Brand Experience Misalignment

I just received my weekly email from Home Depot and after a recent retail visit, it became very clear that the retail experience and the online experience are misaligned.

The retail experience, while vastly improved from the 90s, is still very much contractor-grade. Maybe it's the bright orange color, but I always feel I should be wearing my tool belt when I visit my local store. I prefer the Lowes experience. Not because the product, availability, or assistance is superior, but because it is more friendly.

Depot's email is much more design sensitive and approachable than their retail. The experience is more engaging but also less garish with color usage. No bright, handwritten signs using a fat, felt-tipped marker. It speaks about environmental issues and promotional products in a soft-sell approach. Totally different.

The email communication is "Come and shop Home Depot because we care about the consumer and their needs". If the email is successful, the consumer arrives at the storefront and, beginning at the front entrance, it screams - "Welcome contractors". Kind of like telling my kids we're going to Toys R Us and then arriving at Kmart.

As Depot's readership and email subscriptions increase, they will need to consider the experience gap because the communications are not consistent. My two cents, risk alienating the contractors for a slightly more friendly retail experience. Something to take away for any email campaign and marketing program.

Fort Thomas Jewelers Launched

A local jeweler, Vince Keairns of Ft. Thomas Jewelers, was looking to drive foot traffic to his store. There really wasn't a web presence so we embarked on developing a digital marketing plan that included website design, marketing, search engine optimization, and online promotions. A downloadable coupon from the website helps to drive foot traffic. We also cleaned up the brand identity and created some calling cards. Welcome Ft Thomas Jewelers to the client roster.

MSN's Live Search better than Google?

I have recently been focused on search engine optimization for a variety of my clients. I have read a tremendous amount of information, consulted friends in the business, and I am using many of the tools offered by Yahoo and Google to help monitor, measure, and adjust content to improve placement. Recently, I have been watching the traffic on several sites I manage and have noticed an increase in traffic from MSN's Live Search. This bump, in many instances, is specific to adjustments I made but have not yet been picked up by Google. Seems that MSN's robot is significantly more busy indexing the net - by days even weeks. And, interestingly enough, MSN appears to be following protocols and tactics for building natural, organic relevance. See, I do not believe in tactics and trickery that gain temporary relevance. These guys must be out on an island away from the mother ship because Microsoft NEVER follows best practices or protocols. I am impressed, though.
For instance, I have been doing a link building excercise for one of my sites over the past week. Nothing else has changed on the site to produce better relevance. But, I checked Google Analytics this morning and MSN is driving more traffic on the keywords I targeted months ago than Google and Yahoo together. Position 31 in MSN, 130 in Google. The frustrating thing is that I have submitted sitemaps, robots.txt, and other information using Google webmaster tools meant to enhance the process.
What this means to everyone is a renewed attempt to create relevant, timely results in the search engines. It appears to me that MSN is doing it right with little or minimal effort from me, no sitemap submissions or account setup. And, we all know what competition does in this market.
MSN - keep up the good work.
Google - don't take your eye off the ball.