Articles and Publications to Help Improve your Marketing Performance

FutureNow has been providing marketers and business people with articles, blogs, books, and eBook for more than 10 years. Between a widely respected blog and two Wall Street Journal and New York Times best sellers the resources below have been proven to help companies market better.

GrokDotCom.com: The Conversion Rate Marketing Blog and Newsletter published since 2000

GrokDotCom is published by the knowledge-thirsty folks at FutureNow and focuses on human reactions to marketing, sales, PR & evolving media and interactive marketing optimization methods. Recognized widely as a place to go if you want the right answer, GrokDotCom.com is included in AdAge's Power 150 blog list. Subscribe to our RSS feed or weekly email digest. 

Top Posts and Articles:

• A classic Grok post: 7 very common questions asked by marketers, and the bigger, more important questions they should lead you to.
• Two Ways to Get Started with Personas, Part I: discusses the “100% outsource” model, and Two Ways to Get Started with Personas, Part II: discusses actionable ways your company can do most of the work in-house, and bring in a firm to wrap up if necessary.
• FutureNow's Retail Customer Foucs Study: FutureNow’s annual study on customer-focused websites in various e-retail sectors. This is 2007’s report, highlighting that, among many interesting trends, too many online retailers are focused on technology innovation instead of positive customer experience.
• A great post on FutureNow’s Hierarchy of Optimization. Based loosely on Maslow’s Hierarchy, the Hierarchy of Optimization helps you set a strategy and a roadmap for testing and optimization.
• A post about solid online marketing testing strategy. Shows that most websites are “towers of assumptions” that need to be stabilized by forming hypotheses, testing them, and learning from the results.
• A good reminder that eCommerce website redesigns are dangerous because they’re based on assumptions, and are often not sufficiently tested. It highlights a few ways to bring testing and optimization into the picture, so you don’t end up losing money. 

Our Columns:

ClickZ's ROI Marketing column (over 250 columns) authored by Bryan Eisenberg, one of our co-founders. As one of ClickZ's longest contributing experts Bryan offers weekly insights into how to milk the most out of every marketing dollar.

Our debut article on Forbes.com, discussing the value of consumer generated content. In the article Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg study the emergence of social networking platforms as a business model and the value of online reputation.

Books written by FutureNow Staff:

Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer

Take the guesswork out of your online marketing efforts. This book show you why you should test, how to test, and what to test on your site, and ultimately, help you discover what is best for your site…and your bottom line. It provides for an in-depth review of using Google Website optimizer as an economical and simple yet robust way to maximize your testing effort.  

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing

A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Amazon bestseller, Cat to Bark introduces Persuasion Architecture® as the model that gives business a proven context for rethinking customers and retooling marketers in a rewired market.

The Soccer Mom Myth: Today’s Female Customer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys

The Soccer Mom is a wake-up call about who today's female consumer really is, how she really thinks, and why she really buys – both online and offline. 

Call to Action: Secret Formulas To Improving Online Results

A New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Call To Action teaches you how to define who your customers are, what they want, how to communicate with them, and how to create persuasive momentum so they take the actions you want them to. 

Persuasive Online Copywriting: How to Take Your Words to the Bank

To effectively manage the quality of your online writing, you need to understand what works, why it works, and how to make it work better for you. This book is currently out of print, however, you may order a downloadable PDF version through our store. 

Ebooks Available In Our Store:

• The Marketer’s Common Sense Guide to E-Metrics: 22 benchmarks to understand the major trends, key opportunities, and hidden hazards your web logs uncover.
• What Converts Search Engine Traffic: Explains in detail how the top 15 search engines are converting and not only analyzes the data but includes critical recommendations and resources.
• Which Sells Best: A Quick Start Guide to Testing for Retailers (eBook): Landing page optimization for retailers is no longer a buzzword – it’s a requirement. Optimizing your landing pages using established testing methods is a proven means of increasing your conversion rates and realizing improved ROI.
• The 7 Biggest Mistakes in Marketing to Women Online: Women now spend more money online than men. Smart marketers are learning how to tap into that spending power. But even smart marketers are making mistakes in their product presentation, copy, design, and by stereotyping their female customers.
• Contact Me or Submit?: A Quick Start Guide to Testing for Lead Generation (eBook): Contact Me or Submit? introduces a proven model that has rewarded many B2B sites with impressive increases in conversion. Includes tips specific to the challenges faced by lead-gen sites.
• Save The Sale: A Quick Start Guide on Shopping Carts (eBook): This guide tackles the problem of shopping cart abandonment head on. Up front, you get twenty time-tested tactics for decreasing your shopping cart abandonment rates so you can “save the sale.”
• Persuasive Online Copywriting - Updated PDF version (eBook): To effectively manage the quality of your online writing, you need to understand what works, why it works, and how to make it work better for you.
  

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