A blog about smart marketing and conversion optimization.

I used to worry that sales — the kind where one person helps another — was dead. In the early 2000s, the Internet was on its initial seeping-into-everything rampage.

Why would you need a salesman if you can click for whatever you need?

In the US, ecommerce sales continue to grow briskly with double-digit year-over-year percentage growth. Consider, though, that US ecommerce represented only 6.7% of overall retail sales. See the numbers.

It turns out ecommerce is amazing for certain highly repeatable processes and insufficient for many complex, lower volume and higher price tag buying cycles.

While, Yes, certain sales processes have become automated — buying an airline ticket, trying different pairs of shoes, customizing a laptop, etc. — real estate, enterprise products, many financial instruments, etc. end up boiling down to two humans having a conversation. AND many potentially automate-able buying decisions are still easier or more fun to do person to person.

Is the monopoly of automation just unraveling slower than we thought? Should a college grad entering Sales fear for their profession in the coming decades?

Automation handles the repeatable, not the complex

More complex sales involve more buying options and moving pricing. As soon as you list a price, it’s very difficult to go up from there — even if it’s a screaming deal at a higher price, people resent higher prices.

So while it’s quicker to sell via ecommerce, it can be economically disadvantageous. Automation works in highly competitive marketplaces where pricing moves in a narrow band. But typically automation is going to benefit the buyer, not the seller, who has the advantage of pricing transparency.

The pricing game

In my experience, the longer a company can wait to reveal pricing, the more pricing advantage they retain.

Consumers know this and will generally choose the price-transparent option UNLESS they have reason to believe the price transparent option is of lesser quality or ultimate value. Price transparency with automation typically wins on volume but loses on price.

So you, as a seller, face a dilemma. Once you guarantee a price in an automated system, you’re locked in regardless of whether your cost basis changes, the customer makes demands outside the stated agreement, etc.

A conversation between two people enables both parties to get what they want. Obviously, the seller gets to retain some pricing advantage. The seller also gets to make sure the buyer understands what she is busting and will be a happy customer, not to mention combing the buyer of benefits.

But the buyer also receives major benefits.

1. The buyer gets to interview the seller at no (or little) cost. “Is this someone or a company I want to do business with?”

2. The buyer can get inside knowledge the seller may not have been willing or able to share publicly.

3. The buyer, if savvy of the market, can get an even better price than the seller would ever dream of publicly listing. (Think of a car dealership on the second to last day of the month)

Sorting through the BS

Companies do a lot to try and differentiate their products from the competition, and they’re very good at it. There are many ways to make an inferior deal look like a good deal.

Often, it’s a pricing play: pay nothing to get started (and then a lot to keep going) or free shipping when you purchase more than $25. Or you can bundle lots of extras the buyer may or may not need.

Consumers, especially when entering a more complex purchasing process, quickly figure out all the ways in which that deal they thought they’re getting really isn’t such a deal.

Often, the buying decision comes down to DO I WANT TO WORK WITH THIS COMPANY/PERSON?

And THAT is why talented, effective sales people are going to be very important for a long time. No amount of marketing or advertising can outdo the experience a buyer has with a representative of the seller.

Sales now goes by many names

The best sales people often don’t advertise that they’re, in fact, selling. Selling is done by all sorts of people:

– Customer service reps
– Account managers
– The CEO
– Loan agent
– Consultant
– Etc.

A sales person is really just someone who:

– Helps you to buy something the first time

OR

– Makes sure you buy again / don’t cancel

Consider that even the person setting up email auto-responders, shopping cart upsell settings or chat scripts is filling a sales function. This blog post is more specifically about phone/in-person but still!

Sales success is the confluence of these factors:

1. Providing the customer (internal or external) with huge value

2. Maximizing the profit/cost ratio

3. Being happy and making other people happy

So why isn’t P2P selling dead?

Because it’s really, really hard to balance making a customer happy, turning a profit and doing it all consistently.

As fast as the world automates, I believe the need for personalization and customization is going to increase even more quickly. It’s just human nature to want “special” and personal.

We do a good deal of Facebook Advertising around here, so when Facebook released information about its new Relevance Score measure, we thought it helpful to break this down.

The main advantage of managing and increasing your Relevance Score is to achieve lower cost per click and more efficient delivery for your Facebook Ads.

What is Facebook’s Relevance Score?

In a nutshell, it’s a measure of how relevant your ad is to the people you’re targeting.

Google has had a metric like this for many years. They call it Quality Score, a 1 to 10 scale indicating how good of a search result your ad makes for a given keyword. Advertisers with high scores are rewarded with a lower cost per click, while those with low scores suffer from poor impression share and pay more to reach the same users.

At first glance, the Relevance Score introduced by Facebook promises to do some of the same things.

