I received Outliers as a Christmas gift, and picked it up yesterday around 6 PM.  Knocked out 100 pages when I was supposed to be doing a variety of other things on a Sunday night.  I obviously haven’t finished the book yet, but I am excited enough about what I’ve read that I had to write about it. 

Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point and Blink, simply does what he always does - he makes you think about the world in a way that you likely haven’t thought about it.  And he never does it in an “I’m a genius, so I have to write about extremely complex, hard-to-understand subjects” type of way.  He takes simple success stories - Bill Gates and The Beatles for example - and he exposes you to reasons for their success that you likely never would have dreamt up.   

I am already feeling like it’s a bit unfair to write about this until I finish the book, so I’ll stop there and come back with a full review later.  In the meantime, if you’re a stats geek who also enjoys stories that dig below the surface, pick it up.  If nothing else, I promise you’ll be entertained. 

While we looked under a bunch of rocks to rule out other problems, one look at the contact page told me everything I needed to know.  Here are the problems, and the prescribed medication:

Problem #1: The page is waaaay too crowded.  Lots of links, lots of imagery, lots of reasons to leave.

Solution #1: Treat someone sitting on your contact page like someone sitting at your cash register ready to make a purchase, except in this case remove the Snickers bars, the US Weekly and the Chapstick display.  Remove all clutter other than the essentials.

Problem #2: This form has 13 fields to complete, including unnecessary fields like website address (if you’re in B2B sales/marketing and haven’t figured out how to find a prospect’s website, give up now).

Solution #2: Only list necessary fields on the page.  The idea of the contact form is not to make the sale, or even to capture every piece of information you’ll ever need to know about the prospect, but just to start the relationship. 

Problem #3: The page did not indicate the desired format of inputs like phone number and website address, and even worse when the form submission failed due to incorrect formatting on my part, the page did not tell me what the desired format was, leaving me to guess.

Solution #3: Always assume you are dealing with someone who has never filled out a form on a website before.  Make it as simple as possible, and by all means tell the visitor exactly what they need to input. 

Problem #4: When I did submit the form with incorrect formatting, and returned to fix the information, all of my previously entered information was gone.

Solution #4: Please ensure that his never happens on your site.  Website visitors have short attention spans, and when you have them hooked, you better reel them in fast or else they’ll move on.  Not saving the form information is one way to ensure they move on quickly.

Problem #5: I could barely find the form on the site.  It was buried in a footer link just about everywhere.  I have no idea how they even received 476 views given this placement, but my guess is that that page view number will double with some improved placement.

Solution #5: Again, just like a physical store, if you want someone to see and/or buy something, put it somewhere that makes it easy to see and/or buy it.  Hide it in the back corner on the bottom shelf next to the Metamucil, and you can expect fewer and fewer prospects.

Keep in mind this is a reputable professional services firm with some Fortune 1000-esque clients that failed to address a very simple, yet clearly critical portion of the website with enough TLC.   Great example of a seemingly simple aspect of a website ruining the first few months of a fantastic new website redesign. 

I am not all that surprised that search, as an e-commerce sales driver, is a bit down in 2008.  The search space is getting more and more cluttered, cost-per-click and cost-per-acquisition prices are rising, and at the same time many companies are cutting budgets. 

The surprise is in the email marketing category.  We all complain that we’re getting more and more email, and most of it remains boring, irrelevant and impersonal.  While these figures may simply reflect a heavier use of email by etailers, perhaps what we’re seeing is marketers getting smarter about email.  Maybe marketers are finally embracing the one-to-one customer relationships that email can nurture if the audience is chosen carefully, the content is relevant and timely, and the overall communication personalized for each recipient.

Wishful thinking on my part?

Interpublic Chief Paints Media as a ‘Commodity’

Now, while I tend to agree with the premise that media is fast becoming a commodity, I disagree with a few of Roth’s statements, such as:

“I think that’s what you are seeing right now is clients are demanding to see where their dollars are being spent,” Roth said during a presentation at Tuesday’s session of UBS’ “Media Week” conference in New York.

OK, so while this is true, I find it a bit odd that the demand to see where dollars are being spent is a “new” request.  Were the Fortune 500 type clients of Interpublic NOT asking to see where their dollars were being spent prior to this financial crisis we’re in?  Yikes.

“The buying business has become much more commoditized,” he emphasized, “and when you’re dealing with any commodity, the key component of that is are you getting the better price. If there’s a competitor out there that can provide a better price, then quite frankly, we don’t get the business.”

