Christopher Butler

Storytelling is the Future of the Web
Most of the successful marketing campaigns that stand out in my memory all revolve around characters. Some of them are simply charismatic spokespeople, like Geico’s gecko, Nationwide’s “Greatest Spokesperson in the World, or, I suppose, Burger King’s creepy king. Others keenly represent the intended customer—think way back to Wendy’s “where’s the beef?” lady, or more recently to Apple’s mac and PC guys. In all of these cases, it was decided that a more compelling message could be created by using characters to tell a story, rather than putting the product itself front and center.

Relating to characters and their stories is essential in order for people to make an initial connection with brands. Sure, some brands eventually transcend the need for connection and become themselves defining characteristics of people. In fact, Apple’s “I’m a mac/pc” was somewhat self-referential in that way. But in the beginning, people need to connect with a story in order to believe that a product or service matters to them.
Of course, this isn’t news. This has been established marketing thinking for a very long time. But somehow, the concept of storytelling doesn’t seem to have worked its way down from the worldwide mega-brands to the next tier of businesses in which you and I work. But why shouldn’t it? After all, we’re endeavoring to speak to the very same people they are!
This month I’d like to explore storytelling, dispel the myth that we can’t tell stories on the web, and identify some ways we can hone our craft as web-based storytellers.
Read More >

Most of the successful marketing campaigns that stand out in my memory all revolve around characters. Some of them are simply charismatic spokespeople, like Geico’s gecko, Nationwide’s “Greatest Spokesperson in the World, or, I suppose, Burger King’s creepy king. Others keenly represent the intended customer—think way back to Wendy’s “where’s the beef?” lady, or more recently to Apple’s mac and PC guys. In all of these cases, it was decided that a more compelling message could be created by using characters to tell a story, rather than putting the product itself front and center.

Relating to characters and their stories is essential in order for people to make an initial connection with brands. Sure, some brands eventually transcend the need for connection and become themselves defining characteristics of people. In fact, Apple’s “I’m a mac/pc” was somewhat self-referential in that way. But in the beginning, people need to connect with a story in order to believe that a product or service matters to them.

Of course, this isn’t news. This has been established marketing thinking for a very long time. But somehow, the concept of storytelling doesn’t seem to have worked its way down from the worldwide mega-brands to the next tier of businesses in which you and I work. But why shouldn’t it? After all, we’re endeavoring to speak to the very same people they are!

This month I’d like to explore storytelling, dispel the myth that we can’t tell stories on the web, and identify some ways we can hone our craft as web-based storytellers.

“I feel like there’s this tension that goes on in business and especially in marketing, this conceit that we can take humans—you know, messy, irrational, organic—and somehow cut them open and figure out the binary, rational, predictable, money-making algorithms that determine what they do. You see all this harnessing of science, you know, whether it’s neuro-this or lie detector-that or psychotherapy-this that gets used in the service of, not helping people, but helping marketers crack the nut of what people want, where is the desire center in the brain. You know, that we can learn things about people in a way that is “true”—that is predictable and true, and will determine consumption patterns. I find the idea that we should be able to do that just fascinating, because that’s not the world of people that we live in as people, so why as marketers or designers or producers do we think that we should turn people into things that they really aren’t?”

— Steve Portigal, from a fascinating discussion transposed here.

1:03 pm • 6 March 2010 • 6 notes

Should You Work for Free to Get Your Foot in the Door?

My Opinion: No, You Shouldn’t
Back in early April, I read a post by Peter Madden on the Advertising Age “Small Agency Diary” blog about the benefits of doing pro-bono work during the idle time brought on by an economic recession (pictured in the screenshot to the left). What I think Peter was really trying to hone in on was the idea that though doing pro-bono work may have its good, altruistic purposes, it can also be a practical means to keeping minds and faculties productive and busy when they’d be otherwise unused. I completely agree with that sentiment; for a designer, staying in practice is well worth the investment. However, I did comment on his post in order to note one reservation I would have- I’ve copied my comment below:

“Peter, I think this is a great idea. We’ve done lots of pro bono work in the past, both for organizations we care about and for friends and family connections. The only place it can get sticky is if your business model includes long-term support. For us (we’re a web development firm), we host and maintain every site we build, which means that if a client got that initial site for free, we either have to consider everything we do for them moving forward as free, or deal with the tricky step of transitioning them from pro-bono to paying client. Even if that client is willing to become a paying one, the leap can be tough- when you’re used to getting something for free for a long time, suddenly paying what it’s actually worth is not that easy. To that point, we’ve negotiated that transition with varying degrees of success, such that we have to think carefully about how our business model will realistically impact our desire to do pro bono work every now and then.”

Journalists Love a Good Debate
I was a bit nervous about potentially being seen as a naysayer. After all, the predominant tone of the marketing industry in the current social media era is one of sharing and generosity. Amidst that, who would want to be perceived as a Scrooge? As you’ll see if you read through the comment string, there were opinions on all sides.

