Spark This

Do I know this from somewhere?

A new study suggests that women make up their minds about their mates in as little as 30 seconds. That you have 30 seconds or less should not surprise anyone in marketing. But if you only have 30 seconds, which words spark? The best and worst opening lines are quite telling.

Best performing lines:

'What's your favorite pizza topping?'
‘Who would you be if you were going on Stars In Their Eyes?' (A UK game show)

Worst performing lines:

'I have a PhD in computing'
'My best friend's a helicopter pilot'.

So, what's your line?

Names that spark

Shakespeare was right: “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet;”
And indeed, companies such as BMW, IBM, SAP, and Smuckers are doing just fine despite their, how shall we say, less than stellar names.
But Toto, we are not in the 16th century anymore! With millions of flowers to choose from, your time-deprived prospects won’t bother to sniff your rose if it’s named, say, Plant. Or Vegium. So while a good name isn’t crucial for success, it will sure make your marketing a lot easier. Wouldn’t you want to improve your odds?

Here’s the most common naming mistake I see: “We need a name that explains what we do.” Now, you are asking yourself, what could possibly be wrong with that?

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you have worked hard to develop a lip-smacking-good software program for managing projects. In a brainstorming session, your team comes up with some terrific candidates for the all-important name: ProjectMagick, Projectify, and ProjKick. They all seem to “capture what we do,” don’t they? The problem becomes apparent only when you look at a list of your competitors.
(These are actual product names- I am not making this up!):

AceProject
Cprojects.com
Vproject
eProject
dotProject
ProjectPlace
Projux
Project.net
Project Arena
ProjectByNet
PracticalProject
PlanView
]ProjectOpen[
PHProjekt
OnProject
OurProject

Can you spot the problem, my dear Watson?

You don’t want a name that describes what you do. You want a name that describes what makes you different. Take Basecamp for example. Basecamp is a new entrant to the project management market that is getting a lot of buzz. “Basecamp” doesn’t describe what the product does. Rather, it suggests a different customer experience, and it sure stands out from the flock.

Apple is a powerful brand. “Apple” does not describe what the company does, but what makes it different: fresh, different, seductive, good for you. Contrast it with names like IBM and DEC.

Names that position your brand have another advantage. They transcend trends, technology, and products. Companies like Apple, Oracle, and Virgin have dramatically changed their product line over time, but their names still reflect their positioning.

Want more examples?

Let’s look at a few search engines for weblogs: Blogdex, Blogpulse, Blogwise, Blogstreet, Feedster, and Technorati.

Coincidentally or not, Technorati is the leader in this market. I would not attribute its success solely to its distinct name, but the others aren’t helping themselves with their lookalike names. Their situation is exacerbated by additional blogging tools that are not search engines, but still clutter the name space: Feedburner, Feedblitz, Bloglines, Bloglet, Blogger, etc. This is really sad, as I am sure the developers have put blood, sweat, and tears into developing these products, but they are not be getting an equal opportunity to demonstrate them. (By the way-- I don’t think Technorati is the best possible name, but it’s better than the others)

Let’s look at one more category: Website visitor tracking and statistics (I got most of these from a Google search): DeepMetrix, SiteMeter, SiteStats, StatCounter, OneStat,
ShinyStat, OneStatFree, and Mint.

Which one stands out? That’s right—the one that offers a “fresh look at your web site.” Take a look at the site. The design, the message, and the copy are all in synch with the name. As a new entrant, Mint is not the leader, but as far as I can tell it is getting all the buzz.

Invented names

Invented names (like Accenture, Google, Hummer, Snapple, Squidoo) are more popular than ever. Their advantages are that they are distinct, the domain names are available, they are easy to Google, and they are easy to trademark. When well crafted, names such as these can work. But they are often devoid of meaning and do very little to differentiate you, your company, or your product from the crowd. Finally, the sheer volume of new names that pop up every day makes them harder to grasp. Jyve, Kiko, Fooky, Gliffy, Joyent, Meebo, Riya, Sxip, Truveo, Zopa. You be the judge….

