Living in New York City, I like to venture out and explore. What are the digital entrepreneurs and marketers on the streets of New York thinking these days?
biztechday300Last week, I dropped by BizTechDay 2010, a bona fide professional networking event with an impressive speaker lineup—now touring major U.S. cities—that came from humble beginnings as just another Meetup.com group. What could be a better testament to the power of “conversation”—it’s not just about retweets!
Here are three takeaways that I thought could serve as useful illustrations of conversion optimization principles.
Takeaway #1: It’s not about finding people for your product; it’s about finding products for your people
Throughout the event, the audience was treated to a number of new ventures. These ranged from full-scale presentations like the crowd-funding disruptor Profounder to one-minute pitches like the troubled-youth-educating Ruby Nuby.
The distinguishing characteristic was that they had started with identifying a need in the marketplace. They noticed that people wanted to accomplish something, but didn’t have the right tool or the right support structure. Profounder helps people aggregate venture funding from a wide network of friends and family, yet bypassing the awkward dinner table conversation. Ruby Nuby charges companies for training their software developers, and piggy-backs pro bono training for the disadvantaged youngsters.
When we teach about the clarity of the value proposition on landing pages, one subtle point is so often overlooked: that a value proposition is not determined in the boardroom; it grows out of need.
Takeaway #2: Propaganda makes bad PR (even to the folks at FOX News)
I rarely get to deal with traditional PR, so Clayton Morris’ presentation on how to get TV exposure sounded exactly like what we teach in landing page optimization. His point was: eliminate unsupervised thinking in your press release by clearly communicating value to TV producers.
In Clayton’s world, companies bombard him with press releases that focus entirely on what the company wants to tell the world: new CEO is crowned, new product is launched, and so on. What this cookie-cutter PR misses is that he and his producers are not looking to learn about your company—they are looking for TV show content.
A press release that is not focused singularly on showing how you can add value, is asking Clayton & friends at FOX to figure that out on their own. While they are certainly capable of doing so, these press releases arrive by the hundreds. Which ones get through? The ones that require less work, ones that clearly demonstrate how the story can be used, practically laying out the screen play.
Takeaway #3: If a keynote is given without a PowerPoint, it still does make a sound
Not surprisingly, all things “social” received significant air time, Seth Godin dominating the speaker lineup with an impressive performance. However, the event certainly was not about social media.
Why was Godin’s presentation effective? Relevance is part of it. Engaging tone and enjoyable anecdotes were also key—it came across as more of a conversation than a presentation.
It also helped that to most attendees, he was the biggest name on the roster, if not the reason for showing up. At the same time, he didn’t need to work hard to establish credibility even with those who had never heard of him—he was introduced like a celebrity, plus each attendee had received a free copy of his latest book.
Boris Grinkot
http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/research-topics/credibility-indicators/lpo-entrepreneurship-pr-social.html
Living in New York City, I like to venture out and explore. What are the digital entrepreneurs and marketers on the streets of New York thinking these days?
Last week, I dropped by BizTechDay 2010, a bona fide professional networking event with an impressive speaker lineup—now touring major U.S. cities—that came from humble beginnings as just another Meetup.com group. What could be a better testament to the power of “conversation”—it’s not just about retweets!
Here are three takeaways that I thought could serve as useful illustrations of conversion optimization principles.
Takeaway #1: It’s not about finding people for your product; it’s about finding products for your people
Throughout the event, the audience was treated to a number of new ventures. These ranged from full-scale presentations like the crowd-funding disruptor Profounder to one-minute pitches like the troubled-youth-educating Ruby Nuby.
The distinguishing characteristic was that they had started with identifying a need in the marketplace. They noticed that people wanted to accomplish something, but didn’t have the right tool or the right support structure. Profounder helps people aggregate venture funding from a wide network of friends and family, yet bypassing the awkward dinner table conversation. Ruby Nuby charges companies for training their software developers, and piggy-backs pro bono training for the disadvantaged youngsters.
When we teach about the clarity of the value proposition on landing pages, one subtle point is so often overlooked: that a value proposition is not determined in the boardroom; it grows out of need.
Takeaway #2: Propaganda makes bad PR (even to the folks at FOX News)
I rarely get to deal with traditional PR, so Clayton Morris’ presentation on how to get TV exposure sounded exactly like what we teach in landing page optimization. His point was: eliminate unsupervised thinking in your press release by clearly communicating value to TV producers.
In Clayton’s world, companies bombard him with press releases that focus entirely on what the company wants to tell the world: new CEO is crowned, new product is launched, and so on. What this cookie-cutter PR misses is that he and his producers are not looking to learn about your company—they are looking for TV show content.
A press release that is not focused singularly on showing how you can add value, is asking Clayton & friends at FOX to figure that out on their own. While they are certainly capable of doing so, these press releases arrive by the hundreds. Which ones get through? The ones that require less work, ones that clearly demonstrate how the story can be used, practically laying out the screen play.
Takeaway #3: If a keynote is given without a PowerPoint, it still does make a sound
Not surprisingly, all things “social” received significant air time, Seth Godin dominating the speaker lineup with an impressive performance. However, the event certainly was not about social media.
Why was Godin’s presentation effective? Relevance is part of it. Engaging tone and enjoyable anecdotes were also key—it came across as more of a conversation than a presentation.
It also helped that to most attendees, he was the biggest name on the roster, if not the reason for showing up. At the same time, he didn’t need to work hard to establish credibility even with those who had never heard of him—he was introduced like a celebrity, plus each attendee had received a free copy of his latest book. Leer más “Landing Page Optimization: Takeaways from Entrepreneurship, PR, and Social Media”
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