1 Good Reason - Internet Marketing

BLUF: doing anything extremely well is a lot harder than it looks. The corollary is making mistakes or doing something poorly can make that “it looks so easy to do” thing seem simple. It rarely is.

I have two cats, or rather, two cats live with my family and I. We would love to have a dog but they are not allowed in our condominium. Now, I’m a DIY’er (Do It Yourselfer) and I’m constantly doing things around the house. Several years ago I created a built in catbox that neatly hides the litter tray in our laundry room so the cats have a nice place that is clean and not so out in the open. This litter tray served it’s (not so noble) purpose for several years. However recently it has begun to have problems, specifically it leaks. I’ll not go into graphic details, and I’ll skip the Flickr photos to spare your sensibilities.

So I’ve decided to replace it with something more…effective shall we say? Not wanting to revisit this particular issue again in the near or not so near future, I decided to go with a store bought plastic cat litter box for our particular needs.

I started using the new plastic store bought litterbox this weekend. And I discovered something surprising- it’s a hell of a lot better than my homemade one!

What is there about litterbox technology that’s so amazing? I’ll just share with you that the shiny smooth surface is much easier to scoop things out of and I’ll leave it at that.

But the real point here is that we often see things which are apparently easy but which in fact are not. Getting the price right on a can of beans in the supermarket. Getting one price right isn’t hard, getting the price right on the 50,000 items a typical supermarket sells, every single day, is hard.

Why should you care? The problem lies when you view a competitor, or a vendor failing at something that looks easy but isn’t. This leads you to underestimate the ease with which you can replace them. Which leads to heartache, and headache.

As you watch the Olympics think about your competitors or suppliers and how they make things that are hard look easy. In the Olympics we see the best athletes in the world doing amazing things and making it look easy. There are everyday people doing hard things well, and that makes it look easy. Don’t be fooled, it’s not easy.

Give me one good reason why you think what you do is much harder than it looks.

Tanks for reading.
Chris

BLUF: A Case Study in small business crisis management with recommendations from a number of prominent marketers.

Not one of my proudest moments, I let my emotions get away from me.  A few weeks ago I wrote this blog post about a very stupid, biased postcard I received in the mail.  Now I’ve received the response from the postcard’s author.  And I’ve decided to make lemonade of the whole thing and look at the situation as a lesson in crisis management for small business owners.  I’ll do my best to keep my prejudice against an obviously prejudiced person out of the analysis.

Case Study in Small Business Crisis Management

Background:

Small business owner, Jack Lefkowitz sent out a postcard which was evidently prepared in-house.  The postcard has several significant flaws:

• The postcard contains language that some of the recipients find offensive and possibly exposes the businessman to legal issues.
• A blogger (yours truly) takes the issue and publicizes it.

Now what does the small business owner do?

• Whom should one contact and secure advice from before proceeding?
• How should you best respond to these types of attacks, valid or not?
• What is the best way to frame your response?

What Happened, The Real Response:

Mr. Lefkowitz responded with a follow up letter to the same mailing list.  The complete 4 page letter is scanned into a PDF file here: mailing-from-jack-lefkowitz. I apologize for the low quality of the scan, but it reflects the low quality of the actual letter received.  And yes the scan is in color the letter is black and white photocopy quality.  The photo and the highlights were actually photocopied at such poor quality as to make them nearly illegible.

Selected Excerpts:

Headline: “Why Is This Man So Upset?”

Opening Paragraph: “Last week a post card was mailed out to you notifying you about a property located at … is being put up for auction due to partnership dissolution.  It offered you a great deal to earn $10,000 if you were able to get a buyer that settles. and on the same note, get the neighbor you wished for yourself.”

Subhead #1: “Sounds wonderful doesn’t it?  So why is the man so upset here?  Who is he anyway?”

Subhead #2: “THIS IS WHY JACK IS SO UPSET!!! HE WAS SIMPLY MIS UNDERSTOOD!!!”

