We’ve been swamped with new clients the past several weeks and I haven’t had a chance to write much, but I HAD to share a story that both fascinates me and disgusts me at the same time.
Recently, the city of Minneapolis, MN hired a PR firm to create a website to market the city’s tap water.
Yep, you read correctly…the city wants to get more people drinking their tap water and spent $180,000 to have a PR firm set up a website. And the cost for the website alone? A mere $75,000.
Makes our companies’ prices look like chump change!
If you’d like to SEE what a website that costs almost 6 figures (and you can bet this does NOT include any monthly fees), you can check it out here: http://www.tapmpls.com/
And the article highlighting this gross overspending is here: Minneapolis Website INSANITY
What do I think of this high priced site? Well, honestly, it’s all in flash and if you’ve ever had a conversation with us, we’re not fans of flash. Not because it’s “pretty”, but because search engines can’t read it.
Why care if search engines can or can’t read your site? If you would like to show up anywhere in the search results, flash sites are your “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” They look nice, but won’t get you ranking well because Google, Yahoo, MSN…they can’t read the content to know what your site is all about.
Another problem with flash is that the site takes too long to load. Did you know you have a whopping 3-5 seconds to capture the attention of your website visitors? Poor Minneapolis will lose most of its visitors before the whole site even loads.
There’s also no way for the city to follow up with anyone that comes to the site. I would love to have seen them gather names and emails so they could promote city events or even just send out alerts when they have new videos up on the site.
I do think they’re doing well with the videos. Yes, some are cheesy, but at least someone was thinking about how important online video has become.
What lessons can you take from Minneapolis’ expensive online venture to promote tap water?
1. Don’t overspend on your website. This may seem odd coming from a company that “sells” websites and website related services, but even if you only spend $100 on a website, if it doesn’t make you any money, that $100 was overspending. Instead, spend your money on an online marketing system that can will make your phone ring and bring more people into your storefront.
2. Avoid “shiny object” syndrome. Recently, grocery chain Food Lion had some commercials showing people shopping in stores that were drawn to objects just because they were shiny and flashy. While the Food Lion brand offered comparable quality at lower prices…just in less flashy packaging. Flash websites look nice, but tend to get lost on the 10th page of Google, unless the owners spend lots of time and money on off-site optimization.
3. Follow up every chance you get. If your marketing has worked well enough that you have people coming to your site, it only seems appropriate to try to collect their contact information so you can continue to market to them after they leave.
4. Video is hot and only getting hotter. Online video is growing and any way you can incorporate it into your online marketing, do it. 
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Minneapolis, if you’re listening, I think you’ve overspent on your website, but we’d be glad to do a free consultation on how you could have saved tens of thousands of dollars and gotten a marketing system, not just a fancy website.
