Saw some absolutely brilliant marketing on Monday that was apparently done by mistake.
Here in Australia, we've just finished the second series of the hit TV show "Australian Idol". A girl called Casey Donovan won it.
That was on Sunday night.
On the Monday, one of the major sponsors of the show placed some warm and fuzzy newspaper adverts saying "Congratulations Casey". It also provided the web address of Casey's web site.
Thousands of kids visit Casey's site - but it's gay porn!
Unfortunately they left the .au off the address and sent thousands of people to a gay porn site!
Instant uproar
The uproar was instant with huge publicity given to the gaffe. And everyone I've spoken with has become aware of Casey's web site because of the uproar. I'd estimate the site has received x3 the number of visitors it would have otherwise attracted.
Here's the worst bit
The people doing Casey's web site still haven't bothered to get the site going. It's still a "Site coming soon". That's a great example of how here in Australia people devalue the huge benefit that web sites can provide.
Her site should have been.....
Her site should have been completed before she won the competition. As soon as she won (i.e. 10 seconds after she was announced as the winner) the new site should have been live. It should contain stuff like:
* Profile
* Download her song
* Video of the announcement
* Interviews
* Send Casey an email
* Join Casey's Personal Newsletter
* Read Casey's Blog
* Screensavers
* Checkout the photo gallery
* Listen to Casey's interview
* Order Casey's single
* Buy Casey merchandise
* Join Casey's Official Cheer Squad
* Download a free Casey e-book
* You get the idea!
Anything at all to strength the relationship between Casey and her fans and build Casey as a brand. Get the fans whilst they are hot and keen. Build those contact databases, provide free stuff, sell other stuff.
It's now Wednesday morning....
It's now Wednesday morning and the web site isn't going yet. That's a huge wasted opportunity.
Make the most of every opportunity in business because you usually won't get a second chance.
Cheers
Brendon
Dec 6, 2004: P.S: It's now 17 days since Casey won Idol. The web site still hasn't been updated.
Howdy. Had a great day at the first Test Match yesterday in Brisbane. Great seats, cold beer, good food. Life doesn't get much better than that!
The breakfast was pretty dull. The Guest Speaker was a guy called Mark Taylor, an ex-Australian Cricket Captain.
Now, a Guest Speaker generally makes or breaks these events. This guy broke it big time.
Even though it was 7 am and everyone was bright eyed and awake, he was so boring that he pretty much put everyone back to sleep. Man, he was dull!
How dull was he Brendon?
Thanks for asking!
He was so dull that the MC said to a guy in the audience that, because he was misbehaving, his punishment would be to have to listen to the speech again!
That went over well.
Finding your niche
Someone asked me about how to identify the best market niche for them. The answer to that is pretty easy.
How to identify your niche
* What sort of customers do you really enjoy dealing with?
* What sort of industry are you really interested in?
* What sort of customers have been your most profitable?
If the same customer names/types pop up for each of those questions then that's your niche. You'll enjoy it and be very profitable.
Now you can move on to develop a plan of attack in generating more customers from your niche.
Howdy. No, I'm not advocating that we should all be happy to receive spam.
What happens when you unsubscribe or opt out of spam (there'll sometimes be a link at the bottom that says you can unsubscribe) is one of 2 things:
1. The spammer goes "Yahoo!! There is a person at this address. Let's put him on our list of confirmed addresses and keep sending him stuff. And we'll put him on our list to sell to other spammers."
2. Some links can load a little program on your computer that then sends out spam.
Just delete spam as it comes in. Don't open it and definitely don't buy anything from spam advertising. The only reason spam is so popular is because people buy the stuff they're trying to sell.
I see this a lot with billboards. Billboards look great and can be an effective advertising too (especially for building brand awareness)....sometimes.
But sometimes the creative person doesn’t think too hard.
The deal with highway/street billboards is this: Your target audience is driving past at 60-100 km per hour. They only have time to take in an image and read about 6 words.
You can only have 1 message. Not 2 – less recall of the ad. Not 3 messages – even less recall than 2.
Keep your billboard message as simple as possible. And understand that billboard messages are effective at branding and not too much else.
What can happen
What can happen is this - too much input from too many people. After a while there are 20 words and 4 different messages for the reader........who can't read them because he's sitting on 100 km an hour.
Always keep you message simple. 1 benefit only. That's all the reader is interested in.
Hello. I'm going to the cricket (Australia's national game) at a stadium 100 km up the road later this week. It's the first Test (Test being a game that lasts for 5 days) between Australia and New Zealand.
I'm taking my dad up (he's a New Zealander) - we're going to the traditional Test Match breakfast at 7 am and then it's into our seats at a club I'm a member of at the ground for the start of play.
I'm a last minute kind of guy
I'm a last minute kind of guy - I leave organising everything to the last minute. It's usually the same with sporting events like this one. I'll try and get tickets the day before and end up finding it's booked out.
But not this time......
But not this time......the Club I'm a member of now has a decent web site. On the site I can pay my account (that's my rather large bar bill!), buy tickets to the sporting events and even tickets to the supplementary events (such as the breakfast).
Because I'm a guy who does a lot on the web, I find it very easy and convenient to do all that. And that's made me buy more. Because it's easy.
* If it's difficult to buy, I don't.
* If it's easy to buy, I do.
Make it easy
Make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy from you.
* Offer various payment methods,
* Offer different product mixes,
* Offer whatever it is that pushes their buttons.
The customer is King. Because they're the ones with the money. They're the ones who make or break your business.
