• Most search queries (over 40%) that use branded keywords are by people who have made up their mind and are ready to make a decision and buy.
• About 35% of solution focused queries (i.e. a query for surveying software) generally fall into the consideration phase when a person is researching multiple vendors.
• 40% of issue/opportunity queries (i.e. a search for what motivates customers) are by people who are not yet aware of the solution to their problem.

Implications For Paid Search

It’s easy for advertisers, particularly in b2b to put all their focus on the later stage brand and solution focused keywords. Generally these terms convert the best, and fill the immediate need for qualified leads. These search queries often show good results on a landing page where the goal is to have the visitor sign up for a demo, or to request a call from a sales rep. However, a potential problem with bidding only on these types of keywords is that you’re limiting your addressable market .

Once you’ve optimized the later stage keywords it’s logical to expand onto capturing issue/opportunity type queries. However, these keywords require different landing page tactics. By their nature, people in the awareness phase are in research mode. Therefore, sending these early stage visitors to a trial demonstration page, or expecting them to request a sales call is out of the question.

Instead, early stage queries often perform better on informational landing pages, which discuss and present a solution to the specific problem. A different goal is also required for these queries. The main offer that could work well on these pages are whitepaper and ebook downloads.

Understand how keywords fit in the overall purchase cycle and you’ll be able to run a more profitable search campaign.

With email competition increasing, it’s time to rethink your tactics. Those marketers who optimize their email strategies to create an engaged audience, and relevant communications can increase their net profits on average 18 times more than broadcast mailings.

The Evolution Of Email Marketing

1) Batch & Blast

This is email marketing in it’s infancy. Everyone gets the same message about your new beach ball, including Sally, who lives in the Nevada desert, and has a phobia of water. As your list grows it’ll get harder to keep messages relevant, which will likely be reflected in a higher than average unsubscribe rate.

2) Profile Driven

In this stage messages are segmented based on information subscribers provided when they signed up, or by demographic information in your customer relationship software. An example might include sorting your business customers by sic code, and sending off a Valentines themed email offer just for Jewelers.

3) Persona Driven

It’s time to kick relevancy up a notch. In this phase persona’s are developed for your customer segments, describing who they are, and answering questions about their behavior. For instance, what keeps these Jewelers awake at night? Finding new customers to grow their businesses. If that’s the case, that Valentines day email might include tips for marketing their business on the holiday along with one of your products that will help.

4) Behavior Driven

Customers actions are the best predictors of future behavior. In these scenario it’s important to document normal customer behavior, and set set up trip wires for customers who deviate from the norm. For example, your data may show that the Jewelers segment on average, repeat purchasing your product every 60 days. So at 60 days you mail out a discount offer to customers who haven’t purchased again by this point. Now you’re beginning to manage customer defection.

5) Predictive Messages

Predictive messaging also relies on behavior while also combining other inputs like personas and demographic information to further segment customers. Instead of blanketing all Jewelers at 60 days with a discount message, you might find accounts with higher order sizes tend to space their orders out over longer periods. So instead you send a discount offer to these different customers at 60 and 90 days. At this point you’re not just managing, but maximizing your email program for maximum profit.

How Evolved In Your Email Program?

Companies fall all across the email marketing evolutionary spectrum. Level of sophistication depends on a lot of factors, like technological aptitude, industry, etc. This post illustrates the power of one-to-one messages, and that the potential for exponentially increasing profits are worth the time and financial commitment to improving your email marketing.

Smartphones are enabling people to shop smarter. Price comparison is instant with app’s on the iPhone and G1 allowing consumers to find deals, and sometimes negotiate a better offer. In most cases, retailers have been completely blind sided by the growing mobile bar code scanning trend.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing in increasing frequency mobiles impact on offline shopping behaviors.

Just the other month I had a shopper walk into the ski shop asking if we carried the Salomon Xwing 10. We didn’t have it, and I suggested taking a look at similar skis, but confessed I wasn’t too familiar with the particular ski he wanted. That’s when he whipped out his Moto phone and brought up the specs for the ski.

Knowing what he was looking for, I showed him a couple other skis close to the Salomon. Next he did something totally cool and unexpected, he googled the reviews for the skis and made a decision.

Talk about putting the consumer in the drivers seat!

For many retailers, I bet this type of customer control in the buying process has them quaking. But in reality it’s a good thing. You should stand by your prices, and if you can’t be the lowest then you’d better be competing on added value. Remember, people are still willing to pay a premium for service.

How To Address The Trend

I like how Wegmans is tackling an increasingly price conscious consumer with their comparison shopping signs.

Savvy retailers might take this a step further and encourage people to make price comparisons on the floor. One way to accomplish this is to place UPC codes in a more prominent position. Or perhaps borrow a strategy from Progressives playbook, and create a mobile friendly site that compares prices between you and the competition.

