If you're on the web, read this...

Here's article about an eye-tracking study that reveals how people actually look at websites.

Survey offers a 'sneak peek' into Net surfers' brains

Some highlights are:
--When there is less on a page, users read more.
--People are extremely good at screening out things and focusing in on a small number of salient page elements.
--Consumers are blind to banner ads and elements that seem like they might be ads.

Egg-regiously out of touch

As if 3000 commercial messages a day wasn't enough, some clever folks came up with a way to pack in even more. Come September CBS will begin egg advertising. That's right, eggs with ads.

What's most fascinating is not the desperation it signifies. It's how gleefully out of touch CBS is about the whole thing.

George Schweitzer, president of the CBS Marketing Group said of the campaign, "It's one of the ways we can be intrusive and inclusive. It's right in your face. You can't avoid it."

It's intrusive. It's in your face. You can't avoid it. And somehow, combined with unbearably witty puns such as, "CBS Mondays -- Leave the Yolks to Us," we will be lured to CBS' s new lineup?

TVviewershipp is in a rapid decline -- July saw the least-watched week in TV history. All the while, authentic user-generated media such as YouTube are rapidly growing.

Maybe, just maybe, the TV industry's one-sided, in-your-face philosophy is the problem, not the solution.

3000 every day!

Researchers say we're exposed to 3000 commercial messages every day.
Pretty impressive considering that we're only awake for 960 minutes a day (16 hours x 60 minutes). That averages out to a whopping 3.125 per minute!

At some point you reach saturation and people start tuning it out. And if you ask me, I'd say we passed that point long ago. I mean, does it really matter if it's 3000 or 300,000? It's all just noise.

The thing is, we all want to find the next product we love. But we're not looking to marketers to show it to us. We're looking to other people, both online and off, for honest and credible recommendations. One recent study found that people talk about products and services in about 25% of their conversations.

When designing your own marketing plan, consider what would influence you more -- being "exposed" to 100 ads for Brand X, or one friend saying, "Brand Y is great. You'll love it."

Sure, designing a plan to get the second result is a little more complicated, but at least it works.

It's not about you...

If you keep up with the marketing gurus of the day you've heard it over and over again: "It's not about you. It's about THEM." It's good advice. Great advice, even. Nobody cares about you. They just care about what you can do for them.

Though all this sounds obvious, few people seem to really understand what it means. It's more than just saying, "Product X will make YOU happy." It means seeing the situation from the customers' perspective and constructing your product and your marketing to be meaningful and valuable within that context.

To see through the customers' eyes, big companies use focus groups, surveys, demographics, market trends and countless other tools that add up to more than the GDP of Djibouti.

For us little guys, that kind of research is not an option. That's just fine. As little guys we have a profound advantage: We're closer to our markets and that means we can know them with greater depth than any research could ever achieve.

For the scrappy little company, seeing through the customers' eyes can be a simple process. Start with the goal of creating something that would excite the target market -- something they could buzz about. Then design it as best you can on your own. And the deceptively simple coup de grace.... ask them what they think!

I've done this countless times and it works beautifully. With your big plan at the ready, call up someone in your target market (chances are you know them already) and ask them out to lunch to brainstorm with you about how to make your plan even better. Ask them about features they might want, what the competition is doing, how they look for a product/service like yours... anything you can think of that could make you more relevant, credible and valuable.

Don't stop with just one brainstorming session, though. Keep going until you're confident that you're actually seeing it through their eyes and giving them what they want.

The First Expenditure

When a customer encounters your business, what is their first expenditure?

Easy, right? You deposited it in the bank. You even know the date and time.

Nope. The first expenditure -- that is, the first time they gave you something of value -- was the first time they paid attention to you. I know this sounds a little corny, but it's more than just a (not so) clever play on words.

With the enormous demands on our attention -- from friends, work, family and, of course, marketers -- it's a valuable commodity.

Most marketing doesn't seem to recognize this. Attention is often treated as though we all have a surplus and all you have to do is ask for it (or take it).

A rule to live by is that if you're asking for attention you have to give something back. And the more attention you need, the more you have to give.

From a strategic standpoint that means that everything you do needs to demand as little attention as possible. That means more than just simplifying your website or streamlining the buying process. It means understanding your potential customer's thought process and anticipating their needs.

Then, when you've made every step as easy and clear as possible, you have to reward your potential customers every step of the way. I've said it before but it bears repeating. The reward doesn't need to be (and usually shouldn't be) monetary. It just needs to be valuable. Good information is valuable. Fun is valuable. Catering at your event is valuable. Making new friends is valuable.

If at any point the costs outweigh the perceived benefit, the chain is broken and you're going to lose customers. So be thorough. Keep it simple and clear. Ask for a little. And give a lot.