Marketing Lessons Learned From The
| Category: Marketing | Date: 2001-04-03 |
It was early Saturday morning when I scrambled out to the garage to try and find the strawberries that Id bagged up in the summer and put away into the "deep freeze".
When I opened the freezer door, there was a three-inch-thick band of ice around the rim of our "frost-free" freezer, preventing the door from sealing properly.
Inside were jumbled bags of corn on the cob, zip-lock bags containing cheddar cheese, aluminum-foil-wrapped blocks of hamburger, and ice cream bars scattered from end to end.
I dug through the glob of stuff, hoping to find the strawberries quickly.
But it was almost like digging a tunnel to China. As I dug through one pile of stuff, I descended into the next pile. Some of the stuff was left over from when we purchased the freezer - I was sure.
No one had bothered to clean it out or to organize and straighten it!
After 45 minutes to an hour of moving stuff around, I finally found the bag of frozen strawberries - but spent the next 15-20 minutes putting all the stuff back into the freezer.
And by then, my fingers were almost numb from the cold.
It was definitely an experience I did not want to repeat right away!!!
MARKETING LESSONS LEARNED FROM A FREEZER?
I actually learned a valuable lesson or two from this experience!
So, here goes - lessons learned from the "nightmare freezer" in our garage:
1) If you cant find it, you cant have it!
From a disorganized freezer - if its really hard to find stuff - you probably wont!
Afterall, who wants to spend 45 minutes to an hour digging through stuff to get what you want?
Most people will lose interest and leave.
Thats why your sales copy needs to be interesting right from the start. And dont make it sooooooo long that your customer slogs through the whole thing to get to the meat.
Because he or she probably wont stick around that long. Your customer has better things to do with his or her time!
2) If you have a disorganized freezer - or in this case a web site - youre setting yourself up for failure.
Why? Because if its really hard to find the important stuff - forget it! Whos going to spend the time?
Make sure your web site is:
Well organized!
Do you have a lot of web pages that a visitor would need to spend hours to discover and explore - that really lead nowhere and do not produce a desired result from your customer (such as a sale or a subscription to your newsletter)?
If youre selling a product or service, you want each page to lead toward your order page - with no detours or distractions!
If yours is a content site - then you want a well-organized site map - or similar method - so your visitor can easily find relevant pages ... which leads to ...
3) Make sure you have a method where site visitors can quickly find your most important pages.
"Get the ice off the rim". Make sure everything functions properly!
Like a door that seals properly is important to a freezer functioning properly - a properly functioning order page is just as important to your web site!
You dont want your customer entering credit card information only to get an error page!
Your website and/or your sales process should be simple and easy to understand. Otherwise your customer will leave in frustration!
4) Remove or update old web pages.
If there is a three-inch thick ice ring around the rim of the freezer, obviously some maintenance is needed - the ice needs to be removed so that the freezer will function properly!
If you have a build-up of old web pages that you havent checked or viewed recently - you should perform this task soon - removing old files from your web site - that perhaps are no longer used - or where the links are no longer relevant and not even functioning properly! When is the last time you checked those three year old files (or even the six-month old files)?
5) Check your links!
Imagine a visitor coming to your site and then clicking on links that come up with a "page not found" notice. How impressive is that?
Visitors may leave thinking that the site is no longer active or that the information posted is no longer relevant.
They may even think the webmaster has gone AWOL! (In other words - abandoned the site.)
Not the impression you want to create!!!
6) Organize everything. Sift and sort and place into the proper folders.
If you cant find it, do you really think your site visitors will be able to find it.
Sift and sort and place things where you (and web site visitors) can easily find things!
To make sure I would not repeat the freezer experience again, I grabbed a blow dryer and a metal scraper and worked at the 3-inch ice rim around the freezer, until it was all removed.
Then I found some large plastic bags and sorted items and placed them into the bags. I had one bag reserved for meat. In there, I put the zip-lock bags of chicken, the aluminum-foil-wrapped hamburger, and the zip-lock bags of cheddar cheese.
In another large bag I placed all the plastic bags of fruit we had set aside in the summer - so we could enjoy them in the winter.
And yet in another large bag I placed the half loaves of bread we had frozen - because we knew we wouldnt use them up fast enough before the bread would go bad. This way we had a ready supply of bread.
It took me all of about two hours to do all of this.
And with that, our nightmare freezer problem was solved!
And ... come to think of it ... the "nightmare web site" problem as well!!!
About the author:
Ron Knowlton is the founding editor at <http://www.soaringprofits.com/>
Subscribe to "Articles To Boost Your Success Online!" <subscribe@soaringprofits.com>
"Download a great marketing e-book!" *FREE* *$49 value* Limited-Time Offer!