Completely agree that price matters.  It matters a lot.  However, price is not the only determinant of efficiency of media spend.  That’s the old TV/radio model talking - reach the most people at the lowest cost.  What about audience selection and microtargeting?  What about the offer?  What about the creative?  What about the use of personalization and other tactics that drive higher prospect-to-buyer conversion rates?  The smartest agency folks I know focus on designing campaigns from the inside-out, as opposed to the old way of building campaigns from the outside-in. 

Asked if he feared that advertising agencies might become disintermediated by big digital media players such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that are accruing powerful consumer data streams and efficient systems for serving and measuring advertising results, Roth indicated that Madison Avenue’s strength was not media per se, but the kind of “big idea” normally associated by creative departments.

Would anyone be surprised if Google gets into the “big idea” business at some point?  While Google currently straddles the line between embracing agencies and quietly offering its own agency-type services to AdWords clients, this line could disappear quickly if Google made the decision to offer its own “big idea” creative services. 

I’d rather not be in the commodity buying and selling business.  I’ll stick with the business of making those commodities more valuable. 

• Technical problems: Come on folks.  If you’re going to run a webinar, test the technology beforehand.  Use a reputable vendor.  If attendees can’t join your meeting or can’t view your presentation, it’s over before it even started.
• Too Salesy: We all understand that webinars are designed to start or continue a sales cycle.  But if you advertise the webinar as educational, don’t beat us over the head with 10 “About Us” slides to kick things off.
• Content Isn’t As Advertised: The simplest one of all.  If your webinar was advertised as “Best Practices in Email Marketing” and the title of your actual presentation is “Social Media for 2009 and Beyond”, that’s like buying a ticket for one movie and being forced to watch another movie instead.
• No Concrete Examples: Educate me on the basics, then provide me with real examples I can latch on to.  I may not remember the basics, but you can bet I will remember that Aurora Widgets Company used the solution to increase revenue 10x in 2008.
• Don’t Read the Slides: Presentation 101.  Inject some enthusiasm.  Pretend you’re going off script even if you’re not.  Do anything to make me believe you’re thinking while you’re presenting, and not just reading slides.
• Don’t Run Over:  If the webinar is advertised as 45 minutes, make it 35.  If it’s advertised as 30 minutes, make it 20.  Many webinar attendees are interested in the typical Q&A session that occurs at the end of the session, but if you run over on the standard part, they may miss the only portion they really cared about in the first place. 

If you provide compelling content, market your webinar appropriately, and avoid these mistakes, the webinar can be a very effective lead generation and nurturing tool.  If you aren’t willing to pay enough attention to these areas, then don’t run webinars.  It’s that simple. 

• Choose a target audience carefully.
• Customize your offering and content for that target audience.
• Make sure the target audience can quickly and easily view your offering.
• Allow the target audience to interact with you in a variety of ways.

Translated into a job search, those bullets become:

• Pick a few audiences of companies and decision makers that are realistic targets.
• Don’t send the same thing to everyone; customize the content for the audience, company, and decision maker.
• Make sure the recipient of your materials can view resumes, cover letters and other credentials in whatever way they prefer.
• For godssakes, provide a number of options for getting in touch - email, phone, IM, blog, etc. 

90% of the job inquiries I receive break at least one of these rules.  Guess where those inquiries go?  From the inbox to the trash - immediately.  

For the millions of us watching CNN on election night and the 6 months preceding it, the segment that was most impressive had nothing to with the 18 talking heads on set.  It was John King’s mastery of the touch screen map.  Call him the new Czar of the Telestrator (my apologies to Mike Fratello), call him the Master of the Map, call him whatever you want…his almost error-free execution of those segments was damn impressive.  Of course, the show he put on would not have been possible without the existence of the analytics data surrounding the performance.

This offers further proof that we live in a analytics and data-obsessed society.  In sports, we love stats like earned run average and quarterback rating even if none of us can figure out where those numbers come from.  In politics, we love knowing that in Somerset County, 31.8% of white males under the age of 39 who claim Cheerios as their favorite cereal voted for Obama on election night.  In business, we love our business intelligence.  We love our decision analysis tools.  We love our web analytics. 

Businesses that use some form of analytics, or data collection and reporting tools, are at a distinct advantage over those that do not.  There is no disputing that.  So why do so many businesses, both large and small, run away from putting analytics tools in place?

