David Young | Branding Blog - Marketing Advice and Advertising Strategy for Local Business Owners

Ding Dong SEO Gone Bad

I'm gonna tell the long story. If you want the short story, skip to the last paragraph. Dinner last night was at Elway's, a bajillion-star restaurant inside the equally starred-up Ritz-Carlton in downtown Denver.

After serving us some amazing steaks, the waiter asked if we wanted desserts. We all declined. He then said, "Look, we're kind of famous for our Ding Dongs. I'm gonna bring you one for the table to sample. You shouldn't miss this."

I've talked about Word of Mouth advertising quite a bit and one of the best triggers is unexpected generosity. The Ding Dong rocked. Awesome. It's the reason I'm writing this story. Yes, I'm giving Elway's some WOM love because Max the Waiter gave me a quarter of a Ding Dong. At $9 on the menu, the dessert is likely made up of less than a dollar's worth of butter, flour, sugar, cocoa and yum. So, for the cost of a few pennies, Elway's got a blog post, a Facebook conversation, a tweet...and it's just the day after. Be remarkable. Be generous.

Now, for the SEO lesson.

After I posted this pic on Facebook, my Australian Wizard of Ads Partner, Craig Arthur, asked, "Is that a chocolate spider?" I thought I'd help him out by posting a link to the official Hostess site. Right now (I hope they change this) the Ding Dong page at Hostess has a video of Ashton Kutcher doing a "Ding Dong Doorbell" stunt and absolutely NO a brief description of one of their best-selling snacks of all time. I'm sure that some genius figured out that they weren't ranking as well as the Ding Dong article on Wikipedia and said they should leverage Ashton's use of a similar phrase to garner some SEO traffic. ARGH. If I wanted Ashton Kutcher, I'd type that into Google. The official Hostess page was in second place, but offered little relevancy. A photo of the box, but no real description of the product. I'm not even going to link to their site because I don't want to reward this kind of stupidity. I have no doubt that this blog post will soon be on the first page for a Ding Dong search and at least I offer a story and a rant about a better Ding Dong than Hostess makes. Go do the search. Let me know when they come to their senses. I'll edit in a link for them. ;-)

Seminar Heckler

It was the same guy, over and over.

We should have expected it when he announced during introductions that he didn’t want to be at the seminar but was attending as a favor to his radio rep. He all but told us that he fully intended to make someone pay for his inconvenience. As the 2 days unfolded, he showed us his cards.

His preference is to be a heavy-handed marketer...one of those in-your-face type of advertisers. As I encouraged people to put their web visitors in control of playing video and audio, he argued with me that he believes it’s more “engaging” to have audio and video set to auto-play when a visitor arrives.

As Tom Wanek illustrated one of his Currencies that Buy Credibility with a case study on Yvon Chouinard and Patagonia, Mr. Heckler argued that only someone who is “already rich” could possibly have the guts to draw a line in the sand and stand up for a principle.

A good debate can be stimulating. I’m all for arguing the fine points, or even the not-so-fine points over a glass of red or a couple of beers.

Why am I even bringing this up?

Because it illustrates the point of being clear on the defining characteristics of your business. This guy was clearly at the wrong type of seminar for his tastes. In fact, his tastes are about 15 years out of date for the times.

Today, it is more important to say something powerful in your ads instead of saying something powerfully. You do see the difference don’t you? A powerful message reflects key benefits of your product or service, your policies and philosophies. Delivering a message powerfully, just means using some annoying, intrusive means of delivering it in the hope that people will notice.

Nice Try Samuel Adams

"Beer is banned in 13 states!" scream the press releases.

Samuel Adams recently uncorked this year's version of its biennial Utopias beer with lots of hype about the 27% alcohol content that exceeds the legal limit in 13 states.

Wow. You'd think people would be up in arms. You'd expect lawsuits, protesters, speeches from the pulpit, yet I haven't been able to find much negative news about this evil brew.

It turns out that it's not really a beer at all. Technically, yes it is beer. Functionally, not even close. What they've really done is make a sipping cognac out of beer. At $150 a bottle, even the Mothers Against Drunk Driving doesn't have a problem with Utopias, and they are quoted as such in the original press coverage.

In chapter 8 of Tom Wanek's new book, "Currencies That Buy Credibility," he talks about risking your reputation and prestige to buy credibility. In essence, you do something that will cause some of your customers to be repelled while others embrace your brand more tightly than ever.

In the case of the Utopias press, it's a surface-level ploy to seem cutting edge and risky. They want you to be shocked that this is a beer that has been "banned" in 13 states. You should be outraged that it costs $150 a bottle at retail. Yet, when you dig a little deeper...or just blow the marketing dust off the label...you find out that this just doesn't live up to the hype. It's just another bottle of expensive sipping hooch for connoisseurs.

So, how could Samuel Adams ACTUALLY risk reputation and prestige?

They'd have to do something that would actually enrage the MADD crowd. They could put out a beer that's both strong, cheap and easy to guzzle...something that would attract the high school drinker as well as the street bum. They need a beer that would get them written up in BumWine.com for the hallucinatory side-effects of the dangerous secret ingredients.

