The Conversion Scientist™

The Great Marketing Business Card Scratch-off

Marketing people aren’t important, so let’s call ourselves something else

Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg make the point in their book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? that the average tenure of a marketing executive is less than the gestation period of an elephant. Raquel Hirsch at WiderFunnel has summarized some of the findings of an Ernst & Young study confirming that CMOs and VPs of Marketing don’t have a seat at the executive table.  Anecdotally, many of my friends in marketing roles found themselves to be among the first to go when layoffs became popular in 2008 and 2009.

Clearly, marketing people aren’t all that important.

And then there’s the family reunion blank stare. Your cousins, aunts, uncles and some-how-relateds ask, “what are you doing these days?” You say, “I’m in marketing.” Long pause. They want to respond positively, but suspect that you may have just revealed that you’re being treated for some sort of incurable skin disease.

So, they just smile and stare.

Clearly, if we’re good at communicating, we would pick a word that, well, communicated what we do.

So, let’s call ourselves something else, something that reflects the value we add.

I’m not a “Web Marketing Strategist”

If you were to look at my career, you would find the word “marketing” in most of my corporate titles. However, when given the opportunity to give myself a title, I always chose something that communicated what I did. When I was responsible for marketing at my own company, Soft Reality, I put “VP of Customers” on my cards.

Today, if you analyzed what I do for a living, you might call me a “Web Marketing Strategist” or “Internet Marketer” or “Online Marketing Strategist.” I do lots of marketing-ish things. But, I want my practice to survive the gestating elephant syndrome, so I call myself a “Conversion Scientist.”

Now, no-one knows what a Conversion Scientist is, but the word “scientist” delivers the message that I’m probably smart and most likely know a good deal that the listener doesn’t. That’s the truth. The lab coat seals the deal.

And I can explain what I do in one sentence. “Conversion is the science of turning Web traffic into leads and sales.”

Can you explain what you do without using words like “messaging,” “brand,” “demand generation,” or “campaigns?”

Send Me Your Card

If the title on your business card has the word “Marketing” in it, I want you to scratch it out, write in a better description of what you do, and post a picture or scan of it in the comments. I’ve added the ability to upload images to your comments.

Image courtesy http://www.sxc.hu/profile/vivekchugh

Deciphering Behavioral Marketing Web Sites

Why your Web site may not be helping visitors choose you

As a Conversion Scientist, my job is to cast a critical eye on the sites of my clients. In my recent ClickZ columns, I’ve turned that critical eye toward behavioral marketing vendors. “The Language of Behavioral Marketing” parts one and two are designed to help readers understand what behavioral vendor Web site mean and to underscore some of the mistakes they make.

I think any B2B marketing team could learn a bit from these columns.

In Part One, I highlight why these sites weren’t helpful to me in my quest to better understand the industry. Are you making these mistakes?

Everyone’s the “Leader”

There’s something we’re trying to say when we say we’re the “leader,” but rarely do we say what it is. Are we the highest volume provider? Are we the low-cost leader? Do we have the most market share? Or are we just trying to look bigger than we really are? If it’s the latter, pick something that defines your leadership and say that.

Let your participation in industry events help you define your leadership. Be the thought leader with helpful, smart content.

Shooting at the competition

The sites that I reviewed took great pains to define who they are not. This is understandable as there are hundreds of competing ad networks joining the industry, many of which don’t hold themselves to a standard that big brand advertisers want. Nonetheless, it is far more powerful to tell the story of who you are than to throw stones at your competitors. It just takes more work to define and tell that story.

Everyone does everything

Pick your place in the market and be willing to walk away from the rest. The companies whose sites I reviewed are capable of applying behavioral targeting to a wide range of industries, and don’t want to limit themselves. However, I think they would be well served to select some turf to dominate, and be willing to concede some part of the market in the short term.

Pick the bucket you want your visitors to put you in, or they’ll put you in their own buckets, which may be the “not sure what they do best” bucket.

