Wiis Here, Getcha Ice Cold Wii Here
I call my lawyer today (about B&O taxes, not for that impending insider trading lawsuit). During our small talk that I hope I won’t be billed for, he says something about Christmas would have been better if he could have found a Wii somewhere. I had heard they were sold out of all the stores in our area for at least 2 weeks, so I asked if he had tried the internet.
“I don’t trust buying over the internet.”
Are you kidding? I could have strangled him. Not because fear of buying over the internet is irrational – it is not. But because he has always impressed me as a man of reasonable intelligence and logic, yet he asked told his internet marketing client that he doesn’t trust buying over the internet. Know your audience! Lie to me for pete’s sake!
But unlike the truly irrational approach some pundits in my area have taken to the internet and all things new (duck your head in the sand and wish yourselves back to the good ol’ days), I saw this challenge as an opportunity.
So I said to my soon-to-be-former attorney, “I know – I always like buying locally, too. The best is when they have sites for me to research at home before buying online or going into the store to buy. But when I can’t buy locally, I buy online.”
“Yeah, Justin, but I’m an impulse buyer. I want to take it home with me right away.” How economically sound from a man with both law and accounting degrees. I said, “Just humor me as I do a quick search.”
Wookin’ pa Wii in all da wight pwaces
So I typed “wii” into Google and got this as the top pay-per-click result:
Immediately in the ad, two of my lawyer’s three concerns are immediately overcome.
- They’re in stock and ready to ship today!
- They should be fairly cheap, given the url of the site (lowestdeal.com).
So we clicked through and found a Wii in his price range with all the accessories needed to make his family’s season a wee bit merrier.
The Wii: Be a Better Father
Yet, he was still concerned about the Web site and whether he’d get ripped off. It wasn’t like he was buying from the online store for Target or Amazon (which are both also advertising via Google AdWords for the greatest invention since at least the polio vaccine).
Side note: I have never Wied (ski is to skiied as Wii is to Wied?), but I don’t get it. I mean adults are flipping out over this thing and buying it “for their kids” as an excuse to play at night. Whatever happened to my old college girlfriend (right)?
To reiterate, his fear about getting scammed, is very legitimate. I don’t know lowestdeal.com – it could be selling your information to Nigerian phone rooms, or it could simply be a place that gets it hands on hot (not “hot” that way, well maybe not) stuff and sells it (allegedly) fairly inexpensively. Is it the new cyber-Wal-Mart?
The only thing I do know about the site is that it knows what it’s doing with Google AdWords. The ad text is great and it’s capitalizing on a very in-demand product. They better know what they’re doing. I don’t know what they’re paying, but I’m sure advertising on “Wii” right now is costing them more per click than what it costs me to take my old girlfriend out for a spin.
I won’t get into what they could have done to allay my lawyer’s concerns here. That would be a whole separate post on reducing anxiety, an incredibly important part of getting people to submit information online whether it be for the end conversion goal of a sale or simply submitting an email.
I will say that I did pass on a couple sites to him to check credibility: bizrate.com, a fine shopping comparison site, and one of my personal favorites, badbusinessbureau.com (also called ripoffreport.com). A mixed record from this quick check: no listing in bizrate and one complaint on ripoffreport that didn’t necessarily seem all that bad. Also one complaint that I could find in Yahoo! Answers, again that may not have been completely fair to the company.
If you haven’t checked out your company on ripoffreport, do it today.
Again, no endorsement here – that site could be the future inventor of the beer-wich or it could be shipping weapons-grade plutonium and illegal immigrant cats inside a Wii console shell. Shop at your own risk, people!
$100 / Barrel Oil
Finally, related to absolutely nothing other than me wanting to brag, I took 2 cents off my dad today. We set up a bet about a year ago as to whether oil would next hit $100 or $40. I am brilliant! (I don’t count the time I said the Colts should take Ryan Leaf over Peyton Manning, or expected great things for Ronnie Paulino in 2007, or didn’t see how Goto.com – the granddaddy of paid search marketing – would be successful (ouch!!!), or…).
