Dopp Juice Archive

I commute to work on the MUNI (San Francisco’s municipal transit) and the BART (the bay area’s rapid transit), which means I see all the train station billboard ads. I have to admit, of all the ads I see in a day, these tend to be the best. And here’s a trend I’m seeing on the more successful ones: they include a new web address that starts with an action.

For example…

• http://www.letsmeetatstarbucks.com
• http://www.goruneasy.com (or http://www.cravethepain.com )
• http://www.showmeriskier.com (or http://www.showmesexier.com or http://www.showmecrazier.com or a whole slew of others)

And the common threads…

• With the exception of the first one on this list, you can’t always tell exactly what company is being advertised by looking at the URL.
• The website is interactive and community-oriented.
• The website is NOT the official company website.

And what are the benefits of this for the company?

• There’s a good chance all the noun-based URLs they’d want to use are taken. Verbs are the next frontier.
• By sending people to a campaign-specific website, they can monitor their campaign’s site traffic ROI without any confusion.
• They’re being hip and sexy. Not everyone’s caught on to this strategy yet. The curious are going to check it out.

And what does this mean for the rest of us?

• It’s okay to start using actions in your URLs. Starbucks is doing it. People will get it now.
• Domain name opportunists may want to start looking into likely action-based URLs related to big companies. I misremembered “letsmeetatstarbucks” and instead tried meetmeatstarbucks.com . It took me to http://www.bixbymusic.com. Nice work, guys.
• Billboard-to-web community-oriented marketing is being adapted with high visibility. Web 2.0 marketers, raise your rates!

Useful…

“People commit to a sale for three reasons, in this order: The first is chemistry — they have to like you. The second is your ability to solve their problem. The third is price.”

— Our Director of Strategy

Entertaining…

One of our clients turned to me at lunch and said, “You’re probably too young to remember the animated GIF, aren’t you?”

Chris Heuer recently blogged about a nifty idea — help me spread it around!He’s talking about a sales and marketing plan for people who are trying to sell software, conference tickets, or really anything else that has value to a broad spectrum of economic statuses (sidenote: I really want to say stati instead of statuses — would you still love me if i did?). Basically, the suggestion is to create a sponsorship program. For every software license you sell to a corporation, you give a free one to a nonprofit. For every successful businessman who buys a ticket to your conference, you give a free one to an independent artist or college student. The folks with the money could even choose their buddy recipient from a list of candidates. The benefits are clear:

• The word and experience of your product spreads to a bigger audience (also remember: the underfunded demographic is sometimes the more creative and influential demographic).
• As Chris points out, “some non-profits who really want the software in question would become evangelists, trying to find others who would also benefit from the software.”
• You’re doing a service to the have-nots, which is noble in and of itself, and is also a selling point for your company’s public identity.

Tell a CEO about this strategy today!