• Businesses think putting any type of analytics/reporting tools in place will be expensive.  It’s not, at least not if you take baby steps. 
• Businesses think putting analytics/reporting tools in place will be complicated.  It’s not, as long as you don’t make it more complicated than it has to be.
• Businesses are afraid that these tools may expose flaws or weaknesses in the business model or sales and marketing process that they don’t want to expose. 

That last reason is plain silly.  Isn’t the idea to continually improve your business?  If a tool can tell you that your sales process is less efficient than 6 months ago, don’t you want to know that?  If a tool can tell you that website visitors from site X turn into more revenue than visitors from site Y, don’t you want to know that?

I can guarantee one thing.  Businesses that survive and flourish in this economic environment and beyond will embrace the data they already possess, search for ways to collect more data, and spend time and money using that data to make better business decisions. 

In the meantime, I am anxiously awaiting my wall-size touch-screen website analytics monitor.  Now that would be cool.  Maybe not John King cool, but cool nonetheless. 

1) What is your company/organization?

2) What do you help other organizations accomplish? (Here’s a hint - if you’re not helping them either reduce costs or generate revenue, you may be in trouble.)

3) How do you help those organizations accomplish that goal?

4) What types of organizations do you help?

You, and all the members of your marketing and sales team, should be able to answer those questions in 30 seconds or less.  If not, there’s a messaging problem.  In my experience, only 1 of every 4 marketing management types can answer these questions without stumbling. 

If you don’t know your message, why do you expect prospects to understand your message?

The better news is that this task is really not that difficult, especially if you are using the appropriate tracking mechanisms.  The potential solutions to this problem are endless, yet the implementation can seem complicated.  Here are 3 basic places to start:

1. Assuming you know which marketing vehicles are your most efficient performers from a lead generation or customer acquisition standpoint, cut out the poor performers for the time being and focus on the top performers.  If search engine marketing drives leads at half the cost of direct mail (without sacrificing quality of course), then cut direct mail and focus on search engine marketing.  If your affiliate program drives new e-commerce customers at a $20 cost per acquisition while your email marketing program drives new e-commerce customers at a $75 cost per aquisition, cut the email marketing and focus in on the affiliate program. 

2. Stop doing any form of mass marketing, and focus on microtargeting to particular audiences that you have produced results for you in the past.  Marketers too often assume that the ideal audience for their product is a whole lot larger than it actually is.  The first thing I do when I hear the “do more with less” directive is to look at my current customer list, figure out some common characteristics within that customer base, and build campaigns around reaching similar businesses or consumers.  This seems like an obvious step, and yet it’s one that many marketers stumble on.

3. Focus on improving conversion rates, not just on building traffic.  Building additional traffic can be expensive; improving conversion rates doesn’t have to be.  Marketers often spend a disproportionate amount of dollars driving people “in the door”, and then spend next to nothing on making sure that suspect becomes a prospect.   Don’t for a second think this concept of conversion rates is restricted to online marketing - conversion rates are impacted by a suspect’s experience in your store, their interaction with a landing page, a live chat experience, a phone call interaction with one of your sales reps, etc. 

Just about every marketer I know is experiencing some type of “do more with less” scenario.  The marketers that will survive and flourish during this difficult economic period (and afterwards) are the ones that have stopped fighting the idea of budget and staffing cuts, but instead have embraced it and moved forward with creative, cost-efficient solutions to the problem.

Having run into this situation a number of times, I followed with three simple questions:

Question 1: Who actually implemented the CRM/marketing automation solution for you?

Answer: We used an outside consultant who focuses on these specific types of implementations.

Question 2: Who built the process and rules surrounding the treatment of leads both inside and outside the CRM solution?

Answer: The same guy, the CRM consultant.

Question 3: Who communicated the new process and rules to the sales team?

Answer: The same guy, the CRM consultant, although I was there with him at the presentation.

For anyone reading this that has been successful with closed-loop marketing, you already know the problem.  While it’s fine to bring in an outside group/contractor to help with implementation, the communication of the new process and the enforcement of the new process must come from inside the organization. 

Specifically, in this situation the VP of Marketing and VP of Sales should have been the co-leaders of the new implementation, building the process and rules and handling the communication and enforcement.  Generally speaking, sales people hate to do what they perceive as “extra” work, and entering data into CRM system qualifies as “extra” work for them.  Of course they’re not going to follow the rules set forth by the outside consultant - he can’t issue the stick, and therefore he shouldn’t be communicating and enforcing the rules.

The point here is that process and the communication are just as important, if not more important, than the software.  Software is just a tool.  Focus on things like process and desired outcomes first, then find the right software to help make those outcomes happen.