The Nebraska Cornhusker Economy (and what you can learn from it)

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.