Multichannel Marketing
The Demise of Borders Books: Death by Internet
The news that Borders is considering putting itself up for sale should come as no surprise.
Although the company used last week’s announcement that they’re seeking a buyout as an opportunity to blame a tight credit market and competition from discount chains like Wal-Mart, Borders‚ disappointing performance stems from a failure to take e-commerce seriously.
For Borders not to have an exclusive online presence in this day and age boggles the mind. The homepage is a drab catchall for store locations, gift cards, and company information. The coupons that Borders Rewards members receive via email are good for in-store purchases only. And if you do decide to shop Borders online, type in “Borders.com” and see where it takes you to an Amazon.com boutique, complete with “amazon.com” in the URL.
Why brand your biggest competitor (which, despite market conditions, grew by double digits last year)?
Borders does have a beta site that they’re testing and promoting on the current homepage (Bordersstores.com, not Borders.com), assuring visitors that “whole new Borders experience is coming.” The beta site is very attractive and conducive to buying — except for one minor detail. You can’t buy anything. There’s still no e-commerce attached to Borders, only the ability to “save” a book for pickup at the store nearest you.
To ignore the ways in which online shopping has permeated the lives of untold millions of customers is one of the biggest business failures of this decade.
. .
[About the author: Michele Miller is a guest contributor for GrokDotCom. Michele is co-author (with FutureNow’s Holly Buchanan) of The Soccer Mom Myth “Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys”. You can buy it online from Amazon.]
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Written by:Michele Miller
How to Drive Customers from a Yogurt Lid to a Website
I don’t have a strong allegiance to any one yogurt brand. I enjoy yogurt and eat it fairly often, but I usually bounce between brands. Recently, though, Stonyfield Farm had a unique opportunity to convert me into a full-time customer.
Right there on the lid was this note:
“Profits for the Planet — You can’t have healthy food or healthy people without a healthy planet. That’s why we give 10% of our profits to efforts that help protect and restore the Earth.”
Wow, what great messaging! It was right there, front-and-center on the top of my yogurt. There was no way I could miss it.
But they missed a real opportunity. I’d like to know more about what they’re doing to help protect and restore the planet. Why not have a link to the website? Alas, it was a dead-end message.
How much more powerful might this have been had Stonyfield Farm considered the tops of their yogurt container to be a driving point. What if they included a call to action to visit their website to find out what they’re doing to protect the Earth?
If I weren’t in marketer-Holly mode, I’d have likely never thought to go to Stonyfield Farm’s website, but there’s lots of great stuff there that could engage consumer-Holly.
Are you missing opportunities to drive customers to your website?
[Editor’s note: Join “copywriter-Holly” at our Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar on March 28th in San Francisco.]
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Screencast: How the Super Bowl Ads FUMBLED Online
This year’s Super Bowl ads once again found us scratching our heads. If you’re going to spend $2.7 million for 30 seconds of air time in order to send people to a website, why not sell them your product once they get there?
In this screencast, we’re going to show you how two brands — Tide to Go and Under Armour — continue to miss out on converting browsers into buyers, even after the post-game traffic surge is over. Depending on who you ask, these sponsors’ ads (”Interview” for Tide and “The New Prototype” for Under Armour) were pretty decent. The products don’t seem to be the problem, either.
Nope. What we have here is a failure to convert. So, much like the New England Patriots are doing right now, let’s see what we can learn from some video analysis:
Let’s take a look at some post-game stats from Reprise Media’s Search Marketing Scorecard:
- 6% of companies included a call to action, asking viewers to visit their websites–a decrease of nearly two thirds from last year
- 93% did not buy search placement for concepts relating to their ads, including spokesperson names, slogans and taglines. Among the brands that failed to buy featured stars’ names as keywords were Bridgestone Tires (Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons) and Sunsilk (Marilyn Monroe, Shakira and Madonna). Unfortunately, notes Reprise, given that the celebrities are often the only thing that viewers remember about an ad.