Then, in September, I received a call from Kasey Wehrum, writer for Inc. Magazine. He’d seen my comment on the AdAge blog while doing research for a piece he was writing on the benefits of pro-bono work for November’s issue and wanted to ask me some questions about our experience and pull some quotes for his article. We spoke for about thirty minutes or so, during which I stressed that though we’ve done much pro-bono work due to existing relationships with various causes that employees have had, the notion of using pro-bono work as a strategy to build business was never one we adopted for two reasons: (1) Doing so would be contrary to any consultant’s positioning. If consultants choose to give away advice, it should be because they truly care about the cause. Doing so with the expectation that it could be turned profitable would be disingenuous. (2) When your primary deliverable is incorporeal (advice, strategy, direction, etc.), getting a client to start paying for that kind of service after they’ve already been receiving it for free is very, very difficult- even if they say they are willing.

Requisite Benefits-of-Social-Media Interlude
I should point out that this scenario is a great example of the unplanned serendipity of social media. It’s become a habit of mine to actively engage with other blogs in my industry, so it wasn’t unusual for me to share my opinion on the AdAge blog. What was unusual, to me at least, is that the post that I had commented on, and indeed my comment itself, became research material for a journalist at a major publication. I was glad to share my opinion and experience with Kasey Wehrum, who was a pleasure to speak with, but was surprised that I might be of any help to him. There must be others more qualified than I. However, having commented immediately on Peter Madden’s post put me in the right place at the right time.

Still a Naysayer
As it turns out, the article took a different direction from what I thought it was going to be about. It’s titled Using Charitable Donations to Motivate Employees. Wehrum uses an example of a software company which built an offering for a pro-bono client and was then able to demo it to another company which became a paying customer. Pro-pro-bono, but no problem there- I think my point still stands when it comes to consultative work. In any case, the remaining reference to our conversation was disappointing:

“Keep in mind that beggars can be surprisingly choosy. Sometimes companies have to draw the line about what nonprofits can get for free. Newfangled Web Factory, a Carrboro, North Carolina, Web design firm, lets its employees work on pro bono projects of their choosing during slow times at work. Most of the projects consist of designing and building websites, which are then hosted on Newfangled’s servers.

These ongoing relationships, in which the charity becomes reliant on Newfangled’s continuing service, have led to some problems. Occasionally, one of the nonprofits the company helps will undergo a reorganization, and the new staff will want to revamp its website. “They’ll get in touch with us and want to make a whole lot of changes,” says Chris Butler, Newfangled’s vice president. When the requests are too great, Newfangled politely but firmly says no.”

Oh well. We’re really not Scrooges here at Newfangled! I did leave a clarifying comment, which I hope won’t be seen as overly defensive:

“One point I’d want to clarify is this: In the past when we’ve chosen to do pro-bono work, it has been because we’ve believed in the cause, not in order to gain a potential paying client at some later point.

When it comes to service-oriented firms and consultants, transitioning a pro-bono client to a paying client is very difficult as you’ve already been giving them your best advice for free. For any agency, this should be a serious consideration when entertaining the strategy of getting a foot in the door by offering free service. However, if the scope of the offering has been limited to implementation only (i.e. a website), there could definitely be potential to expand the scope of your service when the client is able to pay.

Also, we do politely say no once the client’s need exceeds our ability to subsidize it, but we also almost always connect them to someone else who can help them.”

Here’s a scan of the article. Click to open it in full size:

10:30 am • 10 November 2009

$When asked how they initially found out about us, many of our clients will recall searching for something online and finding our site among a search engine’s results. Great, SEO win! But that’s not really the full story. They usually go on to say that landing on our site began a long relationship with our content, sometimes lasting years, that preceded becoming a client. These people’s extended use of our site speaks to the high value of our content to them. But what this ultimately shows is that, no matter how long their “vetting” process, a site’s visitors offer very little value to you until you have converted them to prospects. So, think about this in terms of your site: How much site traffic is actually converted and where does it come from?More conversions come from human referrals than from search engine traffic. Take a moment to let that sink in. More conversions come from human referrals than from search engine traffic. Knowing that our site received the vast majority of its traffic from search engine referrals, and that we performed quite well for phrases directly related to what we do, like “defining a web content strategy,” “how to do SEO,” or “website development pricing,” I would have assumed that most of the people subscribing to our newsletter, registering for our webinars, or requesting meetings with us are referred by search engines. But after reviewing the data, I have concluded that this is not the case at all. The image above depicts the 9 top referrers of traffic to our website, showing how many unique visits and eventual conversions came from each over the past 6 months. As expected, the top referrer to our site, exceeding direct visits by almost 5 times, was search engine traffic (Google, Yahoo, and Bing). However, out of the 71, 233 visitors who came to our site from a search engine, only 333 of them ended up converting to an actual lead. That’s a paltry fraction of a percent (.47%). Our miscellaneous referrals, on the other hand, which include any other website on the web that has chosen to link to us, deliver far fewer visitors by comparison to search but far more conversions. Out of the 10,350 visitors that came from direct links to our site on other websites, 475 ended up converting to actual leads. That’s 4.5%- almost 10 times the percentage by proportion of conversions originating with search! While I can’t say for certain that my conclusions about our site traffic would apply to every other company like ours, I’d bet it’s pretty likely. When you stop to consider why search traffic delivers fewer conversions than other referrals, the data makes perfect sense. Think about it: When you search for something online, you scrutinize the results for relevance before you choose one to click, and even then, you often realize that the site you’ve visited isn’t quite what you’re looking for. No hard feelings; you don’t expect search engine bots to organize the web based upon just what you want. That would be like going to your local library and finding a card catalog with your name on it. But when a site you trust links to another site, you do expect that recommendation to be much more closely aligned with your interests and intent than a search engine’s results to your query. You assume that the people behind that website are like you, and when they link to another site, it’s for a really good reason. They’ve read its content and found it valuable enough to recommend to you. Put simply, people trust people and people act upon trust. I think the chart above makes this principle very clear, but if you need any further evidence of how direct human referrals lead to more conversions, read what happened when Smashing Magazine referred to our site among its list of useful email web design newsletters. Read More >$

When asked how they initially found out about us, many of our clients will recall searching for something online and finding our site among a search engine’s results. Great, SEO win! But that’s not really the full story. They usually go on to say that landing on our site began a long relationship with our content, sometimes lasting years, that preceded becoming a client. These people’s extended use of our site speaks to the high value of our content to them. But what this ultimately shows is that, no matter how long their “vetting” process, a site’s visitors offer very little value to you until you have converted them to prospects. So, think about this in terms of your site: How much site traffic is actually converted and where does it come from?

More conversions come from human referrals than from search engine traffic.

Take a moment to let that sink in. More conversions come from human referrals than from search engine traffic. Knowing that our site received the vast majority of its traffic from search engine referrals, and that we performed quite well for phrases directly related to what we do, like “defining a web content strategy,” “how to do SEO,” or “website development pricing,” I would have assumed that most of the people subscribing to our newsletter, registering for our webinars, or requesting meetings with us are referred by search engines. But after reviewing the data, I have concluded that this is not the case at all.

The image above depicts the 9 top referrers of traffic to our website, showing how many unique visits and eventual conversions came from each over the past 6 months. As expected, the top referrer to our site, exceeding direct visits by almost 5 times, was search engine traffic (Google, Yahoo, and Bing). However, out of the 71, 233 visitors who came to our site from a search engine, only 333 of them ended up converting to an actual lead. That’s a paltry fraction of a percent (.47%). Our miscellaneous referrals, on the other hand, which include any other website on the web that has chosen to link to us, deliver far fewer visitors by comparison to search but far more conversions. Out of the 10,350 visitors that came from direct links to our site on other websites, 475 ended up converting to actual leads. That’s 4.5%- almost 10 times the percentage by proportion of conversions originating with search!

While I can’t say for certain that my conclusions about our site traffic would apply to every other company like ours, I’d bet it’s pretty likely. When you stop to consider why search traffic delivers fewer conversions than other referrals, the data makes perfect sense. Think about it: When you search for something online, you scrutinize the results for relevance before you choose one to click, and even then, you often realize that the site you’ve visited isn’t quite what you’re looking for. No hard feelings; you don’t expect search engine bots to organize the web based upon just what you want. That would be like going to your local library and finding a card catalog with your name on it. But when a site you trust links to another site, you do expect that recommendation to be much more closely aligned with your interests and intent than a search engine’s results to your query. You assume that the people behind that website are like you, and when they link to another site, it’s for a really good reason. They’ve read its content and found it valuable enough to recommend to you. Put simply, people trust people and people act upon trust.

I think the chart above makes this principle very clear, but if you need any further evidence of how direct human referrals lead to more conversions, read what happened when Smashing Magazine referred to our site among its list of useful email web design newsletters.

“Telling an internal social media marketing specialist to “be human” might come from the marketing department, but only a company that has been engineered from the ground up to support a culture of human business has the ability to empower that employee to actually be human.”

—

Tom Webster, in his post, “What’s Wrong With Social Media Strategy”

He continues here, in what I think takes some courage to say:

I don’t think anyone “gets it” (myself included) because we don’t know where this is going. Telling a marketing department to be “helpful and human” on the social web is a tactical message. Reengineering the company so that its employees can actually be helpful and human may require an enormous overhaul of the very theory of the firm.

3:11 pm • 15 October 2009