What had the biggest reach at the least cost in your marketing budget ?
What marketing investment or effort for less than $200 gave you the biggest return ?

In our case it is a website:
- $12 for 2 years of domain name at GoDaddy
- $143 for hosting 2 years at Hostgator
- $14 for a design template from ThemeForest
- $0 for the Modx content management system
- $0 for Wordpress blog (download – but a hosted blog can too)
- $30 for paying someone to install all this software

Totals: $199
Of course we don’t count all the hours writing and editing the content.

What was your best spent $200 for marketing ?

The design of objects
This is a trailer video for “Objectified”: exploring the design of objects that we use every day.
The question posed is:
- How effective is the design of objects.
- How well expresses the design the functionality or purpose.
- How people interpret or assume the use of these objects.
- How much is going to cost.
- How much is the total cost of operations.

The goal of design is not just to make it look good or cool.
The main goals are:
- To let people make the right assumptions about the device or appliance
- To eliminate the unnecessary things or features

Eliminate or block functions or features when they are not needed for operating the device for a certain function or device status.

You don’t need the car key when you are driving: still sits always near you while driving in the ignition key lock: just don’t use it.
However the car doesn’t warn you about or prohibits not using it.

“Objectified” trailer of the movie by Gary Hustwit

Design of software – web services
What applies for devices and appliances should also apply for software and web services.
What a user doesn’t need at a certain moment in an application, he shouldn’t be able to use. Moreover the user should be explained why he cannot use it at a certain moment of operation or status of the device.

Great design of devices, appliances, software and web services is complex and should appear easy and logical to the user: less is more.
Great design will make marketing and sales easier (less) and generate more sales.
Great design isn’t limited to expensive devices or solutions.
Because:
- The design makes your product or solution stand out.
- The use has become more obvious through the design.
- The user can become your advocate promoting your product or solution.
Apple and Ikea know all about this.

How good is the design of your products or solutions ?

Although we believe in our product (and our customers seem to do so too), we feel the path from website visitor -> to free trial user customer is suboptimal and could / should be improved.
There are enough website visitors; still we have a feeling that the conversion rate could be higher. In order to know you need to measure and to compare different alternatives.

Most visitors either land on our homepage (about 24%), or enter our site through a landing page and pass in many occasions to the homepage during their visit. In any case their next visit will almost certainly start from the home page.

Due to this importance of the home page it is logical we try to enhance the home page. Thus a new home page layout was cooked up based on the original layout.

So far we only changed the top part (above the fold) to be more focused and clean:
- Less information thus more straightforward.
- Less distraction of too many items
- Less keywords in the top fold
- Less screen shots
We’re planning on taking small steps at a time, making sure each step can be measured.

Google Website Optimizer

We placed the 2 pages head to head using Google Website Optimizer, using the free trial page as the goal.

Google Website Optimizer is a free service from Google that enables you to test different pages or parts of pages and find out which converts better.
As you need to be able to make changes to your web pages, so some technical knowledge is required but GWO (as it’s often called) helps you through the process.

The Results

More than the double amount of visitors who passed by the new homepage went on to visit the free trial compared to the original homepage! (Though not sure how many of them will become paying customers – that we’ll see that later on)

When examining the difference between the 2 visitor segments in Google Analytics we were in for even more of a surprise:
The bounce rate has improved 12%: 63% vs 67% (vs 75% for the whole site) -> From 33% to 37% is a 12% improvement!

On the other hand the visitors entering by the new home page spend on average 44% less time during a visit, and visit 17% less pages! This is bizarre – does that mean they are less engaged? Or they understand faster the purpose of LEADSExplorer?
On the contrary, my dear Watson: New visitor rate: 74% vs 89% – a 15% improvement! This means visitors who see the new homepage are more likely to visit multiple times!

Conclusion

People watch less pages and leave our site earlier.
However a lot more of them come back later to continue visiting our site and eventually ask a free trial, or are convinced earlier in their visit to request a free trial.
This is reflected in the ‘Visitor Loyalty’ view of Google Analytics, which really shows a ‘long tail’ of repeat visitors for the new homepage.

