An "Unfair" Advantage on the Web: Director of Conversion

There are still huge opportunities to get a competitive advantage on the Web. Naturally, I believe that being a leader in conversion strategy is one of those opportunities. While "progressive" marketing departments are creating positions such as "Director of Search Marketing" to build traffic to their sites, a company that markets online courses is taking the lead where it counts: at the point of action.

For most marketing departments, conversion is a metric. For this company it is a discipline worthy of a director level position. In creating the Director of Conversion position they are saying:

• We want to fully leverage the qualified traffic we are getting to our Web properties
• We want to get the most from our advertising spends
• We want to provide our visitors with the information and experience they are looking for
• We want to kick our competitors' asses

Does your business need a Director of Conversion? The company was kind enough to provide us with the text of the job description that they used to find their Director of Conversion. I will say that it was a long search, but the conversion team is dealing in terms of orders of magnitude improvements in conversion and new clients.

Imagine what this team will know about their market in a year.

Following is the full job description, and I think they nailed it.

Job Description

Position: Director of Website Conversion

Reports to: Chief Marketing Officer

Supervisory Responsibility: Site Conversion team

Job Description:

As the owner of the presentation layer of our websites, you and your team are responsible for optimizing our conversion from site traffic to lead inquiry and student production across all web sites, micro sites, and landing pages in the company. Project management, web site usability, testing methodologies (A/B and multi-variant), and managerial skills are required as you will be expected to generate, execute and analyze the results of a testing plan for each website in our rapidly growing portfolio of university partnerships. In this highly visible role, you’ll partner with business unit leaders and other core process owners to positively impact the lives of thousands of people each year and improve ROI for our partner schools and fellow employees.

Ideal candidates will have a combination of extensive HTML experience, solid project management ability and past responsibility for managing a team.  This person should have an understanding of the general concepts related to content management systems, search engine optimization, web analytics and user experience design.  A strong set of communication skills is also essential, as the Director of Website Conversion will work closely with many departments company wide. 

A. Daily Duties:

1. Responsible for hands-on development of the front-end presentation for all company student facing program web sites
2. Stay informed of continuing developments in the industry and apply best practices.
3. Recruit, select, train, performance manage, and develop staff
4. Continually improve ROI for dollars invested through this phase of the value chain company wide.
5. Lead and manage a team engaged in implementing tests, building new and maintaining existing web sites at the sales and marketing level (presentation layer).
6. Develop systems to ensure quality and optimize for high volume throughput
7. Collaborate with business unit, infrastructure groups and other core process leaders to plan tests for marketing message, new sales tools and lead generation features, promotional offers, impact of graphical elements like, colors, logo’s, layout, etc.
8. Ensure exceptional quality and usability of all web sites, while optimizing performance and scalability

B. Weekly Duties:

1. Design multi-variant tests to achieve maximum insight in the shortest time possible
2. Develop measure and publish key metrics for site conversion per web site and roll up company-wide
3. Serve as functional process owner on Operations team
4. Publish key learning’s for the benefit of other stakeholders and roll global enhancements across all sites
5. Work in partnership with the IT team to define optimal technology solutions and processes for constructing web applications
6. Work in partnership with various business owners from sales, marketing and product management to ensure the successful launch of short and long term initiatives

C. Monthly Duties:

1. Formally record test variations and results for later reference
2. Manage departmental costs to meet or spend less than budget
3. Apply knowledge gained in accumulating test results into new web sites created
4. Develop and maintain testing plans for each web site and landing page
5. Determine length of test to reach statistical significance for data set
6. Formally present summarized test results to operating team.

