Home Archives for Blog Internet Marketing

Traditional marketers want the good old days back

23rd February 2012

The sad death of Frank Carson, one of the UK’s best-loved comedians has brought about a wealth of tributes today from many people in the entertainment world. By all accounts not only was he a funny man, but a genuinely nice man. Indeed, he was so well thought-of that Pope John Paul II awarded him a Papal Knighthood in 1987 for his significant charitable work. Throughout the day on radio and TV there have been tributes to Frank from many “old school” comedians. Clips from old shows, like “The Comedians” and “The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club” reminded us all of what comedy was like in the “old days”. It’s not like it is now.

Nostalgia is a funny thing itself. We look back to the past with doleful eyes, wishing it was just “like then”. But, of course it isn’t. The pictures and the sound on those old clips of Frank Carson are pretty ropey, even though they have the benefit of modern technology. Do we really want TV like it used to be? And Frank Carson himself did not stick to the past; indeed one of the reasons he had a lifelong success in comedy was because he kept up with the times, not trying to recreate the past all the time. After all, when he was in his late 70s he was cracking jokes about Viagra…!  (A man goes into Boots and says: “Have you got Viagra?” “Do you have a prescription?” asks the chemist. “No,” he replies, “But I’ve got a photograph of the wife…” – It’s a cracker!).

Success is often associated with reinventing yourself or your business. After all, Sir Cliff Richard is nothing like he used to be, neither is Madonna nor is Marks and Spencer or Tesco. All have adapted, changed and taken on new ways of doing things to move with the times. Meanwhile, struggling firms are largely trying to recreate the good old days, failing to adapt and hoping that all this new-fangled stuff will disappear soon.

Sadly, such attitudes are prevalent in a new study of marketers from big brands. This research shows that many of the companies are wishing they were in the past, failing to take up the challenge the Internet poses and trying to force the “old world” order onto the web. For instance, the way the big brands spend money online is  almost exactly the same way they spend it offline – mostly on “branding” and “direct response”. Even though the Internet provides a host of other ways in which to engage with customers and potential clients, the marketers are still allocating their cash along traditional lines.

Similarly, when it comes to measurement the most important factors for these marketers are how quickly people can get to see the brand. In other words, rather like getting your logo on TV or your poster up next to the motorway, the online marketers for big brands are still focused on getting the brand known and recognised. One of their least important measures, according to the study, is any kind of counting of actual new business.

What the study tells us is that the people who answered the questions in this study are not interested in using online marketing in ways which it can excel. Instead, they are doing the same old, same old. Is it any wonder that traditional companies are facing such threats from online competition? Shoe shops are going to the wall as online shoe sales from a former bookshop (Amazon) take hold, for instance. Google dominates the “find a company telephone number” business, when Yell should have sewn that up a decade or more ago. You get my drift.

Looking backwards, hoping that the future will be like the past is a nostalgic attitude which businesses cannot afford – particularly with the speed of change online. After all, towards the end of last year Google launched Google+ amid a fanfare of tributes that it was the fastest growing social network. Not any more – it has been pipped at the post already by young upstart, Pinterest, which not only is growing more rapidly than any other social network but is already making money, which is practically unheard of in such new ventures.

Clearly things are changing ever-more rapidly online and that means businesses simply cannot afford old thinking any more.

To some extent, I’m really rather hoping the research data is a joke – a cracker…!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPm-nlJsK2U[/youtube]

Related articles
Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Internet Marketing Tags: , , , , , ,

Please sit back to read this! Distance affects your buying decisions

22nd February 2012

Closeness affects buying decisionsHow far are you sitting from the screen right now? Before you carry on reading, please take a moment to move slightly further away. There; that’s better already. Assuming your eyesight managed the shift backwards your brain has started to do different things. That’s because it appears we make decisions better when we increase the distance from the very thing we are thinking about. You may have read the headline and thought “should I carry on reading”. The fact that you sat back a bit increased your ability to make the right decision – by reading on…!

In a simple experiment looking at online purchasing one group of people were told to sit close to the screen and a second group were asked to sit further back. The group sitting closer found it more difficult to make a decision about buying. The detailed analysis of the research found that closeness increases anxiety – and anxiety inhibits decision making. The research confirms an earlier study which showed that the distance between you and your computer screen can affect your thinking abilities.

