A Few Strong Words…

In Part I of this series, we discussed how perception can affect buying habits. In Part II, we saw specifically how this works. You don’t want to buy a Ferrari in a dirty back alley for example. The environment and the way you do business needs to reflect the product or service you are selling.

As you may know, it is easy to look objectively at someone else’s decisions and judge their effectiveness. Yes, Italian marble fountains in the showroom and oak desks mean prestige, trust, and Ferraris.

But what represents your product or service?

For Starters…

It is important to realize that every aspect of your business influences perception. The way you dress for a business meeting, the design of your website, the look of your business card, the colour of the drapes in your office, the way you recycle. Even things like the car you drive or the places where you eat.

For some of us, like the work-from-home freelancer, we aren’t likely to be “seen” at any particular restaurant. But imagine what perception customers would have if they saw Ronald McDonald standing in line at Wendy’s for a lunchtime burger…

So for starters, consider every aspect of what your customers/clients see of you, including:

• Logo
• Tag lines and slogans
• Business cards
• Website and/or blog
• Advertising (print ads, banners, Google Adwords, etc.)
• Phone message recordings
• Brochures and other marketing materials
• Store front
• The way you dress and groom yourself for direct contact with customers/clients

Develop your own list, and consider every point. Also try to keep an objective eye here, if at all possible. What would you think if you saw all these separately? What would you think looking at all of these together?

In short, what perception do you have of yourself based only on these items?

Chances are, there is room for improvement. Even companies like Microsoft and GM must constantly work on customer perception. Decide:

1. How you want customers/clients to perceive your business.
2. How you can achieve it.

What Are Your Keywords?

Deciding how you want customers to perceive you can be deceptively complicated. It is no secret that even the best marketers out there freeze up when they try to decide how to market themselves.

So crafting customer perception is no small thing. It helps though to start with the basics. Jot down in one sentence exactly what your company does. Think in terms of benefits, not features. For example, if you sell WordPress plugins, then your sentence won’t be “sell WordPress plugins”, it would be “make it easier for people to use WordPress”.

See the difference? Not only is the second more colourful and descriptive, but it focuses what your core business really is (i.e. helping people, not just selling products).

If you feel it is important, add a couple more sentences to describe the nuances of your business. But don’t write an essay. Boil it down as much as possible until you have the essence of your business.

Now we boil it down even further. Create a list of keywords based on this sentence, just as you might a blog post or an SEO web page. If you are a florist, some obvious keywords would be “flower”, “arrangements”, “gift ideas”. But what about words like “fun”, and “happy”, and “celebration”? These are even better because they deal with emotions, not objects or ideas.

And we all know from Marketing 101 that connecting emotionally with your customers will make all the difference.

One More Easy Tip

If you want an objective assessment on how your customers perceive you, why don’t you ask them?

Recently, James at Men With Pens asked their readers what people thought of the look of their blog, and what they could do to make it better. That post and the comments opened a whole can of worms. Many people chimed in with suggestions for a website redesign.

But what I think surprised James was the fact that different readers saw different things. Everyone knew them as bloggers, and many knew that Men With Pens was a business name as well, but few knew exactly all the services they offered. (In fact, this is the case for many bloggers — I found out recently that few readers know exactly what I do as well!)

Just by asking for customer feedback, you can find out exactly how some of them perceive you right now. You can do this by emailing them for a quick impression of your website, sending a “How Are We Doing?” survey, or if you have a blog, simply asking them like James did. However, I would recommend making it as easy for your clients to respond as possible. You don’t want them to start thinking that they are now working for you!

Armed with this new-found information, you can decide what holes are in your customers’ perceptions, what you need to stress better, and what you should fix. We’ll discuss this next in Part IV of the series.

Until then, have any tips for discovering customer perception? Let us know by leaving a comment below!

~Graham

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Editor’s Note: Originally, I was going to run Part III of the Art of Perception series today. But in response to Brian Clark’s challenge, I am posting this article in its place today. I think this will be very helpful for those of you who are planning to move your WordPress blog to a new server.

~G.S.

Once it a while it happens: you find out you need to move your blog from one server to another. Perhaps you are changing server providers, or perhaps you want to move your blog from one of your websites to another (as was my case).

Now I know a little bit of coding, a little bit of database stuff, so I was fairly confident I could do move my blog without difficulty. I was wrong – I still got tripped up.

Part of the problem, I think, is that I was getting information from several different sources. This advice “mash up” led ultimately to two mangled blogs (original and new), lost data, and a cross-eyed headache.

