Designs for Success
A weblog about advertising, marketing and web design
Website Magazine recently reported how vital it is for retailers to have an online presence. The survey found that a whopping 94% of consumers perform some form of research before shopping online, demonstrating the importance of having a presence you can be proud of, to garner those shopping dollars.
According to the latest Compete Online Shopper Intelligence Study , three out of five consumers use search engines as their go-to online shopping resource. 61% of respondents chose search engines as the tool they rely on most when shopping. Number 2 were coupon sites with 35% followed by email blasts at 29%. Let dba Communications help you get noticed in this competitive arena. Contact us today.
This past Friday I had scheduled a newspaper ad with a local daily for one of my clients. The paper unfortunately scheduled the ad for a different day. Ok… honest mistake, however, this retailer had a large Trunk Show scheduled with a representative from France. The newspaper finally came up with an email blast to 135,000 to make up for the ad missing from the 300,000 papers published daily. I am happy to report that my client’s website received 493 unique visitors from that afternoon email blast, which is about 5 times their average daily web visits. Once again, this proves the strength of online, even though the paper is still stuck in selling………….paper. I wish they would see that they are more than a publisher of print. They can be so much more, if they would only awaken to the fact they are a media organization, not just a printer…..
I’ve been very impressed with two recent campaigns to bring visitors to client’s websites.
One was a Groupon promotion where-in the client offered $75 worth of product for $25. Of course the first question you ask yourself, is the profit margin of this client enough to make money doing so? The immediate answer is a resounding NO. By itself, that promotion cost money. However, looking long term, the client was able to generate over 700 website page views in a single day (compared to an average 120) and because their average sale is over $350, there are now close to 200 people with a $75 credit burning a hole in their pocket ready to spend over the next several months. So, looking long term, this was a very successful promotion and this particular client will be repeating something similar this Spring.
The second promotion was an animated banner on the Denver Post website. Once again, the response in website page views was a huge bump for the day. While our success with standard size ad banners has been hit and miss, this sizable animated sliding billboard ad on the front page of the newspaper’s website is another winner in a constantly changing and hard to hit advertising media market.
There is a new trend I’ve noticed the last few months of companies presenting themselves to unsuspecting retailers with tall tales that by signing on to their local service these retailers will somehow appear at the top of the list in Google searches. One company explained to me just a few months ago that through their help an Alzheimer’s research firm was now appearing in the top 5 on a Google search…IF, you were to type a series of qualifiers no regular consumer or even investor would ever type. It took a tremendous amount of self control to keep from laughing at the gentleman on the phone so proudly crowing about this accomplishment.
Appearing at the top of so specific a Google search that one would be lucky if a handful of people in a year put that combination of terms together isn’t the goal of any self respecting company. Worse is the waste of hundreds of dollars to show up in such a search. The particular company who sold this bill of goods to the neurological center is doing the same thing to the center as the center would be to its patients if it were selling them a sugar pill to cure Alzheimer’s.
The goal of SEO is to be seen in the categories that matter to your customers, in the searches your customers and potential customers do. Building a solid site, having the right keywords, using ALT tags, having a blog, participating in social networking, keeping your site updated to the newest protocols, and submitting to the search engines are all much better than spending money with some fly-by-night outfit whose promises are too good to be true and upon further inspection are worthless anyway. What good is a $5 television commercial no one will ever see?
If newspapers wish to be profitable, they need to stop thinking PAPER. Years ago in school, I read a Harvard Business Review article from Theodore Levitt, first published in 1960 (and updated since), that challenged businesses to understand the business they were actually engaged in. The article noted how railroads ignored the airplane industry as they saw themselves in the railroad business instead of the transportation business and how Hollywood studios ignored for decades the power of and profits from television.
You see that same stubborn myopia today with the Internet. While the world has embraced the Internet, the music industry, the motion picture industry, and the newspaper industry have either ignored or fought against new technologies every step of the way. When video tapes (betamax and VHS) first appeared for public use, the movie industry went to court to prevent people from owning or recording movies. They feared people would stop going to theatres. Today, the successor to the video tape, the DVD, now accounts for 30% greater sales than box office receipts. What will broadband sales and rentals be when the movie industry finally not only accepts the technology, but embraces it?
