Sunday, June 19, 2011

Customer Purchase Decision Making Process Part 2

Another important factor we have identified in the customer purchase making process is the attitudes and dispositions they develop about your brand.

If there is a negative emotional judgment made about an aspect of your brand there are several ways you can change this to positively influence your prospects.

First is to focus on the authority figures who can influence your prospects attitude. Things such as Consumer magazines, celebrities, government and consumer advocacy groups can positively influence your prospect.


You also want to deconstruct the underlying reasons why a prospect is motivated to buy your brand and then analyze anything getting in the way of making a purchase.


You can also use the AIDA formula to help understand what psycho-emotional process your customer is going through.


AIDA stands for...


Attention
Interest
Desire
Action


Generally these stages occur in order. First capturing your prospects attention, getting them interested in what you have to offer, building desire for your product, and finally getting them to take an action.


There are other behavior models for how a consumer may move to a purchase which you should consider when evaluating your marketing.


The Think-Feel-Do model is another process for how purchase decisions are made. The interesting thing about the TFD model is that it is not linear.


Customers may feel first, do, then think. Or feel, then think, then do. Which order a prospect takes is usually dependent upon the type of purchase;


For transactions with higher risk, or areas where the prospect has less confidence, they are more likely to take a think first approach.

With areas of a low perceived risk  or where the prospect holds more confidence, they are likely to follow feeling first.

For example you do not read the ingredients list and spend 5 minutes analyzing the merits of various soft drink brands. Instead you just go with what you feel like having.


Saturday, June 18, 2011

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs


This is Maslows famous pyramid of psychological needs. We can define a need as something a person feels that they must have. The lower you go on the pyramid, the more powerful the desire is.

However in todays society the lower parts of the pyramid are generally able to be fulfilled very easily - so most marketing efforts are focused on the higher levels of the pyramid.

Which area do you think you could most effectively use to sell your products or services and strengthen your brand?

Customer Purchase Decision Making Process Part 1

There are many factors to consider which affect your customers decision making process.

In this series we will go in depth into how your customers make their purchase decisions - and how to influence them to choose your products over your competitiors.

So the question is, what affects consumer purchase decisions? One of the things we know that affects it is community. Your customers are a part of a larger social group.

The thoughts, ideas, and feelings of this larger group context have a powerful impact on what decisions your customer makes.

Marketing programs seek to connect their brands with a community of other brand advocates.

Organizations such as Ferrari have strong insular cultures where owners are friends with one another, belong to special clubs and receive brand messages both as a community and as individuals.

We have also found that influence from family and friends can have a powerful effect over a consumers decision making process. Publicity and word-of-mouth campaigns can be extremely effective at tipping a purchase decision in your favour.

We also see influencer's in the consumers life which can alter their attitudes towards a brand. This sphere of influence includes people personally involved in the consumers life and also public figures and authorities.

Its important to understand the people who are capable of influencing the decisions of your target market - then actively using those influencer's to help generate favorable opinions of your brand in your prospects.

You must also remember that prospects are influenced by those they do not want to be like.

Endorsements from a negative or undesirable source can hurt your brand reputation and negatively affect the decision to purchase.


Customer Reactions To Your Marketing

Understanding how & why your customer reacts to your marketing promotions is an invaluable asset for any company. In this post we will attempt to dissect this process to help you gain higher profits.

The first step is understanding your core audience, knowing who you are talking to and how they react to different messages.

Different prospects will respond to different marketing approaches, knowing what ways your prospect will react to different marketing messages is the role of a marketer.

Its also important to integrate this into customer retention. Using brand reminders to keep your brand at the top of your customers mind and increase the lifetime value of your customers.

Do not assume your customers will simply keep buying from you "just because." You must proactively maintain your brand in your customers mind if you are to keep their business.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Brand Interaction

Any point that your customers interact with your brand is important. Every interaction adds to the customers perception of the brand.

