SmartSymbols^tm

At least in marketing, pictures are better than words. By “better” I mean more effective: higher impact, greater stickiness and higher conversion rate (a metric that cannot be ignored these days, for the future belongs to it).
Many people have explained the reasons why pictures are better. I would venture to say that it is almost self-evident, provided that the craftsmanship behind the picture is on-par with the power of the words that are designed to convey the message.

In fact, I would say that even when we pitch verbally (as in an elevator pitch) we are often advised to use analogies. Analogies, however, are nothing but a mental picture of what a product or a service does, a summary of its features, benefits and applicability.

So what? Well, the problem is - we are not using visualization as often as we should. At least I don’t.  The All-time Visualization Guru Edward Tufte explained why it is so: “displaying complex information is hard work” he said in Envisioning Information.  Tufte also went on to add that just because things are transformed into a picture they do not need to be dumbed-down: “clarity and simplicity are completely opposite simple-mindedness”.

So, even if we do not always have time to convert our message into a picture, it might be a worthwhile exercise to see if its mental picture is clear and simple.

Or, maybe we should make time and create that diagram or a picture that shows exactly what we want, so our customers can get our message on the first try

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We all know that marketing campaigns consist of four basic phases:
1. Create/deploy
2. Analyze results
3. Adjust campaign
4. Repeat

Now, the critical part is the adjusting step, because the goal is to improve the campaign frequently and incrementally. Frequently, because it gives the most efficient path, and incrementally because it allows us to tackle one specific problem at a time, instead of boiling the proverbial marketing ocean.

The question is - how would I actually do the adjusting? Well, as Robert McNamara said in Lesson 6 - “get the data”, or, for our purposes, analyze specifically what customers are interested in. (Plug: SmartSymbols Analytics can help

A variation on this strategy is a successful implementation of personalization and segmentation approach as a multi-channel campaign. Petco implemented such a campaign and produced stunning results: 400% subscription increase, and 18 times (!) ROI.

My take-away is that we are receiving more and more evidence that “one size fits all” marketing approach does not work; and personalization along with segmentation based on permission marketing is gaining momentum at a record pace.

Where does this lead us? I don’t know of course, but maybe in the future every marketing “impression” is going to be completely segmented, personalized and permission-based. At least, given the business SmartSymbols is in, I certainly hope it would be so.

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Everyone agrees that engaging a customer, providing him or her with interesting, relevant and useful information is virtually a guaranteed way to increase sales (or, the the industry lingo goes - “improve conversion rate”). The question is always, by how much? There are many data points on this subject, the numbers typically vary from 5 to 20%.

Crazy Numbers

Yesterday, Comparison Shopping Engine Strategies published some specific stats pertaining to a specific site. They report that Shopping.com was able to increase conversion rate by some serious numbers.
From CSES website: “Shopping.com rolled out a new shopping experience in their shoe category. The new pages offered larger images, improved navigation, and clearer information on size and color. These changes resulted in some pretty strong stats, including a 55% increase in conversion rate.”

Fifty five percent?! This kind of improvement is bound to catch attention in e-commerce space. But I would venture to say that there is no other way to increase conversion rate, but by improving consumer engagement environment. How else would you increase conversion? Pricing? TV ads? Possibly, but none of these strategies solve main problems consumers are facing today.

Two Main Problems

The main problems that frustrate consumers today are information integrity and data overload. Even if you take either of these problems separately they are not trivial. When you combine the two - it becomes a tangled web of confusing and conflicting messages. These problems affects not only consumers, but product makers as well. What’s more, it virtually breeds information integrity problems, because atomic messages taken out of context are bound to balance on the edge of information integrity.

What Does it Mean?

First of all, at a very basic level, just by organizing product data and creating a simple, consistent and clear message for your market goes a long way towards improving your customer engagement. Information clarity equals better customer interaction.

Secondly, it’s not a rocket science. In the example I used for this article, Shopping.com offered “larger images, improved navigation, and clearer information on size and color”. Does not really get much simpler than that.

The Trend

The underlying trends are simple. One: consumers are shifting their shopping to online venues (The Nielsen Company Report, PDF), and two: whoever can give shoppers information they need when they need it in clear, organized and simple ways will dominate the marketplace. The rest will see their “conversion rates” falling off a cliff and disappearing into the abyss.

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Interesting article on ProImpact7 (bit.ly/GSND0) about the average consumer research process. It turns out that 58% of consumers start their product research at manufacturer’s website. Not online retailers, not consumer advocates sites. No. They go straight to the root of the info.

This is hardly surprising, given that it is the manufacturers that have the most amount of information about their own products, and not the retailers. In fact, it makes sense fundamentally. Retailers have to pump out information about all the products they are selling, while promoting themselves as the most important product. This is an overwhelming task, especially given that they have to deal with thousands of thousands of ever-changing products. No wonder they have little interest or time in creating a cohesive product-centric message.

Manufacturers, on the other hand, have the exact informational capability that consumers are looking for. They are more likely to produce accurate and up-to-date product data, show comparative benefits of various product models, and are interested in creating a community around products they make.

So, next time you are shopping for a new memory stick, camera, toy or a desk - find out who makes the ones that you liked in the past. It maybe that the manufacturer will be the biggest help in determining what product fits your needs best.

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In her article at InternetNews.com Michele Megna is provides a good analysis of the finding that have been published by PowerReviews. The findings confirm once again the general concept upon which SmartSymbols technology has been founded.
“”Customer engagement has become a metric to be reckoned with,” - quotes Michele - “where failing to engage consumers via community and social media will have brand and bottom-line implications.”
She then adds that “[a]side from increasing sales, the study also found the primary goals for using social media marketing is to increase customer engagement.” - which is exactly what SmartSymbols technology has been designed to do.
You can read the entire article here.

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We are changing our brand to give it more focus and a broader market appeal. This will require that we eventually change our company name as well, to something more like SmartSymbols Technology.

Essentially, the purpose of our technology is to convert our client’s website shoppers to customers, we do it through increased customer interaction. And SmartSymbols technology virtually guarantees the increase in interaction. So, consequently, we decided that we should align and focus everything on one subject - SmartSymbols Technologies.

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