The Science of Marketing

What do 237 bloggers have in common?  Today they, like me, are proud to announce the availability of "The Age of Conversation 2," a book we all had a hand in writing.  Jeff and I have already ordered some copies for ourselves and our families, and it couldn’t be easier.  Just go to Lulu.com, sign up for an account and select which format you’d like.  From their, your custom hard or soft bound book will be printed on demand and shipped to you. 

Please take a minute to learn a little about this endeavor, buy a copy or spread the word.  There’s a nice writeup on the origins of this effort at The Age of Conversation web site and a Facebook Group has been created as a forum to extend the conversation.  Bringing this book together was an amazing feat by Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton, and all profits are being donated to Variety, The Children’s Charity.  

For a list of all the authors who contributed to this book, see below or click "Read the rest of this entry".

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I received an e-mail from a college friend (call him "CF1"), who I haven’t seen in a decade.  It was a are-you-interested-in-this-opportunity? e-mail that you get from time-to-time (in a good way).  I forwarded the e-mail to another college friend ("CF2"), who I thought might be interested.  His reply was: "how did you get on the distribution list for this?"  What CF2 was actually saying was: "why didn’t I get an e-mail directly?"

The answer is simple:  CF2 does not work his social networking.

We are given tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Plaxo, whose sole purpose is to help us stay connected.  And they’re free!  So why not use them?

Here are some simple tasks that I perform daily to work my social networking.

1. See whose connecting with whom

Check your networking sites for recent connections between people you are connected with and people you know.  Then reach out and reconnect.

2. Reunite with classmates

Perform a periodic search for high school and college friends and acquaintances (and reconnect).

3. Check Status

New jobs, birthdays, events.  When your contacts report ‘em, reach out.

4. Who viewed my profile? (LinkedIn specific)

If you are a free user, LinkedIn shows  you a few profiles of people who have viewed your LinkedIn page.  If you can figure out who they are, it might be worth saying "hey".

If you put the work in networking, you never know what might happen.

(BTW, I also wrote on promoting your blog on social networking sites last September.)

As you may have figured out, my fellow author and I alternate posts.  He gets Tuesdays, I get Thursdays.  So as we began closing in in our 100th post, we wondered who would get the honor.  I have to admit, I peeked ahead a little to see who it would be, and was happy to see that I would be writing today’s monumental entry.  I was pleased, not only because I’m a sentimental sap who enjoys reminiscing, but also because I knew that inspiration would come easy (and you probably know that it’s not always easy creating fresh content). So, with this - our 100th post - I offer you a brief and humble recap of what a couple first time bloggers have been able to accomplish in a little less than a year:

Cornering the Globe

With our first 99 posts, we’ve had 3,899 unique visitors from 103 countries on six continents (Come on Antarctica!).  In the US, we’ve touched every state except Alaska, but we’re still holding out hope that Sarah Palin will stop by before the election.

Joining the Conversation

One of the best parts of blogging is participating in all the great discussions going on out there.  Since we started doing this, we’ve had about 200 other blog posts link to us.  And we’ve started conversations of our own, sparking over a hundred comments on the stuff we’ve written.

Contributing to a Cool Book for a Great Cause

We never saw this one coming, but we’re sure glad it did.  Through blogging, we came across the opportunity to contribute a short chapter to The Age of Conversation 2, which is due out any day now.  We’ve written exhaustively about the experience, so if you haven’t heard of it, you can catch up here.

Keeping Readers Happy

For us, it’s tough to pick our favorite posts.  For our readers, it’s as easy as a click or a comment.  We keep a close eye on what our readers respond to, and try to deliver content that keeps them coming back.  Here are The Science of Marketing’s most popular posts so far:

1. Pricing Strategy: Anchors
2. Internal Communications: Own It
3. Slogans: Say What You Do
4. Market Segmentation: How to Prioritize Targets
5. Mission Statement: Make it Possible

 That’s not bad for 100 posts.  We’re looking forward to the next 100, and hope you are too.

We’ve written quite a few blog posts about the soon-to-be-released (as in the end of October) book, Age of Conversation 2, Why Don’t People Get it? And why not?  Beside the fact that we contributed to it, the proceeds of the book are going to Variety: The Children’s Charity. Now that I’ve told you why not, I should probably tell you why or at least point you to the right person, Jay Ehret.

Jay, a power blogger in his own right, is conducting a series of conversations with AOC2 authors, starting with the creators, Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton.    This conversation, published as a podcast, answers the question "why did you do it?"

Listen to or download the podcast here.  And check back with the AOC2 web site periodically, there will be more author interviews.

Not so long ago, I was sitting in a company meeting.  It was one of those periodic all-hands meetings where the heads of each department report what’s going on.  When it was the IT person’s turn to talk, she was bombarded with questions about corporate network access through the new VPN.

"How do you do it?"

Her answer was the same to each question - "Did you read the memo?"

Maybe the employees did and maybe they didn’t.  But, no memo ever answered everyone’s questions.  On top of that, after the meeting there were many pairwise conversations between employees and IT that would have been of interest to the entire company.  Internal communications can be better.

This is a great place to have a corporate conversation with an internal blog: one that summarizes new IT features, procedures and problems, allows employees to comment with questions and concerns and provides IT with a tool to respond to everyone at once. Think of any area in a company - sales, product/service, HR, finance - and there are bound to be items of broad interest that can be shared and discussed in a single place - an internal blog.

While it takes some up front work, departmental commitment and effort to make it part of the business, in the long run, internal blogs can be an effective (and cost effective) internal communications tool.

Any success (or horror) stories out there on internal blogs?