D. Annual Duties:

1. Review and refresh team training materials
2. Develop and maintain job descriptions and conduct annual performance reviews
3. Participate as department head in the budgeting process
4. Provide strategic input toward the future evolution of the department and function as the company grows.
5. Develop standards and document best practices as it relates to the web sites development
6. Conduct research into current and emerging Web technologies and issues in support of on-line initiatives; identify influencing industry developments and trends; present recommendations to management in clear and concise manner

Qualifications:

1. Bachelor’s degree in related field or an equivalent combination of skills, training and hands-on experience
2. At least 2-5 years experience designing high-impact web sites using emerging technologies, including management responsibility in an on-line technology environment
3. Familiarity with web site analytics/web site statistics software, such as Google Analytics, Web Trends, etc.
4. At least 2 years experience selecting, managing, and growing teams of at least 3-6 staff members
5. Ability to manage, motivate and teach a team of front end web designers to successfully deliver multiple, concurrent projects with quality
6. Strong organizational skills and attention to detail required
7. Proficient with Microsoft Office
8. Strong analytical and problem solving skills. Ability to work at management level, but willingness and acumen to provide hands-on support when necessary.
9. Experience with testing methodologies as used in marketing practice
10. Project management experience with formal training preferred
11. Expert knowledge of web-based presentation layer technologies, including HTML, CSS, XHTML; solid understanding of content management systems; experience with AJAX and Javascript a plus
12. Knowledge of search engine optimization techniques and experience leveraging web analytics tools to gain insight into user behavior
13. Knowledge of the principles of user-centered design;  experience facilitating usability testing

I don't think I would have changed a thing about this job description. Thanks to Jeff Hoogendam for his contribution.

#12. Do You Charge for Your Free Service?

Am I a marketing sheep? 261 Questions

Xobni is free. They're offering a private beta that is free, if you can get in.

Those of us who want to get an early taste of the service are paying for admittance. We're paying with our connections, with our links, and with our opinion.

I hope Xobni the application is as smart.

At this point, I'm not a Xobni fan. I've never used it. But I did request to get into their private beta. That was almost two months ago. I've done this with dozens of services.

When I got an email from them recently, I'd already forgotten what they do. But, they said I could get in early and with a click they would tell me how.

The Life's Blood of Web 2.0

What does any Web 2.0 company need to survive and thrive?

Not money. At least not much.

Not a high-powered sales team.

They need more people to try the site, people who will help them make it better. So, Xobni offered three ways to get into their early beta.

You should copy these down.

1. Invite friends (at least 4)
2. Qualify yourself as a desirable beta tester
3. Put their badge on your blog and generate two signups.

So, they've turned what could be a dark period with no press into a social free-for-all. This is more powerful than any $9.95 monthly subscription fee -- at least at this point in their life.

Smart.

What are you charging for your free services?

P.S.: Here's the badge. Now go join so I can get in early.

MarketingSherpa Weighs in on Using Personas to Lift Revenue

If you don't get to this content before March 26, signup for a MarketingSherpa trial to get this case study on Personas.

In this case study from H20+, Sherpa give us seven steps for creating and using Personas. I wanted to weigh in.

1. Start with what you know

The beauty of personas is that, by developing them, you are really just organizing what you already know about your customers and Web visitors.

2. Talk to people who interact with your customers

The case study calls out customer service reps, sales people and technical support reps as sources for knowledge that can be shaped into personas. Smaller companies will want to include founders, product managers and marketing managers.

3. Dig into your data

This is pretty intuitive, but don't let a lack of data keep you from developing a set of personas. It is better to market to a specific "wrong" visitor than it is to market to nobody.

4. Identify the holes

Often times, we don't know some of the key reasons that people take action. What information are you not considering?

5. Fill in the blanks

Surveys, focus groups and such are really only effective when you're trying to answer specific questions. You already know what you know. Use these tools to find out what you don't know.

6. Name your personas

I'd go a step further and say give them names that will invoke their personality and role. Some of the persona names I've developed include Naive Nick, Penny Planner, Larry Leftbrain, and Victor Visionary. I also attach a picture of them to each profile.

7. Refine Personas

When developing personas for Web marketing, I recommend updating personas with each analytics review -- typically once per month. The changes may not be significant, but if you realize you're missing a segment of your visitors, you can add new personas immediately. This is better than waiting a year.