Footer Callout (highlighted with dark background): “This mansion is for any person who wishes to enjoy leisure and comfort in a dream luxurious home and live an exceptional life?”

Page 2: (primarily a repeat of the home ad please refer to the PDF for details.

Page 3: “I’m sure you’ll love it once you see it, but as a Neighbor what benefit do you have by recommending a buyer?”

Page 4: Blank

Page 5: Copy of this article from Florida Today.com.  About a swingers club that is being evicted from a rented house in Melbourne FL.  With an attached Post-It note saying, “This is what he’s trying to protect you! Read the enclosed article”

What The Experts Recommend:

I asked a number of prominent marketing bloggers and associates how they would recommend Mr. Lefkowitz proceed.  Here is a condensed version of the recommendations I received.  The full text of the replies I received from all of the bloggers gracious enough to lend me their time and expertise can be found here.

• Lewis Green He should have stopped his card after he described the house.
• David Berkowitz If he’s that concerned over it he could have tried to raise the funds to buy it. 
  
• Jason Falls Sure he was misunderstood the first time.  He’s only going to be misunderstood the second time by many because the message isn’t clear.  
• Roberta Rosenberg Outline the specific goal to be achieved.  Have a professional … write the copy, tho there is a certain charm that might be lost.
• John Johansen Determine if anyone in his market is reading the blog coverage. … If no one he’s doing business with is reading, then the controversy isn’t affecting his business.
• Josef Katz Every communication counts.  …Have an expert review and prepare your copy.  The money you spend will be worth it…
• Cam Beck 1. Shut up until he hires and consults a reputable lawyer.  2 Hire a reputable lawyer.
• Cheryl Waller…Contact the [local paper] with the story and let the newspaper bash him about the inappropriate behavior on the front page in an editorial.  The housing market is a hot topic and the newspaper loves juicy stories. Controversial?  Yes.  More free marketing for the listing?  Absolutely!
• Michelle Lamar I wish I could help you but this guy put himself out in front of the firing squad by using such extreme tactics in his ads.  
• Gavin Heaton Work with the medium in which the issues are raised– if it is a blog, respond in that format.  If you feel uncomfortable in dealing with a blogger… engage a local PR firm to act on your behalf.
• Drew McLellan Anyone who can live in a neighborhood of $2+ million homes is being bombarded with direct mail. … Odds are, most people didn’t even read the headline before it was tossed in the garbage.  Have some respect for your audience.  Don’t send them something that is photocopied to illegibility and then home that they’ll respect your opinion.
• Jason Alba Totally let it go, get on with business.  Give me a break, this the type of distraction that a real CEO doesn’t need to chase, only to dig a deeper hole. … Who wants to read a 4 page whiner’s letter?

Final Recommendations and Analysis:

The main issue I feel Jack missed is that it’s not about him.  It’s not about you or your business it’s about the feelings of your prospects & customers.  There are a dozen ways Jack could have approached this from the perspective of a recipient of his mailings.  The least effective is from the sender’s perspective.  Get out of yourself & your business (hiring someone else to write is a good way) and keep the focus on the customer’s feelings, not yours.  This entire mess would have been avoided if Jack had done that to begin with.  Instead he imposed his feelings on his target audience, bringing about this problem.

After reading all of the responses I received I believe that Jason Alba and John Johansen (among others) hit the nail on the head.  If Jack called me and asked me what to do before sending the second letter.  I would do my best to determine if his target audience read any blogs that are likely to carry the story.  And from my understanding of the story today, the likelihood is low.  So my advice to Jack would be to ignore it and carry on.

However, if it does become a bigger issue then it may be that Cheryl Waller has the best idea to revel in the light of the PR while you make the money. Cheryl, is the one of the real estate professionals who took part and she has a very different view of this.  She says in part:

I honestly do not think that this campaign was designed in-house. He is using a very specific (and touchy) direct marketing approach, yes, based on exploiting people’s fears and ruffling feathers. It’s actually quite effective, which your email here proves. The style, the follow-up, the post-it note.. I have seen it all before. I’ve gone to workshops specifically on this style of copywriting.