Psychological studies of people in real world, bricks and mortar stores have found that people often look at something on display and then move somewhere else in the shop before returning to the original item and then picking it up. What they are doing is removing themselves from the physical proximity of the product they are considering buying. They are then able to think more clearly about whether or not to buy because they are no longer close to the product. Distance appears to reduce the stress and anxiety associated with making the purchase, thereby increasing the buyer’s chance of making the right decision.

Shops sometimes use little “tricks” to increase the distance between shoppers and products making it difficult to touch things or pick them up – putting them in display cases, for instance, or behind some kind of barrier. Not only does this increase desirability because the item is “untouchable” but it also makes it easier for us to decide whether or not to buy, because the anxiety of purchasing is diminished by the distance.

Online, of course, it is difficult to create the distance people need to make purchasing decisions. But you can do things which help people feel they are stepping back and therefore more able to make a decision to buy. For example, product images can initially be set in context, rather than close-up. This makes people feel they are further away from the item on sale – only clicking to see the close-up images once they are in “buying mode”. Similarly, you can use wording to create distance such as “as you sit back and look at this offer today you will be astounded by it”. That simple phrase includes what is known as “an embedded command” – it will make many people physically move back from the screen slightly, thereby making it more likely they will be able to decide to buy.

What this really all means is that you need to pay attention to small details on your ecommerce website in order to make it easier for people to decide to buy. Any way in which you can create physical distance between the web page and the buyer is likely to help increase sales. Otherwise, people who might buy become too anxious and click away from your site without buying.

Related articles
Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Internet Marketing, Internet Psychology Tags: , ,

How to beat Facebook

10th February 2012

Brain TestingFacebook engages its visitors; with almost 500m people visiting the site every single day it must be doing something right, after all. Not only that, but people stick around on Facebook, spending up to 20 minutes at a time on the site. Wouldn’t you just love millions of visitors who spend ages on your website? The fact of the matter is that few other websites get the depth and extent of engagement that Facebook achieves. So what is it doing right?

A new neuroscience study [PDF] reveals what is going on – and it is not as spectacular a finding as you might imagine. Indeed, the research shows a fairly basic fact which any website can use to its advantage. You can take Facebook on if you use the results carefully.

The research looked at four factors – attention, emotional engagement, memory retention and cognitive functioning. Those elements were studied for three “premium” websites – Facebook, Yahoo! and the New York Times. The findings were then compared with earlier research for a range of typical business websites, for which the researchers had gathered prior data.

Unsurprisingly, Facebook had the highest emotional engagement and the New York Times had the best memory retention. The study also looked at the impact of the sites on advertising. It found that adverts on Facebook had greater psychological impact than advertising on other websites or on TV. But, the study was financed by Facebook and was co-authored by them. Even so, the findings are statistically significant.

The research will doubtless be used to demonstrate that advertising on Facebook is better than running adverts elsewhere. But that’s not an issue you should concern yourself with. What is important for every website owner are two other findings in the study, which are not the “headline” results.

The first of these is the fact that the participants felt “more connected to” the sites they visited AFTER using Facebook. In other words if you direct people to Facebook FIRST and THEN to your website, they feel more emotionally engaged with your website as a result – precisely what you want to achieve.

The second somewhat hidden factor to emerge from this study was that the engagement with the websites being tested was largely down to the prior expectations of the participants in the study. In other words it is what people think about your website BEFORE they visit which impacts most on whether or not they stick around. That means the OFFLINE marketing of your site is fundamental in getting people to stay.

So your website can benefit from the findings in this study by doing two things. Firstly, line up the expectations people have for your website by using public relations and other promotional activities so your potential visitors know what to expect in advance. And then get them to visit your website by going to your Facebook page first. They will then feel more connected with you, they will engage more and stay on your site for longer.

Related articles
Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Internet Marketing, Online Business, Social Tags: , , , , , ,

Your Internet Marketing Could Be Boosted With A Cardboard Box

26th January 2012

Think Outside the Box to boost internet marketingInternet marketers are nothing if not creative. There hardly seems to be a day that goes by without some new idea from an Internet Marketing brainbox. And each time you think there can’t be any new ideas to market your business online, along comes another creative thinker who has developed an amazing way to promote your products and services.

In business meetings you will often hear people say “we need to think outside the box on this one”. It is a shorthand way of suggesting that the people in the meeting need to be more creative and come up with new and seemingly whacky ideas. And you can bet that many traditionally-based marketing departments are amazed at how much “outside the box” thinking there is in the young upstarts of the Internet Marketing world.

