Book Review of the Week – Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?

Towards the end of Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg’s terrific Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? the authors note, “…these principles aren’t new; they’ve been around, in one form or another, for as long as people have been trying to figure out how the most effective ways to exchange this for that. Technology may rearrange the furniture, but the same people still live there.” And they’re right. Most marketers will have come across each of the disparate elements in the Eisenbergs’ book in some form or other somewhere along their way. However, if the same people still live there, it’s amazing how many companies have never bothered to visit the neighborhood judging by typical retail website conversion rates. To help marketers improve conversion rates, the Eisenbergs (and their company Future Now, Inc.) describe where today’s consumers live and how to help arrange the furniture in ways that benefit customers and businesses alike. It’s a great read and makes me wish I had been adopted by the Eisenberg family when I was young (sorry, Mom). It’s a worthy follow-up to their earlier book, Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results. Buy a copy of each for your CEO and make sure she reads them. If you’re in marketing today and don’t listen to what Bryan and Jeff have to say, very soon the only furniture you’ll be rearranging are the deck chairs on your own personal Titanic.