thinks

This makes me so happy. When was the last time that you saw a music company that benefits customers, musicians, and the company itself? You’d almost think someone in the business thought this through. It’s a brilliant use of the four steps, too. Here’s how.

1. They’re clearly targeting music listeners on terrestrial radio, knowing most stations don’t id tracks effectively.
2. They understand users want to hear songs they like again… and again.
3. They make it very simple (though not perfect, unfortunately) to find an answer to the customer’s question.
4. Then, and only then, do they offer the song for sale.

Simply brilliant.

Seth Godin has a link to new data from MarketingVox that simply blows my mind. In fact, I cannot imagine this is possible. The basic point is that two sites, Yahoo and MySpace, account for 53% of all display impressions. That’s simply astonishing. The question this begs for me is whether you’re better off trying to compete for space amongst all that noise, or if you’re better served looking for more niche opportunities for display. Do users on those sites tune out due to constant exposure? Something worth keeping an eye on, I would think.

Clickz.com has an article about a web preview of “A Scanner Darkly.” I think this is, to quote those ubiquitous Bass Ale commercials, brilliant. I’ll explain why, in the same terms as my recent post about improving sales. In order, here are the ways they’ve done this:

1. By offering this on IGN.com, they’ve demonstrated an understanding of their core customer group.
2. They’ve made it as simple as possible for their customers to do what they want (in this case, find out if they’re going to get into the movie), by providing an extended, 24 minute preview of the film.
3. They’ve only put one thing in the way of their customers, which is an age verification step. This one makes sense since it’s an R-rated movie.
4. They “upsell” after a fashion, but in the right way. They provide a simple age verification check (which, admittedly, any kid could scam), but offer that first, before asking folks to sign up for an IGN.com membership. They also do a nice job of calling people to engage in the IGN.com community and view other related videos.

All in all, this is a great example of following the steps well. One question: can you buy advance tickets after watching the preview? (The movie isn’t out yet, so it’s unclear if you’ll be able to). The key question is, if not, why not? They also should leave this up through the release of the DVD to drive DVD sales, too.

What are you doing to follow these steps? Who else is doing it well? And, finally, is it your competition?

Can you believe this?

Some folks out there actually believe that the Internet isn’t a mass medium.

According to one line in the report, “marketers will actually find traditional media to become increasingly important because of the relative scarcity of ways to reach masses of consumers.”

Now I’m not one to swear in these pages very often, but, what in the hell is that? “the relative scarcity of ways to reach masses”?!? Have these folks not heard of broadcast and cable television; terrestrial, satellite, and Internet radio; mobile; email; Internet; iPods; DVR’s; VOD; WOM; games; etc. If that’s scarcity, abundance might crush us.

Here’s the thing. Well, two things. First, according to Internet World, almost 69% of North American consumers now use the Internet. Second, the latest Nielsen ratings, according to IMDB.com, suggests that “Never in television history have the four major television networks drawn fewer viewers than they did last week.”

Yeah. That sounds like a winner for the long haul.

technorati tags:internet, media, research, marketing

A recent post by Robbin Steif got me thinking about how I close sales on the websites I’m responsible for in my day job. In concept, it’s simpler than most people think. In fact, I can name that particular tune in just four notes:

1. Understand who your users are before you start building. Start with who you target (but don’t ignore the ones you get naturally). If you don’t start with the user in mind, you won’t end with the result you want
2. Understand what those users want to do.
3. Get everything that interferes with what your customers are trying to do out of their way. I don’t care what the CEO wants. He only thinks he wants it. What he really wants are more sales. Seriously.
4. Only upsell once you’ve closed the first sale. Don’t confuse your customers by getting in the way while he or she is trying to do what they came for. Plenty of opportunities exist afterwards for that.

One last point about that post-sale upsell. Why don’t more e-tailers ask for a sale immediately following? For Pete’s sake, you just closed them once. The likelihood that you’ll get another sale from that same individual is much higher the chance that you’ll get a second sale from the poor soul who’s still floundering with your navigation trying to figure out how to accomplish their original goal.

In practice, number 3 seems to be where too many people I know foul up. The home page is not a place for political disputes or turf battles and your shopping cart is an even worse spot. Senior leadership needs to listen to what their e-commerce team tells them, assuming their e-commerce team follows steps 1 and 2. Otherwise, there is no reason not to ignore step 3. Frankly, a pet initiative for someone from the corner office is probably no worse than that of someone on the e-commerce team if neither are consumer-driven.

One final point. This works offline just as well as online. Check out Paco Underhill’s “Why We Buy” if you don’t think so.

technorati tags:ecommerce, business, online, website, marketing

This one was too good to pass up. This guy thinks people would rather watch commercials than not. Um. Not. All the goood commercials are available on YouTube, anyway. Why would I need them in the middle of shows I want to watch? Make shows I want to watch and maybe people fast-forwarding through commercials would be less of an issue. A colleague of mine and I just had a discussion about this yesterday, where he noted how the cost of advertising on network television has continued to go up while network TV’s viewership continues to decline. Where’s the sense in that? Smart marketers understand that the way to get attention for your product or service is:

1. Give people something worth their attention
2. Put it in the hands of people others listen to

Forcing people to jump through hoops to do what they want to do is not good. As I mentioned during the conversation with my colleague, when you start having to sue your customers because they’re trying to enjoy your product, your business model has got some serious issues (see the RIAA, et al).

Give your customers a reason to watch your programs, Mr. Shaw. Solve that problem first. Then your value proposition to advertisers might actually have some value.