I’m a new-age-y kind of guy, so it’s not surprising that a lot of the people who gravitate to my marketing advice are what you might term “holistic practitioners.”

Folks who do massage therapy, counseling, reiki, permaculture, shamanic work (like my wife), body therapies, life coaching, and all sorts of similar things.

And I give these folks all I’ve got, but I’m not an expert at marketing a business like that. My one attempt, in 1990, was to get certified as a massage therapist and drag a portable massage chair to the front desk of a Merrill Lynch office in Plainsboro, New Jersey hoping to land a lucrative corporate contract.

But my friend Tad Hargrave is such an expert.

He and I had a delightful conversation a couple of nights ago about the challenges holistic practitioners face (both external and internal) as well as the mistakes they typically make in response to those challenges.

At one point I was struck by the similarities between holistic practitioners and wannabe online marketing millionaires. On the surface, I can’t think of two groups less similar to each other. (OK, so maybe Twilight and Chuck Norris fans.)

Yet the underlying dynamic of desire, hope, come-on, failure, and attribution of blame are virtually the same.

Here’s the conversation for you to download in mp3 format.

There’s one fairly annoying section where Skype and the South African internet conspired to make Tad sound like a bad robot, but if you just do some alternative nostril breathing during that short section you’ll get through it fine.

Oh, and at the end of the call Tad talks about a telecourse he’s offering that starts tomorrow. So if the first few minutes of the call speaks loudly to your current situation, make sure you listen all the way through to grab one of the remaining slots.

And if you want to check out the offer straight away, you can go here: http://sixweek101.eventbrite.com/

(Note the non-affiliate link – I’m doing this strictly for the karma points :)

A reader asks:

Hi! Enjoyed the dummies book. The current platform for my [moving company] website is a little difficult to navigate. If I make my blogger page a part of the website, will Google still count this as making daily updates to the website? Or does it look better if daily updates are being made to the home page? Should I try to have the first few sentences from the blog appearing on the home page with some kind of feed?

My reply:

Google doesn’t require frequent changes to your home page. What they want is many pages of informative, relevant, authoritative, and new content on your website.

You can keep your current platform (although I don’t know why you wouldn’t switch to WordPress, which is a breeze to edit once it’s set up properly) and just add a wordpress blog to your site in a subdirectory.

A wise comment that I heard once: If you want to please Google, pretend that Google doesn’t exist and just try to please your visitor.

What information would be most helpful to your visitors? Updates about who your movers are and what they’re up to? Tips about preparing for a move? Guidance about how to choose a moving company? Your musings on current events and pop culture (for example, what could you do with http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2012/01/15/russell_brand_moves_into_new_home or http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news/61501/Prince-William-Kate-Middleton-To-Move-Into-Their-New-Home?)

If your posts are interesting and informative and you title them to provoke curiosity, then having a blog feed appear on your home page might be a great strategy. But it’s not necessary for Google love.

Hope this helps!

Got a question about web marketing? Email support AT askhowie DOT com and I’ll reply on this blog if I feel your question has universal-enough relevance.

This article was originally published in Fast Company.

Take a deep breath. Engage parking brake. Turn ignition on. Shift into first. Disengage parking brake. Clutch up. Gas down. Sputter sputter. Cough. Lurch. Die.

So goes the first 15 minutes of my driving lesson yesterday, the one where I find out how hard it is to work a manual transmission. Mia, my wife, sitting beside me and patiently reminding me not to grind the gears, is wondering if we’ll ever move from this spot. Possibly wondering what’s more dangerous: this, or skydiving?

Then, for one magical moment, I let out the clutch and push down on the accelerator in heavenly harmony. The little blue car slides smoothly forward. I resist the urge to high-five Mia, and instead immediately go into a fantasy of actual usefulness–me buying groceries in Winterton; me driving to the bank to pay our Internet bill; me taking the kids to–huh? What?

Mia is screaming in my left ear. “Second gear! Go to second!” Flustered, I grab the shifter and pull it back, completely forgetting about the clutch. Grind, flobble, lurch, die, whiplash-inducing halt.

Take a deep breath. Engage parking brake… Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Gradually, I begin to get the hang of it. At one point, I am handling curves in fourth gear (when you don’t have to slow down, it’s easy), and I even make a right turn onto a side road, and then cherry-on-top it with a fancy reverse move known to professional drivers as the “k-turn.” Oh yeah!

Yet my conversion rate from cold dead stop to rolling first gear is still only about 25% by the end of the lesson (which is defined by a total cessation of left-brain function, such as the ability to count to 5 and form recognizable words.) So I have a long way to go.

But hey, 25% ain’t awful. Nobody got killed. And the rental car is back in front of our house, none the worse for wear (at least during a walk-around inspection). Since Session #1 qualifies as a success, I get to share some marketing lessons highlighted by the experience.

1. There’s a big difference between theory and practice.

I need you to understand that I’m not a complete moron. I do get the theory of manual transmission. I ride a 24-speed bicycle. And I’ve seen The Italian Job and Scent of a Woman. So driving a stick isn’t a foreign concept.

But knowing what to do in theory doesn’t count for much in the real world. I know online marketers who are addicted to Amazon.com and email newsletters and new product launches. Whenever they’re faced with a challenge, they run to find and absorb new information. Yet their infatuation with the information ends when it’s time to implement.

No matter how promising, how lucrative, and how easy it seems at the beginning, putting the strategy into practice always involves work, time, and a reduced set of expectations. No fun at all! So it’s on to the next big idea, and the next, ad infinitum.