There are also "key interactions" which have a very strong impact on customer loyalty. In your company you must identify the key interactions which take place that make or break your customer relationship. This could be order fulfillment, customer service, sales, etc.

Here is the criteria you can use to identify these points:

  1. 1-10 Impact on brand loyalty
  2. 1-10 Ability to influence the interaction
  3. 1-10 Cost to improve interaction
  4. 1-10 Ability to deliver positive brand messages
 You need to pay attention to several different areas of customer-brand interaction. These are

  • Company solicited interaction (such as advertisements)
  • Interactions required to make a purchase
  • Interactions with the brand outside of company control
  • Customer solicited interaction (for example customer service)
 Company solicited interaction is easy to control.

The interactions required to make a purchase are more difficult. They may involve third parties. What you should do for these interactions is map out all the stages a customer must go through from beginning to end to make a purchase.

Then analyze each of these interactions to evaluate what kind of brand messages are being sent. 

Find ways to innovate and differentiate yourself at these interactions. Use your brand message to develop more powerful ways of delivering value to your customers. 

Interactions outside of company control can involve word of mouth, bad press, etc. Good public relation management is the key to success in these interactions.


Brand Communication

In communication theory we have a 6 step model to refer to for how communication works

As you can see we have 6 steps outlined in this chart. The first stage is the source.

Source

The source is the source of the message, the company or person behind what is being said.

One important key to how your customer recieves your communication is how trustworthy it percieves the source.

The more credibility and authority a source has in the customers mind, the more positively they will recieve the message.

The more your customers trust your brand the less skeptical they will be when recieving your messages and the easier it is to be judged favorably.

You want to provide proof and reasons why your company will fulfill all its promises.

Message

The next step in our communication process is the message itself. A message is not just what you put in an advertisement or in your emails.

Messages are anything and everything that a customer sees as related to your brand. From the time it takes for the delivery company to how long your customer is on hold for at customer service.

You must constantly be on the alert for what types of messages are being sent by your organization. A failure to do so could result in far lower ROI. One negative message hurt hundreds of positive brand messages.

Pay attention to identifying messages being sent which are inconsistent with your brand. Everything a company does and even what it fails to do is a message, you must manage these messages to maintain a strong brand.

Also think about the types of messages which are being sent by the image and appearance of your product. Think about the message the imagery of the IPhone sends.

You also want to pay attention to the brand messages sent by the four P's of marketing:

Think about the message sent when you raise or lower the price of your product.

Price can be used to make your product stand out from the competition.

We have found that the lower the price of a product, the more average it is percieved by consumers.

Pricing must be integrated with your brnd messages. When trying to determine your pricing, keep in mind what kind of messages you are sending.

Furthermore we see differences in brand messages based off of where your product is displayed.

If you take a piece of art from the sidewalk, put it in a gold frame and place it in an expensive gallery - the same piece of artwork now has a dramatically different message its sending.

Keep in mind what you are associating your products with when you choose the place to show your products.

Channel

Finally remember that in your marketing promotions, it is not just what you say in the promotion - but the way you present that message that affects its perception.

Just as you can show the same piece of artwork in a high end gallery in a beautiful frame or on the sidewalk - so too can you display your messages in ways that strengthen or weaken your customers perception of your brand.

From which magazines you choose to put your ads in to the layout and design, everything will affect your brands overall message, not just the advertisement itself.

Next in our first drawing we have the channels. Which channel you choose affects the message. Putting your franchise offer in a small biz op magazine sends a different message than putting it in Forbes.

Remember you are associating your brand with whatever channel you use.

Next, lets talk about noise going on in the environment. All of your marketing messages are subjected to distractions and influences on your customer.

Its hard at times for your customers to maintain attention to your brand messages. They are being bombarded by messages. So under these circumstances its important to keep your brand messages very consistent and easy to remember.

Inconsistency, changing messages, or lack of clarity only confuses your reader and weakens brand messages.