- 74% still neglected to include a call to action on their Web site landing pages, leaving users “directionless.”
These figures are important because they illustrate a common misconception among multi-channel marketing campaigns: While the TV ad’s success can be measured by the traffic it drives to the website, the traffic alone is meaningless. When visitors can’t convert, you lose.
Want help converting online? Download “10 Tips to Start Optimizing Your Site” for free!
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
GoDaddy’s Hail Mary TV-to-Web Strategy
Once again, GoDaddy saved its biggest ad blitz for the Super Bowl. And once again, the goal was to drive as many viewers as possible to the end zone: GoDaddy.com
This year — as they did in ‘06 and ‘07 — GoDaddy had to make an adjustment after having their original commercial rejected by the network censors (a Super Bowl tradition for them). But unlike the past two seasons, they didn’t run a watered-down version of the rejected ad. This time, in lieu of the “too hot for TV” ad, they ran two spots meant solely to hype the uncensored ad, which, of course, is ONLY available at GoDaddy.com.
If you missed the super-tame teaser ads, here’s one example:
As it turns out, the censored ad is only cheeky in the figurative sense, but according to GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons, the teaser strategy worked:
Our Web site has never been busier!
Before the game was over, we received right at 1.5 million visits to our Web site. We had a whopping 2 million visitors for the day. This compares to last year when we had less than 1/2 million visitors.We spent a lot less money!
During last year’s Super Bowl, we purchased and ran 3 spots — two spots during the game and one during the post-game. This year we purchased only 1 ad, which aired in the 2nd quarter. So for a fraction of the cost we generated 4 times the action. Not shabby, when you can do it.
Sounds great, Bob, but did you get four times the revenue?
A year ago to the day, Parsons responded to pundits — most of whom hated GoDaddy’s 2007 ad — asserting that although the ad drove HALF the traffic of his ‘06 ad, it generated DOUBLE the revenue. As Parsons wrote at the time, “Traffic was down. Sales were up! How can that be?
Since he asked so nicely, we explained.
GoDaddy hasn’t posted any 2008 Super Bowl revenue figures — yet — but I’ve asked Bob to share them with us and, if and when he does, we’ll be sure to offer some analysis.
In the meantime, consider this haiku from Ponder Marketing…
Super Bowl Sunday.
Go Daddy girl will jiggle.
What is it they sell?
…and let us know what you think about GoDaddy’s Hail Mary pass.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Happy Hour Branding: Dewar’s Toasts to “Repeal Day”
75 years ago to the day, U.S. citizens, in the midst of the not-so-roaring 1930’s, had their spirits lifted after a thirteen-year drought, otherwise known as the 18th Amendment. The nation’s prohibition of alcohol had backfired miserably.
Score one for supply and demand.
Indeed, prohibition was the best 21st birthday present our government could’ve possibly given to Al Capone. The mob made a killing on illegal booze. Lucky for them, too. Back in those days, all a wise guy had to do was open a speakeasy, grease a few coppers, and boom — even bathtub gin sold itself.
It’s hard to believe that if it weren’t for Dewar’s, this momentous occasion that is the anniversary of Repeal Day would be no more than another missed opportunity to market legal booze. Honestly, though, what a great thing to toast to! Not only can they make an honest buck selling it, but I can go spend an honest buck to drink it. (Must… finish… blog post… )
Take a peek at how Dewar’s brands Repeal Day on this newfangled internet TV the kids use…
(If video doesn’t load, click here.)
Apparently, founder John Dewar didn’t have his son Tommy’s charisma. Fair enough. Might as well use Tommy’s words instead. Regardless, this is a great ad. (YouTube, on the other hand… They’ll never make it. Online movin’ pictures? No way. Vaudeville, that’s the future!)