Mastery is achieved not by understanding theory. It’s achieved by messy movement. By manhandling that clutch until my feet sense the correct pressure and release. By being willing to be bad at something until the trials and feedback and failures start to pay off.

As an author of Google AdWords For Dummies, I deal with a lot of people who want to get involved in AdWords but still can’t figure it out in their heads. They’ve read my book, and usually several others. They’ve attended webinars and seminars and downloaded ebooks and special reports. But they still haven’t set up an account, bid on a single keyword, or written a single ad.

You can’t learn to drive a stick shift–or master a marketing medium–in your head. Mastery is a form of muscle memory.

I’m not saying, by the way, that theory is a bad thing. If I had started to drive stick without understanding the mechanism and potential consequences of my actions, you wouldn’t be reading this now. (Yes, I know what you’re doing right now–don’t be alarmed, it’s just a parlor trick.)

And I certainly recommend that new AdWords users ground themselves in theory before giving Google their credit card.

But don’t confuse preparation for accomplishment with accomplishment itself.

2. Isolate the next step and eliminate distractions

While Mia is driving me to the lesson venue, a quiet, level side road, I am making a sequential list of the skills I need to master.

1. Starting the car on a flat surface.
2. Shifting as I speed up and slow down.
3. Pulling out from a traffic light.
4. Shifting while turning.
5. Starting the car on an uphill using the hand brake.

At first glance, 1 and 3 and 5 appear to be pretty much the same: go from not moving to moving. But context matters a lot. When the big white van races up behind me, oblivious to my left indicator and my auric field of panic, I discover that letting out the clutch while pressing the gas is a lot harder when I’m also concentrating on not getting rammed from behind.

I’d be a fool to try shifting into first gear with 15 cars waiting behind me (even here in Africa, where patience is the rule rather than the exception). It’s just too much to think about.

I see a lot of online marketers falter when overwhelmed. It’s understandable. There’s so much to know, and that knowledge base is a rapidly moving target. But don’t try to take it all in at once. Find the one skill that can move you forward right now.

The trick to learning a skill is to isolate that skill until you can do it repeatedly in an environment of no distraction. Don’t practice jump shots until you can hit free throws. Don’t try to master image ads on the AdWords Display Network until you’ve figured out how text ads work. And so on.

3. Minimize risk

Two elements of this story to highlight. First, it’s a rental car. Low deductible. If I kill the transmission or sideswipe a jacaranda tree, it’s not really that big of a problem for me.

Second, my kids are not in the back seat. Not that I could have bribed them to come along with anything less than an ultra-light plane and tuition for Hogwarts. But I didn’t try. My genetic imperative is to keep them safe.

I’ll be driving them soon enough (as soon as their rational fear of my driving is drowned out by stir craziness). But for the moment, I’m happy knowing that they aren’t in the line of fire.

Many new online advertisers get burned by unknown and unnecessary risks. Setting unlimited budgets while giving Google and Facebook your credit. Accepting the default settings which target huge swaths of humanity rather than a strategically culled few. Sending expensive traffic to untested pages and offers.

Some people think entrepreneurship is all about taking risks. In my experience, most of the time, it’s just the opposite. Entrepreneurship is about planning ahead. About limited risk and exposure and learning from every test and applying what works to bigger and bigger opportunities. As Perry Marshall and Tom Meloche memorably put it in The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising, “aim tiny and miss small.”

At the end of the day, marketing and operating a manual transmission are both about balancing momentum and leverage. Movement and power. Opportunity and risk.

And don’t worry, my next article is not going to be, “Marketing Lessons from Skydiving.” Mia refuses to drive me there.

Right-click to download this video to your computer

The Introduction (In Which You Are Introduced to the Problem and Made to Feel Like Shit About It)

Do you ever get overwhelmed by AdWords?

All the techniques, all the networks, all the settings, all the tricks and strategies and best practices.

And they’re constantly changing, aren’t they? What was a best practice in 2010 is illegal in 2011, or outdated, or just plain stupid.

While I would love to tell you that AdWords is actually quite simple, I can’t.

While I would love to tell you that you can read a 20-page ebook and compete with the best of the best, I can’t.

While I would love to tell you that the latest under the radar trick will get you tons of leads and sales at half the cost per click you’re currently paying, I can’t.

After all, I’m the guy who makes a living writing 400+ page books on the topic. And my agency runs AdWords campaigns that require dozens of hours per month of expert attention and optimization. If we could work less and get the same results, we sure would!

But here’s what I can tell you: most advertisers don’t understand the true power of AdWords.

They don’t know what Search really is.

In other words, they don’t have a feel for the fundamentals.

 Fundamentals First

Most advertisers (and agencies, from my experience) treat AdWords as a technically complex series of pipes, in which marketing messages travel from the merchant to the searcher. They don’t realize that the AdWords machine is the least important part of the equation.

It’s like taking a huge, strong guy and trying to turn him into an offensive lineman in football. You could teach him blocking techniques. You could have him memorize the playbook. You could explain every single rule and infraction and penalty. But if he doesn’t understand that the big goal of the offense is to score touchdowns, he’s not going to be an effective lineman.

Regardless of his skills, and regardless of his strength, and regardless of his knowledge of the playbook and the rulebook.

In fact, until he understands the big picture, teaching him the technical skills and strategies and rules will be excruciatingly slow, difficult, and ineffective.

