Unfortunately, we are stuck in the "if they come they will buy" philosophy of online marketing. It's every bit as valid as "if you build it they will come," which means it's not valid at all.

Search Insider's Tameka Kee summarized a MarketingSherpa study that tells us that 40% of you marketers aren't paying attention to conversion rate and ROI in your Search Campaigns.

While such statistics makes a Conversion Scientist bow his head and shake it slowly, this is where the opportunity lies. When those 40% see declining traffic and leads, they will have little choice but to start offering their visitors what they are looking for to engage them and convert them. Which means they need to know what their visitors are looking for.

Let me introduce you to your visitors.

Two Search Metrics You Should Pay Attention To
MarketingSherpa

"With prices rising steadily, marketers who evaluate search against tangible KPIs will be the ones who will optimize and balance their spending," the report said. - Read the whole story...

Don't forget to come to the SEM for SMB conference. I'll be the one talking about conversion. Apparently, 40% of the chairs will be empty. Use the code science08 to save a ton on the show.

I love small  business because they are so very aware of what's important to their business, and usually act accordingly. When a small or medium-sized business understands how things work, they put them to work in their business.

Unfortunately, search engine marketing (SEM) is an allusive set of practices for many businesses. This is doubly unfortunate because search can be such an equalizer against larger competition.

Now, there's the SEM for SMB conference. Competition beware.

A Workshop

I've chosen to present a workshop at SEMforSMB rather than do a presentation. In my workshop, I'll focusing on the strategies a business must implement to turn Web traffic into leads and sales. We'll help a room full of business owners and marketing managers put their business in a category and then discuss the strategies that Web sites in that category should implement well.

I hope you'll be able to attend. To sweeten the deal, I've got a discount code -- good until July 1 -- that will save you $50.

$50 Discount Code (until July 1) science08

Workshop Date: Thursday, July 17, 1:30 to 3:30

We're in Good Company

I've had the happy honor of working with many of the speakers at the event including Volacci, Spoonbend, Social Web Strategies, and Apogee Search. I think you'll find them enlightening and very helpful.

Please come!

For most marketing departments, conversion is a metric. For this company it is a discipline worthy of a director level position. In creating the Director of Conversion position they are saying:

• We want to fully leverage the qualified traffic we are getting to our Web properties
• We want to get the most from our advertising spends
• We want to provide our visitors with the information and experience they are looking for
• We want to kick our competitors' asses

Does your business need a Director of Conversion? The company was kind enough to provide us with the text of the job description that they used to find their Director of Conversion. I will say that it was a long search, but the conversion team is dealing in terms of orders of magnitude improvements in conversion and new clients.

Imagine what this team will know about their market in a year.

Following is the full job description, and I think they nailed it.

Job Description

Position: Director of Website Conversion

Reports to: Chief Marketing Officer

Supervisory Responsibility: Site Conversion team

Job Description:

As the owner of the presentation layer of our websites, you and your team are responsible for optimizing our conversion from site traffic to lead inquiry and student production across all web sites, micro sites, and landing pages in the company. Project management, web site usability, testing methodologies (A/B and multi-variant), and managerial skills are required as you will be expected to generate, execute and analyze the results of a testing plan for each website in our rapidly growing portfolio of university partnerships. In this highly visible role, you’ll partner with business unit leaders and other core process owners to positively impact the lives of thousands of people each year and improve ROI for our partner schools and fellow employees.

Ideal candidates will have a combination of extensive HTML experience, solid project management ability and past responsibility for managing a team.  This person should have an understanding of the general concepts related to content management systems, search engine optimization, web analytics and user experience design.  A strong set of communication skills is also essential, as the Director of Website Conversion will work closely with many departments company wide. 

A. Daily Duties:

1. Responsible for hands-on development of the front-end presentation for all company student facing program web sites
2. Stay informed of continuing developments in the industry and apply best practices.
3. Recruit, select, train, performance manage, and develop staff
4. Continually improve ROI for dollars invested through this phase of the value chain company wide.
5. Lead and manage a team engaged in implementing tests, building new and maintaining existing web sites at the sales and marketing level (presentation layer).
6. Develop systems to ensure quality and optimize for high volume throughput
7. Collaborate with business unit, infrastructure groups and other core process leaders to plan tests for marketing message, new sales tools and lead generation features, promotional offers, impact of graphical elements like, colors, logo’s, layout, etc.
8. Ensure exceptional quality and usability of all web sites, while optimizing performance and scalability

B. Weekly Duties:

1. Design multi-variant tests to achieve maximum insight in the shortest time possible
2. Develop measure and publish key metrics for site conversion per web site and roll up company-wide
3. Serve as functional process owner on Operations team
4. Publish key learning’s for the benefit of other stakeholders and roll global enhancements across all sites
5. Work in partnership with the IT team to define optimal technology solutions and processes for constructing web applications
6. Work in partnership with various business owners from sales, marketing and product management to ensure the successful launch of short and long term initiatives

C. Monthly Duties:

1. Formally record test variations and results for later reference
2. Manage departmental costs to meet or spend less than budget
3. Apply knowledge gained in accumulating test results into new web sites created
4. Develop and maintain testing plans for each web site and landing page
5. Determine length of test to reach statistical significance for data set
6. Formally present summarized test results to operating team.

