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. ;-)

On Your Market: Open for Business

I've been working on a soft launch for a project that has been in the works for almost 2 years. The idea is to teach business owners some of the very same techniques that we use when helping our clients with their marketing strategy. I got some very talented colleagues to help out and now I'd like to invite you to have a look. We're giving some free samples and we have it priced extremely low because we're just testing things out right now. You're welcome to sign up for the free stuff and jump in with both feet if you like. It's called On Your Market.

Customer Engagement: A Kinetic Word of Mouth Technique

If you can get people involved in an experience with your product during the buying process, you'll go a long ways to cementing good feelings toward you. You'll also give your customer a reason to blab.

Chevrolet is now offering Corvette customers the opportunity to assist in the assembly of the very engine that will be put into their new ZR1 or Z06. The engine will get a custom plaque before it's shipped to final assembly in Bowling Green, KY.

Imagine if you will, how intolerable these Corvette owners will be in their insistence on telling you how they built their own engine. They'll want to show you the pictures. They'll offer to raise the hood to show you the plaque.

QUESTION: How can you offer a similar experience to your own customers? How can you involve them?

The Fabulous Price of Free...Square offers free credit card reader

If Apple had charged $49 (or even $9.95) for iTunes instead of giving it away, would they have been able to achieve their non-violent takeover of the entire music industry? If they gave the software free, but then required you to buy entire albums, would they still have been the disruptive force?

The internet is full of success stories where a key component is provided free to customers and the company makes it's fortune providing the rest of the solution. 

Square is going to grab the credit card world by the ears by following the same strategy. They are making it incredibly easy for anyone to start taking credit card payments at competitive rates WITHOUT having to shell out money for a credit card swiping machine, WITHOUT having to sign a long-term contract, with NO MONTHLY FEES or minimums, and NO SETUP FEE.

Give the customer all the tools required to use your service. Then, give them à la carte choice on how much to buy from you. Throw in a bunch of other cool features, and watch the fun begin.

Square is GIVING YOU a simple little device that plugs into your iPhone or iPad headset jack and you can start swiping credit cards. This is a no-brainer. They are DISRUPTING the model. They are attacking by taking some of the current profit centers out from under the current players. There are companies making a sweet fortune by selling machines, charging monthly fees, setup fees, etc. Take it all away from them and you have just created CHAOS in their world.

What can you do to disrupt the model in your world?

Key to Word of Mouth: Kinetic and Audio Delight

GPS maker TomTom has announced new voices for their products. You can have Darth Vader give you turn-by-turn directions on your GPS.

This is a great example of going over the top in creating something worth talking about. And, to go along with the announcement, they created a fun video of Darth Vader in the studio. If you don't have time to watch the entire thing, you should at least jump forward to the last 30 seconds for the inevitable ending. "Dum-dum-dum, dum-da-dum, dum-da-dum..."

What are you doing to make your business worth talking about?

Free Reward for having an Awesome Interior

Google is going to start helping you spread the word about your awesome retail experience. They've launched a new service where they'll be essentially tying your Google Local results with photos from inside your store...and they are supplying the photographers!

I've been writing for a long time about the importance of your Personal Experience Factor. Your reward for getting it right is that you may qualify for being one of the first to be featured in this new service from Google.

According to this story from ReadWriteWeb, "The company says the photographs will be taken by professionals trained in low lighting, will be as unobtrusive as possible, will initially be traditional in format and will be stitched together to form panoramas in the future."

So, if your jewelry store promises the largest selection of engagement rings in Winnipeg on your radio ads, perhaps Google will step in and help you offer the proof via Business Photos.

My question: What about service businesses like HVAC, or plumbing or roofing? If you're busy roofing Portland, you probably don't have much of a retail presence. Wouldn't it be great if Google would jump in your service van with you and take some job site photos? Not very likely until after they've been inside every retailer. So, you'd better be doing it yourself. Just saying.

Here's the link to find out more about Google Business Photos.

Be a "Word of Mouth" Enabler

Sometimes delivering a great customer experience through amazing products, architecture or movement just isn't quite enough to trigger the chain reaction of effective Word of Mouth.

Think about the reasons that people might be hesitant to recommend. Perhaps I consider my experience too "private" to talk about...or don't want to share the "secret" of my success. Unless you ask someone for specific advice, you'll seldom hear them bragging about their top-notch dentist, plastic surgeon or medical specialist.

Loss of proximity is another reason Word of Mouth loses it's oomph. If I have an amazing experience on vacation, but don't have an opportunity to share it until I get home weeks later, the magic of the moment has already begun to fade.

If you are truly delivering the goods to your customers, you should work on techniques to help them share their experience in the moment or very soon after.

Even in the late 1800s, the big cruise lines knew how to enable Word of Mouth among the millions of immigrants tucked away in 3rd class. On White Star liners, where even the 3rd class guests were served food by waiters on tables set with linen, the menu cards doubled as postcards that could be sent home to friends and relatives.