 The AdWords Fundamentals

I don’t feel like writing a really long sales letter teasing you by talking about the AdWords fundamentals and not telling you what they are.

So here they are:

1. AdWords is a tool that allows you to dig deep empathy with your prospects
2. AdWords is a positioning playground where you can define your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) in triangulation with the market and your competitors
3. AdWords is a test bed for your best guesses on 1 and 2 above

Not complicated. Not technically challenging. Nothing you need to memorize to pass the AdWords Qualified Individual exam.

Just the three key concepts that separate the AdWords success stories from everyone else.

And once you understand these three concepts – not intellectually or theoretically, but practically and experientially – then all the technical details fall into place.

The Checkmate Method – The Missing Part of Your AdWords Education

I’ve taught Checkmate to about 3500 people in the entire world, through Camp Checkmate events, workshops, webinars, private consultations, and the Checkmate home study course that I’m about to ram down your throat on this page ;)

When I share it with students, the responses vary from “I can’t wait to implement this” to “I feel like I’m finally meeting my customer for the first time.” And once they implement, they see the vistas and opportunities opening up as soon as the first results come in.

When I shared Checkmate with Perry Marshall, his response was, “I wish I’d thought of it.”

When I shared Checkmate with Glenn Livingston, his response was, “This is awesome. Let’s do a teleseminar.” (Thanks to Glenn, the method grew larger than a fill-in-the-blanks table in a Word document on my hard drive.)

When I shared Checkmate with the legendary direct marketer Drayton Bird, his response was, “ I’ve seen many people around the world try to teach people to sell things. Howie enables you to do this supremely well, in a way which is almost childishly simple, but hugely effective. You should give him a shot.”

Like I said, Checkmate is the fundamentals part. But it’s more than that. Checkmate is also a method that allows you to write better ads than you’ve ever written before in about 30 minutes.

It isn’t magic. But it helps you access knowledge and insight and intuition that you may not have realized that you already possess.

What You Get With Checkmate Checkmate Fundamentals Quick Start Guide (1 page!) Ever buy a home-study course and get overwhelmed? The quick start guide shows you, step by step, how to get the most out of Checkmate in the least time. You’ll be writing awesome ads in a couple of hours by following these simple steps.

The Checkmate Matrix

The Matrix is a one-page blank table that’s the heart of the Checkmate method. You’ll use the matrix again and again to insert yourself into the sweet spot of your market for any given keyword. At first, you’ll complete a matrix in about 30 minutes. With a little practice, you’ll get it down to 5.

Checkmate Crash Course (Print Manual and Audios)

Part 1: Checkmate Revealed

• The single most important and overlooked factor in searcher’s decision-making process
• The importance of the searcher’s “story” – and how to uncover it
• The hidden search motivator: the trigger
• How to balance relevance and difference in your ads
• How to sneak through the filter in your prospect’s mind
• Should you use the keyword in the headline? Some surprising advice
• How to craft a powerful USP (and evaluate whether yours is up to snuff)
• The nine elements of every ad (knowing these will allow you to evaluate any SERP in minutes and find your own Checkmate positioning)
• A live example – applying Checkmate to the GMAT Prep market

Crash Course Review

Simple two-page fill in the blanks quiz to keep you focused on the most important concepts and skills. Complete this review as you read and/or listen to the Crash Course. (Comes with answer sheet – but no peaking ;)

Part 2: Checkmate in Action – Example, Analysis and Coaching

Checkmate Applications (Print Manual and Audios)

Live Coaching in 3 Diverse Markets:

• Goal Setting (selling education)
• Backup Cameras (selling a physical product)
• Septic Problems (selling a service and product)

Checkmate Tools (Print Manual, and Audio Instructions)

6 easy-to-complete tools that lead you to finding your unique Checkmate Voice, as well as the Tools “Personal Trainer” (step by step instructions to complete the tools)

The most powerful and overlooked ad writing technique is what I call “voice” – the way your prospect hears your ad in their head as they view it. The 6 Checkmate Tools allow you to put an attractive and unique voice into a 4 line pay per click ad that speaks directly to your customer. It cuts through the clutter of the page and makes your ad stand out like new white shoelaces under black light.

Bonus: The 7 Levels of Persuasion

There are 7 levels of persuasion that marketers use to convince prospects to buy. The 3 highest and most powerful levels are rarely used, and used correctly even less often. Discover them in this bonus recording.

How Much Would You Pay For Checkmate?

Usually, when you read that line in a sales letter, you know you’re about to be subjected to a “value build” – where I tell you how much every component is worth (usually ending up with a total of $24,875 or some such number) and then reveal the actual price to be many orders of magnitude lower (only $3997!).

I’ve done that in sales letters. It works pretty well, too. But not today.

Inspired by my friend Tad Hargrave of Marketing for Hippies, I’m actually serious when I ask how much you would pay. Because when you give me your answer, I’ll respond by saying, “OK, it’s a deal.”

Announcing the “Pay What You Can” Checkmate Sale

Checkmate, the home study course, has sold for $467 or $497, depending on whether you wanted all the goodies.

As an experiment, I’m offering a sliding scale on price designed to make price a non-issue.

You can pay any of the following amounts and get the entire digital Checkmate course (eliminating the production and mailing of a manual and CDs allows me to offer a full range of pricing options):

$37           $97          $177          $247          $497

It really makes no difference to me which one you choose. You have to pay something to complete the energetic exchange, but the amount is up to you. After all, different people have different abilities to pay, and depending on what sort of business you have and what level of AdWords you’re playing at, the information in Checkmate will have different value to you.