You should also pay attention to what your competitors are saying right now, where, and how they are saying it.

Monitoring this will help keep you up-to-date on marketplace influences that could be changing your customers interpretation of your brand messages.

Reciever

When considering how your reader will respond to your message, you must take their past experiences into account. Past experiences and evaluations make up for future evaluations.


Its important to understand your market and how they will recieve your message. Will they be open to it? Will they be skeptical? What frame of mind does your reader recieve your brand in?

Also how your message is recieved is influenced by what is going on with them in the moment. If they are thirsty, an ad for Coca Cola may get much more attention than if they just finished a meal.

One approach you can take to help ensure your message is understood clearly is through the use of the three T's.

Tell them something
Tell them what you told them
Tell them that you told them

What this basically means is you give your reciever the same message in multiple ways. This helps to reduce the confusion created in recieving an advertising message.

Another way marketers strengthen the force and clarity of their messages is through multiple channels and an integrated approach to marketing where all messages are consistently communicating the same idea.

This helps to get through to the prospect.

When crafting your messages, its helpful to apply the KISS rule. Keep It Simple, Salesman! You want to keep your messages, clear, simple, easy to remember, and persuasive to your target audience.

It is also important to ensure your message is setting clear expectations for what your reciever can expect from the product or service. Unrealistic expectations created the messages decoded by the reciever weakens brand relationships.

Tracking and managing customer perceptions is one of the most important keys to successful brand management.

Feedback

Feedback is consumer and marketplace response. It tells us if the messages sent have been effective and if they have been recieved clearly.

When we see an increase in sales, and customer interaction, we see positive feedback for the brand. We also find delayed feedback where sales build over time as a result of brand awareness.

Its important to ensure your messages are being recieved clearly and that they are resulting in the desired responses from your target audience. This is the key to building successful marketing campaigns.

4 Ways To Raise Your Brands Value

There are four aspects you can focus on to increase the strength and ROI from your brand. These are:

  1. Brand awareness
  2. Percieved quality
  3. Association
  4. Customer Loyalty
 By paying attention to these four areas, and finding where your company is weakest in - you can raise the value and ROI you receive from branding.

The "Share Of Wallet" Concept

Many people are familiar with the 80/20 principle in marketing. Which is that 80% of your revenues will come from about 20% of your customer base.

However, there is another concept which you can use to help increase your profitability. This is whats known as "share of wallet."

Share of wallet is what percentage of a customers spending in your product cataloger is spent on your company. Think of it this way. You offer health and wellness products. Your customer is a devoted health enthusiast.

They spend on average $25 a week on products from your company. They also spend $13 a week on company B, and $31 a week on company C.

This means the total spending by this customer is $69 per week, of which you have a $25 share of wallet or 36%.

By analyzing your customers spending habits and devising ways to increase your brands share of wallet - you can increase your company profits.

Shifting From Customer Acquisition to Customer Retention

One important shift to take which is often neglected online is moving from acquiring new customers to retaining your current customers.

Its about basing your businesses revenue off an existing set of loyal customers instead of acquiring new customers.

Our research has shown that repeat sales account for approximately 70% of the average businesses revenue. That means only 30% of your revenue is probably going to come from new customer acquisition over the long term.

However the fallacy that most businesses make is focusing their efforts and advertising dollars on acquiring new customers -- instead of strengthening the relationship with their current customers.

Of course in the beginning when you have no customers you must acquire them.

However it is important to be ready to make the shift to focusing primarily on retention instead of acquisition to strengthen your marketing.

Retention is often less expensive and makes more liberal use of mediums such as customer service, rewards programs, and other low cost retention strategies.

Furthermore selling to your existing customer base is less expensive than acquiring a new customer, so your profits are also higher.

You must purposely create and manage your relationships with your customers.

You can take everything away from a company and it can still succeed as long as you do not take away its customers.