What about Internet domain names?

If you invent a name, the corresponding domain name is probably available. For evocative and experiential names you can use a modifier. For example, cork-consulting.com, or corkit.com. Basecamp uses basecamphq.com and Mint uses the memorable haveamint.com.

For extra spark

• I recommend the excellent “Igor Naming Guide” by Igor International, the naming agency with the killer name. It explains many other attributes of great names. The paper is a little lengthy but worth every minute of your time.
• Word board is an online community of naming aficionados, hosted by the very same Igor. They will gladly help you find a name or a tag line for free, although it would be nice of you to offer a reward for the best name.

 

Technorati Tags: marketing, naming, branding

WAIT WAIT! Don’t back-button me!

Your home page is often your first encounter with your customers, especially those arriving from a referring page or a web search. Within three seconds, your visitors will make a fateful decision (for you). They’ll either continue to read – or they’ll click that Back button. If three seconds seems too quick, recent research suggests that you may actually have as little as 50 milliseconds.

“Unless the first impression is favorable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors.

--Gitte Lindgaard, Carleton University, Canada

So how do you engage in a conversation in three seconds or less?

There are four things you can do to improve your odds:

• What’s in it for me?
• Call to Action
• Images
• Testimonials

As in, “WAIT WAIT! Don’t back-button me!”

What’s in it for me?
Your home page needs a short and sweet description of what your site is about and what the benefit is to the visitor. You should use a few simple words that any person can understand. Resist temptation-- don’t use jargon, buzzwords or acronyms, and stay light on adjectives.

Call to Action
What’s the next step once your visitor decides that he or she is interested? You should always – I repeat, always – have a clear call to action. This call to action is whatever you think will keep the visitor interested and the “conversation” going. For example, if you are selling expensive enterprise software, your call to action could be “Watch a demo,” because “Buy” will probably kill the conversation. If you are selling a $5–a-month web service, your call to action could be “Start a free trial.”

It’s OK to have multiple calls to action, but one should be clearly highlighted. Why? Having more than one action highlighted forces your visitor to think. Thinking takes time, and time is the one thing your visitor doesn’t have. So, leaving the thinking to your visitors is a sure way to lose them. An easy way to test whether you have a clear call to action is to get out of your chair and walk three steps back –your primary call to action should still be clearly visible.

Images
Images (or graphics) serve two important goals. First, if they are interesting, they capture the immediate attention of your visitors. No – models with headsets, Clooney clones in Armani suits, handshakes, and abstract graphics aren’t really interesting. Also, many of us grasp pictures faster than we do text. A meaningful and relevant picture will help those “visual types” understand what’s in it for them. It could be a picture of your product, of interesting users, or of the benefits of the product. Apple's iPod home page, for example, uses an image that has all three.

Testimonials
A website without user or press quotes is like an empty restaurant – nobody wants to walk in. None of us really have the time to judge if products work as advertised, so we rely on the opinions of others. If we like the premise, and everyone says it’s cool, we’re in. It may be hard to obtain the quotes, but you must make the effort (and don’t make them up!).

Now that we have covered the four principles, let’s go site-seeing?

The following examples highlight young and ambitious organizations that want to expand quickly, but don’t have piles of cash to spend on marketing. As a result, they have tuned their home pages for maximum effectiveness. They don’t look anything like the average corporate home page – they are light-years ahead.

Take a quick look at these pages. Can you see the WAIT?

Basecamp is a website that enables its users to manage their projects online. Launched by web design gurus 37signals in 2004, it already boasts over 100,000 users. From The Wall Street Journal to Business Week, their product was praised in every major business publication. 37signals preaches simplicity and minimalism in design and their home page is true to their values.  Contrast this page with the home page of their arch-rival. Which one packs more punch?

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Firefox is a web browser that went from zero to 10% market share in about a year; it now has about 50 million users. The “What's in it for me” section could be a little clearer, but it is still a very effective page.