But I learned from my mistakes. I have created an easy 6-step plan for moving your WordPress blog from one server to another that’s straightforward and painless.

Before You Start

This article assumes that you know how to access your server through your control panel, or are at least willing to learn. You will also need the following items:

• An FTP program. I used Dreamweaver.
• An HTML program or (if absolutely necessary) a text editor. I used Dreamweaver.
• MyPHPAdmin installed on your server*
• A database set up on your server*

*If you are not sure about how to do this, follow the steps to do this from the WordPress New Install instructions here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Using_phpMyAdmin

Terminology Note: The blog you are moving from, including the server, database, and files, is referred to here as “current”. The blog you are moving to is referred to as “destination”.

Step 1 – Back Up Everything

Here is a list of things you want to back up (specific instructions to follow):

• Your Current Database
• Your Current Blog files
• Your Destination Database, if you have one

Current Database Backup (see image below)

1. Log into your MyPHPAdmin
2. Click on the Databases link
3. Click on the database that holds your blog
4. Click on the Export tab
5. There are ten tables (as of version 2.3.3). Make sure all are highlighted/selected. If you are using the database for other applications, deselect any of those related tables.
6. Ensure that “SQL” is selected below this list of tables.
7. Select (put a checkmark) the “Structure” checkbox, as well as “Add Drop Table”, “Add Auto-Increment”, and “Enclose table and field names with back quotes”. Deselect everything else in the Structure checkbox.
8. Select the Data checkbox, and deselect everything in that section except “Use hexidecimal for BLOB”.
9. Select “Save as File” and add a filename. If you have a large database, you may want to compress it by selecting one of the ZIP file options, but generally this is not necessary.
10. Click the “Go” button at the bottom right. You will be prompted to save a file to a folder of your choosing on your hard drive.
11. Done!

Current Blog Files Backup

If you already have a folder called “blog” on your destination server and local hard drive, you will have to rename it or back it up before following these steps. IMPORTANT: Any information you do not back up will be erased in coming steps!

1. Open an explorer window and go to the folder that contains your website on your hard drive.
2. Create a new folder somewhere else on your hard drive.
3. Right click the “blog” folder in your website, drag it to the new folder, and select “Copy” from the list.
4. Using an FTP program, download all of the files from your server to your hard drive.
5. Click “Yes” if it asks you about overwriting files (you just backed them up…)
6. Using the same procedure as Step 3, right click the “blog” folder, drag it to the folder on your hard drive that contains your new server website, and click “Copy”.
7. Done!

Destination Database Backup

If you already have database information on your destination server and you want to protect the information contained in that database, back it up using the same procedure described above in Current Database Backup.

Step 2 – Reconfigure Your Config

You may remember that when you first installed your WordPress blog, you had to add values to the wp_config.php file, including database pointers, passwords, etc. You will now have do the same for your new blog so that the database connects with the files on the new server.

In your HTML editor, follow the same instructions found here (http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Step_3:_Set_up_wp-config.php). Note that instead of references like ‘putyourdbnamehere’, you will have the old information in place from your current blog.

Step 3 – Upload Your Files and Database

1. Upload your files using any FTP program. Click “Yes” if prompted to overwrite.
2. Upload your database by going to your MyPHPAdmin on the destination server.
3. Click on databases, then the name of your database.
4. Click on the “Import” tab.
5. Locate the database you backed up from your current database on your hard drive by clicking the “Browse” button.
6. Once selected, click the “Go” button, bottom right.
7. Done!

Step 4 – Change Your Blog Pointers

The database on the destination server is a mirror image to that of the database on your current blog. The data contains “pointers” to your blog, and right now those pointers are leading visitors back to your current blog. All you need to do is change two pointers on the destination database to point it to your destination blog.

1. Open the destination database in MyPHPAdmin.
2. Click on databases, then the name of your database.
3. There will be ten tables displayed (as of version 2.3.3). Locate the table called “wp_options”.
4. In that row, click on the first icon. If you hover for a moment over this icon, the tool tip should read “Browse”.
5. Many rows of data will appear. Find the column that says “option_value”. Scroll down until you find the URL of your current blog (it may be the top one).
6. At the left of this row, you will see a pencil icon with a tool tip that says “Edit” when you hover over it. Click on this.
7. Change the URL in the text box provided, and click the “Go” button, bottom right. IMPORTANT: double check that you have no spelling mistakes, etc. in the URL address, or it will not work!
8. Scroll down until you find the URL of your current blog again, and change it following Steps 6 and 7 again.
9. Done!

