komel.net

There are 3 things that are very important (I like to think of them as mantras) when you’re doing Online Marketing:

Acquisition is the art of getting people to your website

Conversion is the art of convencing those people to commit, to buy your product or sercive

Retention is art of keeping that costumer happy and, therefore, buying more

It is pretty obvious that each one feeds in to the other. No Retention without Conversion and no Conversion without Acquisition. Pretty much like a pyramid or a funnel if you rather. Ideally you would like to do well in each one of these key activities. Let’s explore them in a little more detail:

Acquisition

Acquisition is all about calling people’s attention and making them come to you. There are many, many internet users out there… how do you get them come to your website? There are many ways to to do that, here a list with the most used ones:

• SEO - Search Engine Optimization. This is basically 2 things: generating proper content and organizing the pages on your website in a way that it is easy for search engine’s robots to go throught it. The main idea: when pages of your website are highly ranked on Google’s and Yahoo’s you will get a lot of trafic.
• Paid Search - Basically it is paying Google or Yahoo to appear on a special place on their results pages. To be efficient here you need to know which words to bid, bid the right way (sometimes it is not just how much you pay) and keeping the creatives and Landing Pages relevant.
• Banners - A very well known way of getting visitors to your website. There are many diferent banner formats and generally you hire an OnLine Midia professional to tell you where to place your banners, which formats to use and so on.
• Affiliates - Supose you have a blog or a website that you want to monetize. What do you do? You enroll in one of the Affiliates program out there, place and ad from this Affiliates and start making money (I’ve seen people making cents and people making hundreds of thousants). As you’ve probably guessed, affiliates programs are generally very  “long tail” and work pretty well not being so broad as the above alternatives.
• E-mail marketing - Who likes to receive spam? Although when you user base is well worked it can bring you good results.
• Viral actions - This can be a funny post on you blog, a video on YouTube an e-mail chain with a PPT attached and so on. This works, but is very difficult to plan.
• Member get member - There are many different ways to accomplish this… I believe I could explore it a bit more in detail in another post, since it goes wat beyond the scope of this one.
• The list goes on: Social Networking, On Line video Ads, Printed Ads, PR, Direct Marketing, Catalogs and so on.

Your goal is: bring people in! Be aware, however, that you should focus on qualified type of traffic - that is: people who are within your product’s target. Be aware that sometimes other audience (rather than the intended one) is comming and Converting. My advice: take them! Do not change you strategy just because the people you thought would come are not coming. Instead, make room for the “new people”.

No matter what, pay attention to what people are doing once they’re in. It is mandatory to have web analytics. By knowing where people came from and figuring out what drives them, you will be able to fine-tune the ways you acquire prospects, thus increasing your results.

Start small, think big, grow fast (ooops, I’ve heard this somewhere else…). Test what you are doing to do first, I know this sounds pretty obvious, but don’t go arround spending big bucks on a Google campaign just because everybody talks about it. Do a small test, measure the results, fine tune, and grow - step by step. If you want to do it right, know that it might take some time.

Conversion

If you’ve done the earlier step well, this means you are going to get people landing on your website. They will land in diferent places on your website: your home-page, a product-page and so on.  Where they land is what we call the “Landing Page”. Your Landing Page can be your home-page, a product-page, and depending on what you want: a specially build page.

When your goal is very defined it can be a good thing to have specially built Landing Pages. For example: supose your are selling an Anti-virus and you want to attract people based on “easyness” and “safeness”, then you should create at least 2 diferent Landing Pages (one for each). Each one of these Landing Pages will try to convince whoever comes in using an aproach that will work better for each type of visitor. Go ahead and create a Paid Search campaign and have 2 (at least) Ad Groups: one for each appeal (easyness and safeness).