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Flickr is one of the most popular photo-sharing sites and is now owned by Yahoo!
Note the minimal use of words – who needs them, when one picture tells the story?

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SiteVista  is a web service that enables users to test if their websites look great in all browsers and all screen resolutions. It is not nearly as popular as the other sites mentioned here (it caters to a smaller community), but it is another example of a home page that sparks. The “Live Chat” button with the friendly chaps is a nice touch.

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Ruby on Rails is a software kit that helps developers build web sites and web applications quickly. RoR has been downloaded by some 300,000 developers in the past year, and has received numerous accolades. RoR is an “extraction” from Basecamp, so it’s not surprising that the home page has a similar design approach.

Click here for full-size

Extra Stuff

• Make every effort to hire a professional designer for your site. A great designer understands critical issues that I haven’t discussed in this article, like visual appeal, usability, accessibility for people with disabilities, and browser compatibility.
• Looks matter. That’s another reason why you should hire a pro to design a seductively beautiful web site.
• Steve Kruger’s book on web page design, Don’t Make Me Think, is a classic.
• “Attack of the Zombie Copy” by Erin Kissane is a great article on online copy.

Technorati Tags: firefox, flickr, homepage, marketing, rubyonrails, sitevista, webdesign

Drop. Your. Bullets.

Garr Reynolds, over at the excellent Presentation Zen blog, points us to scientific evidence that supports what we all know: a picture beats a 1000 words, let alone a 100 words in a single PowerPoint slide. What's nice is that you can get the whole idea just by looking at his sample slides. Link: Clear visuals with as little text as possible

Demos that spark

Time and again I see product demonstrations that go like this:  “Click the Options menu, and you’ll see this window, in which you can tweak (are you sitting down?) no less than 36 parameters. Man!” Then they move on to the next feature, and so on.

Big mistake. That’s not a demo. That’s a brain dump.

The problem is that most people will only absorb half of what you show, and forget the other half by their next coffee break. We just don’t remember features and facts that well. I'll bet you that in just five years, we will not remember how many Mbytes USB Drives could store, whether you could put web links in Excel, or what was the unemployment rate in 2006. Information is hard to absorb; it loses its relevance over time and is easy to forget. But Stories, on the other hand, fascinate us, and can be passed on for 1000’s of years. We all remember what gadget David used against Goliath and how the Greeks got into Troy.

If your buyers want to know everything your product does, hand them the manual.

But to make a strong and lasting impression, your demo must tell an engaging story.

And if we are in the business of mesmerizing an audience, who is better to learn from than Hollywood’s blockbuster-writers? These folks can rivet us for 120 minutes, and even make us pay for it. Not bad eh?

Don’t worry. It’s simpler than you think. There’s a simple formula, which shall soon be in your possession. You may not land a contract for the next Spielberg flick, but you will have a better demo.

Meander with me a little longer; we will soon cut to the chase. (Pun intended)

Oh, and one more disclaimer: I am counting on the absence of real screenwriters from my audience, as they would be right to butcher me for oversimplifying their craft :-)

Ready? ACTION!!!

Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks described the “formula” for a great story.  Since then, this formula has been only slightly modified to fit the needs of today’s film industry.

First, you must define the hero/protagonist. Think Luke Skywalker, Mowgli, Agent 007, Cinderella, or Nemo.

In a product demo, the hero is your buyer. Your goal is to help her imagine how she can kick butt with your product. Remember, your product is only the light saber in this story, or Han Solo, but not Luke Skywalker. Put another way, you want the Oscar for best supporting actor.

Second, your story should comprise three acts, separated by two turning points, in this order:

1. Setup. Introducing the hero, the situation, and other characters if any.
2. Incident. Something happens and posses a challenge, a conflict, or a question.
3. Story. A roller coaster of events and actions.
4. Climax. The dilemma is resolved.
5. Resolution. A new state of balance. Happy end. Can lead to a sequel.

