A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect

Quotes to Ponder: Best Practices

”Imitation is the sincerest form of collective stupidity.”
—W. Carroll (Bill) Munro, marketing director, PepsiCo

"Don't give me best practices, they are yesterday's news. Give me emerging practices, they are tomorrow's news."
- paraphrased from Barry Diller (I believe).


Can anyone help validate who said the second one?

Two Ways to Get People's Attention

I hope by know everyone is aware of the traffic cost inflation problem. Even more so, I hope we are all aware how resistant customers are to advertising.

Even in Search Engine Marketing, we have seen many studies which show that people are less likely to click on an a PPC ad than a organic listing. This also fits in with the fact that people focus in on the active area on the screen and only glance towards the sides. In other words they are looking for content. Meaty, juicy, relevant content. What content has become the hottest content as of late? Why of course consumer generated content. It is a total win-win for everyone. Consumers get relevant content from the voice of other customers and retailers get content they didn't have to pay staff for and that usually impacts conversions positively.

Now imagine for a moment you could use all this user generated content not only to persuade and convert people who are on your site, but what if you could also use it to drive potential customers there. Sounds like a good plan, huh?

I think so too. That's why I am so proud that my good friends at Bazaarvoice have just implemented a syndication feature to the already pretty cool Bazaarvoice ratings and reviews functionality.

Imagine you are on the prowl for a shiny new video iPod. Go to Smarter.com and do a search. You'll eventually get to this page for the 30Gig Black Video iPod, click on the review tab or the link under the product rating and you'll see the syndicated reviews from Bazaarvoice clients Overstock.com and CompUSA. Cool, right? Their current syndication partners include Smarter.com, MSN (always one of the top converting search engines), PriceRunner and Froogle, with more to come soon. I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised that conversions on these clicks are very high (we've already seen a 60% higher than the average visitor on the landing page conversion in one analysis).

How likely are you to click on one of these reviews? Do you think your customers might? Any suggestions?

Picked up a copy

I really enjoy Seth Godin's blog so I ordered Small Is the New Big: and 193 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas. Have you ordered it or read it yet?

I just noticed that Amazon reports that people who bought Seth's book also bought Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing. Perhaps you have ordered/ read it. Let me know if you enjoyed it.

Building More Effective "Contact Us"Pages

We've all been frustrated when trying to contact companies for questions and support. This doesn't have to be.

Paul English founder of GetHuman.com sent us his thoughts on Bryan's fresh new ClickZ article Building More Effective "Contact Us" Pages.

Hi Bryan, I enjoyed your column on contact pages. I'm the founder of the www.gethuman.com site, and we will soon be publishing and maintaining info about contact forms and email addresses. In addition to the contact us pages, there is of course the issue of *how* the contact actually works. Please see http://gethuman.com/kayak.html for my philosophy on this, for example.

Paul

Paul is also the CEO of Kayak.com, his philosophy is refreshing. He requires every single employee to interact with at least one or more customers a day. Paul says...

This keeps us honest. It keeps us focused. Rather than adding a zillions features to Kayak, we refine it every week, trying to make the product simpler and simpler to use.

How To Get A Repeat Customer

Several months ago I decided I was going to fly the new, all business class airline from JFK, MaxJet, to get to London for my buddy, Jim Sterne's, Emetrics seminar. It was a fabulous experience and I told several people they needed to try it out.

With all the chaos with the airlines this past week, MaxJet's CEO, Gary R. Rogliano, sent out an email which just about guaranteed my next trip in November will be aboard his caring airline. The text of the email is below:

Dear Friend:

The MAXjet Family is committed to getting you where you need to be, while keeping your security and safety utmost in our minds. We have continued to operate all of our flights as close to schedule as possible, due in large part, to the efficiency of flying into and out of London Stansted Airport.

Our primary focus right now is to maintain the safety and security of our customers, crew members and all others involved. To that end, I want to reassure you that we are following all security directives to maximize the safety and security of our airline.