Although those 2 Landing Pages are for people sensible to different appeals, there are some things you should respect always. Here is a cake recipe:

• Be relevant -> Your Landing Page should have only relevant information.
• Be clean -> This means: have only what matters written. Even though your product might have a lot of different features, people’s brain usually freeze when they are in front of too much information.
• Give the visitor the possibility of “knowing more” -> This means: even though you gave him just about enough info to make a call, give him a “details” or “know more” link and there you could stuff a lot of info
• Have the most relevant information within on scroll of the screen (find out the screen resolution through your web analytics software)
• No outbound links -> It sounds wise not to give your visitors links ta point to outside your Landing Page. Enough said.
• Use call to actions -> A call to action can a phrase like “Click here” ou “Buy now” and as weird as it might seam, statistically it has been demonstrated that it works. People obbey orders.
• Try to avoid the use of the word “NO” -> For some reason this word generates some crazy pattern inside peoples brains.
• Give the user some sort of experience -> In a traditional store people can handle what they intend to buy, but it is not possible to do so online. Zoom-in pics and reviews are a good way to achieve this.
• Have a nice shopping cart -> I’ve cases where I wanted to buy something but I didn’t know which creditcards the store accepted or even how much the product cost was. Horrible.
• Don’t ask your prospect to do something you wouldn’t -> Imagine this: you want this guys to commit to a $10 bucks / month product. And you make him go through hell filling up a ton of forms with personal information (not to mention when the javascript on this forms don’t work well). By all means: make this guys life easy (it pays!).
• Don’t lie about your product.

Conversion if a subject I enjoy talking about. So expect more posts about it!

Retention

Last but not least. It seams everybody talks about how to sell online and little is said about how to keep selling online. If you are selling a service, how can you keep your base of subscribers? Furthermore how can you do up-sell or cross-sell to your current costumer base?

You guessed it right when you thought that it is not only up to you, but the guys who do CRM and the Product People in your enterprise. Yes, because if there’s not a well mantained product (I’ve seen VoIP that doesnt route well, or Wi-Fi service that doens’t work anywhere …) how can you get that guy who bought something from you to keep buying? And I am not even considering that a happy costumer will recomend you to 3 other people and an unhappy costumer will make sure he tells 10 people about how terrible you are.

One of the things I like to do if always go through the buying process and see where it fails. Keep many diferent account and use the products to check how they do. Ask “off line people” to use the product (and whatch them use it) and so on. The bottom line is: test your products.

Keep an eye on your product’s churn rate and be close to the CRM people. If you’re small enough no to have a CRM peolple, than be your own CRM people by creating metrics and understanding things like costumer life cicle. Act upon your costumer life cicle! If you discover that the average costumer drops out about 6 months after he/she commited, that you could do up-selling or cross-selling before 6 months, this way you could keep them longer.

It is less expensive to have stickness than to go out and acquire new costumers!

Even though people are more or less unpredictable, we can map people’s behaviour pretty well nowadays. We know for sure that evey buyer goes through stages before buying something.

The first step is to “identify the need” of something. For example: I have a pretty old cel phone and I start to notice all my work mates own smart-phones… and they actually become more productive. So I begin to consider the possibility of getting one.

I start to search the web looking for information on smartphones and best model for me. I use Google and Yahoo for this. Ok, I now know I will be getting either a iPhone or a BlackBerry. So I beging to read reviews online and what people are saying in the blogsphere.

Then I finally run into a big store like Amazon, E-Bay, Shopping.com etc. and start searching prices and payment conditions. If the store is kind to me I commit. Maybe the store has been nice to me in the past, so I just commit again…

Some points I want to get accros:

• Every buyer has diferent mental stages in his process to buy something. More or less they all follow the same path: recognize the need, search for information, choose the model and, finally, buy it
• Every one has many diferent roles during a day. You can a mother a mother in the morning, a tech guy during the day and a drunk person at night. You get the point, whatever you are being influences your perception of the world and the way you are going to react to a product ad
• Knowing what to offer (and how) is pretty damm hard, but it sure pays off. You can rely on CRM technics, model your Y! and Google Ads, costumize your landing pages …

This is a small graph sowing the buying likeability during each phase.

Off course there are some quite important conclusions that can help you improve your results in your Google and Yahoo campaings, on your landing pages and even how you handle your costumers.

I shall go into details on the next post, stay tunned!

I have seen it over and over: websites promessing something and delivering something else (I am talking about quality of services, not products). And I repeat it over and over: DO NOT CHANGE THE RULES.

Let me give you a quick example of what I mean. Lately, I have been studing SCRUM a lot. The natural way, after reading everything I could on the web was to buy a book. And I did, at least I tried to.

So I went to big bookstore (not Amazon, ok?) and picked a book I thought suited me. I did not want to use my credit card so I printed the bank form (called boleto in Brazil) and payed it cash.