Recently, however, psychologists were interested to find out if by actually being “outside a box” made people think more creatively. The researchers conducted a study which was purportedly looking at different working environments. Some people were sat in a large cardboard box, whereas others were “outside the box”…! The researchers were not actually looking at work productivity or the way people responded to different environments. Instead the psychologists wanted to find out if being in a box hampered creative thinking and if being outside the box actually helped. And amazingly it did…!

When people were inside the box, they were much less creative than when they were, literally, “outside the box”.

So, in order to boost your creative thinking for your internet marketing you could always buy yourself a big cardboard box, do your work in that for a while and then physically step “outside the box” to improve your creativity.

On the other hand, you might want to take a different path to success…! What the research really shows is that a change in environment boosts your creative thinking. So, if  you are struggling with coming up with new ideas for your website, or how to market your online products, you need to get away from your desk. Take a walk, go for a coffee, simply walk to someone else’s office for a chat – all of these are tactics which help improve creative thinking.

In essence, when you are in your office you are in your own little “box” environment – step outside of that box and your creative juices will start to flow again. It all goes to show that there is often some truth in the jargon-laden sayings we hear in the workplace..! Get out of your office for a while and your Internet Marketing will be improved because you will literally be thinking outside of your box.

Related articles
Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Internet Marketing, Internet Psychology Tags: , , , ,

Vast amount of online data reduces marketing effectiveness

5th January 2012

Diane Abbott on Twitter

The British Member of Parliament, Diane Abbott, was in hot water for her comments on Twitter recently which many people deemed to be racist. After several hours of criticism against her, the offensive Tweet was removed and Ms Abbott made a public apology. It was yet another example of the so-called “power of social media”. Of course, it was more about the power of data. People make all kinds of comments in bars and at dinner parties, but they don’t have to retract what they say because any complaining about what they say is relatively small, from one or two friends. Online, people get to see the true extent of the feelings against their views. In a bar, a single person might actually be voicing the views of a majority; but the person who makes offensive remarks has no way of knowing that – they only see the one complaint against them. But when they say the same things online, they can see the endless array of Tweets against them. Online, the extent of opposition to anyone’s viewpoint is made obvious by the amount of the Tweets or Facebook comments. Indeed, people even set up Facebook pages or groups to complain and make their views known.

Anyone who does say something controversial can be in no doubt as to the extent of the opposition against them, thanks to the obvious data in the numbers of people Tweeting, or the extent of Facebook opposition. It is not social media that has caused people to retract their negative views, but the weight of numbers – the data.

This is just an example of data available to us which prior to the Internet we could not collect – or at least not easily. Prior to the Internet, people could express all sorts of viewpoints – now they can see how offensive they have been. The extent of the information which we can collect is now massive. So much so it has been given its own name – “Big Data“. You can get information about the precise activities of your customers, your targets and prospects as well as all sorts of data on your competitors which was previously hidden to you, prior to the web.

Only recently a friend of mine attended a seminar where one of the speakers was from Amazon whose presentation focused on the fact that successful Internet marketing requires attention to detail of the data. Firms like Amazon know what you searched for, the books you have bought, what your friends have bought, what other people are searching for and what the competition is up to. Using complex software they aggregate all of this information to make it much more likely that they can offer you just what you want, at the precise time you want it. Try doing that with a bricks and mortar bookstore.

For companies the size of Amazon, collecting and analyzing all this data is not too much of a problem. But for the average business it is tough. Do you pay for specialist software to do all the number crunching? Expensive. Do you employ teams of people to analyze the information? Time consuming. Or do you outsource the data mining to experts in each sector? Tough to manage.

There is, in fact, so much data available to you that you could almost spend all of your day analyzing it so that you get to the minutest detail and find precise ways of targeting what you want to sell. But just because data is available does not mean you have to collect it or analyze it. There is a tendency within Internet marketing to try to ever more narrowly target and understand specific customer behaviour. But what you need to ask yourself is whether or not such analysis has a return on investment. Much of the analysis of “Big Data” is often futile – you can spend a lot of time and money analyzing the data for comparatively little return.

The only data you really need to know inside out is exactly what your customers want from you. And often it is not data that can tell you that – it is simply asking them.

In much the same way, if you were  a British Member of Parliament it might be wise to ask people what they think of your viewpoint, before publicly declaring it on Twitter…!

Related articles
Comments: 1 Comment
Categories: Internet Marketing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,