The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

Second, I was at a Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) retreat a while back and one of the things that came up for discussion was "What is SNCR's competition?"

Companies have been asking NextStage to help them understand their competition for a long time. The first request came back in 2003 and you can read the results in the original Gen Y Etailers Web Site Comparison or get a taste of them in 2006's How to Build a Super-Sticky Homepage. These reports are based on NextStage's desktop TargetTrack tool. Since then NextStage's TargetTrack tool has been used for comparative analysis by Fidelity (also noted in How to Build a Super-Sticky Homepage and referenced in 2009's Sentiment Analysis, Anyone? (Part 1)), P&G (as a demonstration of why identical page layouts would fail in different countries due to cultural differences), most famously by Progress Software as documented in Reading Virtual Minds Volume I (also available on Amazon.com) and the list goes on. NextStage has a long history of successfully using our tools for comparative analysis of marketing materials.

Third, most recently we've been converting some of our desktop tools to web-based tools. You can see the current list on NextStage's KnowledgeShop Tools page. There's more coming and you're welcome to take part in the discussion of what should be released when (or what you'd like to see now) on both LinkedIn and FaceBook. Some of these tools are based on various TargetTrack components and one in particular, NextStage Sentiment Analysis, is the closest to the existing TargetTrack for comparative analytics purposes.

Fourth, so while I was sitting there and because the question was asked, I did an analysis of the sites of four groups mentioned during the "What is SNCR's competition?" discussion (the homepages only and analyzing what came up, not navigating beyond what each group presented the visitor. The different homepages are shown in this blog post). You can find those analysis in the following links and should open them to follow along with the rest of this post (a high level comparative analysis).

• Altimeter Group
• Forrester Research
• Pew
• SNCR

Take-Aways

Probably the most obvious and most actionable take-away from this comparative analysis is that SNCR could come to the front of its pack by doing the following:

• Design more for a business audience than a research audience.
• Make their site an active promotional tool ("one-click") for SNCR and all SNCR functions/activities.
• Make their site more visually active.
• Making their site a more obvious doorway to higher value content would put them ahead of their competition in most regards.

Background

Comparative Analyses are basically gap analyses. Pick the group(s) doing outstandingly well, measure them, measure the client, see where things do/don't line up. Is there a place where the client's value is noticeably less or more than the test groups'? Ah, you've determined one thing that could be changed.

Comparative analyses are involved. What I'm doing here is simply meant to point out some directions for further inquiry. For example, do all the groups in this analysis get most of their business off the web? From an existing subscriber list? Is there an active sales force involved? Does the web presence exist simply to exist (because you have to have one these days), is it a primary/secondary/tertiary sales tool, a lead generator, merely a portal for clients who are given links to "deep" pages for downloads, reports, etc.? These are questions NextStage would normally explore in such an analysis.

This analysis allows some of these questions to be answered quickly and easily. Let me also offer that comparative analyses can be like detective work. Each Sentiment Analysis listed above includes several sections and you need to use all the sections to create a complete profile. Just as human psyches tend to be complex, so too the psyches that are being are demonstrated on these pages.

Last item before the analyses themselves -- we comment on the reports, not the items being analyzed. No humans ever look at the material being analyzed because doing so may bias our comments and we work to keep our personal feelings out of our analyses.

Okay, enough blather. Here goes...

Author Attitude

The first section on each analysis is Author Attitude. The Altimeter, Forrester and SNCR values are close enough that I'm not thinking this is a deciding factor...

...with the exception of the Forrester analysis. You'll notice that the explanation of the Author Attitude report ends with "It is most likely the author doesn't like, accept, believe in or otherwise is on bad or unfriendly terms with their audience". This is different from the SNCR and Altimeter reports which end with "... their subject matter."

Based on long experience looking at these kinds of reports one thing immediately comes to mind; the companies/groups/businesses that actually own these sites hired another group to do the site design and development. NextStage has long known that a design firm's non-conscious thoughts about their client will often get non-consciously placed in the finished product. If the design/development group doesn't feel wonderful about what they're doing, that goes into their work and is usually picked up by consumers (again, non-consciously).²

I'm impressed by Pew Trusts' 96% Neutral rating because it takes work, training or both to be that neutral about something. More on the meaning of this in the next section.

