Boing!

That’s the sound of someone finding your site, but not finding what they wanted ON your site.

Boing!

That’s the sound of Web site content that doesn’t match your marketing.

Boing!

That’s the sound of a Web site that talks about the company instead of the visitors’ problems.

Technically, a “bounce” is a visitor that looks at only one page, or a visitor that spends an embarrassingly short time on the page.

A visitor bounces when they don’t find anything close to what they were looking for when they visit your site. Either you’re attracting the wrong visitors or you’re don’t know why they are visiting.

Bounce is the most extreme form of conversion problem. High bounce rates are an indication that you are throwing good marketing dollars down the tubes. Whatever you’re spending to get traffic to your site is being wasted.

The Campaign Culture

The conversion problem is one of culture. Most marketers and business owners have a campaign culture. This is a marketing department that creates programs with fixed goals over relatively short time periods.

It is the culture of marketing people focused on monthly and quarterly objectives.

It is the culture of limited marketing resources.

It is the culture of project-oriented agencies.

It is the culture of IT departments lording over online resources.

Curiosity and the Conversion Culture

A marketing department that has escaped the campaign culture is one that produces campaigns effortlessly. The primary attribute of a conversion culture is curiosity.

Just as great companies like Google and 3M have given their employees freedom to explore new ideas, a marketing department must have the time, budget and permission to learn from their efforts.

It is a culture of that knows why it has or hasn’t met objectives.

It is a culture in which every communication is a test.

It is a culture in which momentum carries it across project boundaries.

It is a culture that builds brand while it educates and persuades.

Are you a Curious Marketer?

You may be a curious marketer trapped in a campaign culture. I believe that curiosity is a basic human trait. Where can you start to instill curiosity in your organization?

Start with yourself. Exercise your curiosity muscle.

On October 8, a group of the most curious among us are gathering for a day of conversion tactics, strategy and culture in Austin, Texas.

I’ll be leading a workshop in which the entire conversion “stack” will be introduced and discussed. The goal is for everyone to leave with a new set of skills and a renewed curiosity.

We’re going to understand how to start asking, “why” in each of our communications. We are going to adopt some tools that will help us organize our work around the visitor.

I’ll be leading the workshop, and by the end of the day, will have covered almost everything I know about online conversion.

Will you be a part of this curious group?

You can also join me in San Diego for DMA 09. The Direct Marketing Association has invited me to present this material in a two-day pre-conference workshop, followed by four days of mingling with some of the brightest marketers on the planet. This is another place that curious marketers come to ask “why.”

Marketers that know how to apply curiosity will be writing their own ticket in the next five years. Join us in a place where curiosity is welcome and celebrated.

I completed my thesis on the evolution of online advertising in "Evolving Further Toward Targeted Display Advertising." Our journey ended with Homo Optimizapien, "Optimization Man." Homo Optimizapien has achieved a place where display advertising, or banner ads, deliver search-like returns, only with wider reach than search can deliver.

Display is more than clicks

Through my work with my clients, it has become apparent that display advertising can influence purchases even if it doesn’t generate clicks. I was fortunate to have seen this first hand when working with Apogee Search. Apogee had recommended that one of my clients use a portion of their paid search budget on the "content" networks, meaning that my client’s ads would appear on other Web sites. You’ve seen the "Ads by Google" blocks. I was skeptical.

As predicted, click through rates from the content ads were horrible. However, our client saw a marked increase in purchases from direct traffic. When we turned off the content network, the sales dropped. When we turned it back on, sales went up.

While everyone’s trying to figure out how to measure this effect directly, I’d recommend that you try text or display ads. The cost is low, but the benefit could be great.

Juicing Display Advertising

There are companies who can make display advertising work even better for you.

One is a company called AdReady. AdReady has a library of banner ads that can be customized by you. Furthermore, you can select the ad template that is currently performing well for other advertisers. AdReady can share your ad on the major ad networks such as Google and Yahoo! and track your results.

Dapper.net has an interesting approach. They will literally scrape your eCommerce Web site and build a database of offers from your product pages. As you change offers on your site, the ads running through Dapper change as well. This is great for organizations who have a large catalog of offers, or whose offers change frequently. Think "Travel."

If you’ve had success with pay-per-click search ads, and are spending $10,000 or more per month, you might consider some of the more sophisticated implementations, such as those offered by Tumri and Teracent.

Consider Display

It’s easy to test display advertising, and often the cost is low. My recommendation is try it in our market to see if you can increase direct and indirect conversion rates.

Images courtesy Teracent.

