I spent a good portion of last week delivering guest lectures to the “Creative Promotion in New Media” classes at Berklee. For the class, I offered up some slides which helped explain both what marketing is about along with a few examples of sites that were good, bad, or at least illustrative of the necessary understandings.
Ultimately it came down to 5 major considerations. Here they are:
1. Have a good product. No amount of brilliant marketing or scintillating design covers up a crappy song.
2. Choose a domain that’s easy to remember, and get all of the associated domains you can. .com, .net, .org, .biz, etc. Why give potential competition or posers an easy opportunity…
3. We’re visual sheep. We read top to bottom, left to right. Build your pages to follow what people are used to reading.
4. Include a statement of purpose – something that clues the visitor in and explains why they’re there.
5. Offer value. Time is precious, so why should I spend it on your site?
There’s a whole bunch of additional ideas and devices worth discussing, but these’re the top 5 that tend to get ignored and overlooked. Building from this foundation provides something solid to grow from.
A few examples of the good: Well thought layout, clear information, visually interesting…
www.wilcoworld.net
www.mypunchbowl.com
www.livingstontaylor.com
A few examples of the not-so-good: Very cool looking, but slow to load, nearly impossible to navigate…
www.lotusflow3r.com
www.jimcarrey.com
www.billyconnolly.com
For those interested, my presentation (minus my add’l commentary) is available here:
SF-MarketingPresV2…