Dewar’s could definitely do much better with their Web strategy. Both the Repeal Day micro-site and their main website are WAY too dependent on Flash animation, the usability stinks, and there’s just too much friction in the experience. But that’s fancy business-talk, straight from ROI City; conversion rate, cash-on-the-table stuff, see. The marketers at Dewar’s have already done the hardest part of their job: They’ve reminded me that I’m free to give them my money.
And I will.
[Now, before I hear anything from you scotch snobs about how Dewar’s doesn’t compare to your brand, don’t say a word unless you’ve tried their Aberfeldy reserve batch.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Pardon Me, Do You Have Any Hanukkah Ham?
“So… That not kosher?”
Isn’t it bad enough that my people can’t even agree on how to spell the holiday? 
One might expect Balducci’s, the fine food emporium, to know better. After all, they wrote the we’re-not-taking-sides-but-you-should “holiday” menu(s)*:
Balducci’s has everything you need to create a magnificent holiday meal, no matter which holiday you celebrate. Whether it’s an informal Chanukah get-together, an elegant Christmas feast, or even a glamorous New Year’s Eve fete, with our Holiday Entertaining Menu and Ordering Guides you’ll find all the ingredients for a memorable meal.
Ah, but that just shows how thoughtful they can be online. What about when NancyKay Shapiro goes into one of their stores to shop for the “holidays”? Apparently, the product doesn’t match the persona.
Okay, so it’s not like they were marketing this for Ramadan. And maybe I did have a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich for lunch, but that thing was good. (Don’t tell my rabbi.) Besides, a stock room clerk — not a marketing manager — probably made this mistake. Still, it’s important for marketers to be careful with those “holiday” promotions.
Happy Chanukah/Hanukah/Hanukkah**!
(*Which, for some reason, you can only download as a PDF. It looks good, but why not host it on the site? That way, customers could have the option to download, print, or email to a friend.)
(**To anyone for whom that’s relevant.***)
(***Now do you see why George Costanza recommended we all just celebrate “Festivus”?)
[Hat tip to the Good Experience blog.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Word of Mouth Down the Toilet
When’s the last time you were out in public and had one of those must-go-now moments? You’re torn between embarrassment and physical agony. The panic’s rising. Perspiration beads on your forehead. What do you do? Hope the first store you walk into lets you use the employee-only washroom? (This usually works only if you are desperate and pregnant.) Lean into the stranger next to you as you turn beat red and whisper, “Where’s the nearest bathroom … it’s kinda urgent“?
One company empathizes with your predicament. Not only do they help you prevent those can’t-hold-it-in situations, they’ve created a great public service that puts public restrooms on the map and at your fingertips. Just go to http://imodium.com/page.jhtml?id=/imodium/include/3_5.inc
“That was page-dot-what?” Yeah. See a major mistake here that’s just flushed a, um, boat-load of word-of-mouth marketing right down the toilet?
Of course you can awkwardly type this gibberish into your portable device and bookmark it. I would. But where do you really want that link living, on the road and off the computer? In memory!
When you’ve really really got to go, the only words going round and round in your head are: I need a bathroom! No “include-slash-three” about it! So use a domain name that reflects the need and helps market your product.
Give people - especially desperate people - something easy to remember and share. Here’s a compassionate, useful reference tool that is also a perfect place to promote a brand. So make it easy to share when the need is crucial. What a way to help people remember you were there when their need was … pressing.
I’ve registered NeedaBathroom.com. The nice people behind the bathroom finder can contact me, and I’ll gladly transfer the domain. No cost. As a thank you, because you’ve done something good for the public. Whew!
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Why I Nearly Flaked on the Season Pass
Last winter, when I made my temporary move to Salt Lake City, I started researching the local ski resorts. The mountains surrounding the city are known for having some of the world’s biggest and lightest powder snow. I was convinced by the customer reviews I’d read online that were written by local ski bums from Utah.
Time and again, I read and heard reviews about the Snowbird resort having some of the most challenging terrain, coated by the area’s best powder. So when I finally got a chance to ski Snowbird’s Cottonwood Canyons trails for myself, I quickly turned into a raving Snowbird fan.
