Tom Lindmeier’s Blog @ MarketPlanB

There was a very intelligent discussion on Cord Silversteins blog titled Engage Your Customers or Die where he asks the question: “Is it a good thing for companies to try to engage their customers online? Does the good outweigh the possible repercussions that could come from it?”. The repercussions were defined as the big bad things that can happen if you do not handle every instance right.

If you read my previous post on the Invisible Visitor, I maintained that that the route to understanding our customers is engagement. Once they become visible, you are then positioned to make strategic decisions that result in major marketing breakthroughs. So the question is not “if” you should engage but rather “how”.

I struggle to understand why some businesses come to fear their customers. Any business with even the best service standards faces an onslaught of touches with customers who have problems. This constant exposure to negatives is the only reason I can come up with for this fear. Yet these same businesses understand that turning a negative into a positive is one of the best ways to to create a loyal customer. The dedication to pursue this strategy is no easy task and requires a major commitment. Maybe this fear is just a manifestation of the weariness that comes from accommodating customers with what may seem to be unrealistic expectations.

Here’s my list of engagement tactics ranked by the quality of actionable information:

1. Requests for email input on your home page and other locations in your site
2. Blog within your domain
3. Reviews
4. Online chat
5. Search and response to blogs and portals outside your domain
6. Post-transaction online surveys
7. Post-product delivery email and package insert surveys
8. General surveys to email customer base with and without incentives

Note that tactics that are “open invitations” receive the highest quality rating. General surveys are preferred by most businesses because it makes it simple to quantify data, but they are of questionable value because they do not capture fresh information. Also, users want to be in control and do not prefer to respond to your controlled format.

I have received the best quality information with the open invitation to email. Junonia.com does a wonderful job of this by posting an invitation to email the president right on the home page. This results in a large quantity of responses and it requires a lot of effort on her part to respond in a timely manner. There is also a good deal of effort that goes into distributing it throughout the organization. But the quality of this information is invaluable and because it gets you closer to understanding your customers than any other method.

The solution to building forums that work is to define the proper set of expectations that narrow the focus to product and refer users with transaction problems to customer service where issues may be resolved in a more timely manner. For instance if you build a blog, you’re much better off inviting users to engage in the product development process.

Does your experience differ from my assertion?

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I have always marveled at the world-wide penchant to buy logotype merchandise and pay a premium price for it. This type of marketing is perhaps the best direct measure of the value of a brand. If you have to give away your logo merchandise, you have not achieved a truly powerful brand.

This causes me to fondly recall the Internet World Conference of 1998 in NYC. The pre-bust atmosphere was electric. Hundreds of companies were awash millions and putting on great shows on big stages. Dancing girls were flinging logotype merchandise left and right. I returned to my hotel room with bags full of goods and spread it out across my bed like a child returning from a night of trick-or-treating. I admit that I really wanted the free stuff but ended up leaving most of it in my hotel room and giving the rest to my kid when I got home. I forget who the companies were. I doesn’t matter though because they are mostly out of business now.

I created a prototype of a shirt for my MarketPlanB consulting business and made it a part of the header for the new design of this blog. It will be used for a video that I am currently producing that’s a spoof on link baiting. Note that I also tapped into other major brands by adding their logos so I can ride their coattails (though you barely see them). I’m not going to give the shirt away for free, but you might get one if you send me fifty bucks.

Please comment on the new design of this blog. This design will stay unless I get blasted.

Ever try to buy a baseball cap without a logo? They’re almost impossible to find.

Here’s an entertaining article on schwag bags.

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The first thing you should understand is that I’m not a shill for the SEM agencies. This is a viewpoint from a Director of Ecommerce who understands that the most important decisions concern where to direct resources. For most ecommerce businesses, the PPC program is the primary driver of new customers and deserves the most attention.

Depending on the scale of your organization, you have 4 options:

1. Do it yourself
2. Hire a new employee or delegate to an existing employee
3. Hire an individual contractor
4. Hire an SEM agency

I have previously done all four and am going to recommend the SEM agency with a caveat. The decision of whether or not to run a “long tail” program is your primary consideration. (If you are not running a long tail program for both SEM and SEO you need to do your homework). Long tail programs require effective tools because there are too many dark corners with inefficiencies that can drag down your program when you are managing thousands of phrases on multiple search engines.

These tools have historically been proprietary to the SEM agencies until recently. ChannelAdvisor started as a SEM agency that has redirected its business towards marketing of software and is moving many of their clients to self-management of PPC and other programs by making available it’s formerly proprietary software. Now it’s available to anyone willing to pay the price.

