I’ve decided that I want to start impressing my friends when we go out for dinner, but rather than ordering the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu, I thought I would surprise them with my Italian language skills. And after watching CNBC for six month straight, I could think of only one company to help me with this project……….Rosetta Stone.
But rather than just going straight to their website, I thought I would take a look at their online marketing. They do a great job on TV, so I thought that their Internet effort would be no less spectacular. Well, I hope they teach Italian better than then promote it.
So here was my search “learn to speak italian” and here were the PPC ads that came up
Rosetta Stones Crappy PPC Ads
As you can see, their PPC add is less than compelling and really isn’t orientated at solving anyone’s lack of Italian language problems. It may solve your problem if you were looking for award winning Italian language software, but that really wasn’t part of the solution I had in mind.
So we click on the add anyways and let’s see where we end up:
Rosetta Stones Learn Italian Landing Page
For the uninitiated, you may see nothing wrong with this page. For anyone who has gone through the process of attempting to sell anything online via PPC marketing, you should see the fail right away. There is no attempt to capture any information from person who just clicked on ad but was not ready to drop $200 to $600 right away (but might have been if the company spent some time wooing me) . So if the company just spent $1.00 on that click, and I spent10 seconds on the site, the company spent $6 for a minute of my time or $360 per hour……………
If you look around the site, you can tell that Rosetta Stone’s marketing team has run into a ceiling in getting new customers because they are starting to promote 15% discounts and free shipping across the entire site. If they utilized online direct marketing a little better, they could probably plow the money they are investing in discounting and free shipping in a better customer conversion process and end up generating more profit rather than giving it away.
Ya, that’s a fail for a company with vast direct marketing experience.
but the process stays the same………..unless of course you have a habit of yelling “BUY BUY BUY” the second you get face to face with your customer – more on this later
For what ever reason, people seem to think that the Internet has changed the steps that a customer goes through before they buy a particular product or service.
It really hasn’t.
The customer still needs to establish a want or need, do some research on alternative methods of satisfying the want or need, compare the alternatives and then make a decision. Of course we could get into semantics about the particulars of each step, but from a 30,000 foot level, this is how people behave.
What has changed is the method by which the consumer goes through this process.
Think back to 40 years ago and imagine you are buying a house, selecting a private school for your kids, or buying life insurance.
Step 1 – Find someone who sells what you are looking for. You could ask a friend for referral, open the phone book or maybe walk down the street and see if there is any advertising promoting the above referenced services.
Step 2 – Repeat Step 1 a few times so you have a few different alternatives. You usually don’t buy the first house you see without having another to compare it to. You wouldn’t send your daughter to an all boys private school if the first school you found was an all boys school. And you may not buy from the first insurance salesman you find if it turns out they only sell whole life when you need term.
Step 3 – After speaking with the sales representatives, you would sit down and consider alternatives. Ask you spouse, your friends, your co-workers, your mistress, anyone you thought might have a valid opinion.
Step 4 – You make your decision.
Now flash forward to present day. How do you go about this process?
Well, there is probably a good chance you would start on the Internet, which is perfectly fine.
But the buying process remains the same for the customer – 99% of the time, they are not jumping at the first offer they see. They do research, they talk to people, they evaluate and then they buy………just like you.
BUY BUY BUY
So imagine a situation where you are meeting with a sales representative for the first time and the first thing that comes out of the rep’s mouth is BUY BUY BUY. Every question you ask is met with the same response – BUY BUY BUY. You are looking for some basic product information, get a sense of how the company can help solve a particular problem you have and all they can say is BUY BUY BUY.
Now, that would be weird, because everyone knows that you need to foster a bit of a relationship and a bit of trust before a customer parts with their money. It’s only natural. An especially on a first sales meeting because often the prospect is looking to fill a basic information void they have.
But for some reason, when people get in to marketing on-line, they forget this. They set up a few PPC ads, link them to some generic web page and you know what you get…………a situation where the company is yelling BUY BUY BUY at the prospect. The prospects’ questions and concerns are of no value to the company, because otherwise, they would have developed a better way to listen to them.
On top of this, the merchant is oblivious to the best part of selling over the internet……you can develop automated systems to educate a prospect about your product to see if it fits with their situation. You can use a number of processes to build trust with the prospect………in fact you can use the internet to automatically deal with the most laborious tasks that the average salesperson deals with………..prospecting……..so that by the time a salesperson finally meets a prospect, the prospect is much further along the sales process and has the expectation that the company can help solve their problem.
OR……you could keep yelling BUY BUY BUY at your prospects and have your sales people constantly spending time doing a manual task, like delivering basic product information, that could easily be automated
A perfect example of this is for this search: corporate training solution las vegas
If you take a look at the Raytheon ad, they dont really discuss any benefits of their product offering………but they must be #1 for a reason
When you get to the landing page, you see the typical mistakes (no information capture) and no way for the customer to easy communicate their needs to the company, but the company is telling you how great they are at” aligning performance among employees, customers and partners” and you say to yourself……..”I just wanted to teach my employees about our new sales process”
Have you ever tired using direct marketing to ask your customers about their needs? I bet it will work.
Just stop yelling at your customers!!!
If a PPC ad isn’t worth doing well, its not worth doing at all
Here is another perfect example of advertisers attempting to cram brand advertising into the direct advertising model.
Say you happen to be a mom in Miami whose 13 year old son just came home with an F in math. What is your first instinct beyond taking away their cellphone and PS3? Maybe the kid needs some extra help or else he is never going to be able to support you in your old age.
So you do a fairly specific Google search – Miami Math Tutoring.
And what pay per click ads does the magic Google machine pull up? These (I’ve done some cropping of the organic search results as that isn’t focus here):
and these:
Let’s take a look at the ads, and remember why someone might be looking for tutoring services?
Do any of these ads actually address why a kid, you kid could be failing math?
Maybe your son sits at the back of the class, can’t see the board and all he needs is a pair of glasses? Maybe he has hearing problems? Maybe he is dyslexic? Maybe he is gifted and bored by the subject? Maybe he sits next to the cutest girl in the class and spends the entire class talking to her? Maybe the math teacher wears low cut shirt that distract from the subject matter……..I’m going to extremes here to make a point
Or before you run out and hire a tutor, you might want to find out how a tutor can help.
None of these ads try to address this information void or even explain the benefits of tutoring.
Collectively, they attempt to sell on price (offering a discount), talk about their expertise, location or mention their services. These thing all go towards brand. They don’t really address your problem (and your son’s) that underlie your need for a tutoring service.
The landing pages for these ads also deserve an F, with Huntington Learning not even bothering to attempt to capture information…………YOU ARE PAYING FOR A TOP POSITION!!!
This is lead generation folks. That means you want leads. And you want to encourage people to become leads. So don’t throw up a PPC ad with a phone number. You want them to become part of your marketing program. If all you are doing is throwing up a phone number, you are investing in a PPC advertising program for one shot at a customer…….ONE SHOT………you don’t have much of a hope for a return on your investment. You need to build a database of interested contacts.
This mother may not call you for her 13 year old son, who in the end, just needed some glasses, but if you in some way, shape or form developed some trust with her, you may get a call from her when it turns out that her 17 year old can’t get that sports scholarship to university because he can’t do basic math.
Just a thought. For 99% of companies, direct ads are about solving problems. Not building brand.
