It's a truism in real estate circles that the two most important areas when selling a house are the kitchen and the bathroom. These are also the two areas where liquid hand soaps are most likely to be found. Which makes the lack of aesthetic appeal for most liquid hand soaps puzzling; there's a distinct tendency toward bright colors and ugly bottles.

So I was interested in a recent post put up by Dooce. The soaps she mentions are an interesting combination; soap bottles with great aesthetics and that match up with consumers' renewed interest in the environment.

Whether this company did it by accident or design (though I have to assume it was after careful market research), they identified and are filling a hole in the market. To the point where Dooce, an influential blogger, will voluntarily write an entire post, complete with beautiful shots of the product, about how wonderful the soap is.

I enjoyed a recent post from advertising practitioner: games, flow, mystery.

The author commented that games have been very successful over the last 20 years. People not only spend money on expensive systems, but also on more and more new games. He wrote:

"I suspect there's much the advertising and media business can learn from the games industry, not least because they know how to create something people want to spend time with, playing, interacting, hanging-out, learning. "

The author argues that people responded well to the famous Cadbury's drum-playing gorilla for much the same reasons they respond well to games; the ad engages them and makes them work out what is going on. The author's argument is for more complicated and clever ads that engage the viewer.

An example of the other side of the argument is this post from Marketing Genius: A to Z of Marketing: C – Clarity

The author writes about a very clever ad she came up with for a restaurant client that fell totally flat. It was too clever; something straightforward and simple worked better.

So what's the moral? I'll borrow a comment from Edward Gossage:

"People don't read advertising. People read what interests them and sometimes it's an ad."

It comes down to what people are interested in. Maybe they want to be entertained, or maybe they just want to know where the cheap food is.

What does your audience want?

Search engine rankings are competitive. This makes sense as a page's ranking has significant impact on traffic volume, and ultimately to the success of a business. High rankings are partially driven by the savvy use of keywords. With that in mind, below is what I have gathered from multiple sources about choosing and using keywords and, as usual, I’ve also included useful links at the bottom of the post.

What Are Keywords?

Keywords are the words and phrases people use when they search for a webpage. Many companies put a lot of effort into optimizing their websites around sets of keywords. The goal is to drive as much targeted traffic to the website as possible. Obviously, the overall content of the page should be in line with the keywords; the keywords need to deliver what they promise or visitors will just click away again.

Choosing Keywords

The first thing to do when coming up with a list of keywords is to think of all the possible terms people are likely to use to search for the site. It should be fairly easy to come up with a preliminary list; hopefully you know your viewers and have a pretty good idea of what they’re interested in.

It’s also worth having a look at traffic sources for your website; what phrases have people used in the past to find your site? This is an excellent source of keywords; however, these are keywords that already exist on your site. If you rely on these alone for direction, then you may be missing out on other good keywords.

Once a list has been put together, you can further expand that list with tools like Google’s keyword tool. (This tool is actually to help businesses generate keyword lists for their AdWords placements, but works for this application as well.) This tool will pull up a list of suggested keywords related to the keywords you enter.

So now you (hopefully) have a huge list of potential keywords to optimize your site with, but you obviously can’t use all of them. How do you choose the ones to use? The first step is to decide on keyword phrases rather than just keywords.

Typically, keyword phrases of two to three words are a better choice than single keywords. Using a phrase makes the search more specific and so fewer sites come up. To take an example, it’s the difference between searching for “frog” and “red-eyed tree frog” on Google. The number of results for “red-eyed tree frog” is just 0.56% of that for “frog.” Phrases can significantly narrow the pool of competition. (Specific keywords are also good for searchers; the more specific the keyword phrase, the more likely they’ll find the page they want.)

How Your Keywords Stack Up

So now you’ve got a list of keyword phrases that might work. Choose the best ones; the ones most relevant to your content and most likely to draw the viewers you want. Then enter them into a search engine and see how the competition stacks up. How many results are pulled up when the keyword phrase is entered into a search engine? The more results, the more competitive the keyword.

