Last Thursday night the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers football team had one of their biggest wins in the last 10 years. They went down and played a top 20th ranked football team in the Missouri Tigers, got their ass handed to them for 3 quarters then in the 4th quarter scored 27 unanswered points to go on to victory.
The next morning I went through Mcdonlads to grab a quick bite to eat before making a stop at my dentist. When I went through the drive though the window attendant’s first comment to me was “what an amazing game last night!”. He made a few other comments about the game (I did not watch it so I did not know anything about it) which I just agreed with until he gave me my food.
Now you have to keep in mind that in Nebraska, college football is all we have. There is no professional sports. No Pro Hockey, Baseball, Football, Basketball. Cornhusker football here is peoples reasons for living. Literally.
When I arrived at my dentists – BTW I should point out my dentist is also one of my best friends and my visit was to drop off a movie and say hi not to actually get any dentistry work done… I would not go eat a sausage mcmuffin before going to the dentist that would be just rude!.
So when I arrived at my friend Brad’s Office we talked for a few minutes about how much the economy improves in Lincoln when the Huskers have a huge win like they did. He talked about how people are much more likely to splurge money on items they otherwise might not. For example in his business the sales for elective cosmetic dentistry really goes up.
But likewise when the Huskers lose a tough game (like that lost 3 weeks ago to Virginia Tech) it drastically effects Lincoln’s economy. People cancel appointments and just dont feel like spending money.
Last night I took my wife to go see “Couples Retreat” (hilarious movie BTW, highly recommend it). Before going to the movie we went shopping to get me a winter coat. I asked the sales clerk how the sales stuff for Huskers items were and she told me they sold out of ALL of their winter inventory that had a husker logo on it earlier that day. We could not find a hat, coat, anything with a Nebraksa Cornhusker Logo. The sales clerk said it sucks for them because it was Friday and they don’t get shipments until next Tuesday.
Luckily for me I was looking for a Spyder jacket that I was able to find and not a Cornhusker one.
At the movies it was a sea of crimson red. Everyone had on a Cornhusker jacket/shirt/sweater.
After the movies I was having a conversation with a random gentleman about the cornhusker economy and he said back in the mid 90’s when Nebraska was winning championships local car dealerships used to have promotions like “Come take a test drive with the QuarterBack” which was only good for pre-approved
So what can you – Mr Affiliate Marketer, Startup Company, E-Commerce Website, etc, learn from this?
Several Things:
1) Greet your audience with something they care about – Fortunately for website owners you don’t have to wait for the 1 game in 13 years win to connect with them about something they care about (and capitalize on it). There are some great plugins and javascript (search for socialble.js) out there to tell if your user has been to certain sites and then greet them accordingly (welcome facebook user, welcome myspace user, etc, etc).
Chitika recently introduced search referral based keyword targeting in their ad units that target users based on what they search for. The results have been dramatic for its publishers. You can test the tool out here on their page (goto the right hand side) or watch the video below to see how it works:
2) Be educated about your customers and what they love – If you own any customer facing business about Nebraska and do not know much about the Huskers then its going to cost you big time. This is also true about your website and the people who visit it.
What are they into?
You can send them a survey directly or a much more non intrusive approach is to add a simple feedback tab to your site. The get satisfaction one is pretty slick.
This will tell you what your users like/dislike which will greatly improve overall ROI as you learn their mind set.
3) Be prepared for any outcome – Just like how my local Dept store got caught with their pants down with zero inventory and super high demand for a limited time for Husker merchandise, you also are susceptible to volatile fluctuations in web traffic that are totally out of your control.
In years past this meant you needed load balencers and tons of servers to scale which was a huge investment. But 1 day’s worth of traffic more then paid back that investment when your ship came in. In today’s world with cloud computing you can be prepared for that giant surge while but only paying for it when you need it.
Because we try not to do any local business the Cornhuskers winning or losing really does not effect me. But its not hard to see the parallels in things we do and still get value in learning from them.
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October 18, 2009 at 11:17 am
Ironically enough I have a good relationship with my dentist as well (sorry a little off-topic but this is the fisrtt time i’ve found someone else that does)
October 14, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Cool lesson using a real-life scenario. You’ve come a long way, Shoe….from previously being a sports & sportscenter junkie, to no longer watching the Huskers!
October 14, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I think that you are absolutely right. Greeting a customer with something they are interested in is a great way to get them to let their guard down. Relating to them in someway helps get them to like and trust you. I need to get out to see “Couples Retreat” it looks hilarious!
October 14, 2009 at 7:58 am
I’m totally with you on this effect. I got my undergrad at Penn State University, very similar to Nebraska in terms of football culture. Whether they win or lose on Saturday really determines how good the parties are that night, how much energy Sunday’s have, and what the mood is like the rest of the week.
October 14, 2009 at 5:15 am
Well, I basically agree with all three points and believe that you make it really simple for your readers to understand that kinda direction they need to follow. But I would just add that you are amazing storyteller & I enjoyed your story, flow, interpretations & all very much.
