Last week I attended the 33rd meeting of our Document Management Service Providers Executive Forum in Austin. That's right, 33. And there were a number of executives there who have been in attendance at a good number of them.
On the way down on Southwest Airlines (which seems like a great airlines if you have an A-15 and a not so great airline if you are a C-57, proving that customer experience is not always directly tied to the actual service delivered), I saw an ad in the airline magazine for Tito's Handmade Vodka. The ad told the story of this little vodka company in Austin that had won awards against well-known Russian vodkas. When I got to Austin, I of course could not remember the name of the company (my wife can testify about my failures related to the names of our neighbors, much less vodkas). So I Googled "Austin Vodka" and up popped old Tito's in the number one position. I went to the web site, which was quite entertaining. To make a long story short, I used the web site to find a local liquor store and bought a couple of bottles as giveaways during my presentation.
It occurs to me that this is a good example of what marketing should be all about. A little small company in Austin used effective marketing to actually entice someone who had never even heard of them to seek out their product and make a purchase.
They used print to attract my attention -- in an environment in which many companies look down on print as an effective medium. They used story-telling within their ad to attract my attention.
They had obviously taken time to optimize their site for search -- so that even someone who had forgotten their name could find them easily.
Their web site was entertaining and fun, drawing me in further.
And their web site helped me actually make the purchase.
Nice work. The tools fit together to drive an actual outcome. Not often the case.
See also...
Where does the document channel see opportunity in 2009?
Document channel strong moving into recession
Spot survey suggests greater resiliency for DM spending moving into 2009