I'll also add the following suggestion provided by Lynn Pausic from Expero, Inc. in her presentation to the Bootstrap Network in January:

8. Put your personas up on a Wiki

All too often the personas are shoved into a drawer or buried on someone's hard drive. Put them on a wiki where they can be easily accessed and updated by the entire staff.

Needless to say, you should be subscribe to MarketingSherpa's free best-of newsletter.

MarketingSherpa: How to Use Personas to Lift Revenue 500% in 7 Easy-to-Follow Steps

#11 Do You Understand Signaling Theory

261 Questions

"Yes. Absolutely," he said with some aplomb, yet his head shook back and forth tightly as he spoke the words. Immediately, I felt a twinge of concern that I hadn't been heard or understood. I wanted him to get my point. I felt strongly about it. His mouth spoke the words I wanted to hear. His head signaled something different.

Either he wasn't listening or he was thinking something more than his words communicated. Maybe he was tired of listening to me. In the parlance of Tom Wanek, this was counter-signaling. I recently saw Tom's presentation at the Wizard Academy on Signaling Theory. He gave me permission to summarize it here.

Signaling: Aligning actions with words to gain credibility and trust in your marketing.

UPDATE: Tom Wanek is teaching the workshop Fight the Big Boys and Win at the Wizard Academy near Austin, Texas May 13-14. Free meals and lodging for first 12 students.

The Costs of Signaling

There is a cost to making action and communication match. In the case of my friend, he could have paid with better attention, or with honesty about his doubts. Tom would have called the first a "Time and Energy" cost; the latter an "Opportunity Cost" in that he may have insulted me and lost all opportunity with me.

The key to credibility is the cost of aligning word and action. If you pay the cost, you can gain the credibility.

Tom identified six Signaling Costs in his presentation.

Material Wealth (or your businesses' resources)

To build credibility, don't make claims that the business hasn't made real.

If you're going to offer a warranty as proof of your quality, you're going to have to give some money back. That's a material cost

If you're going to taut your great customer service, you're going to have to hire excellent people to service your customers. That's a real investment of salary dollars.

If you're going to claim industry-leading technology (please never use this terminology) you've got to invest in technology that offers more than your competitors. That's a real capital expenditure.

Time and Energy

Where does the business you're marketing for focus its energy? At Conversion Sciences, I would get more leads if I led with my SEO or SEM resources. It's what people are looking for today. But I spend 75% of my time on Conversion Analysis. Hence, I focus my brand and messaging on conversion. For example, my title is "Conversion Specialist." Better than "Online Marketing Specialist," this signals where I invest my time.

By this time next year, everyone will know what "conversion" means.

Opportunity

What opportunities are you willing to pass by so that you can signal clearly?

This is the cost that marketing to personas illuminates. In the process of focusing your marketing message on a few visitor personas, you must stop messaging to some segment of your visitorship. That's the opportunity cost.

Tom uses the example of  Toyota's Scion brand, which is targeted and signals to buyers 18 to 24 with non-conformist tendencies. It was a success and they could have significantly expanded the market to older, more conformist buyers. But they felt they would have lost their core buyers. So the capped production and maintained their targeted message.

That's a real opportunity cost.

Power and Control

The social marketing movement has caused us to begin considering this cost. Anytime you let visitors and customer post on your site, you lose power and control. Facebook recently counter-signaled it's community by trying to take back some control with their Beacon advertising platform. This unilateral action was not in alignment with their signaling that said the users owned and controlled their Facebook experience.

Reputation and Prestige

Standing for what you believe can cost you in reputation and prestige. Tom uses the example of Patagonia, a clothing manufacturer that, in the midst of thriving turned "green." They now only offer environmentally-friendly products. Naturally, a portion of their loyal customer base found this to be "preachy" or alarmist. It was inevitable that their reputation would suffer, but the owner decided to signal his beliefs and, by proxy Patagonia's values.

Safety and Well-being

The most extreme example of paying the price of safety and well-being is "betting the company" on an idea or marketing message. Putting your entire marketing budget into Superbowl ad is one example.

