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Your Website As Persuasion Machine
By Jerry Bader (c) 2009

The combination of the Internet, the Web, and technology has
democratized business almost beyond recognition. Today the
small, nimble, clever adaptor has the competitive advantage over
their bigger, slower moving, 'we've-always-done-it-this-way'
competitors; but the confluence of the Web environment and
digital technology is one thing, how to use it effectively is
another. Not every trendy social networking gimmick, user
generated irrelevance, and pointless viral voyeurism is a
productive business communication tactic.

The Day Dinosaurs Died

Like the dinosaurs that once ruled the world, the giant behemoth
corporations that once dominated the business landscape have
become fat and lazy, relying on muscle rather than brains, on
statistics rather than understanding, and on technology rather
than insight.

As these companies got bigger, they became top-heavy, corrupt,
and stagnant, throwing their weight around rather than
innovating and adapting. Oh yes, the big boys are still around,
still doing what they've always done, jumping on every trend
'du jour' promoted by the 'blogosphere' without any real
understanding of what it can accomplish, but hell, they figure
if they throw enough you-know-what at the wall some of it is
bound to stick, or so they hope.

But the handwriting is on the wall, the giant Internet meteorite
has already hit these corporations right in their balance sheets
and they are tumbling into irrelevance. The list of extinct
corporate giants grows, and the march to Chapter 11 continues
unabated.

So how does the smart, fearless, innovative thinking, business
decision-maker take advantage of the Web's ability to even the
playing field? The answer lies in their ability to use the Web
as a persuasive communication medium.

Persuasive Communication

The Web is really a very simple concept: it is a place that
allows you to communicate your message to your audience. What
could be simpler, but like anything democratic, it's messy: a
jumble of the very good and the very bad, and a whole lot of
mediocre in-between. And in today's overcrowded Web-centric
business environment there is little room for the mediocre.

In the final analysis all marketing, branding, positioning,
advertising, and public relations is about communicating a
persuasive message that attracts attention, generates interest,
stimulates desire, triggers experiences, produces memories, and
prompts action. And what Web-enabled communication tool gives
you the best chance of delivering that kind of persuasive
message? Web Video.

Persuasive Web Video Communication

The Web has some of the most effective creative video
presentations you would ever want to see, and it also has some
of the worst.

Easy-to-use and relatively inexpensive technology has created a
plethora of do-it-yourself efforts. Some DIYers do it because of
cost, others do it because of ego, and some just figure they're
smarter than the people who do it for a living; and in some
cases they may be right. Not all professionally produced
Web-video is created equal. If your Web-video team is not
pushing you to be bold with a focused, defining, differentiating
message, then you've hired the wrong people.

Communication intended to persuade is a complex undertaking, one
that requires a better understanding of how messages are
communicated than it does the technical production issues. When
people watch a video, what they see is far more susceptible to
both intended and unintended nuance than a simple face-to-face
conversation.

Every Move You Make, I'll Be Watching You

"Every move you make; every vow you break; every smile you
fake; every claim you stake; I'll be watching you."

- From the song 'I'll Be Watching You' by The Police

Everything a person does or says is a sign, not just a
communication of the obvious intent but also of the underlying
subconscious subtext. In person, people have a built-in
monitoring system that filters-out irrelevant verbal and
non-verbal distractions, glitches and eccentricities, but on
your website, in a video, those performance issues get magnified
and can destroy your entire presentation.

In his book 'Messages, Signs, and Meanings' Marcel Danesi
states, "Humans convey over two-thirds of their messages
through the body, producing up to 700,000 physical signs, of
which 1000 are different bodily postures, 5000 are hand
gestures, and 250,000 are facial expressions."

If your website lacks a video presentation, and instead relies
solely on text communication, you are handicapping your
business's ability to persuade, convince, and convert website
visitors into clients. And, if you do have video on your site,
but it's not producing the intended results, perhaps the verbal
communication is in conflict with the nonverbal message,
creating confusion and distrust rather than confidence and
understanding.

Forget all the things you think your website should be doing;
its most important and most critical purpose is to deliver an
effective communication to your audience.

A Recipe for Web-Video Communication

Persuasive Web-video communication is a complicated process that
involves numerous creative and technical talents, as well as
psychological insight into performance issues: scripting,
casting, producing, directing, editing, music, and sound design,
all complemented by communication psychology, emotional
resonance, and business savvy are required to create effective
presentations.

Ingredient One: Attract Attention

Job one is to get people to take their hand off the mouse and
pay attention; it's the equivalent of someone yelling, "hey
you" in a crowded room, everyone stops and turns to find out
what's going on.

Mark Hughes author of "Buzzmarketing" suggests six criteria
that provide the hey-you-pay-attention affect: the taboo, the
unusual, the humorous, the outrageous, the remarkable, the
secret, and the titillating. Which of these criteria you choose
to use depends on your brand image, your audience, and your
message.