I am not a client of representative of ChannelAdvisor, but have taken a long look at their product and do recommend it. If you are a start-up business, you may not have the economies of scale to get the needed ROI and may benefit from an SEM agency with low minimum fees if you can find one.

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In my previous article titled 3 Guaranteed Methods for Driving Conversion I highlighted the need to cover a wide variety of user preferences. Users gravitate to specific shopping methods and will not necessarily use the best or efficient means to complete a transaction. The list I provided was a list of basics that you need to get right before proceeding with other programs because the ROI is guaranteed.

Where do you go next? The next step is to classify user preferences that are unique to your business by examining paths to conversion in your analytics. Typical classifications may look like this:

• Efficiency shoppers– use navigation and search features to quickly process a transaction and may be receptive to more robust features.
• Browsers– have a tendency to click-thru many thumbnails and may be more receptive to suggestive selling.
• Investigators– have a tendency to click-thru many pages and need plenty of information to gain confidence for a purchase.
• Socializers– have a tendency to visit non-product content and use send-a-friend features, e-mail, reviews and blogs to share information (typical profile for drivers of user-generated content).
• Digiphobics– users who distrust ecommerce, have minimal computer skills and are more likely to complete a transaction over phone or fax.

By analyzing these types of segments, you will have a much better understanding of where to get bang for your buck when allocating your marketing investments. For instance, if your demographic has a high percentage of Digiphobics and you are pursuing a viral marketing program, you may want place more emphasis on off-line tactics rather that jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. You also need to keep in mind that you may need to approach this as an analysis of untapped segments because your analytics can only measure what exists on your site. In this case, a competitive analysis of user types is in order.

I’d like to compile comprehensive list of user preferences to share at a later date. Please comment and add to this list.

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There was an interesting discussion on Ron Shevlin’s blog on the Anti-Web. 2.0 Movement. It’s a ludicrous concept to rally against an unfortunate buzzword, but they do bring up some interesting arguments by identifying the irrational exuberance and engage in a sobering discussion of the potential impact of Web 2.0.

We do need to step back and evaluate where this is headed and analyze if the attempts of marketers to monetize it will ever succeed. A recurring theme I do see is the businesses that deliver the technology are making a bundle of money and the businesses that are attempting to use it to market their customer base are for the most part, experiencing moderate or no success. However, I believe marketers will eventually learn from their mistakes and do it right.

So let’s use Occam’s Razor and ask why a business would use Web 2.0 technology. I can think of 4 reasons. Please add to my list if you think I’m missing anything.

1. As a public relations tool
2. To enhance the SEO value of your site
3. To empower enthusiasts to drive new business
4. To better understand your customers

Where do you start in developing a Web 2.0 program? First, marketers need to realize that Web 2.0 is just another tool for viral or word-of-mouth marketing and this is a concept that dates back hundreds of years. Second, the tools for viral marketing will forever change but the businesses that have a true understanding of their customers and prospects have a good chance to succeed.

So I’m arguing that if you start out with the goal of better understanding your customers, you have a better chance of accomplishing reasons 1, 2 and 3. The worst mistake you can make is to start by engaging in hit-and-miss tactics that are based on assumptions of your marketing goals. Your customers have to provide the direction. See my article on the Invisible Visitor for more information on this subject.

There an exception to this rule of not starting with a tactic. It’s never a bad idea to post a blog because the cost is nominal and there isn’t much of a downside. The problem arises from the decision of how to theme your blog. How do you know what will really resonate with your customers? I would suggest putting up several blogs and test to see what really works. If none of them work, start a new series of tests based on the input from your failed blogs.

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You may want to read The Salesman vs. the Geeks Round 1 before reading this post.

I recently drove up to Lake Belle Taine in northern Minnesota on a vacation and had the good fortune to listen to a lecture from the Chatauqua Institute by Dr. Mel Levine. He founded an institute named All Kinds of Minds that’s dedicated to demystifying learning differences through a neurodevelopmental viewpoint. Their unique philosophy and methods emphasize team collaboration to better understand and nurture individual learning profiles of strengths and weaknesses. He stated interesting concept that I immediately glommed onto for the second round of this boxing match. The theme he identified is that the ability to understand the “big picture” and “skillfully recall and manage vast amounts of detail with accuracy” are for the most part, mutually exclusive skill sets. If you pursue a career outside of your profile, you will most likely not succeed.

This means that a marketing analyst, like myself, has a better chance to succeed if they have a penchant for understanding the big picture. This also means that I have a bit of a problem recalling details such as names, dates, phone numbers, etc. I understand this problem and have to consciously turn on a switch to make an effort to recall these details. But it also means that my bliss is the process of developing the “big picture”.

