thefunnel

I came across an interesting web application that I’m probably going to try out.  This tool greatly improves on-site conversion rates by being able to present content to web site visitors dynamically, based on a certain set of user defined rules, such as keywords, visit frequency, location, referred / visited URL and so on. What this means is that based on what you know about the visitor as a persona, you can present the visitor with more relevant content, which leads to higher conversion. For example, if one of the web sites visited prior to yours was one of your competitors, you would have a different message compared to if the visitor was a frequently returning loyal customer. Not only does this helps in being more targeted in your messaging, it also provides a potential solution for reducing “page sub optimization” (this is when the same one web page is trying to target multiple audiences, by scrolling messages / banners, etc.), and the need for specific landing pages, which are not helping to build your SEO equity on your main site.

I came across an interesting article about brand loyalty. Basically, the notion is that in the current “participation economy” traditional marketing attention and interruption marketing paradigm) is obsolete and that “movements” needs to be generated instead of communication. The reason for this is that most products are good enough, for what they are intended to do, and the way you succeed in branding is to “achieve or create a loyalty without reason”. This means finding that emotional connection by attaching a level of mystery to the brand (the more the consumer knows about the specifics of a brand the less interesting it becomes), because people are today looking for things beyond rational value. The article claims that this applies equally to B-2-B products, and that intimacy, a story, a relationship leads to “unreasonable loyalty”. In addition marketing should be aiming to measure the return on involvement, rather than the return on investment. The above is one of the reasons, for example, why traditional approaches to market research, based on information, knowledge and data, often fails to provide an accurate prediction on the success of a new product. Marketers should forget about focus groups, because in a focus group environment, customers hide their real feelings towards a brand, and therefore, aspects of “unreasonable loyalty” are never uncovered.

Is messaging easy? Not if it is done right. The old saying goes: If I had more time I would had made this post shorter! The shorter and fewer words, means more time spend to think through what you really want to say.  Also, a very smart person that I know, once said, “perfect never is”.How true that is, particularly for copy writing. When do you reach the point of diminishing return? Or, maybe your customer in the first place never cared as much as you did? So here’s an interesting case study. Highest level message for a particular company.

All You Need to Confidently Design, Test, Measure and Monitor. For more than sixty years, engineers have turned to ”the company”  for test, measurement and monitoring instrumentation to solve design challenges, improve productivity and dramatically reduce time to market. You can always count on us to give you the domain expertise, innovation, performance, practical advice and quality you need.

That’s 396 characters including spaces. Takes 30 seconds to read. Good for web, highest level value proposition. Let’s analyze:

All you need = we provide you with everything you need, hardware, software, service, support, people etc.

Confidently = many company do the same, but in our results you can trust, why?

More than 60 years = evidence, reassurance, testimonial, don’t just listen to us, look at your peers

Solve design challenges = what the company does

Increased productivity and reduced time to market = the value proposition (not unique)

You can always count on us = yes we are a company, but more importantly we are people, not a pile of bricks

Domain expertise, innovation, performance, practical advise and quality = the highest scoring differentiated brand attributes

Practical advise = we are people, who are here to help you out

As you can see from the above, every single word means something, either explicitly or implicitly, and every word chosen is done so for a very particular reason.