Howdy. I've been reading a book over the last couple of days called "Moments of Truth" where 60 prominent people talk about what they view as the one turning point in their life.
We all make mistakes and make bad judgments, but what I'm kind of seeing in the book and via my own experience is that success or failure isn't bought about by 1 single action.
More likely it's a series of actions, behaviours, skill acquisition and a dash of luck that gets us to where we want to be.
Applying it to my own situation I've had a lot of fantastic successes. But they've come about from a series of things I've planned or made happen, rather than just a big lump of luck. But then again, maybe I'm taking too much of the credit.
Maybe it would have happened anyway.
I always say to clients that their marketing plan will almost certainly work, because that's the nature of things. Take action and consequences will follow.
Adjust your marketing actions according to those consequences and different consequences will happen. Repeat.
That's the basis of marketing and it's also the basis of being successful.
Mel, my gorgeous wife, bought a new oven the other week. New super-duper stainless steel thing.
Here in the office yesterday the Microwave oven died. And the kettle started leaking. Must have been bad karma??
So Mel had the bright idea of bringing in the kettle and Microwave from home for the office. Which meant she could buy a new kettle (stainless steel) and microwave (stainless steel) to match the new oven.
So off she trotted to the local store tonight and purchased them.
The kettle was fine. He was plugged in and worked well.
Not so with the Microwave oven.
But not so with the Microwave oven. The one Mel was looking at in the store was stainless steel. But when she opened the box, the one she had been given was a metallic blue.
And that wasn't going to match the oven.
Mel wasn't happy!
Back in box. Back in the car. Back into the store. And in she marched.
But the guy at the store refused to swap the Microwave!
Mel was furious until he said this next bit:
"Ummmmm......just take the blue plastic protective cover off and you'll find it is indeed stainless steel underneath."
Mel snuck out of the store as sheepishly as possible, her face a crimson red!
When she returned home and told the boys and I what happened I think we gave a small smile (actually we all roared with laughter for about 5 minutes).
She unpacked the Microwave (again), peeled the blue plastic sheet off and was most delighted with her purchase.
At Christmas time we seem an explosion in the number of companies wanting marketing the is effective, quick and cheap!
* I know who is most likely to buy from you.
* I know how you should reach them.
* I know exactly what you can offer them.
* I know where they live!
Makes me sound like I'm a stalker, but I'm not. Just a marketer!
You should have all this information at your fingertips
As businesspeople, we must maximise each and every contact we have with our clients.
We need to continue the relationship in an attempt to have that client buy from us again and again and again.
From each client you should get:
1. Name & Address
2. Mobile (Cell) number
3. Email
4. Birthday
5. W hat they purchased
Not always easy, but that would be optimal.
Because with those details you can do a whole heap of things:
1. Send them direct mail to their house
2. Send them an SMS (Text messages) on their mobile
3. Put them in your email newsletter list
4. Send them a birthday card
5. Tailor your offer to them in relation to their previous purchase (i.e. if the customer purchased a tennis racquet, it would make sense to offer him some tennis balls).
Getting your customer's details and then keeping in touch can be the most effective marketing you'll ever do. Start collecting that information tomorrow.
Increases sales by having a US support phone number
Improving service and cutting costs
Howdy. In the blog of October 27 I mentioned I was trying a VoIP (Voice Over IP) phone. It's basically a phone that uses the Internet for the connection.
What I've been able to do is get a US phone number (New York). Our web site visitors in the US have that number to call as our Support Desk.
The cost is a local call.
Through the wonders of technology that call is diverted via the Internet to our VoIP phone sitting on Mel's desk here in Australia. The US visitor has no idea they've called Australia (and like I said, the cost of the call is as per a local call).
What that has meant to us in real terms is quite a bit.
After 2 years of having our Australian phone number on our web site we'd never received a call from the US. This morning there were 26 message on the New York number's voicemail.
Most of those are people wanting to place orders (not everyone is comfortable placing orders over the Internet) - at a 25% conversion rate, that's an extra 6 or so sales.
That's better service for our customers and visitors and more sales for us.
One last bonus
One last bonus is this - our mobile and long distance call rates are also reduced by about 40% because we use the VoIP phone (at a much lower rate than our normal provider).
If you make a lot of long distance and mobile calls, VoIP might be worth taking a look at.
Hope all is well with you and yours. I haven't written for a while because I've been either working, driving or drunk.
Sometimes all 3 at once! Just kidding.
Enduring a day at the races
I got back from Sydney at 4 am on Tuesday and then had to 'endure' a long day at the races drinking beer, betting on slow horses and looking at gorgeous and beautifully dressed women.
Women seem to love to get dressed up in all their finery - sometimes spending into the thousands of $ for that perfect outfit. A guy thinks he looks good in shorts and a T Shirt. And that a 3 day growth is attractive.
Anyway, on with the shoe...
2 things:
#1: The audio below (I'll do video next week) talks about the problem with having people listen to, rather than read, your message.
#2: Someone asked the question about the sites I mention and asked for the sites to peruse.
I won't tell you the latest 2 sites because they are in small niche markets and we need to retain some degree of commercial confidentiality. But they are pretty basic products and the sales are in excess of $15,000 per day.
** Winner Web Design Library - Best Book of the Web Industry 2004 **
The Web Design Business Kit is a compilation of everything Brendon has ever done and every document he has ever used to build and grow his business!
It contains two huge ring-bound folders with over 700 letter size (8.5x11) pages, plus a CD-ROM which has everything you need to build a thriving Web Design Business...
To find out more about The Web Design Business Kit click here