Step 5 – Review the Destination Blog

1. Log in to the destination blog the same way you do your current blog.
2. You will probably have to re-activate all the plugins you have.
3. You might want to take some time at this point as well to update plug-ins, and perhaps even your whole WordPress version, if newer versions are available. This way if you have any problems, you do not have to panic since this blog isn’t “live” yet!
4. Done!

Step 6 – Change FeedBurner and Your Commenting Habits

The last thing you need to do is let the world know that you’ve moved. If you use FeedBurner for subscribers, then you can automatically redirect your subscribers’ feeds by going into your FeedBurner account, clicking on “Edit Feed Details”, and change the domain name in the “Original Feed” text box to your new domain location.

Note: this does take a little while to “propogate”, usually a couple of hours. I officially switched over my blog on a Sunday, my lowest traffic day, so that it would be least likely to affect readers.

You can also announce the move on your blog – I did pre-announcements to let people know. Also make sure that when you are commenting on other blogs, you add the URL of the new blog, not the old one.

And that’s it! Your new blog should be up and running just like your new one.

One side note about links: all incoming links will now be erased, and you’ll be starting at zero again. This is part of the price of moving — just look at it as an exciting new fresh start.

Making a move right now? Let us know how it goes by leaving a comment below — especially if you used this method!

~Graham

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In Part I of The Art of Perception series, we talked about how perception can affect our buying habits. As experienced consumers, we have opened and entered many doors in our lives, some good and some bad. Now we can usually tell where a door is going to lead before we get to it.

On the other side of the equation, as marketers we can try to understand what the characteristics of that “ideal” door is, and then design our door to match.

In this installment, we talk about why perception is so important. If our customers get to the door and hear hooves on the other side, they’ll expect horses. Usually it is vital that when they walk through that door, we show them horses.

Why Give Them Horses?

Let’s back up a step. As we know, the most effective marketing is targeted marketing. The better we can identify our “best” customers (repeat customers with the highest sales, etc.) and create marketing that speaks directly to their wants, the more likely we are to make that sale.

In terms of perception, this means setting up a buying environment that will make people comfortable. For example, if you are going to buy a Ferrari, you’d expect the showroom to have marble floors, perhaps a fountain in the showroom, and fine leather furniture.

But what if this wasn’t the case? What if there were plain concrete floors, wood panelling, and florescent lighting throughout? You would likely get nervous. Alarm bells would go off. You would probably wonder if this “dealership” was actually a chop shop.

Now this doesn’t just hold true for high-end items. Think of McDonald’s. Their key to business success has been consistency. Go to any McDonald’s in the world and order a Big Mac, and you’ll get exactly the Big Mac you were expecting.

What Are We Trying to Convey When We Give Them Horses?

In simple terms, giving them horses nurtures the same thing whether you are selling Ferraris or Big Macs.

Trust.

Customers who want to see horses are expecting reliability and consistency. There are two reasons for this.

First, this helps the type of buyers who don’t want to think too much about their buying decision. They are relying on some other aspect of your business (your brand, your presentation, your professionalism, etc.) to help guide their decision. For example, people in a hurry don’t want to make a huge dinner choice, so they go for a Big Mac, knowing that it will be a safe and reliable choice. Other examples include:

• Any type of franchise operation
• Everyday items like dish soap, toothpaste, razor blades, etc.
• Branded clothing like Nike runners, North Face winter wear, and Joe Boxer boxers

Secondly, this covers buyers who are carefully scrutinizing their purchases. Someone buying a Ferrari wants to feel like those hundreds of thousands of dollars are well spent. Buying it from a trailer office just won’t convey that trust. Other examples include:

• Financial services like banks, investment consultants, etc.
• Jewellry stores and other luxury item shops
• Country clubs and similar social clubs
• Real estate agents

Nurturing Trust

Perception plays a large part in conveying that trust. That’s why banks are solid, conservative structures with vaults and bars and secret rooms. We want to protect our money in a fortress, so they give us a fortress.

It’s also why McDonald’s puts such an emphasis on cleanliness. Seeing a spotless restaurant conveys the perception that the food you are about to eat is good too. (Okay, you know what I mean…)

So how do we as marketers convey that trust by creating perceptions?

We’ll look at that next Monday.

Until then, join the discussion! How does perception affect your buying (or selling) habits? Share your experiences!

~Graham

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Psychadelic Musings on Marketing Theory

Perception is a tricky thing. Here’s why.

