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Everyone’s using the “r” word or worse to describe our economy. Just a month or two ago, online marketers were whispering the word for fear of contagion. Now it’s spoken out in the open. We all seem to sense that we’re in a recession or that one’s stalking us and tapping on our shoulder. There is no question that customers’ wallets are going to be tighter. Some sites are experiencing slight sales declines; others are prepping for the recession by…

In expanding the question about relational-transactional purchasing by asking the question of WHAT makes people buy, a fellow deep thinker from the Wizard Academy shared that we should also add in the essential “reporter” questions: I’d lump them into four categories: Who … Why … What … When-Where-How. Who, Why & What are big driving issues, while you can lump the other three (When, Where, How) together as the sort of mechanics of purchasing. WHO we are (or think we are and desire to be) deeply influences WHAT…

Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads, shares a brilliant insight from one of his fastest growing retail clients today in his Monday Morning Memo: I asked, “How is traffic trending? Are we ahead of last year?” “Roy, I don’t measure traffic.” “You’re kidding.” “Last week one of my salespeople made 63 sales presentations and closed only 24 of them. That tells me 39 people bought somewhere else. And right now they’re telling all their friends why they bought where they did. They’re…

For Sale! Prices Slashed!! Marked Down!!! People have used many of the same tactics for centuries to focus potential customers on the value they’d receive if they were to buy now. But here is a question for you: Would your customers rather a product be marked down from $203 to $192, or would they prefer a markdown from $199 to $188? Either way you slice it, they get an $11 price reduction. For you, it changes your final price from…

I’ve been speaking at Search conferences since 2001 and have spent a ton of time getting to know who is who in the industry. Every day it seems that there are another dozen experts to follow on SEO. But, who should you really be paying attention to in 2014? For starters, solid SEO’s need to have a proven track record in the ever-changing world of search – remember, search engines like Google frequently update their algorithms. Another criteria is the…

Marie, the VP of Marketing, predicts that she can increase conversions to sales by at least 40 percent. She wants to conduct a series of disruptive experiments that make everyone nervous. Scott, the VP of Sales, is especially on edge. The lead-to-contract rate is already a respectable 7.1 percent for this not-so-new marketing technology B2B SaaS. If Marie is right, it’s a homerun. But if she’s wrong, Scott is predicting a debacle on an epic scale. You’re in charge. Would…