The Organ Grinder’s Monkey

March 2008’s Trendwatching Briefing is all about the rise of free and the gift/attention economy. In fact, their calling the phenomenon “Free Love.” (Warning: Mildly NSFW photo)

Some ideas they explore:

• The trend toward using advertising to create revenue out in a free economy, now showing up in places you wouldn’t have expected, including free airline seats, photographic prints and food/drink vending machines. That’s right, folks - free food, free flights and free photos, among other options.
• How the Freeconomy is changing the way not-free items are marketed and sold, including a revisit to the “Tryvertising” and “Trysumers” trends.
• The rise of FREE C2C, or the production of consumer created content for the enjoyment of other consumers.
• Swapping, recycling and other no-money transactions, from as low-end as finding a new home for those old National Geographic magazines to the high-end of house and car swapping.

Tags: Trends by Soni Pitts
No Comments »

Sean D’Souza has a great article out on why creating taglines tends to drive business owners nuts, and how to do it right. Why Creating Taglines Drive You Crazy covers two angles - problems caused by myths and misinformation about the how and why of creating taglines, and a process for doing it right (without pulling your hair out in the process).

Great article, and perfect timing for me (I’m working on some taglines for a client at the moment). Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do…

Tags: Copywriting by Soni Pitts
No Comments »

Wired’s lastest issue is all about “free”, specifically, FREE, the book by editor Chris Anderson (coming out in 2009) that is bound to get more than a few economists’ knickers in a twist.

I highly recommend that anyone who plans on doing business in the next decade or so go read the article, paying special attention to the scenarios (in gray boxes) and other supplementary resources they’ve decorated the article with (including the video - it’s just a few minutes long and worth the click.)

In the video, Chris Anderson notes:

“The difference between one penny and free is the difference between having to make a conscious decision to purchase a product and to just do it.”

And while that seems to be a subtle difference, when you actually think about it it’s actually quite a significant gap. Crossing that gap requires a decision. And anytime your customer has to make a decision, the answer could always be “no.” Take that decision away, and the answer is almost always “yes.” Now, if the cost of production, distribution and materials is essentially nil, why risk “no” when you could virtually guarantee “yes” by eating that almost non-existent cost?¹

A few quotes from the article:

From the consumer’s perspective, though, there is a huge difference between cheap and free. Give a product away and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business, one of clawing and scratching for every customer. The psychology of “free” is powerful indeed, as any marketer will tell you.

[snip]

Surely economics has something to say about that?

It does. The word is externalities, a concept that holds that money is not the only scarcity in the world. Chief among the others are your time and respect, two factors that we’ve always known about but have only recently been able to measure properly. The “attention economy” and “reputation economy” are too fuzzy to merit an academic department, but there’s something real at the heart of both. Thanks to Google, we now have a handy way to convert from reputation (PageRank) to attention (traffic) to money (ads). Anything you can consistently convert to cash is a form of currency itself, and Google plays the role of central banker for these new economies.

There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities — and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for the sake of a business model to be identified later. Free shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.

In short, it’s very possible that free will be the basis of trade and commerce for the foreseeable future. And yet, as Anderson points out, all of the biggest vendors of free services - Yahoo, Google, etc - are filthy rich and increasingly raking it in hand over fist. So yes, it’s possible to get rich on free.

But you have to embrace it, rather than fearing and avoiding it, or trying to take it on in baby steps. The first response will simply keep you in the realm of the buying decision (i.e. trying to work around “no”). The second will simply ensure you’re left slugging it out for customers and memespace as those who embrace free wholeheartedly get all the buzz (and all the crowd momentum).

1. In most cases, it’s greed, ego, habit and confusion, in that order. Greed operates at the “Even a penny is better than nothing” level, which is patently untrue anymore. Also, any time you hear any argument against free that includes the term “stakeholder value,” you’re probably looking at greed and, not insignificantly, the primary stakeholder the speaker probably has in mind. Ego is concerned with the “appearance” of giving things away equated with lack of quality, and the “I don’t have to give it away, because I’m so good” argument…again, neither are relevant here. Habit is just that - business as usual making it hard to envision business as it’s becoming and hard to get out of the rut of the way it’s always been done. And confusion is simply a matter of doing what you’ve always done, because it’s easier than figuring out how to make the new ways work. [↩]

Tags: Business, Changing the World, Conversation Economy, Society and Culture by Soni Pitts
No Comments »

Re: my previous posts on marketers who view business as war, I recently got an email from Eeyore, the subject of which explains that he can teach me “how to DESTROY newbies in any industry.” [emphasis his]

Gee, thanks. I’ve always wanted to be a part of the Massacre of the Innocents, and now’s my chance.

Stupid newbies.

