Why Attention is the New Currency Online

by Eric Tsai

Like many digital marketers, I consume and create large amount of content daily. Whether it’s doing research or analyzing data, I’ve come to realize the economic value of attention.

It’s relatively easy to create and publish content nowadays because technology has made it cost-effective and efficient.

This isn’t the case when it comes to consuming content because our attention simply doesn’t scale. Just like our personal values have to be sorted and ranked in order for us to make wise and consistent decisions, so do our values for consuming information.

As more and more businesses and individuals continue to produce digital content, one trend is starting to emerge as the explosion of content proliferates – the role of curators.

Moving forward, it’s important to look beyond the value that content creates but also how it gets consumed.

The gatekeepers to quality: Content curators

Unlike traditional media authorities such as The New York Times or Wall Street Journal, new media curators are the barometers of quality content that help harness our inherent need to consume personalized information.

Think of it as a filter for personalized content from trusted sources.

This is different than competing for page ranks in search engines or displaying authority in social media.

This is about access to audience and the ability to be heard.

Content curators rank and decide which information offers the most value and enriches you in the process of indulging your curiosity.

And the idea of curation isn’t focused on individual pieces
of content, but the ability to piece together cohesive patterns that contribute to a larger trend.

The challenge is not just in grabbing attention but also maintaining it until the content consumption process reaches its peak value.

This is why popular blogs continues to be popular because of original content curation that follows a narrative.

You need to deliver high value content regularly instead of just sharing the same content as someone else.

So how do you differentiate yourself in a space full of re-hashed content?

First you need to understand and optimize your content for online browsing and reading.

People read more online than print

People only want to spend time online with content they find valuable but if they don’t read it, how would they know if it’s valuable?

Let’s look at an eyetracking study by The Poytner Institute (excellent study) to see just how different we read newspaper content online vs. in print.

Online readers read an average of 77% of story text they chose to read
Broadsheet readers read an average of 62% of stories they selected
Tabloid readers read an average of 57% only.

When measured whether a story was read from start to finish:

Online readers read 63% of stories from start to finish
Broadsheet readers finished 40% of stories
Tabloid readers, 36%

Here is an interesting data from the perspective of people that read online: When looking at story lengths, online readers still read more text regardless of the length.

These findings shows that people have different habits when reading online and it could be because websites are viewed as real-time with up-to-the-minute content.

Another key to point out is that in print, headlines and photos were the first visual stop while website navigation was the first stop for online readers.

Web layout and design plays and important role in how your content gets viewed.

Web browsing habits matter

Web browsing habits affects how users absorb and internalize online content, especially when your declining digital attention span is sliced between multiple browser tabs.

Parallel browsing is like multitasking splitting your concentration in different browser tabs.

Microsoft research Ryen White and Information scientist Jeff Huang recently studied the behavior of 50 millions web surfers and habits regarding tabbed browsing on 60 billion pages.

They found that instead of users viewing more pages with tabs, it simply leads to multitasking cutting user’s online attention span!

Parallel browsing with different tabs occurs 85% of the time
Viewers often view 5-10 page per tab
57.4% of the browsing time are used for parallel browsing with tabs
Most web surfers do not create tabs (branch out) from search engine result pages, but more from non-navigational queries
Users open new windows and tabs because they’re waiting for a page to load

Now ask yourself these questions.

How are tabs being used by your customers?

How does this affect the time spent per page on your site?

How attention span affects content decay

So how do you overcome the challenge of maximizing the value of great content?

You need to first understand what Steve Rubel calls Attentionomics (of social media platforms) – the fact that content is infinite, but your attention is finite.

Let’s look at some examples on how attention spans works in social media.

First up: Twitter.

According to a research by Sysomos:

92.4% of all retweets happen within the first hour of the original tweet being published
1.63% of retweets happen in the second hour
0.94% take place in the third hour

So much for the longtail in attention even with 110 million tweets per day!

Next we’ll look at how video content gets consumed on YouTube.

According to research by TubeMogul:

A video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site
After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total view
In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.

The proliferation of video content is setting new standards in both reach and speed. However; at the same time most online video viewers watch mere seconds, rather than minutes, of a video.

According to another study by TubeMogul, “most videos steadily lose viewers once ‘play’ is clicked, with an average 10.39% of viewers clicking away after ten seconds and 53.56% leaving after one minute.”

And finally let’s check out Facebook.

The thing to keep in mind is that Facebook has their EdgeRank algorithm which determines what content users will see from the pages they “like.”

Basically it’s like the organic links in Google. If you want to grab attention you need to first format your content so it’s Facebook-friendly and then send it out at the right time.

For the optimize time to market on Facebook, I’ll turn to Dan Zarrella’s infographic on the “5 Questions and Answers about Facebook Marketing.”

I’ve seen studies that put the percentage of posts that make it through to users’ news feeds at less than 5% while post feedback ranges from 0.01% to 1.5%.

The bottom line is that Facebook is more relationship-focused than push-focused so it’ll take time for marketers to come up with a standardized metrics that measures something meaningful.

The other interesting development is Facebook’s own CPC network (like AdWords) called Facebook ads that has the ability to deliver quality traffic on a comparable volume scale.

The difference is that Facebook ads tries to look less like an ad and more like an editorial that’s of interest to the user. (I’ll be going over this soon)

The value of social

For now I don’t have the answer to the intrinsic value of social media, but I do know that it’s not just about increase advertising impressions or click through rates.

Still, as Facebook continues to roll out new products and revise its algorithm, it’s best to monitor and allocate small amount of time and resources to do your own testing.

And finally, keep in mind that the content decay data provided above are on logged-in users “actively” engaging each social media platform.

What does this mean?

Social media is just one channel and a user may engage in multiple channels (email, search, offline ads) and within each channel he/she may have different accounts for different purposes so treat each platform autonomously.

For example:

A per who uses email may have two email – one for personal, the other one for work. Personal email usually don’t get checked as often so time-sensitive content needs a clear segmentation and different engagement tactics. Or a use may only check personal email on their mobile device so optimizing for mobile experience would be a priority.
A user may have multiple social network accounts but choose to engage each at different time for different purposes. This requires tailored content for for each social network in order to deliver the optimal experience. You may use similar content from a content strategy perspective, but the ad copy or marketing message must fit the context within the social network.

Here is an overview of how often people use social media from a combination of comScore reports and research by Wedbush Securities.

Clearly Facebook is the dominating platform with a huge distance between itself and the rest of the social networks in terms of unique visitors.

In fact, Hitwise has been reporting for months now that Facebook had passed Google in terms of time spent online!

There is also further data to show that people are using Facebook more frequently than did on a daily and weekly basis compare to sites like Twitter and Linkedin.

When it comes to social media marketing, keep in mind that each social network has their own unique user experience and habits thus size may not always be the most important factor.

There is no one-size fits all strategy.

The take away: As the “gold rush” to producing content continues, the need for curators will increase disproportionately to the number. The value of content on social media will continue to evolve bringing new challenges for your content to stand out in the digital realm.

Simply put, if content is currency, then attention creates leverage by serving up the right content at the right time.

Do not shortcut your best ideas for easier consumption, instead, focus on your desire outcome with measurable ROI.

As Seth Godin has said, “We don’t have an information shortage, we have an attention shortage.”

