By Tim Peter
The Internet offers customers lots of options before they make a purchase decision. In fact, it’s cliché to say that on the Internet your competition is just a click away. But it’s true. Research from Google and others suggests that customers view an average of seven to 10 sites before making a purchase decision. In some industries, those numbers are even higher.
Why so many?
Simple. Regardless of whether they are looking for a new car, consultant, contractor, or chiropractor, customers really look to answer only two questions when researching products and services online:
Will this product/service meet my needs?
Why should I buy from you?
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This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from January 2011. We welcome your feedback.
By Francis Moran
I heard the saddest story the other day.
A few years ago, we worked on the launch of a new personal finance website developed by a veteran personal financial advisor. The site was detailed, secure, incredibly useful and solved a sharp, expensive and disruptive pain that the advisor had been running up against his entire professional life.
Our media launch went well. We got some decent coverage, both in mass media and, more valuably, in the trade media reaching financial advisors. Although the site was designed for individual subscriptions, advisors were identified as its most important channel to market since they were expected to counsel their clients to use it.
We were a little confused when the campaign was not continued past that initial launch, especially since some of the best opportunities we generated for the client were over the long term, including, for example, an agreement to have the site’s creator contribute a regular column to one of the key trade publications in the space. From the other folks working on the launch we heard encouraging news about the possibility that the site would be white-labelled by one of the largest firms of financial advisors on the continent, and other early signs of traction. So we were at a bit of a loss when everything went unexpectedly quiet.
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By Leo Valiquette
I’ve blogged before about my ambitions to become a fabulously successful novelist and my annual April trek to Toronto to attend the Ad Astra literary conference. Having just returned from the 2013 edition, here are my latest observations that apply as much to entrepreneurs as they do to authors.
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By Denzil Doyle
By definition, innovation is all about change, which means that the duties and responsibilities of a high technology CEO are bound to change as the company grows.
While a board of directors must pay close attention to those changes and how well the existing CEO is reacting to them, the board must resist the temptation to terminate the CEO prematurely. This is particularly true if the founding CEO is a technical person. Many directors are of the opinion that it is their responsibility to bring in a more “business-oriented” person at the first sign of trouble.
Unfortunately, business orientation can mean different things to different people, but as a general rule, the following four parameters are important in a CEO’s evaluation:
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By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are ReadWriteWeb, Ventureburn, Techvibes, Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That and Velocity.
Smarter marketing: How minority report got it all wrong
In her article, Sarah Rotman Epps talks about the Smart Body, Smart World paradigm — how sensor-laden devices like wearables give us access to new domains of information. When speaking with marketing executives, Sarah finds a consistent comparison to the 2002 movie, Minority Report. She argues that the Minority Report-style marketing is a “dumb vision of the smart future” and provides some intelligent advice on implementing innovative tactics that rightly embrace the future of marketing.
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