Tags: Bad Monkey! Business and Marketing Craptacularity by Soni Pitts
No Comments »

Ah, the plaintive cry of the spam-hounded netizen (that quote was nabbed from a comments thread about bulletin board spambots). No doubt you, yourself, have bitched or moaned something similar in response to a particularly annoying or persistent ad. Remember that feeling? Great, now turn it around…

What does that frame of mind mean for you, as a business owner?

Simply this:

1. Make it dead easy to find you.
2. Don’t give me any reasons to click away when I do find you.*
3. Make it easy to complete the transaction that I want to complete, and make it worthwhile and fun for me to do so.
4. Stay in touch whenever it’s in my benefit for you to do so, not yours.
5. Leave me alone when none of the above are happening.

I see some of you out there nodding your heads. Now contrast those rules with the rules for Business As Usual:

1. Get in their face as often as you can, wherever you can, however you can, and as loudly as you can.
2. Do things your way, regardless of what the rabble wants. What do they know, anyway? (Or, alternately, “Who’s the professional here?” God, I just can’t get enough of that…)
3. Proprietary code that only functions on one specific browser and build, unnavigable Flash, impenetrable navigation schemes, unfindable goods, pop-ups, unholy web design, redirects, etc…it’s all good. So what if it makes things a little harder to use? We paid good money for that website/software/technology. If they want it bad enough, they’ll slog through it. And make sure they only buy what we want them to buy, in the packages we want them to buy it and under whatever conditions we happen to set. While you’re at it, make sure you don’t give away any more than you have to for the money. Man, I’m telling you…if you don’t keep an eye on them, those customers will rip you off to the bone!
4. Keep hounding them until they buy something. Then take note who bought and really turn up the burner underneath those “valued customers.” 7 touches is just the start!
5. GOTO 1
   DO NOT END

If you recognize yourself or your business strategy in any of these last 5 rules, you have some work to do. Time to get busy…

*Note that on number 2 of the first list, I DID NOT say “Give me a reason to click through or to stay once I find you.” These days, you start with “NO” and earn “YES,” not the other way around. Remember that.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Business, Conversation Economy, Internet Marketing, Society and Culture by Soni Pitts
No Comments »

That’s a quote from Rabbi Pinny Gniwisch, speaking on a podcast with Hugh McLeod about marketing and “Influencers.” They discuss a lot more, and the conversation goes in some very interesting areas, so you might want to give it a listen.

But the primary reason I stopped by to blog was to lay out some righteous honesty for you, from a marketer who hates to hype:

The reality is, you can have the best copy, the coolest widget, the best demographic targeting, the shiniest website and the most bitchin’ marketing plan this side of Eden’s apple and your product launch can still completely and utterly fail. As in no sales, no interest and no money. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Why?

Luck. Happenstance. Random acts of wtf.

Maybe you just happened to launch at the same time as someone else did and they got all the juice. They don’t even have to be superior to win, just first. Or loudest. Or luckiest. (Remember the Betamax/VHS tech race, now being replayed between HD-DVD/Blue-Ray tech.)

Maybe your launch got overshadowed and out-shouted by world events, local news or just the latest, greatest Internet meme hitting the feeds at the same time.

Maybe, despite all your careful research, quality control and expensive design, no one gets it. Or wants to. Why? Don’t ask me. You’d think that in this day and age, those teeny-tiny gas-sipping mini-cars that the British are so fond of would be all the rage over here in the States. But they’re not. Why? Many reasons, few of which have anything to do with the quality, utility or value of the vehicles. Mostly it’s just cultural machismo bullshit.

Maybe a partner firm or even an unrelated company, in the same business or a completely different one is going down in flames, and for some reason people are associating you and your products with them and the nasty taste in their mouths that the company left behind. This happens completely at random as often as it makes any sense. Several specific toys made in China are discovered to be contaminated with lead. Your toys are made in Japan, or Poland. Now no one will touch them with a ten-foot pole. Why? Mass hysteria bleed-over, that’s why. Foreign toys = death on a stick, no matter what the facts really are.

Mostly, though, success is just a matter of nearly pure luck, thinly plated with a veneer of wisdom, experience, skill and confidence.

And that’s something that marketers don’t always want to admit - the reality that with all of our fancy tricks, our secret handshakes, our specialized knowledge, our dark and eldrich incantations and so on, the best we can do is give you a reasonable chance of taking advantage of whatever luck comes your way.

We can’t guarantee results. We can’t say you’ll make more sales. We can’t promise you the world. We’d love to, trust me, we would. But we can’t. Or at least the honest one’s can’t. Because your luck (or mine) can change on a dime and give you back 8 cents change. And the best copywriting, marketing or advertising can’t do a damned thing about it.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Business, Copywriting, Ethics and Business, Society and Culture by Soni Pitts
2 Comments »

Patrick Coffey has an insightful - and statistically supported - take on why making the front page of a major aggregator site like Digg, Stumble Upon or Reddit doesn’t do you any good.

