David Meerman Scott Bio/Archives
David Meerman Scott is a writer, consultant, contributing editor at EContent Magazine, conference speaker and seminar leader. David's latest book Cashing In With Content: How Innovative Marketers Use Digital Information to Turn Browsers Into Buyers is a riff on using Web content to drive revenue and other action from Web site visitors. His writing has appeared in such diverse publications as BusinessWeek, Competitive Intelligence Magazine, North American Review, Product Marketing Magazine and many others. David specializes in using online content to market and sell products and services to demanding customers worldwide. He has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, Boston, and Hong Kong and has presented at industry conferences and events in over twenty countries on four continents. Contact him at www.davidmeermanscott.com.
The Gobbledygook Manifesto -- Cutting Edge! Mission Critical! An analysis of gobbledygook in over 388,000 press releases sent in 2006
Oh jeez, not another flexible, scalable, groundbreaking, industry-standard, cutting-edge product from a market-leading, well positioned company! Ugh. I think I'm gonna puke! Just like with a teenager's use of annoying catch phrases, I notice the same words cropping up again and again in Web sites and news releases—so much so that the gobbledygook grates against my nerves and many other people's, too. Well, duh. Like, companies just totally don't communicate very well, you know?
Many of the thousands of Web sites I've analyzed over the years and the hundred or so news releases I receive each week are laden with these meaningless gobbledygook adjectives. So I wanted to see exactly how many of these words are being used and created an analysis to do so.
AN ANALYSIS OF GOBBLEDYGOOK
First, I selected words and phrases that are overused in news releases by polling select PR people and journalists to get a list of gobbledygook phrases. Then I turned to Factiva, a Dow Jones & Reuters Company, for help with my analysis. The folks at the Factiva Reputation Lab used text mining tools to analyze news releases sent by companies in North America. Factiva analyzed each release in its database that had been sent to one of the North American news release wires it distributes for the period from January 1, 2006, to September 30, 2006. The news release wires included in the analysis were Business Wire, Canada NewsWire, CCNMatthews, Commweb.com, Market Wire, Moody’s, PR Newswire, and Primezone Media Network.
The results were staggering. The news release wires collectively distributed just over 388,000 news releases in the nine-month period, and just over 74,000 of them mentioned at least one of the Gobbledygook phrases. The winner was "next generation," with 9,895 uses. There were over 5,000 uses of each of the following words and phrases: "flexible," "robust," "world class," "scalable," and "easy to use." Other notably overused phrases with between 2,000 and 5,000 uses included "cutting edge," "mission critical," "market leading," "industry standard," "turnkey," and "groundbreaking." Oh and don't forget "interoperable," "best of breed," and "user friendly," each with over 1,000 uses in news releases.
Read the rest of The Gobbledygook Manifesto here.
Posted by David Meerman Scott on October 13, 2006 at 09:49 AM in Business Growth, Customer Dialogue | Permalink
Learning about effective marketing from other industries
Earlier this week, I posted on my blog the following: Attention American Automakers: Your websites suck. I was surprised at the number of emails I got as well as comments and posts by other bloggers.
As you will see in the original post if you link to it, I pose a number of observations for the auto industry. However, the same issues are applicable for all web sites.
Why do automakers insist on copying one another’s slick, TV-influenced, one-way broadcast websites that feel like advertising? Visitors who actually want to learn something aren’t satisfied and sales are lost. Check out the big three automaker sites (I have included the headlines from today):
Ford: Model Year Clearance! 0% financing! 0 for gas!
Chrysler: Get employee pricing plus 0% financing!
GM: 72 hour sale!
Doesn’t it look like all three of these sites were designed and built by the same person (some Madison Avenue ad guy)?
As Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing writes: “Websites are like software products: the real challenge isn't what to include; it's what to omit. Is your web site trying to sell or is it helping people buy? There's a difference.”
Read the rest of my original post and the comments here. What do you think?
Posted by David Meerman Scott on July 7, 2006 at 08:45 AM in Customer Dialogue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly
By David Meerman Scott
The Web has changed the rules for press releases. The thing is, most old-line PR professionals just don’t know it yet. But you need to understand the new rules. To help you, I just published a complimentary e-book called: The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly. Please download it and pass it on.