Where should we focus next when optimizing our site?
How can we improve the flow from home page or landing page to the free trial?
What makes people decide to sign-up for a free trial?

What are your experiences with Google Website Optimizer?

Are you proud of the number of products or varieties you’re offering?
Are you convinced offering so many choices actually increases your sales?

You might be wrong!

Behavioural scientists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper conducted a (now classic) study in order to find out if offering too much choice made people indecisive. They set up a booth in a large supermarket, well known for it’s abundance of choice, where shoppers could sample a number of jam flavours all from the same relatively inexpensive brand.

During the study, the number of flavours were varied so that either 6 or 24 flavours were displayed. The selection was rotated hourly. After tasting, shoppers were given a discount coupon. So regardless of the flavours encountered at the booth, shoppers were eventually confronted with the full range of flavours in the aisle.

The results were surprising: of the shoppers passing the extensive selection of jams, 60% stopped vs 40% of those who passed the limited selection.

But from those who were able to sample the extensive selection, only 3% actually bought the jam compared to a staggering 30% from those who had sampled from the 6 flavours.

Overall result is that 6 times as much jam was sold when there were only 6 compared to 24 flavours to sample from!

The researchers suggested that too many choices, although highly appealing at first, might lead to frustration in the decision making process. Too many options to differentiate might result in the customer not being able to engage with the task at hand, leading to an overall reduction in interest in the product and a decrease in sales.

We think there might even be a fear of loss involved: ‘what if I pick the wrong choice?’

When Procter & Gamble reduced the number of Head & Shoulders varieties from 26 to 15, they experienced an immediate 10% increase in sales. Not as dramatic as Sheena and Mark’s jam study, but still too large to go unnoticed.

Offering a limited set of products or services for a market or as a solution will also make it more likely for people to retain the main features and differences.

Offering too few products however might mean you miss a part of the market you are addressing. As usual, finding a good balance is key here.

On the other hand your marketing collateral and website will be less complex as you only need to explain a few products and their differences.

Less products mean:
- Less product development
- Less product maintenance
- Less manuals to write or to keep up to date
- Less product changes in manufacturing
- Less inventories
- Less marketing costs
- Less sales trainings
- Less storage space
- Less raw materials

All of this leads to less overhead costs.
Your lower operational costs can be reflected by lower pricing.
And as a ‘bonus’, you might even make the decision for your customers easier, sell more and win market share!

Have you ever wondered whether you’re giving your customers too much choice?

Nurturing with newsletters

Newsletters have been praised as the most cost effective method to keep contact with your current and potential customers. This is nurturing your customers with newsletters.
Thus every month or on a regular basis companies try to get your attention by sending you their all important newsletter.
All companies try to sign you up or cheat you in to receive a newsletter from them.

The fivefold newsletter problem

- The abundance of newsletters in the email inbox: all companies think they are important for you.
- The length of the newsletters: too long and the messages are ignored
- The news worthiness: not all companies have real news worth reading every month.
- The images: the planned impact of images misses as many email clients block the download of images.
- The real news message can be lost: the real news is hidden by all the preceding marketing messages.

The two last ones might be the worst cases:
- No images makes the newsletter without content: thus no message.
- due to the fact the customer or potential customer has received already so many newsletters from the company with little interesting content, by the time important news is communicated, hardly anybody will notice and read it.

The promoters of newsletter nurturing will stipulate that your subscribers can unsubscribe easily with every newsletter received. However as people are lazy, it is much simpler for them to just skip or to hit the delete button for every newsletter message.
Still a good newsletter service should provide you with the number of opens.

Keep them hungry: Less is more

Thus if you use newsletters for nurturing purposes, don’t over-nurture your customers as they will become fed up of your content.
Make them stay slim and hungry with short newsletters and few containing interesting content.
Then you will stand a chance to be able to communicate the real news and to nurture when it really matters. Thus keep them hungry for real news.

Only speak out when it is important – as silence is golden too.

How many email newsletters does your company send out?
Any worth reading?
Any customer wins thanks to the newsletters?