This also means that the ideal skill set for a technologist (developers, programmers, technicians, etc.) is the opposite. Their bliss is obtained by skillfully managing details. This also means that they need to consciously turn on a switch to get a big picture view of marketing analysis. It does not come naturally.

In a comment, Alan Rimm-Kaufmann suggested that there is a new breed of young technologists who are so adept at online marketing that the distinction I am making may not exist anymore. I don’t think so. You can’t fool mother nature…

Round 2 is over. We need scoring from the judges.

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While my wife claims I’m guileless and gentle, I prefer to think of myself as a brutally honest curmudgeon with an advanced bullshit meter. In this information overload environment where everything seems over-hyped and the most critical success factor is boldness of your approach, I believe that the most valuable skill is the ability to eliminate the clutter and get to the core concepts.

The great marketing gurus have this secret in common. They repackage age-old ideas and make them relevant today by citing current examples of success and failure. So most of what you read about here and in most blogs is really just a discussion of concepts you already understand but may have forgotten or just plain ignored. Keeping this in mind, I’ve developed a personal preference to operate as an analyst with historical perspective.

A frequent theme you will see in my postings is how new concepts really aren’t new at all. They’re age-old concepts that have come to life again as the means for delivering them changes. Seth Goden recently addressed this theme when he stated.”Just about every successful venture is based on an unoriginal idea, beautifully executed.”
As technologies advance and options for how to go to market expand it’s natural for confusion to arise. I have very effective solution to this problem. Just boil it down to the basics. If you have trouble doing this I am willing to do it for you. Now please excuse me while I go to the kitchen and prepare a demi-glace for tonights dinner…

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As a reader of this blog you probably share a common trait with me. You research new technologies, examine success stories of those who have been able to leverage the tactics and build an analysis of best practices. You may also examine the early adopters to get a leg up on the competition but may be fearful of entering the bleeding edge because these tactics may only affect a minor segment of your customer base and potential prospects. You also engage in user testing and it most likely tells you to forget all of this new-fangled stuff because they just don’t care and will never use it.

My first forays into user testing were very frustrating. Most users completely ignored the more sophisticated features of the site that were designed to allow them to quickly find what they wanted. I consistently found that most users engage in the most basic shopping methods (example: open a vast category of product thumbnails and scroll). But this can be very misleading. The problem is that the methodology of user testing does not engage a statistically significant sample and it may lead you away from improvements that can lead to significant incremental gains. When I eventually decided that user testing needed less weight in the decision making process and moved ahead with site upgrades that many users ignored, it turned out to be a good decision. The more sophisticated users are out there and they will eventually dominate. This lead me to the conclusion that the best solution for driving conversion is to accommodate the style of a wide variety of user preferences.

I understand that adding site functionality can be a very costly and time consuming process and there is a great deal on the line to make sure you are advancing the right hypothesis. The benchmarking of competitors and related sites with deep pockets can take you only so far unless you have reliable data on their metrics. I have also found that the buzz surrounding new technologies can be over-hyped and misleading so it can very difficult to come up with an ROI analysis that gets the bang for buck that you need to keep your job and advance your business. I have gone through the wars and admit that I have formed attitudes based on a “been there, done that” mentality. The attitude may change tomorrow, so you’re getting it as it stands right now. Although this post is written as a primer for relative newcomers to ecommerce, more sophisticated marketers will want to review this list to make sure you haven’t missed a key factor.

When you are prioritizing your list of site enhancements or if you are considering a redesign, take a step back and make sure that you are covering a wide variety of user preferences. You aren’t running at peak efficiency if you haven’t satisfied these 3 conversion drivers.

1) Navigation and site search– In addition to descriptive product categories, do you list benefits of the product as categories? Do you have filtering options for the most significant factors that affect buying decisions (brands, sizes, colors, etc.)?
2) Transaction methods– In addition to major credit cards, add PayPal and Google Checkout and consider other alternate pay methods. If your call center isn’t top notch then you should improve it or outsource it elsewhere. If you don’t allow fax transactions you are probably missing out of potential sales, especially if you’re a B-to-B marketer. And finally… surprise, surprise, a 4-step checkout process beats a one-step checkout.
3) Depth of user experience- Add as much relevant content as you can muster. The additional content must be presented as options to maintain speed and ease of use. Although it is possible to go overboard with rich media (because it can be very costly), it is now a prerequisite. If you have a print catalog, you need an online version and quick-order functionality.

I invite you to join in and add to this list or to take a shot at debunking my “attitude”.

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