Community Connections Marketing has created a website called Orlando Canine Connectionswhich is for dog lovers in Central Florida. It lists dog related events, product reviews, resources, etc. We will be implementing several new initiatives over the next few months including spotlighting local businesses via a video interview. The idea to help out locally run pet related business. I am only going to interview businesses that get the Mali dog stamp of approval meaning that my dog would frequent the establishment. I have done a fair amount of research on the types of business that I want to approach and decided on the first one several weeks ago.
I sent an email to their main email address and waited. It took about a week before they responded, which I thought was rather strange given that I respond to email inquiries within a few hours. That should have been my first clue. In any case, we setup a day this week for me to come to the facility take photos and conduct the interview. When I got there, the owner was there and immediately said ‘I have to approve all photos before they are used’. That always strikes me as a bit odd when someone is so worried about me taking photos of their business. What are they trying to hide? However, I agreed that he would be able to see all the photos before they were posted.
We chatted a little longer with him asking me questions about Orlando Canine Connections and what my relationship was with another pet related media company (another odd line of questioning). He then proceeded to tell me how he doesn’t need any additional exposure, his website is ‘under construction’ and he does no advertising / social media / etc. Basically he has no internet presence, nor does he want any. He is doing great without exposure via the internet and he doesn’t want to deal with people who find businesses via the internet because they are cheap. When he does have a website, it ‘won’t be for people who spend all day on the internet, it will be for regular people’. These are his words, not mine.
At this point, I knew that this was not the business for my website however I thought I’d do the interview anyway. Apparently he had not read my email where I said it was a video interview and when he realized that is was, he said he would never allow a video interview unless he was able to approve ‘every single piece of footage’. He said he would interested in a written interview. I stood up, shook his hand, and thanked him for his time. I explained to him that my whole work is digital marketing so I am not interested in doing anything other than a video interview.
Here is a business that is missing a HUGE opportunity to market to their key customers and potential customers via the web, but he just doesn’t get it. He thinks word of mouth advertising is all he needs. Unfortunately for him, we live in a world where ‘regular’ people are on the web all day long and make buying decisions based on information from the internet. I had not heard a business say they didn’t want to be on the internet in probably 10 years! I have lots of businesses say they want to be on the internet and don’t know what to do, but NONE that say they don’t want to be on the internet. Amazing to me that business owners still feel this way.