Every entrepreneur should come to understand what microcredit is teaching us. This movement is teaching us about the very foundation of our free enterprise system. It is teaching us where compassion lives within our framework of self interest. It is showing us that we are right to believe that opportunity brings out the best in us in ways that charity does not.

In terms of providing “aid” to struggling countries, the US is quite generous. However, the results of our aid are often heart breaking, with much of it being wasted by the governments that are supposed to get it to their people.

Charity has its place. Opportunity, however is the jet engine that moves charity to increase a person’s standard of living. As Americans, we believe that opportunity is the seed from which freedom springs.

Microcredit is opportunity. It is the process of making small loans to individuals in countries that do not share our freedoms… yet. These loans are given to individuals who wish to build businesses in their communities. Initial loans are often no more than US$50.00. Payback rates are well above 90%, and typically approach 100%. It is women who are taking the most advantage of microlending opportunities. This is good, because they tend to invest their profits in their children and their community.

DiscoverHope is a “blended” microcredit organization headquartered in Austin and focusing on South America. I support DiscoverHope because they don’t just loan money, but have built education centers to teach their clients how to build and run a business.

I love the thought that my donations to DiscoverHope will create value over and over and over. This is what we want in our businesses. Why not demand it of our giving?

DiscoverHope is home-grown goodness, started right here in Austin, Texas. In classic Austin tradition, DiscoverHope is using music to express their gratitude and raise more funds for sprouting entrepreneurs in Peru. It’s Saturday, September 26.

You should buy a ticket. The $25 you pay goes right to DiscoverHope activities.

You should also plan to come. You’re going to meet people who have a positive, expansive vision for how we can give back some of the bounty we enjoy here in America.

Do you give out of guilt, or give out of gratitude? Come mingle in a room full of the grateful, and see if you don’t start the next day with a fresh attitude.

Conversion Sciences is a proud sponsor of Band Together for Hope and a donor to DiscoverHope.

A couple of graphs from MarketingSherpa drive an important point home about the use of e-mail for marketing. It works, it has always worked, and it will continue to work. You just have to know how to use it.

In this graph, "Emailing to house lists" falls behind "Web 2.0 (social network marketing)." However, since fewer marketers are reducing the use of house list email, it should be #1.

I’ll go so far as to state this:

If you don’t have your email marketing efforts nailed, you have no business investing in social marketing.

Social marketing has its place, and is not a fad. But, we know so much about good, permission-based email marketing, that it is criminal to ignore it. Don’t let superstitions drive your marketing strategy.

MarketingSherpa has some choice interpretations of this graph:

Those that see the effectiveness of their email programs diminishing are much more likely to have short-sighted organizational attitudes toward the tactic.

Organizations with investment-oriented views of email reap the rewards. They have higher open, click and conversion rates. In addition, they are much more likely to have a metrics-based grasp of how email works for them. Those with the "email is free" view, on the other hand, are more likely to fall into the group that doesn’t track conversion.

It is so easy to measure email’s effectiveness, that I would argue that you can’t call yourself a marketer if you’re not watching your results. We call you a spammer.

You’re not marketing if your not measuring.

Essential for any Considered Purchase

If all of your customers buy spontaneously on their first visit and never buy again, then you may not need to invest in email marketing. I don’t know of any business like this.

If your customers take weeks or months to come to a purchase decision, you cannot ignore email. Email is the biggest social network on the planet. Even retirees use email.

Your House List is the list of people who have given you permission to enter their inbox. This means they want what you have, and should be given every opportunity to opt out.

Email Isn’t Promotional, It’s Social

Don’t use email purely to promote sales and discounts. Use it to educate, inform and entertain. If you have a blog, send your most interesting posts via email. Most of us aren’t using RSS. Email is your ticket to growing your blog readership.

Then simply advertise in your own emails.

Get Started Now

It does take time to build your house list, so start now. Email can be fun if you’re sending content that reflects your passion for your company, your industry and your brand.

Then you can start investing in the smaller, less intimate social networks out there.

Please Vote

Imagine your most important customer, let’s call her Melissa, walking into your meeting room and laying the law down to your manager, telling them exactly what she wants from your Web site.

Now imagine that she’s not just your most important customer, but a representative of hundreds or thousands of your customers. Would she be able to change minds and influence decisions?

This is the power of Melissa. She is your Market Segmentation Study personified. She is your analytics report in a skirt. She is legal counsel for your creative team and a force to be reckoned with.

Melissa is an example of a persona. She represents the desires and fears of a large number of your prospects and customers in the most human and compelling way.

She isn’t real, but she will seem more real than any chart you can concoct.