And of course, whatever you pay, if you aren’t happy with the product, you get a full refund (of the amount you paid, not any other amount ;)

This offer feels very good to me. I hope it feels accessible and risk-free and good to you to.

What’s the Catch?

Were you wondering about a catch? I mention it in the video above, but I’ll spell it out here.

I believe that once you discover and begin implementing Checkmate, you’ll want to experience it in a group setting, with my guidance. So within the next two months I’ll be letting you know about a Virtual Camp Checkmate (that will also be offered on a sliding scale).

You’re much more likely to join an interactive Checkmate group if you own and use the Checkmate home study course. So that’s my hidden agenda. (Oops, not hidden anymore.)

The Obligatory Big Fat Bowl of Urgency

(In my best car commercial announcer voice) You must act now to get this incredible deal. Quantities are limited.

What? No they’re not!

But you do have to make up your mind relatively soon. As I said, this is an experiment. I reserve the right to stop it at any time if it doesn’t feel right.

And as an added incentive for quick action, I’ll hold a bonus webinar on November 30 for everyone who’s signed up by then. The topic: The Magic Shortcut Called “Last Ad Standing.” (I’ll share a Checkmate shortcut that you can use to write great ads when you don’t have time to do full Checkmate.)

Ready to get started?

Click the amount you feel comfortable paying to head to the checkout page.

$37
$97
$177
$247
$497

Want to read more? Here’s the original Checkmate sales letter – but come back here to order if you don’t want to pay full price.

This post was originally published in Fast Company. Not that I’m bragging. Much.

The van driver rolled down his window and called me over. “I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up earlier–the ladies in the back wouldn’t let me.”

“That’s OK. I wouldn’t pick me up, either.” The ladies smiling, grateful to be let off the hook.

“No, I hate to pass by without helping, since I did so much hiking in my day.”

Here in South Africa, my family and I are getting used to relying on the kindness of strangers. With no car (yet), no contacts, and frequently no clue, we’ve gone from reluctantly accepting assistance to actively sticking our thumbs out, soliciting it.

Particularly when it comes to transportation. We’re about two miles up a mountain from the nearest mini-mart, and three-hour shopping trips for a cartoon of eggs, two onions, and a Cadbury Turkish Delight are getting old.

So I’ve taken to thumbing it as soon as I hear the infrequent rumble of a vehicle engine behind me. And in so doing, I’ve discovered a few things about human nature that make me a smarter marketer.

1. When I hitchhike with a child, I have better luck.

When I’m by myself, my conversion rate of vehicles to rides is quite dismal. One out of ten, or worse. And the drivers stoically reject eye contact, as if I were some kind of psycho with evil intent and the power to mesmerize them with my gaze.

When I have a child in tow, the odds change dramatically. About 50% of drivers stop, and the ones who don’t arrange their faces and gesture sympathetically about not having enough space or time or whatever it is they’re trying to communicate. What they’re really communicating is, “I’d stop if I could.”

So what’s going on? Why does a child increase my odds so dramatically?

I don’t think it’s pity. Not in a region afflicted by poverty and malnutrition and domestic violence. My well-fed, well-dressed kids are in no way Save the Children poster material compared to the dozens of children who walk the hill every day in shoes that have been handed down since the 1970s.

Rather, the presence of a child makes me safer to pick up. I’m a father; therefore I’m probably not an axe murderer. I’m a caring, affectionate father; even better. When we hear the engine approaching, we hold hands, smile, and assume thumbs-out position. Who can resist John-Boy and John Senior needing a lift to pick up Grandma Esther’s heart medicine?

The marketing message is sobering: when I’m first trying to attract prospects, who am I on the inside is far less relevant than who my prospect THINKS I am.

I’m the same person, whether I’m walking solo or dragging a kid who’d rather wait at home. Two days ago, in fact, I went to the store for tummy medicine for my eldest, who was suffering from what she likes to tell people was amoebic dysentery (partly because it sounds dramatic, and partly because it doesn’t contain the word “diarrhea”). I was tired, and busy, and yet I braved the elements in search of over the counter bismuth subsalicylate.

Couldn’t the busy motorists sense that I was on a mission of mercy? Apparently not. To get a ride on that day, I would have needed to drag my poor daughter out of her sickbed to stand with me on the side of the road, so she could demonstrate my virtue and harmlessness.

So what does this mean for marketers?

Mainly, accept that most prospects already don’t trust you. If you’re on the web, you look just like all the online businesses that have scammed or disappointed them in the past, or that they’ve heard stories about, or that they’ve made up stories about.

So include as many trust elements as you can on your landing pages. These include: photos of you and your staff, real phone number and physical address, photo of your location, trust badges like BBB, eTrust, and VeriSign, and logos of already trusted organizations like UPS, Visa, and FedEx.

Also, anticipate and acknowledge visitor concerns by answering them up front. “Yes, there are a lot of fly by night online marketing ‘gurus’ out there, but you can trust my advice since I was selected by Wiley, Inc. to write Google AdWords For Dummies. Also, my client list includes…”

Once they get to know, like and trust you, none of that will matter anymore. Your skills, your ethics, your heart will trump all the logos and badges and honors and awards and certifications you may have accrued. But in order to get to that point, bring a kid with you.