Here are some of my recommendations:

Tailor your content for each social media platform in relevancy. (short-form goes to Twitter, medium-form goes to Facebook, long-form goes to blog etc.)
Reiterate content for behavior change with an emphasis on quality not quantity. (repeat is ok but there is a fine line between consistency and spam)
Focus on optimizing your content so users can consume them in the least amount of time.
Make it simple but not simpler and as straight forward as possible.
Run experience test to see how your content performs at different time frames, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds…etc.
Use your Google analytics to help you identify what visitors are doing once landed on your site. (How long do they stay, how many pages do they read, when do they return again…etc)
Use engaging call-to-action without been pushy or salesy.
Conduct an usability audit on your website user interface. (what got clicked, where do people go, bounce rates…etc…use In-Page Analytics from Google Analytics)
Balance your design with function that support each page’s objective.
Run simple A/B split testing, multi-variant testing and user experience testing. (mix and match images, graphics, headlines, copies and layout)

If you made it this far, why not let me know what you think?

Or if you’re just scanning, I hope you go back and re-read this post again!

How to Build Influence and Earn Trust via Enchantment: An Interview with Guy Kawasaki

by Eric Tsai

Information doesn’t sound like it’s worth a lot of value. In fact, most of the time information wants to be free and are free in the sense of accessibility. In order to make information so valuable that people will pay money for them, you had to turn organized knowledge (i.e. stuff you find on Google, Wikipedia or on the Internet in general) into insights.

That’s what most experts, gurus and teachers do. They sell insights in the form of ideas packed inside a book, a seminar, a podcast or any information products. The value of the information isn’t just in what you present, but how you present it.

Enchantment book

This is precisely what Guy Kawasaki did in his latest book “Enchantment – The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions.”

Guy took influence to another level by providing action steps, how-to guides, case studies and various examples to help you understand the power of social influence in the digital age.

What I particularly enjoy is the fact that the book is formatted in a way that’s easy to consume and gets the point fast with excellent use of headlines, subheadlines, bullet points and pictures were spotted on.

Here are some of the key parts that I found useful.

Chapter 1-3: Explains in detail what Enchantment is all about including likeability and trustworthiness.
Chapter 4-7: How to leverage enchantment to launch a business or a product.
Chapter 8-9: How to use market via push technology like presentations, e-mails and Twitter (or what marketers call outbound marketing) and how to use pull technology like Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn (inbound marketing).
Chapter 10-12: Tips on building relationships with your boss, employees and resist the enchanting wiles of others

It felt like the book is trying to get you to learn it instead of just jamming jargons down your throat. If you want to learn social media influence and persuasion, I highly recommend this book.

I’ve also had the pleasure of speaking with him about his new book recently. You can click below to listen to the podcast:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You can buy Enchantment from Amazon.

Interview with Guy Kawasaki – transcription

Eric: So, can you talk about the difference between this book and the nine previous books?

Guy: Well, some of the nine previous books are easy to differentiate. One was about funny definitions. One was about databases and one was a collection of interviews. But the meat of my writing has been things like “How to Drive Your Competition Crazy”, “Selling the Dream”, “The Art of the Start”, “Reality Check”.

And those books contain some similar material focusing primarily on evangelism. And I would say that “Enchantment” takes evangelism and persuasion and wooing and influence to another level that a lot of those techniques are for transactions.

You evangelize a Macintosh.You persuade someone to buy a Macintosh. You influence someone to buy a Macintosh. But if you are truly likable and trustworthy and have a great product, you can take it beyond the transaction. Beyond the one time purchase of a Macintosh and delight the person with the relationship that’s so strong and so permanent that they’ll not only buy a Macintosh, they’ll buy a Macintosh, an iPod, iPad, iPhone, i anything. And buy books from iBooks and movies and songs.

That’s sort of the goal of the book, to take it to that level.

Eric: OK. That’s great. So, in the book, actually, I had to read it really fast but you defined enchantment as more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence or marketing techniques.

How has the Internet changed traditional persuasion, influence and marketing techniques?

Guy: As opposed to changing enchantment?

Eric: Well, as opposed to, for example, before the Internet came along the way it is today, can people embrace enchantment?

Guy: Yeah. Well, first of all, I have sort of a…perhaps even somewhat contradictory response. On the one hand, if you are likable person and you are trustworthy and you have a great product or service, you could rub two sticks together and be enchanted.

Eric: [laughs] (totally agree)

Guy: OK? The flip side of that is if you are not likable and you are not trustworthy and you have a piece of crap, you could have the most expensive, extensive social media, Internet, digital technology campaign in the world and you won’t be enchanting.

So, it’s not so much that people are enchanting because of social media. It starts with the basics.

Now, if you got the basics, the trustworthiness, the likability in the product, then social media can just take you beyond. Faster, cheaper and easier than ever because you can reach so many people so quickly anywhere in the world.

Eric: OK. So, basically, would you say Internet allows you to build relationships in a mass scale, right? But are they authentic? Are they the same relationship that you would have (in real life) ?

Guy: Well, by definition, if you… with people’s time being finite, if you have a thousand relationships versus 10 and you suspect that the thousand cannot be as deep as the 10.

But having said that, I’ll tell you that in my personal case, I have relationships with thousands of people I could never have prior to the Internet. And so, it depends on how you look at it. Is the glass half empty or half full?

Half empty says, “Well, Guy, you have all these friends that you’ve never met face to face. You’d never have dinner with them. You don’t know what their kids look like.”

It’s very wide but very thin. That’s the half empty.

The half full is, “Guy, you know people in Istanbul and Moscow and everywhere in the world, Brazil.” So, these people you would have never known at all. So, half full is a wow, you have a lot more friends in the world. That’s the way I look at it.

Eric: I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, I looked at almost all the photos that you took when you travel because I’m subscribed to your Posterous. (I was one of the first group of people to sign up and use Posterous and it’s got some interesting people o there.)

OK. So, in this book, you talked a lot about ways to influence others through actions, likability, trustworthiness and even got endorsements from the Godfather of influence himself, Robert Cialdini.

Guy: Yeah.

Eric: I mean he’s just an amazing guy. I love his book. I actually reference it a lot in my marketing. So, how important is influence in becoming enchanter?

Is it like celebrity fame where you can’t just go to the public anymore because people are just going to come up to you? Or is it like the Klout score for Twitter like where you have influence and it’s a number?

Guy: Well, I think that all enchanted is influential but not all influence is enchanting. So, the enchantment is perhaps purer form of the influence. And as I said, influence can be on a transaction basis. One time, temporary, whatever. Whereas enchantment, I think it is a more permanent relationship.

So, Cialdini is definitely the Godfather and created the foundation and I’m just taking it often in a slightly different direction. But yes, he did endorse the book which is pretty influential.

Eric: Yeah, when I saw that I was like, “It’s over. We’ve got to get a couple more copies of this book when it comes out.” So, which quality of persuasion is more important in order to enchant someone?

I mean is there one more important than the others? The ethical persuasion (techniques) like reciprocity, scarcity, liking authority, social proof, consistency?

Guy: Well, in that section, I list the techniques that you just described. And I don’t think it’s so situational that social proof could be very important if you are introducing a consumer gadget.

You want people to see that lots of people have iPods, so lots of people buy iPods. So lots of people see iPods so lots of people buy iPods, all right?

So, that social proof. In another circumstance, it could be reciprocity. You’re not trying to get thousands of people to reciprocate. You are just trying to get one person to reciprocate.

So, it’s like saying what’s the most important marketing technique? Well, it kind of depends on the situation and the product.

