Recently I saw a newspaper ad placed by one of our clients, and I noticed they had not included the URL (some people spell it out, others of us say, “Earl”) for their web site. I called and reminded them that they should always include their URL in ads, and practically everywhere else.
It reminded me of an experience I had a couple of years ago at a Wisconsin Economic Development Association conference I was attending. I was visiting with a group of WEDA members, and a gentleman walked up, looked at me and said, “URL, URL, everywhere URL.” I couldn’t help but smile. Five years earlier, I had given a presentation for members of the Association of University Related Research Parks (AURRP) on marketing their respective web sites. I talked about several strategies, including optimizing their web sites for Search Engines. The only PPC player was goto.com, the predecessor to Overture, now known as Yahoo Sponsored Search. And Google Adwords was only a rumor. I told them that everywhere your logo goes, your URL should go as well. If you have a fleet of vehicles, it should go on the doors, or as a decal in the back window. Use it on your letter head, business cards, email signature, bill boards, signs, water towers, and every ad (including radio and TV) you place.
I finished that presentation by telling the audience if they only remembered one thing from my talk, it should be “URL, URL, everywhere URL.”
It was true over seven years ago, and it is true today. When you think advertising, think, “URL, URL, everywhere URL.”