Employees can be replaced, buildings can be rebuilt, but without customers you do not have an enterprise.

Your goal in managing your customer relationships is to increase customer loyalty. Think of it as a scale

Not loyal at all ------------> Intensely loyal

What you want to do is move your customers as far as you can from the left end of the spectrum over to the right end.

One of the ways you can do this is through the creation of customer communities.

These are deliberately designed communities of your customers that create a social aspect to your business, and raises the loyalty.

For example if you sold cereal you could create a breakfast club where parents and children could meet up and play games along with sampling the lastest creations from Kellogs.

This is one of many ways you can apply communities to your brand.


Thursday, June 16, 2011

What Affects Customer Loyalty?

The more loyal your customers are to your company, the easier it is for you to maintain a profit. What we have found is there are several common factors which strongly relate to customer loyalty:

Commitment - Your client wants to know that you are putting them first. That your not going to lie, cheat, or manipulate them to get their money. The best way to serve your customers is to put their needs ahead of your own (so long as it does not become a cost center).

When you do what is best for your customer instead of only what is best for the company, you gain intense loyalty and ultimately win in the marketplace. We see this right now with Google who is putting its customer experience ahead of its own advertising profits.

Response - Every company is going to run into problems. Eventually in your customer relationship, your company is going to make an error. What matters is how does your company respond and handle this error.

You can turn a negative customer experience into a way of strengthening your brand by demonstrating how effectively your company deals with customer problems and complaints. Demonstrate outstanding service to your customers.

Consistency - You want to be consistent in your product, service and in your brand positioning. If you recall an earlier post where we talked about McDonalds.

When you go to McDonalds you know exactly what the food will taste like, what the service will be like, how much it will cost, etc. McDonalds may not be winning any awards for culinary excellence but they are extremely consistent at delivering what they promise. This is one of the reasons for their dominance in the fast food industry.

Branding Part 3 of 3: Image

This is our third part in the three part series on branding. In this final series we are going to talk about brand image.

What is a brand image? It is the impression about your brand that a customer has which is created by brand messages and experiences.

Customers impression of your company = brand messages + experiences

What you want to do is deliberately create a favorable impression on your prospective customers and manage that impression for higher profits.

Next, we are going to discuss multi-tier branding: This is where you create a brand and several sub-brands to further strengthen you position in the marketplace.

For example if you have a online publishing company, you can brand the company as X. Then lets say you have a series of products about golfing you release, you can brand all of these products as Y. Further you can brand each individual product as their own individual brand.

This helps to build brand strength. We see examples of this with Apple. We have Apple, IPad, IPhone, IPod, etc.

This use of multi-tier branding helps to differentiate your products in the marketplace. Furthermore it acts as a way of strengthening your brand as each product adds to the brand value of all the other products.

Its important to always remember that a successful brand is really a relationship between a customer and a company.

What you want to focus on is building long term trust. Simply going after the sale can weaken your company in the long run. If you manipulate or decieve your customers, you are going to lose your customers.

Furthermore they will tell other people negative stories about your brand. Finally you will eventually lose market share to companies who think long-term. If one company is just going after the sale, they may initially have higher profits.

However when you look at the lifetime customer value the company who develops trust has a much lower customer acquisition cost and makes more money off each customer.

So not only does it cost less for a company who develops trust to acquire a new customer, but they also make far more money off each customer they acquire.

This is a deadly combination in any marketplace that allows long term brands to stomp companies who only think short term.


Branding Part 2 of 3: Identification

This is the second of the three part series on branding.