Eric: You provided some pretty specific entrepreneur strategies and tactics on creating, launching, and sustaining a business. In order to be successful, what’s the most important thing to master as an entrepreneur beyond having a marketable product or service? I mean obviously, you got to have product and service, right?

Guy: Yeah. I mean you say that as if it’s that easy. [laughs] But it’s not that easy. But let’s assume for a second that you do have that. I think there’s two things.

One is you have to plant many seeds. Today because the Internet has flattened influenced and persuasion. It’s not as simple as well, there’s this opinion leader and he writes for the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or Business Week and if you get this opinion leader and he or she blesses your product then she or he is going to tell the great unwatched masses to just do what I tell you and game over, right?

That may have been true in the old days but that’s not true anymore. So, now, it could be lonelyboy15 that makes your product successful and he’s got 250 followers on Twitter. And he has a hundred friends on Facebook. How the hell did you know he was so influential and so powerful? Probably, he didn’t know he was.

But it’s all those people who add up that make a Facebook or make a Twitter, right? I don’t think it was because any industry guru declared Facebook and Twitter winners at the start.

Eric: So, how should a beginning enchanter, an entrepreneur, deal with tasks outside of his/her expertise?

Like obviously, everybody got dreams. Everybody talk about it. When it comes to actually doing it. “Hey, I’m just not good at writing copy. I’m not just good.” Obviously, you do that well. I see all the references to the people you give and how do you go about that?

Do you just pick up the phone and say, “Hey, I need help? Help me out.”

Guy: Well, I could tell you what works for me but I maybe an unusual case.

Eric: Well, you’re Guy Kawasaki, by the way. (just a reminder)

Guy: Yeah, well… But it’s not like I’m Nelson Rockefeller’s son or something, right? I didn’t come into this world with any special advantages.

So, in my career, I attribute most of my success to two things. One is I grind it out. I’m willing to grind it out. I’m willing to do an interview anytime you want, any way you want, and I answer my own emails. I do this kind of stuff. Well, most of them, anyway. And so, my secret is grinding it out.

The second thing is I really believe that life is win win. And so, in the book, I discussed that there’s two kinds of people. One is a baker and one is an eater.

And an eater believes there’s this pie and it’s fixed in size and I got to get a bigger slice of the pie as possible.
A baker believes that you can bake bigger and bigger pies. So, I’m a baker. I’m a baker on steroids. I believe that life is not a zero sum gain and I think that attitude… when people understand that’s where you are coming from, they tend to help you.

In this book, the creation of this book, you would be pretty amazed at how many people helped you.
I mean let me just tell you some ways. I need examples because I like to use new examples that Malcolm Gladwell hasn’t used yet, right?

Eric: Right. (now we’re talking!)

Guy: So, I post these kinds of questions on my blog and I say I need an example of this or I need an example of this or tell me your personal story of enchantment.

Every chapter has this personal story at the end, right?

Eric: Right. Love that.

Guy: There are 12 of them. And of the 12, I knew one before the book which is Garr Reynolds. Everybody else came through the woodwork in the Internet. And so, I got these stories from the Internet, from strangers in quotes.

People help me with my Power Point. I’m about to put out badges for the book. Two people did that for me for free just because they… I don’t know. They love me. I don’t know because they love the book and it just… I did a crowd sourcing cover contest and there was a thousand dollar price for that.

And the guy who won is an engineering student in like Singapore or Cambodia or Malaysia or something.

Eric: Indonesia. (Yes, I read the book)

Guy: Professional designer. I’m sorry?

Eric: Indonesia, I think.

Guy: Indonesia, yeah. And so, just time and time again, this kind of stuff just happens and I don’t have scientific proof for but it I think there is a karmic scoreboard. You help a lot of people, help comes back to you.

Eric: So this book has ways to be becoming enchanting as an entrepreneur as well as an employee which kind of what surprised to me when I was reading it towards the end.

What is your recommend for longtime employees who want to enchant on their own journey that lack direction?

Guy: Well, are you saying how to enchant your boss.

Eric: No, like let’s say you are working for someone and you kind of want to just break out of that and start your own thing.

But you don’t really have a direction. You have the passion. Maybe you are tired of it. Maybe you got an idea up.
Do I just buy this book and say follow the whole formula before that and it works.

Guy: Well, just to be accurate, this book presumes that you want to be enchanting, whether it is in your current job or future job, or a new company.

So if you want to learn how to quit and start a company, you should read another of my books called the Art of the Start. I am not to pimp myself too much. But that’s the book for that purpose.

Eric: All right, so make sure you get that book everybody. [laughs] OK, so you had a chapter on overcoming resistance. How should an enchanter deal with failure?

When things don’t go right, and maybe you lost a lot of money doing something, the software is not working…

Guy: Yeah, well first of all, as you get older I think you come to expect that lots of things will fail as opposed to this romantic notion that everything will succeed off the gate and you are the next Google after six months.
So part of that is just this realization that life is tough. And then it becomes a matter of your personality. Do you give up or do you keep going?

And that is one of the toughest decisions to make. I think one of the hardest decisions is when do you decide that it is not working and you should give up.

A very difficult decision.

Because you always hear these stories about the guy who founded FedEx he was on his last payroll and he went to Las Vegas and he made 10 grand. And he met the last payroll and then things turned around the next day.
So you love that kind of story. But for every one of those there is probably a thousand people who didn’t make the last payroll and died.

So you don’t read about those, right?

Eric: No.

Guy: So that’s the challenge. And when you face an adversity, of course it is easy for me to say because I am not facing your adversity, but you just have to suck it up sometimes.

I wish I could tell you that for $26.95 you can buy a book that’s going to fix adversity and prevent you from lot of failure because if that was true, that is a lot, and we’ll price the book a lot higher. And infinite copies would sell. I would wipe up all the forest in the world, cutting down trees to print this book, because so many people would buy it.

No book can do that. We could give you tips, we could give you insights, we can give you slightly better ways, we can even inspire you.

But at the end of the day man, you got to suck it up and you have to grind it out actually.

Eric: Well, one of the things that I’ve noticed about the book, I don’t know if this is the right way to say it, but it makes me feel I need to be a better person, or maybe there are other agendas behind everyone’s actions.
But it’s kind of like when you talk about social proof and when we talk about persuasion and stuff like that, it makes you question yourself.

It makes you question the things you do, that tactics that you use, and how you engage with other people.
And in a way I would say this is kind of similar to Robert’s approach to a lot of things except you kind of put that whole thing into Internet (marketing) strategy with Twitter, Facebook, social media and how to deal with people in general.

So I guess my next question is what do you think about improving yourself through the Internet or is it possible to do that, through building a relationship that you have with people over the Internet, does that help you?

Guy: Well, certainly it helps you. I think it can broaden your perspective; you can gain sort of a 360 view of the world, and of yourself.

And it brings diversity to you in terms of age, and color, creed, religion, sexual orientation, I mean you name it.
So, yeah compared to what, compared to an extreme where you are living in a forest area with no cable, [laughter] yeah absolutely.

I think it has been my experience and I travel all over the world. And maybe I don’t see every element of every society clearly I don’t. But people are more similar than they are different.

And basically people want to have a good life, and have a even better life for their children. It kind of boils down to that. And I have more similar than it is different around the world.

And I think partly, a book like enchantment can help you arrive at that because it helps you change people hearts, minds and actions.