D. Annual Duties:

1. Review and refresh team training materials
2. Develop and maintain job descriptions and conduct annual performance reviews
3. Participate as department head in the budgeting process
4. Provide strategic input toward the future evolution of the department and function as the company grows.
5. Develop standards and document best practices as it relates to the web sites development
6. Conduct research into current and emerging Web technologies and issues in support of on-line initiatives; identify influencing industry developments and trends; present recommendations to management in clear and concise manner

Qualifications:

1. Bachelor’s degree in related field or an equivalent combination of skills, training and hands-on experience
2. At least 2-5 years experience designing high-impact web sites using emerging technologies, including management responsibility in an on-line technology environment
3. Familiarity with web site analytics/web site statistics software, such as Google Analytics, Web Trends, etc.
4. At least 2 years experience selecting, managing, and growing teams of at least 3-6 staff members
5. Ability to manage, motivate and teach a team of front end web designers to successfully deliver multiple, concurrent projects with quality
6. Strong organizational skills and attention to detail required
7. Proficient with Microsoft Office
8. Strong analytical and problem solving skills. Ability to work at management level, but willingness and acumen to provide hands-on support when necessary.
9. Experience with testing methodologies as used in marketing practice
10. Project management experience with formal training preferred
11. Expert knowledge of web-based presentation layer technologies, including HTML, CSS, XHTML; solid understanding of content management systems; experience with AJAX and Javascript a plus
12. Knowledge of search engine optimization techniques and experience leveraging web analytics tools to gain insight into user behavior
13. Knowledge of the principles of user-centered design;  experience facilitating usability testing

I don't think I would have changed a thing about this job description. Thanks to Jeff Hoogendam for his contribution.

I believe that a site that gets a few things right will outperform the business that tries everything. That is, if you know what's most important to your particular site, you can generate more leads and business.

I've teamed up with Jon Lebkowsky of Social Web Strategies to develop a workshop that will help marketers and business owners figure out what kind of Web site they need for their business and then which three strategies they need to get right.

If I'm creating a social site, I've got to nail the "invite your friends" functionality.

If I'm creating a consumer e-commerce site, my product pages have to be right.

If I'm selling to businesses and have a long sales cycle, then my email nurturing campaigns are critical.

I think we can isolate three strategies for any site that will make or break the Web marketing effort.

Join us on May 28 in Austin, Texas for the Web Strategies Workshop.

Photo courtesy epidemya

It's been a week since we launched the BookLobby application in Facebook. We've already got two completed booklobbies; one by me and one by my developer.

This situation was expected. I'm really just getting up to speed on social marketing. Most of the time I've budgeted toward BookLobby has been spent wrangling friends and acquaintances into doing something as a favor. We'll see where that goes.

I have excuses too for why nobody has come. Here's my current list:

1. It takes commitment to do a Booklobby. Be patient.
2. We aren't in the Application search list yet. I'm not yet sure why this is.
3. We haven't given visitors a way to share the application. We didn't want to trick people into sharing like so many spam applications, but we should have provided SOME way to share.
4. We don't explain enough about what you should do on the pages we present
5. Our marketing guy is weak (gulp)

I find myself trapped in a little Catch 22: I don't want to invite some A players until we have content, but it looks like we won't have content until I invite some A players.

Right now, I'm favoring patience and wrangling up some content from my personal network.

What would you do?

• Buy some installs from Slide or Rock You?
• Start courting political bloggers?
• Send out press releases?

Plus, I had an idea that needed to be implemented. I'm actually very proud of it.

I want to start by talk about what I'm learning, not what the application does. Bear with me (or scroll down) to learn what the application is about.

My Un-Facebook Application

Those who have implemented successful Facebook applications will tell me that I've already committed a couple of enormous errors that will doom the application to failure.

First, I'm not interested in understanding an advertising business model, so we aren't looking for advertisers nor are we displaying any advertising. We expect the application to be self-funded based on affiliate fees.

Second, I want the content to be the reason people tell others, not that they forgot to click "Skip" when asked to invite all of their friends. So, we aren't going to ask you to share with your friends. We want you to share it with all of your friends, so we better have some damn good content.

Yes, we may be doomed.

But comments by Zuckerberg at the SXSW conference and sources like Allfacebook are hinting that this strategy may actually work in our favor. We keep the SPAM down.

Other than that, we're a mashup application that relies on the contributions of users to create the content and spread the word.

Selling My Facebook Application

I have to admit that, despite all of my supposed marketing genius, I find it difficult to know how to coordinate my marketing approach. There are many ways to spread the word.

What would you do?

The Application

OK, so here's the skinny on the application.

It's called BookLobby. Please install it now and give it a whirl.