You now need to choose a name for your brand. Your choice of a brand name must reflect the position you want your brand to take. Several important keys to remember when developing your brand name and logo are:

  • Strive for a Brand name which is easy to remember, and a brand logo that is very distinct.
  • Try using customer surveys and focus groups to get feedback on your ideas for brand logos and names

In addition here are some key elements you may want to communicate in your brand name:

  • Benefits - Incorporating a benefit directly into your brand name
  • Unique - Picking something completely off-the-wall that is very distinct from your competitors (example Amazon for the name of an online bookstore)
  • Association - Choose names that represent ideas you want associated with your brand
  • Simple - Names that are very simple and easy to remember, short and easy to pronounce
 

Branding Part 1 of 3: Positioning

This post is part of a 3 part series about developing a new brand. The first step is whats called positioning.

Positioning is how you position your companys brand relative to the other competitors in your marketplace.

Your customers compare your brand to other brands, and its up to you to strategically determine how you will position your brand for the best evaluation by your customers.

The ideal position is one which can be delivered by the product or service and is highly appealing to your core audience.

There are several approaches you can take when determining a position:

Image

With this approach you want to create associations with your product. You create a differentiating image for your company. 

Category

This type of positioning is where you base it off of generic features which all competitors share but have not talked about in their advertising. This is particularly useful in industries where competitors sell commodity type products. 

Benefit

This is where you emphasize the benefits your customer will enjoy as a result of using your products. We define benefits as, something that fulfills a need or desire, that your customer has. 

Unique Product Approach

This is where you take features of your product and use it to differentiate yourself in your market. For example Apple provides highly functional and beautiful technology that is innovative and easy to use. Facebook offers a different social experience than MySpace.


Fulfilling Customer Expectations

One of the powerful aspects of relationship marketing and branding is that it sets customer expectations. You know exactly what to expect when you enter into a McDonalds.

You know what the food will taste like, what you can buy, approximately how much it will cost, what the service will be like, etc. It is this consistency which makes McDonalds such a powerful force in the fast food industry.

Your customers have certain sets of expectations based off what your brand stands for, what it communicates and past experiences.

It is important that your company is consistent with your brand message. You need to maintain the same brand promise overtime and deliver upon it to develop a brand.

When delivering a brand promise, it is important that it is one you can actually deliver to your customers. Offering unrealistic or false brand promises weakens your brand and can lose you customers very fast.

If you have to choose, its better to set customer expectations low and impress them with outstanding value than it is to set customer expectations high and disappoint them.

How To Create Your Brands Meaning

What a Brand means is really determined by the experiences a customer has with everything associated with that brand.

These experiences, either positive or negative, make up the thoughts and emotions a customer has about your brand. Customer experience is crucial to building a successful brand.

If your customers consistently have positive experiences with your brand, then it gains power and force in the minds of your clients.

This is one of the key reasons behind the success of Starbucks. Instead of focusing on traditional advertising, Starbucks emphasized customer service and their retail environment.

This created a powerful, positive experience for Starbucks customers that kept them coming back time and time again.

A brand takes a product and turns it into something more. A product goes from being a simple physical object to having a personality, identity, and meanings.

Studies have shown people even evaluate identical products as being superior when one product is associated with a well known brand.


This is the value behind the brand. You can take a simple physical product and when people know its associated with a well known and liked brand, they are willing to pay more for it, evaluate it as being superior and are more likely to buy.


Mastering the "Intangible Assets" of your Brand for Higher Profits

When you are establishing and communicating your companies brand it is important to remember that it is the intangible attributes of your brand which give it massive value.

What is Coca Cola? Sugar, water, and some flavoring.

Yet, this simple combination is the product behind one of the most powerful marketing forces on earth. Why? Because the value of the Coca Cola company is not just from its core product but from the relationships it has established with its customers and the associations people have about Coke in their minds.

Coca Cola has a powerful connection to its customers hearts and minds. It is this connection which gives it billions of dollars in sales every year. Here are some attributes you can focus on to increase the value your company gets from your brand:
  • Value
  • Image
  • Role Performance (example, successful people wear Rolex, Armani, etc.)
Keep these in mind when delivering your marketing communications and remember they are often more important than the simple physical attributes of your product or service

Building Stronger Brands

Building strong brands is based off a solid foundation.

