It

Yesterday my husband and I were watching The Office (my favorite show) and we saw a commercial for Gatorade. The whole commercial was about "it". At the end, you realize "it" is Gatorade. The problem? About a month ago we were watching a much more innovative commercial about "it" from eBay. Opps...it seems that eBay and Gatorade both seem to think they have what "it" takes.

A good reminder to us all to differentiate ourselves from our competition and stand out. It is easy to think of examples of businesses who all have the same marketing messages: realtors who give you a free home value report, mortgage companies who offer you "friendly service," stores that offer you a "no-hassle return policy." Maybe these were innovative marketing messages some time ago, but it is time for these companies to come up with something new. It is time to think of how to differentiate yourself if you look around, and others are saying the same thing about their business as you say about yours.

I think the Capital One No Hassle credit card does a great job of differentiating themselves from the competition in a cut-throat almost commodity industry. They have used their commercials to illustrate to us visually what happens to us when we use another credit card. We get hurt by pillagers, always are told "no", never get to talk to real person, and lack the protection of a guardian angel.

Make "it" a point to differentiate your marketing message.

I couldn't have said it better myself

Saw this posting this morning on a blog that I read regarding local businesses having websites.

The only thing I disagree with, being a web designer, is that small businesses should hire someone to create the website for them. I believe that design does matter. I am not sure about other companies, but we are able to provide most small businesses with a respectable website that will not destroy their budget.

The Line creates the demand

Within about 1/4 of a mile, there are two Coney Island restaurants by our house. One is always empty, one is always full. The one that is always full usually requires that you wait in line about 10 minutes before you get served. The line snakes outside onto the main street in rain, snow, and sunshine. Why is this Coney island full and the other one empty? Because everyone driving by sees the line, says to themselves "wow, that place must be good for people to WAIT in line OUTSIDE. And demand continues to grow. The restaurant has a perceived value because of what they see others doing to consume their food.

On the Internet, you wouldn't exactly want people to be waiting ages for your page to load, but there are things you can do to create the same effect. Sell some of your products in limited quantities. Tell them what percentage of the product is left until you sell out. Put expiration dates on your coupon. Make offers available only to the first xx number of people who subscribe to your newsletter. Create a sense of urgency and value on your website so your customers feel that they are lucky to be able to do business with you.

Where is your virtual signboard?

My husband and I were walking in the downtown area of Rochester, MI yesterday morning. It is a typical little downtown, old buildings from the turn-0f-the-century with little local shops in them.

One of the shops is a locksmith. Outside his store he had a little signboard that said "Ask about our safe sale." This little sign board made his store stick out from all of the rest of the stores in Rochester. I am sure it didn't cost him very much to buy the board and stick it out in front of his store.

What it made me think was that sometimes, the simple things make our business stick out from the competition. And for local businesses there is a virtual sign board they can put out on the sidewalk for people "walking" by their store....internet advertising. When someone searches for "restaurants Rochester, mi," only one of the many good restaurants appears on the first search page for Google. This restaurant has a signboard. All the rest do not. Google has a place for 10 free sign boards on each page (10 organic results show). Why aren't more companies taking advantage of Google's free "signboards?" Because they don't recognize the value of being there. But I believe that just like the locksmith's signboard, a Google "signboard" will bring in business (and probably a lot more than the one on the sidewalk) - those keywords were searched 100 times last month just on Yahoo!

Netscape

I got a new laptop about a month ago and decided I was going to install Netscape on it to see how it compares to IE. I would be 100% converted if it weren't for one thing....there is no Google toolbar for Netscape - which really isn't the fault of Netscape. So sometimes, I reluctantly have to open IE again and work from there so I can use the toolbar to see the Google PageRank.

But for anyone who doesn't need the Google toolbar, I think you should take another look at the browser that you probably started using the first time you surfed the net. It is great!

AOL Email Advertising

I received this headline today about AOL posting ads on their email pages. http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/2006/06/13/aol_confirms_ads_in_email_subsc/index.php

This is very unfair to small and medium sized businesses that rely on email marketing to stay in contact with their customers. AOL is going to start marking almost everything as SPAM unless you are goodmail certified. So most emails from businesses to AOL users will go right into their junk mail folder. And now, they are basically saying to businesses you can't make it into the inboxes of our subscribers unless you pay through goodmail. But if you don't like that, don't worry, you can pay for a banner ad and your ad will be displayed when our users are reading their email.

I guess the good news is that according to the article AOL subscribers are dropping like flies for free email accounts that offer better service! So we won't have to worry about the much longer.

What Your Customer's Expect

My husband, and business partner, put this is his monthly newsletter, and I wanted to post it here.

"I strongly believe that to stay on top and win, we all must start meeting our customer's technology expectations. Here are a few things that I think all customers expect from your business.

* When they type in your name, company name, address, or keywords related to your business they expect to find your website.

* When they visit your website they expect to find a professional looking website that fulfills their need to be informed, place an order, or contact you.

* When you have specials they expect to be informed. "

Google vs. HP

I posted last week on how I had to search Google on how to do something on Windows and the Windows help "feature" didn't help me at all.

Saturday I encountered a similar problem with HP. When I bought my new laptop (HP Pavilion -- Love it!!!), there was a little slip of paper in the box that said I could turn my laptop into a TV. I threw it out without a second thought. Until Saturday, when my husband and I wanted to watch the World Cup on TV. I saw that it was being broadcast in High Def and because we don't have cable (we don't watch much TV), I remembered that little slip of paper that came with my laptop. I logged on to hp.com to look for it and couldn't find it. They gave me all sorts of irrelevant products and services....no TV tuner. So then I go to Google, and once again, in about 2 seconds, I had a whole selection of TV tuners to choose from.

Which brings up a couple of issues. HP should have some type of feedback button. I would have filled it out in a second to tell them that I couldn’t find what I was looking for. Whenever I go shopping in regular stores the first thing they ask me when I am checking out is “did you find everything you were looking for today?” Why not have something like this on your website? Second, why is there search capability so bad? I used to work for an automotive supplier and part of my job was purchasing hardware from HP. They were bad then, we complained, and it seems like they haven’t gotten any better since I left 2 years ago.

I will restate my original proposition – unless companies begin realizing that the search capabilities on their website needs to be as good or better than Google’s they will continue loosing sales because customers will go to Google to find products that they could have found on their own web site.

People are Looking for your business online

One of the biggest obstacles our company faces is convincing people that people are actually looking for their business online. They think that just because they don't search for businesses online that no one else is searching for their business online.

I saw a report on CNN a few days ago about this 19 year old multimillionaire who sells business chairs online (he started when he was 14). They were listing his clients - and there were big names - one being the Pentagon who bought chairs from him after 9.11 to refurnish the destroyed offices. I would love for some of our clients to have seen this story --- The Pentagon. You can land a big fish by being online.

Why is MS Windows Help so Bad???

I knew that I could change the quick launch bar of my computer with programs that I actually wanted there, but I couldn't remember how I used to do it, so I opened the help menu from Windows and type "change quick launch programs" It only showed me one result under the glossary. So I go to Google and type the same words in and I find the information that I am looking for in position number two...How does Microsoft expect to compete with the likes of Google when their customers have to go to Google to get answers for questions on a Microsoft product?

Do you have a way for your customers to easily find the information they need about your product or service? Don't make them go elsewhere.