I have a great deal of the book dedicated to the ethics of enchantment, because I think for enchantment to truly work and to truly last, you have to have a very high degree of ethics.

And just in case people encounter people who don’t have a high degree of ethics, there is a chapter though about how to resist enchantment. Which I felt was very important to put in.

Eric: So one last question about the title. Because I am marketing guy and I love book covers and stuff like that. Is that your idea to put your name at the top? It’s almost bigger than the word enchantment?

Guy: Well, we went back and forth about that. So one theory is as the person in a coffee shop tell you, people are going to be confused and think Guy Kawasaki is the title.

Eric: Well, it just happened. (I told Guy earlier that I was reading it at a coffee shop and someone saw the book and thought Guy Kawasaki was the name of the book.)

Guy: Yeah, so that’s not good. On the other hand more people who have heard of my name than they heard of the book by definition because nobody has the book yet. And so we went with the marketing decision that the initial recognition would be the name and not the title.

And we’ll see, what I am really trying to do is I am trying to make the butterfly an icon that, it’s like sort of easily recognizable.

I am trying to own the word enchantment, right. Tom Peters owns Excellence and Geoffrey Moore owns Chasm and Robert Cialdini owns Influence and Persuasion, and Malcolm Gladwell owns Tipping.

And I want to own Enchantment. And so the whole thing is with the butterfly and the red cover, everything is pushing towards that goal.

Eric: Right. I would expect to see your name attached to that when I go to the dictionary.com or Wikipedia.

Guy: Yes, certainly Wikipedia. [laughter]

Eric: One last tricky question. There is a story, really interesting story about you and Richard Branson in there. And I am just kind of wondering, do you ride Virgin more or do you ride United more right now.

Guy: Well, let me tell you something. As of Richard Branson, well just two things. One is Richard Branson. Because he just got on his hands and knees and started polishing my shoes, that’s a kind of leverage.
But the second thing is, this is a good institution of a gentleman. So he has likeability and trustworthiness. That’s two and a three.

But Virgin America is a great airline. The airplane is really nice. It’s WiFi on everyone. The flight attendants are nicer. The cabin is more beautiful, et cetera, et cetera. So if it was just Richard Branson, and he had a crappy airline, I would not fly it. But there is all three. And so I am global services on United, which is the highest level you can be.

And if I was flying to some place that United flew and Virgin flew, I would fly Virgin. And you know, that the way you get to be global services is you have to amass not only a lot of miles, you have to amass a lot of revenue.
Because if someone flies the cheapest coach ticket, a 100 or 150,000 miles a year, is not as good as someone who flies full fare first class a 100 or 150,000 miles a year, right.

So when you start flying other airlines, you risk your global services status. But I just like the plane better and in San Francisco where I fly out of, Virgin America flies out of the international terminal, which is cleaner, newer, cooler, shorter lines.

Because the international terminal is busy late at night, when everybody is flying to Asia and flying to Europe. And you fly at midnight; you get there at 7:00 am, that kind of thing.

So during the day, it’s not nearly as crowded. So you get through the line faster, and to my great sadness this service Clear, kind of died, it is coming back now. It is in Denver, in Orlando, but Clear was the great equalizer.
Because if we had a Clear card, it didn’t matter whether you had first class or coach or whether there was a first class or coach line, because there was always a Clear liner, that was always fast.

But Clear doesn’t exist in San Francisco right now. So it matters. And so for all these factors, yeah, I am a Virgin America.

Eric: It’s almost like they have a superior product in every way that you would not have discovered it had he not polished your shoes.

Guy: You know, that is kind of true. I think, eventually I would have taken it and figured it out.

Eric: I bet, but then you have already invested emotionally, financially into United. And so it is difficult thing, I got a lot out of that story because it is enchantment. He did that. And it doesn’t cost him anything. But that was incredible.

Guy: Yeah. It is also true that he might not do that for everybody, right? But still I can tell you a lot of people who would have done that for no one.

Eric: All right Guy, I really appreciate your time.

Guy: Thank you, bye.

Enchantment infographic
One simple diagram that explains the basics of enchantment.

Enchantment Infographic

Need more enchanting evidence? Check out these Enchantment slides and videos.

3 Steps to Getting More Traffic and Higher Conversions

by Eric Tsai

3 Steps to Getting More Traffic and Higher Conversions

If you had to pick between getting tons of traffic or having a high conversion rate, which one would you pick?

Most marketers churn out content for SEO rankings, build backlinks for offsite optimization and may even invest in PPC at some point.

Whether your objective is to get people to buy, opt in to your list or download your content, you need to understand the significance of both.

All traffics are not created equal

It’s surprising to me when I hear business owners and bloggers ask the question, “how do I get more traffic?”

Sure, traffic is important and with lots of traffic you won’t need a high conversion rate. It becomes a numbers game.

On the other hand high conversion says you’re selling to the right people at the right time at the right place. It’s how well you’re able to connect with your customer.

So why can’t you do both?

That’s precisely what successful businesses do when it comes to Internet marketing. They drive highly targeted traffic to relevant content that leads to rapid conversions.

So how do you go about getting quality traffic? Simple, here is a three step process to get you started.

1. Start with the right expectations

The art of getting traffic goes back to the roots of direct response marketing.

Specially the why, who, what where and how of your target. It’s often referred to as the Five W’s and one H. You can see an example of this concept in the post Social Media Science: The Five W’s of Twitter Marketing.

In the case of traffic you need to start by asking the right question that solves the right problem.

It’s like going to the doctor’s office when you’re sick and you expect the doctor to ask you how you feel not what your favorite TV show is.

Pinpoint the right problem is how you can make meaningful assumptions to achieve your desire outcome. This calls for a bit of critical thinking.

Getting on the first page of Google won’t mean much if you don’t get any clicks. After all there are a bunch of ads all around it fighting for attention and clicks.

Here are some questions you need to consider to get started:

Why would someone click on it? (you’re not the only one with relevant title)
Who should click on it? (are you talking to the right prospects?)
What would clicking on your link do for them? (what do they really want?)
Where does the link take them? (what click path are they on? What are the options?)
How would you maintain a visitor’s interest? (how do you stay relevant?)

These questions serve as the foundation to help you identify your main objective of getting traffic: What’s the desire outcome?

Think holistically. Then think specifically.

What is the end goal that you have in mind? In other words, you need to have a real, tangible result in mind.

You want sales? Great, how much sales? From where? When?

How would those statistics stack up again what’s going on now?

By setting the proper expectations you get altitude on what matters in your pursuit to traffic. It brings clarity to how your traffic generation tactics fit into the overall strategy.

Then it all comes down to executing and measuring the effectiveness of each tactic you employ.

2. Convince people with compelling content

Measuring results is hard to do and often the results will manifest themselves into insights other than the website. This is why you need to realize that traffics are actually people.

And people want to be treated like a human being regardless of what campaign you run. At some point you will need to use a combination of words and images to grab attention and understand the psychology of your customers.

People often think they know what they need, but they don’t take action to fulfill those needs because they simply can’t justify the benefits of buying.

Why buy this now? Why should I buy it from you?

Aim for emotions that matters to people. People are more likely to buy from those they trust and like so show them who you are.

What are your values? Bring some social proof and authority but also show your personality. Be human.

Once you establish some level of rapport, you need to make sure that they “get” the immediate impact that you can make going forward.

You can do that by showing them why they need what you have right now using effective content and marketing strategies.