Her contribution was long and detailed and worth a read.  I don’t happen to agree with Cheryl’s perspective, I simply think that Jack is not that clever in his marketing efforts.  But I could be wrong.

All in all, this was a great experience, and I’m truly thankful to my friends who gave me their time and their wisdom to help me with this.  This was a lot of fun and I will do it again in the future.

Tanks for reading,

Chris

BLUF: Deceit is a stupid way to start any business relationship.  But in the world of Google and social media it can and will come back to bite you.  I’m climbing on my soapbox now…

A good friend sent me a job posting that was on MediaBistro.  The job described was a perfect match so I applied for it.  It turns out that that job didn’t exist, and never existed.  The recruiter had created the posting to gather emails and resumes.

I wrote an angry email to the recruiter telling them they were being deceitful and to remove me from their database.  The reply included the following:

“We wrote a general posting and purposely made it look like a ‘general’ posting. That general posting is currently on our site including this line: “We service a variety of clients ranging from Fortune 100 powerhouses to small boutique digital ad agencies. They all have one thing in common - they trust and depend on Aquent…The same posting on our site has the city listed as New Jersey indicating that there is no specific city.

…Aquent does NOT make a practice of attempting to deceive its talent or prospective talent. We make every effort to set realistic expectations with everyone we work with.”

My response included this:

“You are creating postings for the purpose of collecting emails and resumes with no specific product to offer the respondent to your ad.  If you were selling hard products in a brick and mortar store you would be clearly guilty of fraudulent advertising. The flaw is in writing a job posting to begin with, no amount of fine print or qualifications in the posting will circumvent the fact that you have no job (product) to offer with the ad.

Surely you can find a better way to contact qualified candidates where you can begin your relationship on a honest footing?  Because a relationship begun in this manner will never be mutually beneficial.  I will always know that you are deceitful and I can therefore never trust you to be honest with me or to work with my best interests in mind.

I suggest that you reexamine your moral perspective on this.  And please honor my request to remove me from your database.”

Last week I attended the Digital Publishing & Advertising Conference and during the Keynote Panel, a man proudly introduced himself from the stage in this way; “My job is to make loans online, by any means necessary,” he is a VP at CitiGroup. Hearing him describe himself in that fashion sent chills down my spine.

The point here is that CitiGroup, Aquent, and too many others in the service industry feel that fraudulent or misleading advertising is fine.  Advertising non-existent products simply to gather information on qualified prospects is accepted as the norm.

I won’t be using CitiGroup or Aquent any time soon.  And companies who employ these tactics will find that the web and the power of social media will be following them. Google has a very long memory. Hopefully the shame and social pressure to do the right thing can cause people to do this type of wrong thing less often.

NOTE: I thought long and hard about whether to include ANY names in this post, company or individuals.  I decided that individuals are not to blame, but that the pervasive attitude accepting these tactics at the companies and in the industries is to blame.  Therefore I excluded the individuals but included the companies- hoping that the notoriety of this blog post will begin to turn the tide.  (If you would like to help with this effort Digg, or Sphinn or StumbleUpon, the article with the company names as keywords.)  And by the way I’m still looking for a job…although not at CitiGroup or Aquent.

Tanks for reading,

Chris

BLUF: I want to look at your website with the information presented in the order I want it.  Mass customize your site by allowing your visitors to rearrange the info to their liking- an idea whose time has come.

My friend Steve Woodruff over at Sticky Figure proposes an idea to have a single user interface for web applications.  The idea is good but I think he misses the point.  Here is his idea in a nutshell:

One Interface to rule them all Part 1, Part 2

I’m on a quest (as I’m sure many others are) for the One Gold Ring - a single interface that will be my functional portal into the web. Right now, I go to too many places (iGoogle, Yahoo Mail, Google Reader, Flickr, Pageflakes, WordPress, Twitter, Plurk, Amazon, eBay, etc., etc., etc.) to “do web stuff,” and the fragmentation of these services is inefficient and frustrating.