I think back on some pretty amazing experiences I've had and not been able to share until well after the moment. A great example is the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. The system in place is a well-oiled machine for getting people rigged up, trained up and moved out into the superstructure to begin the ascent. Before you are back down, the digital photographs of your group have been loaded on monitors in the gift shop waiting for you to purchase them...which we did. On a CD, which sat in our bags until we returned home. Then, it sat on our coffee table for weeks.

Since you are not allowed to bring your own camera, these are the only pictures you can get of your experience and I'm sure that loads of people purchase them. How could they be turned into an instant Word of Mouth marketing tool?

What if the operators made the photos available on a kiosk, where you could just email a lower resolution picture to anyone you wanted, BEFORE you left the building. Yes, they might lose a few CD sales, but they would be enabling their customers to tell others in the excitement of the moment.

In this day of social media, they could take it a few steps further. Since most of their tickets are sold online, they could ask for some sharing details BEFORE people arrive and be ready to post photos and video directly to their Facebook, Myspace or Twitter streams DURING the experience.

What about your business? How could you enable people to tell others while the experience is still fresh?

Is Your Store Smiling?

As a postscript to Monday's post on Sniffing for Market Share, it occurred to me that one more thing you could do when you evaluate the look (sight) of your business is to watch for smiles.

That's right...smiles.

Rolex has always required dealers to display their watches with the hands showing 10:10 because it looks like a smiling face.

The current TV ad for American Express drives it home as well. The first half of the ad is a bunch of everyday shots that we interpret as unhappy faces. The second half is full of smiles.

Can you make your storefront smile? Are any of you competitors smiling brighter than you?

Want to see more? Check out the Faces in Places Facebook page, this search on Flickr, or just do your own search.

Good Signs for Business

NOTE: This is basically the EXACT SAME STORY that I published yesterday. The only significant difference is the sign in the photo. Yet, it makes all the difference in the world!

The Personal Experience Factor (big lever #2 in the Advertising Performance Equation) begins before your customer walks through your door.

It actually begins the moment your store comes into view from whatever distance it can first be seen. In some cases, this can be miles away. For example, the local Cabela's store in my town has their colors and logo on a big water tower that can be seen from about 10 miles away. 

For most businesses, this will be a block or two at most. In a mall, unless you have some outside signage, it will be walking distance and line-of-sight. 

So, what's the first mental image (FMI) of your signage? Does it set the stage for the experience you plan to deliver once a customer crosses your threshold? Is it sending some unintended messages?

I snapped this picture on a recent trip to Canada. Let's talk about it. 

(click the picture for a full-size pop-up view)

This business is located in a mall on the edge of town. It's down at the end of the mall where they put all the medical businesses. 

Please note: The answers to the following questions are purely subjective. We know that it is wrong to judge a book by its cover. Yet, we proceed to do it. I don't know the owner of this store. Perhaps we can help give the owner an outsider's perspective of the message being sent to customers.

What do you think? What do you expect when you walk through the door? What will the experience be like? Given the workmanship of the sign, what can you expect from the rest of the shop? From the staff? What will the attitude of the owner be? How will you feel about yourself if you purchase here? Will you tell your friends that you purchased here? 

Spending Your Ad Budget on Personal Experience

The next 3 months are usually not the best time to "buy" advertising. I'm not saying it's a terrible time to run advertising, just that you should have already bought it before the traditional holiday push that depletes media inventories, driving prices up. I'll give you some tips on when and how to make media decisions in future posts.

So, where should you be spending this quarter if you haven't got an ongoing schedule? If you own a service or retail business that isn't reliant on holiday sales (HVAC, Medical, Financial, etc) think about putting some of your ad budget into sprucing up the Personal Experience of your customers.

Here are a few ideas…some more expensive than others.

• Complete deep cleaning of your store/offices. Hire an outsider to help because they will see the dirt/clutter that has become invisible to you.
• A fresh coat of paint can breathe new life into a store.
• Interior decorators can help you imagine what your store COULD be instead of what it has become. Face it, you got into the business because you are an expert in your own field, not a designer.
• New service vehicles…talk to your accountant to take advantage of end-of-year spending strategies…car dealerships might have screaming bargains just to move vehicles out of inventory before the end of the year.
• New signage/Exterior remodel…evaluate how your business looks from 2 blocks away, 1 block and from the sidewalk. Are you invisible from any of these vantage points? Sometimes you become invisible just by having the same sign for too long. Many contractors would appreciate a commercial job in the off-season just to keep workers employed. Shop for good deals.
• Spy season…hire some secret shoppers to visit your store along with all of your competitors. Don't use friends or you risk getting smoke blown up your….well you know. You want honest evaluations about how you stack up.
• This is a good time of year to embark on some customer research. Offer a prize or discount to customers who will fill out a lengthy form or complete an interview. You'll be amazed at the good suggestions your customers will provide you when you simply ask.

The bottom line is….if the holiday season is slow for you, don't just sit on your bottom. Get busy doing something so when your own season rolls back around, your customers will be delighted by the "new" you!

QUESTION: This list isn't exclusive. What other suggestions do you have?