3. Measuring performance and results

It you sell stuff online it’s relatively easy to assess whether things are working or not. You can get to the bottom line with total sales, orders and customers or you can use metrics like the conversion rate to give you a sense of how effective the site is in turning visitors to customers.

That’s measuring results.

But if you run non-transactional websites, you need to have a different perspective to measure your return on investment. Specifically you will need to look at the activities that happen on the site.

This is measuring performance.

These are probably the best way to gauge your conversion rate which requires a level of scientific assumptions.

Does the number of visits have an impact on the awareness of the campaign?
How does pages views relate to the amount of information being consumed?
How many people took the action that you’ve put in place? Such as download a PDF content or request for moreinformation via a contact form.
Where are people “going” on your site? You can craete a visual of your visitor’s click path by using Google Analytics content Drilldown and In-Page analytics

Basically you can make some pretty reasonable assumptions using web analytics system, but it simply can’t tell you exactly what the visitors ended up doing at the end.

This is why it’s important to measure results not just performance. Results bring you insights that will tell you more about your target audience than your website.

It therefore requires a lot of thinking and coming up with the right hypothesis for testing.

Free vs paid tactics

Most of us don’t know what we don’t know that’s how we end up wasting hours on tactics that will never work.

This is especially true when it comes to implementing your traffic generation strategies.

Here are some “free” tactics to get traffic:

Submit your site to search engines, content directories, news sites, social bookmarking sites, RSS aggregators and share them on social networks
Publish quality content (articles, videos, podcasts, infographics) that embeds the keywords you want to rank in mind
Guest post on blogs in your niche area that ranks high, you can start with Google contextual search
Comment on other people’s blog by elevating the conversation not spamming with your links
Start conversations in social media and make sure you include links to your website on your profile page. You can start by answering questions on Linked or respond on Twitter
Build an email list if you don’t already have one and direct them to your web properties
Sign up for HARO and participate
Submit content to free press release websites, check out this list of paid and free ones
Include links in your outbound documents to clients such as invoices, postcards, RFPs, reports, make it fun and interesting (has to be done tastefully)

Although those are considered free tactics, they may not be free if you don’t get the results you want. And don’t forget your time isn’t free!

Now here are the no so free tactics:

Advertise on websites where your target audience visits the most (e-publications, web portals, forums or blogs), this can be in the form of banners, sponsored content, endorsed links or joint venture promotions
Contribute (recycle) content to partners, affiliates and complimentary products (make sure you arm them with tools to market your name)
Sponsor events or better yet start one, even a Twitter chat is a start
The good’o pay-per-click on Google still works but also checkout Bing and Facebook, both have less competition and spam
Hire writers and bloggers to help you create content using services such as Junta42 or use the Problogger job board
Join a paid networking group both online or offline, you can find some via Ning or Meetup
Submit content to paid press release website, check out this list of paid and free ones
Publish an eBook, write a report (whitepaper) or webinar
Start a giveaway

The take away: As I write this I know there are new ways to get traffic such as hiring people on Fiverr to fabricate you arbitrary social proof.

Just remember that black hat tricks such as the ones BMW and JC Penney did will ultimately hurt you in the long run.

So be honest with what’s working and what isn’t, what was smoking mirror and what wasn’t. Keep doing what’s working and stop doing what’s not. Done right, getting traffic is a lot like selling water in the desert.

Remember, the quality of your traffic has a direct impact in the rate of your conversion.

Not only will you need to understand why they’re here, you need to be able to convince them to take the action you want them to take.

So stop focusing on obtaining large amount of unqualified traffic.

Instead focus on collecting and profiling your prospects and customers. There is no excuse now with all the advance tools you can profile just about anyone using a combination of social CRM and behavior targeting techniques.

How to Create Your Unforgettable Elevator Pitch

by Eric Tsai

How to Create Your Unforgettable Elevator Pitch

Have you ever tried to tell someone about your online business or your idea for a business, but when you did, their eyes glazed right over?

You feel stupid or self-conscious because you know they’re bored, confused or just don’t get it.

The truth is we’re already inundated with information and overloaded with work everyday that most everything just aren’t that interesting to us.

In fact, most of us happen to think, say and do the same things everyday. We just do it with slight variations.

This is why you can’t help wanting to check your emails, tweets and text messages to see what’s fresh coming down the information pipeline.

It’s human nature.

So how do you talk about what you do in a powerful way that people will not only stop and listen but maintain their attention all the way through?

You need an elevator pitch – a way for you to instantly spark interest from your audience.

Here are a few key elements to a compelling elevator pitch.

Be specific and focus on the problem you solve

Elevator pitch is how you talk about what you do not your personal mission to change the world so focus on the specifics.

The critical mistake that most people make when asked “what do you do” is that they either go with a micro-level answer of telling people their daily tasks at their job (I do accounting) or the macro-level answer of describing the industry they’re in (I’m in IT).

The problem?

Everyone has a different perception of what a compute programmer does or what it means to be working in sales. In fact, the less specific answer you provide the more confusing it gets.

Instead of talking about abstract concepts, focus in on how you help people, specifically, the problem(s) that you solve.

It’s should not be your personal mission to change the world because most people are process-orientated, nobody really cares about what you do; it’s about HOW you do it!

It’s not about selling or using fancy words

Elevator pitch is a way to effectively wake up people from their daily routines and sparks their curiosity so they’re interested to know what you have to offer.

It is not about how you can impress people with jargons that make you sound smart (even though you’re). Great elevator pitches bring awareness to people so it makes sense to them to shift their attention to what you have to say.

Fancy words or phrases often requires your audience to “figure it out” which leads to disconnects and confusion. Stay away from them and use simple words that are easy to understand.

It should sound like something that happens in the real world that’s tangible, external, measurable and specific.

How to create unforgettable elevator pitch

Now that you know the key elements of a compelling elevator pitch, here is a simple template to use when creating your elevator pitch.

Start by saying, “you know how some people have this problem?”

Replace “this problem” with the problem or challenge that you solve.

Then continue with, “well, I offer this solution.”

Replace “this solution” with how the problem is solved.

Do not describe your business or the process of what your product does.

Here is an example.

You know some people have stuff they want to get rid off but don’t want to give it all away for free? Well I offer a website that allows them to auction anything off to the highest bidder. (eBay anyone?)

To take this even further, you could narrow it down to a specific group of people and their problems. The trick is to add some conveniences by using words such as with or without and recaps the entire pitch at the end.

You know how parents after their kids are grown want to get rid of all their baby stuff without giving it all away for nothing?

Well, I offer an online auction website that lets them sell their used baby stuff within a week or we’ll offer to buy it from them. Do you know any parents that want to get paid with their used baby stuff?

Remember, you can tailor the pitch to fit any scenarios or situation depending on your audience. This way you’ll have different versions of your elevator pitch to use when you meet a friend, an investor, a partner or a prospective customer.

So, what do you do?

[This article was published on VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner]

How to Create Magnetic Copy to Maximize Your Content Appeal

by Eric Tsai

Getting people to take actions from your content requires a deep connection with your audience.

We all know the need to implement the right tactics to capture the emotion that leads to those desirable actions. Provide valuable content, use ethical SEO (search engine optimization) tactics, give away free eBooks, free webinars, whitepapers, special reports, you name it.

But if you really want to elevate your conversion rate, you need to understand the art and science of content marketing.