BookLobby makes it easy for you to send a book of your choosing to an elected official or politician of your choosing complete with your commentary. Will the politician read it? Well, his staff might. They're more likely to read it than any form email you send.

What's more important is what Facebook brings to the picture. Your commentary becomes part of the public conversation fueled by the social machinery of a major social network. It's power politics from the ground up, and I'm very excited.

You can read more about the booklobbies over at the BookLobby Blog. I'll try to limit my commentary on Customer Chaos to what I'm learning about marketing a Facebook application.

The first product advertised is "Make My Logo Bigger Cream." Spray it on any Web site or ad and your Logo becomes the major visible feature -- instantly!

On the Web, business managers apply this same concept to copy. The result is Web sites that talk about the company and its solutions with no recognition for the PROBLEMS that their visitors are trying to solve.

This satires a battle that both designers and Conversion Scientists fight often. But, then the video goes to far.

In space, no one can hear you persuade.

The next product "advertised" is  "Whitespace Eliminator". Here's where action-oriented Conversion Scientists diverge from emotion-oriented designers. To the Conversion Scientist, whitespace is only helpful if it helps to guide the eye along a page to relevant information. To the designer it might be used to communicate openness, freedom, simplicity or any other host of emotions. On the Web, it's the expansive page headers that push the messages down "below the fold" that will jack your bounce rate through the roof. Often, people just want to see what you have to say and have no interest in openness, freedom, or simplicity.

Give them what they want.

The video even gives us a great example of what Agency Fusion (the video's copyright holder) might recommend, complete with what the Eisenbergs call "Wee-Wee" copy:

Take a Load Off.
"Dotbiznet develops and licenses Internet based products which help make personal computers easier to use and maintain by large and small business users and individual consumers."

Using so much space to say so little is anathema to our work as Conversion Scientists. All that space basically says "Dotbiznet does something with PCs and we do it in a field." Huh? I'm sure the folks at Agency Fusion are actually poking fun at themselves with this... aren't they?

So, I think the Whitespace Eliminator is actually a helpful product here.

Emphasize the relevant information.

The video then moves on to the next product featured in this video series: "Starburst Dust"

Don't look up. Tell me the cost of these offers from the ad at the top of this post. You probably new because of the Starburst with $29.99 in it, right? (Please comment below to confirm). Drawing your readers' eyes to relevant information, like price is what good conversion design does. Now, I've never recommended a Starburst, but I do recommend colored boxes that stand out AND placement near the top of the page.

So, here again, I think I have to disagree with the designers' sarcasm.

Use color to serve your visitors, not your ego.

Next up is the Fluoresce Sizer spray. Just spray it on and your Web site becomes a rainbow of fluorescent colors. This is extreme, but designers can get a little inflexible with their color palette. Conversion Scientists want certain things to stand out. Good designers are our best resource for using color to our advantage.

But, bad designers also do things like make link text almost the same color as the rest of the text (until you mouse over it). Not helpful to the reader or the business manager. Blue underlined links may not match the palette, but everyone knows what they mean. So change the palette.

Finally -- and all for just $29.99 -- there's Emotionator. By rubbing Emotionator creme on your marketing or inserting the "patented" Emotionator USB device into your computer, you can add heart-rending images to your marketing, such as American flags, puppies and baby seals. There are plenty of designers who will laugh at this bit of satire, and then turn around and put stock images of starched business people on a business Web site.

Images are powerful. Choose them well based on your conversion profiles. Remember this: a picture is NOT worth a thousand words. Words create more powerful images than pixels.

Treat your designers well.

So, I've spent far to much time taking a satirical video seriously. I've been tough on designers before, so I better fess up: I'm not in any way equipped, trained or talented enough to do what decent designers do. I've tried. Just look at my blog. If a designer does their homework, they should nail it. If they don't do their homework, they should copy their Conversion Scientist's homework.

The REAL gem of the video is THE LOOK. As a Conversion Scientist, you will see this look from your designers. You can even "see" this look over the phone. I don't need to explain it, but be prepared.

Make My Logo Bigger Cream

Xobni is free. They're offering a private beta that is free, if you can get in.

Those of us who want to get an early taste of the service are paying for admittance. We're paying with our connections, with our links, and with our opinion.

I hope Xobni the application is as smart.

At this point, I'm not a Xobni fan. I've never used it. But I did request to get into their private beta. That was almost two months ago. I've done this with dozens of services.

When I got an email from them recently, I'd already forgotten what they do. But, they said I could get in early and with a click they would tell me how.

The Life's Blood of Web 2.0

What does any Web 2.0 company need to survive and thrive?

Not money. At least not much.

Not a high-powered sales team.

They need more people to try the site, people who will help them make it better. So, Xobni offered three ways to get into their early beta.

You should copy these down.

1. Invite friends (at least 4)
2. Qualify yourself as a desirable beta tester
3. Put their badge on your blog and generate two signups.

So, they've turned what could be a dark period with no press into a social free-for-all. This is more powerful than any $9.95 monthly subscription fee -- at least at this point in their life.

