A post on Copyblogger today inspired me.  It opens,

Whether you’re promoting a product, a program or just an idea, exuberance sells. One of the reason blogs can be so effective is that their writers tend to show more enthusiasm than polish. And that’s not a bad thing—if you have to pick one over the other, enthusiasm wins.

As Sonia Simone says, enthusiasm can’t be faked.  Likewise, I’ve always found it MUCH easier to write compelling copy for people who are excited about their products or services.  When I have to struggle to find new ways of selling something through words that aren’t founded on some degree of passion, I’ve already lost the battle. 

For example, several years ago, I was asked to write some copy.  When I questioned, "What am I trying to convey?," my source responded, "That we’re better."

As Christopher Walken says, "Wowwy Wow Wow wow!" I couldn’t wait to get started writing engaging copy for a service that has no unique goals! 

Seriously, it was among the greatest challenges I’ve faced from a writing perspective.  I felt forced throughout the exercise, and when I finally delivered the product (taking longer than originally expected, since I didn’t have the personal energy to drive a quick flow of ideas), I wasn’t proud of it.  Amazingly, the stakeholders thought it was great, and they found mild returns once they implemented it in their collateral. 

But I wonder how my writing would have changed—and how many more conversions we could have encouraged—had the initial sell been wrought with admirable enthusiasm to energize the team and its writer.

If you give people too many choices, their brains will melt and they will retreat to the option thatoffers the least amount of uncertainty and confusion. In the online world, the most popular method of eliminating confusion and uncertainty is the "leave this site" option. Avoiding decision paralysis is imperative to effective marketing.

In their book, Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reflect on what makes an idea stick—a topic I think quite a bit about. On the road to "sticky" marketing, my experience is that decision paralysis is a very sneaky little trickster.  it’s just an easy trap to fall into, and no trap is more appealing than offering too many choices.

The Heath’s cite a study in which college students are faced with the following choices when planning their evenings:

Scenario 1:

Choice #1: Attend a lecture by an author you admire who is visiting just for the evening, or

Choice #2: Go to the library and study.

(Is "neither" an option?)

Scenario 2:

Choice #1: Attend the lecture.

Choice #2: Go to the library.

Choice #3: Watch a foreign film that you’ve been wanting to see.

The choices made between Scenario 1 and 2 are surprisingly different.

Continue reading "Marketing To Avoid Decision Paralysis"

We’re all (too) familiar with the "This program has stopped responding" message when Windows decides to crash something. You know that little message that pops up after the error? The one that says "Report this bug?" What does Microsoft do with that information? Does it actually go anywhere? Does it suffer the same fate as Dwight’s complaints against Jim, stuck under Toby’s desk in a big trash bag? Or does that information actually help Microsoft debug and improve their OS/software?



The problem is, I have no idea what happens to that information. And that’s why I hardly, ever, hit "send." Why would I make the extra effort to contribute something if I have no idea if my contribution will matter? This, unfortunately, is an all too common error in customer service and marketing (which, I happen to think are one in the same). Companies, or inviduals for that matter, request user generated content with the promise that it will help "shape the future" or "make a difference," but what happens all those suggestions?

Continue reading "Liars! Why Talking to Your Customers Is So Important"

This morning when I opened my reader I had a few folders that had the nice little “1,000+” number next to the folder. How, depressing. I began to read through the posts one by one and marking them off as ‘read.’ One hour later I hadn’t made a dent in that annoying little “1,000+.” By the way, thanks for putting that number in fire engine red because I wasn’t already aware how out of control it is. Anyhow, in each of the folders where said number appeared, it’s usually just one blog that is the culprit and it got me thinking....is it possible to blog too much?

I decided to ask the Google machine. Well, turns out I’m not completely off my rocker because the first search result was a post by Seth Godin entitled, “The Noisy Tragedy of the Blog Commons.” In that post, Seth laments the Tragedy of the Commons in relation to blogging. In a slight twist on the definition of the commons, Godin asserts that we’re actually over saturating people because we can.

I want to subscribe to blogs that make me wish for more; not blogs that make me wish they’d stop writing. I want a blog that is selective in it’s content; not a blog that publishes everything it can get its hands on related to it’s industry. I mean honestly, who has time to read 100 posts a day from one blog alone? I know I can tag my information, I know I can just scan headlines; but why not do the tagging for me? Why not scan the headlines for me? Why not produce only the best of the best content, and leave the rest for the pageview & blood thirsty ego-blogger? Obviously there are some exceptions--take TechCrunch or AdAge for example....and there are your friends blogs that you read because you care about your friends. But my favorite blogs are still those that censor information for me and tell me what I need to know.

I think the Microhoo situation was a good example. That was the shot heard round the blogosphere. Everyone wrote a post (if not multiple posts) regarding the takeover, but I read very few blogs that actually had something good to say. Perhaps people felt the pressure to write about it so as not be deemed irrelevant.

But therein lies the rub for me…

Continue reading "Is it Possible to Blog Too Much?"

UPDATE PT. 2Thanks to Joel, you can now view the commercial I was mentioning at his blog here. Thanks Joel!

UPDATE: Thanks to Muriel’s comment, here is the link to the DirectTV commercial series I was referring to. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the exact spot, but it does have some others that are in the same vein and equally as funny. Hopefully they’ll be posting the “Blog it Out” spot soon.

Direct TV has a new TV commercial series out featuring John Micahel Higgins and a chunk of the Christopher Guest Crew (Waiting for Guffman, Best In Show etc.). I bring that up because not only did the most recent commercial I saw make me laugh out loud; it was incredibly poignant.

The group is sitting around a drab executive style oval table, and they all look bored to tears. They are playing the part of the unnamed cable company executives. Higgins begins by stating that cable TV is losing it’s steam and something must be done. Rather than changing their policies, he says to the crew “We’re going viral. We’re gonna get online and start blogging it out.” I wish I could find that commercial on YouTube--if you find it, please let me know.

Anyhow, that is just a perfect picture of a typical view of digital marketing and social media. Someone, somewhere, heard of social media and decided they needed to be leveraging the new shiny toy. It was clearly not in Higgin’s original business plan to utilize digital marketing. Digital marketing is not a quick fix or a limited one-off; but rather a long-term invested approach of discovering where your customers are, and finding relevant ways to join their conversation on their terms

A recent study by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Association of National Advertisers suggests that fewer than 1 in 4 of the participants in Marketing & Media Ecosystem 2010 consider their organizations digitally savvy. Furthermore, AdAge reports that,

While every marketing executive recognizes the pervasive pull of the internet, most allocate only 5% to 10% of their ad budgets to digital media.

The article goes on to say,

Leading marketers such as Nike, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble are indeed recognizing that digital and interactive are no longer niche capabilities; they are a requisite skill set for all marketers.

Currently, the way in which legacy marketing treats digital marketing is akin to buying a cell phone for the sole purpose of replacing your land line: You never take the phone with you. You leave it at home, you plug it into your answering machine, and you bolt it to your wall. You now have your shiny new toy and you’ve now become ‘relevant.’ Great concept, but missing the point.

The issue for Higgin’s crew in the Direct TV commercial is that is that not only was it too little too late; but the culture supporting the “blogging it out” is not conducive to blogging.

Continue reading "“Blog It Out” - The Confusion of Digital Marketing"