Confidence

Confidence is something that tends to come naturally from certain people. Pew Trusts' 64% Confidence value, when taken with their 96% Neutral value, indicates the confidence is genuine because they don't have an agenda (they're "neutral"). Most People with definite agendas are not often confident about their agenda (with the exception of zealots, religious or otherwise).

Now consider Altimeter Group's Confidence and Author Attitude values. Their Negative Author Attitude is almost twice their Positive value and their Confidence is almost as high as Pew's. While Author Attitude values can sometimes reflect design group confusion, Confidence is most often direct from the author(s). Therefore whatever Altimeter and Pew are communicating, they're fairly confident about it and good for them.

Forrester had a remarkably low Confidence value. Usually NextStage's Evolution Technology ("ET") pings us when it gets a value that low and so it did this time, so I checked the page using NextStage's BlueSky Meter³ because a lack of confidence is often accompanied by a high BS value. Forrester received a good, technical BS rating of about 1.3%, thus whatever they're not confident about, at least they're not BSing anybody about it. The negative Confidence value could be due to the popup. It opens with "We would greatly appreciate your help in evaluating and improving your Web site experience." NextStage has (as I write this) about seven years of research indicating that visitors find such popups offputting, and that opening statement is a need to improve things, hence a lack of confidence in the way things are. Hence the site designers/owners have basically broadcast they don't have confidence in their site.

Finally for this section, SNCR's Confidence rating falls into the "...casual, 'every day' writing" level. From this one can gather that while the other three sites' content is being produced by professionals, SNCR's content is either being produced by non-professionals or by professionals wanting to reach a common, broad audience rather than a specific, targeted audience...

...or, as we'll learn later, a completely different audience than Pew, Altimeter and Forrester.

Audience Branding

SNCR is the standout here with about 19.5% of its audience scanning the homepage then not returning. This is actually much better than the other sites. Here we begin to ask some "purpose" questions, as in "What's the purpose of this site?" Considering the concurrency of the previous elements we can guess that the Altimeter, Pew and Forrester sites are not their primary means of revenue. It is plausible (based on the data so far and previous experience) that these sites exist as placeholders and that richer content is provided on "deep" pages provided to existing customers or prospects directly rather than through site navigation.

That recognized, it is worth noting that SNCR, the "oddball" in this area, may be attempting to get clients via its website and that its content (as analyzed here, a "snapshot", such as it were) isn't designed to entice visitors beyond a "first look".

Message Intent

This section provides some light on what we surmised based on previous sections.

I wrote earlier that Author Attitude values can sometimes reflect design group attitudes more than author(s) attitudes. Note here the Message Intent:Constructive, Active Pleasure and Referral values for SNCR and Altimeter. The Constructive value alone tells us there's a disconnect between Author Attitude:Negative and Message Intent, so it's probably safe to assume external design groups created the SNCR and Altimeter sites.

Pew is the real standout here. The Referral, Active Pleasure, Love and Constructive values all demonstrate that these people enjoy/believe in what they're doing (even if the site is primarily a placeholder for deeper content). Forrester's consistently mediocre and low values here (in my opinion) definitely indicate there's not a lot of "visitor-directed" design on the homepage (this is not a source of revenue for them).

There is a message here for SNCR due to it's high Message Intent:Referral, Active Pleasure and Constructive values, it's low Love value and the previously noted Audience Branding: Read Once Then Ignore value -- The site author(s) intend for the audience to respond rather than Read Once Then Ignore. As the section indicates, adding a little more excitement or joie de vivre in their subject will bring these values more in line and could cause visitors to return to the site for further investigations.

Author Influencer Type

The standout here is Altimeter. Consider their Author Influencer Type:Influencer value with their Confidence value and you are basically broadcasting "We're a cocky bunch" without any negative aspects. Nicely done and good work provided it works for you.

The other three sites have ballpark Influencer values and note Pew's Author Influencer Type:GateKeeper value of about 11%. That's a high enough comparative value to other Pew numbers to indicate that Pew both knows it's influential and knows who to get its information to in order to cause action. SNCR's 4% value is overshadowed by its Influencer value, ie SNCR knows its influential, knows they have actionable data and hasn't figured out who to get it to or how to get it to them yet.

Ten "Must" Marketing Messages

All the sites could use some help in this regard as none of them are demonstrating a "customer-centric" or "visitor-centric" dialogue. Forrester is (in comparison with their other numbers in this section) screaming they can be trusted, that they can help and that they're a leader. Unfortunately none of the other values in this section are backing up those messages.