The quote is from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which can be translated as “In the limitation the master shows” or “Less is more”.

Recession matches with “Less is more”

In these times of economic crisis and recession (depression), we all will need to do with less: both as a consumer as in business.
Thus less consumption, less purchasing, less marketing, less cash, less credit.
Less expenses, less products, less services, less sales support, less commissions, lower margins.

However all will require more effort as you will need to bring the same performance in sales and marketing with less support.
Less support like: advertising, trade shows, leaflets, presentations, web seminars.
Same performance: keep the sales coming.
Everything is on a shoestring, except your sales quotas.

As you have to adapt to the change created by the change in both sales and marketing, you should show your “Mastership” for generating leads and sales by using your best capabilities:
- The most cost effective marketing methods.
- The best sales techniques – your best sales skills

Therefore you will need to be inventive and innovative:

In Marketing:

Instead of expensive advertising or emailing campaigns and expensive trade shows or conferences, you will have to use the assets that the company has available at a marginal increase of costs:
like using the website for lead generation more effectively.

In Sales:

Instead of pursuing all possible leads, you should qualify your leads even better as following up leads costs money. The more efficient your lead qualification, the lower the costs of your sales process.

Although lead generation is very opportunistic, improving on your customer retention could be more effective for generating more sales.

Sales and Marketing are all under a tight budget, thus you need to be inventive or innovative by embracing new solutions.

Will you be able to perform the same in Sales and Marketing with less (on a shoestring)?
This is when and where your Mastership will show in both your skills and your innovation.

Scanning texts instead of reading

It seems that people don’t like to read anymore.
Instead of taking the time for reading, people scan a text or a page in order to absorb as many ideas and concepts in the shortest amount of time.

Currently most websites have plenty of text in order to explain your proposition or solutions in detail.

However people hardly take the time to read all the content of a page.
They read:
- The title
- A few of the headers (paragraph titles)
- A few words
- A look at the image (if present)
These lose items should constitute the subject and message of the text or even tell the story.
The problem related is that due to only reading small parts of the total expose, the message that the reader interprets or thinks he is reading can be differently. So different will be his conclusions.

Less is more like Twitter?

On the other hand people have become more and more comfortable with short messages like Twitter and SMS (Texting).

Twitter limits your messages to 140 characters.
Just 140 characters to explain one item or action.
Apparently people feel comfortable with this limitation.

The same applies for the popular SMS (Texting) messages send by billions of people every day that are 160 characters long.
People find them convenient enough to use and understand these brief messages. Thus why should we put more text and full sentences on a website as no one reads it?

Many short messages in a short time

Apparently people love to absorb many ideas and concepts in a short time. Nothing to do about this as you cannot change human nature.

An enormous amount of information is cropped on one Twitter or friendfeed page.
This allows them to pick up the best ideas or the concepts that suits themselves the best for their own purpose.

SMS your web pages?

Should we change:
- Our website page content into several short 140 or 160 character sentences?
- Making sure that there are only relevant messages to be read
- Each of these 140 or 160 character lines explaining a single feature, function or benefit of the solution or proposition?
- Not more than one statement or fact in one sentence?
- No short cuts to be made that can lead to the wrong information or conclusion?

Would a website with “Twitter-style” web pages be a possibility?
Would this be a good new and convenient format?
Would this convert more visitors into leads? Thus better lead generation?

The French web developer Mathieu ‘P01′ HENRI has developed for the marketing agency Jung von Matt the smallest adver game ever in order to promote the very small Smart ForTwo.

It is a game in a favicon (short for favorites icon), which is the 16 x 16 pixel in your browser left of the “http://”, mainly used for displaying a tiny company logo.
The game is based upon the well known classical Defender game from 1980.

For those interested in information on the java game read: Defender of the Favicon.

In order to let the public know about the game, every site featuring the favicon game has a supporting banner that explains and indicates the game presence.

Additionally there is the video:

This is not a low cost marketing campaign: development, banners, favicon deployment and a video.

