The Funnelholic

So, first to be clear about some things:

First: Lists: What I mean is the popular-offer/subject-line-grabber technique of 100 Best Ways to “X” or 10 Reasons You Shouldn’t “X.”

Second: George Carlin . If you don’t know him, read about him on Wikipedia.

Third: Offers can be blog posts, article headlines, whitepaper headlines, Webinar topics, email subject lines and so on.

So, I am listening to the radio, and the host is talking about George Carlin, who passed away this year due to heart failure. Here is how he described Carlin: “George Carlin is known primarily for his ’seven dirty words act’ … ” The “seven dirty words act” is of course George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.”

OK, so do the math. This dude did stand-up comedy and movies for 40 to 50 years. He was known as being funnier than hell. At the end of the day, Carlin will always be remembered by the ultimate list headline: “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” The seven words take one minute to list, and the monologue was one act in an entire career. Yet it is what everyone turns to when they describe Carlin’s career.

George Carlin proves one thing: You cannot stop the use of lists for marketing success. You can only hope to contain it.

Ironically, as I was thinking about this offer, I figured that I should do some research on it, and, lucky me, some of my favorite bloggers have some great posts on the subject:

• Michael Stelzner from Writing Whitepapers blog: “Two Reasons Numbers Still Work in titles“
• Two posts from Brian Clark of Copyblogger: “7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work” and “5 Reasons Why the List Post Is Dead“

One thing is true: With the blogosphere and the multitude of people trying to capture eyeballs, the list technique has never been more prevalent. But the bottom line is that it still works.

Then there’s this comment from MacStansbury in the “7 Reasons” article:

“It’s getting so bad with the lists, I’m almost to the point I don’t want to read a post if there’s a list. Of course, I’m still writing posts like that, because it works!”

Why does it work for approaching B2B buyers? B2B buyers have no time and want their information from people whom they trust or that they believe are thought leaders. The list approach conveys the following to a B2B buyer:

1. Easy to Read: The list format gives a feeling that your offer will be “to the point” and can be consumed quickly and easily.
2. Authority and Thought Leadership: Making a list is authoritative and definitive.

The most important factor is that the list technique still works, and B2B marketers should take notice. Also take notice that if you haven’t been doing it, everyone else has, so you have to still be creative and think outside the box on how you present a list. George Carlin would be proud.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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Well, this is fun. The Funnelholic is now becoming a real journalist. So here is the deal. My post, The Funnelholic “How-to” guide to getting jacked by Wikipedia, was not only overall a good post, but also a conversation stirrer. A lot of my friends sent me emails liking the post and finding the whole situation fascinating. So, here is what we did…we went out and interviewed Kent Lewis from Anvil Media who runs the agency that lead the Wiki-gate. Kent has been really open and cool about the whole situation. Anvil Media, Inc. is a SEM agency doing SEO, PPC, SEM PR,ORM, and SMM.

So first do this:

1. Read my previous post: The Funnelholic “How-to” guide to getting jacked by Wikipedia
2. Make sure you read the Marketing Sherpa article: How to Use Wikipedia Entries for Lead Gen - 6 Steps to 18% Higher Conversion Rate
3. Then read this interview with Kent.

Funnelholic: Do you think that cooperating with the Marketing Sherpa story was a bad idea?
Kent Lewis: Extremely bad idea. Doing good work and sharing it with others as a learning experience applies everywhere but the blogosphere and wikisphere from what I can tell.

Funnelholic: Are community-based sites like Wikipedia worth investing in from a marketing point of view until the community evolves to accept commercial contributions?
Kent Lewis: If you can get in there, I’d say it’s worth doing…the Attensa case study speaks for itself, even if it’s the first and last of its kind.

Funnelholic: Did anyone really think there’d be no Wiki backlash when it was learned that PR people were writing content?
Kent Lewis: Nobody thought about it…I’m old school and have seen it all, but I really don’t spend much timing thinking about the 1% of the tech population that edits, but the 99% that value the content.

Funnelholic: Is there a more community-based approach to doing this – seeding the site with entries and encouraging customers and partners to add information, for instance?
Kent Lewis: Probably…we’ll encourage everyone to explore it while we’re in the Wikipedia doghouse. Hopefully the rules will evolve with technology and human behavior so that people and companies can share information and clear up inaccuracies in a timely manner.

Funnelholic: If, as a real expert, I contribute real valuable content to Wikipedia, regardless of a commercial or non-commercial tone, how can I make sure that it isn’t bastardized by either someone gaming the system or a rival or an idiot?
Kent Lewis: I would recommend monitoring any and all relevant pages/posts (perhaps via RSS) to catch any gaming, ineptitude or libel. Also, developing a relationship with editors is probably a good idea…I’ve learned Wikipedia is built on respect, which has to be earned, and sharing our story was disrespectful more than it was dishonest.

Funnelholic: Now that you have gone through the process, can you provide any insight on how to draw the fine line between ‘gaming’ the system and getting booted or providing valuable information that will stay up? Kent Lewis: Sorry, can’t help you there. Ask the Wikipedia editors. As far as I can tell, the only difference between gaming the system, providing valuable content and getting booted is whether or not you get caught. There’s a ton of crap/useless/inaccurate information on Wikipedia as much as there has been a ton of verifiable, factual, helpful, unique and unbiased content removed. If Wikipedia editors got beyond the grudge match power-tripping, they might find they’ve robbed their own visitors & fans of good content.