Smart.

What are you charging for your free services?

P.S.: Here's the badge. Now go join so I can get in early.

In this case study from H20+, Sherpa give us seven steps for creating and using Personas. I wanted to weigh in.

1. Start with what you know

The beauty of personas is that, by developing them, you are really just organizing what you already know about your customers and Web visitors.

2. Talk to people who interact with your customers

The case study calls out customer service reps, sales people and technical support reps as sources for knowledge that can be shaped into personas. Smaller companies will want to include founders, product managers and marketing managers.

3. Dig into your data

This is pretty intuitive, but don't let a lack of data keep you from developing a set of personas. It is better to market to a specific "wrong" visitor than it is to market to nobody.

4. Identify the holes

Often times, we don't know some of the key reasons that people take action. What information are you not considering?

5. Fill in the blanks

Surveys, focus groups and such are really only effective when you're trying to answer specific questions. You already know what you know. Use these tools to find out what you don't know.

6. Name your personas

I'd go a step further and say give them names that will invoke their personality and role. Some of the persona names I've developed include Naive Nick, Penny Planner, Larry Leftbrain, and Victor Visionary. I also attach a picture of them to each profile.

7. Refine Personas

When developing personas for Web marketing, I recommend updating personas with each analytics review -- typically once per month. The changes may not be significant, but if you realize you're missing a segment of your visitors, you can add new personas immediately. This is better than waiting a year.

I'll also add the following suggestion provided by Lynn Pausic from Expero, Inc. in her presentation to the Bootstrap Network in January:

8. Put your personas up on a Wiki

All too often the personas are shoved into a drawer or buried on someone's hard drive. Put them on a wiki where they can be easily accessed and updated by the entire staff.

Needless to say, you should be subscribe to MarketingSherpa's free best-of newsletter.

MarketingSherpa: How to Use Personas to Lift Revenue 500% in 7 Easy-to-Follow Steps

Tonight, March 18, I'll be presenting at a meeting of the Bootstrap Network at 6:30pm. The meeting will be held at Cafe Caffeine (click for map).

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I'll be presenting at the Successful Networking Association on Wednesday, March 26 over lunch. This meeting will be held at Peony Asian Cuisine starting at 11:30.

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I hope you can make it.

Watch my blog for slides.

"Yes. Absolutely," he said with some aplomb, yet his head shook back and forth tightly as he spoke the words. Immediately, I felt a twinge of concern that I hadn't been heard or understood. I wanted him to get my point. I felt strongly about it. His mouth spoke the words I wanted to hear. His head signaled something different.

Either he wasn't listening or he was thinking something more than his words communicated. Maybe he was tired of listening to me. In the parlance of Tom Wanek, this was counter-signaling. I recently saw Tom's presentation at the Wizard Academy on Signaling Theory. He gave me permission to summarize it here.

Signaling: Aligning actions with words to gain credibility and trust in your marketing.

UPDATE: Tom Wanek is teaching the workshop Fight the Big Boys and Win at the Wizard Academy near Austin, Texas May 13-14. Free meals and lodging for first 12 students.

The Costs of Signaling

There is a cost to making action and communication match. In the case of my friend, he could have paid with better attention, or with honesty about his doubts. Tom would have called the first a "Time and Energy" cost; the latter an "Opportunity Cost" in that he may have insulted me and lost all opportunity with me.

The key to credibility is the cost of aligning word and action. If you pay the cost, you can gain the credibility.

Tom identified six Signaling Costs in his presentation.

Material Wealth (or your businesses' resources)

To build credibility, don't make claims that the business hasn't made real.

If you're going to offer a warranty as proof of your quality, you're going to have to give some money back. That's a material cost

If you're going to taut your great customer service, you're going to have to hire excellent people to service your customers. That's a real investment of salary dollars.

If you're going to claim industry-leading technology (please never use this terminology) you've got to invest in technology that offers more than your competitors. That's a real capital expenditure.

Time and Energy

Where does the business you're marketing for focus its energy? At Conversion Sciences, I would get more leads if I led with my SEO or SEM resources. It's what people are looking for today. But I spend 75% of my time on Conversion Analysis. Hence, I focus my brand and messaging on conversion. For example, my title is "Conversion Specialist." Better than "Online Marketing Specialist," this signals where I invest my time.

By this time next year, everyone will know what "conversion" means.

Opportunity

What opportunities are you willing to pass by so that you can signal clearly?

This is the cost that marketing to personas illuminates. In the process of focusing your marketing message on a few visitor personas, you must stop messaging to some segment of your visitorship. That's the opportunity cost.

Tom uses the example of  Toyota's Scion brand, which is targeted and signals to buyers 18 to 24 with non-conformist tendencies. It was a success and they could have significantly expanded the market to older, more conformist buyers. But they felt they would have lost their core buyers. So the capped production and maintained their targeted message.

That's a real opportunity cost.