Let’s look at “Die Hard,” featuring Bruce Willis. (Hey, we are learning to kick, aren’t we? :-)

• Setup: NY cop John McClane, arrives in Los Angeles for Christmas.
• Incident: Terrorists take over a skyscraper. John’s wife is among the hostages.
• Story: McClane sneaks in, and starts to kick butt left & right. Powwww!!! Splaaaaat!!!! Serious bloodshed.
• Climax: McLane whacks the terrorists, and frees the hostages.
• Resolution: John gets his family back for Christmas, and earns LAPD’s respect too.

That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Need more examples? Indiana Jones meets Beverly Hills Cop here.

Now, imagine that you need to demonstrate a Thumb Drive-- a thumb-sized, detachable storage device for computer files.

• Setup: Jill Stowe, a senior advertising manager is in a meeting with a large client to pitch a four million Dollar advertising campaign. Jill and her team worked hard on this presentation, as the agency’s future depends on winning this deal.
• Incident: Jill is trying to start her PowerPoint presentation, but alas, her laptop won’t start.
• Story: Fortunately Jill has a copy of the presentation on her trusty thumb drive. She attaches the drive to one of the client’s computers and goes on with the presentation.
• Climax: Jill knocks their socks off with a killer slideshow. The client says, “Jill, we are floored! Where do we sign?”
• Resolution: Jill buys the entire creative team a pizza. Beer too.

Click here for two additional examples .

You can actually stop reading right here, as we have covered the most important point: Great demos are more about storytelling than information sharing.

For extra credit, you can continue to read for a few more important tips.

• Add twists and turns to your story. Just when they think the problem was solved, let another one rear its ugly head. Surprise adds more fun, and makes the story more memorable. Remember Glenn Close rising from the bathtub in Fatal Attraction?
• Spark life into your story. It’s no coincidence that there aren’t many movies on computers, or software. We are more interested in other things. For example, heroism, money, power, sex, romance, suspense, crime, disasters, dogs, cute kids, marine mammals. You can spice up your story by incorporating such interesting elements. But keep in mind it’s like chilly sauce: a little goes a long way. Drizzle too much and it will overpower the dish.
• Realism matters. Don’t confuse fun with sloppiness. I often see demos with Gibberish. For instance, an order entry form with ”Donald Duck” in the Name field,  “Asdasasd” in the Shipping Address field, and “qwerty” for zip code. It makes you look like an amateur. What you are essentially saying is “Sorry, I didn’t have the time to invest in this, but surely you can make the mental leap and imagine what it would be like with real data?” Understanding your product is hard enough so don’t add obstacles.
• Keep it short. You have to be really good to keep someone riveted for 120 minutes. At the Demo Conference, vendors are allotted 6 minutes, which is just about right.
• Rehearse. Hollywood or not?

Got something to add? Click on the “comments” link and speak up :-)

The iPod, Apple’s biggest flop…

At least according to some Apple fans back in 2001.

"All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field is starting to warp Steve’s mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off."

Jason Fried over at Signal vs. Noise has an entertaining post on why you shouldn’t always listen to customers.

Slides: The Hacker's Guide to Marketing

I am posting the slides from a presentation I gave at the Open Source Developers' conference today.
In a nutshell, the presentation looks at the success of a few open source projects such as Firefox and Ruby on Rails from a marketing perspective.

It was really nice to feel the good vibes within the Israeli Open Source community.

Feel free to copy, rip, improve, etc.

Click to Download  the PDF (1.3 MB)

The new PR

A guy creates a simple blog page and makes it, albeit unintendedly, to the NY Times, MSNBC, BBC, and NPR.

PR agency fees:   $0
Web site hosting:  $10 a month
Ingenuity:             Priceless

Making the most of public spanking

Salesforce.com got a fair amount of flack  recently after a couple of outages left its users sales-deprived.  The company described the first outage as a “minor” hiccup.  After the second outage, “minor” lost its descriptive power. 

Their response?  They put their data center folks and their customers on the same page. Literally.
How many companies would have the guts to offer such transparency?

Now the press is showing some love again. They should.

Hire Jeff

If you need a marketer, this guy passes with flying colors. Brilliant!