I just did a guest blog post for Everything PR that talks about my sales experience at Sears and how I learned how to sell washing machines. I also go through 7 examples of companies (EverNote, Sharpie, Ginzametrics, Odwalla, Bose, and others) that do an amazing job telling customers what they want. Check out the post here.
I never saw this coming. Shazam has completely transformed the TV Advertising experience. Big brands have already started embracing it. All you need to do is whip out your phone and Shazam the tune playing during the ad and it will direct you to a mobile site where you can directly buy the product.
Tide and Old Navy have been playing ads with Shazam nationally. Here is the Old Navy ad.
The Old Navy ad is very cool. You can buy the exact outfit the person is wearing on click of the “Shop The Look” button after you Shazam the song playing in the commercial.
Shazam has done something awesome for TV ads. Increase conversions! No longer do you have to direct the viewer to a website address. What are the chances that someone will whip out their phone and actually type in the web URL? Very low… I don’t think I have ever done it. Conversions from TV Ad -> product view -> purchase is going to be on the up and up!
Another major benefit is we can now have a better understanding of how well TV Advertisements perform.
Way to go Shazam! Brilliant name, brilliant technology, and now brilliant application to TV advertising.
A question I get asked a lot is how to find good keywords that will bring new paying customers. I got inspired by SEOMoz’s 10 Steps to Great SEO and decided to do a full step by step write up on finding keywords.
Step 1: Get into the mind of the customers
If you already have an existing customer base. Go through your email interactions with them. What are they asking for when they contact you? Start creating a list of all the keywords they mention in their email.
If you don’t have an existing customer (like in most cases). Describe your product to potential new customers and have them explain it back to you. Write down all the keywords they say.
The goal here is to come up with keywords that address customer wants. When in doubt ask yourself this question: “What will they Google?”
You should have a list of at least 20 keywords. The more keywords you can come up with at this stage the better. Remember their are no bad keywords at this stage.
Example: My product is HapTap – The first toy for Instant Messaging.
Keywords: Keyboard, Toy Keyboard, Emoticon Keyboard, Fun Keyboard, Kids Keyboard, Smiley Face Keyboard, Web Chat Keyboard, Fun Computer Peripherals, Fun Peripherals, USB add-on keyboard, Geeky Toys, Nerd Toys, USB Toys, Gift for Kids, Mini Kid Keyboard, Computer Toys, Laptop Toys, Computer LapTop Toy
Step 2: Compile a list of keywords and dump it into an Excel spreadsheet with the following columns:
A. Keyword
B. Search Volume
C. Keyword Difficulty
D. Estimated Conversion Rate
E. Estimated Average Conversion Rate
F. Heat Index
I created an Excel Spreadsheet template. Click on the button below to download it.
Download Free Keyword Spreadsheet
Step 3: Look at the the keyword volume using Google Adwords Keyword Tool for each keyword. Enter in the keyword volume into your spreadsheet.
Some of your keywords will have a “-” under “Global Monthly Searches” this pretty much means no one is searching for that keyword.
Step 4: Determine difficulty by Googling that keyword and seeing who else ranks for it.
You can use SEOmoz’s tool that gives you an actual percentage of what the exact difficulty is.
Or… you can also do a poor mans version of this:
Assign 80% Value – If WikiPedia is the #1 link for that keyword – The Difficulty is Hard
Assign 60% Value – If a reputable brand (Amazon, Walmart, etc) is the #1 link for that keyword – The Difficulty is Moderate
Assign 20% Value – If a link farm or a no-namer is #1 – The Difficulty is Low
Add the keyword difficulty into your spreadsheet.
Step 5: Determine keyword value. We need to make sure the keywords you pick will actually yield paying customers. Some keywords might have a lot of traffic but will lead to 0 conversions. Other keywords might have low traffic but bring in great paying customers.
(taken from slide 37 of SEOmoz’s Presentation)
In order to determine keyword value you will need to place some Google Adwords from our keyword list and measure the conversion rate.
If you haven’t launched your product yet try building a landing page with Unbounce or Weebly and ask for email sign ups. If someone clicks on your ad and enters in their email address saying they are interested … that is a good sign that you have the right keyword.
