“Experts” and the Rush to Judgement

GoDaddy’s Super Bowl ad was a tremendous failure. They. Did. Everything. Wrong. FAIL!
#fail #failgodaddy #godaddysucks #godaddyjustdied #boycottgodaddy #hastagsarethecoolthing

Re-tweet that a couple of millions of times. 10 seconds after the commercial airs.

Or just wait a minute. Or a day or two or a week. And let the facts and figures come out:
Go Daddy Posts Biggest Sales Day in History After Super Bowl Ads Run

Still, people are calling the ad a failure. Why? They didn’t like the ad? Didn’t agree with the tactics? Doesn’t fit their own neat little marketing ideas?

And yet said experts are ironically still extending the conversation about GoDaddy.

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Categorized as marketing

Nutritional Supplements Block Lifted on Google Shopping

The block on nutritional supplements was lifted on Google’s shopping engine. Nutritional supplements were not showing in Google shopping results since about mid-August, when they also were transitioning from free to paid listings. I’ve confirmed that my own feed is appearing.

Jargon

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
-Charles Mingus

“Our fully-functional solution is best-in-breed and its robust feature set will ensure maximum ROI!”

Great, what the heck does it do?

I made that up, but it’s not that much of an exaggeration.

I actively look for new opportunities, programs, and services for my company. I have to laugh at the language some companies use to describe their services. Man, just tell me what you do!

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Categorized as marketing

Start Competing with Counterfeits

This post on Lifehacker got me thinking about an idea I had for a while. The post compares the advantages of bootlegged movies over buying a legit copy. FBI warnings, movie previews, etc that you can’t skip.

It’s so true.

Nothing strikes this notion more than sports gear. A replica NFL jersey (a replica!) costs about $80 ($80!). Knock-offs cost $15-$20.

I bet any amount of money that they would sell more than 100% more if they cut that price in half. They’d probably sell 10x the jerseys if they sliced the price to 1/3.

The demand for the counterfeit gear should sound alarms. Not the counterfeiters fulfilling the demand!

They would not only get more people to buy who would have passed on a jersey all together, but they would put a serious cramp on the counterfeiters. Instead of playing whack-a-mole with Asian importers, they can compete on price. And sell a ton more–not only recapturing lost sales to counterfeiters.

Pricing is a funny thing. I used to work in the casual games industry. The going rate for a game when I started was $19.95. That’s getting up there. This was a free trial model. The conversion rate from free trial to buy was extremely low (a small fraction of a percent low). We ran a test once, and slashed prices in half. We more than doubled sales. More revenue when charging less! hmmmm Still though, I thought there was more room to cut. I thought $4.95 was the magic number. Where there is little or no cost resistance. Almost competing with the cost of a premium cup of coffee. At that rate, I bet there would have been 100x the sales.

I wonder how many companies do a true price sensitivity analysis.

Why punish your best customers?