Conventional wisdom is that new sites should be optimized for moderately popular keyword phrases. The logic is that it will be hard for a new site to get into the top rankings of a very popular keyword, but that it is possible to get top rankings for a less popular, more targeted keyword. While the volume of people who search for the less popular targeted keyword will be smaller, since the site will rank higher in the more targeted keyword search, it can draw more visitors.

Keyword Use and Placement

Once you have the keywords narrowed down, each page should be optimized for one keyword phrase. The content of the page should be composed with that keyword in mind.

I also had a look into where the keywords should be placed. This is something that clearly changes as search engines change, but common wisdom is that keywords should be placed in:

• Title
• Content Headings (titles and subtitles)
• URLs / file name
• Image alt tag
• Link text, e.g. use “learn more about our cat grooming services” rather than “find out more!”
• Body copy

Depending on who you ask, keyword density in the body copy should be anything between 3 and 20 percent. There are dire warnings on various sites against having either too high or too low a keyword density. While the exact percentage seems to be under debate, the most sensible advice I came across is to write the content so that it reads naturally to humans.

Final Thoughts

Keyword optimization isn’t something that gets done once and then never needs to be updated. Like most things on the web, it requires regular maintenance. Also, search engines change how they index pages over time. What works now, may not work in the future. Keep up to date. Track results. Respond to changes. And look on the bright side, search engine changes are an opportunity to improve your search rankings.

More Information

How to do keyword research and learn what your customers need

Choosing keywords

Simple Rules for Keyword Selection: Self promotional, but they have interesting points

Where To Use Keywords

Keyword Placement: Not All Search Engines Are the Same

The other day when I walked into the YMCA, I noticed something different; there was a bouquet of flowers on the front desk. I went and had a closer look; a florist had left them there, with one flyer identifying the company, as a promotion. I've since been back and the florist changes the flowers regularly; a different bouquet each time and it always looks fresh and beautiful.

This is a brilliant idea. The clients at this particular YMCA are well off and the sort of people who buy luxury items, like flowers, frequently. The positioning is prominent (people have to walk by the flowers every time they come into the gym) and the quality of the flowers is high.

Here's the problem, though. How many people walk into a YMCA with a pen and paper in hand? The florist did not provide anything to take away. I've noticed and admired the flowers many times, but I wouldn't know how to go about ordering from that particular florist (or even be able to say who the florist is).

One simple solution would be to provide a stack of coupons (for perhaps 10% off) beside the flowers that potential customers could take away. The coupon would need to be small &mdash maybe similar to a business card in look and feel &mdash so it could fit inside a pocket or gym bag and would have the phone number, address and URL, as well as the offer.

The placement of the flowers is brilliant. Without something for people to take away, though, I suspect the florist is not getting nearly the results that they might. I know it's an old idea in marketing, but it should always be as easy as possible to become a customer. The fewer barriers there are to a purchase (such as trying to remember the florist's name and then working out how to contact them), the more successful a promotion is likely to be.

Awhile ago I came across a post by Maple Creative that talks about what really sells. They maintain that the ultimate drivers for any marketing piece will always be one of the following: Money, looks, popularity, health and sex.

You can check out the whole article here.

As an undergraduate, I took both a literature and biology degree and then, for a couple years after college, I worked in a lab. The head of the lab told me a story that has stuck with me and, oddly, has been relevant for marketing.

All cells have a molecule called ATP. The cell cannot function without ATP. It is a way for the cell to store energy.

Some scientists were running experiments in which they were adding a solution of ATP to the cells. The solution was purchased from a company and was nearly perfectly pure. The scientists were seeing extremely interesting results. They constructed elegant theories as to how the ATP was interacting with the cells and producing these interesting results.

Then the company came out with a 100% pure solution of ATP. Everyone was very excited and rushed to try this 100% pure ATP solution.

The experiments stopped working.