Lifelock CEO Todd Davis published his Social Security Number in the company's marketing and advertising. This was bold, and seems to have worked well for them. Of course, if he'd been hacked, the company would have been humiliated and all credibility lost.

The Benefits Must Exceed the Cost

My friend Jeffrey Peltier is an incredibly knowledgeable search marketer. Yet, he doesn't have a Web site. Not even a blog. He has great referral business and the cost of maintaining a site that would pass muster for a search "expert" is too high. While his competition is spending time on their Web site, he's spending time making customers LOVE -- and talk about -- his results.

More From Tom

It is always a treat to spend time at the Wizard Academy, and this past Tuesday's Open House was no exception. The Academy is about understanding communication. The ideas you'll find are generally new ways of looking at how we deliver and absorb messages.

Tom Wanek will be presenting a workshop at the Wizard Academy in the coming months. Enter your email below, and I'll remind you with a post when the date has been finalized.

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Business Owners: Here's the Truth About Building Your Web Site

It's Time for a Rant

Throughout my career, I've been involved in tens of Web projects -- many of which started before my involvement, but not all. The vast majority of them have fallen far short of their initial vision. Many were all-out train wrecks.

Business Owners, read this before you decide to create a Web presence, "update" your Web site or start taking orders online.

What I am writing here about the professionals you will work with isn't true. But, it is exactly what you will experience if you decide to manage the Web development process yourself.

The Low Barrier to Entry Trap

Software seems very malleable. It looks at first glance (and second and third) like something that’s cheap to produce and easy to change. That’s the trap.

If you buy into the thought that there is a low barrier to entry in software – and Web sites especially – you’ll also buy this little gem:

It’s more cost-effective to build an application and release it to the public than it is to research your audience to tell you what to build.

The people who write software have seen high-profile stories of this strategy at work. It general will NOT work for your business, and you shouldn’t have to depend on such a strategy, because, over time, it's very expensive.

This is the first major disconnect between Web developer and business owner.

The Disconnect Between Business Owner and Web Developer

The business owner sees a Web site as a brochure that takes orders. To them, a Web site is a convincing collection of words and pictures with the added bonus that people can actually buy stuff. Right there. In the brochure.

The Web developer sees it as a puzzle in which the pieces don’t have to fit perfectly. To them a Web site is an imperfect, growing and self-evolving organism. Developers are patient people. It’s just software.

Meanwhile the business owners fortunes are dependent on the site. As development stretches on and on, he sees his fortunes going down the toilet. The business owner really doesn’t understand why a brochure that sells stuff is so hard to get finished.

Working with Developers Sucks

You will never find a person less able to communicate, worse at time management, more limited in planning ability and more truly autistic in his professional relationships than you will in a Web developer.

If they're busy, you’re really hosed.

My mind boggles at how few exceptions I’ve seen in the innumerable Web development projects I’ve been involved in. And, as a developer, I was not an exception.

Web developers are sometimes brilliant, but they're rarely effective.

A talented project manager may know how to accommodate such an animal. A business owner, with other matters to consider is going to crash and burn.

And it doesn't stop with the Web developers.

Designers Design for Themselves

Great designers don’t compromise. Unfortunately, bush league designers don’t either.

Designers are doing art. No matter what they tell you, they can rarely prevent themselves from injecting some part of their soul into your logo design. Once that happens, asking them to change something is like asking them to remove one of the legs from their newborn baby. They will do it if you insist, but you know things will never be the same between you.

Three Comps and Your Out

Rather than doing the hard work of understanding your customer, they revert to the "three comps" method of design research. Once they've created a spectrum of creative design comps, guess who picks the winner. The business owner. The one person least qualified to make design decisions.

Inevitably, he or she will prefer one of the two “throw away” comps instead of the one that has the designer has embedded his soul into.

Needless to say the relationship starts off on a bad footing.

The poor business owner is in a quandary. He is completely unqualified to select a design, yet it is his duty to choose well. He must live with the decision for a long time.