2. The driver’s not the only one who needs to agree to stop and pick me up.

The passengers can veto the driver’s decision. In the case of the van full of ladies, they did. Totally understandable, right? I’m not exactly a hulk, but I am five foot ten (on bad hair days) and I can do three consecutive pushups. What hope would seven female middle-aged tourists from Johannesburg have against me?

Very often, your prospect is not the final or only decision maker. In B2B sales, the searcher generally presents several options to the decision makers. But even for consumer sales, you need to consider the priorities, prejudices and opinions of the passengers.

Spend time discovering the stakeholder constellations for your typical prospects. Do they have to run it by their spouses? Must 20-somethings get financial buy-in from their parents? Do your prospects care about looking stupid in front of their friends?

Develop marketing content that “sells through” as well as “sells to” your prospect to the other passengers in their decision vehicle.

3. The drivers who stop for me typically have done a lot of hitchhiking in their time.

This one is really interesting to me, because it begs the question, “So, what are you going to do once you get a car?”

See, I hardly ever pick up hitchhikers. I just drive right by them, avoiding eye contact. After all, who knows what sort of crazy criminals they might be?

But now I’m on the other side. I see the rigid, fearful faces of the people who don’t stop. I see the warm, smiling faces of the ones who brake just ahead and motion out of the window for me to hop in. It’s clear which one I want to be.

So my behavior is changing based on empathy. Based on being in someone else’s shoes, seeing the world through their eyes.

If you want to market effectively, this sort of perceptual shapeshifting is required. Spend some time searching as if you were your own prospect. Think about what’s at stake. What you wouldn’t know. What would scare you. What you’d want more than anything else. What promise you’d most like to hear and believe.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go shopping. We’re out of bread, and the store’s far away. Wish me luck…

This article was originally published in Fast Company.

Last Wednesday morning my 12-year-old son and I accidentally climbed a nearby mountain called Sunset Peak. Elan and I meant only to walk up a little way, scouting the thing out for a possible climb on Saturday. But two hours later, we were at the top, thirsty, out of breath, and delighted. What happened? Why did we abandon our plan of a short leisurely stroll in favor of a hard and demanding hike?

We couldn’t stop climbing because of all the immediate positive feedback.

Once we began our ascent, we discovered something: with every step the view improved. At first, the phalanx of 12 huge water tanks that we passed on our way to the trail shrank to Lego size. Then the road we walked up from our house ribboned down the hill and out into the valley. We argued about which was our house (Elan turned out to be right), and gradually rose to a point where we could view the Drakensberg Mountains farther to the south than we had ever seen them before.

By the time we were halfway up, we could see the summit. And although I had skipped breakfast and felt a bit shaky, there was no way I was going to turn back. Elan agreed, and skipped on ahead as I trudged and stumbled my way behind him. When we summited at 11:15, we just sat in wonder for a few minutes at the 360-degree vista and our own accomplishment.

Immediate Positive Feedback Online

So what does this have to do with your website? Plenty, if your website serves a business purpose. You need new visitors to take a certain action as a result of their visit. Depending on your business model, the action might be to purchase online, fill out a lead or request for quote form, like you on Facebook, call you, or print a coupon and drive to your physical location.

Take a second and think of the most desired action on your website. That’s your summit. How can you entice your best prospects to climb all the way to the top?

Case Study: Ring Central

RingCentral.com offers cloud-based telephony to small businesses. Their service is robust and complex, with hundreds of features, many of which require setup on the part of the customer. The Ring Central mountain takes a fair amount of time and effort to climb all the way to the top. So let’s look at how the website chunks the climb into manageable segments, each providing its own immediate positive feedback.

First, the most desired action on the home page is not a purchase, but a free trial. The most prominent feature on the page is the red-orange SIGN UP button, which you see as your follow the man’s gaze past his attractive co-worker.

Just as Elan and I wouldn’t have taken the first step if our only option had been to summit Sunset Peak, my company Vitruvian probably wouldn’t have made the leap to Ring Central without the zero-risk, low-commitment trial.

The five bullets on the left focus not on the ultimate benefits of Ring Central, but rather on the ease of use. Simple pricing, instant activation and free 24/7 live support are all designed to make the mountain seem easy to climb. These are the trail signs at the bottom of the mountain. The first step up the mountain is the “learn more” button just below those bullets.

That button takes you to a page describing the most important features and benefits of Ring Central under two main headings, Making Calls and Receiving Calls.

Clicking the plus sign next to each high-level feature expands the section into three or so detailed sub-features. You’re invited to climb the Ring Central mountain step by step, with each step delivering more value than the effort required.

At any point in the sales process, you can press one of the “Take me to the top” buttons; on the interior pages, the “sign up” button is joined by a “next” button at the bottom of the “request a quote” box on the left.

Notice that the ultimate goal of the website is just the first mountain in a series of ever-higher peaks. Once you sign up for the risk-free trial, Ring Central follows up with email tutorials and customized progress reports that help you set up the key features, so you convert to long-term paying customer. From there, you are presented with a series of logical upsells to bigger, more robust, and more expensive plans.

Implementing Immediate Positive Feedback

Here are four elements that you need to implement immediate positive feedback on your website:

1. Know what your prospect wants when they first arrive at your site.

Too many websites focus entirely on the benefits of the top of the mountain. They ignore the importance of the small first steps. Elan and I just wanted a pleasant walk. Ring Central prospects want a phone system that works right away, with minimal effort and cost.

