Marketers aren't always as smart as they sound... but first, a trip down memory lane:
When I was in 4th grade back in my hometown of San Jose, CA I had bit of a schoolboy crush on a girl in my class and at one point I convinced my mother to take me to a local cheap jewelry/accessories store and let me buy her a "gold" necklace. She loved the gift and wore it everyday but after about 2 weeks I noticed the "gold" started to rub off and within weeks it was a dull steel necklace with a slight gold tint. I was terribly disappointed but she liked the gesture of the gift more than quality of the gift. Lesson learned... things are not always as they appear on the outside.
The problem is that I'm still learning it. I'm constantly amazed by how far people can get and how many people are convinced that they know what they are doing just by using the right vocabulary.
The internet is a powerful and dangerous thing. Lately I've been more and more impressed by the effect that it has had on the knowledge share of business professionals about conversion marketing. What I'm noticing is that the terminology on concepts are now widely available to everyone, but most only take the time to casually understand the subject of conversion marketing. And as we all know a little knowledge can be a very bad thing.
This has been highlighted to me more than a few times recently in meetings with peers and executives (in and outside of my company). For example I was sitting in a meeting a few weeks ago and an individual started talking about an online campaign as an example using all the right buzz words like conversion, funnel, persuasive elements, fall-out, efficiency ratios, etc. but something went terribly wrong. My (internal) reactions to his comments were umhm, yep, yep, absolutly, perfect, right on, yep, hmm that doesn't sound right, what?, wait wait, oh no, oh my god he really thinks that, hold me i'm scared, AHHH, final I had to call a time-out: illegal motion 5-yard penatly.
What this individual showed very clearly was that he understood the basic vocabulary and dynamics of the term but like the "gold" necklace, scratch skin deep and there is not actual knowledge about the subject just the parroting of skimmed data. This is a complex subject after-all we are talking about marketing your product here, growing your company, surviving in competitive markets. It blow my mind that so many people fake it.
Kids, marketing (especially internet marketing) isn't going to get any easier in fact it's going to get downright hard really soon (by the way if this is news you really have some catching up to do). You must know what you are talking about and you must be able to put it into action. There are excellent resources out there to really understand conversion dynamics. Now for the shameless plug... Let's talk about real experts: I've been a big fan of the Jeff Eisenberg & Brian Eisenberg and FutureNow, Inc. for years. As far as I'm concerned their concept and implementation of persuasive architecture will allow companies to have great success in fast growing competitive spaces. I have just finished reading their new book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?, and it's excellent (full review coming shortly). Get to know what they do, why, and how it works and you will go a long way toward being able to walk the talk.