After, no doubt, much cursing and some additional experiments, the scientists realized the results that they were seeing weren't caused by the ATP but by an impurity in the original solution.

The moral, as a marketer, I derive from this is that the data can be real, but what causes that data is often an extrapolation. In the same way that impurities in the solution tripped up the scientists, something unknown about the audience (or how the data is gathered) can trip up marketers.

(By the way, if anyone thinks this is a back-handed complaint against science or the scientific method, it's not. This story is an example of exactly why science works. The scientists did not rest on their laurels with the almost-pure solution; one set of results did not prove it was "true." They kept testing and ended up with a new insight they would have missed if they had not.)

P.S. Looking over some previously unopened emails from Marketing Experiments Journal, I came across this case study: Optimization Testing Tested. It's a review of test validity for optimizing webpages and looks at some of the ways data can be misleading. Interesting stuff especially as they break down where potential errors could occur.

Recently I learned how to use Photoshop (with help from this tutorial) and started creating mastheads for the site. This in turn made me think about the creative process and how it works. And, perhaps more to the point for this blog, why should a marketer care about how the creative process is performed?

The simplest answer to why a marketer should care is that marketers use a creative process all the time. Generally not to design an email blast layout or logo, but rather to come up with new methods for marketing a product and interpreting data. The results almost never have an aesthetic value, but the method is necessary to constantly improve marketing techniques. The ability to think creatively about new approaches for marketing is critical for success.

While not everyone uses this exact approach, common steps in the creative process are:

1) Research
2) Define the problem in specific terms
3) Create many possible solutions
4) Choose a solution and refine

Research

The research stage can and should happen all the time. It’s a matter of being open to and seeking out ideas and influences, and then making connections, often in new and unexpected ways. Completely new ideas are very rare; generally creativity is simply bringing old ideas together in a novel way. To get new ideas, a designer might visit the local art museum, develop a passion for comic books, or browse the web to see what other people in the field are doing. Marketers might read a book, examine how competitors are marketing their products, or talk to other people in the department. The ways to be exposed to new information are extensive and we’re lucky to live in a time when information is widely available.

Define the Problem

While research is perpetual, problems tend to have a deadline. The first step is to clarify exactly what problem needs to be addressed.

For example, if the webpage needs an overhaul, what exactly does that mean? Does the site need a new look? i.e. a color change and a few graphic switches. Or is the overhaul in response to a usability test and the entire interface needs to be rethought out?

The more specific the question, the easier and more productive the next step will be.

Creating Solutions

Once the problem has crystal-clear clarity, the next step is to create solutions to address the problem. This is when all that research in the first stage comes in handy. More targeted research will probably also need to be done at this stage. What you already know and what you are learning gets thrown at the problem and creative solutions are brought to the surface.

There are many different ways to handle this step. One is simple, old-fashioned brain storming. Get a group of people together who are knowledgeable about the problem, bring in a white board and write up or sketch out any ideas that the group suggests. The brainstorming session should be completely positive; outrageous ideas can suggest novel solutions.

Another technique that I find useful is the aptly named squid sketching. A key word is written in the center of the page, and then related words are written on lines that branch out. This helps to generate new ideas in a structured way. A more complete explanation of squid sketching can be found here.

A list of other creative techniques that can be useful for creating ideas is here.

Choosing a Solution and Refining

Once all the possible solutions have been created, choose one or two and develop them further. This may be an iterative process where the final solution is modified and only arrived at after going through several versions. The iterative process is common; very few people seem to come up with a perfect solution the first time around.

The creative process is very important for anyone involved in the creative side of marketing and it is undoubtedly hard work. This same process can be used by marketers to come up with creative ways to address problems. If you're interested in learning more about the creative process or how to become a more creative person, the links below should be useful.

More Information

10 Steps for Boosting Creativity

What is the Creative Method?

Scientific Creative Methods

All Creative Tools

How to Be Creative

The Financial Times recently ran an article on how problems in the subprime market are likely to affect profits from ads: Internet groups brace for subprime fallout

From the article: "According to data from Nielsen/NetRatings, mortgage lenders Countrywide and Low Rate Source were two of the 10 biggest online advertisers in the US in July."