We all want to search for the truth. As consumers, we want to know that a specific product or service will meet our specific needs. I think that it is fair to say that as consumers, we are all pretty jaded. We’ve all bought those X-Ray Glasses sold at the back of comic books (do they still do that?), the Ronco 16-in-1 potato peeler, the foot massager with the Lifetime Warranty we never cash in on when it breaks three months later.

Caveat emptor — buyer beware. You know this problem has been around for a while when there is a phrase for it in Latin!

On the other hand, most of us here realize how easy it is to take marketing too far. We’ve glimpsed behind the curtain — hell, we are the “man behind the curtain”! We understand the balancing act between portraying our clients in the best light.

Pop quiz. Who said:

“In the universe, there are things that are known, and there are things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.”

Was it:

(A) Jim Morrison
(B) Aldous Huxley
(C) William Blake

Leave your answers in the comment section below — 100 points for the correct one!

Anyway, a great quote. What it means is that no matter “reality” is, it is filtered through our own preconceived notions. We all have assumptions. For example, when we hear hooves we think horses, not zebra. (Unless you live in the Ngorongoro Crater — the exception to prove the rule.)

But when we remove those filters (as the theory goes), we can see a thing for what it truly is. Huxley tried to do it with mescaline, Blake with religion, and Morrison with all of the above plus a fifth of Jim Beam chaser.

I don’t want to go too far down this philosophical road. What I do want to point out is that we all do have filters, pathways through doors we’ve opened before to help us understand the world around us.

I think this is important to consider when creating any sort of marketing. It is related to target marketing, but it goes one step further, I think. Not only do you need to ponder what customers want and how to give it to them, but you also need to consider many levels of perception. How do customers perceive your product or service? Does everything in your marketing (from website, to business cards, to messaging, to store front) meet those perceptions? Are there ways that could exceed those perceptions (aka expectations)?

And so on.

Kelly Erickson at Maximum Customer Experience recently had an excellent way to illustrate this. Do yourself a favour though: consider what these awnings mean to you before you read all the comments! And note the ironic sub-title — classic!

Forming Other People’s Perceptions

Now we get into some sticky situations. When does marketing stop being suggestion and “showing our best qualities” and become manipulation? Manipulation is a dirty word in my books, and I certainly try to avoid it in my own work. However, persuasive copy and content is by definition a form of manipulation.

There is a distinct difference though, no matter how subtle. I define it as this: if you believe — truly believe — in the product or service you are selling, then persuading your target audience to try it is fine, as long as you are honest about your intentions and the product/service at hand.

That’s why so many marketers have a problem with certain products. If they don’t believe in the product, how can they sell it? (Besides the fact, you won’t do a good enough job anyway. If this is truly how you feel — walk away!)

Once we’ve jumped this hurdle, let’s start looking at not just what consumers want, but how they perceive what they want, and how their perception of your business will affect their buying habits.

Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer — not hard to do, since as mentioned above we are all consumers ourselves. What doors do we know? We know the one that leads to broken promises. We know the one that meets our needs adequately, though perhaps without any real fireworks. And we know (or at least heard of) the mythical doors that lead to full satisfaction, absolutely guaranteed.

Most of us also have a good nose for deciding which is which before we purchase. And that is perhaps the most important thing to remember. Keep your marketing honest and — if at all possible — mythical.

Intermission

Instead of forcing you to read a giant opus in one go, I’m going to break this into mini-opuses. In coming posts, I’ll go over some of the ways I have found to promise less and deliver more. In the meantime, let us know how you have worked with — or against — perception in your own work. Or break on through to the other side of the coin. How has perception affected your activities as a buyer?

And don’t forget, leave me the answer to the Pop Quiz! References to prove your claims gains extra points.

~Graham

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I’m glad I announced ahead of time the blog was moving — some of you may have noticed some strange activities today, including now the disappearance of today’s post. Now you know why.

Rule #1 - Backup the full original database, not the empty, destination database before moving your blog…

Anyway, hopefully I’ll be back online tomorrow. Sorry to all those who commented today — I’m afraid they are lost in the ether!

~Graham

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Yes, I am in the process of revamping my main website (grahamstrong.com) and plan to move this blog there in the coming days. It is part of my quest to streamline and simplify my services.

I have many hats to wear in my business: several writing specialties, website designer, basic layout and design, etc. I thought that branching out in my websites would be useful as well, creating one for each specialty.

In theory this is a great practice. But rather than underline a specialty, this approach seemed to cause confusion. One design client of mine wanted to know where he could find a good writer, and was skeptical that I would be able to do the job myself…

So now I’ve come full circle, advertising myself as a writer first, and offering many “value-added” services where required. Besides, my original website was sorely in need of a change. It has served me well for years, but now I’ve created a more minimalistic design. A sneak peek is available here if you are interested.