Why Personas Have So Much Power

Roy H. Williams puts it best.

"Your business has three or four customers living at thousands of different addresses."

Get to know them and they will lead you in the right direction.

Personas provide three power points that will help you focus your marketing and advertising dollars, and justify more spending.

You can Relate to People More Than Data

Melissa has a name, a face and a story. She is the perfect age, has the right income, and the ideal home environment to represent large numbers of your customers. With each little decision that marketers and business people make each day, you can ask, "What would Melissa do?" Each time you’re asked to make changes to your messaging, media, or offers, you can ask, "Would Melissa want this?"

You will relate to her as a marketer, manager, owner, CEO, Vice President or agency. This means better decisions, defendable positions, and consistent execution. Melissa is good.

Personas Create Consensus

The process of creating personas must involve anyone who would "know" Melissa. She is the personification of data, sales experiences, product research, customer support calls and personal experience. To make her whole, you must involved these functions in her creation.

Then, when budget time comes around; when knee-jerk initiatives seek to copy a competitor; when programs are proposed that are questionable, everyone will remember Melissa when you invoke her name.

Personas Turn Your Focus Outward

In any organization, it is easy to turn inward; to focus on the next product or the next campaign. Too many marketing conversations begin, "How can we get our message out more?"

Melissa changes the conversation.

"What could we do to get Melissa interested faster?"

"Why isn’t Melissa visiting the site?"

"What does Melissa need to know to go ahead and buy?"

These questions are fundamentally different. They are outward looking. Everything from strategy to copy to design will open to Melissa like a flower, and she will react.

The Key Components of an Online Persona

I’ll be covering the key components of an online persona in my SXSW Panel, provided you vote for it and it gets accepted.

I’ll also show you some of the decisions personas have influenced for my clients.

Give the panel idea your vote and then attend SXSW Interactive 2010.

Please Vote!

There are some very specific things you want to accomplish when you engage your prospects and customers.

• You want them to use your product, service or communication.
• You want to help influence their opinion of your product, service or communication.
• You want to help them talk about your product, service or communication.

This is the Social Media Cycle as defined by Dave Evans. It has two distinct parts:

1. The pre-purchase funnel

2. The post-purchase funnel

The Social Funnel includes both the traditional and post-purchase funnels.

It is important to define “purchase” for the sake of our conversation. Your customers may only have “purchased” a communication, paying with their time, attention and contact information if they want to continue the conversation. So, downloading a sample is modeled as a “purchase” in this scenario.

Just as it takes a series of “conversions” to move a prospect through the traditional sales funnel — to Awareness, then Consideration, then Action — you must likewise move them through the post-purchase funnel.

Yes, you have to convert a buyer into a user.

Then you have to help them form an opinion. Social media is great for this, because others’ opinions will shape their opinion. Focus on strategies that reveal what others are saying about your service or brand.

Finally, you must convert those with an opinion into talkers. Provide ways for them to share their experience. They will, in turn help you:

1. Convert more users into opinion holders
2. Direct new prospects to your funnel, often starting them in the Consideration stage

Would you like to know which social strategies lend themselves to each of these conversions? Would you like to know how to measure your success in the post-purchase funnel?

Vote for my SXSW Panel “What is your Social Conversion Rate?” Then attend.

Your vote will help educate business owners and marketers on a model that will make social media more helpful and interesting for all of us.

We all go through stages as we endeavor to grow — to evolve — into something greater, grander or more worthy of dating. The same is true of online advertising.

Through my columns on ClickZ.com, I have looked out of the cretaceous pool that spawned my online marketing life and have seen great beasts walking the land.

I have seen brands that are capable of amazing feats of targeted advertising.

I have seen fantastic creatures capable of sorting through volcano-sized mounds of data in milliseconds.

I have seen technological wonders through which what we see online magically congeals into its most pleasing image.

I have seen the Google Mammoth and the Sabre-toothed Yahoo carving rough trails through the jungles, enough to let us lesser-evolved forms taste the power of targeted advertising.

Yet, I know that there is a process at work here, and have attempted to document our evolution from Web site advertising to full-fledged, self-aware behavioral display advertising. The earliest stages are these:

• Homo Webilisite: Web Site Man
• Homo Searchenginus: Search Engine Man
• Keyanderthal Searchilis: Paid Search Man
• Keyanderthal Convertis: Conversion Man
• Keyanderthal Displayis: Contextual Display Man

You will find them defined in this month’s column on ClickZ. Next month, I’ll document the advanced stages of evolution through Homo Optimizapien Man.