Give that one a try, Sam.

Will You Be Transparent?

Driving home from running a few errands, my eye caught a used Chrysler Crossfire sitting on the lot of my local Chrysler dealer. Painted on the windshield was "'05 42,000 miles."  I looped back around to see if there was a price. I'm not really in the market, but I've like the Crossfire ever since I had the chance to chase one around a track a few years ago. I was curious about the price.

No price marked on the car. (Down the road, at a local used car lot, the prices are all handwritten on the windows.)

I get it. The dealer wants me to call them, to ask for the price, so we can have a conversation. Problem is, I don't want to have a conversation. I live in a small town. Experience has taught me that I'll start getting phone calls from them every few weeks, or until they see me driving a different car. I'm simply not interested in playing this game.

What do you think? Would the dealership be better off putting the price on the car? I can find prices on eBay easy enough. Why not just be transparent?

How to Profit from a Higher Bounce Rate?

It's simple. Put your phone number in your banner. The phone rings more and the bounce rate goes up.

I get tired of web gurus telling people that they should make sure their bounce rate isn't too high. Some will cite studies that quote an average bounce rate. Some will say things like, "Obviously a high bounce rate means your site has low relevance to visitors, and so to capture more of those visitors you can work on making your site more relevant."

Here's the rub…comparing YOUR bounce rate to somebody else's is simply bad math. The only important comparison to make with your bounce rate is to compare it to the past. If it changes, dig deeper into your web analytics to find out what is going on.

So, how will putting your phone number in your banner increase your bounce rate?

And, why is this good?

If you are a local retail or service business and you are doing other advertising in your market, you will no doubt be enjoying traffic (you do have a web site...please say yes) from visitors who have searched for you by name. (The good news about this is that when they search for you by name, they most likely won't find your competitors.)

Many of those visitors are coming to your site for one reason; to find your phone number. If you bury it on a "contact" page instead of making it prominent, you create friction for your customers who are already convinced they should call you. If they are forced to click through to find it, your bounce rate drops because these visitors don't count as a bounce.

If you put it on your banner, a visitor can find your site by searching for your name, see it on your banner and stay on your site just long enough to dial the phone. Your analytics program will count this as a bounce.

I would count it as making the phone ring.

Wouldn't you like the phone to ring more?

It was a Day of Days

Just got back to my room after hearing Nellie McKay cap off the annual Wizard Academy reunion. That was fun! She played for an hour and stayed to sign autographs and take pics with us. A nice cozy crowd of about 100 people. If you don't know who Nellie McKay is, you should find out.

We had a few warm-up numbers from Peter Nevland and Phil Sheeran.

Too fun for words!

Grabbing Attention: Ejector Technology for Passenger Vehicles

It's one thing to grab someone's attention. It's quite another thing to bait and switch. As a blogger, I get quite a bit of PR email. Today, one came from DENSO corporation with a file attached which was named "DENSO Develops ejector technology for passenger vehicles."

My brain said "CRIKEY! What's this about?". I opened it and found out that it is some kind of new-fangled air conditioning technology.

Sigh.

By using an ejector that rapidly injects and expands high-pressure refrigerant, the energy that previously was lost in the expansion valve is converted to pressure energy and reused, thus boosting energy efficiency*2. As a result, high cooling and refrigeration performances are both achieved even when the cooler box is used.

“An ejector system can drastically improve the energy efficiency in the refrigeration cycle, and we are now working to develop a system specifically for car air conditioning systems,” said Hikaru Sugi, managing officer in charge of DENSO’s Thermal System Business Group.

Unless you are really into the whole air conditioner technology groove, this is total boredom.

Really, this is just a PR typo, but doesn't it remind you of some of the marketing and advertising crap you see every day? Don't do this type of thing in your advertising.

Another example is the stupid travel site emails I get every day. Southwest Airlines sent one the other day which promised Denver-Austin for $79 each way. Not on the dates I wanted, and only on about 2 dates between now and Christmas. Sheesh.

How have the marketers been fooling you?

YES! My Life Has Been Validated!

I always knew deep-down that cleaning a desk was a total waste of time. Yes, that's a glimpse at my work surface deep in the heart of my wizard cave. I'd give you a 360-view, but that might give away too many trade secrets!

JC Penney - Biggest Sale of them all?

Does anybody believe JC Penney and the sale du jour? Would you pay full retail at JC Penney?

Just asking.

What does Green Mean?

Green means GO. Green means Money (in the US). Green means eco-friendly. Kermit the Frog has always been the spokesperson for the color green.

One more thing...for as long as I can remember, Green-handled fuel pumps mean you are pumping diesel fuel. I've never owned a diesel-powered vehicle, but my dad had a diesel Caddy back in the '80s and he always pulled up to a green pump.

Along comes BP and they want to splash green all over everything (to make us think they are eco-friendly, I assume) including gasoline handles. Hmmm. It's not against the law, but it goes against the grain and it's causing people some serious problems.