Of all the great schools of marketing, from Penn to Johnny Paycheck, the most scandal-ridden is the Field Of Dreams School Of Marketing.
If it had a political-science department, the chair would be Karl Rove. If it had a football team, it would be coached by Rich Rodriguez and would number Reggie Bush among its recruits. Its business school would have Jeff Skilling as dean. And so on.
You do know the Field Of Dreams School Of Marketing, don’t you? If you build it, they will come? I tell you, more sins have been committed in the name of If You Build It They Will Come than even Tiger Woods can dream of.
Here’s why. In the course of If You Build It They Will Come people forget to build a meaningful way in or a way out. Sometimes they even forget why they built the thing in the first place.
It’s like constructing the Bellagio in the middle of the Bob Marshall National Wilderness Area and then thinking to yourself, “Now where did I put that casino?”
Here’s an example. A company that makes flexible tubing decides it wants a microsite to showcase its people, who are tremendous – they’re the New York Yankees, flexible-tubing division – and its products, which are splendiferous. If Tiffany made flexible tubing it would look like this.
I don’t have a problem with microsites. If you have a significant portion of your constituency roosting on the Internet a microsite is a good idea. People appreciate a place on the Internet to waste time. That’s the one thing the Internet’s lacking. (And to think the Defense Department created this whole Internet thing.)
It could be that an agency sold the company a microsite. Ad agencies like microsites more than three-martini lunches. Actually, ad agencies like selling microsites (with the optional SEO package, leather, and a sunroof) over three-martini lunches better than they like Nutella scooped out of the jar with a finger. Presumably a different finger each time.
Right. So the ad agency builds the microsite, flings open its doors, and for the longest, longest, longest time all you hear are crickets. Crickets who are not in charge of buying flexible tubing for their organization.
Wha’ happen? This: No one asked whether customers, or potential customers, want this level of interaction with a flexible-tubing maker, the flexible-tubing maker failed to create a clear connection between its main site and the microsite, and everyone forgot to think about what they wanted to ask for at the end, what sort of behavioral act they wanted this site to elicit.
In short, the flexible-tubing maker got hosed.
Let’s go through what should have been done. The tubing-maker should have asked its customers (including potential customers) how they want to interact with the company, realizing full well that nothing – nothing – beats a face-to-face sitdown. Nothing has and nothing will.
Then once it asked and got the answers, the company should resist every admonition to ignore the results and say, “Yeah, but if we build it they will come.” Because they won’t.
They have told you how they want to interact with you. Believe them. No matter how neat your idea is, it won’t sell one more piece of flexible tubing.
However, if your customers indicate they do want to interact with you via a microsite or some other piece of Internet bric-a-brac, build as many roads in as the traffic will allow and your budget will hold. If you have built a better microsite the world will not beat a path to your door. You have to create the paths – and once created, keep them open and maintained. That means ongoing everything: changing copy on the main Web site, changing content on the microsite, full SEO, links from blogs, links from LinkedIn and Facebook, the kitchen sink. In the Internet world you cannot survive on merit alone.
Finally, make sure you know beforehand what end behavior you are trying to elicit from your effort. The Targeted Application Of Common Sense says you have to get something out of the deal. Do you want a purchase, a contact name, a survey filled out, the start of a dialogue, a quote, or something else? Provide visitors a clear path out – but make it a toll road.
Now, a different example. Our church has a fall schedule and a summer schedule. The summer schedule has one service a week; the fall and winter schedule has two. Yesterday our church voted to continue the summer schedule indefinitely under the premise that one energetic service is better than two less-energetic services.
At the same time, the church has a building project on the drawing board that includes a half-court gym and new classrooms. The church expects a major increase in attendance, membership, and excitement once the addition is built. I personally know about a hundred guys who would attend church more regularly if halfcourt three-on-three games were part of the service.
In this case, if the church builds it they will come – but if the church doesn't build it, and instead makes it harder for them to come, will they come? It seems counterintuitive.
What's the difference between these two examples, outside of the fact that one building is real and one is virtual? With the church building, the payoff at the end is well-defined, and the means to that end is clear and obvious. A new building in a relatively small community is obvious; people can see it, their curiosity is piqued, they peek, they come through the door, they attend. If you build it they will come -- but only if it’s able to do its own marketing,
Listen, I never liked the movie Field of Dreams. I found it blatantly manipulative in the worst traditions of Hollywood. And I never cared much for If You Build It They Will Come as an excuse for marketing. It’s the lazy way out.
What’s the non-lazy way out? Do everything for a reason. Know the reason beforehand. Drive your audiences to a place where they can drive sales. Tammany Hall used to ply voters with rotgut, shove a dollar in their pocket, drive them to the polls, walk them up to the polling place, tell them to make their mark by the star, and after they did, shove another dollar in their pocket, walk them back to the car, and drop them off at the nearest bar.
That was not waiting for the votes to come in. That was not If You Build It They Will Come. That was reaching out to the customers. That was building something -- a political machine -- and providing a clear way in and a clear way out.
What it built made Sodom and Gomorrah look like a kiddie carnival, but for its myriad illegalities, that, my friends, was marketing.
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