In a recent post on Bizmark Tech, Deb calls our attention to some pointers by Suzie Gardner on what makes good material for a company blog.  One common thread that runs through most of the content areas she lists is information, and I couldn’t agree more.  If you want your company blog to become a resource for your customers, partners or anyone in your ecosystem, you have to give them something that’s useful, something that’s relevant, something they can’t get anywhere else.  You have to inform them.

What types of information should you provide?  Well…whatta you got?  I’ve seen high tech companies that are sitting on top of mounds of data about performance and security create blogs around this information - becoming authorities in their respective industries and generating massive media coverage because of it.  I’ve seen a building safety equipment vendor centralize publicly available research and legal information on its blog, providing a resource for its audience and creating awareness for its solution.  And I’ve seen an executive at a storage hardware vendor use his blog to discuss trends in data management and backup strategies, using his unique viewpoint to promote his company’s differentiation.

The point is, the people you want to communicate with are just outside your door, and they’re looking for useful information.  Chances are your company has some inventory of information that nobody else can provide to them.  By sharing this information with them, you can open the door to new conversations that position your company as an expert, as a resource, as a partner. 

The only question remaining are - what useful information does your company posess, and how can you leverage it on your blog?

Ask any author and I’m sure he’ll tell you - it’s not easy giving birth to a book.  Now multiply that by 237 and you’ve got The Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t They Get It.  Throughout the monumental task of finding all these authors, getting their releases signed, chasing down their chapters, editing their work and weaving it all together; Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan have made it look easy.  And now, about nine months after kicking off this project, I’m told that Gavin and Drew are going into ‘ahem’ labor and putting the finishing touches on the book.  We even have a due date - October 25!

Goofy puns aside, this effort really is about the children, with proceeds from the book benefitting Variety: The Children’s Charity- an international organization dedicated to improving the lives of children around the world.  The first edition of The Age Of Conversation raised well over $11,000 for this worthwhile cause.  This year, we’ll look to do even better.

I know this process is a ton of work for Gavin and Drew, but it’s a labor of love and they’re doing a great job.  Hats off to them for all their hard work.  I’m really rooking forward to the special delivery (from Amazon) next month.  In the meantime - would someone please go get some ice chips - stat?

Read the rest of this entry »

I love looking at Google Analytics.  I do it every day for both this blog and our corporate web site looking for patterns, insights and clues to help increase eyeballs and hopefully business. One of the areas that I focus on is referring sites - how visitors got to our web site.  For each referring site (including direct links), Google Analytics lists visits, pages/visit, average time on site and bounce rate (percentage of visitors that exit on the same page they enter). Here’s some statistics and observations for our corporate web site from the beginning of the year until now.

Visits

• 39% - direct link (someone typed our URL into the browser)
• 35% - search engines
• 26% - other referring sites
• Of the other referring sites, 9% were from this blog and 5% were from LinkedIn.

Pages Per Visit

• 6 - direct link
• 4 - this blog and LinkedIn
• 3 - search engines

Average Time on Site

• 7:45 - direct link
• 3:01 - this blog
• 2:33 - LinkedIn
• 1:47 - search engines

Bounce Rate

• 23% - LinkedIn
• 38% - direct link
• 44% - this blog
• 53% - search engines

The conclusion is that social networking sites:

• Generate additional visitors
• Produce quality visits (more time on the site, more pages per visit, lower bounce rate) as compared to search engines

So, why not beef up your social networking efforts?

Here’s a follow-up to a post I wrote in late August.  You remember - the one about marketing communications activities that happen in sequential stages to be most effective.  Since then, I’ve been talking to peers and keeping an eye on the blogosphere to get a feel for how others feel about a phased approach to marketing communications.  The result: it seems that the days of trying to do too much with a single tool or program are quickly coming to an end. 

Most marketers are no longer swinging for the fences with marketing communications - they are thinking through their marketing goals and mapping out phased communications strategies that get them there over time.  They are walking before they run, dating before they marry, and establishing a dialogue  before they sell.  Here are a few examples of progressive thinking in the area of marketing phases:

Marketing Experiments Blog: Writing Headlines that Don’t Sell — But Get Much Higher Conversions

Startup Hustle: Acquiring, Engaging, Retaining and Monetizing Your Customers

Marketing Interactions: B2B Websites Need to Focus on the Long Term

Drew’s Marketing Minute: Are You Expecting too Much From your Marketing?

I’m a big believer in marketing programs that don’t sell or try to do too much, but instead happen in phases and focus on long-term success.  I’m glad to see that others agree.  What do you think?

If you haven’t added the StumbleUpon toolbar to Firefox (or, God forbid, Explorer), you gotta do it - now.  StumbleUpon is the web’s equivalent to channel surfing, a "lean back" experience that  - with a click of a button - delivers interesting content to you without searching.  You never know what you’re going to get, but 99% of the time you’ll like it.

StumbleUpon is simple to use, just go to their web site, register and choose categories of interest (e.g., hiking, cooking, pets), and download the tool bar.  You’ll then see a button on your browser that says "Stumble!".  Click it and a random page is served up based on your interests and its popularity with users.  You can then rate the page with the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons on the toolbar.   I can Stumble for hours.

So, what does this have to do with your blog?  Well, just like other rating sites, you can take the pedestrian approach as in the eHow.com article "How to Use the Stumbleupon Toolbar to Increase Website Traffic.", which basically says vote for your blog and blog posts. And that’s OK, but it takes time.

I stumbled upon another method that resulted in periodic order-of-magnitude increases in traffic to this blog. One day, while I was Stumbling, I found a great blog on pricing anchors and wrote a blog post about it.  One day that week, the visits to this blog increased 10X and have continued to jump up to that level for few days every month.    I will continue to note any relevant content that I StumbleUpon to see if I can recreate the increase in visits.

Has anyone had a similar experience?