We’re not making sales, because we need a new website.

Organizations (actually, the people inside the organizations) often complain about their website hindering sales. They don’t like the look of it or there isn’t enough information available for customers. Usually, there is a simple explanation – they’ve just heard someone complain about their website and now they are parroting back what they’ve heard. In actuality, these complaints are hiding an underlying problem. There is no understanding of the buying process.

{Note: In a few cases, there are companies who’s online presence is novice. If this is you, fix it.}

The buying process describes the steps that a person goes through before they actually make a decision in your product. There is a human process (mostly brain/decision-making theory) and a company process. The company process also contains variations for the industry, product, and market. The buying process is not something we consciously do, but we all go through it nonetheless. Unfortunately, problems in the buying process will pop up as random complaints about random things.

So when someone complains about the look of the site, they really mean: “Our website is very important in the initial discovery stages, and we aren’t creating a good enough first impression.”

And, alternatively, when someone complains about the lack of information, they really mean: “Our website is being used later in the process for qualification and we aren’t providing enough information to keep us under consideration.”

Once you understand the buying process, you’ll fix many of those complaints.

Marketing budgets on the decline

Great point about declining marketing budgets:

New Study Says Marketers Expected to Cut Budgets: Are You?

Should you innovate?

It seems like everyone should be running around innovating. It’s a good thing, right?

However, there’s really not much incentive. Let’s say you take a lot of money and you spend it on R&D. You do a bunch of market research, talk to some existing customers, and start developing some prototypes. Then, after a few years, the idea fails.

The ROI on your investment? Zero. Zip. Zilch.

Or, let’s consider another path. You take a lot of money and you spend it on R&D. You do a bunch of market research, talk to some existing customers, and start developing some prototypes. Then, after a few years, you become a huge success.

Then what? People start copying your idea.

The ROI on your investment? Small at first and then smaller. Why does it get smaller? Because people start copying your idea and cutting into your market share and profits.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

One solution to the situation is not to innovate. I’m going to ignore that because it’s the wrong answer.

Another solution is enforcement of intellectual property. By either using copyright, patents, or trademarks, you can protect a part or all of your invention for a period of time. Then, ideally, you could recoup some money for the length of the legal document. This only works for large companies with deep pockets. Small companies don’t have the money to enforce the patent issue.

Eli Whitney, the inventor and patent holder of the cotton gin, was eventually forced out of business due to filing lawsuits against knock-offs and competitors. This is a perfect example of how a revolutionary invention forced the inventor out of business. Doesn’t seem right, does it?

Why innovate then? Because it should be your goal to change the world. Don’t settle for mediocre. It’s rewarding to participate in something bigger than yourself. When you reach retirement age, you want to look back and say that you’ve contributed to changing the world.

Of course, there are economic and strategic reasons to innovate. I’ll talk about those next.

But I can tell you this, it’s not as exciting as changing the world.

Inc. article on business luck

Great read.

Lucky or Smart

The downfall of shortcuts – social proof

Continuing off yesterday’s post on heuristics.

There are ways heuristics help us. As we mentioned yesterday, using mental shortcuts eliminates the mental overhead in processing every single minute detail and decision in our life. There are times, however, where these shortcuts lead us astray.

Take the example given yesterday. As we leave the building, we follow everyone else out the exit door. This is an example of a mental heuristic called ’social proof.’ This behavior is perfectly reasonable and thousands of people use this shortcut each day. But sometimes it leads us down a terrible path.

Social proof is discussed extensively in the book:
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)

Riots and violent outbreaks often contain elements of social proof. In the beginning, there is mostly yelling. More people show up and the level of interaction increases. People start getting angry, waving their arms, and shaking their fists. Soon, everyone is yelling, complaining, and acting with threatening behavior. A frenzy starts in the crowd. As soon as the first person makes a single violent move, the stage is set and the remaining group acts in a similar manner. Normal, sane, calm individuals start destroying things. All because of social proof.

Financial bubbles are another example of social proof gone wild. Buying a stock causes the prices to rise, which cause more buying, which causes the prices to rise, etc.

From an evolutionary standpoint, this behavior has it’s roots in survival. In both nomadic and stationary tribes, it made sense to makes decisions based on the group’s needs. Survival then was completely different than today. Things were dangerous then. You had a greater chance of staying alive if you followed the group then if you decided to make your own decisions. So we learned to follow the crowd.

Does social proof serve us now? Yes, of course it does. It help us through the day. Only in rare circumstances do these things get out of control.

We’ll discuss another particularly nasty heuristic about pricing next.

Video on Web Stats for Musicians

All parts of the web stats session have been posted.

Web Stats for Musicians Part 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUZdzr-aQ5A

Web Stats for Musicians Part 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZOtlBQZMgs

Web Stats for Musicians Part 3 -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9P2r-KU5vY

More to come.

Press releases for Musicians

I’m finishing up the video on Press Releases for Musicians. In the meantime, I wanted to provide you with a few resources for you to review.

PRWeb.com

This is a paid press release distribution site. It provides a more comprehensive distribution than the free sites, but it does cost money. ($80 for the starting membership level.) There is, however, another reason to visit the site. They have a tutorial on writing a press release and they list releases that have already been released, which you can use as examples for writing your own.

Tutorial for writing a press release – from PRWeb.com

Press Release Examples from the the ‘Music’ category – from PRWeb.com

Enjoy. The video will be up soon.

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