A creative brief communicates to the creative team exactly what is needed for a project. Ideally creative briefs solidify the goals of the project, give clear direction and provide all pertinent information. This is good for marketers because then they can be sure that the creative team knows exactly what is wanted. It’s good for the creative team for much the same reason.

There are many variations out there on what should be included in a creative brief. This is in part because they get used in so many different contexts. For instance, the creative brief constructed for a new advertising agency would look different than the one put together by marketers for use internally.

Below is a broad outline of what could be included in a creative brief, though it should be modified depending on the exact circumstances of the project.

Information to get started with

This section has basic information that will help orient anyone looking over the creative brief.

Name of the Project
Type of Project (e.g. direct mail)
Project Manager (i.e. the contact for the creative team if there are questions)
Today’s Date
Final Creative Deadline
Drop Date

Background information

Include any background information on the company or the product that will be useful to the creative team.

Audience

How large is the audience? what do we know about them? Be sure to include information about the typical customer. The clearer an idea the creative team has about the audience and the type of prospect you want to reach, the more targeted they can make the creative.

Objective

Why is this piece being put together and what is the goal?

For instance, the objective of this piece may be to reach customers who have left in the last six months and let them know about a new product. Or perhaps it’s to reach current customers and get them to sign up for the new eNewsletter. Any relevant information about specific marketing goals (e.g. a goal of 100 sales) should also be included here.

The message and the tone

What is the one thing you want to communicate with this piece?

What should the prospect / customer take away from this piece? What impression should they be left with?

Budget

How much money is available to spend on this project? (Know this before you talk to the creative team.)

What needs to be produced?

What does the copy writer need to know? How about the designer? What needs to be communicated to the production manager?

How is this different and how is it similar to previous campaigns? Do you want to keep this consistent with previous campaigns or are you looking for a whole new approach?

Are you modifying an old piece or putting together a new one?

What are the components?

Are there previous pieces the copy writer and designer should look at for ideas?

Are there any other specifications the creative team needs to know?

Any additional information

Is there anything else that the creative team needs to know that you’ve not included elsewhere in the brief? Is there anything that needs to be re-iterated?

Timeline

When is the first draft due? the second? When does this have to be absolutely and completely done by? Remember to leave in time for internal approvals.

Additional Information

Writing a Creative Brief from elise.com

Briefs from the fruits of imagination

The Creative Brief... Usually It's Neither from ClickZ

How to Write a Good Creative Brief from Bytestart

Advertising Age published an article today which looked, with some skepticism, at using neuroscience techniques on focus groups: Hidden Persuasion or Junk Science?

One of the underlying problems with the type of neuromarketing described in the article seems to be that there is some confusion about how science works and how that relates to marketing.

Good science works by a scientist running carefully designed experiments, analyzing data, running more experiments and writing up a paper. The scientist then submits the paper to a journal which may or may not accept it. The paper is reviewed by peers before it is published and revisions are made. Once it's published, if the research is interesting or important enough, other scientists will try to reproduce it. In other words, the data is questioned all along the way.

To take a neuroscience technique, use it on a small focus group, and then conclude this indicates how consumers are going to respond is not science. It uses a scientific technique that may give interesting and useful information. The data, though, is not coming under much scrutiny or testing and so can be very misleading.

From the article:

"Indeed, in the view of some neuroscientists and marketing researchers, the notion that the human brain should be studied in isolation is deeply flawed to begin with. Measuring the brain's reaction to a TV spot simply does not provide enough data to extrapolate future behavior. Studying how a person interacts within the larger culture is far more important.

"There are many other constraints outside the brain that make us act the way we do," said John Winsor, VP-director of the cognitive and cultural radar department in Crispin Porter & Bogusky's Boulder, Colo., office. ...