I was set on getting a season’s pass for the this year. And after reading reviews like this one from CitySearch, my excitement about the upcoming ski season reached fever pitch:
Depending on the characteristics of — or our level of attachment to — the must-have thing du jour, we all buy in different buying modes to match our feelings about it. I typically purchase commodities in a more Spontaneous mode, but I take my ski season very seriously, and my search for a good deal on a Snowbird pass turned into a Methodical review of various resources to find the ultimate deal. I took my time and I read everything I could before I pounced.
Although I knew I wanted a season’s pass, I had a hard time justifying the steep price Snowbird was asking ($1,149). If the season let me down with only a few big snow days, I could be kicking myself for risking that much money.
As the summer came to a close, I got a little anxious about my upcoming purchase. Around this time, I heard a radio ad about “Sniagrab,” an annual sale run by the Sports Authority a local sporting goods chain called Canyon Sports. They were offering discount season’s passes to Snowbird. I don’t recall them specifying a sale closing date, but when I called Canyon Sports (shortly after hearing the ad), I was let down when I heard I’d missed the sale by one day. Maybe it’s my fault that I missed their sale, but the ad was vague and I had still acted quickly. It made me feel stupid — as dumb as that sounds.
Chances are you won’t catch me in a Canyon Sports any day soon.*
Unwilling to give up my quest for a deal, I searched for “snowbird seasons pass” at Craigslist. Believe it or not, there was a woman who posted a 10-day pass because she’d recently broken a bone and wouldn’t be skiing this season. She was selling it at a discount because she obviously needed to give the buyer an incentive to purchase from her, rather than go directly to the source. But since I was planning on skiing more than 10 days, I continued my search.
I sent an email to my local friends, asking if any of them had a connection to help me out. To my delight, I received a reply from a snowboarding friend. He encouraged me to join the Velocity Sports club in order to get a discount at Snowbird. Velocity’s an exclusive club, so in order for me to join, my friend had to sponsor me. He was only allowed to sponsor one person annually. There was also a $40 membership fee that I had to pay upfront. I signed up and paid my dues but this still didn’t guarantee me a discounted season’s pass. Before I had a shot at one, they made a limited promotion available to existing members who have been members for over a year. So I waited and waited for a reply.
After two weeks without a reply, I sent them a follow-up email. They told me I would hear back from them in a couple of weeks. When three more weeks passed without a reply, I decided to email again. That same day, I received a phone call from Velocity Sports, telling me that the promotion was now open to me but I had only two days to take action.It’s a good thing I didn’t miss the promotion (like I had with the Canyon Sports promo). It would’ve been nice to have gotten periodic updates from Velocity about the promotion. Then again, maybe I would have never even heard from them had I not been really good at nagging! Regardless, they came through for me in a big way, and I got my season’s pass for $799; a $310 savings (after membership fee) over buying directly from Snowbird.
No matter where they decide to buy a product, 64% of customers regularly do their research online before they go for it. In this case, there were a few multi-channel influencers (i.e., the radio ad, craigslist, Snowbird.com) in my buying decision process, but only the consumer-generated media (i.e, the customer reviews and word-of-mouth) had a positive influence on where I actually bought the thing.
The bottom line: It seems the local skiing/snowboarding community is more involved in finding and offering good deals for Snowbird customers than Snowbird is itself.
What do you think? Am I just griping, or should Snowbird consider being more involved in the community in order to better harness their marketing potential?
[Editor’s Note: See comments below. Our sincere apologies go out to everyone at Canyon Sports. Although it seems the Sports Authority chain — not Canyon Sports — has the Sniagrab Sale, there’s too much confusion about who Melissa called. Did she call Canyon Sports, and they answered her about a different sale that just ended? Who knows? Still, it seems there’s a whole lot of ski marketing fog to break through in Utah. Either that, or Melissa needs to stop multi-taking when she drives. 
