Just a few words…
Kim Klaver’s blog on writing copy: A blind man’s new words get new results.
Their mileage may vary
A nice Squidoo piece in the New York Times yesterday gave us a chance to learn a lot about perception and demographics.
Our analytics data shows that a visitor who came via the link in the article viewed 300% as many pages as a typical first timer.
That’s a huge difference.
One explanation is that a Times reader is just different. More inquisitive, maybe, or slower on the uptake…
Another explanation, and the one that makes more sense to me, is that when you are reading the Times, it changes your posture. Makes you–anyone–more interested in poking around. That good writing can pique the curiousity and push the reader to do more.
All of which goes to make the point that where you run your online ads and where you focus your PR matters. Because different venues generate different actions, even among the same audiences.
Which is why they cancelled the Beverly Hillbillies TV show when it was still in the top 10, and why network TV might not be the very best place to run your next ad campaign.
Banging down the doors
Finally, a sunny day. Did some errands, walked around the West Village and realized what a phenomenal cue queues provide. In other words, there must be a reason for that line.
Stew Leonard’s, a mere shell of its former glory as a groundbreaking supermarket, was so crowded that it was literally impossible to push the cart. After two aisles, I actually fled the store. Not such great prices, not such amazing selection, but thousands of people in the store. And the main reason, the best I could tell, was precisely because of how crowded it was. I know that I fell for it–I needed some fish for a party and told myself the story that it would be fresher there because of Stew’s volume. The person in front of me grabbing strawberries like they were scarce certainly agreed–even though they were precisely the same price as the market down the street.
Later, watching the party people lining up for a 2 pm brunch in New York… I don’t think it was an accident that people chose the source for their eggs benedict largely on how crowded the cafe was. A few places had huge lines. Some places had none. The menus seems awfully similar… and how different could the pancakes be? Those that wanted to feel the energy of community and scarcity knew just where to find it.
Remember when kids were willing to pay $200 for a Magic card or their parents $200 for an Elmo doll? Being popular can be its own marketing tactic. And no, I don’t think it’s a Catch-22. By carefully choosing pricing and scale, any organization can manipulate, at least for a while, how "crowded" it feels.
Moxabustion
For thousands of years, practioners of acupuncture would burn mugwort on a patient’s skin, believing that the heat would penetrate and help heal the patient.
Superstition is a funny thing.
Often expensive, time-consuming and even dangerous, a superstition can stick around for a long time, even when there’s no evidence that it really works.
Everywhere I look, I see organizations practicing moxabustion. With a vengeance.
Purple Cows in Seoul
Denis Papathanasiou points out that a leading candidate in the race to be mayor of Seoul calls herself a Purple Cow. Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea.
I had no idea it might lead to this.
Trial and error
Most learning, especially most organizational learning, occurs through trial and error.
Error occurs whether you want it to or not. Error is difficult to avoid. It’s not clear that research or preparation have an enormous impact on error, especially marketing error. Error is clearly not in short supply.
Trial, on the other hand, is quite scarce, especially in some organizations. People mistakenly believe that one way to successfully avoid error is to avoid trial.
We need more trial.
The Personal MBA
Josh Kaufman, who needs a new haircut, may just be on to something: The Personal MBA. Worth a look.
Does BoingBoing matter?
Boingboing is one of the most popular blogs in the world… it’s read by more people than most magazines. Day to day, though, it’s easy to assume that most of the posts are not particularly earthshattering–particular the ones about earwax.
Enter the Squidoo boingboing contest. Heath just sent me to: Squidoo : How BoingBoing is Changing the World. This lens from Erin Banister will probably change the way you read the site, and if you’ve never read it, will probably cause you to give it a shot.
If you want to put together a totally different point of view about boingboing, enter the contest.
But don’t measure THIS
John Dodds responded to my post about measurement. So here’s some more: There’s no doubt that you should measure things that are both important and measurable. When you do, it’s inevitable that what you measure improves.
Caveat #1 is not to measure things that aren’t important, just because they’re measurable. Business lore is rife with stories about companies that started measuring something… like defects to the last sigma… only to discover that people figured out that the best way to improve the measurement was to not make anything at all. Start measuring how long your operators stay on the phone, for example, and you’ll discover plenty of operators that just hang up on long-winded callers. Measuring the right thing is essential.
But caveat #2 is even more important: the art of business and organization is in realizing that there are important things you can’t measure. These ephemeral, soft things are the ones that often differentiate one organization from another, that lead to one company winning when all the metrics appear to be the same.
True story: I have a gig coming up, one that was planned a month or two ago. I went to book the tickets. First I went to Travelocity. Then, halfway through the process, decided to go straight to American to do it. Not sure why. Finished the reservation. Went to pay. Got a popup: can’t do that because the ticket has already been booked.
Amazing.
I had forgotten I had already booked the ticket (That part isn’t amazing. that happens all the time). No, what was amazing is that six weeks ago, I had gone through the same process, picked the same airline, the same flight times… exactly the same. Because of something you can’t measure, but is important nonetheless. And smart managers know how to invest in that too.
New direct marketing tactic
Jim Logan, who I’ve never had the privilege of meeting, lives in California. Capital One just sent him a piece of junk mail, soliciting credit card sign up… with my name on it.
This could be a trend… putting the names of bloggers or authors or famous accountants on junk mail addressed to others, just to get them to open the mail.
See the picture here: Jim Logan