Discover Disney: Decoy Marketing?

NeuroMarketing is the newest and most advanced form of marketing available today. It has taken large businesses over 20+ years to accept the merge of science and marketing; and with this new merge, businesses are capable of targeting more engaged audiences.

 

Walt Disney is a World Wide name and well known brand. My recent interest towards visiting Disney this month gave me a surprise. Many of you know that from January to June every year Disney runs a special for Florida Residents called the 'Discover Disney' Ticket. The ticket is always available the beginning of January and expires in June when season begins. However, this year their marketing campaign showed they were running off of a NeuroMarketing tip.

 

Last year, in January 2012, Discover Disney was released to Florida Residents with two different ticket offers:

(1) 3-Day Pass: $99

(2) 4-Day Pass: $129

This year, Discover Disney was released again, however the pricing was different:

(1) 3-Day Pass: $119

(2) 4-Day Pass: $129

Although the pricing for the 4-Day pass stayed the same, the price for the 3-Day pass increased by $20. This approach is called 'Decoy Marketing'. They did not change the price of the second ticket, but, by increasing the price of the 1st option by $20 they made the option of the 4-Day ticket seem like a better buy. So by increasing the price of the first option (3-Day Pass) resulted in the increase of sales of the second option (4-Day Pass). By creating this 'Better Buy' idea to its targeted audience, more 4-Day passes were sold thus driving more money, sales, and an extended stay for these buyers. So it was an all around WIN for Disney with this new pricing.

 

Decoy Marketing can be a very powerful tool in marketing products as you can see with this example. To learn more about this technique, check out this link to Roger Dooley's 'Brainfluence' Blog about Decoy Marketing.

Enhanced Campaigns: What We've Noticed Thus Far

It has been a couple months since we've had the ability to upgrade existing campaigns to the new Google AdWords enhanced campaigns and have been able to experiment and make observations of the changes. While the new structure may have a positive impact for some advertisers (i.e. increased CTRs and Conversion Rates), we haven't noticed significant improvement just yet. In fact, some accounts have remained performing the same and in others there were some issues. In one of our client's account, we noticed that the company's actual phone number was being displayed on their ad instead of the Google Forwarding number (which was the setting selected). Also, the account was reaching it's daily budget a lot quicker than before.  We also had to check across accounts to make sure sitelinks were shortened as characters have decreased from 35 to 25. Overall, the enhanced campaigns do help manage accounts more simply while saving time.



What have you noticed? Please share. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

 

-Sara Ayala

Turning Clicks Into Customers

Having had experience as both a business owner using Google Adwords and as an account manager of it, I have seen both sides of how it can work or not work for my customers. I owned an office automation company where we serviced and sold printers, copiers, faxes and supplies. We depended heavily on our Adwords campaigns. With offices in Los Angeles and Miami, our call center was in Fort Lauderdale and we found out very quickly how important it was to man the phones. Most of the calls that came in were customers who were down and needed quick response times, and our ads boasted "Same Day Service" so it was imperative for us to answer the calls quickly and transmit them to our techs in the field. Adwords could always bring us the leads, but it was up to us to turn those leads into customers.

I have clients today that complain about low conversion rates and I know from firsthand experience that it is hard work to turn that click into a real live customer. There are a lot of variables involved in the process things like: 

How expensive is the proposition?  It’s a lot easier to sell a $2.99 car air freshener than it is to sell a $4,000.00 plastic surgery procedure. 

How are you converting those leads? 

How is the potential customer contacting you? By email, phone call, or is the customer filling out a contact form on your website? However the contact happens, it is very important to follow up in a timely manner. 

These are all things to be considered when setting up your website and ad campaigns.  Make it as easy as possible for the customer! In most cases, the searchers are doing research about a certain product or procedure and they are not just looking at you they are also looking at your competitors.  Once they contact you, quick response and good customer service can go a long way to turning that click into a new customer.

Social Media Checklist for Business

Social Media is a very powerful marketing platform for any business, but how do you know what to do? The typical business owner ask the same questions when social media is recommended for them. How do I blog? How many tweets do I send? What should I do on Facebook? What about LinkedIn? 

This is a very simple social media checklist to help any business owner with what they should be doing at minimum for these different platforms. 

Blog Post:

• Write 3 new blog post a week
• Have 3 targeted keywords that you include in every blog post
• Share the blog post link on:
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google +

Facebook:

• Find and Like 5 new pages a week
• Update company page status daily
• Post about 2 interesting topics related to your business
• Ask people to comment, like or share post

Twitter:

• Re-tweet 2 interesting tweets a day
• Follow 10 new people a week
• Send at least 3 new tweets daily
• Business related
• Promotional
• Fun & Interesting
• Circulating the blog post

LinkedIn:

• Update Company profile and status
• Connect with 3 – 5 new people per week
• Ask for 1 -2 recommendations per week
• Follow 3 new companies

Google + :

• Add 5 new people to your circle a week
• Offer a Google + Hangout session for a related topic in your industry
• Share content at least twice a day to your personal Google + profile and company page
• Host a monthly Google + hangout for a topic your industry

Pinterest:

• Each month, post product images and examples of our work from our company website as pins leading back to the site
• Follow 5 new interesting and inspiring pin boards each week from other users related to our field
• Add 1 new board that contains at least 6 new pins each week

YouTube:

• Find 3 new videos each week to share on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +
• Plan a video that showcases an area of our businesses expertise
• Have video capability at special events our business hosts or attends each month. Ask for brief interviews to post to YouTube.

This checklist should be used as a guide to help any business owner with their social media platform. These are the typical minimum requirements necessary to perform properly and see results. 

Rock of Ages, Google Play, and My Samsung Galaxy Note II

I am 37 years old now. I remember 1987 quite well, but I was in middle school. It was a very different world back then. I am pretty sure I liked Michael Jackson and Pop music at the time. Today, I am very much a contemporary country music fan.

Rock of Ages filmed 2 years ago right around the block from my office at a facility I knew as "The Edge" (later to be The Chili Pepper... Now I think it is called the Green Room). I was interested in the movie when it was released. The reviews were bad and I swear I didn't know anyone that saw it and knew how good it really was - so I didn't see it in the theaters.

Since it came out on HBO, I have seen the movie 5-6 times. It is the movie that every time it is on, I can watch it. Tom Cruise as the 80s Rocker? Love it! Alec Baldwin singing? Love it! Amazing 80s music - the reason to watch the movie!

This morning I really wanted to listen to the soundtrack. I have been too busy to buy it on ITunes and transfer it to my Ipod, so I tried buying it on my Note II through the Google Play store. I was impressed in every way and got to listen to it all morning (and now playing in the background on my PC).

Screenshot from this morning a few minutes after I decided I had to have it:

I noticed one comment on Google Play that said Rock of Ages is like the Grease of our generation. I am good with that. This is an amazing movie. It is a guilty pleasure. If you are between 50 and 32, this is a movie that you have to see.