His key message? A small amount of highly targeted or qualified visitors will out-convert a tidal wave of random visitors every time.

Through some trial and error, Alexis was able to help our natural health e-letter site get a boatload of traffic from Stumbleupon. In fact, in the last month, one page generated over 28,000 new visitors.

When I heard this, I thought it was great news. You see, when we get traffic from outside sources, we can generally convert at least 10 percent of it into e-mail sign-ups.

So how many of these 28,000 social media visitors do you think signed up for our natural health e-letter?

500? 1,000? 1,500? 2,800?

No! Try 80. That’s a conversion rate of just over 0.2 percent.

In the article, he notes that the reason for this is that social media visitors are notoriously hard to convert. They tend to be very ad and marketing savvy (and resistant), they rarely sign up for stuff like newsletters and they don’t tend to stay around on a site for very long (stickiness is vital to making sales). He also notes that the added expense of the bandwidth use and server strain also detracts from any value this sort of traffic brings

Being someone that surfs the social media sites for news and other interesting tidbits, I have to agree with his conclusions. I rarely stay on any site I click through - usually just long enough to skim it for relevant news. I almost never sign up for anything on the sites (who needs more inbox filler?), nor do I buy stuff. I’m news and giggles hunting, not shopping.

Of course, your mileage may vary. Increasing your traffic can help sell advertising and increase awareness of your existence. Plus, sites that get Dugg or Stumbled stand a better chance of attracting the attention of top-level media sites, highly-rated blogs or other websites that can provide qualified visitors. And if your product or service truly does fit the needs of all those Diggers, you might have better luck with the sales. So it’s not all bad news.

The key here is that social media sites are a great tool for getting traffic, but getting traffic is meaningless unless that traffic converts once it’s on your site. If they don’t, then no matter how many hits you get you’re no better off than a storekeeper on the Pamplona bull run. There’s a lot of people running by, but none of them are going to stop and shop.

This doesn’t mean you should ignore these sites. Nor does it mean that hitting the front page is pointless. Just keep in mind that for the most part, it unlikely to bring you much of anything other than a temporary spike in transient traffic. To increase sales, you need to increase your exposure to specific, qualified people. Everyone else is just passing through.

Tags: Conversation Economy, Internet Marketing, Social Media by Soni Pitts
No Comments »

Subtitled: If You Don’t Get That Flyer Out of My Face, I’m Going to Strangle You With Your Own Spam Thread

[This is crossposted from a response I wrote on an a Google group in reaction to a bit of spam trying to sell a video full of “Google Smashing” techniques to get you to #1 on Google overnight, or some such crap.]

Here’s my question:

There are all kinds of tricks, tips and tools for getting your website, your ebook, your telecourse or your blog into the top spot at Google. And some of them even work, no question about it.

But (and that rustling sound you hear is me dusting off and donning my coaching hat), let’s reframe this issue for just a second and ask:

Does your content actually DESERVE to be #1?

Is it, really, the most relevant information on the topic a person could find if they went searching for those keywords and phrases? Is your product, site or blog really what they’re hoping to find?

Or, by putting yourself at #1, are you simply acting like one of those annoying campaigners standing outside of the voting hall that won’t let you through their ranks to vote for who you have already decided to vote for without listening to their spiel first and, probably, taking a piece of brightly colored and expensively printed landfill with you?

Are you helping, really, or are you simply getting in the way?

Google and other search engine rankings are supposed to be an indicator of relevance, not your 133t algorithm-hacking skillzzzoorzz. If you can’t get to the number one spot, or at least on the front page, simply by being the most relevant, the most interesting and the most current information, product or service specific to that keyword or search term, then really…you *shouldn’t* be there. (Yes, I’m simplifying a lot. The principle remains the same.)

What is it about being in business that changes us, the minute we get behind our desks, from thinking, caring and empathetic members of the human community into single-minded, blindered profit-makers with bottom-line eyes and a “sell-sell-sell” one-track mind? (Of course, I’m sure that none of you guys are like that. It’s all those other people. I’m using the generalized “royal we” here. Humor me for a minute.)

We stop thinking about how we would like to be treated, and start thinking about what we can do to make the next sale, regardless of how we respond to those exact same tactics when we’re back to our normal “just folks” selves (where most likely we’d spot it for the commercial pitch it is and either ignore it at best or be annoyed with it to the point of fissile combustion at worst).

We stop acting like people who like and are trying to help other people, and start acting like hunters on the prowl, loading up with the latest and greatest take-down weaponry, deceptive camouflage and covert maneuvers we can get our grease-painted, doe-scented fingers on.

In short, we quit being people and start being businesses.

“But the whole point of being in business is to make money…isn’t it?” I hear from the peanut gallery.

