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Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing (Hardcover) (精装)
by Bryan Eisenberg, Eisenberg, Lisa T. Davis
| Category:
Business, Market, Customer, Persuasion |
| Market price: ¥ 228.00
MSL price:
¥ 208.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
This book lays out a clear methodology on how to attract and pull customers through each step of their buying process. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 8 items |
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D. L. Barnett (MSL quote), USA
<2007-06-15 00:00>
Marketing is all about turning consumers into Pavlov's dogs, salivating at even the mention of a brand name. That's a stereotype, but even among marketers themselves the received wisdom was that the most heavily promoted brands would have the most loyal following.
If that was ever true, it is less true today with the advent of the Internet. On the Web, consumers have access not just to the "big" brands but to all brands, all equally a click away. It turns out consumers are not dogs after all, but cats. How do you get a cat to stick around?
That's the question a new book for marketers sets out to answer. "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?" ($19.99 in hardcover from Nelson Business), by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg with Lisa T. Davis, is subtitled "Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing." The authors write that "increasingly, customers are associating brand not with a message but with their entire experiences surrounding the product or service." The central message of the book is that customers, like cats, have a "what's in it for me?" attitude, and good marketing works when it attempts not to manipulate but ("within the confines of profitability and integrity") to delight the consumer. Why? "Delighted customers become repeat customers."
But how does a business provide this delight? The authors have developed a set of conceptual and software tools they call "Persuasion Architecture," which they present in detail in the book. I found the first half of the book quite helpful in understanding how the democracy of the Internet has changed marketing; the latter part of the book seemed to indulge in more and more jargon ("masks," "wireframing," "waypoints," "persuasion entities") with more and more mentions of Persuasion Architecture. The Eisenberg brothers veer awfully close to wanting professionals in their field to salivate at the mention of their brand.
Yet I think the authors genuinely want to be helpful. The CD packaged with the book includes an 80-minute question-and-answer session video and the Eisenbergs are clear they don't have all the answers. The CD also features a PDF file of the entire book. A delightful touch!
The book is unified around an examination of three questions.
First, "who are we trying to persuade to take the action?" This involves the creation of "personas" on the part of the business so marketers can develop empathy and anticipate questions. "Personas are stand-ins for the various angles from which your customers view their problems and your solutions." As an example, the authors offer Best Buy. One of the company's personas is "Jill," "a soccer mom who is motivated to please and care for her family. She doesn't want an intimidating experience when she shops for appliances or electronics. She needs to feel she has a friend along to help." Empathizing with "Jill," Best Buy can develop ads that talk about "Hassle- and fear-free electronics shopping."
Second, "What is the action we want someone to take?" Imagine a Web page that gives product information but offers no way for the user to make a purchase.
Finally, "What does that person need in order to feel confident taking that action?" This involves answering relevant questions in a timely fashion. Imagine someone about to order a product online who wonders how much the shipping is. Does the site make the consumer complete the transaction before providing that information?
We cats value our time. So delight us!
Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. Copyright 2006 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission. |
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Marco Din(MSL quote), Italy
<2007-06-15 00:00>
I'm still reading it but since the first chapter I found it enlightening. Like many others I think this book is a milestone. If you manage sites it's a good idea to read it. I've already discovered and fixed some subtle mistakes on my site.
I previously read also "Call to Action" and "Persuasive Online Copywriting" and all of them worth consideration, but they seem rather a collection of articles.
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Dr. Heat (MSL quote), USA
<2007-06-15 00:00>
Waiting for Your Cat to Bark hits home. I have been trying to understand the new marketplace and our company's place in it for quite some time. I now have a clearer understanding on how to answer my customers needs when I market to them.
This book was also helpful in identifying how to answer our potential client's questions. It does not matter if their contact with us is on the phone, email, web site, direct mail, or even our trucks- we have to make sure that our message and image is consistent with their expectations. Otherwise we both loose. Thanks Bryan and Jeffrey.
Steve Sorenson Owner-One Hour Heating and Air Conditioning Oshkosh, Wisconsin
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Craig Arthur (MSL quote), Australia
<2007-06-15 00:00>
Every man and his dog teach how to sell but very few teach how customers buy and how to marry the two processes. Waiting for Your Cat to Bark does just that. It teaches you how to open up multiple sales piplines. If you want to make more sales and grow your business you need to buy this book. |
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David Young (MSL quote), USA
<2007-06-15 00:00>
As a friend and as a colleague who licenses Eisenberg's products for my own clients, I am thrilled over the success of this book.
It's a nice, easy read. Refreshing for a business book.
M. Overweg seems to think that Jeff and Bryan are making internet marketing more complicated than it needs to be. I strongly disagree. The very problem that Persuasion Architecture aims to correct is the false notion that a simple approach will work all the time. A simple approach (if it's the right approach) will likely work well for a product targeted at a highly specialized market segment.
