I listened to a session today by Wolfgang Allisat from Omniture. It was an ok talk, most of which I’ve heard before. He said a couple of truths however, that my mood really felt like hearing. You all reading this blog post probably know this already, but I feel like I need to say it.

I am unsure of the nature of the relation, but supposedly there is a 80:1 relationship on how much money companies spend on marketing for people to visit their website and how much they spend on actually converting them when they get there. That’s a sick relationship right? That’s like going to the pub, putting on the best behavior, being generous, hitting on the most beautiful girl at the place and getting her to come with you home, only for you to live in a dirty shack where your skidding tracked boxers are laying there in the hallway, there is hair all over the toilet and long hairs in different color all over the bed. IDIOTIC if you want to get laid right? So why do we behave exactly like that when it comes to money spend and the web?

We spend millions to get the users to come over, and when they do, we just don’t give a crap what they do. We’re acting like we don’t care if we get closure or not. We got them there! YEY… let’s report an increase in visitors to top management and smile. Is the traffic qualified? Well, that’s not the point… right? eehh… 80:1.. my god.. the business really needs a proper bump on its perspective.

What we buy is what we get

We buy banners or engage in viral word-of-mouth activities. We’re displaying ads that cover the entire white house or land a jumbo jet in a gigantic bowl of pop corn just to get the attention of the people around us. We make friends with them through the best kind of chit chat and evolve together with our customers. We listen and take care of them. BUT, when they are ready to buy –> we just don’t give a f**k.

That is what this relationship is telling us. 80 dollars on advertising, 1 dollar on conversion. We should be ashamed. I say We as I am in the middle of all of that. I want people to spend money on social media, SEO and other activities to draw people to buying their stuff. After seeing these numbers in front of me I am considering dropping the social media and SEO completely to focus my activities on what I am really the best at, namely making engaged people buy stuff.

Stop selling people, that’s not where your focus should be

Another of the speakers, Steen Rasmussen, put words to where corporations go wrong these days. “They try to sell stuff online.” That is soooooo true. Why are we trying to sell stuff online? We all know it doesn’t work. The only thing that works is “enabling people to buy stuff” online, which was Steen’s punch line. However cheesy those two phrases are when put together, they are surely clear enough for a kid to grasp them.

SEO, a perfect way to meet the searcher in the search engine result page. Engagement in social media is absolutely crucial if you want some check on what people expect of your company. But to go from that to not care about what they do when they get to the website. Well that’s just plain stupid. Are you stupid? I guess you are, cause most of us are.

And I already know this, why do I react?

Now, today’s news was really no news to me. It fit my mood, and so I got pissed off enough to get inspired to write this blog post. So many companies not knowing anything about this and even fewer doing anything about it. By sharing today’s impressions I hope that I inspire someone out there to pick up what’s around you and say that you have had enough and start the long process towards change. I am a restless individual, and I want change when I see flaws. I don’t wait, and I am not resilient. But why should I be? Customers aren’t!

//Jesper

My boss Björn Alberts once showed me an excellent (suckin’ up big time) chart displaying the master matrix of any online web project. Since then I have basically made these types of matrixes as a way to structure my thoughts. This post will display one of those matrixes. Maybe not as useful as the one linked to above, but for organizations stuck in SEO-land, it might help with the visualization of where to go and what to do in order to go there.

Basically SEO centered business models rely on highly rational processes. The future models of making money online are however less rational and more behavioral.

I am far from ready with the model above, but it combines the worlds of online marketing that is evolving right now. You might want to criticise it for its lack of banners. But I truely and passionately advocate against banners as a means of online sales and thus I keep it out of the model. Secondly I sincerely feel that any marketing that has not at least a long term connection to some kind of sales, is a waste of money.

How to read the model
Well… it is quite simple. If you start out working with SEO, your revenue will increase as you optimize your search engine presence. This can be done in a very rational manner that has a clear ambition of converting search engine traffic.

Once you’ve got yourself up and running with the SEO, you should start working with your E-marketing and Social Media activity. Why not before? Well.. in order to get the trust in social media you need some ground visibility so that people searching for your brand or products, or even more importantly –> your people, will find them and be able to “confirm” their existance easily.

Then you move onto relationships.

Optimization is good, but in order to gain trust you need to customize your communication. This will also increase your hit-rates, your conversion rates and your relevance with the people you are talking to. Customization is a step towards loyalization. Talk to people the way they understand and listen to them to build relationships will in the end gain you their loyalty.

Equally the third step going from conversion to returning customers builds on trust.

Rational vs Irrational
Once you’ve gained the skill of working in the rational areas of online marketing you can take steps towards working with irrational marketing. Irrational marketing is when you try to engage peoples preferences for your products rather than them choosing another – otherwise similar – product.

Irrational marketing increase the surplus value of your products. It is both irrational in the way it aims to have people give your products an added value, but it is also irrational as its method is not at all about promoting your products, but it is all about keeping your promises, listening, being honest and continuously changing in the direction of your closest supporters.

Anyhow… have a field day with this one! I am not yet done and I need to add to this model. Please help me get going.

//Jesper