You need to figure out what motivates your audience to click here and sign up there.

Why people give their emails away to complete strangers, follow every call-to-action and come back for more.

Let’s look at the 3 keys of creating powerful content to help you increase your product appeal.

Grab and Keep Attention

How do you read newspaper? How about magazines? Do you every sentence of every word from start to finish cover to cover?

If you do, that’s great, but for rest of us we scan.

In today’s drive-by attention grabbing culture, people do judge a book by its cover.

That’s why magnetic copy must have magnetic headlines that get people curious. It should always be organize around benefits, the “what’s in it for me” must jump out at your prospective customers.

This is why content marketing mimics the format of news with powerful headlines, sub-headlines and bullets. Simply put, human beings are wired to tune out advertising because that’s the natural of our brain to detect deceptions.

People have less resistance with news style formatted content than advertising that looks like, well, advertising!

So start getting into the mindset that you need to write effective copy in order to grab and keep attention.

Focus your coy on the results that your customer will get instead of what your product does or the fancy technology behind it. Research your customer’s behaviors, attitudes and demographics.

People only really care about themselves so keep your copy simple to the point and write in a way as if it’s you and one other person that are in conversation.

Your content can break through the noise if it’s interesting and exciting.

Demonstrate Social Proof

Ever since we’re little we associate ourselves with certain type of identifiers. Whether it’s the cloths we wear, the car we drive, the food we eat, the music we listen to, we’re obsessed with being part of a group.

This is human nature and the foundation of our society.

When people first land on your website or visits your social media profile they are looking for validation. The idea of social proof is all about perceived value of your influence and authority.

Who you are, what you do and why should people trust you?

You simply can NOT ignore the fact that people will form opinions in their own mind that reflects the perceived status of your stuff. You literally have less than 10 seconds to make an impression and that’s your instant reputation.

If you want your visitors to stay you must show them you’ve got the goods.

You can do this by leveraging testimonials and user-generated content (UGC) such as reviews or questions and answers (Q&A). Then follow up with some high value stuff that resonates with them right away.

Another method is to show the number of subscribers, comments, retweets or followers you have. The bottom line is that social proof is all about positioning.

Get Them To Take Action

So now you’ve demonstrated your expertise across multiple communities. The next step is to get your audience to take action.

Getting people to take action on the internet is all direct response marketing strategy with effective copywriting techniques. This means integrating measurable call-to-action that gets your visitors to do what it is that you want them to do.

It can be as direct as asking people to buy your product, contact you, input their personal information, share your content or leave a comment.

The trick here is that you must provide enough real value to earn the trust of your prospective customer so you can start building a relationship with them.

People are more likely to do what you ask if you’re open, honest and transparent.

Speak like a friend and stay relevant is the key to motivate people to take action.

The take away: Magnetic copy is about appeal and getting attention not about you or what you know. It’s about becoming your customer and getting people genuinely interested so they will want to know more, see more and take actions that you anticipated by design.

Your customers don’t want your product, service or sign up for anything. What they want is the solution to their problems.

Sure you can create content that appears to do that but ultimately magnetic content helps connecting the dots in all your information to drive out miscommunication.

Real effective content actually does help people and get them the result they want.

How about you? Are you creating content that sticks? Share your top tip for creating effective content in the comments.

7 Ways To Elevate The Perceived Value Of Your Content

by Eric Tsai

measuring value

Understand how people learn, think and communicate is the key to create effective marketing. In fact, communication is the core of your marketing and if you know how to leverage it, you will be able to elevate the perceived value of your products and services so people are willing to pay higher price for as soon as they see it.

However; it’s often much more counter intuitive than you think. It all comes down to what you say and then how you say it via your communication.

So what is communication?

According to Wikipedia, “…Communication requires that all parties have an area of communicative commonality. There are auditory means, such as speech, song, and tone of voice, and there are nonverbal means, such as body language, sign language, paralanguage, touch, eye contact, through media, i.e., pictures, graphics and sound, and writing.”

In other words the only way to open up the communication channel is by having a common medium, a means to understand and relate the information that’s being communicated.

The problem is everyone has a different style of communicating and learning thus the goal of marketing communication is to eliminate misunderstanding.

For example, when I say the word “car” what kind of car are you picturing in your head? A big SUV or a small sedan? A red sports coupe or a family minivan? Is it a Cadillac or a Lexus?

This is one of the biggest content marketing challenges in today’s attention fighting world especially with barriers such as information overload and attention deficit resulting in loss of concentration and focus on an ongoing basis.

There is a high chance that you’re losing your audience as you speak because everything is moving so fast and people can’t help but want instant information gratification.

As it turns out, in marketing you need to create crystal clear communications that are as specific, tangible, measurable and external as possible.

That’s exactly what great copywriters do, they write compelling stories that builds trust and use words that describe real world situations, things you can see, feel, touch and experience.

And since most purchase decisions are made by the emotional part of our brain, ineffective communication will never result in a sale so it is up to you to position the purchase in his minds.

Here are seven ways to help you build influence by mastering the basics of high perceived value communication:

1. Communicate Like How You Would Speak

If you want people to like and trust you, start by communicating like a normal person in a one on one plain English.

The key is to make your communication frictionless and easy to understand since everyone is not your customer so speak to people about what they want to talk about, in the way that they want to talk about it.

It’s not about being perfect but being authentic and on target to appeal to one market at a time.

2. Create Self-Contained Concept of Your Content

By making your content self-contained, you can reduce complexity while maximizing understandability especially when introducing a new product or a new idea.

This type of content should be modularized, to the point and does not take a lot of time to consume.

First introduce it by bringing the concept to the table then explain it in a practical way that conveys the outcome that your prospect want and finally connect the dots for them and wrap it up.

3. Look For Pain And Urgency

When people have unmet needs they become more idealistic about their situation.

Not only will they believe that they know what they need to solve the problem but will start to think in simple terms to get to their solution.

Focus on delivering simple action steps that would provide the result they want predictably and consistently with as little risk and hassle as possible.

Do you know what thoughts, emotions or pictures pop up in their head when they encounter that exact pain or problem?

Connect on high pain and urgency values will instantly grab their attention.

4. Translate What You Do With What They Value

Realize what motivates your customers is one of the most effective way to get them to take actions. You must be able to communicate the value of what they want and realize the meaning of their desire outcome and its direct impact to their lives.

Translate it in all 3 currencies they want: monetary value, time investment value and labor/workload value.

5. Use Powerful Reframes To Increase Understandability

Leverage psychologies, histories, insights and stories to frame your content into high perceived value formats. Involve their situation in multiple perspectives will dramatically increase the specificity of your communication.

It will also likely increase the memorability and appeal of your products by structuring and organizing them into alternative frameworks that eliminates misunderstanding. It’s saying the same thing in many different ways.

6. Provide The Why, What and How To’s

In order to do that you must be on top of your customer’s emotional drivers knowing what benefits they’re looking for and what value meanings to them.

Incorporate the why, the what and how into your stories.

Explain to your customer why they should pay attention to you right now then introduce what it is, the actual product or services they’re going to get, and finally how to get the result they want with what they get, the step by step recipe.

7 Minimize Risk Maximize confidence

Getting customers to take the action to buy is about making everything “believable.” It is not simply about taking all the risk out but just enough that it doesn’t seem too good to be true.

It’s leading with the giving hand, earning trust over time and building reputation slowly via social proof.