What do your visitors want at first? Reassurance that they’re in the right place? Confidence in your capabilities and ethics? Answers to their pressing questions? A phone number so they can talk to a live human being? Empathy?

Make a list of the initial requirements of your visitors and design landing pages that acknowledge and deal with those requirements before you start touting the view from the top of your mountain.

2. Be clear what you want your visitor to do.

Ring Central doesn’t try to get prospects to sign multi-year, multi-employee contracts on their first visit. The mountain they want new prospects to climb is the 30-day trial.

What’s the first mountain your visitors must climb before they can do business with you? Is it a sale? Or can you decrease the height and slope of the first mountain by asking for a name and email, or a software download, or a phone call, or some other intermediate step?

Behavioral economists point out that humans will do much more to prevent loss than to achieve gain. The more you can decrease your prospects’ perceived risk and effort, the more likely they are to take you up on your offer to begin climbing.

Determine the smallest mountain you can define that still gives you the ability to follow up with your prospects after their initial visit.

3. Use visual cues.

Once you’ve identified the first mountain, design your site so that every pixel reinforces that action. Ring Central uses color contrast to highlight the action buttons, as well as positioning them in places that already attract eye gravity. Humans follow others’ gaze; the man’s eyes on the home page directs our eyes to the “sign up” button.

On the features page, the “request a quote” box is a darker color than the rest of the page. The plus sign next to each feature is a widely recognized convention for “There’s more here if you’re interested.”

And while the Ring Central site contains a lot of information, the design divides it into manageable chunks, so that each step appears easy to take.

How can you visually identify both the top of the first mountain and the steps visitors need to take to progress toward that peak? How can you use color contrast, white space, and images to help your visitors see the path and want to follow it?

4. Give clear directions.

The trail that Elan and I climbed was well marked with signs at the trail head, at the junctions of other trails, and with blazes along the way. Also, it was well-maintained throughout; we never looked around and wondered which way to go next.

The Ring Central buttons describe where they take you: “sign up,” “learn more,” and “next” all indicate why you should click and where you go once you do. On many websites, too many buttons and hyperlinks are of the Alice in Wonderland “Drink Me” variety: you don’t know where you’re going or why. The default “submit” button sounds more like a call for surrender than an invitation you can’t refuse.

5. Test continually.

These four elements are grounded in empathy; striving to understand what your prospect cares about, desires, and fears. The second half of the equation is curiosity; an eagerness to find out if you’re right.

Online, curiosity is best operationalized by tracking visitor behavior on your site and testing variations to see which one provides the most compelling and simplest path up your mountain.

Here’s the Ring Central home page on March 17, 2010:

While much of the page is identical, the photograph has changed, and there’s more white space. The Mobile and Fax areas are lighter in tone, allowing the “sign up” and “learn more” buttons to stand out more on the page.

Make a list of things you can test on your site. Start with the big ones: headlines, overall design, color schemes, wording of buttons. Next, test the order and number and text of bullets, body copy, and text font and color.

Don’t be formulaic–let your tests derive from curiosity about what makes your mountain easy and appealing to climb.

If you want more people to start climbing your mountain and make it all the way to the top, think like your prospects and make each step immediately worthwhile so they’ll want to take the next one.

Otherwise, they’ll surely take a hike.

Do you have too much time and not enough to do?

If so, you can stop reading this post right now. I don’t wanna hear about it ;)

If, on the other hand, you’re as overwhelmed as the rest of us, you’ve got to listen to this.

My good friend, former boss, and current cahoots-er Peter Bregman has just written a fantastic book about how to get things done.

And if you’re wondering, it’s not like the other time management / productivity books out there. This is a system that doesn’t require you to adopt an entirely new set of habits, buy fancy software or filing equipment, or spend all day managing your time. Peter’s book is called 18 Minutes because that’s your entire time investment per day – 18 minutes that can buy back at least three hours of productivity each day (at least in my experience).

Peter didn’t write the book as a professional time management guru. Instead, he was frustrated by his own tendencies to get distracted, to focus on the minutiae, and to let day after day get away from him. He started exploring, experimenting, and keeping track of results. The end result was a system that worked so well for him that he began sharing it with his friends and colleagues and clients, who began sharing it with their friends, colleagues and clients. The book is just the outcome of this viral spiral of common sense and uncommon wisdom.

Listen as Peter and I chat about how he came to write 18 Minutes, what he sees as the shortcomings of most other time management systems, and how to implement 18 Minutes in your own life. You can click the Play button below to listen online or click here to download the mp3 for later.

Join Peter’s email list to get access to the 6 Boxes tool and the 18 Minutes Daily template that we talked about in the interview. Just look for the “Stay in the Know” section below Peter’s headshot.

What do you think? Brilliant? Crazy? Eh? I love feedback of all kinds. Join the conversation – please share your thoughts in the Comments box below.

Here’s a conversation between me and Garrett Todd, Vitruvian‘s Director of Website Optimization, as we prepare the outline for the Website Optimizer chapter of Google AdWords For Dummies 3rd edition. Listen online or click the download link to save the interview to your computer or iPod.

Download the interview in MP3 format.

What if your business was a reality show, and you couldn’t hide anything from your prospects and customers?

My kids spent a few weeks watching as many episodes of Cake Boss as they could, and I have to admit that once I started watching over their shoulders, I was hooked.

In case you’re as clueless about Cake Boss as I would be sans offspring, here’s the synopsis offered by TLC, the channel that airs the show:

“Buddy Valastro is the Cake Boss. Renowned cake artist and master baker of Carlo’s Bakery, he manages a team including his mother, four sisters & three brothers-in-law. And, when you’re working with family every day, there’s bound to be a lot of drama.”