Here is my counter proposal: Customizable Sites:

I want eBay and Amazon to offer me the ability to rearrange the way they present information to me in the way that I like it.  This way, I can make the sites that I visit frequently all look similar to me.  And you can make the sites you visit look similar to you.

This is the future of the web, mass-customization, you can glimpse it today on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk etc.  I get to decide how your website looks, and how it presents information.  I can pick background colors, and the order of the information as it’s presented.

Talk about engagement! Talk about customer involvement!  A customer who customizes your website to their specifications is one who will return and use it much more than any other.

What do you think?

Tanks for reading,

Chris

BLUF: Get to the point in your emails.

It seems to me that in recent weeks email newsletters have taken a giant step backwards.  So in an effort to demonstrate what I think is most effective and least effective in email I’ve created the following video.

Now my question to you is this; What image do you remember?  Which ones enticed you to want to read more?

Each of the images are the same size, taken from my email preview pane, or a web page.  A special thanks to Greg Cangialosi of Blue Sky Factory for sending me links to their email examples.  He didn’t know what I was going to use them for, so he was particularly brave for sending them my way.

My purpose here is to demonstrate that if you are very lucky, you will have almost as much time as this video demonstrates.

Most likely you will have much less time to Enthrall your email recipient than this video allows.

The Good: (IMO)

This email comes from ION Interactive and is an excellent example of getting to the point.  I know what it’s about and if I’m interested then I’ll decide to read more.

The Bad:

This email is from The Marketing Experiments Journal a part of Marketing Sherpa whom I hold in very high regard.  I’ve read their excellent “Email Marketing Benchmark” study and this message violates most of the rules they’ve laid out there. (Full disclosure, I don’t have any connection with Marketing Sherpa/ Marketing Experiments other than being a customer.)  Frankly I expected better from you folks.

In the first two vertical inches there is nothing to tell me why to read any further.  This is mainly due to the addition of the banner ad for Omma Gaming inserted in the top of the message.  Which have suddenly appeared at the top of numerous emails in the last few weeks.

The Ugly:

As he so often does, Steve Jobs flaunts conventional wisdom.  Does this email tell you what it’s all about? Nope!  Does it get right to the point? Nope!  Does this email make you want to read more?  Yes!  But I believe that is just because Jobs has made such cool products.  If it were about anything more mundane, like for instance email marketing- it wouldn’t be enticing and it wouldn’t work.

Now watch that video again and look at your emails to see what you are getting across in the first second…

And by all means please tell me what you think in the comments below.

Tanks for reading,

Chris

BLUF- Is SMO (Social Media Optimization) generated traffic lower quality than SEO (Search Engine Optimization) traffic?  My conclusion, it’s extremely difficult to measure and it’s also too soon to tell.

In an excellent post James Duthie lays out a classic experiment comparing two blogs.  His conclusion is that the quality of traffic generated by the SMO site is lower than the quality of traffic generated by SEO.  In his words;

“A clean sweep of loyalty and engagement metrics certainly provides evidence to support the theory that search engines generate superior quality traffic. In 3 of the 4 metrics, the search engine supported blog generated a clear lead over the social media supported blog. And while other factors undoubtedly influence each engagement metric, the fact that Marketing Easy led all 4 categories removes some of the doubt relating to external influences.”

I’m not going to quibble over the methodology, although I feel there are questions.  My argument is with the test in it’s basic form. SMO is too new to generate any significant movements and therefore will fail when measured against any other form of advertising or outreach.  It’s simply not big enough to move the meter today.

Over the past week I attended two conferences which included SMO issues.  And it is clear to me that we are in the earliest phase of the social media revolution.  My overall impression of Omma Social was one of confusion.  Some of the best and most prominent minds in Social Media were on stage and they were clearly making it up as they go along (IMHO).

One thing stuck in my mind from Omma Social:

Paul Beck Sr. Partner & Executive Director of Digital at Ogilvy Worldwide said “Social Media is less than one half of one percent of our Digital Advertising Budget.”