Again it's worth noting Altimeter. Their numbers are fairly good ("This Is Important" could do better and that value can always do better for every site/paper/brochure we've analyzed) with their strongest message being "We're A Leader". It's rare we see the "We're A Leader" message as the strongest (usually "We Can Help You" is strongest) and this leadership message strength backs up the previously noted Author Influencer Type:Influencer and Confidence values.

Trust & Affinity

The surprise here is Forrester with Trust and Affinity values of 10% and 11% respectively. These numbers are pretty good when the audience is western educated and an indication that regardless of anything else, the content author(s) are aware of their audience and believe they are part of their own audience. Note that this could explain the request for help redesigning the website noted earlier.

Altimeter's low combined ratings are probably reflections of their high Author Influencer Type:Influencer and 10 "Must" Marketing Messages:We're A Leader values. You can't be on a par with your audience when you strongly believe you can influence and lead them (we've seen this a lot when analyzing political material. Political leaders can't truly envision themselves as part of the populace they're leading because an ego that believes it can lead and influence must non-consciously recognize itself as being different from those it seeks to lead and influence. If not, then there would be no confidence in its ability to lead or influence).

For "off the chart" Trust & Affinity values, see A Sentiment Analysis of Alex Todd's "Trust Extender" Post. Scroll down to the But Wait! There's More! section, or just open the plain text analysis of Alex's post and scroll down to the Trust & Affinity sections of that report.

Author-Audience Rich Persona

Probably the real, immediate "take-away" or meat in this comparative analyses is in this section. Both Pew and Altimeter are going after the same audience (V16) in so far as how that audience thinks, makes decisions, learns, finds important, what they place value on, are influenced, ...

Forrester's audience (K15) is (my opinion) obviously a business audience. They focus on what to avoid (minimizing risk, 2nd bullet), are focused on recent experience rather than long term experience or learnings (3rd bullet) and are skeptical of hype (4th bullet).

This brings us to SNCR's audience (V8). This is (again, my opinion) obviously a research audience. It's not the obvious business audience of Forrester nor the business-like audience of Pew and Altimeter. The latter two have audiences that need charts, graphs or pictures (1st bullet) then thinks things through before making a decision (2nd bullet) -- they want to read a report -- , SNCR's audience wants to see things then discuss them with an authority figure (1st and 2nd bullets) -- ie a presentation with discussion format.

This could be another area in which SNCR could improve their "click-through"; make their site more business oriented (if that audience is the goal).

Sphere Of Influence

Of all the sites analyzed, SNCR has the greatest viral impact, meaning its Real Followers (also known as "first circle audience") will tell their friends (Friends of Followers or "second circle audience") about SNCR goings-on. But those Friends of Followers is small and this lends confirmation/explanation to the Audience Branding:Read Once Then Ignore value.

Forrester's audience is necessarily small but the conclusion is that their site isn't intended to bring in new business (we'll see what happens after the redesign). Both Pew and Altimeter share the same audience with Altimeter gathering about 1.5% more of that audience than Pew, possibly due to their "Leadership" message. A business audience can be easily swayed by a self-declaration of "leadership", substantiated or otherwise.

Summary

The Take-Aways were listed earlier in this post.

Probably all that's worth adding at this point is that the above analysis would cost about US$2,000 using NextStage Sentiment Analysis's Advanced Corporate Analysis. Alternatively, you could take a training and run the analyses yourself for about US$210.

A similar analysis run through our TargetTrack tool would cost about US$7,000, include a pre-analysis phone interview, a written report with a page or more of take-aways with specific, actionable suggestions, and a two-hour phone consultation to go over the report. The TargetTrack tool reports much more in-depth information including

• age and gender capture breakdown
• major and minor messaging analysis and interpretation
• an ROI curve indicating what changes will result in the greatest return so clients can determine where to place their dollars
• ...

• Analysis of content before publishing ensures that it will appeal to the desired audience.
• Analysis of the users to a web site will help align content to the audience and their expectations.
• These products provide empirical data about user profiles and reactions -- which is difficult to obtain other ways -- while protecting anonymity.

2 - A long ago example of this was a designer/developer who thought she was underappreciated and given the task of designing a site for a major NH business. That business's web business started faltering as soon as the site went live (their bounce rate went through the roof).