Because the rules for relating to the public have changed so slowly over the past ten years (since the Web has allowed people to read press releases directly), practitioners who learned based on the old rules have been equally slow to change. In fact, most old-school experts have refused to change altogether. It is time to step it up and consider the promise Web 2.0 public relations holds.
Today, savvy marketing professionals use press releases to reach buyers directly.
While many marketing and PR people understand that press releases sent over the wires appear in near real-time on services like Google News, very few understand the implications for how they must dramatically alter their press release strategy in order to maximize the effectiveness of the press release as a direct consumer-communication channel.
The media has been disintermediated. The Web has changed the rules. Buyers read your press releases directly and you need to be talking their language.
This is not to suggest that media relations are no longer important; mainstream media and the trade press must be part of an overall communications strategy. In some businesses, mainstream media and the trade press remain critically important and, of course, the media still derives some of its content from press releases.
But your primary audience is no longer just a handful of journalists. Your audience is millions of people with Internet connections and access to search engines and RSS readers.
Download my complimentary e-book The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly and see for yourself what all the buzz is about.
Posted by David Meerman Scott on January 17, 2006 at 09:13 AM in Customer Dialogue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Forget the Brand, Focus on the Customer
"The Brand." Ugh. Just hearing the term makes me want to puke. "Branding" was the most over-hyped concept forced on marketing people by the media and VCs in the dot-com era. And that's saying a lot because almost everything in the online world was over-hyped a few years ago. The result was countless marketers who got their knickers in a twist about the outward manifestation of their brand including logos, image ads, and even tchotchkes.
So what about now? Yes, the brand is certainly important to all companies. But what's really at stake—in fact, what branding's really about—is a focus on the customer. As each customer builds an emotional response to a company, that emotion becomes the brand image for them. Fortunately, many great companies understand that the provision of quality content does more to build brands online than pretty logos, cool giveaways, and hip partner deals. Yet, for every company that's taking this knowledge to the bank, there are still more focusing on branding for its own sake.
My first experience with brand abuse was in the early 1980s, when fashion design houses like Yves Saint Laurent licensed their logos to any old shoddy manufacturer. Logos were slapped on everything from handbags and scarves to cigarettes and perfume. I even saw a toilet lid with the YSL logo. It seemed the prevailing attitude of these brands was: "if you brand it, they will buy." Inevitably, the brand image tarnished (or, as in the case of the commode seat, worse) due to poor quality and over exposure. It took YSL a decade to crawl back and some design houses of the era never fully recovered.
So what can a company do? The process starts with marketers who work extensively with the market to understand their problems. Too often, companies design and market their products in a vacuum, cobbling something together because they can or because it would be cool. Then they try to brand their way out of a poor product. Without input from the target market, an offering is doomed to mediocrity at best and no amount of branding will help.
Marketers can learn a lot by emulating the publishing industry, which knows that their business is all about getting the readers’ attention. Like a publisher, work first to understand the audience and then use that insight to decide how to satisfy your prospects’ informational needs through effective online marketing programs. Your offline and online marketing content is meant to drive action, which requires a focus on describing answers to your customer’s most urgent problems.
Posted by David Meerman Scott on October 19, 2005 at 05:09 PM in Customer Dialogue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Shorten the Complex Sales Cycle with Web Content
Long complex sales cycles often confuse marketing people. Marketers at companies with long sales processes, such as software and technology companies, usually just focus on the top part of the sales funnel, mistakenly believing that their only job is to “generate leads.” These misguided marketers then toss the leads over the cubicle wall to the sales department and move on.
This strategy is ineffective.
It is interesting to note that many companies with great products have terrible marketing, particularly on the Web. I’ve been a judge at the SIIA Codie Awards. Many companies with award-winning products that have complex sales cycles just can’t get out of their own way when they try to market on the Web.
Savvy marketing professionals understand that sales and marketing must work together to move prospects through the sales pipeline. This is especially important in the complex sale with long decision making cycles and multiple buyers that must be influenced. The good news is that Web content can drive people through and even shorten the complex sales cycle.