Lastly, Happy Thanksgiving to all you Canadian readers! We had our turkey and pie last night — I still haven’t eaten since! Woke up to this great graphic from Google to celebrate the day:

Mmm, pumpkin pie. Best. Dessert. Ever.

~Graham

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Just read Kathy Hendershot-Hurd’s “Fast Track to Blog Success” — and I’m impressed. This PDF guide shows you how to identify the keywords you should be using in your blog to increase your traffic. It mixes tips on a little bit of everything including SEO basics for bloggers and keyword research techniques.

I especially liked the way she uses Wordle to visually show what keywords are dominant on a web page (brilliant use of this “time-waster” btw…). As Kathy illustrates, it’s not always the keywords that will help you most that are dominant on your blog!

Kathy also inadvertently (or perhaps advertently — who knows?) shows us the power of a well-written (white) paper, and how it can draw more readers and/or customers. At the end, she offers a coupon-code for her 8-Week Power Blog Launch program — I can only presume that she will do well promoting the program this way.

I think this paper is destined to be one of those “touchstone” reports, so if you are at all interested in boosting your blog traffic for any reason, check it out. She has it on for free until tomorrow (Friday, October 9) if you enter the coupon code: CathRocks (alluding to Cath Lawson, of course.

~Graham

Disclosure: I have no financial interest in this report — in fact I’m hoping that neither Cath or Kathy minds I’m revealing the coupon code here (though it is easy enough to find through either one of their blogs). I came across report via Cath’s blog, read it this morning, and decided I’d get the word out before the free offer expires…! If you’re reading this after October 9, check it out anyway — it’s worth the investment.

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Yesterday I covered a hockey game for the local paper. Now I’ve watched hockey for years (okay, decades), read game notes, and of course written hundreds of articles. But I’ve never watched a game and written about it.

I wasn’t really that worried. I’m confident enough in my own writing skills and hockey knowledge to know that I could do it (though I did get caught with my head down a couple of times during goals — you don’t realize how great instant replay is until you don’t have it!)

I did do a bit of research, brushing up on covering a hockey game by reading some recent NHL pre-season articles. I would have likely Googled to find some hockey writing tips, or perhaps more likely, covering sporting events in general.

This doesn’t sound too far removed from any type of writing. If we are not sure of a certain format, like web content writing or brochure writing, we will likely search out answers. What we are doing is essentially trying to find out: “How would you write this?”

I realized yesterday that this might be the wrong way to go about it. I think the most important question we should ask is: “How do I write this?” Sure, we might need some help with stylistic and grammatical choices to fit the format. But we all have our own writing voice.

So I wrote the piece the way that I would write the piece. Not the way that Fluto Shinzawa covers Bruins games for the Boston Globe, or Bob McKenzie passes along his hockey insights on TSN. Not even the way the editors of the paper would write it.

I used to listen to Frank Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way” and thought it was a little arrogant, a sort of “my way or the highway” kind of thing (which was kind of what he was all about anyway…) But now I’m a little more optimistic about that song. Perhaps it means finding our own voice.

Learning the writing craft is an ongoing process, and seeking the help of others is only natural. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how Shinzawa writes it or McKenzie says it or Sinatra sings it. It only matters how I do it — and how I continually look for ways to do it better.

~Graham

Yeah, it’s ironic, but do you have a “finding your voice” story? Let us know how you did it your way in the comment section below!

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Yes, this post is late. I actually have a few opuses (opi?) simmering on the backburner, but after taking a week off to travel to my niece’s wedding, playing the obligatory catch-up game for the last few days AND trying to get some work done on my website overhaul, I just haven’t had time to do them justice.

However, if you were expecting a “just because” post, you’re only partially right. Thanks to the success of the last plug-in review I did, I’ll give you another here: the Google Analyticator by CaveMonkey50.com for WordPress.

I used to find it frustrating that there would be huge blank spots in my Analytics because I simply did not know how people on my website were interacting with my blog. On the other side of the coin (almost literally), I used WordPress.com Stats to track blog hits, etc. but this didn’t tell much about what happened once they ventured out of the blog area.

Now I have data from all parts of my website so that I can see what links are being clicked on within the blog, and where they go to within the main part of the site.

The upshot: this is a no-hassle way of adding your Google Analytics code to each of your posts automatically. (And if you don’t know about Google Analytics, check it out!)

More good stuff coming next week…

~Graham

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