Enter in your conversion rate and how much you made on each conversion.
Step 6: Look at your Heat Index and focus on the Hottest ones.
If you use my spreadsheet template. You will need to change the value ranges in the heat index key that pertain to you. Heat Index is calculated with this formula: (100%-keyword-difficulty)*Search-Volume*Est.-Conv.-Rate*Est.-$$-Conv.-Rate
If you haven’t had the chance to checkout SEOmoz’s Presentation. I strongly urge you to check it out. One of the greatest SEO talks I have come across.
Please let me know what you thought about my debut comic, my keyword template, or this post in the comments.
One way to get more money from your customers is to charge them on a yearly basis instead of monthly. There are 3 major benefits to charging yearly:
1. No need to ask the customer for new credit card info when their credit card expires or is declined. (This is a major issue for all SAAS businesses)
2. If the average time a customer stays with your service is under a year , then by charging up front for a full year guarantees longer customer lifespan.
3. Cash in hand is worth way more than cash later. You can actually do things if you have the cash (like acquire more customers now instead of 11 months later).
Squarespace does a great job pushing the yearly plan onto the customer.
My top 3 favorite things about this page:
1. By default the yearly option is chosen
2. It is clear that they get a discount when they pay yearly
3. Even though they are paying yearly they show the monthly prices
I have no idea why but for the past few days I have been obsessed with the number of followers I have.
It probably has to do with the fact that it is public and everyone can see it. Or maybe it has something with the fact that if someone has a ton of followers we think they are more important than others. I often find myself looking at how many followers other people have to determine if they are worthy of my follow.
Public stats has worked on me over and over again.
First it was YouTube. Since people could see how many views a particular video has, I wanted to promote the crap out of it. I also would email all my friends so I could get 1 more view. If a video is over 5 minutes long and it has less than a 1,000 views I will most likely turn it off before the 1 minute mark (unless it completely engages me).
Next it was LinkedIn. Since the number of connections was public I really wanted to hit the 500+ connections landmark. I quickly lost interest in connecting with more people after I hit the 500+ goal because you can’t publicly see how many connections someone has past 500.
Now it is Twitter. I find myself checking Twitter Counter on a daily basis to see if my # of followers has grown. Do I think it is pathetic?… yes, I do. Will I still check my twitter numbers tomorrow… yes, I will.
Conclusion: If you want your users to care. Show them stats and make it public for everyone to see.
Side Note: I wonder if I would have done better in school if my grades were displayed publicly.
Am I the only one that is like this? Do public stats make you care? Let me know in the comments please.
Meetup.com rocks at email marketing! In this blog post I’m going to show you how they make money with their emails. You should walk away from this post understanding the power of personalized location based email marketing and how it can increase user engagement.
Meetup.com User Life Cycle Comic below
First the Basics:
What is Meetup?
So lets say you wanted to get a bunch of like-minded people to talk about books, web development, parenting, etc. You can go to Meetup.com and launch a “meetup”. You can also go directly to their site and search based on your interest and zip code for a meetup in your area.
How does Meetup.com make money?
Meetup.com charges the organizers a flat monthly fee ($19/mo) to run a “meetup”?
Note: that they don’t have a free plan or trial. Instead they explain why they need to charge and a picture of their entire team. They also try to incentivize you to sign up for 6 months rather than doing a month to month plan (this probably helps them increase retention since it takes 3-6 months to get your meetup really going).
Why would anyone want to run a “meetup”?
Lots of reasons. But here are a few:
Meet like minded people, recruiting, seminars, business development, build a small community. Oh… also you can charge people to attend your meetup so this can turn into your own business.
Now the Good Stuff. How they do email marketing:
It is meetup.com’s financial incentive to make sure people attend meetups. Organizers are likely to keep their meetup going if people show up.
Step 1: Incentivize the “Organizer” to market the meetup using their existing community and location.
Meetup tells the organizer to email their contacts, post flyers up, and publish an ad on craigslist in their city. This helps meetup.com reach new users.