Valueless value propositions

The power of picking your bucket is that you can create a value proposition that differentiates you and establishes you as a desirable partner.

The businesses I reviewed clearly wanted to work with major brands, but don’t want to walk away from small and medium-sized businesses. Picking one might reduce their appeal to the other, but it doesn’t have to. “We’re Big Brand Behavioral Marketers” appeals to big brands, but offering a white paper on the site entitled “Why the Big Brands Win in Behavioral” would appeal to smaller brands without undercutting the basic value proposition.

In short, use powerful positioning statements to establish your ground, but use innovative content to finesse your offering.

Playing it Safe with Content

Once you’ve stepped out onto the skinny branches of defining who you are as a business, you’re content has to reinforce that. It should do it emotionally, passionately and without compromise.

There is little copy less emotional, passionate and compromising than “corporate communication,” and this is where most Web copy is drawn. Corporate communication is for proposals, the prospectus and the quarterly report. It is not appropriate for marketing communication.

Add a little attitude to the video. Title your reports and white papers in unexpected ways. Have some fun with your executive bios. Remember business people are humans.

Image courtesy http://www.sxc.hu/profile/nighthawk7

What Can We Learn From the Web Sites of Behavioral Marketing Vendors?

There is a great deal of information, but you have to decipher the code.

In my ClickZ column this month, The Language of Behavioral Marketing Part 1, I explore the Web sites of many of the popular behavioral marketing vendors looking for clues to help me put them in buckets. This is the first in a two-part series that seeks to clear the fog that lies over the industry.

Behavioral marketing vendors aren’t the only businesses whose Web sites need some help.

I hold forth that the Web sites of the industry make these mistakes:

• Everyone’s a Leader
• Shooting at the "Other Guys"
• Everyone Does Everything
• Valueless Value Propositions
• Playing It Safe

I also throw in a few honorable mentions for sites that take a more daring approach in an effort to communicate their value to the marketplace.

The Lab Coat: Conversion Scientist Chic

I apparently have set off a new fashion trend

During my presentation at Innotech Portland on Social Conversion Twitter was alive with chatter about my attractive Lab Coat. In generous Conversion Scientist fashion, I provided @tom_bennett of The New Group with a coat of his own, as well as @bryanrhoads and @kellyrfeller of Intel.

Brian Massey, Kent Lewis and Dylan Boyd at Innotech Portland

Clearly, a I’m not the only one that looks good in a lab coat.

But, lest you believe that the coat is only a fashion statement, be assured that it is an important protective garment for any Conversion Scientist.

In my letter to Tom,  Bryan and Kelly, I tell them that the new addition to their wardrobe is functional as well as stylish.

These coats are woven from mono-filament engagium for strength and protection. The cloth is designed to protect the wearer from all forms of marketing chemicals no matter how acidic or overblown. The material will resist most toxic marketing, including email ribonucleic flaccid, copy hydro-inflate, and Flash fires.

However, there is a danger to the appearance of unbounded intelligence intimated by such an outfit.

Be forewarned that, when wearing the coat in public, you will be expected to have intelligence far beyond normal human capacity. Nonetheless, making up answers to questions about genetics or the proper operation of an electron microscope will harm the image that we try to convey with the lab coat. It’s OK to say “I don’t know.”

Needless to say, such a garment doesn’t come cheap. Safe marketing my friends.

Applying the Scientific Method to your Behavioral Marketing

Scientific Method? Hey, I’m a Conversion Scientist

As you learned in a previous post, I’m just wired to see the world through the scientific method. It get’s extreme.

In this month’s ClickZ Behavioral Marketing Experts column, I apply it to behavioral advertising. The thing I love about the scientific method is that it quickly exposes the challenges in your marketing campaign. Behavioral Marketing is a Conversion Scientists dream, but it poses some challenges when developing hypotheses and figuring out "why" something worked or didn’t work.