BTW, when I refer to Online Advertising “Man” I mean the species Man, which includes women, though they may prefer to downplay such an association.

Photo courtesy http://www.sxc.hu/profile/code1name

Look at any product description on any Web site. Peruse any brochure. You will find a list of features designed to tell you why the product will do the things you need it to do to solve your problem.

They will probably have a check mark next to them.

What you will not find on these lists are features like these:

• A helpful Web site so you make the right decision
• Informative reports and white papers offered free of charge
• An active Facebook page full of the opinions of our users
• A well-labeled box placed in the right part of the store so you can easily find it

How a product or service communicates is not considered an important feature. This is why marketers — who develop the communication features — struggle to keep their staff and budgets during a downturn. This is why Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) don’t have a seat at the executive table with the CEO, President, COO and CFO.

To the executives, marketing doesn’t create products or sales. Marketing is a cost.

Prospects actually become customers when they buy your communication products

The first purchase a prospect makes from your company is a communication product. It is the flyer, brochure, Web site, report, article, press announcement, blog post, Webinar, etc. that you provide, ostensibly to help them understand how your product will help them solve a problem or entertain them.

They only occasionally pay with money. More often, they pay with their time, their attention, or their contact information to continue the conversation. Since they don’t pay with money, marketing never shows up on the bottom line. It’s always seen as a cost.

Now, if a customer is satisfied with their "purchase," they become a repeat customer taking more communication products. They also buy your company’s offering — for real money. Sales will get credit for the latter.

The mistake marketers make is creating communication products that are only focused on persuading prospects to buy the money-based products. How would things change if they focused on building great communication products instead?

The New Marketing Department

Imagine a marketing department run like a product development department. How would that change the focus?

This list could go on. What would you add? Tell us in the comments.

I’ll be talking about how buyer personas drive bigger marketing budgets at ProductCamp Austin on Saturday, August 15. Come out and let’s talk about great communications products.

Photo courtesy http://www.sxc.hu/profile/lusi

If you read this article and then go out and read your Web site, odds are very good that you will be embarrassed. You probably should be, but that isn’t really a helpful response. The proper response is to change the copy on your site. It works. You can completely revamp your Web site without changing one pixel of the design.

Please, for all of our sakes, change the copy.

How will you keep from simply writing more of the same boring Styrofoam flavored copy that you’ve already got on your site? By knowing bad copy when you see it. Here are 10 ways to know that your copy is going to convert visitors to buyers and one bonus tip.

Thanks to Amy Lemen at Writeous Words for helping me compile this.

1. It Speaks Specifically to Someone

If you can’t tell who the copy was written for simply by reading it, you are probably in trouble. Who are your customers? What happened in their lives that made them come to your site at this particular time? Profile your visitors, understand their motivations, and write to their issues. Personas help.

2. It’s Written Naturally

Do people talk like your copy is written? Does it convey meaning with the kinds of metaphors, euphemisms and engaging omissions that are used in speech? Or are the words straining to persuade the reader, attempting to touch on every point necessary to make the reader buy?

“Clarity trumps persuasion,” says Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments. Stop persuading. Start communicating.

2. The Copy on the Page Matches the Offers in your Ads

Your visitors didn’t get to your site by magic. They got there from one of your ads, from a search engine or from a referral. Does the copy on your home pages and landing pages pick up where your ads started? Does your "Meta Description," which the search engines display on their results page match the copy on the page itself? If not, you are breaking what the Eisenberg brothers call the "Scent Trail."

At each step of their journey to and through your site, there should be something familiar, something related to the previous step. Nothing provides scent better than headings and copy that draws on a common thing. Images and color are also affective, but that’s another article.

One of the most expensive mistakes is made in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on search engines. If you offer a discount in your PPC ad, the page they come to should have the discount clearly visible. Too often, great offers in ads are defeated when the visitor is taken to your homepage, on which the specific discount cannot be found.

Yes, to do this effectively means that each ad should have its own landing page on your site.

3. It gives the Reader Information They Can Use

Is the copy persuading or being helpful? It’s not about who you are and what you do. How can the visitors to your site solve their problems with your offering? Do you present a good value proposition?

When I come to your site, does your copy answer any of the following questions for me:

• How does it work?
• How will I use it?
• Which features should I care about?
• What should I be cautious about?
• When does it make sense to try something different?
• How do I justify the cost?
• How do I sell this internally?

These are just examples, but you need to understand that they are fundamentally different from telling the reader that you will give them "unparalleled visibility, divisional support and alignment."