Its the simply sexy post, man!
October 14, 2009 at 1:07 am
GO HUSKERS. Some of my best friends in high school were Huskers. The Mocketts. Great people. Dr. Mockett, rest his soul, was hardcore. I am a Trojan, through and through, class of 84, and I love college football. I watched that game. It was AWESOME. Huskers are on the right road.
Also, funny, my dentist is my old college roommate.
Great site Shoe. I’m learning a lot and applying slower than I’d like.
I want to get a shirt in for a Friday.
October 13, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Thanks for the tip man. I figured this was the case, i’ve been testing it myself since I sell some products in the sports market.
October 13, 2009 at 11:59 am
Hey now – Nebraskan here – we have the Lincoln Salt Dogs Baseball and the Lincoln Stars Hockey too! (semi pro – but it’s something!) Omaha has the Royals? and The Lancer hockey team too!
October 13, 2009 at 7:34 am
Same thing is true for Iowa. No professional teams there. When Iowa and Iowa State win games its a big deal.
October 13, 2009 at 7:19 am
Now I know why owning a local biz in Minnesota would not be successful…
…except for maybe an Origami shop. Our teams always seem to fold quickly when the pressure is on!
October 13, 2009 at 5:46 am
well a lesson learned Shoe!
October 13, 2009 at 2:52 am
I never knew there was such a mad craze for college football, sigh there is no big team in there.
October 13, 2009 at 1:52 am
Giving customers what they want, is a concept that we all struggle with. Using something familiar (as you’ve shown with the Cornhuskers) is a brilliant way to connect with people.
Thanks for the tip!
October 13, 2009 at 1:49 am
I love how you’ve taken something from everyday life (the Cornhuskers) and shown how the principles behind it can be applied to business in general.
It’s given me a whole host of ideas to work on for my new site.
Thanks Jeremy!
October 13, 2009 at 1:31 am
I liked it. So much useful material. I read with great interest.
October 12, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Great article. Reminds me of the saying “football is religion”, and when we played football against a team from Nebraska, and they were HUGE.
October 12, 2009 at 10:52 pm
It’s good advice that has been proven to work.
October 12, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I have seen the same thing in Columbus Ohio when the Buckeyes win vs when they lose. The town goes into a couple days/weeks slump after a lose.
October 12, 2009 at 8:29 pm
i have heard a lot about chitika and i may try it some day
October 12, 2009 at 5:28 pm
The video is going over your right sidebar, and it should be “affect” not “effect”. But apart from that, right on.
October 12, 2009 at 4:58 pm
You can check twitter’s trending topics for sports and teams that are hot.
I tried to use that method for awhile to sell team jerseys, caps and collectables, but ended up a waste of time.
October 12, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Jeremy, I love how you use real life examples in your blog posts, like this one and the one about Sea World. It’s very easy to relate to, and it makes it easier for us to understand how we can use the same principles in our online businesses. Thanks a ton! Keep em’ coming!
October 12, 2009 at 11:53 am
OH YA, I just remembered a story I heard years ago. Tiger Woods came on the scene in 1997 and then dominated in the 2000 and 2001 seasons.
There seemed to be a direct correlation to the rise of a Monday stock market the day after Tiger won a golf event. It was an amazing stat.
October 12, 2009 at 11:50 am
There is a lot of money to be made in the sports niche as many people live for the games and can’t wait to get through the week just to be able to watch the next game. I think it is a huge and relatively untapped niche in many markets where someone could make money with even polls or surveys about teams.
October 12, 2009 at 11:47 am
Guess what, I’m one of those Husker nuts and pretty much didn’t notice what you wrote on this post except for the fact that the Huskers are awesome and Thursday night was a great night for me.
Oh ya, good post on the whole feeding what your users want to hear about.
October 12, 2009 at 11:24 am
Shoe – this is one of the more useful posts lately. I see Chitika starting to pop up all over the place. I’ll have to dedicate a day to checking it out.
It just occurred to me that these new FTC rules are going help me, because I’m simply going to ask my readers – outright – to buy stuff from my blog. Actively!
October 12, 2009 at 11:01 am
dude…..you use IE6????????? I don’t doubt Chitika is a good service…but really, next time you make a screen capture for an ad for this company, ditch IE6…it makes your video look old fashioned.
October 12, 2009 at 11:59 am
The video is made by Chitika, dindong, not me
October 12, 2009 at 10:58 am
I wonder if this is because people bet on the home team, and when the team loses, they lose their money? On the other hand, if the team wins, they have some extra cash to go spend…
October 12, 2009 at 9:22 am
Hmmm….I was going to skip Couples Retreat after the poor reviews. I’ll probably still just Netflix it. At least I know it’s rental worthy now
October 12, 2009 at 8:38 am
And how about a Tip #4: Choose your cheerleaders wisely!
October 12, 2009 at 7:16 am
super blog//////
thanks for the post!