The bottom line: don’t just ask your behavioral advertising partner about their technology, methodology and ad network. Ask about the ways they interface with you to ensure you’re getting the best information when investigating, hypothesizing, testing and evaluating.

ClickZ: Behavioral Marketing and the Scientific Method

What is Your Social Conversion Rate?

New presentation debuts at Innotech eMarketing Summit in Portland

After collaborating for a ClickZ article on Social Conversion with Dave Evans, I was pleased to get an opportunity to work with him to expand on the topic. I presented the topic at the eMarketing Summit during Innotech Portland 2009.

This is a topic that is moving quickly, and I suspect you will have something to say. Please do.

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What to Test! Returns to Interactive Austin 09

You can still get a discount with the code TPH200 today

The last time we played What to Test! The Conversion Quiz Show, we were throwing balls and learning about content that converts.

I’m teaming up with Alissa Ruehl of Apogee Search at Interactive Austin 09 bring it back.

• They tell you that you should test copy, but what will your visitors respond to?
• They tell you to test different button text, but which ones?
• They tell you to try different headlines, but how do you choose?

We’ll be covering the “Conversion Stack” which is the levels and kinds of conversion you can consider based on your resources and experience.

Join us at Interactive Austin ‘09 where everyone that is anyone will be … interacting. Use code TPH200 to get $25 off of your registration fee TODAY ONLY.

What Conversion Metrics Should a Job Seeker Examine?

Find out at the Door64 Tech Fair and Extraordinary Interviews Seminar

For a Conversion Scientist, life is full of A/B tests. You find them everywhere. We are naturally curious creatures, always wondering why people behave the way they do. The answers are rarely obvious.

For example, I have been monitoring a sort of A/B split test happening at a local cupcake and coffee shop called Cupprimo. For some unknown reason, the proprietors have consistently provided both quilted and unquilted toilet paper in their men’s room. As you might expect, the quilted TP roll is consistently smaller than it’s unquilted competitor. But, as a Conversion Scientist, I have to ask: is it because the position of the quilted roll is more convenient to right-handed bomb-droppers? Is it because the luxurious quilted TP is thicker, and that the roll only appears to shrink faster? Perhaps it is a test error? Are the hapless managers not replacing the rolls at the same time? Here’s the real kicker: are these results consistent with the ladies’ results?

I know that, like me, you’re just dying to find out what the test really tells us. But right now, I’m going to spend the next few paragraphs trying to tie this example to my presentations at the Door64 Tech Fair and the Extraordinary Interviews Seminar for Technology Professionals. You want to go, you just don’t know why yet.

The Job Search and Conversion

While the toilet paper question is important, I’ve had to focus my attention on the problem of job search for the past few months. As in our toilet paper split test, I am dealing with incomplete information in the job search. Elusive are the conclusions we would draw from our job search data.

The ultimate conversion is a job offer. However, it turns out that the resume-to-job-offer conversion rate is fraught with trouble, the most significant being that once we get one or two conversions, we stop caring. We take a job and stop searching.

What we need for the job search is predictive metrics. For most job seekers, the most important predictive metric has been number of resumes sent. But this approach is no different from that taken by any number of companies who’ve spent like drunken sailors buying clicks for search terms that have little to do with their business, hoping that someone might actually become a lead or buy something–anything. This is not conversion.

A more important measure is number of interviews. For the sake of conversion, we measure it as the number of interviews booked divided by resumes sent. I call this the resume-to-book rate. The drunken sailor set will say, “So the more resumes we send, the more interviews we will get, right?” Well, since the resume-to-book rate is a percentage, throwing resumes against the proverbial wall will actually decrease your conversion rate (unless you send each with a substantial sum of money, which is also true in pay-per-click search).

The key is to send fewer more targeted resumes. When you do this three things increase your resume-to-book rate:

• You decrease the number of resumes sent, which will mathematically increase resume-to-book rates.
• You increase the likelihood of getting more interviews by spending more time on each application and cover letter.
• You target only those jobs for which you are somewhat qualified.

