Does Your Marketing Suffer From Incomplete-itis?

Does Your Online Marketing Suffer From Incomplete-itis?

My wife and I were watching TV a couple of months ago and came across a public broadcasting channel presenting a live concert from Ireland featuring Celtic Woman.  The music and singing were so amazing I actually fished out a credit card and paid a hundred bucks for a DVD of the performance.

Fast forward to October and I find out they’re playing at a resort north of Toronto in December. I go to the resort’s site to see if tickets are available and what they cost.  Bingo!  Two tickets. Sign me up. The confirmation tells me to expect my tickets in 4-6 weeks.

Last week, my wife says “Hey, why don’t you check and see if we can stay at the resort that night?”.

Great idea. Back to the site where I search for room rates to see what the price range is and what’s available. After clicking on just about every link I could find related to their hotel rooms, I find nothing. I call the resort.

Here’s the phone call in a nutshell:

Me: Hi, My wife and I have tickets for Celtic Woman in December and we were thinking of booking a room at your hotel. I couldn’t find any information on your site except a bunch of pictures and some blah blah. Do you have any rooms available? 

Hotel: Did you already book your ticket?

Me: Yup.

Hotel: Uh, oh. That’s too bad. (can you think of any time in your life when ‘uh, oh’ meant anything good?) 

Me: Why?

Hotel: Well, we have room packages. For a steal, you could have got your tickets, an overnight stay, breakfast and ….

I had to cut her off before she could tell me the package included a meet-and-greet along with an all-expenses paid trip to watch them perform at Slane Castle in Dublin.

Hello? Why wasn’t all this information available in plain view in the online copy on the website where it would have been useful? Instead I get somebody telling me how great life COULD have been if only someone at the hotel hadn’t decided to keep it a secret.

Make sure your online marketing tells your entire story. Look at your selling story through the eyes of your prospect.

The reason the hotel’s sales message was incomplete is because they have told the story so many times, they’ve gotten sloppy. They forgot that new visitors to the site don’t necessarily know how their business works.