Power and Control

The social marketing movement has caused us to begin considering this cost. Anytime you let visitors and customer post on your site, you lose power and control. Facebook recently counter-signaled it's community by trying to take back some control with their Beacon advertising platform. This unilateral action was not in alignment with their signaling that said the users owned and controlled their Facebook experience.

Reputation and Prestige

Standing for what you believe can cost you in reputation and prestige. Tom uses the example of Patagonia, a clothing manufacturer that, in the midst of thriving turned "green." They now only offer environmentally-friendly products. Naturally, a portion of their loyal customer base found this to be "preachy" or alarmist. It was inevitable that their reputation would suffer, but the owner decided to signal his beliefs and, by proxy Patagonia's values.

Safety and Well-being

The most extreme example of paying the price of safety and well-being is "betting the company" on an idea or marketing message. Putting your entire marketing budget into Superbowl ad is one example.

Lifelock CEO Todd Davis published his Social Security Number in the company's marketing and advertising. This was bold, and seems to have worked well for them. Of course, if he'd been hacked, the company would have been humiliated and all credibility lost.

The Benefits Must Exceed the Cost

My friend Jeffrey Peltier is an incredibly knowledgeable search marketer. Yet, he doesn't have a Web site. Not even a blog. He has great referral business and the cost of maintaining a site that would pass muster for a search "expert" is too high. While his competition is spending time on their Web site, he's spending time making customers LOVE -- and talk about -- his results.

More From Tom

It is always a treat to spend time at the Wizard Academy, and this past Tuesday's Open House was no exception. The Academy is about understanding communication. The ideas you'll find are generally new ways of looking at how we deliver and absorb messages.

Tom Wanek will be presenting a workshop at the Wizard Academy in the coming months. Enter your email below, and I'll remind you with a post when the date has been finalized.

This is a great lessons for marketers.

If You're Selling to Humans, You've Got to Tell Stories

How did David Ansel build a business peddling soup around Austin? He sold something more valuable than good soup. He sold a story.

"You will win once you figure out the simple mechanics of turning strangers into friends and friends into customers."

This a poetic way to describe what we're trying to do with conversion, and why I believe "conversion" will be the hot marketing term by the end of 2008.

Seth's Blog: The problem with search engine optimization

Throughout my career, I've been involved in tens of Web projects -- many of which started before my involvement, but not all. The vast majority of them have fallen far short of their initial vision. Many were all-out train wrecks.

Business Owners, read this before you decide to create a Web presence, "update" your Web site or start taking orders online.

What I am writing here about the professionals you will work with isn't true. But, it is exactly what you will experience if you decide to manage the Web development process yourself.

The Low Barrier to Entry Trap

Software seems very malleable. It looks at first glance (and second and third) like something that’s cheap to produce and easy to change. That’s the trap.

If you buy into the thought that there is a low barrier to entry in software – and Web sites especially – you’ll also buy this little gem:

It’s more cost-effective to build an application and release it to the public than it is to research your audience to tell you what to build.

The people who write software have seen high-profile stories of this strategy at work. It general will NOT work for your business, and you shouldn’t have to depend on such a strategy, because, over time, it's very expensive.

This is the first major disconnect between Web developer and business owner.

The Disconnect Between Business Owner and Web Developer

The business owner sees a Web site as a brochure that takes orders. To them, a Web site is a convincing collection of words and pictures with the added bonus that people can actually buy stuff. Right there. In the brochure.

The Web developer sees it as a puzzle in which the pieces don’t have to fit perfectly. To them a Web site is an imperfect, growing and self-evolving organism. Developers are patient people. It’s just software.

Meanwhile the business owners fortunes are dependent on the site. As development stretches on and on, he sees his fortunes going down the toilet. The business owner really doesn’t understand why a brochure that sells stuff is so hard to get finished.

Working with Developers Sucks

You will never find a person less able to communicate, worse at time management, more limited in planning ability and more truly autistic in his professional relationships than you will in a Web developer.

If they're busy, you’re really hosed.

My mind boggles at how few exceptions I’ve seen in the innumerable Web development projects I’ve been involved in. And, as a developer, I was not an exception.

Web developers are sometimes brilliant, but they're rarely effective.

A talented project manager may know how to accommodate such an animal. A business owner, with other matters to consider is going to crash and burn.

And it doesn't stop with the Web developers.

Designers Design for Themselves

Great designers don’t compromise. Unfortunately, bush league designers don’t either.

Designers are doing art. No matter what they tell you, they can rarely prevent themselves from injecting some part of their soul into your logo design. Once that happens, asking them to change something is like asking them to remove one of the legs from their newborn baby. They will do it if you insist, but you know things will never be the same between you.

Three Comps and Your Out

Rather than doing the hard work of understanding your customer, they revert to the "three comps" method of design research. Once they've created a spectrum of creative design comps, guess who picks the winner. The business owner. The one person least qualified to make design decisions.

Inevitably, he or she will prefer one of the two “throw away” comps instead of the one that has the designer has embedded his soul into.

Needless to say the relationship starts off on a bad footing.