All these elements individually or in combination can produce
the stop-look-and-listen effect you want as long as they are
appropriate for your target audience.

Ingredient Two: Generate Interest

Sarah Wood of Unruly Media, a company that specializes in paid
viral seeding points to high value relevancy as an additional
key ingredient; it's what turns the viral-for-viral's sake
into a purposeful, persuasive, viral marketing communication.

High value relevancy is based on the connection made through
your video presentation. If your video doesn't resonate in some
way, you will lose your audience. Resonance can be established
through the performers' personality, the delivery of the
dialogue, the scenario presented, the subject matter discussed,
the point-of-view perspective, and/or the emotional content.

The idea of course is to convince and persuade; that's what
makes the whole exercise worth the investment. Resonance builds
trust and allows you to present your message in a way that gives
the audience pause: a kind of "I-never-thought-of-it-that-way"
sort of reaction. You're not trying to get your audience to buy
into something they don't want, need, or care about, but rather
get them to see what you are offering in a new light, so that
they see it as something they do need, or better still want.

Ingredient Three: Stimulate Desire

Once you've attracted the audience's attention and gained
their interest through some kind of cerebral or visceral
connection, the next step is to stimulate desire. Generating
desire is key to the ultimate conversion from audience spectator
to active client.

Everyone likes to think of him or herself as intelligent and
rational, as someone who makes decisions based on logic and
need, but the truth is we are emotional creatures motivated by
desire, only tempered by logic.

When products, services, and ideas fail to capture their share
of the market, even when they are superior to their competition,
it is often because their marketing focuses on their technical
superiority rather than their emotional benefit. The marketing
challenge for cell phone supremacy between Apple's iPhone and
RIM's Blackberry is not about which is better, but rather which
provides the status-buzz buyers get from ownership.

Web video provides the ideal vehicle for delivering both logical
and emotional benefits in an easily digestible format that
penetrates the audience's subconscious and delivers all the
necessary desire-building components. In an over-crowded
marketplace, need alone is not a sufficient enough motivator.

Ingredient Four: Create An Experience

Far too many website business models are based on the idea that
customers should make instant decisions. By focusing your
attention on the quick sale, rather than a client seduction, you
are giving up on the vast majority of your potential customers.

The old high-pressure direct marketing tactics of a bygone era
have little relevance in a Web-marketplace where potential
customers are safely hidden behind a wall of remote access. A
website needs to do more than present a bunch of photos and
order buttons and expect people to just follow commands to "Buy
Now"; there are just too many options available for that
strategy to work.

A website has to be a memorable experience, one that forces your
audience to keep your offering in the forefront of their minds,
where every competitor must stack up to the memorable experience
you present.

For example, take e-commerce clothing websites; why present
clothes like you were limited to a print catalogue with static
images when you could present video of models moving to display
how the garments look from all angles with a voice-over
commentary providing detail and incentive: a simple but far more
effective presentation sure to sell more clothes than a series
of static lifeless images.

Ingredient Five: Be Memorable

Getting an order is important, but getting a customer is far
more valuable. Because your audience is hidden behind a veil of
Web security and remote access, pushy high-pressure tactics just
won't work, and if they do work, they'll probably only work
once. By providing a memorable experience your site stays
top-of-mind, and when a prospect finally decides to buy, your
site will be the one they remember, and not the other dozen or
so faceless, boring, characterless websites they visited.

If you are not prepared to take a chance, and woo your audience
with some memorable relationship building content that delivers
emotional resonance and meaningful memories, then your chances
of converting traffic into clients is slim.

Ingredient Six: Prompt Action

The idea that you need to blatantly ask for an order sounds like
a sound sales tactic, one you hear all the time from sales
experts, but let's face it everyone knows you're out to sell
him or her something. By being too pushy or too obvious, you
appear to be untrustworthy or desperate.

What you really want is for your audience to take some action,
commit to remembering you by signing up for a newsletter, book
marking your site for future reference, or better still phoning
or emailing for more information. It's all about building a
sustainable business relationship with viewers by staying in the
forefront of their minds and establishing trust and expertise
through communication and dialogue. It's the true value and
meaning of the Internet's promise of being a means of
generating global conversations.

What to Remember

In the end, business success is all about how well you
communicate your message to your audience. Websites provide the
opportunity to deliver a meaningful, memorable marketing message
through the use of Web-video.

There are many fine technologies available that allow you to
dialogue with customers over the Internet, but real
conversations are sloppy, frustrating, rambling exercises in
point-counterpoint discussion, whereas Web-video is an
organized, focused, concentrated presentation of the message you
need to deliver.
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Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design
firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and
http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com
or telephone (905) 764-1246.
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