However, if you wish to sell a product to the masses, you must accommodate more than one buying process into your selling process. Not everybody is just like you. Not everybody is just like your last customer.
Eisenbergs have done a fine job of explaining how this is done. That doesn't make it easy to do. It's time consuming and complex. But, at least for my clients, well worth it.
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Jaci Rae (MSL quote), USA
<2007-06-15 00:00>
As any cat lover / owner know, a cat will do what they want to do when they want to do it! Marketing is the key to any business success. You can be the best there is with a unique product or service and unless someone hears about it, they will never know you exist.
The problem is that marketing strategies used are many times cookie cutter and not unique to the individual or the product. The same marketing technique is used over and over again; just watch commercials or any reality TV show. Once someone finds something that works, other copy forgetting that many times it won't work with their product.
This book takes a deeper look and uses the concept that all products aren't eh same just as all consumers and business owners aren't the same and helps you go from there. The book and the CD are well worth the money and extremely helpful to anyone who wants to improve their results. If you want different results, you must try a different route and that's what this book relays to the audience. Learn your audience, but also learn about whom they are and what they represent.
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Meryl Evans (MSL quote), USA
<2007-06-15 00:00>
Customers drive marketing, not the other way around. No longer do customers accept products as designed. They expect and demand products to be molded to their needs. Just like you can't turn a cat into a dog; marketers can't turn a customer into a buyer by convincing them that they need product or service `as is.'
"Waiting for Your Cat to Bark" is a fitting title for this book. Cats tend to see the world revolve around them while dogs are eager to please their masters by doing whatever they want. Today's customers are in charge-much like cats.
"As is" might work in the bargain bin, but not in the majority of today's markets. The authors guide the reader in reaching the audience, persuading them to take the right action and feeling confident about that action, and giving the audience results that match their demanding expectations.
Those growing expectations come from the Web reaching new levels. You may have heard a lot of talk about Web 2.0. No matter how anyone feels about the term, one thing it is clear - the Web has reached a new stage: interactivity. Users do something, and the Web page immediately reacts to the user's commands. It's also about creating online experiences, which often represent site's brand. All of this together adds to users' increasing expectations when they're online.
Marketers can lend a hand to their sites' visitors with persuasion architecture, a concept the Eisenbergs developed. Fancy words, perhaps, but the only words that will do. Before starting any marketing effort, the authors recommend asking three questions:
* who is it you want to persuade?
* what action do we want them to take?
* what information is needed to motivate them to take that action?
Building effective persuasion architecture requires more than knowing who your audience is - but who they represent. The authors show how to create audience personas and weave the persuasion architecture to satisfy the different personas' needs.
The first chapters dig into the changes in the marketing world; how and why marketing has changed. The middle chapters uncover the minds of customers and why they've changed as they respond to products and services. The latter part the book enlightens the reader on persuasion architecture and how to use it to influence customers. The book closes with a chapter on getting started with persuasion architecture, which, in practice, shrinks the gap between customer and marketer.
What differentiates the authors and the book from others is their treatment of marketing and the Web as one? Too often, marketing and Web design teams don't work as a unified group and end up banging their heads. Organizations that plan to use the Web to market products or services stand to reap rewards in terms of user actions and higher profits with the advice from the book.
The book comes with a CD containing 80 minutes of the authors in a question and answer session (here's a clip), the full-text of the book in PDF format, online sales and marketing reports from Shop.org and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and a $50 credit on Yahoo! Sponsored Search (for new users only). You can read an excerpt from the book.
Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? is the right length (240 pages) and avoids heavy-duty or textbook language, which makes for a smooth and easy read. The authors have hit their stride with this one. Those who haven't read any of the Eisenbergs' books should start with this one and if there's room for another, check out Call to Action.
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Paul Boomer (MSL quote), USA
<2007-06-15 00:00>
This truly is the blueprint to match your selling process to your customers buying process... and measure its effectiveness!
Applying the concepts in this book helped boost one of our client's bank account to an all time high. Read the book and take action on the book and you'll pad your cushion.
The Eisenbergs and Lisa Davis share a powerful way to create a left-brain selling process while greasing the gears for your emotional buying, right-brained consumer; all while giving you the means to measure your persuasive and selling systems effectiveness! I'm not sure what business would not want to create a system that speaks to their customers and allows them to measure its effectiveness?!
The methodology in this book, which is written in plain and simple English, can be used on your website, in your marketing material, in your store, with your staff, and across the board. If you use them, you will have stronger and better relationships with your current customers and with your future customers. To put it another way, your customers will thank you with their money. They will thank you because you will no longer be speaking to them but with them... to them vs. with them.
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1 Total 1 pages 8 items |
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