Of one thing I’m certain, mobile price comparisons will continue to grow, and if you’re a retailer, you don’t want to miss this opportunity.

I bet you can think of some creative ways retailers can benefit from the mobile upc price comparison trend, and would love to hear your input in the comments section.

Photo credit appleseed

Standing there, sweating and impatiently shifting weight from foot to foot I never imagined the situation would provide inspiration for blog fodder. One never really knows until the moment strikes.

Even though I’m the last person in a line of about 15 people, by some strange mechanics the two postal clerks are right in front of me. I had a front row seat to what happened next. A woman walks into the building, instead of getting in line behind me she walks up to the employees at the counter and asks, “Excuse me, I need to send this package right now. Could you help me?”

Replying rather gruffly, the postal worker pointed to the line, “You’ll have to wait like everyone else ma’am.”

And so the simple request ended unsatisfactorily for the woman, she sullenly waited in line like everyone ahead of her.

Even so, the woman’s failure got me thinking, what could she have done differently to achieve her desired outcome?

For starters, she should have directly addressed the people in line rather than the clerk.

More importantly, the woman should have provided a reason for her request. For instance, “Excuse me, I need to send this package right now because I have an appointment to make in 15 minutes,” would have increased the chance or her skipping to the front. As Robert Cialdini points out in his book, “Yes: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive,” using the word “because” drastically increases the rate of compliance. He references a study by Ellen Langer, who showed that using because in a request to make Xerox copies ahead of someone else led to a 94% compliance rate versus 60% when no reason is supplied.

This held true, even when the reason is complete jibberish. The woman might have said, “Excuse me, may I get ahead of you because I have to mail this package?” Well, duh of course you’re here to mail the package, after all this is a post office. Despite unsound requests, the study Cialdini references shows people still maintained a high compliance of 93%.

However, the power of the word has it’s limits. If the woman had an armful of packages that needed to be weighed, people in line would be less receptive to letting her skip ahead. Plus, I’m confident that it has less effect with a crowd of people than just a handful.

What’s really interesting is how to take this knowledge and apply it to your business. The power of because also works in reverse. Research by Gregory Maio and colleagues shows that when people are asked to reiterate their reasons for doing business with a company they have a more favorable opinion of the business afterwards. In addition to providing valuable insights, those customer feedback surveys may allow long-time customers realize they’re decision to use you as a supplier is not out of habit but based on reason.

You should read Cialdini’s book “Yes,” because it raises awareness of how persuasive techniques affect you, and how you can use ethical strategies to be a better persuader. Not to mention the next time you’re at the post office it might get you through the line a little faster.

It’s brilliant creative. Unfortunately it’s ineffective because it fails to provide clear steps a person can take to prevent the long term consequence of cancer and death.

Research shows that while fear arousal is sufficient to influence attitudes, it must be paired with specific, detailed recommendations for a person to change their behavior. In this case, including booklets on “How To Quit Smoking,” provided by the US Dept. of Health & Human Services alongside the mural will be more effective than providing a quit smoking hotline phone number or nothing at all.

Remember that fear by itself only leads to inaction, you need to immediately provide concrete, achievable steps for the person to begin minimizing the risk.

On special holidays mom cooks pierogi for the family. She makes two kinds, those filled with mashed potatoe + cheese and the other with sauerkraut. What’s more, the pierogi I’ve had while eating out, and in the frozen section at Wegmans have stuck to this standard. For the longest time, if you asked me what I craved in a pierog it would have been mashed potatoe + cheese or sauerkraut.

That all changed when I visited the Rochester farmers market this past weekend. While walking past a food stand, my taste buds screamed at me to turn around. The menu had the normal variety of pierogie, in addition to a smorgash board of tantalizing fillings. These ranged from savory selections filled with bacon or packed with spinach, and sweet varieties stuffed with blueberries. In that moment my perception and appreciation for the humble perogie changed forever.

You might be thinking what’s the big deal? There are 15 variations of Dorito chips being sold. We live in world filled with food variety. True, but this has not always been the case. Malcolm Gladwell attributes the revolution in food companies offering products tailored by tastes to Howard Moskowitz. And it’s only been 20 years since Howard convinced Prego to launch their extra-chunky tomatoe sauce. Before that, we had been limited to buying plain sauce off the shelves.

Although we’ve seen an explosion in product variation there is still alot of variablility to discover in human preferences. This is especially true for service businesses, many who have yet to discover their niche. There needs to be more daring, spicy, chunky tomatoe sauce companies in the world. However, at the same time, you can’t rely on your customers to tell you outright what they want. People who’ve never tasted a blueberry perogie won’t be able to say that’s what they want until given a sample.

So here’s a few questions to ponder:

If people don’t know what they want, how do you determine their desires?

Is there a saturation point for choice? Reframing the question, is it possible to overwhelm with too much choice?