This statement by Mr. Beck indicates that SMO’s reach and impact are far from being realized.  Comparing SMO to SEO today is like early automobile versus horse races, the horse won.  But in the end everyone at the time knew that the car would eventually eclipse the horse.  So my conclusion is that’s it’s simply too early to run valid head to head tests between SMO and SEO.

What do you think?

Yesterday I attended Omma Social Conference in Manhattan.  And I have to say that for the newbies in the audience it must have been very intimidating.  The presenters gave no case studies and spoke in such general terms that you couldn’t get much actionable information out of many of the sessions.

I have to admit that I came late and missed the keynote, and I had to leave early.  So it’s possible that I missed some real gems.  But from 10 AM to 4 PM only one presentation used the projector, nice job Rohit Bhargava! (although, two of the examples from members of your panel were the same thing.)  However, not a single presentation showed actual web pages.  How can you have people talking about the web and not have them showing you the pages, ads, and events they are describing?

I can tell you that one attendee I spoke with gave me the following compliment, “I’ve learned more actionable ideas from you in the last 10 minutes than I have in the whole day here.”  This conversation happened at the 3:15 PM break.

Her questions were simple, and generally unanswered:

• What is Social Media?
• How do I start?
• What should we be doing today?
• What are the best books?
• What do we do if a (business i.e. product recall) disaster strikes?

Her statements were even more compelling:

• My client is afraid of blogs.
• They are afraid of what their people will say.
• My clients are worried they are being hurt if their competitors are using Social Media.

Omma did make a very serious attempt to make the event more Social Media friendly.  They twittered live, and used Hashtags but from my reading the tweets lacked substance, which merely reflected the conference.  You can read these Excellent notes on the conference posted by K.B. Skobac. And make your own judgement.

So, how could Omma improve the next conference?  IMHO here are my suggestions:

• Demand that presenters prepare slides, or a list of bookmarks to illustrate their points.  (PS this will ensure they are more prepared.)
• Run the twitter stream on the big screen during the conference.  And display it to the presenters.  After all, it’s social isn’t it.
• Present more actionable info.  Have the moderators require concrete ideas and examples from the panelists.
• Give the presentations to the audience, post them on the site.

What did you think?  Either from the twitter stream or as an attendee?

Tanks for reading,

Chris

I have a client who is very cautious with his credit cards on the internet. Perhaps, hyper-cautious is a better definition. For instance, he uses a pair of credit cards for all of his online purchases, and keeps their limits extremely low to avoid any possible fraud. Now this is a prudent policy that more people should emulate.

However, since this client also spends a few thousand dollars every month on Google AdWords advertising this can and frequently does lead to snafu’s. Regularly, his Google AdWords account issues the following warning:

From a Marketing and Management perspective this is a fine way for you to inform your client of an extremely import issue. Unless of course, it’s a lie.

In the two years I’ve been running this client’s AdWords account the ads have stopped exactly one time. And the time that they stopped the message didn’t alter one iota. Yet the “Your Ads are not running…” message is displayed at least once a month. I’ve seen this message on numerous other client accounts both large and small. And it never actually reflects a stoppage unless the account is seriously behind in payment.

In case you are not familiar with the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” It’s about raising the alarm when there is no emergency. The moral of the story is that you should only SCREAM FIRE, WHEN THERE’S AN ACTUAL FIRE!

So my question is this;

Why does Google, typically a sensitive and intelligent company resort to crying wolf like this?And does it damage their customer relations?

I think they cry wolf because they rationally and scientifically tested different messages and found this to be the most effective. And they want effectiveness because stopping ads directly impacts their bottom line cash flow. However, scientific web analytics often overlooks the psychological impact on the client.

I do think that it damages their customer relations in several ways.