Understandably, some of you may choose to change your travel plans because of the security incident that arose this week. I’ve asked our excellent Customer Service, Reservations and Airport Services teams to allow a one-time waiver for change fees and add collects for you, for changes made prior to 31 October 2006. There’s more information listed on www.maxjet.com. Some flights for instance, may require authorization from Customer Care, due to availability.

Know that we are doing everything possible to keep you safe, get you to your destination as close to schedule as possible and provide you with the best possible customer service. If you need more information, we have posted the restrictions on www.maxjet.com.

We’re here to serve you and provide you safe and comfortable passage on your trip.

Warmest regards,

Gary

Gary R. Rogliano
CEO

MAXjet Airways, Inc.

What messages are you sending to your customers that show you really care about their lives not just your business?

3 simple steps to create a viral campaign...

1. Get yourself a YouTube, Digg, Flikr, del.icio.us, furl.net, or __________ (insert your favorite online popularity tool here) account.
2. Get out your handicam, pen, digital camera, blogging software, word processor, or __________ (insert your favorite communication tool here)
3. Find something to say that's relevant, salient, and transparent to such a mass audience, it overcomes each visitor, infects them (er, eh, like a virus ;) in such a way they can't quite articulate, at their core they just have to pay it forward.

I'm sorry, did my title lead you to believe this would be easy? (Ya, fancy little lists give that impression. It's no wonder why the business section of your local Barnes & Noble is littered with them.)  Not only is it not easy, but more to the point (and sarcasm aside now), it's also not possible to create a viral campaign in advance.  A campaign becomes viral due to the energy the campaign consumes in the wild.  It becomes viral due to factors outside of its control.  You simply don't set out to create a viral campaign.  I'll say it again, only louder (and with the sarcasm switch turned on again):

You don't create a viral campaign, simply because you wish your campaign would be viral. 

Likewise, you don't ascend to the homepage of Digg, simply because you've written something you wrote simply to get there. 

If you swing for the fences, you're much more likely to strikeout than you are to hit a homerun.  But if you aim to make contact, you just may hit one out of the park.  When planning your marketing communication strategy, please do remember to keep your eye on the ball.

Care to share your thoughts on the topic?

PS - Care to know what the driving point for this little rant was?  Contrast the following links from AdAge. 

The first, being yet another story around the Agency.com Subway pitch (the irony here is that the industry at large created the viral effects, not the campaign itself.  Had this video been a campaign for a mom and pop shop, trying to win the business of the largest car dealer in Bismarck, North Dakota, the blogosphere would have never heard of it). 

The second, being yet another story around the pure viral steamroller that is Snakes On A Plane. Never will a movie make more with less, and they've all but acknowledged publicly, they certainly didn't greenlight the film with this in mind.  Have they capitalized on the CGM efforts- absolutely (and all indications are, they'll continue doing so) but to suggest they planned it this way is laughable.  Enjoy, and safe flying ;)

Following on the heels of PAPR

PRWeb, our partner in applying Persuasion Architecture specifically to the world of Public Relations announced it was acquired yesterday.  We couldn't be happier for PRWeb founder David McInnis.  Not only is David an incredibly nice guy, he's one of the smartest guys around, and I'm not just saying that because he's a partner.  He's revolutionized the PR game, giving a direct-to-consumer angle that didn't previously exist, and tying it into search engine optimization better than virtually any SE "expert" in the space today.  Congrats Dave, you deserve it!

Stay tuned, for more PAPR news...

Today's leading story on ClickZ:

http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623082

Anyone doing PR just may want to take 5 and read the article.

Improving Customer Experience- Howard Kaplan speaks with Peter Kim of Forrester

Our own Howard Kaplan recently sat down with Peter Kim of Forrester Research to discuss the customer experience online.. Some of the topics they covered...

• Ensure a positive brand experience online
• Stop customers from ignoring you
• Develop a customer-centric approach
• Use rich/multi-media elements to improve customer engagement on your site
• Track and analyze these rich media efforts

It was part of a Digital Lobby Program entitled "Improving Customer Engagement Online"

See the discussion here.