dba Communications

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 last week 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 it being the anchor tenant in a shopping center no one can find or wants to find?

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?

Here in Denver, the remaining daily newspaper, The Denver Post, charges $30 per year for the ability to view a digital copy of each day’s newspaper. For your $30 you are able to view page by page, ad by ad the exact layout of the paper you could have delivered to you doorstep for $100 a year.  At the same time,  anyone can go to denverpost.com and conduct a search for any person or subject and get just news they want for free. So why pay the $30? For the ads??? Well, as it turns out, advertising is what pays the salaries of the reporters and staff and those businesses who shell out thousands and thousands of dollars each day for each individual ad are ignored and pushed aside. Advertising rates have not kept pace with decreased circulation. They have in fact increased. So where is the incentive for advertisers to continue supporting a medium that is bleeding customers?

The Denver Post should reverse it’s online model. They should give away FREE the digital representation of the daily newspaper (with an online registration for email campaigns) and let the advertisers who in point of fact allow the lights to stay on profit from the increased exposure for their ads in the paper and charge for the luxury of searching specific articles or topics.

Be the website you want to see. Having a website for your practice or your retail store(s) in 2009 is no longer an option, no longer a luxury, but a requirement, akin to having a telephone or even a fax. According to an Accenture survey in 2007, over 2/3 of respondents prefer shopping in a physical store yet will use the internet to research products, prices and the store they choose to buy from before shopping.  Yet far too many retailers are ignoring the internet’s importance to their business and therefore risk losing both current and future customers. Your website is your businesses’ living, digital, dynamic, and always changing brochure.

Over 80% of Americans spend in excess of 11 hours a week online. What is the impression they will receive when they visit your website? Does it look like something your neighbor’s brother’s daughter’s boyfriend did as a class project four years ago in high school? Does it look like every other optical retail site in town? Does it look like a sterile doctor’s office from the 1950’s? Or does your website connote a 21^st century business? Your store may embody old fashioned values, but don’t think for a second that your customers are searching for old fashioned products or technology. The look and feel of your website broadcasts who and what you are and what you want the public to think of you.