If he’s lucky, he’ll be brow-beaten into agreeing with the designer. If not, nothing the designers do will be quite right. Designers inevitably will prove that you should have listened to them.

SEO? SEM? Google?

The Shaman comes in, dressed in animal furs, waving his chicken foot, chanting to the Search Spirits, asking that they may grant the business the blessings of high search rankings, more traffic and much bounty.

Search is a very cost-effective way to advertise. There really are just a few things you need to do to effectively tell a search engine what you’re Web site is about.

The search engines want to know what you’re about.

So, how does something as straight forward as telling a search engine who you are produce such a mind-numbing assortment of schemes and tactics? How is it that there are 1000 small SEO consulting shops none of which use the same strategy? It’s because everyone is guessing.

SEO experts know for certain that their belly button moves up and down when they breathe. They just don’t know why. However, it's obvious they need to breathe in more and avoid breathing out if they want higher a belly button position.

SEO is important, and the business owner doesn’t have any frame of reference for where to put his money. He’s guessing too.

What if the Shaman brings his medicine, but the patient still dies? Well, the SEO expert can’t be responsible for a Web site that doesn’t convert. That’s a marketing or creative issue.

Copywriters and PTSD

Like designers, copywriters believe what they do is art. They are really writers who have added "copy" to their title because it pays better.

However, designers use complex tools with names like "Photoshop" to maintain gatekeeper status over their work.

Copywriters have no such protection.

The Blood of Their Children

The red ink that a business owner pours over their work looks to them like blood. There's little they can do, and then PTSD sets in -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Most are beaten into submission, delivering mind-numbing copy with the flavor of Styrofoam.

You see it every day. Incoherent chains of adverbs and multi-syllabic words designed only to make the business look smarter or bigger than it really is.

Good copywriters are story tellers. Business owners want manifestos to what they've built.

Unfortunately, business owners don't often meet their copywriters. The design firm often hides these poor vulnerable creatures away to minimize their pain.

Business Owners On Their Own

The business owner has his years of experience working with his customers. He has this vision for his business that he can’t get out of his head. He has a product that he’s thought about non-stop for years. The developers and designers and consultants and writers all tell him that it’s important to understand his market.

Then they make the mistake of asking him “so who are you selling to.”

Inevitably, the business owner will tell them about everyone he’s ever sold to all mashed into one über-human.

The über-human is an entity that doesn’t exist in the real world.

Marketers may even try to demographically segment the über-human into über-children, none of whom exist in the real world, either.

Then, they all go off and develop for, design for, optimize for and write for their own individual image of the client’s customer.

It's a mess.

My Advice for the Business Owner

Pay for the Process

My advice to the business owner is to hire professionals that have a discovery process, a process that intimately involves you. Processes feel expensive because you buy a great deal of a professional's time before anything actually appears on the Web.

You'll get every penny of it back and more.

Pick a Good Process

If you don't say "Ah HA" many times during this discovery process, you have bought into a poor process. If you are not learning new things about your business through the eyes of these other professionals, then they are not learning much either.

Have Someone in Your Camp

Make sure you have a project manager or marketer that works for you to manage the project. They must understand your business and advocate for you.

When what is being produced by these vendors no longer reflects your business's interests, all will be lost.

Watch the Results

Make sure that everything results in a measurable payoff that can be examined at least once a month -- sales, leads or traffic. When these measures aren't growing, stop whatever it is your consultants are doing and start asking questions.

Trust the Process

Once you feel that your Web development team has been informed by a strong discovery process, and they know that you'll know if things go awry, you can let these broken but talented professionals spread their wings.

Let the designers be artful.

Let the writers tell their stories.

Let the developers go off to their caves until the next deadline.

You don't have to know what they do as long as they really know what you do.

Brian Massey has at some point in his career been a Web developer, designer, writer and SEO consultant.

Photo courtesy mikekorn.

#10 Are You Brave Enough to Give Web Visitors What They Want?

Am I a Marketing Sheep? 261 Questions.