For this particular book they claimed I could receive the product the SAME DAY or 1 working day after payment was confirmed. And, since I did not use my credit card, I expected the product for the next working day.

I felt really weird when, upon calling the bookstore, I found out that my book would take 6 weeks to arrive. I imediatelly canceled my order and will only buy from those liars when I and if I have no option left.

This is my advice: do no change the rules.

When I bought the book there was nothing there telling me that if I didn’t pay using my credit card it would take 6 weeks rather than ONE DAY.

BlogBlogs.Com.Br

It is well known that the 3 great forces behind the buying decision are:

1. Drive for exclusivity
2. Punishment for not having something (lost oportunity)
3. Reward for having something

We live in a time where basically everyone can have anything, they only need to pay for it. And there are many, many ways to pay for something. Credit cards, split paiments or even saving money are ways to get there.

Having things is a easy way to tell the world where you stand, who you are. Off course there are other ways, but they usually require some work and self discipline. Having a Mac generally tells the world that you are creative, having a Rolls Royce says you’re powerfull and conservative as well as having a sports car may mean you are powerfull and are willing to take risks. Having exclusive stuff means you’re unique.

Every other week I receive an e-mail from DELL with a notebook offer. They go like: “limited offer, great notebook for only $X. Only today.” So my mind thinks: “oh, such a good oportunity! If I don’t buy it I’ll loose this chance!”.

What is Dell doing? They are using points 2 and 3. Punishment and reward. Even though *I know* they will send and e-mail like this every other week I just keep reading them.

Now imagine a biz model to use the 3 points above: exclusivity, reward and punishment. That is exaclty what 200nipples.com does. They sell t-shirts (exclusive ones) in a limited edition fashion. Every edition has only 100 copies so number 1 costs $1 and number 100 costs $100.

Punishment: if I don’t hurry I won’t have number 1, or 69 or my lucky number and so on. Reward: I get my exclusive t-shirt, thus I am unique. Punishment: if I don’t hurry I’ll loose it.

Genious hun? So why don’t E-bay or Amazon do it? Because this strategy will only work on products that you can make many different editions (it works for Ferraris - in fact Ferraris are numbered…) and to really make money you should be abble to repeat it many, many times. That is: you need scale or to sell Ferraris! (more on that in the comming posts)

Since I was not able to buy a printer from americanas.com (follow the story here, here, here, here and here) I decided to buy my new printer at Fnac. For those of you who do not know, Fnac is a french company. They have awsome stores and also sell online.

First thing I notice in their website is that search does not work properly. I want a printer, right? So, as soon as website loads, I go right to the search and type: printers. What do I get? A message saying that nothing was found: “We have found 0 products”.

No, no, no! A thousand times no! A prospect willing to buy a printer (notice I was not just browsing around) comes to your website and search and receives a message saying that ZERO results were found ??!!?? Gosh guys, could you just be a little more creative? Even if you don’t have he product don’t give your customers this message.

Anyway, I am bold. So I look around and try to figure it out. Yes, it’s there: there is a little combo in which I can say what part of the website I want to search, so I finally find the printer I want and try to buy it.

Funny, they only tell me what cards do they accept in the end. So I have to go through all the way to know if they are going to accept my card.

Don’t you sense something is wrong here?

Well, it’s been more than 24 hours (an eternety if you consider internet time) since I mailled the ombdusman and have not received any feedback at all.

I cease my case. No more to say.

Here are a few common mistakes the biggest e-commerce in Brazil has made:

- Offered a payment method that they did not test well, also did not offer any way out for the customer. Once the person chooses to pay via banking account debit he can not turn back and reconsider (in case things wen’t wrong). The customer cannot even cancel the transaction and redo it in a different way.

- Americanas.com does not know how stablish a one-to-one relationship with their customers. Everytime I sent a message (even responding to their answers) I got an answer to somebody diferent.

- Copy-and-paste answers. Even worse, cut-and-paste answers very poorly written. So i all sounds like nonsense, you feel really bad about it.

- Their ombdusman is unexistent. No answer whatsoever from this person. I start to wonder if he or she really exists.

Americanas.com, see you in the next life. For now I’d rather spnd my moeny somewhere else.