This is often achieved through the use of a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). A powerful promise which is unique and cannot be easily promised by another company.

We see that great companies often persue an ideal. The USP is a part of the company, not just the advertising but it is integrated into the core of the companies philosophy. It is communicated to all employees, it is endorsed by top management and the entire organization moves to deliver this unique, powerful form of value to the client.

Top Brands and their respective companies do not just make a promise. They make the most powerful, compelling promise they can deliver upon. They consistently deliver this promise and base themselves upon a single idea that is communicated to the customer at all times.

You must remember that your brand is basically a customers perception of your business, and you must get the strongest, most compelling perception in your market place if you want to become the dominant force in your industry.

Marketing Mediums To Build Your Business

As discussed in the previous post there are many ways you can promote your business through marketing. The best approach we have found is through a multiple channel approach. The use of many different communication mediums can result in a powerful net effect on your potential customers and existing clients.

Here are some of the most commonly used mediums in modern marketing:

1. Advertising

Perhaps the best known form of marketing is advertising. Using paid forms of media communications has created some of the largest and most successful corporations in America.

It has literately built some companies from nothing. Billions of dollars in sales have been generated through the proper application of advertising.

2. Direct Marketing

One of the most immediate forms of marketing is direct marketing. This is where your advertising seeks to solicit an immediate response from your prospects or current customers.

Typically in direct marketing the consumer is buying directly through the manufacturer instead of through a middleman. The advantages include immediate feedback from your marketplace about your advertising - as well as better cash flow.

3. Publicity

The "free" form of advertising. Some of the advantages of publicity are the very low cost associated with it, and the very high ROI you can get. Publicity is simply hard to control, you cant just demand to get 500,000 people to watch your ad like you can with advertising.

However, publicity is an extremely valuable marketing tool which allows you to take advantage of third-party credibility to build your brand messages. It also allows you to potentially get large amounts of exposure for relatively small amounts of money. 

4. Personal Sales Representatives

This can also be an extremely profitable field to add to your business. The use of qualified sales professionals can add large amounts of sales to a business, at a healthy profit.

There are many approaches you can take such as direct sales (where the salesperson approaches the company or customer), telemarketing (selling through the telephone, and service based sales where customer service reps are trained in sales to boost company profits. 

5. Packaging

A package doesn't just hold your goods. It also conveys information to your customers. When you are designing how you will package and present your goods - you must think about how your customer will perceive your brand as a result of your packaging.

There are many tactics which have worked well in the past to boost sales through packaging. Using unusual or attention grabbing packaging has helped many products to succeed. Also beautiful packaging has proven effective for luxury brands and even technology companies like Apple.

6. Sponsorship

Creating events and sponsoring activities are designed to engage customers in your brand and get you publicity. You can also sponsor people you want to associate your brands with, this is a very popular strategy that has worked well for companies such as Nike.

Even if you do not have a large budget you can still take advantage of sponsorship - you can support up and coming athletes, musicians, artists, or whoever you wish to associate with your brand who may be in need of a extra money and will happily endorse your products for a relatively minor amount of money.


The Four P's

There are four P's in marketing which you should be aware of, these are known as:

Product
Price
Place
Promotion

These four P's make up your marketing communications. We are seeing a shift in the advertising world which is moving away from soley relying upon traditional advertising to promote these P's.

Instead we are seeing a multi-channel approach which uses various media to create a more effective advertising campaign. Companies are using public relations, packaging, in-store personnel, and more to further improve the effectiveness of their advertising.

In your marketing communications and advertising, you must communicate these four P's to your customers. It is my recommendation that you use multiple channels to contact your prospects & customers.

If a customer sees your brand in their morning newspaper, then hears about your company in a radio interview on their way to work, and gets an email from you while checking their email -- you will be at the top of their mind and strengthen your brands position as opposed to putting all resources into only one media.