Allowing your prospects to come to their own conclusion that leads to their own decision is a very powerful confident booster.

It’s both emotional and psychological commitment.

The take away: People want stories, techniques and someone that “gets them.” High perceived-value communication should include all those ideas. Then you roll them up in an easy to digest package full of incentives with the promise of great value.

Give your market what they want and you will be rewards with brand loyalty and market share.

At the end of the day it’s ok that you don’t speak to everyone, you only need to resonate with those that get you that you get them.

Effective marketing is not about manipulation, it’s about being human, it will multiply your sales.

The 6 Habits Of Highly Effective Marketers

by Eric Tsai

Most business owners, experts and professionals understand the importance of providing non-promotional, educational content during the beginning of the relationship with a customer.

In essence, content marketing is information marketing, and information marketing is the new currency on the Internet. The challenge is how to translate your information into products with high perceived value.

It’s indicative that every business can now be called an information business because we all need some kind of information to make our decisions, learn how to solve our problems or to help us get what we want in life.

Simply put we want our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs met in order to take actions.

And getting people to take action through marketing is the most valuable skill anyone can learn and master. (Not to mention it’ll also improve your interpersonal relationships and communication skills.)

This is why great marketers focus on communicating the value and translating the utility of the information. Whether the goal is to get the prospect to click on your website link, sign up for your newsletter, join your coaching program or buy your information product, it requires meeting the right balance of Needs versus Wants from the prospect’s perspective.

Done right, you can leverage powerful internet tools to attract pre-interested and pre-motivated prospects that are ready to buy and start a business relationship with you.

Not only will you be perceived as an influential authority but you will gain credibility and trust without having to convince people to buy your product.

So what does it take to be an effective marketer today? Here are six traits of highly effective marketers:

1. Effective Marketers Make No Assumptions

People often don’t question their own assumptions about what will work.

Majority of the entrepreneurs, experts, marketers like to spill out their solution without asking what exactly their customers “think they want” that can solve their problems.

Imagine a doctor telling you what’s wrong with you by just looking at you from a distance. Even if the doctor has the correct diagnose, would you trust their advice? Great marketers know that they don’t know what they don’t know. They ask questions and dig deeper below the surface to identity the pain, urgency and frustration of their customers.

In addition to finding out what the problems are, it can also serve as your free market research.

Start talking to all your prospects and customers everyday and continue asking why until you get to the root cause, you may be surprise what’s going on inside their reality.

Take a look at this recent research insight provided by MarketingSherpa and IDG from surveying buyers and B2B marketers about specific factors that motivate recipients to opt-in, open and engage with vendor email.

Notice the difference between what marketer and buyer values. Buyers actually gave the highest rank to promotional content!

2. Effective Marketers Are Storytellers

Once you have identified your customer’s problems, help them make the logical connection between their needs and your solution (product or services) one step at a time.

This way they don’t have to work to figure out how to use your knowledge or expertise to solve their problem; instead you reverse engineer your solution from their problems.

Top marketers know how to connect the dots by using narrative to set the quickly get people’s attention. It’s one of the 3 most effective content marketing techniques you can use.

The idea is to ensure your solution sounds exactly like what’s going to solve their problem when you finally get to introduce it typically “at the end” so it’s easier to digest.

Keep in mind that you should never present your solution prematurely, it will only create disconnects which leads to distrust.

Maintaining the communication channel open is critical in facilitating the buying process because people don’t care about your products and services, they just care about themselves. So even with storytelling, guest who’s perspective and story do customers like to hear? (Hint: read the last sentence again.)

3. Effective Marketers Build Relationships

What is relationship and why important?

Everyone talks about relationship but what exactly is relationship?

Here is the definition of relationship from Wikipedia: “Relationships usually involve some level of interdependence. People in a relationship tend to influence each other, share their thoughts and feelings, and engage in activities together. Because of this interdependence, most things that change or impact one member of the relationship will have some level of impact on the other member.”

So a relationship can impact one another mentally, physically and emotionally.

This is why social media is a great way to relate with each other to see if the other person is like you, identify a common ground to connect via LinkedIn, follow on Twitter and “friend” on Facebook.

In fact, a relationship is a process to continue to relate until we feel related, full of emotions and thoughts of the other person.

A critical mistake many struggling experts, marketers and business owners make is thinking of their customers as “its” they can manipulate. Wrong!

Great marketers focus on building relationship to have trust, admiration and credibility that extends beyond business transactions not to mention people will buy more and refer to from those they like and trust.

4. Effective Marketers Are Givers

People often forget that trust is earned over time typically on a more intimate level. In order to introduce your great product or services, you need to earn the right to ask for the sell.

This is the framework of the “freemium” business model, where you offer so much value to your prospect that their respect for you goes up instantly.

This requires you to supply relevant content or information and ultimately give away your best stuff to show that you’ve got the goods! (Do you?)

This feels counter-intuitive to most experts and business owners because they feel like they’ve earn the right to charge for their expertise or services through years of experience or training.

The problem is they, the customers, don’t know and won’t believe that you’re in their best interest until they get to know you.

Effective marketers aren’t afraid to give away their best stuff because knowing how to drive a car doesn’t mean you’ll win a race even if you start with the fastest car.

Authors like Seth Godin, Yaro Starak, Brian Clark, Michael Steizner and Darren Rowse are great example of over-delivering their value so when it’s time to ask for a sale, readers usually come to expect and respect what they bring to the table.

5. Effective Marketers Know Everything Is A Test

Today, the market moves so fast that it’s important to understand the real goal of marketing is to focus on the long-term strategies to get customers.

There is no silver bullet that will bring you sustainable instant results. In fact, it’s vital to have the right mindset knowing that every action you take is to validate your ideas from fact gathering.

Great marketers do not hold their ego to their chest; they look for facts and data that enable them to make incremental improvements.

This is why direct response marketing delivers better results than institutional branding and advertising.

They have different appeals with different purpose but direct marketing is more effective in small to medium size business than branding or making logos and websites “look nice.”

Your investment in marketing efforts should always be measurable in some ways, think of it as making progress not perfection.

The best marketing ROI is about profiting from the time and money invested in your tests! You would test the water before you jump into the pool or drink a hot soup right?

6. Effective Marketers Are Laser Focused On A Niche

Successful marketer choose a niche and stick to it. They inject all the experience, knowledge, theories and ideas they have and consistently create content around it.

Everything is narrowly focused so it speaks to those that are looking for solutions in that topic.

They deliver bite size chunks of information to ensure that their audience learn and take actions. Ultimately it’s about delivering value that are solutions not just suggestions.

Since people aren’t good at valuing anything with out learning (more information again), top marketers knows to create techniques or systems that enable the prospects to understand the value of the solution.

Simply put, great niche marketing minimizes misunderstand and delivers high value information that pushes the buy button.

And to do that, it requires focusing on the needs of the customer without assumptions. (goes back to#1 above)

A great method to do that is to learn Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling technique by focusing on asking the right Situational questions (find out what’s going on), Problem questions (challenges happening), Implication questions(what the challenge implies) and the Needs-payoff questions (the price tag on solving the challenge).

The take away: Marketing is a skill that you can learn and should be practiced everyday. In fact, thanks to the internet today there is very little barrier to entry for anyone to do marketing.

The information are all out there, you just need to follow some simple steps to start marketing your product, services or your personal brand.