Funnelholic: Does the combination of Wikipedia and it’s automatic top-level-Google-search-result have too much power in this world where search is king?
Kent Lewis: Absolutely. I wouldn’t be upset if KNOL upset the balance with Wikipedia, as much as Cuil challenges Google. I’m not betting on either happening though.

Funnelholic: Now that you have been through this, any regrets?
Kent Lewis: Yes, not what we did, but simply that we talked about it. Fortunately, it has only generated fantastic new business opportunities, and we won’t stop telling our stories, just not about Wikipedia.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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First allow me to describe my morning timeline lead-in to this post:

9:00 AM: Buy Blue Bottle Coffee (yes, it is very trendy…but completely legit coffee)
9:15AM: Read my morning email newsletters
9:20 AM: Excitedly but suspiciously open the Marketing Sherpa newsletter email entitled “Wikipedia as Lead Gen” (really excited, I love that kind of stuff…still worried its some bait)
9:21 AM: Bated breath, open How to Use Wikipedia Entries for Lead Gen - 6 Steps to 18% Higher Conversion Rate. Love the title man, I have hope that this going to be a great article.
9:21 AM: Begin reading the article, it is legit.  The story of how a technology company, Attensa, in conjunction with its Agency, Anvil Media, was able to use Wikipedia for b2b lead generation.  It is a classic Marketing Sherpa study, with the whole scenario set up and real quotes from the Director of Marketing and his agency.  The Results were exciting:

• 4% increase in site traffic
• 4% increase in leads overall
• 65 leads per month on average from Wikipedia
• 18% higher conversion rate for Wikipedia traffic

9: 25 AM: I read it and am excited.  This is something new I can blog about…really cool innovative stuff.
9:27 AM: I hit the SEO experts I know:

• Funnel: “I have got something you guys have never been able to hit, Wikipedia.”
• Top SEO guy: “No you don’t”
• Funnel: “I’ll send it”
• Top SEO: “Do it, and I bet you $100 it doesn’t work”
• Funnel: “Done”
• Ten Minutes later, TOP SEO via email: “Number One: go look for them on Wikipedia and number two: $100 via Paypal”

9:37 AM: I realize that in my wild excitement, I never checked to see if it was still up on Wikipedia – it isn’t.  Then I start to read the comments…comment number 1: Jul 23, 2008 - Gregory Kohs of MyWikiBiz.com says:
“Good luck with future success, now that you’ve exposed yourself and the Anvil Media agency. I have a lot of experience observing what you tried to do here, and I guaran-damn-tee you, this isn’t going to end pretty. Wikipedia is going to decimate your efforts. It’s a shame, of course, but them’s the facts. More discussion on this article at: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=19391”
9:38 AM: Then see comment number 2: Jul 23, 2008 - Gregory Kohs of MyWikiBiz.com says: “You all realize, I presume, that this article led to the complete roll-back of everything Anvil Media and Attensa had accomplished on Wikipedia?”
9:39 AM: I feel bad for Attensa and their agency Anvil Media.

The simple two-step how-two guide to getting slammed by the Wikipedia police:

Step 1: Try to game Wikipedia - Wikipedia is policed heavily to keep spammers out of their kingdom and while I know Attensa would not consider what they did spam, it is to the  Wiki-world.  And they are watching…

Step 2:  If you manage to successfully game them, then publish your strategy and results on the internet – Writing an article on Marketing Sherpa is essentially goading the Wiki-police into putting a match to anything you have done.  See Attensa.

The moral can be summed up by the final comment on the article page:

Jul 28, 2008 - Peter of Entra Marketing Ltd. says: “Memo to self - spend more time improving my business, traffic, conversions, and less time telling people (and especially highly trafficked marketing information websites) how I do it :)”

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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It’s amazing, it seems like every week I run into a Direct Mail is not dead seminar or blog post or article. I just read the Go-to-Market Strategies article ‘Is Direct Mail Dead?‘ Typically I have stopped reading these last pleas to keep a dinosaur alive, but decided to read it today. This is my favorite quote: “The DMA study released in June 2008 shows that 75% of marketers still use direct mail and that direct mail still surpasses email in the most important result of all–revenue generation.” Look that does say direct mail is not dead, it still doesn’t mean it is not dying.

The Al Gore “Four”: The slow and painful death of direct mail.

1. The Incovenient Truth– Come on people…read the freaking news….you are killing the environment for a couple leads.
-Basically in the direct mail process you did the following:

1. Killed a tree
2. Used up expensive crude oil/gas (and funded terrorism)
3. There is probably a bunch of other environmental offenses you have done as well.

2. Al Gore, the ‘inventor’ of this little thing called the internet – Please join us in the millennium. Yes, marketing on the internet takes work. I still have some people I talk to who say the internet for lead generation does not work…those people clearly do not read my and other blogs and stories that the internet is a GREAT place to generate leads…you just need to have the right strategy to attack it. Commit to the internet for god’s sake, it’s time.

3. Al Gore’s reinvention to pure utter hipness – Guys, seriously, you just look bad with the client. If you are doing technology marketing and you send a piece of paper to an engineering guy, if he even gets it in his hand, he now hates you for sending him that. Seriously, in verticals like tech marketing you are HURTING yourself by sending them mail

4. Al Gore’s staff of people who read his mail – Look, your boy Al has a staff to read the mail, that’s right, they actually have a process for looking at it. The rest of us, file through the mail and look for the bills we have to pay, not to read a letter from you on Endpoint Security or VoIP.

The “Direct Mail is not dead” movement sounds is a conspiracy run by people who still broker addresses and do direct mail.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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