The next session for today is by Tony Pybuss and a bit of talk by Jason Duke who are talking about knowing your customer's values, and how you can use that info in search and conversion optimization. Tony is teaching marketing here, and it's great, Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes around, funny because I've been reading up on his hierarchy of needs recently.
He started out with this statement:
The sole purpose of Marketing: to chance or enhance existing behavior.
And then walked us through different "groups" of people, "throwing" them into three different groups: inner directed, outer directed and sustenance driven, and plotting that along a market development chart. It's way too much to blog right now, but I'll ask Tony if there's a chance that he can put up his presentation on something like slideshare.
He gives some example of sites that are sending confusing messages, talking about products that are interesting only to the outer directed, in a language that will only appeal to the inner directed. He's so right... Jason gives some examples of gambling sites where they have, by looking at them with this method, increased conversion by 1200%.
There's a question from the public about using this in b2b. The answer: you're still targeting humans. Think of which people are buying your goods within those companies, and in which time frame they're thinking: if they're thinking 5 years ahead, don't sell them anything that's aimed at fixing something tomorrow, OR sell them something talking about the next 20 years. He recommended a book about this too: The requisite organization by Elliot Jacques.
Well maybe you should need to read 'Made to Stick' then, which says that Maslow is kinda ok, but the middle three aren't that distinct anymore and are being chased on simultaneously more and more.
The writer gives some excellent tips on how to recognize the state of these users and how to approach 'em. The What's In It For Me, is also a very nice approach to this. Nice stuff to read when on airports and planes Joost ;)
Hehe yeah, I started in it last night ;) (Everyone else: Roy gave it to me to read last week ;) )
Roy, I just ordered the book. The first thing that intrigued me about this entry was the utilization of Maslow (psychological theory in general) in the use of marketing and strategy. Having a master's degree in psychology, I use my past education all of the time when strategizing information architecture and marketing campaigns for my clients. Thanks for the tip!