The six traits are the building blocks to form powerful influence which is explained by Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion as ethical persuasion in reciprocity, scarcity, liking, authority, social proof, and commitment/consistency.

What do you think the most important trait of a marketer is? What worked well or not so well for you?

If you like to become a more effective marketer or learn more tips on how to market your business, sign up for my Profitable Knowledge FREE course below.

The 3 Most Effective Content Marketing Principles

by Eric Tsai

It will be increasingly difficult to grab attention from anyone on the Internet or in person.

You may spend hours writing a great blog article, creating a high-value video or designing your marketing slicks only to find that people just aren’t interested in consuming them.

Why?

Because we’re being bombarded by messages, alerts, and feeds every second. We’re constantly distracted and interrupted when we invest our time on the Internet. As a result, our brain essentially reconfigures itself.

This is what Nicholas Carr, the author of the book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, found when he studies how the Internet influences the brain and its neural pathways.

Basically he discovered that the mental and social transformation created by our new electronic environment makes us shallower, unable to concentrate and strips our ability to do deep creative thinking.

Carr argues that,” We want to be interrupted, because each interruption brings us a valuable piece of information… And so we ask the Internet to keep interrupting us, in ever more and different ways. We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the division of our attention and the fragmentation of our thoughts, in return for the wealth of compelling or at least diverting information we receive. Tuning out is not an option many of us would consider.”

Simply put, greater access to knowledge is not the same as greater knowledge; and breadth of knowledge is not the same as depth of knowledge.

So how does this affect your marketing or how you produce content for your business?

The answer is simple. If you don’t produce content in the way that people want to consume them, you will not be read, remembered or passed on.

Most of us simply don’t read and retain what we consume over the Internet like how we do it with physical books.

In fact, I heard one of Carr’s recent interview as he described that most people read over the Internet in a “F” formation, scanning horizontally across at the top, then moves down the left and half way down scans again across.

It’s indicative that in the process of producing compelling content you take consideration in the following mistakes to avoid so you have attractive “looking” content in format, length and appeal.

1 Strong Opening That Gets Straight To The Point

Great copywriting is not different than great public speaking. You must instantly grab people’s attention in a thought provoking way without trying to be fancy.

This is why article/book titles, the first 10 seconds of you meeting someone are so critical to set the tone for your audience.

Your audience’s mind wants to see the payoff by giving you the attention and their emotions are driving the need for you to get to the point.

This is extremely important as we humans do a lot of consequential thinking to figure out why we’re investing our time in consuming information.

Most experienced professional coaches, consultants, marketers, gurus or trainers have a lot of knowledge, but they often forget that they are the expert and their audience are not!

That’s why it’s important to open with a great title or introduction that immediately gets to the point.

The wealth of information out there usually overwhelms normal people, so I recommend you to focus on emotional connections so you can meet them where they’re at and try not to use any of your professional jargon. It takes practice.

2 Use Emotional Keywords And Phrases

Give them what they want then facilitate what they need as the content unfolds. Leverage emotional keywords and phrases that automatically paints a specific picture and are easy to understand.

When you use complex, difficult to understand phrases, your audience has to do all the work to figure out what you mean and it interrupts the flow of consuming that piece of information.

Stay away from theoretical, conceptual, abstract and general terms in your communication. Focus on communication that brings concrete, emotional and specific outcomes. This is because we’re wired to respond more with what Paul MacLean discovered as our reptilian brain or what some calls lizard brain.

MacLean’s evolutionary triune brain theory suggests that the human brain was made up of three brains: reptilian (self preservation), limbic (emotions) and neocortex (logic).

I won’t go into the details but basically the reptilian brain can hijack the higher levels whenever it wants to do so especially when there is a pain point or urgency to solve a problem.

It can be as simple as the “need to know” urgency where you seek immediate knowledge (we want to be in control, our logical ego) or looking for an answer.

People don’t go to seminars, watch videos or engage in a conversation with you for no reason; even entertainment and the need to connect or to be heard is something we unconsciously look for.

3 Leverage Powerful Stories That Creates Your Marketing And Conversation

Story develops relationships with people. In order to do that people have to like you, know you and trust you (and yes, you can do that over the Internet).

Just having social proof is not enough, just being a likeable person is not enough.

Both of those are great foundation to build your relationship on, but ultimately people are more likely to buy what you sell if they trust you.

And trust can be built via powerful stories that motivates and inspires people.

When developing your story think of your story as a movie.

There is an opening, a situational challenge and then it goes through a rollercoaster ride that eventually hits a turning point then finally ends.

So how do you position your story?

You need to start your story high where everything is normal then take your audience to a low point where they can relate and connect but don’t make people feel sorry for you.

And then through a turning point or a series of events you overcome the lows and that’s where you give your audience hope.

It is NOT about you but your audience. Don’t make it your life long story or biography; focus on a specific area of your story that allows people to quickly learn about who you are.

Your story is a way to show your humanity so people believe what you can do for them.

The take away: Content marketing is about creating information that are meaningful to your audience and engages them emotionally.

The real value is when you’re able to meet them where they’re at psychologically and make them highly motivated to take actions.

Whether it’s signing up for your newsletter, buy your product, get your coaching or read your book. In fact, it can also be used to get your internal team on board or management buy-in to your proposal.

Everyone is inundated with information, overwhelmed with daily tasks and if you can focus on the 3 principles above, your audience will be drawn to you more because you make it about them and easy for them.

How do you approach marketing your information, content or product? Share your thoughts below.

10 Reasons Why You Are Not Getting The Results You Want Out Of Your Marketing

by Eric Tsai

You spent countless hours crafting your marketing campaign investing money and hiring marketing experts to help guide you through the process. You get ready to push the launch button, waiting for emails and phone calls come pouring in, then…

Nothing happens. But what could go wrong?

You did the things that the marketing “experts” said you should do with your keywords, putting up blog articles day after day, uploading videos and sending out email newsletters.

Why?

Here are 10 reasons why you’re not getting the attention, buzz and most importantly – the sales conversion. Oh, and let’s assume you have an unbelievable product.

Your marketing message is full of “I” and “me” instead of “you.”
You didn’t communicate the “why” (from the “I” perspective)
You didn’t communicate the “what” (again from the “I” perspective)
You didn’t communicate the “how” (need I say more from which perspective?)
You didn’t communicate the “what if” (as in what if “I” was to buy and use the product)
Your marketing talks at people about your own expertise instead of showing them how your solution solves their problem.
You make assumptions about your customers (because you already sold some products before or you just know because you’ve been doing it for 20 years, ok great continue to do that then) instead of focusing on fact gathering (read my last post on listening)
You didn’t do enough testing on your products, services or marketing messages before you launch
You use all your email and social media as a one way push advertising instead of two way conversation (to help you pre-test)
You lack compassion and didn’t empathize with your prospects because you’re too focused on the bottom line – making money

The talk away: Don’t be all things to all people. You’ll have a better opportunity to convert sales (subscription, readership etc.) if you narrow down your target market because you’re a big fish in a small pond so just go after more small ponds! Don’t swim with the sharks in the big ocean because chances are, you’ll become their lunch.

Ask yourself if your marketing message is tangible, external, specific and measurable to your target prospect? And try NOT to use the word “I” or “me” in your message.

Here is one of my all time favorite (and world famous ad) created by the genius David Ogilvy. Notice how many “I” or “me” were used in this ad – none. Focus on the title and you’ll learn how this 1959 ad is still the foundation of today’s direct response marketing.