Worst of Signs, Pt. 3

Same Day Appointment Sign - Calumet City

I took a picture of the sign above at a dentist’s office in my Calumet City neighborhood. (That’s in Chicago’s south suburbs, if you’re curious.) What’s wrong with this sign? On the surface, nothing. But think about the wording “Same Day Appointments” for a moment. Is this dentist so efficient that he can guarantee to look at your teeth the same day that you call? Or is business so slow that there are always open slots in the schedule?

(To be fair, I’ve never visited this office, so I can only speculate about any specifics about the business and it’s success.)
Speaking of slots, The next sign is a doozy.
Slots Sign - Calumet City
This photo is from a bar, also in my neighborhood.

The bar changed the sign after about a week. Must not have worked as well as they thought…

Either that or the slots really do pay out too much and they started losing more money than they made in drinks…

In which case the lead generation method really was brilliant. The lifetime customer value was just too low or the owners were too short-sighted.

Like the dentist’s office, I’ve never been inside this bar, so I’m speculating again.

A few people told me I took the whole thing too seriously; the sign is probably just a joke. And maybe they’re right. (I could just walk down to the bar and ask the owner.)

But even so, marketers have to be careful; if customers feel misled, they’re not going to be happy.

That’s one of the reasons humor is risky in marketing.

What do you think?

Don’t miss these related posts (with pictures from my neighborhood!):

It Was the Best of Signs, It Was the Worst of Signs

Worst of Signs, Pt.2

Small Restaurant, Big Lesson

Pork Chops and Big Promises

GoDaddy’s Super Bowl Ads Poured at Least $4 Million Down the Toilet

Advertising during the Super Bowl, GoDaddy “spent at least $660 on each new customer… to get what they hope to add up to $54.30 each by 2015.

In his Copywriter’s Roundtable today, John Forde wrote:

You remember, I’m sure, that I joined the legions that trashed one of the “GoDaddy” Super Bowl ads.

You know the one, where a computer nerd sucks face with supermodel Bar Refaeli to prove something or other. I hated it. And so did a lot of people.

I praised GoDaddy’s other ad, where an international cabal of disenchanted wives and girlfriends chided their men for not acting on the online ideas that might have made them rich.

This, I thought, communicated the promise.

But ultimately, of course, you’ll also remember that the big question about ALL the ads was whether it was “worth it.”

Well, at least with GoDaddy, now we have some data.

As many wrote in to tell me, it turns out that the day after the Super Bowl, GoDaddy’s new customer sign ups went through the roof.

In a single day, they added approximately 10,000 new customers. That certainly sounds like a coup, yes?

But is it time for me to grab the ketchup and my crow-eating utensils? Maybe not yet.

The folks over at Yahoo Finance did some math. Considering typical domain renewals and other factors, the estimated lifetime value per customer works out to about $54.30.

That means those new Monday sign ups are worth about $540,000 over the next couple years. (Again, an estimate, but a fair one.)

Thing is, each 30-second commercial — not counting any production costs or post-commercial mouthwash for Ms. Refaeli — cost them $3.75 million.

So, to get $540,000 in lifetime value out of those first 10,000 customers… they spent $7.5 million.

Looking at it another way, GoDaddy spent has already spent at least $660 on each new customer… to get what they hope to add up to $54.30 each by 2015.

So, asks Yahoo Finance, what if the smooch-heard-round-the-world lingers a bit longer, with the media coverage and all?

Even if the net result is another 50,000 new customers from the two ads, the same lifetime value puts the cost per new customer at $150.

$150 to get $54.30 in return still isn’t a great deal, any way you slice it. For GoDaddy, that would still add up to a $4.7 million loss.

But hey, at least the actor got to make out with what might be considered a super-babe on national TV, right?

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I highly recommend that you visit John’s website at http://copywritersroundtable.com.

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