]
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Written by:Melissa Burdon
GrokDotCom @ ad:tech
Just a quick note to let you all know that we’ll be covering ad:tech New York this week. There will be a lot of great panel discussions and keynotes on all things new media. So, be sure to check out the official ad:tech blog and GrokDotCom for reviews conversations about hot topics in marketing optimization.
We’re a tad biased, but this really is a great city to play host to ad:tech’s 10,000+ attendees (if you can believe it). For better or for worse, New York is a giant fishbowl of advertising messages. It’s everywhere — from the subway, to entire sides of buildings, to the Men’s room. It’s a place where multi-channel campaigns take shape in an instant. And when the message is off, you don’t have to be a marketer to notice.The result is sometimes inspiring, often annoying, and — for those who grok — a never-ending source of marketing do’s and don’ts.
If you’ve ever wondered about what it takes to keep NYC’s low:tech ad world moving, take a peek at this cool video from the aptly named Good Magazine.
If you’re in town for the conference, drop us a line in the comments to let us know what you’ve enjoyed or what you’d like to see covered, and we’ll try to accommodate.
[Special thanks to Steve Hall from Adrants for inviting me to guest blog with ad:tech.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Toys ‘R’ Us Scares Away Customers, Giraffes
Remember those commercials from the 80’s (”I don’t wanna grow up, because if I did, I wouldn’t be a Toys ‘R’ Us kid”)? Well, a lot of those kids grew up to be parents — and the thrill, as they say, is gone.
In our upcoming 2007 Online Customer Focused Excellence Study, ToysRUs.com fared well below average. The study, which tracks 300+ online retailers, found several giraffe-sized disconnects in the customer experience; things that seem inexcusable for a click-and-mortar retailer with the budget and brand recognition of Toys ‘R’ Us. And with the holiday shopping season upon us, the company presents a feeling of doom for many parents who’ve come to rely on the store to pacify beloved, nagging children.
But they’re not just making things difficult online. Toys ‘R’ Us has a fundamental business problem. They’re scaring customers away — and not just because it’s Halloween. Joseph Jaffe explains the disconnect:
See, here’s the problem. Toys R Us spends all this money on silly 30-second spots with talking giraffes designed to “persuade” kids to nag their parents to take them to the store, but the stores themselves are largely warehouses, void of life, talking giraffes and any experiential quotient whatsoever. If you’ve ever set foot in a Toys R Us, you’d know exactly what I’m talking about.
[…] Here’s the scary part. From what I was told, this (customers returning toys without gift receipts) happens roughly 12 times a week and when it happens, it’s typically Dad doing the returning; it’s typically on a Saturday and it’s typically a shouting match that ends in frayed nerves, expletives and threats never to set foot in a Toys R Us store again.
Try and do the math. 12 x 52 = 624 x 836 (according to the number of stores in the US) = 521,664 unsatisfactory returns per year.
But wait, there’s more….
Now attempt to factor in “lost revenue” associated to a) frequency of transactions (conservative guesstimate of 4 x a year), b) dollar value of average transaction (let’s say $35) and c) word of mouth (let’s say an ultra-conservative pre-social media factor of 15), and you might just be looking at a number of $1.09bn which is either in play or at risk. fyi - Toys R Us’ 2005 revenue was $11.28bn, so my numbers aren’t exactly Monopoly (or Linden) equivalents.
The sad thing is that the staff at Toys R Us really wanted to help me, but “their hands were tied”. The real sad thing is that had a suit from Corporate been in the store (a sighting equivalent to Hailey’s Comet), they would have whipped out their “key” and saved the day on an ad-hoc and unscaleable basis.
Whether Jaffe’s math adds up is another story, but it doesn’t really matter. When you kick mothers out for breastfeeding, ruin kids bikes, let kids eat lead paint, and upset people by not letting them buy what you advertise, you’ve got a brand that clearly doesn’t wanna grow up.
Ahh, the good ol’ days…
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Written by:Robert Gorell