Look, I’ve got no beef with anyone making any amount of money, provided they do it legitimately and ethically. Go on, get rich. Roll around naked in a pile of shiny gold coins if it makes you happy (although…ouch). I couldn’t care less.

That’s not my point.

What I’m saying is…hell, you’ve been out there. You’ve been on the net looking for something you needed. You’ve bought stuff from people. You shop.

The times, they are a changing. People these days not only don’t want to be sold (they never did want that), but they’re savvier, smarter and have more recourse to avoid you if you try to sell them stuff.

Business is beginning to be viewed (at least by the customers, which includes you some of the time) as less of a commercial activity separate from and outside the sphere of the rest of human interaction and more of a stewardship of valuable goods from there to here. We the people expect to be able to find what we’re looking for and have it delivered to us with concerned attention to our needs, without having to wade through sidewalk squatters on the way in, or a gauntlet of ads, emails, harangues and other annoyances on the way out. And if we can’t get that, we’ll change laws, we’ll change technology and we’ll change the nature of commerce itself until we can.

Be an ass, and don’t be surprised if your assholery gets blogged, Tubed, Boinged, Dugg and Redd for all the world to see. And act on.

But some people in business just don’t get it. They see anyone who’s buying anything from anyone other than them (or even just looking) as someone who has just proven they have cash in their wallet, regardless of the fact that said wallet-bearing primate has demonstrated NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER IN THEIR CONTENT, PRODUCT OR SERVICE.

Trying to buy something online during this time of transition is a lot like trying to buy something in a big, open-air market in a third-world country. You spend the entire shopping trip fending off repeated, endless offers of guides and personal shoppers, ambulatory sellers trying to interest you in their wares and people whose uncle is selling the very thing you’re looking for, if you’ll just come this way, sirrah (even when they haven’t a clue as to what you’re interested in).

And God save you if you actually buy anything, because suddenly you’re the picnic at the ant Olympics. You’re immediately swarmed by a thronging mass of these same “helpers,” plus a veritable river of beggars and pickpockets that appears to pour forth from the very walls of the market itself. If you can make it back to your hotel room with all of your limbs, possessions and coins intact, you count yourself very, very lucky.

By participating in “Google smashing” techniques, by engaging in marketing and advertising strategies that would annoy or inflame you if you had to deal with them, by spending more time tweaking your SEO than your content, and by positioning yourself in front of what someone really wants in the hopes of catching some of that traffic (or, likewise, thronging around them on the way out of the store after they’ve bought), you just become part of that crowd of beggars and commercial mercenaries. You’ve become the problem, instead of the solution.

But don’t these tactics make money? Uh, yeah, they do. Quite a bit, actually. I won’t deny it. But they do so at the expense of our humanity, by turning other people into prey and turning us into people who see other people as prey.

And that, as far as I’m concerned, is not who I ever want to be. Not for any amount of shiny gold coins.

Just something to consider, the next time you see an ad for something that promises to get you to the top of Google, or the next time you’re considering just how intensively you want to market your next product or service offering.

I’ve got no beef with good business practices. And I think people who actually have something of value are ethically and morally required to do their best to get it into the hands of those who can benefit from it. But this isn’t that. And if you can’t tell the difference between the two, or if the glare from those shiny coins tends to blind you to such subtleties, then IMHO you really have no business being in business in the first place.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Bad Monkey! Business and Marketing Craptacularity, Business, Ethics and Business, Internet Marketing, Society and Culture, Success by Soni Pitts
4 Comments »

It’s about trees. And Texas. I think.

(Hint: Check out the page title in your browser’s page title bar. And yes, that last sentence was written that way intentionally.)

Look folks, there’s a point at which a keyword-stuffed article ceases to be an article in any sense but a purely theoretical one and becomes merely a handy carrying case for keywords. At that point, what’s the point, really? You’re not providing any value (there’s nothing in this article I couldn’t find clearer and better info on in 5 seconds with Google), and it’s written bad enough that no one’s going to read it. So what’s the point?

This? Not as bad as some I’ve seen (and perhaps even a few that I’ve written, although in my defense they were cobbled together to the client’s spec).

But dude. That page title? That just hurts.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Bad Monkey! Business and Marketing Craptacularity, Copywriting by Soni Pitts
No Comments »

Speaking of advertising, if you’re up for a bit of crude humor, consider dropping by Cracked.com’s If Banner Ads Were Forced To Be Truthful contest.

Some caveats:

1. This is Cracked, folks. There will be adult humor, images and language. Just so you know.

2. These folks are pulling no punches. If you’ve ever clicked on any of these ads in their original incarnation, visiting this site will probably hurt. A lot.

3. Yes, the one’s that say they contain nudity really do. And they’re damned funny, too. So if you’re capable of catching a glimpse into the life of a sexually active adult, it’s probably worth it. If nekkidness bothers you, move along…

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Random Silliness by Soni Pitts
No Comments »