4. An Experienced Copywriter Wrote It

Don’t look at copy as filler on your page. In the hands of an experienced professional, your copy will increase the effectiveness of your Web site and this will translate into more leads and more sales. Unlike design, though, we can all create copy. And unfortunately we do.

As I have said before, treat copywriters like designers. Get two or three “sketches” of the copy. Choose one. Correct the errors. Leave the rest alone.

5. It is Efficient

Long copy is OK. Rambling copy is not. Use efficient copy of any length to engage your reader.

Amy Lemen recommends using copy indexing formulas to help you measure the efficiency of your copy.

6. Your Analytics Tell You It’s Working

Google Analytics is free, easy to add, and relatively easy to learn. Use it or something else. Then ask someone to show you how to check the following. If copy changes don’t make these better, try again. The company that knows grows.

1. Bounce Rates: How many people leave immediately when they come to my pages? You want this to be low, at or below 30% usually.

2. Site-wide Conversion Rate: How many people visit the site? How many people take action by completing a form or buying something. When you divide the latter by the former, you get your site-wide conversion rate. You want it to be higher over time.

3. Exit Percentage: Which pages most often cause people to leave the site? These pages are either solving their problems completely or turning them off. Take a look at them. Try to get the exit percentage down.

4. Page Conversion Rate: For those pages that really count, the pages where people buy, find out how many people took action and divide that by how many people visited. This is your conversion rate for this page. You want it to be higher over time.

5. Web sales: How much stuff are you selling via the Web?

7. You had an Individual Edit it, not a Committee

Having a whole Web site go through a committee is a bad idea. Just because your marketing manager developed the product messaging doesn’t mean she should write or edit the copy. The product manager should only look for errors, not rewrite. The CEO needs to know the end result.

8. There Are Links Throughout the Copy

When someone reads your text, they are engaged. In fact, they are probably less likely to see supporting information in the left or right columns of the standard Web page. Use links within paragraphs to get readers into the site. Don’t over-do it, however. Too many links or links that encompass lots of text will make the paragraph difficult to read.

This is great for SEO, too. It provides an internal linking structure that helps search engines understand what the site is about. Your copywriter should be using important keywords for these links.

9. You Got Someone from Outside the Company to Participate

Internal writers are often too close to the material. Consider a copywriter from outside the company. This also requires that you go through the process of communicating what your company does. You’ll be surprised at how difficult this will be, even with a sophisticated copywriter.

This process should help you refine your messaging, and maybe delay updates until you’ve got a coherent story that the average human will understand.

10. You’ve Tested Your Headlines

Your heading are critical to scanning readers. Try different headings, font sizes and colors. Be patient. Watch your analytics for benefits that last.

Litmus Test

Do you enjoy reviewing the copy for your Web site? Do you feel pride when you read it? Is it something you’d consider adding to your portfolio should you find yourself looking for work? If not, imagine what your visitors think. "Good enough" just doesn’t convert as well.

If you can’t write like these guys, please let someone else do it.

Copywriters Round Table Blog
http://copywritersroundtable.com/

CopyBlogger Blog
http://www.copyblogger.com/

Nick Usborne’s Excess Voice Newsletter
http://www.nickusborne.com/excess_voice.htm

Here are some resources to grade your copy.

Fog Index
http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/fog-index.html

FutureNow, Inc. WeWe Test
http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm

Photo courtesy http://www.sxc.hu/profile/iwd.

Brian Massey is The Conversion Scientist. He shows businesses how to turn visitors into leads and sales. Brian is the author of The Conversion Scientist blog, is a ClickZ Behavioral Marketing Expert, and author of The Market for Me: Surviving Job Loss and Building Your Lifetime Career Network. Brian lives in Austin, Texas, where life and the Internet are hopelessly intertwined.

In a post on the American Marketing Association blog, I’ve presented my list of best practices for notification and clarification emails. These are golden opportunities to continue the conversation with an engaged prospect and move them closer to becoming a customer or a user of what you offer.

Notifications are sent when someone requests something from your web site. They can be triggered by a download, registration, demo, webinar, signup, contact inquiry, service request, or customer support call.

Each one should move your conversation with this person further along.

We see these as simply informational, but they should also provide additional value.

The Top 6 Mistakes

Mistake #1: Not sending notifications and confirmations

Mistake #2: Not sending enough notifications

Mistake #3: Not helping new users get started

Mistake #4: Not tracking the performance of your notification and confirmation e-mails

Mistake #5: Not sending quickly

Mistake #6: Not offering that next piece of information

Get the details on the AMA blog.

Photo courtesy http://www.sxc.hu/profile/k_vohsen