Skip to main content

Are You Advertising Yourself Correctly?

I can't believe it has been a month since my last post, but then again, in that month I have moved, had a conference and had another child (ok, not me but my wife did). Needless to say, it has been busy. Plus our annual conference is 10 days away.

Anyway...

My move has given me the distinct pleasure of sitting/driving on I-66 in Virginia at rush hour. This has given me the opportunity to see many commercial vehicles on my commute. I am shocked at how many of them (vans, trucks, trailers, etc) have the company name and phone number, and that is it. No description. No website. I have also seen many with a tagline or description, but no website listed.

I don't know about you, but the first thing I do when checking out a business is go to their website. I googled a few of these companies to see if maybe they just didn't have a website (shame on them), but most did. (There were a few that didn't, and I will be calling them to offer my freelance web design services.) So if you have a website, why wouldn't you put your URL on your trucks?

I honestly can't think of a good reason, except cost of painting your truck. But in this day and age, isn't your URL more important to shout to the world than your phone number?

Yes, in the car, someone might dial that number directly from their cell right then and there. But more likely, they are going to scramble looking for a pen to write it down and call later. But a URL they can probably just remember (if you have a good one).

Looking at this from an association point-of-view, you should ask yourself, "Are we advertising ourselves the right way?" Can people find you/the information they need? Is there the right call to action? Have we made it easy for people to act? Now might be the time to take a look to see if you are on the right track. If you aren't, people might just be glancing at your truck on I-66 and forgetting all about it because what they were looking for wasn't there.

Comments

Christina at YourMembership.com said…
Great point. Websites are the first thing I look for -- even in selecting a restaurant.

But then I'm a believer that URLs (or twitter ids, etc.), should be on the bottom of email signatures as well. After all, you've probably worked hard to make your site/profile into exactly want you want so why not tell everyone about it?

Thanks again. Congrats on your new baby.
March 25, 2010 at 2:20 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where do you draw the line on social media?

I try to keep up. I have a feed reader . I blog . I comment on other people's blogs. I tweet . I have multiple websites . I have accounts on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and others. But you have to draw the line somewhere. I wrote earlier about being app'd out . I still feel that way. But each day I feel farther behind. Maybe not behind, but not necessarily maximizing potential. I don't Digg. I don't StumbleUpon. OK, maybe I do like once a month if I have some spare time. But I know I am missing out on a lot of cool things. I usually check out other people's links to cool tools or the next new thing. But right now, I feel like I am in the Dip . Any suggestions on how to get out?
6 comments
Read more

10 Thoughts on #ASAE10

Ok, so I could have spelled out the title, but chose the hashtag - #asae10. Supposedly there were over 8,000 tweets with the hashtag, but probably countless more direct messages of messages that left out the hashtag but were conference related. Two years ago, we were using twitter as a backchannel to talk about speakers. Now, over 800 people sent conference related tweets. If you aren't on Twitter, you are already late to the party. Anyway, on with the post... In no particular order, my thoughts on this years ASAE Annual Conference: 1. LA was a good venue. Lots to do. Hotels close by. Only downside was the rooms were a bit of a hike. 2. I missed Sunday because of family obligations. That really put me behind the 8 ball. Since I led a session, that meant I only got to go to 3 true sessions. Sorry, I don't count Joy Behar and the closing session. Although Marshall Goldsmith was good, I probably wouldn't have gone to see that speech as a Learning Lab. 3. Based on #...
11 comments
Read more

Sunk Costs, Marginal Costs and Economics

When I was in college, I hated Economics. Then, several years later, I found myself teaching undergrad Econ and learned an appreciation for it. Now today, I have an even bigger appreciation for it. I have also noticed that not enough people have a solid grasp of some basic econ concepts that can be applied to everyday life. Two of these are cost related. Here are some basic definitions from The Economist website : Sunk Costs - When what is done cannot be undone. Sunk costs are costs that have been incurred and cannot be reversed, for example, spending on ADVERTISING or researching a product idea. They can be a barrier to entry. If potential entrants would have to incur similar costs, which would not be recoverable if the entry failed, they may be scared off. Marginal Costs - The difference made by one extra unit of something. Marginal revenue is the extra revenue earned by selling one more unit of something. The marginal cost (or whatever) can be very different from the AVERAGE c...
1 comment
Read more