The main idea is to create a buzz by using blogs (like this one) and people telling about it.
The target market consists of consumers interested in a very small car.
However are these consumers visiting the typical automobile websites? Probably not as car websites are mainly visited by people who like more expensive cars.
If the bloggers and journalists should be able to generate a buzz, the campaign could reach the potential customers.
Still measuring the lead generation will be difficult to prove as there seems not to be a direct link to the company or product website: thus no online measurement of the effectiveness of the campaign is possible.

Do you think this campaign will bring interest from potential buyers for the car?

If unlimited comes for free, then everybody will embrace it as there are no borders, no constraints. Nobody cares as long as they can use it for free.

Pricing model with unlimited use

If people need to pay for an unlimited service, then they feel they will be paying too much as they won’t be able to use the capacity entirely. They feel they are paying for the unconsumed part too.
Customers just want to pay for what they actually use.
Unlimited is beyond their real needs.

Therefore unlimited is not a good value proposition.
If the user cannot use these unlimited amounts he will be looking for alternatives with your competitors or he will stick with a lesser bucket proposition.
Thus you need to limit your service or solution to a certain amount, level or capacity.

Limit is required

In order to comply:
- With human nature
- The parsimony of people
And to avoid pricing or discount discussions.

There has to be a limit of some kind:
- The amounts to be used.
- The capacity.
- The number of users.
- The functionality.
- The features included.

In this case “Less is more” applies:
Even if you could offer “Unlimited use” for the same price, for business reasons you just need to limit the capacity in order to get your customers paying.

Has your (web) service a limitation in the pricing model?

2UnLimited performing “There is no limit”

* Picture by thereallex

The Product Overview Comparison Chart

Marketing or Product Management spends a lot of time and effort compiling a Product Overview Sheet that allows comparing all of your products or solutions at one glance in order to state clearly all the features, functions and benefits of all products.

At first this seems to be a great tool for selling as you can:
- Inform the potential customer about all possible products
- Offer all possibilities to the potential customer
- Make sure no single solution is overlooked
- Proof the company has wide range of products

However:
- Too much data to absorb by the potential customer: People will remember 3 things max.
- Too much distraction of competing and similar products: “What’s this?”
- Too much possibility to raise interesting questions about the not suited products: “Why you need this?”
- Too much time to explain by the sales reps: “The seventh product is for …”
- Too much choice to choose from: “We like products 2 – 5 – 9 and 3″

In the end the potential customer is overwhelmed by the information but hasn’t got a clue.
The big product overview has the potential customer confused and he doesn’t know anymore about the features, benefits and reasons to buy.

They will probably select a different vendor that proposes the best suited solution as their salesman have extensively inquired, defined the problem and clarified the benefits of their best suited solution.
Less is more.

The added value of the sales rep.

Using the Product Overview Comparison Chart the role of the sales rep. is reduced to send or bring the comparison sheet and walk through the different options and alternatives.

However the sales rep. has a different role:
- To listen to the potential customer
- To asses the problem(s)
- To define possible solutions
- To present one best solution accompanied by one or two alternatives.

This is where sales rep. are:
- Bringing additional value for the potential customer.
- Limiting the choice to a limited number of products or solutions.
- Builds confidence and a relationship
- Could speed up the buying process

He can position:
- The best product (for both parties)
- Give the customer one or two alternatives in order to have the freedom of choice.
It is like a magician presenting you a hand with three cards and he knows the one you will be picking.
Less is more.

What to do with a Product Overview Comparison Chart?

Thus instead of presenting the great Product Overview Comparison Sheet, keep it internally for sales trainings in order to explain to your sales people or resellers what they should know and how to find the best solution for their potential customer.

A products comparison sheet is a D-I-Y (Do-It-Yourself) solution, to be used in a sales process without a sales rep. like catalog or online sales.

The sales rep can present parts of the Product Overview Comparison chart to differentiate 2 or 3 products, but not to offer the complete offering of a company.

The first rule in sales is to build trust with your potential customer, so don’t confuse them with a gigantic Product Overview Comparison Chart.

Confused people don’t buy.
Confident people buy (from trusted parties or parties that seem trust worthy).

Ever killed your sales with a Product Overview Comparison Chart?