Category: Marketing

Posted on

Pricing is just Perception, Lesson 1

Consider the Sony SVRHD700 Digital Video Recorder. This fine-looking piece of kit has dual high-definition digital TV tuners, HDMI output and a 160GB hard drive to store up to 23 hours of HD video. The even finer Sony SVRHD900 is identical — except for a 250GB hard drive, storing 36 hours.

Now a 250GB hard drive costs just $30 more than a 160GB. But by adding $30 of hardware, Sony can charge an extra $200 for the whole machine — $1499 compared with $1299.

Why? Because you get 56% more storage, and 20% more model number, but pay only 15% more. Bargain!

Posted on

Vodafone only half-useful

Yesterday I couldn’t find Vodafone’s website because for some inexplicable reason I got the spelling wrong. Who knows, maybe it’s because in English the word is “phone” so I went to www.vodaphone.com.au. The stupid thing is, Vodafone had already gone half-way to solving the problem, but left me hanging.

Now I won’t get into the whole “Let’s convince customers we’re cool by using funky spelling” thing, except to say I think it’s a complete wank. As soon as you try to be cool, you’ve failed.

What’s daft is that Vodafone had in fact already licensed the Internet domain vodaphone.com.au…

posen:~ contour$ whois vodaphone.com.au
Domain Name: vodaphone.com.au
Last Modified: 16-Nov-2002 06:04:14 UTC
Registrar ID: R00010-AR
Registrar Name: Melbourne IT
Status: OK

Registrant: Vodafone Pacific Limited
Registrant ID: OTHER 056 161 043

Registrant ROID: C0754342-AR
Registrant Contact Name: THE MANAGER
Registrant Email: hostmaster@vodafone.com.au

… but done nothing with it. So, for anyone who knows how to spell and goes to www.vodaphone.com.au, nothing happens. The resulting marketing message is “We’re offline. We’re unreliable”.

Yet with less than an hour’s work, the message could have been “Hey, our name is actually Vodafone. We’ll now take you to www.vodafone.com.au.”

And if they did that, they’d even know how many website visitors they’d been losing this way.

The lesson for businesses: Where are your customers looking for you? When they go there, will they find you?

Posted on

Web’s Short Attention Span (plus more)

If you’re writing for the web, get to the point! The average home user spends only 52 seconds on a web page.

Other useful facts from Nielsen/NetRatings’ June 2006 figures:

  • The average home user has 36 web-browsing sessions per month, visiting a total of 63 unique domains.
  • There are 10,546,747 active “digital media” consumers in Australia (does that mean “Internet users?), out of an estimated 13,745,868 potential users.
Posted on

Watch It Shred!

Thirty-seven points for marketing genius to SSI Shredding Systems Inc. Forget features and benefits” [yawns] — all you need to know is that they make machines which can turn three dishwashers into ragged shards in ten seconds.

Marketing Lessons:

  • Before you can talk to someone, you have to attract their attention.
  • To attract attention, trigger an emotional response first. They’ll remember you that way. They’ll come back for the facts when they become relevant because they remembered you.
  • If people think “Wow! Come and look at this!” they’ll tell others.
  • Do it quick! A typical website visitor only looks at one page of your website — two if you’re lucky.

If you’re in Wilsonville, Oregon, please buy these guys a beer.