There’s a right and a wrong way to do business in the new world order. The wrong way would be to treat your customers as criminals. Assume they’re going to screw you over and do everything in your power to screw them first. Witness the RIAA and their constituent companies. Sue your customers, include software on your CDs designed to take over their computers, and even after you’re busted, demonstrate you think they’re too stupid to care.
The internet doesn’t allow for that sort of behavior. Good news spreads too quickly, and bad news even faster. At one point the movie industry was considering trying to stop people from text messaging their friends and telling them not to see horrible movies. Did it never occur to the industry maybe they should stop trying to repackage crappola and hope people wouldn’t notice?
The truly great will get noticed. Your customers want to advertise, if only you had something worth advertising. It’s something Bob Lefsetz is constantly harping on and I think he’s spot on. (Of course, he also sometimes contradicts himself — first the “long tail” is where it’s at, then it’s about more than the long tail. I’m not entirely sure I ever fully understand what he’s saying, but I usually enjoy the journey anyway).
Take campus111.com, for example. When looking at different bluetooth headsets a while back I found one I liked a lot. It seemed to be just what I needed, but the price most places wasn’t great at all. You’d find it for $120 at BestBuy, but looking around online I found a few places with it for as low as $50. I had tried a previous bluetooth headset and eventually sold it off to a friend, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to waste another $50 to find out I still didn’t like using a wireless headset.
Then I found campus111.com — or more specifically, I found the price of the h700 on the site. Even including their expensive shipping, it was less than a quarter of the cost of best buy. For that price, I could afford to give bluetooth another try. I was a little hesitant to order from a site that might as well have had “cheap asian knockoff” written all over it in giant flashing letters, but I decided to go for it.
I got what I ordered, it shipped very quickly, and though not in retail packaging (probably factory reconditioned, but I couldn’t tell if so, it looked brand new) was exactly what I needed. Since then, I’ve recommended the headset and website to anyone who’s asked and I know at least 7 people that have ordered that product from that website because I recommended it. Who’d have thought that such a lame name like campus111 would be a good website name? Well, half the people I recommended it to I didn’t even email or have them write it down. Funny how having a catchy name isn’t half so important for that as having a simple, straightforward one.
Further proving the point that they are actually trying to win their customers over, I got two letters in the mail today from Hong Kong. Not knowing anyone in Hong Kong right now, I was a little confused, but they had the right address, even spelling my last name right. The lumpy envelope was a little odd, and what was inside was almost as strange as the bright pink stationary the envelope and letter were printed on. A sock. Yup, an iSock. Or rather, a cheap-asian-knockoff-i-sock. A sock along with a Merry Christmas (in very poorly phrased english) and suggestion to check out pigpony.com, a campus111.com affiliate. Pigpony? Well, it looks like they’re continuing the trend of easy to remember domain names. Make it memorable, and make it simple.
So I’m doing my part to let the cream rise to the top, and the nuts settle in the bottom. And to those 7 others who took my advice–enjoy your sock.