• It makes Google seem more monolithic, uncaring and machine like. Hard to do for a monolithic machine driven corporation, but true none the less for those who are impacted.
• It desensitizes clients to real warnings when they occur in the future. (the last one didn’t mean anything.)
• It creates a hole in the “Infallible Mystique” Google has built around it’s reputation. Which may be the most serious blow of all.
• Frankly, Google I’m tired of being treated like a child. Treat me like an adult and tell me the ads are going to stop if I don’t do something. As a Google Certified Advertising Professional why do I get the same message that Joe’s Bait Shop gets about account status?

How could Google or any company fix this?

1. Tailor messages to account levels. Higher spending accounts should receive more professional messaging. Especially for Google- Certified Advertising Professionals- (who studied for, took, and passed your test and paid your fees) should receive professional level reporting and warnings.
2. Treat your customers like adults. Amazingly, when treated like adults the vast majority actually respond like adults. However, when treated like children…
3. Don’t lie. (Remember the old corporate motto Google? “Do no evil” Many of us feel lies are evil, and the beginning of a slippery slope.)
4. Don’t lie to your customers. (Do I really need to expand on this concept?)

These are my thoughts on this GoogleBoy Who Cried Wolf story, what are yours?

By Chris Kieff, Social & Search Media Evangelist

Warren Beatty’s Bulworth, a well-intentioned yet overreaching film about political and social commentary, came to mind as I attended the Advertising 2.0 Conference last week, the well-intentioned yet overreaching new media conference during the first-ever Internet Week, in New York.

It was billed as the “primary” state of the business conference and had a list of well-heeled media big wigs which would rival any Capitol Hill fund-raiser!

So begins my first article for the Madison Avenue Journal. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

Sometimes when I visit a website I have to imagine what were you thinking? And I know that I’ve done it myself on occasion. Made that foolish blunder that was done with the best of intentions. That thing where when you look back it made sense every step of the way, but now looking back it’s flawed train of logic to have arrived where you are.

Today’s example: Plurk.com’s My Account Page.

As an intrepid web explorer I fill out numerous forms on sites. And usually at the bottom of a form you’ll find the SUBMIT button, or the much cooler “Do It!” or another variation on the theme. So imagine my surprise when I mistakenly clicked the button at the bottom of this form on Plurk:

A little background Plurk is the hot new social networking site that has all of the social (media) butterflies a twitter (sorry for the inside joke)! It offers a different interface and some fun new features when compared to Twitter. What you don’t Twitter? That’s just fine because todays blog is about presenting ideas and managing their presentation to the audience.

I have no doubt that the people over at Plurk are smart. And I’m sure they care very much about what they are doing. But I think in their rush to get the product out the door, up and running as quickly as possible they didn’t give as careful consideration to how people use their website, as they might have. I can imagine the conversation going something like this:

Designer #1 “We need some way for people to quit our service. I hate when you sign up for something and there’s no simple, easy to find way to leave the service. And that will help us, because when people delete their accounts we don’t have to store their info anymore. It will make the technology run better.”

Designer #2 “Seems like a good idea. How about we put it on the Manage Account page?”

Designer #1 “Ok, that’s easy to find. But we should put it all the way at the bottom. We don’t want people to see it too soon.”

Designer #3 “Hey, why don’t you make the button to delete my account Red so that people will see that it’s different than the others?”

Designer #2 “Good Idea”

Designer #1 “And instead of a simple message let’s make it say exactly what deleting will do.”

So following a process something like this outlined above we now have a BIG RED BUTTON TELLING CUSTOMERS TO LEAVE. I believe that most Marketing people would recommend against that. And the real kicker is it’s in the place that’s usually reserved for a SUBMIT, or SAVE button would be.

How could this be avoided? Invite some people in for donuts and ask them to try it out while you watch them. Pay people $10 in the deli on the corner to do it. Try anything to have someone try your site out first.

This is the oldest and cheapest way to do user interface testing. Just ask some people to try it and watch them while they use your stuff. You will learn fantastic things about your interface.

If you want to learn about good interface design, go look at the top 10 online stores. Study the way they do things. Because you can guarantee that they have studied it. Look at eBay, Amazon, NetFlix.

What do you think you can do better?