<http://www.soaringprofits.com/free-ebook.htm>
ron@soaringprofits.com
http://www.soaringprofits.com/
When I opened the freezer door, there was a three-inch-thick band of ice around the rim of our "frost-free" freezer, preventing the door from sealing properly.
Inside were jumbled bags of corn on the cob, zip-lock bags containing cheddar cheese, aluminum-foil-wrapped blocks of hamburger, and ice cream bars scattered from end to end.
I dug through the glob of stuff, hoping to find the strawberries quickly.
But it was almost like digging a tunnel to China. As I dug through one pile of stuff, I descended into the next pile. Some of the stuff was left over from when we purchased the freezer - I was sure.
No one had bothered to clean it out or to organize and straighten it!
After 45 minutes to an hour of moving stuff around, I finally found the bag of frozen strawberries - but spent the next 15-20 minutes putting all the stuff back into the freezer.
And by then, my fingers were almost numb from the cold.
It was definitely an experience I did not want to repeat right away!!!
MARKETING LESSONS LEARNED FROM A FREEZER?
I actually learned a valuable lesson or two from this experience!
So, here goes - lessons learned from the "nightmare freezer" in our garage:
1) If you cant find it, you cant have it!
From a disorganized freezer - if its really hard to find stuff - you probably wont!
Afterall, who wants to spend 45 minutes to an hour digging through stuff to get what you want?
Most people will lose interest and leave.
Thats why your sales copy needs to be interesting right from the start. And dont make it sooooooo long that your customer slogs through the whole thing to get to the meat.
Because he or she probably wont stick around that long. Your customer has better things to do with his or her time!
2) If you have a disorganized freezer - or in this case a web site - youre setting yourself up for failure.
Why? Because if its really hard to find the important stuff - forget it! Whos going to spend the time?
Make sure your web site is:
Well organized!
Do you have a lot of web pages that a visitor would need to spend hours to discover and explore - that really lead nowhere and do not produce a desired result from your customer (such as a sale or a subscription to your newsletter)?
If youre selling a product or service, you want each page to lead toward your order page - with no detours or distractions!
If yours is a content site - then you want a well-organized site map - or similar method - so your visitor can easily find relevant pages ... which leads to ...
3) Make sure you have a method where site visitors can quickly find your most important pages.
"Get the ice off the rim". Make sure everything functions properly!
Like a door that seals properly is important to a freezer functioning properly - a properly functioning order page is just as important to your web site!
You dont want your customer entering credit card information only to get an error page!
Your website and/or your sales process should be simple and easy to understand. Otherwise your customer will leave in frustration!
4) Remove or update old web pages.
If there is a three-inch thick ice ring around the rim of the freezer, obviously some maintenance is needed - the ice needs to be removed so that the freezer will function properly!
If you have a build-up of old web pages that you havent checked or viewed recently - you should perform this task soon - removing old files from your web site - that perhaps are no longer used - or where the links are no longer relevant and not even functioning properly! When is the last time you checked those three year old files (or even the six-month old files)?
5) Check your links!
Imagine a visitor coming to your site and then clicking on links that come up with a "page not found" notice. How impressive is that?
Visitors may leave thinking that the site is no longer active or that the information posted is no longer relevant.
They may even think the webmaster has gone AWOL! (In other words - abandoned the site.)
Not the impression you want to create!!!
6) Organize everything. Sift and sort and place into the proper folders.
If you cant find it, do you really think your site visitors will be able to find it.
Sift and sort and place things where you (and web site visitors) can easily find things!
To make sure I would not repeat the freezer experience again, I grabbed a blow dryer and a metal scraper and worked at the 3-inch ice rim around the freezer, until it was all removed.
Then I found some large plastic bags and sorted items and placed them into the bags. I had one bag reserved for meat. In there, I put the zip-lock bags of chicken, the aluminum-foil-wrapped hamburger, and the zip-lock bags of cheddar cheese.
In another large bag I placed all the plastic bags of fruit we had set aside in the summer - so we could enjoy them in the winter.
And yet in another large bag I placed the half loaves of bread we had frozen - because we knew we wouldnt use them up fast enough before the bread would go bad. This way we had a ready supply of bread.
It took me all of about two hours to do all of this.
And with that, our nightmare freezer problem was solved!
And ... come to think of it ... the "nightmare web site" problem as well!!!
About the author:
Ron Knowlton is the founding editor at <http://www.soaringprofits.com/>
Subscribe to "Articles To Boost Your Success Online!" <subscribe@soaringprofits.com>
"Download a great marketing e-book!" *FREE* *$49 value* Limited-Time Offer!
<http://www.soaringprofits.com/free-ebook.htm>
ron@soaringprofits.com
http://www.soaringprofits.com/
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