When your ad is shown to your target audience on Facebook, they have a few options:

1. Respond positively: like it, share it or convert.

2. Respond negatively: hide or report your ad

3. Do nothing.

The more people respond positively to your ad, the better your Relevance Score. The more negative feedback you get, the worse you’re scored. Before your ad is live and has real feedback to rely on, Facebook will make guesses about people’s behavior and assign a starting score.

Where do I see my Facebook Relevance Score? 

You can now add Relevance Score as a column to reports. It looks like this.

How do I improve Facebook Relevance Score?

There are a number of factors that contribute to your score. Overall, if your ads resonate nicely with your target audience, and especially if they convert well, you’ll have no issues with Relevance Score.

If you need to troubleshoot a low score, here are some good places to start:

1. Tighten your targeting. Try some niche segments with respect to interests, in-market categories, etc. If you achieve a better score by doing this, slowly fan out your targeting from there — or better yet, create dedicated campaigns for each market segment, each with tailored ads and images.

2. Focus on the image. Your prospects will see the image associated with your Facebook Ad before they read the text, so A/B test images rigorously until you find one that resonates. Be careful with risqué photos, though. While they might score a few curious glances at first, inappropriate content is more likely to get your Relevance Score in trouble.

3. Keep your ads fresh. Every ad has an expiration date, especially on Facebook where each user is viewing so many pages daily. Continually cycle your ads and keep it interesting. Fresh engagement from users will help your Relevance Score.

Got other ideas for how to boost Relevance Score? Tell us in the comments.

A year ago, I interviewed Rand Fishkin. He was open, candid and insightful.

A few weeks ago, we did a follow up interview. Not only does he have a new hair do, he has a new perspective on life and Moz. In the spirit of Rand-like transparency, I need to come clean — not only did I lose audio altogether in the first interview, but Rand let me do a retake, and the audio/video is still choppy, which is very frustrating considering how much testing and QA I did before both interviews.

I may have bungled the audio/video tech, but at least I got from him the secret to marketing success — really, all success — and I’m going to give it to you in bullet points.

1. Perception is not reality

A year ago, Rand make it clear he wasn’t happy: about Moz’s performance, product launch issues, his stewardship of the company … well, just generally. Rand was willing to be open about a fear most of us, well at least I, share … that everything is messed up, and I’m at fault — or so it seems.

A year later, Rand made a critical distinction between perception and reality. In reality, little had changed in a year, but his perspective had noticeably brightened. He was clearly able to separate reality from perception (which, by the way, seems also to create a lot of happiness).

This is a critical take-away for marketers on two levels. First, this is why a marketing strategy/plan is critical; it establishes goals we’re working toward and steps to get there so that we’re not on a constant emotion roller-coaster ride through the process that can cause bad decision-making. Second, our job as marketers and product developers must be to let the data guide us, not our changing perceptions. And if we don’t have enough data to make a decision, create a plan to gather that data and execute.

2. Transparency as a personal imperative

Having known Rand for a while now, I’ve been awed by his willingness to say anything and go anywhere. The pessimist in me wondered whether he was doing it because it’s a good marketing strategy or that’s how good businesses are run.

But Rand set me straight: he’s transparent because he “needs to be” … it’s a compulsion. He admitted there are times it may not make things easy, but he just doesn’t feel right if he’s not 100% open and transparent.

Personally, I think it’s working. Despite any product or competitive challenges, Moz continues to be one of the top independent marketing analytics companies. Moreover, his compulsion for transparency is a welcomed breath of fresh air in a world where many let fear of the competition, negative press or vulnerability run their decision-making.

3. Great products can’t be crowd-sourced

Something that Rand emphasized even more strongly is that product development can’t be crowd-sourced. While customer input is important, there must be a single leader who drives the product forward. He emphasized this in all our conversations, but I wanted to share his more detailed take from our recent conversation (sorry again for the audio/video issues).

I really agree that great products can come from all sorts of teams, but I also relate to Rand’s sentiment that working in small, tight teams is the most fun. Personally, I find the triangle of techie, designer, biz lead to be incredibly powerful.

4. Success is in the Eye of the Beholder

From my perspective, Rand is an online marketing industry God. He was able to leverage his consulting work into developing products that help not only his clients but everyone trying to gain greater insights into search and web analytics.

From his perspective, Rand is doing okay but not totally crushing it. He keeps looking up at how things can be improved, bigger goals.

I can relate and so can many growth hackers, I believe. The truth is that it’s fun to hit bigger and better milestones, but then the floor resets. If we can achieve X growth in Y time, then we need to achieve 3X in Y/2 time. It’s a necessary attitude for exponential growth hacking.

Thanks, Rand, for both of these conversations.