How we can we create more word-of-mouth for our local businesses?
I have an answer, but I want to see if you can figure it out on your own. To help you do this, I’m going to present a quick case study which will allow us to see why certain forms of advertising work better than others. My goal is for you to read this post and to come out with knowledge applicable towards improving the marketing plan of your local business.
I formed this idea after reading the post by Matt Garrett about Leonardo’s Pizza’s presence in Gainesville.
This picture is a link to Matt’s post (you can click it) and within the second paragraph, Matt presents some digital marketing strategies of Upper Crust, Burrito Brothers, and Leonardo’s Pizza. To begin this exercise, I want you to look over the following three web pages, spending as much time as you need to form an opinion about them. (please take this seriously!)
Now that you have your opinion, see how your experience compares to mine:
When I glanced over these pages, I first noticed they were covered with blurbs that looked like they came straight off the “specials of the day” chalkboards. I then clicked on the miscellaneous Facebook tabs to make sure their wasn’t anything important there and then hit the back key to continue reading this post. In other words, they were extremely boring, and I just wanted to get back to my own business.
This leaves us with the question: Why were these pages so boring?
To get the answer, lets compare these websites from above to a website I find to be much more interesting. This website is the facebook page of Burrito Brothers. (FYI, I had no intention of selling the success of my local business’s web page. Remember, this is merely a case study which I want us all to learn from).
Now, I’m guessing most of you looked at this Facebook page and didn’t find anything different about it. It has the same pictures and the same info about the soup and guacamole. Why did I find this Facebook page more interesting than the others?
You will find the answer by asking yourself, What Would Google Do?
If you read the book, the answer should come instantly. This Facebook page was successful in catching my interest because it allowed me to see the word-of-mouth of Burrito Brother’s customers and it invited me to participate in the discussion. If you can’t see what about this web page I’m talking about, click on the “discussion” tab or click here. This discussion section serves as a platform that enables its fans to create their own conversation and to, unknowingly, create positive word-of-mouth.
Isn’t it interesting to see how we can apply the perpetual words of Jeff Jarvis?
Now that you’ve made it through my case study, I hope you take the time to come up with your own idea for optimizing the word-of-mouth about your local business. Please feel free to create your own discussion below.
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Great idea to do a case study of boring “web 2.0″ websites. Too often companies get a facebook or twitter page because it’s the thing to do, and then never properly implement it.
[...] for my discussion on the use of Facebook and Twitter to drive business, I will link to the case studies I wrote about two weeks ago. In my analysis, I wrote about what I thought was a successful discussion board on the Burrito [...]