Step 2: Automatically assign email alerts to the user based on the meetup they joined. For example I joined a board-game meetup and it assigned a bunch of tags for me based on that meetup:
The beauty here is not only do they know I’m into board games but they know that I’m also located in San Francisco. Now, whenever a new board-game meetup is created in San Francisco I will get an email alert. 
The more things meetup learns about you the better they will be able to fill up their new meetups by alerting users.
Step 4: When a new meetup is created alert the people that are interested in it. This will help organizers fill up their meetups and keep them as a happy paid customers.
So, What’s The Point?:
comic art work by jenniart. feel free to reblog or embed this comic If you have a community driven site and need help with figuring out how to make this happen just let me know in the comments or here. I would be happy to help you out. I’m also constantly tweeting about web marketing so feel free to follow me.
Update 3/23/11: Awesome quote in the comments by Ish
“Bottom line you are playing with fire with email alerts — make sure its clear to the user whats causing the alerts to happen and give them fine-grained tools to control them.”
Whenever I see a “Donate” button. I automatically assume rich people will donate and therefore I don’t have to. That is why I like how PBS makes it very clear that I’m wrong and it is viewers LIKE ME that keep PBS running.
Creating cultural change to sell products isn’t easy. But it has been done been done before. Deodorant, cigarette’s for women, and razors have all successfully created cultural change.
Not wearing deodorant is now considered gross. Hairy arm pits or legs are now considered gross. Cigarette companies targeted women by calling cigarette’s “freedom torches”. All three of those changes were backed by companies in order to sell more products.
There are four main things that go into Cultural Change:
I believe Orabrush, an easy to use tongue scraper, is going to make cultural change happen. I predict in the next 5 years not scraping your tongue is going to be considered gross.
I learned about Orabrush yesterday because my twitter and facebook stream was filled with likes. Here is how they are making it happen:
#1 The person that invented the Orabrush is a doctor and they use “Dr. Bob” in all email communications and on their website whenever they need to establish credibility.
#2 They are getting everyone you know to tweet about it. If your friends are doing it then it is totally okay for you to get one as well. The power of social influence is a big one here. They strongly incentivize you to “follow” and “like” it. Here is a break down of how they are getting a ton of people to follow:
A. On their website they have a call to action asking if you want the Orabrush for free? Yes of course I want one for free.
I thought Groupon’s Superbowl Advertisement was awesome. It is definitely the most talked about commercial. Here is a small list of why I liked it:
#1 Everyone is talking about Groupon wether you liked the ad or not. Millions more will learn about the brand.
#2 Once people realize that Groupon is actually trying to help Tibet people won’t hate them for their provocative ad.
#3 A bunch of press will contact Groupon asking for a follow up of what they were thinking and they will be able to direct them to their charity initiative.
Here are some of my favorite opinions/comments I have read about the Groupon Ad:
“Dude, chill. More people than ever are now talking about Tibet, learning about the issues. It was edgy and funny, not everything needs to be safe and comfortable. If that’s the kind of thing you need, go watch Frasier.” – random dude on reddit
“An important thing in marketing is how someone that had never heard of your company or product (groupon), nor had any of the information above, is going to feel about the company after that ad.After this 30 second spot, they are going to think that groupon are insensitive dicks. They took the culture of people who are suffering and turned them into a joke for privileged people to be cheap and save money.
The ad is only “inside” and “ironic” to people that already understand what groupon is, how it operates and its history. That is definitely not your target audience on Superbowl Sunday, especially for $3 million dollars a pop.
Honestly, had they simply said something like $1 from each groupon sold in February will be donated to Tibet relief they would have looked like heroes, but for them, their marketing company, ad agency and focus groups to all miss that and then to blow $3 million on this epic fail which will probably cost them customers, is pretty daft.” – Cdf12345
“People get mad at Groupon for being tasteless. Groupon CEO gets invited to explain themselves to various media outlets. CEO apologizes, explains the whole donation thing, people are satisfied, and Groupon gets more free exposure than the other Superbowl commercials.” – mynewtempaccount
This informational video has everything
– Short and sweet: 2 minutes long
– Funny
– You get the idea of what the app does
– It answers all the questions you are already thinking “isn’t this like blah blah?”
– It keeps you watching
– Awesome song in the background
Check them out at birdhouseapp.com