Web Strategy Micksup

Carrot Cake

Originally uploaded by rexipe

I saw the email below in my inbox and realised a few times that morning I’d been talking to clients about how to encourage your customers/users/peeps to do things. How to get them to sign up, fill in their profile, add reviews, invite friends, etc.

—–

Dear Mick,

From 1st - 31st October 2008 we’re giving away $1500 in entertainment vouchers from our friends at Strike Bowling Bar.

A Strike Bowling voucher? What does that mean?
That means you can shout your mates to quite a few games of ten pin at Sydney’s finest indoor bowling experience and put a hefty amount of money behind the bar to keep them happy all night long with food and drinks. They will love you forever!

All you need to do is write a review to be in with a chance of winning.

Up for grabs:

x1 $500 voucher
Awarded to the overall best review of the month. This will be judged across all categories. Review any business in any category. If the business you want to review isn’t in RAYV - simply add it!

x1 $500 voucher
Awarded to the overall best review of the month in the category of Active Life.

For both of the $500 prizes, we’ll be looking for reviews that are honest, funny, informative and also opinionated. Of course, we’re not looking for all of those requirements in the one single review, although if you can do that, that would be pretty impressive.

x2 $250 vouchers
Lucky dip! That’s right, like pinning a tail to the donkey and smacking the bejesus out of a pinata, we’ll be blind folding someone in the office and laughing at them fall over their own feet as they try to pull out two lucky winners from a database of reviews.

You gotta’ be in it to win it - as they say.

The more reviews you write, the greater your chances are of winning!

For more information on the competition - please click here.

Want to write a review now? Click here.

Have a great long ‘Sydney’ weekend.

The RAYV Team

—-

I guess their are two methods - the Carrot and the Stick.

1. The Carrot (Cake) - means to give them an incentive. Do this and we’ll give you something. By far the best way to do this is just to offer the core value of your product and make sure that it’s strong enough. “Sign up, fill in 10 forms and you’ll get to use our cool service”.

Thinking about how to tell people just how tasty your carrot cake is, is important.

Tell them too much and they’ll go away. - “This carrot cake was first developed back in 1948, it’s ingredients include water, flour, carrots…”

Tell them too little or the wrong things, and they might not be sold. - “It’s cake.” “It’s carroty”. “It’s made with fat”.

The problem often is that people want different things but you only have one home page. That’s where prioritisation comes in. A general heading, then let people easily get to what they want.

Some want it straight away - don’t make them watch a video or go through the 5 benefits to get it.

Some want a video - give them one.

Some want lots of info - give it to them.

Some want examples and testimonials - give it to them.

Structure your information so it’s easy for people to sell themselves. And make sure you have buy/try now buttons in multiple points at every step. Don’t make it hard for them to get the carrot.

Other Peoples Carrots

Often your service is not quite awesome enough yet to get people to jump through hoops, so you might have to do something extra. This often means you have to offer something else. Sometimes you piggyback in on someone else’s carrot cake. They get you for free as a bonus and if they like it, they’ll use it.

Sometimes you have to give them things they want to do it. Money, prizes, information. “Sign up today and win an iPod!” That’s OK. It’s just a little nudge in the door and then it’s up to your product to deliver. Be wary of this though. You might be attracting the people that want the iPod, not the carrot cake.

The Stick

Hmmm, I’m thinking through this and wondering how you give people the stick. Bundling can also be considered the stick. We used to do this at Kazaa. Give away a free service, but you have to have these other adverplications to get it. Hopefully that they are not completely painful (*ducks*) to be considered a stick, but it’s not what you want, so it is a cost.

Can anyone think of stick examples of this?

I guess watching interstitial ads is a stick for increasing CPM rates.

Things to remember when trying to get people do do things online;

1. Put yourself in the customers shoes. What do they want, what would they be prepared to do to get it (sign up, pay you) or what would you have to do for them to get them to do it.

2. Focus, focus, focus. (Of course) don’t try to offer too much at once.

3. Patience. Don’t chop and change it. People do things in their own time and for their own reasons. It might be a ten step process over 5 weeks until they really get and love your product. Don’t rush them and don’t change it so much they can’t find that love.

4. Test, test, test. Make sure you have the analytics setup so you can track everything and spend a lot of time being sure they really are ‘finishing the whole plate’.

What’s your experience?

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