"You're nuts."

That's what Justin Singer of SMBology reports hearing from roughly half of the people he's heard from about the Competitors page on his Web site.

Yes, he lists all of his competitors on his Web site. Furthermore, it's a main navigation link.

No, it's not smart to connect potential customers to your competitors, unless that is what they want.

So, who wants to know who your competitors are? According to Justin, its the other half of the people he talks to. In a competitive market (there are 28 competitors listed on his site), Justin wants to differentiate his business on trust. With one word on his home page, he communicates the following:

If we were trying to pull a fast one on you; if we weren't willing to stand behind our service; if we didn't believe we were the best solution for you, would we put a list of competitors on our Web site?

There is no doubt that Justin is losing potential business because some of his visitors will check out his competitors. But, he believes he's gaining the right customers by demonstrating that SMBology is trustworthy supplier who's not afraid to stand side by side with others in the market.

Justin wants to do business with those customers who say "that's gutsy. That's who I want handling my IT services."

In every marketing campaign there are those things that we as marketers know will land with our target audience. When good marketing messages conflict with knee-jerk fears about "looking corporate;" when effective copy is dumbed down so that no one gets left out, are you prepared to defend your best prospects' needs and desires?

"Always Be Opening" and Other Unexpected Advice

I'm a bit skeptical of Webinars, white papers, and free eBooks. That's ironic as I'm a big fan of informational offers to generate online leads. Too often, these little morsels are self-serving, are not actionable, will talk down to me or are just plain boring.

So, I'm bringing a free ebook entitled Give Marketing a Sales Quota from Hugh Macfarlane to your attention that delivers the goods. Eloqua got my contact information, and I feel that I got good value in exchange. Unfortunately, there's no landing page that I can refer you to. So I'm linking directly to the ebook.

I wanted to add a little commentary to some points made in the book.

Always Be Opening

Make sure that sales is paying attention to the leads you're generating for them. Don't just incentivize Sales to close. It makes them spend their time with prospects that are already being worked. Incentivize them to open the next fresh lead before it goes cold.

Marketing is Only Valuable When it Delivers Revenue

I love this simple concept because, if you can get your organization to believe this, it addresses two of my pet peeves:

1. You have a good argument for killing the image-building brand-awareness crap that doesn't deliver the goods.

2. Marketing execs, long considered the head of the "creative department" can finally get a seat at the strategy planning table with the CFO and COO.

"Fragmented and incremental activities"

Your typical corporate marketing strategy can usually be described as a series of "fragmented and incremental activities." I'll hum a few bars, but you know the words:

What 10 things can we get done this quarter? OK, let's see which of those the CEO will let us do. When we're done, we'll have some cool creative to put on the slides that we present to the executives.

We don't know what problems our buyers face

We're so busy constructing positive messages about our company and our products, we don't acknowledge the pain and trade-offs that our prospects face when deciding if they will buy.

This is why I have dedicated myself to brining personas to the marketing world. At the heart of the persona is the reason a person comes to your Web site. The power of the conversion profile is that it lets everyone -- Sales and Marketing -- slip into the prospect's shoes.

Recycle the Leakage

Conversion is not the rate at which your Web site converts. That's your conversion rate. Conversion starts Conversations. Marketing has to be ready to carry on these conversations for the entire 3-9 month sales cycle faced by many B2B companies.

Read the eBook

This is good marketing. My apologies to Eloqua for linking directly to the book, but they didn't include a "share with a friend" link. That's a problem.

Photo courtesy juliaf

Question #9: Do You Show the Product?

Am I a Marketing Sheep? 261 Questions

Advertising Strategy #1: Show the product.

Advertising Strategy #2: Talk about a benefit.

Advertising Strategy #3: Show the product again.

A Coremetrics study reveals that video product tours increase sales conversions. I could go on about how engaging or immersive product video tours are, but I think that's missing the point.

I truth, I think we just do a crappy job of showing the product on the Web. Product tours work because they are the opposite of crappy.

