Posts Tagged ‘Internet’
Will it Blend? 3 steps to online marketing success
Posted by: Jeff in Business, Internet, Internet TV on November 8th, 2009
When you’re standing in the store or searching online for a new blender, one company hopes you’ll ask yourself “will it blend?”. Their web video series has proven that their blenders have the strength to blend just about anything. Whether or not you really want to blend your iPhone, golf balls or glow sticks, it’s nice to know that in a pinch you could… Right? Of course!
The Blendtec Total Blender and company serves a group of people that don’t think the average blender sold on Wal-Mart’s shelves will do. Instead, they created a blender with plenty of power and sharp blades to cut through just about anything they throw at it. I don’t own one of these blenders and I don’t have any experience with them, but they’ve got me convinced that they’re probably the best blenders around. In fact, I’ve never seen an ad on TV for one or one on a store shelf, but Blendtec is a brand that stuck for me several years ago entirely becaused of their web-based marketing efforts. The Will it Blend YouTube video series and website of the same name allowed them to share videos based around the simple idea of blending basically anything in their blenders. It’s like a late night TV ad gone awry… but it works.
The company was relatively early to the game. They came up with a good idea and have stayed focused on content updates to Will it Blend? since 2006. The concept was good and even though the videos are distributed entirely on YouTube, they have a solid reputation. To be fair, I have no idea what kind of conversion rate they have from people that watch the videos to people that actually buy the product, but what can’t be denied is that they’ve built strong brand recognition with hardly any money spent. As of writing this, they have 213,124 subscribers on their YouTube channel and videos with views from hundreds of thousands to millions on some of their videos. That’s quite an audience and lots of eyeballs all because of a simple concept. Too often, people get caught up concerning themselves with doing something that’s too tech heavy for an Internet-based marketing campaign or just too much of a traditional advertising model. Companies also try too hard to be one of the cool kids and say “me too”, but everyone sees right through those supposed “viral” productions.
Blendtec Home
The keys for a good web-based marketing effort seem to be the following:
1) Keep it Simple. The KISS principle is almost always the best thing to keep in mind when doing anything. It also helps to keep your costs low. It’s easy to over-complicate a good idea or a good product. Apple has proven that having a simple product focused on solving one specific problem can have a much better impact than something trying to do it all. The Will it Blend videos never try to do too much and you shouldn’t either. Three steps is all they needed for success. 1. Show blender. 2. Show something go into blender. 3. Show dust come out.
2) Rinse and Repeat as needed. It’s just like the instructions on a bottle of shampoo. Once you have a good concept, don’t do it once and stop. That’s like starting a corporate blog and posting once. Sequels happen for a reason and once you have something people are responding to, you shouldn’t stop. It’s also important to listen to your audience. When you’ve jumped the shark, you’ll know it and you may want to try something different.
3) Be unexpected. The “Will it Blend?” series would not have gotten as much attention if they had just blended food. Not everyone needs to do something completely ridiculous like this, but taking steps to stand out from the crowd is important. Almost everyone has a competitor in one form or another and having a differentiating factor is important. However, having one that wouldn’t be expected is even better.
Will you be able to blend these three principles together into a successful web-based marketing effort?
Rollerhome Spots
On The Web
My friend Lawrence and I finally launched the Spots feature on Rollerhome.com. There’s surely some bugs that’ll still need fixing, but for the time being it works fairly well and I’m enjoying using it.
Why Spots?
Where Do You Want To Skate?
Spots is a feature that really makes Rollerhome.com the complete destination for everything Rolling related online. You can now meet new people in your area via the forums and profiles, find that perfect skate spot and plan a session with your friends. There’s still a lot of fun things we could add in to make it even easier, but since Law’s busy raising a youngster and working and I’m broke and trying to find a job or an actual income, it does make spending a whole lot of time on these things a little challenging.
Hopefully, with Spots going live we’ll see an increase in traffic that might justify doing some ads or partnering with various companies for advertising deals. Obviously there are a lot of other sites out there with a similar goal or feature, but competition just means that people want this and we’re hoping our delivery and ease of use bring in the users…
My Comcastic Experience
Comcast and their @comcastcares reps on Twitter have been mentioned as being one of the more progressive at dealing with customer service. Now more and more businesses have embraced social media sites including Twitter. This is a little of my recent Comcastic experience.
Comcast image courtesy of dmuth on Flickr
I’ve been a happy Comcast Internet subscriber for some time now, but over the last couple of weeks that faithfulness was challenged. It all started when I suddenly began experiencing extremely slow and unpredictable Internet access. I figured I’d reboot the modem and router to see if that would help and started doing ping tests on my router when it did not. I found that I was experiencing packet loss of up to 70% at the worst times! I was about to dial up Comcast but didn’t have much time to be kept on hold and wanted a quick reaction. I’ve heard of success stories with @comcastcares, so I figured I’d send out a tweet… I quickly heard back from another Comcast associate on Twitter and he only really said that they’d need to send out a tech. I figured this meant they were taking care of it and acknowledged it was an issue on their side since I didn’t hear anything else further and the next day I once again had decent Internet access.
Of course, the better service didn’t last long. I called Comcast and set up a time for a tech to visit. What was interesting here was that when I mentioned that I asked @comcastcares on Twitter, they didn’t seem to know what I was talking about and said my account didn’t have any notes on it. They couldn’t schedule a tech to come out till Tuesday and I agreed. Tuesday came around and everything was working again so I canceled my appointment. Once again, Tuesday night came around and the net was useless.
I did a little more research and found that I should check out my Cable modem’s Status and Signal on my local network at 192.168.100.1. I found that I was getting low signal levels of < 27db at times and that these levels should be at least 30-35db. A more reasonable signal is anything about 35db apparently. Of course I dialed Comcast which led to a brief hold time and my insistence that the problem was not on my side. The representatives I worked with were all very understanding and helpful, but it’s always tough to stay calm when your connection is acting up… I scheduled another visit and a tech was out in another 2 days. He was the best Comcast tech I’ve ever had and was able to verify that the problem was at the tap. He temporarily hooked me up to a slightly better signal line at the tap and scheduled a network technician to come out and fix the issue permanently.
I guess my lesson here was learning about the signal level I should get and just to call Comcast. I was on hold for less than a few minutes and they were all very helpful. @comcastcares may be better for some quick billing inquiries or something — but I found that just calling was a lot faster and easier to have a good back and forth discussion. I still applaud Comcast in their efforts on Twitter, but it doesn’t seem to be a perfect replacement for a good old fashion phone call yet.