That, I soon discovered, is putting it mildly.

Family members screaming at each other. Semi-abusive management techniques. Violent reactions to setbacks. People slamming doors and dropping cakes and messing up the frosting. Who in their right mind would want to do business with this crazy family?

And yet…

Every show ends with a beautiful – I mean stunningly incredible – cake being delivered on time and on budget to exactly the right location.

Suspense and Happy Endings

What the viewing audience finds so fascinating, of course, is not the happy ending. The resolution is satisfying, and often breathtaking, because Buddy is in fact a skilled baker and cake artist. But just watching a cake being designed and baked and constructed is like going to the movies just to watch the happy ending.

It’s the 110 minutes of roller-coaster suspense, false starts, dashed hopes, and degradations that make the happy ending so powerful. Salvation without the constant threat of damnation is just boring.

OK, so Cake Boss makes for good theater. But still, that kind of up-close-and-personal scrutiny can’t be good for Buddy’s business, can it?

Are Prospects OK with Imperfection?

Disclaimer: I actually have no idea if Buddy is a batter-and-frosting billionaire, or just one step ahead of the taxman.

But my educated guess is that the TV show has been an incredible boon to his business.

Despite the rudeness and nastiness and occasional sloppiness and incompetence caught in the unforgiving and ever-remembering camera lens.

Despite?

Or partly because of?

As Seen on Reality TV

You see, with Cake Boss, the prospect feels like they know exactly what they’ll get. Buddy and his family aren’t hiding anything. They can’t hide anything – they’re on reality TV.

If you order a Cake Boss cake, you know the end product will be fantastic, regardless of the drama it takes to make it.

Not only do you end up with a fabulous cake, you also get the intangible story of the cake, which you get to share with friends and family to make it – and you – that much cooler.

We don’t want products anymore. We want experiences. We want stories. We want totems – physical items that have been magically imbued with someone else’s JuJu so we can bask in their vibrations.

Business Storytelling

My friend and mentor Sharon Livingston of WebStoriesThatSell.com has a wonderful practice in which she interviews business owners about their businesses. But she doesn’t ask things like, “What differentiates you from the competition?” As important as that question is, YAWN.

Instead, she asks, “What were you like as a kid? When did you know you wanted to go into this business or profession? What excites you about it?”

She elicits stories and puts a human face on a product or service. She makes us care about the person first, and then we’re naturally drawn to their business.

We see the passion that underlies the goods and services. We hear the emotion in their voice. We find out about setbacks, about struggles, and about practice-makes-perfect expertise.

And the messy, non-perfect bits don’t stand in the way of the sale, as long as the professionalism and quality are there. In fact, they enhance the sale. The more is revealed, the less we worry about what’s being hidden from us.

Fly Your Dirty Linen Proudly

So what are you hiding and trying to spin in your business?

About yourself?

Most of it is probably not as bad as you think.

(Please note, there’s a fine but very real line separating secrecy from privacy. I’m not suggesting you blog about your collection of pre-owned nipple rings. Some things really ARE better left to the imagination.)

My friend Peter Bregman writes convincingly in his upcoming book, 18 Minutes (pre-order from that link, it’s that good), of the power of embracing your weaknesses.

In marketing, embracing means sharing them freely. Admitting that you’re – gasp – not perfect.

And then showing how those imperfections make you more approachable, more engaging, and more able to deliver the experience your prospect wants.

We’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking for connection.

So even if your business isn’t on reality TV, you can still be Real in your marketing.

You’ll inspire confidence. You’ll stand out. And you’ll have way more fun than if you try to keep it all safety tucked away.

Let us raise our glasses to messy authenticity, and say, “Holy Cannoli!”

“Jocelyn is a horse whisperer,” I explained to my kids as we pulled into the long driveway of the rural farmhouse in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. “That means she trains horses not with force, but by understanding their psychology and using her posture, movements and words to communicate with them.”

Driving back to North Carolina after a week in Manhattan, we arrived at 8pm in need of a quiet, peaceful, safe place to decompress for the night. Iverson the giant poodle greeted us warmly, without suspicion, even though we were complete strangers to him. Jocelyn Pierce Audet came out and greeted us, suggesting that we spend some time with the horses now before it got too late.

Mia, the kids and I followed Jocelyn down to the barn, where the doors were all open and the horses nowhere to be seen. Jocelyn began calling her horses’ names, inviting them to come meet the new people. As her shouts echoed over the farm’s 52 acres, I saw my kids exchanging glances that clearly said, “She’s a horse whisperer?”

As we waited for the horses to finish grazing and chilling in the fields, Jocelyn explained her training philosophy and methodology.

Understanding Horses

“Horses are herd animals, and they have a very different psychology than humans. As herbivores (grazing prey animals) whose main defense against predators is speed and a good head start, their primary goals in life are safety and peace. In horse whispering parlance we say that horses always seek the place of lowest pressure.”

Serafina, a six year old Andalusian filly, galloped up to meet us and instantly demonstrated this constant need for safety by rotating her ears in all directions, in response to every single noise in her environment.

“In order to train a horse, you have to show her that she’ll be safer and more comfortable with you than she’d be on her own. That’s why I don’t need whips or threats or any kind of force.