The poor business owner is in a quandary. He is completely unqualified to select a design, yet it is his duty to choose well. He must live with the decision for a long time.

If he’s lucky, he’ll be brow-beaten into agreeing with the designer. If not, nothing the designers do will be quite right. Designers inevitably will prove that you should have listened to them.

SEO? SEM? Google?

The Shaman comes in, dressed in animal furs, waving his chicken foot, chanting to the Search Spirits, asking that they may grant the business the blessings of high search rankings, more traffic and much bounty.

Search is a very cost-effective way to advertise. There really are just a few things you need to do to effectively tell a search engine what you’re Web site is about.

The search engines want to know what you’re about.

So, how does something as straight forward as telling a search engine who you are produce such a mind-numbing assortment of schemes and tactics? How is it that there are 1000 small SEO consulting shops none of which use the same strategy? It’s because everyone is guessing.

SEO experts know for certain that their belly button moves up and down when they breathe. They just don’t know why. However, it's obvious they need to breathe in more and avoid breathing out if they want higher a belly button position.

SEO is important, and the business owner doesn’t have any frame of reference for where to put his money. He’s guessing too.

What if the Shaman brings his medicine, but the patient still dies? Well, the SEO expert can’t be responsible for a Web site that doesn’t convert. That’s a marketing or creative issue.

Copywriters and PTSD

Like designers, copywriters believe what they do is art. They are really writers who have added "copy" to their title because it pays better.

However, designers use complex tools with names like "Photoshop" to maintain gatekeeper status over their work.

Copywriters have no such protection.

The Blood of Their Children

The red ink that a business owner pours over their work looks to them like blood. There's little they can do, and then PTSD sets in -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Most are beaten into submission, delivering mind-numbing copy with the flavor of Styrofoam.

You see it every day. Incoherent chains of adverbs and multi-syllabic words designed only to make the business look smarter or bigger than it really is.

Good copywriters are story tellers. Business owners want manifestos to what they've built.

Unfortunately, business owners don't often meet their copywriters. The design firm often hides these poor vulnerable creatures away to minimize their pain.

Business Owners On Their Own

The business owner has his years of experience working with his customers. He has this vision for his business that he can’t get out of his head. He has a product that he’s thought about non-stop for years. The developers and designers and consultants and writers all tell him that it’s important to understand his market.

Then they make the mistake of asking him “so who are you selling to.”

Inevitably, the business owner will tell them about everyone he’s ever sold to all mashed into one über-human.

The über-human is an entity that doesn’t exist in the real world.

Marketers may even try to demographically segment the über-human into über-children, none of whom exist in the real world, either.

Then, they all go off and develop for, design for, optimize for and write for their own individual image of the client’s customer.

It's a mess.

My Advice for the Business Owner

Pay for the Process

My advice to the business owner is to hire professionals that have a discovery process, a process that intimately involves you. Processes feel expensive because you buy a great deal of a professional's time before anything actually appears on the Web.

You'll get every penny of it back and more.

Pick a Good Process

If you don't say "Ah HA" many times during this discovery process, you have bought into a poor process. If you are not learning new things about your business through the eyes of these other professionals, then they are not learning much either.

Have Someone in Your Camp

Make sure you have a project manager or marketer that works for you to manage the project. They must understand your business and advocate for you.

When what is being produced by these vendors no longer reflects your business's interests, all will be lost.

Watch the Results

Make sure that everything results in a measurable payoff that can be examined at least once a month -- sales, leads or traffic. When these measures aren't growing, stop whatever it is your consultants are doing and start asking questions.

Trust the Process

Once you feel that your Web development team has been informed by a strong discovery process, and they know that you'll know if things go awry, you can let these broken but talented professionals spread their wings.

Let the designers be artful.

Let the writers tell their stories.

Let the developers go off to their caves until the next deadline.

You don't have to know what they do as long as they really know what you do.

Brian Massey has at some point in his career been a Web developer, designer, writer and SEO consultant.

Photo courtesy mikekorn.

"You're nuts."

That's what Justin Singer of SMBology reports hearing from roughly half of the people he's heard from about the Competitors page on his Web site.

Yes, he lists all of his competitors on his Web site. Furthermore, it's a main navigation link.

No, it's not smart to connect potential customers to your competitors, unless that is what they want.

So, who wants to know who your competitors are? According to Justin, its the other half of the people he talks to. In a competitive market (there are 28 competitors listed on his site), Justin wants to differentiate his business on trust. With one word on his home page, he communicates the following:

If we were trying to pull a fast one on you; if we weren't willing to stand behind our service; if we didn't believe we were the best solution for you, would we put a list of competitors on our Web site?

There is no doubt that Justin is losing potential business because some of his visitors will check out his competitors. But, he believes he's gaining the right customers by demonstrating that SMBology is trustworthy supplier who's not afraid to stand side by side with others in the market.

Justin wants to do business with those customers who say "that's gutsy. That's who I want handling my IT services."

