Writing for the web

 Simply: conversations = conversions

Ads are dead. They don’t convert. People don’t see them (a la banner blindness). Stop kidding yourself, AdMan.

Here’s a quick list of what you need to do to get more out of your marketing budget: 

• Facebook - No, don’t just set up a corporate group! Place your offers here. Create $5 Starbucks coupons that friends can buy for other friends and send along to them (a la “send a flower to a friend”). Or create a tax calculator application that’s actually fun to use and that highlights how awesome your QuickTax or TurboTax software is.
• Get & keep a great blog - A useful one with a non-corporate, readable tone. That your legal department “forgets” to review. Don’t be scared (dogs and readers can smell fear… and it smells a lot like marketing). Get everyone in your company who has a Shyftr.com profile to add your blog to their list for scraping and to share it with friends.
• Affiliate marketing - Stop talking about yourself. Be okay with your Web site doing the heavy lifting (converting researchers) while Amazon.com and your other affiliates actually sell the units. (ATTENTION UNIT-DRIVEN MARKETING DEPARTMENTS: It doesn’t matter who sells the product… as long as it sells.)
• User reviews - Earth to stuck-in-a-time-warp senior leader: people EXPECT to read reviews of your service or product from people like them. (You choosing not to post user reviews will NOT mean that the user just stops looking for them.) Let your users tell your story. They’re more reliable than you are.
• Double opt-in EMs - You are sort of having a conversation with a customer when that person at least allows you to talk to them; if the user doesn’t allow you to talk, then your so-called conversation is dead before it even gets off the ground. So ask users what they want to talk about and how frequently, confirm their choices with them and talk to them as if you actually care about their time.
• Customizable home pages and sites - Take one look at sputtr.com and tell me that this isn’t a much better approach to customer-centric messaging: let people see only what they choose to see. Why make a person sort through the clutter of your messages in search of a conversation they’re willing to have?
• Be interesting - Ask yourself, “Is this message doing enough to stand out among the 1000s of marketing messages my customers receive every day?” If yes, well done, you. If no, revise until it would interest your 13 year-old nephew.”14 ways to spend your refund” vs. “Get a better refund with our deduction tools.”
• Write well for the Web - Plain and simple, there’s no better way to have a conversation in a text-based online environment than by following good writing rules. So chunk your copy. Use headers, subheads, bullets, links, bold, colour, white space. In moderation. As needed. Always with the reader in mind.

Says who? Not just me. See also:

• Copyblogger’s “The new media model for creating lifelong customers“
• Ian at Conversation Marketing
• Nathania at Social Media Butterfly
• Pitbull Marketing: “It is no longer a world of mass media but rather it is a world of communities of customers and consumers.”
• Agency execs McLellan and Heaton in “The Age of Conversation“

What does this mean re: conversions?
If ads don’t work any more (you can argue the point, but what good is it really doing to do?), then what might lead to sales? Well, of course there’s a great product or service and a great offer… but what else? 

The same thing that’s always worked: The man across the soda counter talking to a family (think Norman Rockwell). Dwight and the other salespeople from The Office who take relationships seriously enough that they’re keeping a small-time paper company in business… regardless of the increasingly paperless world.

Talk = trust. 

Listening = trust + more talking. 

And you can’t spell “conversation” without “conversion.”