Period Three Blog » Marketing

Oct202009

Permission marketing and active-lurkers

Posted by Gene in Marketing, Creating Community

It’s not just that you have users who do stuff and users who don’t, there is an in-between too. The “active-lurker”. I’ve borrowed heavily from a couple of sources to make the following points, starting with Joshua Porter’s post on Designing for Active Lurkers.

This post and Joshua’s post are all based on idea by Bradley Horowitz when he’s talking about the communities surrounding Yahoo’s many services like Flickr, Yahoo Groups, Upcoming & del.icio.us. The idea is that there are phases a non-interacting visitor (lurker) goes through before he/she becomes a content creator or conversion:
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1% of the user population might start a group (or a thread within a group)

10% of the user population might participate actively, and actually author content whether starting a thread or responding to a thread-in-progress

100% of the user population benefits from the activities of the above groups (lurkers)

So, most of your users (even the contributors) are going to be passive most of the time.

This is permission marketing at it’s basic core. Real permission marketing is when people opt-in, not the legalistic definition not the CAN-SPAM law, but real people wanting to read your stuff and then choosing to participate when they feel passionate about a subject…

As Joshua Porter reminds us about what Seth Godin says:

“Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. Real permission works like this: if you stop showing up, people complain, they ask where you went.” - Seth Godin

Here’s an example: On colamovies.com, we want more movie reviewers, but it makes logical sense that in order to get more reviewers we need to continue to focus on cultivating the visitor base that simply uses the website for movie times, then make it easy for those visitors to make reviews. The same is just as in the analogy Porter makes from Fred Wilson:

Just like bookstores use cafes to bring potential purchasers in the store, online retailers should intentionally cultivate an active non-transactor user base.

In other words, the big book stores use fluffy comfortable chairs and coffee to get you into the store to read the books in order to entice you into making a purchase…

So they key to transforming lurkers into active participants is to think of how to engage based on their current activity. Don’t just look at the current conversions and the paths those visitors took to convert. Look at the traffic patterns below the conversion, what are they searching for? What lead them to you? How are they using your website in ways you don’t intend?

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May132009

The Seven Deadly Sins of Website Copy

Posted by Gene in Marketing, Email Marketing

This is a great article from Michel Fortin, that covers what he sees as the 7 deadly sins of website copy writing (really any marketing project copy falls under these 7 items). I agree with what he’s saying overall. Think about these things as you are pulling your next projects copy together and i’m sure you’ll be a success.

1. They fail to connect.
2. They lack a compelling offer.
3. They lack reasons why.
4. They lack scarcity.
5. They lack proof.
6. They lack a clear call to action.
7. The lack good copy.

Particularly I like #6, I scream about this a lot to clients and I say it over and over again. The further boil this down Michel says:

Focus on the “power of one.” That is:
One message
One audience
One outcome

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Apr162009

The TRUTH will always win in social media

Posted by Gene in Business, Marketing, Branding, Social Web

The thing about social media is that it will expose you. If you are an awesome person who truly wants to help people or run a really great business it will show through. On the other hand if you are not so good at what you do, are unethical or make some mistakes you get exposed just the same. We have to take the good with the bad and learn to deal with it. Here are a couple of really recent examples of how this all works:

Amazon.com fails in customer communication
A seemingly harmless change to Amazon.com’s cataloging software caused “gay and lesbian themed books” to be lowered in ranking relevancy thus causing them to disappear from the website - which of course cries of censorship ensued. Instead of taking the problem in hand, responding clearly and concisely online. Amazon only offered “there was a glitch in our systems” as a response and then a full day later announced in a statement that it planned “to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.” That’s pretty much all we get on this from Amazon… It is amazing to me that Amazon would not take this opportunity to control the conversation online, they are leaders on the web after all. See #amazonfail for more on how this is progressing.

Even after it explained the scope of the problem, Amazon continued to face criticism for its slow and limited response to the online blowup, particularly at a time when sites like Twitter can so easily accelerate and amplify a public outcry.

“Frankly, it’s surprising to hear that Amazon, which was a pioneer in the digital space, would miss this opportunity to react in real time and to manage this crisis better than they did,” said Gene Grabowski, chairman of the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington.

Read the full NY Times article where I get most of this from.

The DiggBar Hullaballoo
Digg.com recently released their DiggBar, I wrote a quick post about it on the P3 Blog here.

The DiggBar enables you to Digg, read comments, find related content, and share stuff from any page on the Web. And it’s presented in a short URL format, making it easy to share in emails, on Twitter, and via other services. - from Digg.com

It seems like a good idea to me. Though there have been very loud cries of outrage at the Diggbar and how to kill it. Digg has largely been forced to make changes that effect the way DiggBar works and i’m sure goes against their original strategy for it. This one is still playing out, people will not relent on this one, especially when there is a perceived danger to harming their website’s link authority in search engines. I know i’ll be waiting to see how Digg handles themselves and recovers from it.