In every marketing campaign there are those things that we as marketers know will land with our target audience. When good marketing messages conflict with knee-jerk fears about "looking corporate;" when effective copy is dumbed down so that no one gets left out, are you prepared to defend your best prospects' needs and desires?

"You're nuts."

That's what Justin Singer of SMBology reports hearing from roughly half of the people he's heard from about the Competitors page on his Web site.

Yes, he lists all of his competitors on his Web site. Furthermore, it's a main navigation link.

No, it's not smart to connect potential customers to your competitors, unless that is what they want.

So, who wants to know who your competitors are? According to Justin, its the other half of the people he talks to. In a competitive market (there are 28 competitors listed on his site), Justin wants to differentiate his business on trust. With one word on his home page, he communicates the following:

If we were trying to pull a fast one on you; if we weren't willing to stand behind our service; if we didn't believe we were the best solution for you, would we put a list of competitors on our Web site?

There is no doubt that Justin is losing potential business because some of his visitors will check out his competitors. But, he believes he's gaining the right customers by demonstrating that SMBology is trustworthy supplier who's not afraid to stand side by side with others in the market.

Justin wants to do business with those customers who say "that's gutsy. That's who I want handling my IT services."

In every marketing campaign there are those things that we as marketers know will land with our target audience. When good marketing messages conflict with knee-jerk fears about "looking corporate;" when effective copy is dumbed down so that no one gets left out, are you prepared to defend your best prospects' needs and desires?

So, I'm bringing a free ebook entitled Give Marketing a Sales Quota from Hugh Macfarlane to your attention that delivers the goods. Eloqua got my contact information, and I feel that I got good value in exchange. Unfortunately, there's no landing page that I can refer you to. So I'm linking directly to the ebook.

I wanted to add a little commentary to some points made in the book.

Always Be Opening

Make sure that sales is paying attention to the leads you're generating for them. Don't just incentivize Sales to close. It makes them spend their time with prospects that are already being worked. Incentivize them to open the next fresh lead before it goes cold.

Marketing is Only Valuable When it Delivers Revenue

I love this simple concept because, if you can get your organization to believe this, it addresses two of my pet peeves:

1. You have a good argument for killing the image-building brand-awareness crap that doesn't deliver the goods.

2. Marketing execs, long considered the head of the "creative department" can finally get a seat at the strategy planning table with the CFO and COO.

"Fragmented and incremental activities"

Your typical corporate marketing strategy can usually be described as a series of "fragmented and incremental activities." I'll hum a few bars, but you know the words:

What 10 things can we get done this quarter? OK, let's see which of those the CEO will let us do. When we're done, we'll have some cool creative to put on the slides that we present to the executives.

We don't know what problems our buyers face

We're so busy constructing positive messages about our company and our products, we don't acknowledge the pain and trade-offs that our prospects face when deciding if they will buy.

This is why I have dedicated myself to brining personas to the marketing world. At the heart of the persona is the reason a person comes to your Web site. The power of the conversion profile is that it lets everyone -- Sales and Marketing -- slip into the prospect's shoes.

Recycle the Leakage

Conversion is not the rate at which your Web site converts. That's your conversion rate. Conversion starts Conversations. Marketing has to be ready to carry on these conversations for the entire 3-9 month sales cycle faced by many B2B companies.

Read the eBook

This is good marketing. My apologies to Eloqua for linking directly to the book, but they didn't include a "share with a friend" link. That's a problem.

Photo courtesy juliaf

So, I'm bringing a free ebook entitled Give Marketing a Sales Quota from Hugh Macfarlane to your attention that delivers the goods. Eloqua got my contact information, and I feel that I got good value in exchange. Unfortunately, there's no landing page that I can refer you to. So I'm linking directly to the ebook.

I wanted to add a little commentary to some points made in the book.

Always Be Opening

Make sure that sales is paying attention to the leads you're generating for them. Don't just incentivize Sales to close. It makes them spend their time with prospects that are already being worked. Incentivize them to open the next fresh lead before it goes cold.

Marketing is Only Valuable When it Delivers Revenue

I love this simple concept because, if you can get your organization to believe this, it addresses two of my pet peeves:

1. You have a good argument for killing the image-building brand-awareness crap that doesn't deliver the goods.

2. Marketing execs, long considered the head of the "creative department" can finally get a seat at the strategy planning table with the CFO and COO.

"Fragmented and incremental activities"

Your typical corporate marketing strategy can usually be described as a series of "fragmented and incremental activities." I'll hum a few bars, but you know the words:

What 10 things can we get done this quarter? OK, let's see which of those the CEO will let us do. When we're done, we'll have some cool creative to put on the slides that we present to the executives.

We don't know what problems our buyers face

We're so busy constructing positive messages about our company and our products, we don't acknowledge the pain and trade-offs that our prospects face when deciding if they will buy.

This is why I have dedicated myself to brining personas to the marketing world. At the heart of the persona is the reason a person comes to your Web site. The power of the conversion profile is that it lets everyone -- Sales and Marketing -- slip into the prospect's shoes.

