I recently went on the backstage tour at Disney World and learned some top secret Disney information that can help you with your online marketing!
Here is a quick review and recap of the tour before we begin: Six hour tour, $75 per person lunch included, lots of cool and interesting facts, it was cool to see all the backstage storage and employee areas, the efficiency is beyond amazing, and I saw 2 characters without their heads!
So Joe, how does any of this relate to my online marketing efforts?
I am so glad you asked!
Within the first hour of the tour our guide filled us in on how Disney makes all their decisions within the park regarding attractions, construction, and pretty much anything else that people see while they are in any park. The four things they evaluate, and this is in order of importance: Safety, Courtesy, Show, and Efficiency.
It was funny how my brain immediately related this into internet marketing. After thinking about each of these four evaluated areas here is how I interpreted into a successful web presence.
1) Safety- Most people’s focus on, once their site is “up,” getting traffic. Now obviously traffic is a critical component of your site, but when your site is not ready to convert visitors into anything that is going to benefit them or yourself, what good is traffic? It is important to aim at increasing traffic when it is safe to do so. Don’t waste all your ammo on setting up an amazing launch if you haven’t spent some time testing out conversions and what calls to action are going to be most effective. Do some upfront research on your industry and competitors to determine what will be most effective, then you can set up a safe, successful, profitable launch of your site.
2) Courtesy- How generous are you with information? Are you accessible to your followers? Is everything you blog about and have on your pages a blatant sales pitch? As a business marketing online, it is important to communicate and respond to your audience as quick as you can. More importantly, be courteous enough not to see every engagement as a sales opportunity. People enjoy and appreciate communication without solicitation, it builds confidence and a comfortable dependency on the easy access to your knowledge.
3) Show- This is really the “sales pitch” of your product. How well is it viewed? Is your pitch enticing and does it draw your audience into wanting to learn more about how your product or service can help them? If they aren’t ready to make a purchase today is there any kind of freebie or trial version they can take advantage of? It is the user engagement with not only your sales pages, but your site as a whole which is the “show.”
4) Efficiency- This is more of a backend necessity. You really don’t want to be scrambling daily or weekly to manage comments, sales, and social networking. This is why a routine schedule you create for yourself is imperative. I am sure at some point in your life you made a list of things to do and found it to be significantly more productive.
So there it is! You now know how Disney operates and how you can apply it to your internet marketing.
Let us know of an interesting situation you have been in that you found yourself relating back to the internet.