Episode #56 – Ice cream Innovations, a Question About How to Choose the Perfect Domain Name, a Resource to Find Bargain Flights, and a BIG Marketing Lesson from The Guitar Center
May 20, 2009Episode #56 – “No Sense Being Pessimistic – It Wouldn’t Work Anyway…”
Websites and resources mentioned in the show:
AirfareWatchdog.com (Search for bargain airfares and view routemaps)
NiftyClicks (discover the very latest web tools and resources)
Get a Private Telephone Consultation with me (to Help YOUR Business)
Buy This Week’s T-Shirt(from National Media Services)
Wow, what a busy week. I’ve been travelling around the country. Last week included:
Salt Lake City, Washington DC, Bethesda, MD, New York City, Stamford, CT, and Chicago, Il!
Did you notice that both Haagen Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s have released tiny ’snack’ size versions of their popular ice creams – available in supermarkets? They sell for around a $1, so the profits must be substantial.
A lot of people send in questions about registering domain names, so I think this one will be helpful for you. It’s about how to register the best possible domain name for a business. I’ll give my top tips that you need to keep in mind.
As you now know, I travel a lot, and it makes sense for me to keep an eye on airfare bargains. While I use Kayak.com much of the time, I’ve also found Airfarewatchdog.com to be really helpful, for a number of reasons that I explain in the episode this week. Both are good tools for different reasons.
This week’s BIG marketing lesson is from The Guitar Center, which is a national chain of music stores here in the USA. They do a great job of keeping connected with their customers via direct mail, and I was impressed with one particular strategy that I explain in this episode. You can do something similar, and I’ve even pre-researched some resources to help you implement, fast!
Enjoy the show!
Regards,
May 20th, 2009 at 3:38 am
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May 20th, 2009 at 5:01 am
Hi Andrew, nice observations about attracting and retaining customers with the restaurant example.
Many more businesses need to think outside the box and do something to stand out.
Anyway just a quick addition about some basic SEO elements that can count up to 90% of your SEO efforts. Domain names should have a reference to the service or products being sold but are *not* the number one factor in getting top listings in the search engines.
Key factors are:
1) web site navigation structure, your website has got to be easy to navigate by both the human visitor and the search engines.
2) It’s got to have good quality content that is relevant to the page title (big hint…).
3) It has to have other *relevant* websites linking back to that site so that Google and other search engines can see that other people rate your site as important and relevant to them (another big hint…).
Don’t worry about keyword density as Google only look at content relevancy not how many times a particular keyword is used.
Hope that helps
May 20th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Hi Andrew,
I don’t know if many people noticed, but one of the clips you showed was for a domain research tool you highlighted as a past NiftyClick – instantdomainsearch.com. I love this resource and use it all the time when researching various domain name combinations. It is remarkably fast!
Thanks for the referral to airfarewatchdog. I just signed-up for their fare alerts feature for cities I travel to frequently. Looks promising!
Wishing you safe travels,
Pete
http://TheHealthyMinute.com
May 20th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Nick,
Thanks for those insights – very helpful.
Pete,
You’re absolutely right, and I love that tool for researching new domain names.
Regards
Andrew
May 20th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Another great, informative show, Andrew!
You are always on top of great marketing techniques, but one that you seem to have overlooked entirely comes from that “evil giant”, Wal-Mart. Their $4 & $10 prescription plan is not only capturing millions of dollars worth of business for their pharmacies, but it is also a fantastic help to those of us who take multiple prescriptions on a continuing basis.
One of my prescriptions that would cost me $162 thru my insurance plan I can get at Wal-Mart for $10.
And, of course, it takes them 20 to 30 minutes to fill a prescription, so what do you do while you wait? You browse thru Wal-Mart and inevitably buy other items!
Looks like some savvy marketing to me.
Jimm
May 21st, 2009 at 1:39 am
Andrew, what a world traveler you have been this week. You make me tired just listening. Hope that you had fun with all that work as well. The ice cream would be two bites and it is gone. But what good two bites they would be. The store front was great and very different. Everyone remembers them when they see if. It would be a reference to other places as well. Great job on this show. very nicely done.