To cash in with Web content, marketers at many sites specifically design content to support the sales consideration process or draw a potential buyer into the sales cycle. People considering a purchase always go through a thought process prior to making a decision. In the case of something simple and low cost, say buying a new umbrella, the process may be very straightforward and only take seconds. But for a major item such as complex business-to-business sales, the sales cycle may have many steps, involve many people, and take months or even years to complete.
Effective Web marketers take Web site visitors’ sales consideration cycle into account when writing content and organizing it on the site. People in the early stages of the sales cycle need basic information on the product category. Those further along in the process want to compare offerings and need detailed specifications and lists of features and benefits.
To supply content to those in the early stages of the buying process, it is often best to supply “thought leadership” pieces. Don’t just talk about your company and your products at the early stages. Provide information about the problems that your buyers face. The job of Web content in the early stages of the sales consideration process is just to get a prospect to “raise their hand” to express interest. Later in the sales cycle, specific Web content that helps people to make the decision to more forward is appropriate. Consider Webinars, blogs, ROI calculators, feature comparison charts and other tools for the middle portions of the sales cycle. And make certain that your salespeople know about the content so they can point prospects there.
In an increasingly competitive marketplace with a complex sales process, Web content will unlock success, even in highly competitive industries where smaller players are beset upon by larger, better-funded competitors.
Posted by David Meerman Scott on September 17, 2005 at 11:07 AM in Customer Dialogue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Communicators: Beware of Gobbledygook
I receive several dozen press releases in an average week. I'm interested in what companies are up to, but I'm just too busy to decipher press release gobbledygook. I normally give a press release ten seconds to catch my attention, but the surest way to get me to delete a release in frustration is to write the first paragraph in a way that I just can't understand.
Here are a few phrases from opening paragraphs or "about us" sections of press releases that were sent to me by well-meaning PR people. Do you know what these phrases mean?
...provides the most complete toolset to deliver interactive video experiences to global audiences using its content delivery network...
...a leading global developer and provider of performance-based marketing and commerce enabling services...
...a leading provider of browser-based data collection and analysis software...
...provider of appliance-based URL filtering, web-use reporting, IM and P2P control and bandwidth management solutions...
...technology enables individuals and organizations to harness the power of networks to achieve personal and business objectives...
Marketers can learn a lot by emulating the publishing industry, which knows that their business is all about getting the readers’ attention. Like a publisher, work first to understand the audience and then use that insight to decide how to satisfy their informational needs through effective marketing language.
Posted by David Meerman Scott on September 9, 2005 at 03:55 PM in Customer Dialogue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Please Do Not Read This
by David Meerman Scott
Recently I enjoyed a long lunch with my friend Jonathan Kranz, author of Writing Copy for Dummies. We shared a few secrets about creating great Web site copy.
Interestingly, we both had strong evidence that "negative" Web headlines and links often generate lots more clicks than "positive" ones. For example, on my blog Web Ink Now, my Worst Practices category gets more clicks than almost any other area of the site.
I remember several years ago I helped build a site where we included a link "For Executives Only" and this generated much more traffic than any other self-select paths on the site. It turns out people react to negatives. Words like "Worst", "Not", "Don't", and "Only" are interesting and people want to know what’s there.
Jonathan experienced the same phenomenon with a link on his Web site: 10 Important Reasons NOT to Hire Me, which he writes about in a great post "The Power of Negative Thinking" on his Kranz on Copy blog.
Jonathan says: "that negative word, 'NOT,' attracts attention. Some people wonder why I would deliberately discourage business. More experienced marketers understand that I'm qualifying my prospects, and come to see how I manage it. Others are simply curious."
Jonathan recommends, "One of the truly beautiful features of the Web is that it allows us to experiment with content then gather immediate, measurable results -- practically for free. Try it yourself. Take something such as, '8 Ways You Can Increase Sales' and flip it on its head. With the amazing power of negative thinking, it becomes, '8 Ways You Undermine Sales, Discourage Customers and Reduce Revenue.' Then watch what happens to your click-through rates."
While the "negative" technique most certainly works, it should be used sparingly. Only one negative link is appropriate on a site. And don't forget -- there must be something compelling and interesting to read once people click! Don't promise something interesting with a negative headline and then fail to deliver.
Posted by David Meerman Scott on August 23, 2005 at 02:37 PM in Customer Dialogue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