What is a Brand?

When you think about Coca Cola, Amazon, Google, or Walmart, what do you think of?

Like the majority of people, when you hear these names, or see their logos, you have a set of ideas and emotions which come to mind about the company. Perhaps you have pictures you see in your minds eye about a particular brand.

The power of a Brand is that it has a position in the minds of its prospects and clients. Brands exist inside the hearts and minds of your customers. Many people think that branding is about images or logos, but always remember that the real power of a brand is that people feel a certain way towards a brand. Without those feelings about a brand, the logos are worthless. Its important to keep in mind when branding:


Everything your company does, in every form of communication, affects its brand.

This means that everything from order fulfillment to customer service is a part of your branding and your message. If any one of these points fail - you affect the impact of your brand and its value. Your brand is really a relationship between you and your customer. If you fail to keep a happy relationship with your customer, your brand has a negative impact.

It also important that you communicate to your customers how they will benefit from your brand. Paint pleasing word pictures, show images or videos of the benefits, as well as what consequences they will face if they do not buy your brand.

When branding it should be clear in your customers mind how much your products cost, and where they can get them when they are ready to purchase.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Shifts In Advertising

In the past it was a simple set of messages used in advertising. Here are the benefits of buying our product, buy now.

However nowadays companies have moved beyond the simple model of hard selling customers and are looking to build relationships with their clients. Instead of calculating how much money is made per transaction - companies are looking at the lifetime value of a client.

By focusing on creating customer relationships instead of one-shot sales, companies are creating new levels of performance and long-term success by taking a global view in the marketing-sales process.


New Trends To Develop In The Online Sales Process

As I wrote about earlier, I believe you will see new trends developing in online copywriting, becoming more long term and a part of a multi-stage sales process.

I want to further touch upon this point. Here is a new sales model which may bring about greater ROI.


Customer is unaware of the company ->

Discovery of company or product through word-of-mouth, publicity, or third-party information ->

Seeking out information from the company ->

Company delivers valuable educational information ->

Deepening of relationship with the customer through multiple "touch points" such as social media, email, blogging, and forum marketing ->

"Soft sell" of products to customer ->

Customer retention and loyalty is emphasized

I believe this will be apart of a future trend online where you see companies taking a longer term approach, strengthening customer relationships and increasing loyalty. I believe that customer loyalty and the creation of "brand cults" will enable powerful new online enterprises to take over from traditional "traffic" based websites which rely on third party sources.

Instead this new model relies on the relationship between the company and the customer. Instead of the relationship between the company and Adwords or DoubleClick. Word of Mouse will become more powerful as the internet matures and markets begin to buy based off of quality instead of price. Online luxury shopping will further develop as a method of convience and obtaining hard-to-get products which may have otherwise been unpurchasable.

Innovations in customer service and online customer experience will further enable the retail industry to develop online as new technological innovations improves the customer shopping experience vs traditional retail shopping

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Future of Online Copywriting

Where is copywriting going nowadays? I think you will see several trends develop as copywriting matures online:

1. The development of trust based copywriting. Just as google is relying more and more on authority sites, I believe we will see further trends towards social accountability and trust based copywriting. I believe this will be done using authority and third-party sites which validate the claims in a piece of copy and further lend believability to the advertising

2.  Media-rich advertising. More multimedia integration to further strengthen the sales presentation using video, audio, images and offline campaign integration to create a full sensory experience to capture an increasingly impatient audience.

3. Multi-step copywriting. Given the way the internet is developing I think you will see copywriting and marketing become further integrated with traditional salesletters becoming more obsolete. I think you will start to see copywriters approaching a sale as a multi-stage process, because it traditionally produces higher conversion rates.

We may see trends such as email and salesletter integration develop further with the copywriter and marketers planning out an entire multi-step psychological plan for motivating prospects to buy using social media, email, video, multiple websites and more to garner commitment and psychological currency over would-be prospects.