But, don't get hung up on the effort required to generate video or flash product tours. You can increase conversions by simply having lots of high resolution pictures of your products from as many angles as you can think of.

Services Businesses Aren't Off the Hook

If you can't think of a way to "show the product" just because you're a services business, then you're not thinking creatively enough.

How about those pictures of pleasant-looking ladies smiling with their headsets on? That's a pretty good way to "show" customer service.

Spokespeople are a great way to "show" a service. How is the Go Daddy Girl showing a domain registration and hosting service? Well, she just is.

Your whitepapers should have pictures of the report as if it were printed. Let the user click on the image to get a large (e.g. readable) image of the cover.

Your testimonials and case studies should have pictures of the smiling customers with them. They are the product.

When you can't show the product as a services business, your only alternative is to blather on about your service. And that's what we sheep do.

Video Product Tours Yield 35% Increase in Online Sales Conversion - MarketingVOX

Photo Credits: Capqros, panda68

More Social Networks? Yes, Please.

Brochure Web sites are so over.

Anyone who is exasperated over the proliferation of social networks should ask themselves: do you want more brochure Web sites or other one-way push information Web sites?

Any business that is considering putting up an old style brochure site is nuts.

It doesn't take a million people to make a successful network. If there are 1,000 people passionate about your enterprise email software solution that dots all 'i's with smiley faces, then give them a way to share with each other.

Blog with them.

Let them build a profile if there is a social component to the product.

Let them invite others to see their smiley 'i' documents. It's WOM marketing.

Let them write reviews of the before and after. It's great for SEO.

Let them post about how smiley 'i's increase readability and make people feel good. It turns your customers into sales people.

Create implementation groups so that your customers can help new users get the most out of their smiley 'i' module. Let them help prospects sell this to the CEO.

It's now easy to put these kind of sites in place. So, why put up a site that blathers on about your "morale improving font modification module for email servers" when your customers will do the talking and sharing for you?

More Social Networks? - AdGabber

Photo courtesy of dhester on stock.xchng.

Why You Have Time to Use Personas

Jason at 37signals made a great point about personas.

You are already using them.

However, the ones you're using are probably versions of you. If not, the personas you are using is an amalgam of the last customers you talked to.

And furthermore, the person writing your copy is using a persona: himself. The person doing your design is designing for a persona: their last customer.

And the beat goes on.

Then you review the work and ask them to nudge it to be a little bit more like you, or maybe just your last customer. No wonder your site continues to be a mix of headings, copy, images and navigation all working against each other.

Pick personas that will work for you. Do an intimate profile so that everyone can understand who they're working for.

It's powerful stuff. And you won't have to redesign the site over again when the one you have fails to deliver.

Ask 37signals: Personas? - (37signals)

Thanks to Brian Eisenberg for the pointer.

Photo courtesy gun.

Personas Do More Than Increase Conversion Rates

There was a long pause. "Wow, that could be our tag line."

I was on the phone with three executives of a $150 million telecommunications services company. We were in the middle of a Conversion Analysis Interview in which I was taking them through the process of organizing what they already knew about their customers.

The process includes discovering the core benefits of each of the "features" of what they offer. In this case, we uncovered new ways to look at and talk about the business.

The interview is part of a process designed to create Personas, or "named profiles that represent members of each key customer group, and describe their characters, personalities, tastes, and quirks." Once we're done with the process, then entire team -- copywriters, designers, marketers -- talk in a different way about their visitors.

"Tom Techie isn't going to relate to this copy."

"Mary Meticulous needs a more detailed spec sheet on the site."

"We'll put a big read button in the header for Peter Paniced."

Tom, Mary and Peter are Personas, virtual stand-ins for larger segments of my clients' visitors. The names draw to mind intimate details about each persona and give the entire team a uniform focus.

People can relate to people easier than they can relate to analytics reports.

Unexpected Benefits

In almost every one of the conversion interviews I've done over the past year, we've accomplished more than we expected to.