“Let’s say I want to train Serafina to walk up the ramp into a trailer. She’s naturally a little scared of this new environment. So I keep her feet moving until she steps on the ramp. Then I let her relax. If she backs down I get her moving again, which corresponds to agitation in her mind. Again, she finds peace, or the spot of lowest pressure, on the ramp. After a bit of this, she’ll naturally be drawn to the ramp as the place she can relax.”

How to Exert Invisible Control

The next morning, Jocelyn invited us to watch as she gave Serafina her workout. We had no idea how Serafina knew to walk in a particular direction, when to start trotting, when to slow down, stop, canter, gallop, or do some fancy side-stepping footwork. Jocelyn used few words and almost no gestures. She just rode and seemed to telepathically communicate her wishes to Serafina. When she dismounted, she turned her attention back to us.

“I speak to Serafina using my core muscles. First I have to really tune in to my own energy, so I’m really conscious of what I’m communicating. Horses are incredibly sensitive, and they often pick up on tension and fear in humans that the people themselves aren’t aware of. Next I assess her mood and state, and see what she needs in order to feel safe and at peace.

“Once those channels of communication are open and clear, I use my muscles to communicate what I want Serafina to do. Since I’m the alpha of the herd, she’s happy to give me the responsibility of taking care of her. So it makes her happy to please me, because in her mind that ensures her own safety. She associates me with that spot of lowest pressure she is always seeking.”

The World Wide Web: A Balance of Safety and Novelty

All that got me thinking about marketing, and the Web, and human beings. I think there are some useful lessons here.

I can totally relate to the horse’s need for safety and peace. After a week in Manhattan that included a family wedding, maneuvering a minivan through three episodes of alternate side of the street parking, never-ending honks and sirens, loud construction, and Chinatown during rush hour, I was craving a shady pasture myself. Some place where I didn’t have to be on high alert, where nothing unexpected would happen, and where I could let down my guard and be taken care of.

Too much of this state of relaxation has a name. Humans call it “boredom.” We also need excitement, novelty, challenge, and surprise. And one requirement of human happiness is the right balance – different for each of us – of excitement and security. Think of the safety/peace requirement as the foundation for the excitement/challenge requirement.

On a physical level, we can only run and jump when our legs are supported by solid ground. On an emotional level, we can make ourselves vulnerable only when we trust the person we’re opening up to. On a transactional level, we can only take a financial risk – aka “buy something” – when we feel safe enough with the entire commercial system to open up our wallet.

What Makes Us Feel Safe (or not) Online?

Online, the “entire commercial system” includes several components.

First, the Web itself. People have to feel comfortable making an online purchase of any kind. In the last century, ecommerce was a scary proposition. I remember the rush of exhilaration and fear as Matt and I sat at my Mac SE in 1990 and ordered a pound of pistachios over CompuServe. I sure was glad it was his credit card!

Second, people must have confidence in the “recommendation engine” that brought them to your site. That, as much as anything, is Google’s main contribution to the Internet. Finding a site on the first page of Google was like “as seen on TV.” Not only were the search results faster and more relevant, they came to seem more trustworthy. After all, Google must employ some quality control to rate Web sites, right?

Third, people who leave Google for a third-party site must feel instant reassurance that they’re in the right place. Think of Serafina’s ears swiveling like a submarine’s sonar, constantly pinging her environment for any sign of danger. On Google.com, the searcher feels safe and protected. Once they leave the protective nest of search, they are momentarily disoriented, unable to process anything beyond “Am I safe here?”

ARR and DEP from Google Airport

Sean D’Souza of Psychotactics.com likens the Web to an airport in a foreign country you’re visiting for the first time and you don’t speak the language. If you’re on your own, without a trusted guide, your overriding question every step of the way is, “Who can I trust here?”

The cab drivers who are beckoning and shouting at you? The guy with the red cap and semi-official uniform? The airport money exchangers? The rental car desk clerks?

Until you decide to trust someone at least a little, you can’t leave the airport. And you can’t really concentrate on their offer until you feel safe in their company.

That’s the Web. Google’s the airport, and all the links on the search results page are offers to take you away from the familiar and into the new. The new is exciting. The new is where all the undiscovered treasures lie. And the new is the only way you make progress on your search. You can’t spend your entire vacation at the airport, and you can’t spend your entire search on Google. At some point you have to venture out into the world and take your chances.

How to Be a Visitor Whisperer

So your first job as a Web site owner is to be a “Visitor Whisperer”: to present a design, content, and functionality that allows your visitor to relax, to feel safe and at peace. Before you can agitate their problem and get them to buy, you must convey your confidence that you can help them. You’ve helped dozens or hundreds of thousands like them before. You’re not afraid of questions and objections.

The fastest way to project this calm, assertive confidence is to align yourself with the whole truth. Eliminate spin, and simply talk about your prospects and how you can help them from a place of integrity. Raise likely objections yourself, and explain clearly whom you can and can’t help. Empower your prospects to trust their own judgment and they will automatically trust you.

And like a horse whisperer, build a trusting relationship slowly, letting your prospect lead. Offer them free useful information on your Web site. Offer them a chance to find out more by leaving an email address or calling you on the phone.

Honor their shy skittishness for the intelligent survival mechanism it is, and demonstrate that the safety and peace they seek can be found in your online pasture.

Only then can both of you run free.

For more information on Jocelyn and her horses, visit Enlightenedhorsemanship.com. And here’s a video of Serafina learning how to jump:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZuwTHOlbEw

This article was originally published in Fast Company.