In other words, your doing the exact opposite of what most search marketers do.

Meaningful Job Search Conversion Rates

It turns out that, like our quilted toilet paper test, our resume-to-book rate has some built-in issues. Since 80% of all jobs offers are garnered from a personal contact, sending resumes is actually the least effective way to apply for a job. The number of postings available via job boards is too small and there’s too much competition. In short, it doesn’t scale. The Conversion Scientist ranks #1 on all search engines for “conversion scientists with lab coats.” However, the number of searches is small, so it really doesn’t help. Job postings have the same problem.

Since personal contact is the way to get interviews, then our predictive conversions must be tied to the number of people who are actively helping us look for work. For most of us, that is our parents (motivated to get us to move out of the house again) and that one new recruiter who hasn’t yet learned a tactful way to tell us they don’t really have anything for us.

As it turns out, it’s our old friend “opt-in rate” that is the most powerful predictor of our job search. Most of us have low opt-in rates. ‘We’ve Twittered, “Got laid off. Let me know if you hear of anything.” That doesn’t invite an opt-in. A few of us have sent emails to our professional contacts detailing our qualifications. Then we end by saying “Let me know if you hear of anything.” Not an opt-in either. In short, we don’t give our personal networks anything to opt into, and our opt-in rates would be zero if not for our parents and that one green recruiter.

Why is opt-in important? Because the higher your opt-in rates, the larger your personal job search network gets. The larger your personal job search network, the more unpublicized jobs you’ll be privy to. The people who know how to engage their personal network have the following advantages:

• They uncover jobs that aren’t posted
• They get inside information on the jobs they apply for
• They find champions to walk their resumes into the hiring manager
• They circumvent the trolls in HR whose main job is to protect the hiring manager from tidal waves of resumes

Learn How to Put Your Personal Network to Work for You

If you want to enjoy the benefits of an active network of friends, relatives and colleagues joyfully working day-in and day-out to help you find a cherry position, then you need to come out and see me. I’ve written the book, and we’re working on the software, but you can’t get either right now, so this is your only option. There are two opportunities in Austin:

[UPDATE: This has been cancelled] April 28 at the Extraordinary Interviews for Technology Professionals Seminar. This is a full day that covers the gamut–networking, resume writing, cover letters, and interviewing skills. Those who attend this event are going to be taking all of the good jobs for a while. The rest of you can relax.

April 30 at the Door64 Tech Fair and Austin Brain Party. If you don’t think you have a personal network, let Matt Genovese and Door64 get one started for you at the Tech Fair and Brain Party. I’ll be talking about the ten attitudes that you will need to succeed in the job market for the next 20 years. For a list of the participants you want to know visit door64.com.

"What to Test!" The Conversion Game Show at PubCon South 09

We were throwing balls at the audience during the Conversion Optimization and Testing Panel at PubCon South in March. Why balls? Because we were focused on reducing the amount of traffic that bounces off of the audience’s Web site, of course.

Along with panelists Taylor Pratt and Bill Leake, and our moderator Christine Churchill, we gave the audience the best practices for reducing bounce rates and increasing leads and sales.

I decided to have some fun with my segment of the Panel. Several brave members of the audience volunteered to answer the query “What to Test!” for the chance to earn a smiley ball compliments of Smiley Media.

Now you can play as well!

RISEAustin Podcast: Your Key Web Site Strategies

What is your Web site pattern?

I’ve boiled down the entire universe of Web sites into five patterns: Brochure, Portal, eCommerce, Considered Purchase, and Site as a Service. So far, no one has been able to identify a sixth unique pattern. Which are you?

Here’s the full presentation I gave at RISE Austin, an amazing and unique conference in which businesses present free sessions to entrepreneurs all around the city.

We are lucky to live in Austin. Enjoy the audio and slides.

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