Dan and Deanna “Marketing Unscrambled”
May 21st, 2009 at 10:44 am
I got to get us one of those wire acts for our show OR at least for our annual Halloween show!
May 21st, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Hi Andrew.
That was a great tip about using actual gift cards rather than a cut out coupon. I never really thought about that but you are absolutely right. The perceived value factor is very important. Oh and I loved this weeks shirt haha.
May 21st, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Hi Andrew,
I love your work and style, I have 2 things too ask..
1. I have a company that generates website health checks (with an objective to create SEO leads*) and would like to know your thoughts about how to generate more leads. We obviously have an adwords and SEO campaign already.
2. I also have a seminar business in Australia and I have access to a National Database of CEO,s of the top Public companies. Im working with a JV partner to promote a new event this year for about 200 of australias top CEO’s and as its a corporate event (rather than a mum and dads event or small business event like Mal Emerys) I wondered if you could recommend any particular speakers that specialise in the Public company arena, specialising in Marketing online/ offline..
regards
Peter
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Peter,
It would be unfair to others for me to answer complex marketing questions here, I’m sure you understand. The process for that is to submit it through the ‘ask andrew’ link at the top of the page.
Regarding seminar speakers that relate to corporations, I would recommend Tony Hsieh from Zappos.com, Mike Faith from Headsets.com, and Bob Parsons from GoDaddy.com
You can contact all of those through the respective websites.
Regards
Andrew
May 24th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Even though I am not an entrepreuer, the tips presented in your show make me want to be one. Hmmmm….what can I market? Anyway, the show was entertaining and I was particularly amused by the opening bits. I will use the travel web site the next time I need to fly and I will be better prepared to deal with marketing ploys like coupons masquerading as gift cards. Thanks!
May 26th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Hi Andrew,
This is not to do with your podcast which I do enjoy and think contains lots of helpful insight and tips.
This is about the email I received today where you promote 14 Constraints, 14 solutions (a teleseminar), to listen to TODAY. From what you write it’s already happened, but the site you promote and it’s author, Rich Schefren, make you sign up 2 friends before you can even get to it and then they’re promoting it as a future event!!! You really should check out these links before you go pushing them onto your own membership! This is the worse sort of marketing in my opinion and will make me (and I’m sure many others) wary of any further “great” things you tell us to check out. Not a good example of marketing at all. Not helpful, simply annoying – and I can’t even listen to what was said and that was so essential!
May 26th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Alan,
I can understand how you came to that conclusion, but your assumptionincorrect is incorrect. It could have been worded better on the page, but there was absolutely no requirement to send the message to 2 friends. When YOU entered your email address you immediately were sent the details of the call, no strings attached. The page you saw online was entirely optional.
The call HAS already happened, what you were invited to was a replay. The information in the call is really good, it’s free, and there’s no obligation, so before you jump to a conclusion about the marketing, at least listen to the call! I hope that makese sense
Regards
Andrew
May 26th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your quick response, but unfortunately that link in the email doesn’t link through to it, it plugs the pdf that “started it all”, as well as promoting the teleseminar on 28th May 2009! And that other page really was a little more than badly worded, it was misleading. Please provide the link and I’ll happily listen to it.
May 26th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Alan,
Please go back and re-read the email.
It gives all the details for the call replay, which is what was being offered.
This is what it says:
Here are your call-in details for the teleseminar replay:
Date: May 28, 2009
Time: 7:00pm EDT
Call Number: 1-512-225-3008
Access Code: 959510#
The link you saw in the email was to download the free report that prompted the call.
I agree that it should have been clearer that it was not a requirement to enter 2 emails of friends. I know Rich and he would not want to mislead anyone. No way. It was a mistake that I’m sure he’ll rectify – I’ve notified him about it by the way.
Please remember that as marketers we don’t want to irritate or annoy customers – that’s counter productive. This was most likely a mistake due to the haste of putting it together. I’ve done things like this before, none of us are perfect!
Regards
Andrew
May 26th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
the video seemed like it would be very helpful for this interested in the topic. the host makes drwas in the watcher by making it fun and ineteresting. Good work andrew…
July 9th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I should say that helpmybusiness.com has lots of interesting information. Looks like the author did a good job. I will be coming back to helpmybusiness.com for new information. Thank you.