I happened to catch “That Thing You Do” over the weekend. You know, that Tom Hanks movie about the one-hit “Wonders”. Anyway, it was an interesting insight into the nature of the music business at that time and it made me think about the time I spent working in the music industry back in the mid 90’s.

There is one fundamental concept that the music industry in those days (40’s, 50’s & 60’s) has on the music industry of today. If you look at it, the flagship product of a record label at that time was the single. Albums were secondary. Labels had caravans that took their artist around the country and showcased their roster to a swarm of fans. These bands would play a few songs and then head on their way. For the most part, that doesn’t happen today.

I believe that it should.

Think about it, with the advent of the MP3 and services like iTunes, the consumer has the opportunity to buy the song(s) that they like and not be force-fed an album of 2-3 good songs with 7-8 fillers. So, why do these artists and labels still need to act this way when they should be focused on selling great music. Learn from your predecessors people. Let the idea of the single reemerge.

Here’s another idea. Where do artists usually make their money? Most would think that it’s on albums - it’s not, it’s in touring. So, why not think of your singles as your “marketing materials”. Give them away in anticipation of gate receipts. Your ROI would be incredible - especially in this day and age where technology has revolutionized the recording industry and greatly reduced the costs associated with quality recordings.

Labels used to offer something called “tour support” - they don’t do that much anymore. Why not? Why don’t labels put on the tour and spread the cost of the production across 4-6 artists on their roster? Better yet - scrap the whole idea of royalties and put your acts on salaries with a bonus structure. This will free them up so that they can mature in the industry and have long term success.

This idea will require a complete overhaul of the way the music industry operates. However, if we agree that the music industry needs to focus back on the “single” then everything else will flow from there.

Companies who sell services, or even high-end products, must realize that they have a shopping cart, too. It’s a little different than, say Amazon, but it’s still a shopping cart. What is this thing you say?

It’s your lead generation form.

Let me guess - you just put your email address up on your site and are hoping that someone is going to click on it and - boom - there’s your lead. Not so fast my friend! It just doesn’t work that way. It goes back to my theory about the “Field of Dreams Syndrome” - just because it’s there, doesn’t mean they’re going to show up.

I received a great case study in my inbox this morning about this: Lead Generation: Is Your Sign-Up Process Costing You Leads and Conversions, or Maximizing Them? While this article doesn’t get into great detail about the specifics of B2B lead generation, it does do a great job of profiling subscriptions and how to improve effectiveness.

I’ve been preaching this concept for a long time and have helped many companies through this process. The case study above does a great job of walking you through this concept and why you have to pay attention to this even if you don’t have a traditional shopping cart.

Every website operator has to know and understand their success metrics (I’ll cover that topic in one of my next posts). But, how your site visitors funnel down to your contact form is integral to a successful B2B website.

Here’s an interesting tool from the folks over at FutureNow - the “Customer Focus Calculator“.

This tool counts certain words on your site and pairs that against how many times your name or company name is mentioned. Research suggests that talking in a customer-centric voice will greatly impact your conversions and website effectiveness.

Give it a try and see how you score. I ran the calculator on my company’s homepage and here are my results:

These are the Customer Focus Calculator results:

For the url: http://www.linearmill.com

Your Customer Focus Rate: 43.48%
You have 10 instances of customer-focused words.

Your Self Focus Rate: 56.52%
You have 10 instances of self-focused words.
You have 3 instances of the Company Name.

You speak about yourself almost as often as you speak about your customers.
Might you improve that?

Original length of Page (including all HTML)= 5,037 bytes
Content length after stripping HTML = 2,587 bytes
Total word count: 360

Looks like I have a little tweaking to do myself.

Look, there are really only 3 things someone can do while they’re on a page on your website. I didn’t really think of it like this until I was having a conversation yesterday with a colleague. So, here’s the list:

1. Stay on the page.
2. Go to the next page.
3. Go to the previous page - aka hit the “back” button.

Now, the secret is completely understanding why each thing happens - there are probably several at each step. Plus, you need to be focused on those visitors that aren’t doing what you would like them to do. Things like staying on your page or moving forward to checkout and others.

I’m a big Dan Patrick Fan - I especially loved his ESPNRadio show. And, when he decided to call it quits back in August; I wondered what he would end up doing. So, on a whim, I typed in DanPatrick.com one day and….

Check out my latest PodCast for more….

On a side note, I’d love some feedback on the PodCasts - drop me a comment below - Thanks, cg

Everyone out there please do me a favor. Please, stop saying “www” when you’re spelling your domain name. Remember back to elementary grammar when you were taught about “you” understood? Please invoke that rule when spelling or saying your domain name.

I loathe it when, especially on the radio, I hear someone say their domain name. How many times do you hear that and they don’t even say “dot” between the “w-w-w” and the domain name? It drives me nuts. So, let’s all just make a deal and drop it. When was the last time you didn’t enter “www” when you navigated to a website anyway? The the “www” go the way of the pronoun “you” and let it be understood.