"For example, Mr. Winsor said, does it make a difference if a test subject's brain lights up while viewing a Hummer ad in Boulder, where "you feel guilty if you don't drive a Prius, or where my parents live, in Cody, Wyo., where the norm is to drive a pickup truck?"

"There are other factors that control how we are going to interact, and culture is a big one," he added. "

While neuroscience techniques applied to a focus group may provide some valuable insights, this approach should be taken with a grain of salt.

Direct mail is not cool. It’s not hip. Web 2.0 and viral marketing are much hipper. But direct mail can still be a successful marketing channel. What follows are general observations based on my own experience and gleaned from other sources. The focus is on direct mail that includes a letter, but some of these ideas can be carried over to any direct mail piece.

Where to Start

The first step is to formalize what you want out of the campaign, how you will achieve it, and how results will be tracked.

Once that is clear, it's worth looking at the cost. Direct mail tends to be fairly expensive to produce and mail out. Make sure that the direct mail campaign can be justified financially. Some common costs include printing and mailing, as well as the cost of the creative from the advertising agency and charges for list purchases, etc.

Mailing List

A targeted mailing list is critical to the success of a direct mail campaign. The more targeted the list, the better the result per mailed piece. So the questions to ask are: Who would buy this product? How can I reach them?

To take a simple example, the market for surf boards is probably pretty minimal in landlocked Idaho. In southern California, though, there are surfing beaches aplenty. Geographical targeting for people who have access to surfable ocean would be a first step. After that, the next step would be to look at how you can reach them. For instance, who can you purchase a list from? One possible list source would be a surfing specialty magazine.

It’s also generally worth leveraging your current customer list. Current customers may not know about the product you want to promote, or they may need reminding. They are potentially a great segment to mail to.

The more refined the list, the better the results on a per mailed piece basis. However, in order to construct a successful targeted list, you need a clear idea of who will respond well to what you're marketing.

Customer’s Reaction

The customers’ reactions are critical to the success of the campaign. If the outside envelope doesn't grab the customer, straight into the garbage the piece will go. If the copy or offer don’t appeal, you’ll never hear back.

Since this is a fairly broad topic and contains ideas about copy, design, the offer and the call to action I’ve divided it up into subgroups. Even then, I’ve only covered some of the more frequently canvassed ideas about what is successful in direct mail.

Copy
One of the advantages of targeted lists is that you know who you’re sending to and hopefully have a pretty good idea of what will appeal to them. Keep this in mind when putting together the copy. Focus on the benefits of the product and why the customer would be interested in buying the product. Including a P.S. that re-states the offer can also be an effective addition.

Creating a sense of urgency can improve response rates. For instance, give the recipient a certain timeline in which to reply. Without a sense of urgency, the letter may be left to gather dust.

Most marketers seem to lean toward copy that is concise, with short sentences, short paragraphs, and bullet points. What works, though, will vary depending on the audience.

Design
The outside envelope is critical. It’s your opportunity to make a first impression. At a glance, recipients will decide if the letter is something to keep, or rip up and throw in the trash. Give the recipient a compelling reason to open the letter.

The design should also draw attention to the offer, as that is one of the driving forces behind getting people to respond.

Offer
The offer is an incentive for the customer to buy the product, sign up for the service, fill out the survey, etc. For instance, if they buy the product, then the offer might be that you’ll send them a blender. Or, if it’s a service, the offer might be a credit on their bill. As with the copy, the offer needs to be tailored to the recipients so that it appeals to them.

The higher the perceived value of the offer, generally speaking the more effective it will be. However, this needs to be weighed against the value of the customer. For instance if the customer value is $100, an offer that costs you $105 won’t make sense.

Call to Action
All direct mail mail should include a call to action. It’s worth including this in more than one location in the mailing. The call to action should be simple for the recipient to follow through on, and it also needs to be crystal clear what the next step is. The response also needs to be tracked so the profitability of and response to the campaign can be analyzed.

General
Put yourself on the mailing list. Make sure you receive all versions of the mailing that goes out.