Recycle the Leakage

Conversion is not the rate at which your Web site converts. That's your conversion rate. Conversion starts Conversations. Marketing has to be ready to carry on these conversations for the entire 3-9 month sales cycle faced by many B2B companies.

Read the eBook

This is good marketing. My apologies to Eloqua for linking directly to the book, but they didn't include a "share with a friend" link. That's a problem.

Photo courtesy juliaf

I just discovered Seth Godin's Keynote speech from SES Chicago on Webmaster Radio. I don't even know when the event actually took place. I wanted to capture what I heard, so I started typing. Why not make it a blog post?

This stuff is in Seth's book Meatball Sundae.

Seth prefaced this list as "14 things that I see going on." Each of these trends can be wind at your back.

1. Direct communication between consumers and producers. Example: Sonos

2. Consumers are louder than ever before - Amplified word of mouth

3. Authentic Stories - People don't have time for fineprint, watch infomercial. They grab stories. At best they'll get a charicature of your brand. Tell your story and live it.

4. Speed. Are you organized around a factory or delivery?

5. The Long Tail - Example: Amazon gets half their sales from books that B&N doesn't even carry.

6. Outsourcing - If you're job can be reduced to manual, sooner or later your company will find someone else to do it for cheaper.

7. Google - Things are being unbundled, divided into molecules

8. Infinite channels of communication. TV, Radio, YouTube, Internet

9. Consumer to consumer relationships - eBay, Kiva (fastest growing charity by far), Paypal

10. Flip in the difference between scarcity and abundance.

11. Triumph of Big Ideas. Stories spread very quickly.

12. Debate about who vs. how many. Were you in the business of harvesting attention when attention was cheap? How many isn't as important today as who and why. Get exactly the right "who."

13. The rich are different from the who the rich used to be. Now we find rich people everywhere we look -- some with extremely bad taste.

14. New gatekeepers and No gatekeepers. You don't control your message. But you can deliver your message without being limited by others.  

15. Bonus: Upside-down bell curve. The difference between scarcity and ubiquity and the dangerous middle. People know the information is free, but the event or souvenir isn't.

Good Point: People are looking for a moderator -- not someone to exploit them. If you become that moderator, you have longevity.

The opportunity for the people in this room is NOT to change what goes on at the top of the business pyramid, where sales and marketing happen. The opporunity is NOT to change the busy stuff at the top, but to change the bottom of the pyramid, where products are created and services delivered.

From a conversion standpoint it's this: Make promises to those who come to your site. Promise that you know their problem and will help them solve it. But NEVER NEVER make promises you can't keep.

With Corporate America changing its marketing and product development, Seth Godin in his 2007 SES Chicago Keyonote tells us why we should take part

I just discovered Seth Godin's Keynote speech from SES Chicago on Webmaster Radio. I don't even know when the event actually took place. I wanted to capture what I heard, so I started typing. Why not make it a blog post?

This stuff is in Seth's book Meatball Sundae.

Seth prefaced this list as "14 things that I see going on." Each of these trends can be wind at your back.

1. Direct communication between consumers and producers. Example: Sonos

2. Consumers are louder than ever before - Amplified word of mouth

3. Authentic Stories - People don't have time for fineprint, watch infomercial. They grab stories. At best they'll get a charicature of your brand. Tell your story and live it.

4. Speed. Are you organized around a factory or delivery?

5. The Long Tail - Example: Amazon gets half their sales from books that B&N doesn't even carry.

6. Outsourcing - If you're job can be reduced to manual, sooner or later your company will find someone else to do it for cheaper.

7. Google - Things are being unbundled, divided into molecules

8. Infinite channels of communication. TV, Radio, YouTube, Internet

9. Consumer to consumer relationships - eBay, Kiva (fastest growing charity by far), Paypal

10. Flip in the difference between scarcity and abundance.

11. Triumph of Big Ideas. Stories spread very quickly.

12. Debate about who vs. how many. Were you in the business of harvesting attention when attention was cheap? How many isn't as important today as who and why. Get exactly the right "who."

13. The rich are different from the who the rich used to be. Now we find rich people everywhere we look -- some with extremely bad taste.

14. New gatekeepers and No gatekeepers. You don't control your message. But you can deliver your message without being limited by others.  

15. Bonus: Upside-down bell curve. The difference between scarcity and ubiquity and the dangerous middle. People know the information is free, but the event or souvenir isn't.

Good Point: People are looking for a moderator -- not someone to exploit them. If you become that moderator, you have longevity.

The opportunity for the people in this room is NOT to change what goes on at the top of the business pyramid, where sales and marketing happen. The opporunity is NOT to change the busy stuff at the top, but to change the bottom of the pyramid, where products are created and services delivered.

From a conversion standpoint it's this: Make promises to those who come to your site. Promise that you know their problem and will help them solve it. But NEVER NEVER make promises you can't keep.

With Corporate America changing its marketing and product development, Seth Godin in his 2007 SES Chicago Keyonote tells us why we should take part