Domino’s gets punk’d
Domino’s was blindsided by “Two idiots with a webcam and an internet connection” just a couple days ago (even though they said it wasn’t real). The two perpetrators have been fired and criminal charges have been filed. But like some have called for Domino’s needed to get active outside of just dealing the the “crime” itself. It looks as if they have posted a video from the CEO and in the past 24 hours have signed up for a twitter account @dpzinfo.

According to an article in AdAge when talking to Domino’s there’s “only so much a marketer can do” here was the prevailing attitude at first.

He [Dominos spokesman Tim McIntyre] said the company decided not to issue a press release or post a statement online. After all, he said, the company can deal with tens of thousands of impressions, but a strong response from Domino’s would alert more consumers to the embarrassment.

Mr. McIntyre, however, said the company decided that such a response would be akin to “putting out a candle with a fire hose.”

We’ve seen Domino’s turn around on this and start getting involved in consumer conversation on the web. Using Twitter is a great start, but the issue is cultural to big business (yes in IMHO any Domino’s chain is a part of a very big business…) Why should you be invulnerable to a customer not being happy just because you have hundreds of thousands of them. Does my opinion not matter to you? Thanks to social networking apps like twitter and facebook my singular opinion can now effect you - get ready big business!

The point is that as a business you have to be where your customers are, you have to listen to them in the way they want to talk to you. It’s hard to do that, but you have to do that. The bigger your business is the more you have to listen. The internet will only expose you for the truth of how your business operates, it can’t do anything otherwise because even more so today than ever the internet is powered by consumers - and it is only going to grow more in that direction.

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Jan302009

Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape

Posted by Gene in Business, Marketing, Branding, Social Web

More Gary Vaynerchuk @Web 2.0 Expo NY this past year, I can’t get enough of what he’s selling (not the wine) but the message.

Gary really hits it home here for me. Your product/service is YOU, you have to be honest and work hard and just make sure you like and respect the people your working for or with.

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Dec192008

When marketing ideas go wrong.

Posted by Gene in Marketing

Check this out “meat scented” perfume by Burger King. Now who were the ad wizards that came up with that one?

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Oct032008

Twitter use by both candidates

Posted by Gene in Marketing, Social Web, Twitter

This is a really great article on how both candidates are using Twitter. It starts off a bit anti-McCain, get past that though and read deeper, this guy has some really good insight on how effective use of Twitter should be considered. I personally watch a good bit of Twitter chat-traffic myself and when people use it to just post out their latest blog post, using it as just another medium to broadcast a single point of info, it tends to fall and be less “special” to other Twitter(ers).

…they [Obama’s posts] all have a similar format: “Barack is here. Click here to watch him live.”

B-O-R-I-N-G tweets to me but still I can see how these little updates add value to his supporters who may want to see Barack campaigning on the trail rather than someone like me who wants to know what he’s having for lunch.

To me, authenticity matters most, and this is another example of Barack running an unauthentic online campaign. This is the opening that John McCain’s campaign could use to catch up.

Full post here

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Sep242008

Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2008

Posted by Gene in Marketing, Blogging

Technorati has released their State of the Blogosphere 2008 report, which is all based on a blogger survey they conducted which we were part of here at Period Three and unmatchedstyle.com.

For the first time, we surveyed bloggers directly about the role of blogging in their lives, the tools, time, and resources used to produce their blogs, and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally, and financially.

Generally they report that Blogs are here in a HUGE way, they are mainstream now and most large scale media organizations are entering or have entered the Blog space. Mostly the big brands, chances are that if you are a big brand you are launching or have launched a Blog presence on the web. They also go on to recognize that chances are really high that if you are a big brand then whether you’ve launched your own controlled Blog presence or not, you already have one, for good or bad. Bloggers are already going to be talking about you (much like off-line word of mouth, duh.)

The most interesting piece of info was the reported money Bloggers are making, apparently if you have 100,000 or more visitors a month your making more than $75K - sign me up!

The majority of bloggers we surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.

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Aug212008

Writing for the web

Posted by Gene in Marketing, Usability

Jakob Nielsen has studied writing for the web in depth, what hasn’t he studied about the web in depth? But he has some really good points to make that I think anyone planning their new website should take into consideration.

Here’s my synopsis:

Web pages have to employ:
scannable text
bulleted lists
meaningful sub-headings
one idea per paragraph
the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
highlighted keywords
half the word count than what you think

He’s not kidding around, he tested his thesis in true scientific fashion and found: “when we combined three ideas for improved writing style into a single site, the result was truly stellar: 124% better usability.”

Listen to the man.

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Jul022008

Flash can now be indexed by Google/Yahoo, insert sarcasm, Yipee!

Posted by Gene in Marketing, Web Development

Adobe announced yesterday that they have helped Google and Yahoo to index flash files on the web and it’s gotten a lot of coverage.

Adobe is providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines.

As Jay says, “let’s keep this under wraps“. I agree.

I understand why Flash is so tempting, it’s neat after all. But I still fail to understand why your “rich Internet applications” need indexing? Please advise…

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May082008

Lance Winslow scares Chuck Norris

Posted by Gene in Random Stuff, Marketing

This absolutely has to be the most wacked-out “about” page i’ve ever seen: http://www.lancewinslow.org/founder.shtml

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