Analysis

Once you get the results back, run an analysis. Was the response rate what you expected? Was this campaign profitable? If so, by how much? Did one test version outperform the others? What are you going to test next? Who are you going to send it to?

More Information

Designing Strong Direct Mail Letters

Tips For A Successful Direct Mail Campaign

WHEN IT'S OK TO USE BAD GRAMMAR

28 design tips to improve the effectiveness of your advertising and direct mail

Direct Mail Formats

7 Sure-Fire Tips to Direct Mail Success

Target Marketing

Online Media Daily has a news article about why viral campaigns are not working as well as was hoped: Viral Campaigns Falling Short, Says Jupiter Research. According to the research, only 15% of the campaigns achieved the goal of getting the marketers' message to go viral.

(I found this article via a post on Seth Godin's blog.)

The success of a marketing piece depends in part on the design. This encompasses not only the correct placement of information (which is what marketers typically worry about) but also the overall aesthetic of the piece.

Good design demands good ideas whether they come from the designer, the marketer or the CEO. Good ideas don’t appear out of nowhere: they come from things we’ve read and seen, new and old; they’re the product of research and reflection; and when they’re ready, they’re eventually shared and revised.

With that first step in mind — what we see and read — I decided to continue writing about design and art in this blog. Art Nouveau is an obvious place to start as one of its big successes was with an ad.

In 1894 an artist called Alphonse Mucha was commissioned to produce a poster to advertise the play Gismonda, starring the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt. Mucha produced an Art Nouveau poster with subtle, pastel colors, an elongated figure, and ornate decoration. The poster was a huge success and demand for it soared. It helped to launch Mucha's career and led to a profitable working relationship between Mucha and Bernhardt. I’ve included an image of the Gismonda poster; other works by Mucha can be found at ArtMagick.

While Art Nouveau was current from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, its popularity has held on. It came into being at a time when mass-produced, and often ugly, consumer goods first began to fill marketplaces. The Art Nouveau style can be read as the artists’ reaction to these goods. The idea was that even purely functional items should be influenced by the decorative arts and made to be beautiful.

The style was characterized by organic, flowing lines and often incorporated plant-inspired motifs from nature. Figures are generally elongated and the female form and face are frequently represented. Examples of the Art Nouveau style can be found here, and there are additional links under More Information below.

While Art Nouveau is extremely attractive, I am not suggesting that all marketing materials should use Art Nouveau-inspired design. However, if you’re trying to come up with new marketing ideas for a product that Art Nouveau would lend itself to, it might be worth looking up some old images for fresh inspiration.

Final Words

In previous posts I wrote about the elements and principals of design, which are the building blocks of design. This is useful information for marketers because it helps explain why designers make the choices that they do. It also produces much better results when you can say to a designer something like “The balance is off; it’s too heavily weighted to the right” rather than “This looks wrong.” The first gives the designer something to work with; the second will get a blank look.

If you’re interested in a quick refresher about this basic information, the posts can be found by following the links:

A Vocabulary Lesson: Design Elements

Principles of Design

More Information

An Introduction to the Work of Alphonse Mucha and Art Nouveau

art nouveau to art deco: Article with photographs of art nouveau pieces

ArtMagick: Alfons Mucha (Czech, 1860-1939): Images of Alfons Mucha works

Art Nouveau from Wikipedia

MarketingSherpa had an entertaining post the other day about an unfortunate URL. The placeholder URL — vanityurl.com — wasn't replaced before the piece went to print. The writer of the post over at MarketingSherpa keeps a fairly light tone, but she underscores how critical it is to check URLs.

I wanted to add my two cents in here as I've had a similar experience. A company unexpectedly shut down a 1-800 number for a piece after it had gone to print. Fortunately, we managed to get the number up and running again.

We all know this, but it's worth checking and double checking all methods by which customers can respond, whether it's entering a URL or calling a number. If the customer can't follow through on the call to action, the piece isn't going to be successful.