Want traffic? Go to www.playballoonacy.com and add your site…I’ve had over 500 visitors in the last 24 hours. Granted, most of them don’t stay long…but at least the stat sheet looks nice :)
USU Partners in Business Research Results
April 30th, 2008
This last semester I had the opportunity to work with and lead a small team of students on a research project for USU Partners in Business Seminars. We were looking for an alternative method to market and advertise these seminars to increase attendance without spending more than we currently were. It was a really fun, challenging project and I thought I would share the powerpoint presentation I put together with results and the final proposal with the world. I did a few things with the website that I will talk about later, but for now, here lie the goods! Hope you enjoy!
Download the PowerPoint
(PPTX, Office 2007 format)
Starbucks Presentation
March 17th, 2008
I recently presented an analysis of the “Personality of Starbucks” to my Consumer Behavior class at Utah State. I thought I would upload the PowerPoint presentation for the enjoyment of all. With the presentation I tried to break away from the norm of standard PowerPoints I get every day during class and used some basic design principles to make things a little bit nicer to look at. Hope you enjoy!
Why Is Snowboarding Fun?
December 28th, 2007A few weeks off of school, some time off my job and some hard work to get ahead with snowmaking has given me a little free time. Today I went snowboarding, as I have hundreds of times before. There was a little bit of fresh snow and as the day went on the crowds grew and grew. Imagine, thousands of people on wooden planks sliding down a slippery hill in near zero temperatures.
Everytime I stop and think about snowboarding I am blown away that it is a billion dollar industry. It’s winter, nobody dares drive to the store during a snow storm, but thousands of people drive up steep canyons during blizzards to get fresh tracks. Why? All you are doing is sliding down a hill on a piece of wood. When you think about what snowboarding is, it doesn’t make any sense, but when you think about the emotion involved…it does.
Snowboarding, and many businesses are not based on a logical experience but an emotional experience. Many people wonder why I can sell so many snowmakers each winter…snowmaking is not a logical experience, its an emotional one. The feelings of watching snow fall, feeling it crunch under your shoes, and slowly watching the grass turn from brown to green. Its about having a white Christmas, not just dreaming about one.
I guess the lesson I learned from all of this, is that if I want to truly understand why people do things…I probably need to give it a try myself. Thinking logically about things usually doesn’t give me the answers I am looking for.
Whoa, Too Much Information!
December 7th, 2007I have been mulling over in my mind a concept this morning after a call from a interested snowmaking customer; we’ll call him Joe because that was his name. Joe had done his homework…and I mean REALLY done his homework. He knew about every home snowmaking site that existed and had questions about each one and how their products compared to mine.
I really had to be on my toes.
But at the same time I wasn’t worried. I trust my product 100% and I know its place in the snowmaking world and why it’s better than my competitors. With that trust and knowledge, I was able to easily respond to every question he threw at me without attacking my competitors or belittling their products. Plus, Joe was a great guy and very kind and interested, he had sincere questions and wanted simple answers.
After his barrage of questions, I got to thinking about which ones could be answered on the site and which ones couldn’t. To answer all of Joe’s questions would require A LOT of information on the site, information that most customers may not need. Information that, perhaps, would bog down other visitors to the point they would get stuck or lost and end up leaving. So, the question arises…how much is TOO MUCH information?
MarketingExperiments.com has found over and over that long copy converts better than short copy. However, how does long copy compare to really long copy, super long copy, and even the dreaded ridiculously long copy? Of course there is a medium between drowning the visitor in relevant but not necessary information and simplifying things to the point where the customer doesn’t dare take action because they have so many unanswered questions.
The trick is finding that sweet spot…if only they made oversized drivers for internet marketing with giant sweet spots…
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Former entrepreneur now a 9-5'er (by choice), I'm a web marketer, blogger, designer, and lover of all things outdoors. Happily married, living in the mountains of Colorado.