I have just sent an e-mail to the americanas.com ombdsman. Let’s see what happens now. I will keep you posted.

You can read the full story here, here and here.

This is my adventure trying, praying to find a way to pay a business for a product I want. If you want caught up with the whole story look here and here.

After sending a message through the “talk to us” link I receive a message a minutes later… it goes something like this: “We have received your message and will get back to you within a working day. This an automatic message, please don’t reply”. Fair enough I thought. They are letting me know the received my message, so the DO care. One working day for an answer is not the best timming for internet time, but hey let’s give them a break.

So the next day I do get an answer from someone called “Francisca Santos”. Here is what she said, my comments follow:

a. the option for payment through bank account debit is only for clients of Itaú and Unicanco (braziliam banks)

b. The conditions may vary for each bank

c. The bank can take up to 2 working days to inform us of your payment

d. We recommend that you first inform yourself of the payment conditions offered by your bank

I was convinced that this was a “copy-and-past” answer. She did not even bother to read my e-mail. If she had taken a minute to read what I’ve sent. What the heck, let’s answer her and make sure I include a print screen showing the part of their website that shows that they offer split payments through banking account debit.

Again I receive a message saying that they had received my e-mail and would answer within a working day. This time someone called “Bruna Dias” answers me. In a “copy and paste” answer (again!) she tells me that they do not accept split payments on baking account debit payment. HUMMMM interesting. Even after I’ve send a print screen of their website that says they accept split payments…. she did not bother to read my e-mail (again!) or even check the attached file. It is starting to get funny.

Then she says customers of Itaú and Unibanco can have split payments (first they don’t and now they do??). But I would have to check with my bank. HUMMM … the biggest e-commerce in Brazil sells me something and tells me to go check it up with my bank. I begin to believe they are treating my like a monkey.

E-commerce rule of thumb: TREAT YOU COSTUMERS WELL. TREAT THEM LIKE SMART PEOPLE.

So I fire up another message and I basically say: I want to know how to finish my transaction. Nobody cared to explain me this up until now - despite the fact that I have asked many times.

Again the same message stating that they’ve received my message an shall answer within a working day. TA-DA I get my answer and it says: your order awaits for your payment. You can pay calling our call-center throught the number XXXX. Thank you for your message and you are a very important client to us.

Actions speak louder than words, isn’t it ? How much care does americanas.com have towards their customers? Not to mention that this time ANOTHER person has answered me. Third message, third different person. Why?

Off course I would love to blog out loud: americanas.com fuck you very much! I shall not return here and I will make sure everyone I know will know about this. But I want to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes, so I say nothing.

Tomorrow would be the day I was going to get the printer if everything wet fine. So tomorrow will be the day I e-mail the ombudsman.

Stay tunned, it is a promissing story of everything you should not do and how not to sell online.

Every thing started here. So I proceded to my check out. As I decided to pay throught debit directly on my banking account, splitting payments.

Everythig ready so I clicked on the “BUY” buttom and was redirected to my bank website to make the payment. And something that the folks at americanas.com probably didn’t think of happened. My bank’s website was out.

So americanas.com believes I have made the payment and is waiting for my bank to confirm it. My bank never knew about the purchase so it has done nothing and will do nothing. And I, thy custumer, am waiting here for the damm printer I wanted to buy but I could not.

Should I proceed into re-doing everything again? What is the system at americanas.com understands that there are 2 printers to be delivired (and charged) to me?

The safe way, I though, would be to try to contact them and explain what happened and find a way to finish this transaction.

How naive one can be ?

– more on the next post –

Last friday night I decided I should get a new printer. So after browsing the internet in some e-commece websites like e-Bay, mercadolivre.com and americanas.com and after reading some products commets I made up my mind. I wanted to buy a color laser printer that was inexpensive and also not so big - just good enought for me.

Usually I buy stuff at mercadolivre.com, but this time I decided I should give americanas.com a try. I guess the main difference between this two is that while mercadolivre.com is like an e-Bay, americanas.com would be more like amazon.com.

The printer I wanted to buy was on for 500 bucks (more or less 300 dollars) and I could split payments in 12 times. Even better, they offered me a special payment system where they would charge directly into my banking account. So no credit cards - I loved. All that I wanted. I was happy and thrilled. So I went for it.

But that was where everything started to fall apart.

More on the next post !