• We've simplified messages by boiled long lists of feature statements into a few core benefits
  
• We've reduced the workload of marketing teams by making it intuitive to prioritize content development
  
• We've redefined the company tag line or value statement
  
• We've gotten previously unheard salespeople into the marketing process
  
• We've helped executives understand "what the hell was the marketing team thinking" when proposing experimental projects.

We've also increased conversion rates and revenues.

If I haven't personally introduced you to Conversion Analysis using Personas, then read this InternetRetailer.com article for a great summary of what they are and why they work. Thanks to GrokDotCom.com for the reference.

InternetRetailer.com - Persona-lizing a site

GrokDotCom.com

Photo Courtesy bigevil600

8. Do you know what your visitors are looking for?

Are you a marketing sheep? 261 Questions.

MarketingVox reports the following:

Some 72 percent of potential US online car buyers experience "search engine fatigue": unable to find the information they need, they grow impatient or frustrated.

Of those, three out of four leave their computers without finding the info, according to a new Kelton Research survey commissioned by Autobytel Inc., reports MarketingCharts.

Three out of four. 72%. Ouch. And the car makers are looked upon as online innovators.

The problem is any of the following:

1. They don't know what their visitors are looking for.
2. They know but aren't delivering the information.
3. They know and THINK they are delivering the information.

In any event, this is the most common objection when I propose a Conversion Analysis of a potential client's site: "We're moving too fast to do an analysis of the visitors." The hidden objection is "we already know" who's visiting and what to say to make them buy.

Ironically, no one comes to me if their Web site is performing for them.

The MarketingVox report is sobering because certainly the car companies know what potential buyers are looking for. It's a car.

Do you really know why your visitors are visiting?

7. Are you OK with Tweakers?

Are you a Marketing Sheep? 261 Questions

Lately, I've had the audacity to call myself a Conversion Scientist. Conversion Specialist is actually a more accurate, but "Scientist" draws more interesting pictures in peoples' minds. Plus, I love that line from Ghostbusters: "Backoff, Mam. I'm a Scientist."

Now Seth Godin has come along and declared that I'm really a tweaker. My job is to make those often small changes that cause a Web site to convert visitors into leads and customers. But, a tweaker is not nearly as cool as a scientist.

I found this post through a discussion on Social Media Optimization that Rohit Bhargava started. Of his five good rules on SMO (fight that gag reflex), I love the last, "Encourage Mashup." This rule tells the marketing sheep that his job is to put a little bit of his product out there for others to play with.

This was at the heart of the first item on the Massey Marketing Manifesto: "Marketing is a valuable service." It says that marketing is an extension of the serivces (or products) provided by your company.

What information does your organization generate that could be shared with the public?

Just because you don't know what they would use it for, doesn't mean it wouldn't be valuable to someone. And if it is related to what you sell, doesn't it stand to reason that the people using it would be somewhat close to those you sell to? The answer may be NO.

But to try out such strategies, you clearly need to leave the flock and embrace the tweakers.

Finally, Social Media Optimization?! That is a name that will be bandied about in the flock for years to come. I hope this is the last time I'll ever use it.

5. Are you in the cross-hairs of changing consumer habits?

Are you a Marketing Sheep? 261 Questions

A dead body. You just can't help but stare. You don't want to, but you do, especially when the deceased was supposed to be an all-star.

That's the feeling I get when I read about the Music Industry: Sales of Music Long in Decline, Plunge Sharply. Everyone saw it coming but them. Or maybe they did, but couldn't comprehend the end of their precious business model.

So, are we in the path of a truck bearing down on us as we look transfixed at the body lying in the street?

Have you noticed that your customers are behaving differently. Worse: have you failed to notice?

Have you changed your Web site from a brochure to a service?

Does your copy speak with your voice or in a voice filled with industry-leading solutions for textual comprehension?

Have you begun or continued a conversation online with a customer?

Have you delivered less-than-positive news openly to your customer community?

Go ahead and stare, but not too long.

Photo courtesy Pyskoti-k on DeviantArt.com.