The business called us in. The site "looked" fine, very professional indeed. An analysis with the desktop TargetTrack tool revealed the hidden message "I don't belong here". A visitor coming to the site was being given the non-conscious message "I don't belong here" and leaving. A subtle change to the site removed the message and online business boomed.

The following material is from a marketing paper published in Nov 2003:

The Difference Between What You Meant and What You Designed, Part I

Most people who design and build websites think the real message of a website is the obvious one and is something like "Buy from us", "Come visit us", or "We're better at what we do than anybody else." In that sense they're correct; that's the obvious message and it's the message you meant to give. But remember that right now we're talking about subtleties. What you meant might not have been what you designed because what you designed is conveyed in subtle messages you, your designers and programmers are probably unaware of. What subtle messages might your website be giving visitors?

To understand that you need to know what these subtle messages are and where they come from. People talking face to face or over the phone pick up subtle cues and messages from each other during their time interacting. Some cues and messages are obvious (facial expression, body language, tone of voice, ...) and some are not so obvious (changes in respiration, iris dilation, muscle tonus, word usage, ...). Because some cues are obvious we intellectually respond to them. The obvious messages and cues that we intellectually respond to are the "Buy from us", "Come visit us" and "We're better than our competition" messages we mentioned above.

It's also true that we respond to the unobvious cues and messages, we just don't know it. Responding to unobvious cues and messages goes on when we're talking face to face, when we're talking on the phone, and, not surprisingly, when we browse a website.

Unobvious cues and messages are placed in websites by designers and developers even though they don't know it, just as most people don't know they've assumed an aggressive or defensive posture, or that their face or tone of voice registers disbelief or anxiety. Never-the-less, these messages show up in websites just as they do in face to face conversations.

Consider these notes from actual NextStage Evolution clients:

 

From an eCommerce company

I asked Joe to run Evolution Technology on our site and five of our competitors' sites. Evolution Technology showed our five competitors with pretty much the same messages; "Learn about us here."
Our site had the message "Go away, we're not ready."
I told Joe this was hard to believe because I had designed one of those competitive sites.
About ten minutes later while I was thinking about it, I realized that when I designed our site we didn't have a product and were about six months away from having one. I remember that I was really nervous someone would actually contact us and ask for a demo when we had nothing to show them.
Evolution Technology correctly analyzed the message that was deep in our site, and because I'd never updated our site the message was still there, months after we'd been in the market.

 

From a Professional Website Designer

I recently had a website that I designed run through NextStage Evolution's engines. The overall message that was found took me by surprise but was right on target. The message was "I don't have time for this" and at the time this was one of 15 projects going on and I was most definitely in a hurry to complete this particular website. I was floored that the engines picked up on my inner feelings at the time.

These unobvious messages are important because they pass our intellectual barriers and go straight to the deep brain where our emotions and childhood superstitions lie. Such unintentional messages can be good and bad. Don't tell yourself your website is different and no subtle messages exist there. Trust us, they do. Evolution Technology is able to find these hidden messages before visitors to your website do and that's a very good thing for you. And yep, we have some stats for that.

3 - NextStage BlueSky Meter (NSBM) is a format recognizing text analysis tool based on Nextstage's patented and award winning Evolution Technology (ET). ET is the only patent (as far as we know) granted by the USPO that "allows machines to understand and respond to human thought". Why format-recognizing? Because people respond to DOC files, web pages, emails, straight text, etc., differently even when the same information is contained in each item.

NSBM is designed to analyze material (blogs, Twitter streams, FaceBook pages, emails, DOC files, ...) and determines how much Blue Sky is hidden in the content. Please remember that

• Some material is intended to be BlueSkyish.
• Everybody has a little blue sky in everything they do. This is required for cognitive continuity (few people can exactly remember everything correctly) and to maintain the "fabric of society". Purveyors of penultimate truth are usually ostracized.

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Upcoming Trainings:

• 17 Sept 2010 - Know How Someone Is Thinking in 10 Seconds or Less in Bedford, NH
• 21 Sept 2010 - Social Media Messaging with Meaning in Concord, NH
• 22 Oct 2010 - Mastering Push and Pull Writing (Writing Headlines that Cause Action) in Bedford, NH

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Have you read my latest book, Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History? It's a whoppin' good read.

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