I was driving in Palo Alto / Menlo Park today, and spotted a funny sign in the window of a Mattress Discounters store. It was large, plain-text sign that said "We ship to Lake Tahoe" - at a very busy intersection on El Camino. Hmm... What does that say about the neighborhood market demographics? "We have tons of customers with second homes in Lake Tahoe who are shopping for beds. Advertising especially to them is the best way to increase our sales."
Or maybe the point is something else... if they ship to Lake Tahoe, they'll probably ship anywhere between Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe, or anywhere just as far as Lake Tahoe. Or maybe they ONLY ship to Lake Tahoe, so don't even bother asking if they ship anywhere else!
Enquiring minds want to know, so I went to this website to find out... Not helpful... apparently, they don't have a store in Palo Alto... or Menlo Park... or even CALIFORNIA! The directory came up empty. Or else the database is broken. Thinking there might be more than one chain of the same name, I Googled it. This led me to Yelp, and a review from jc c that said: "DO NOT SHOP HERE, unless you are feeling especially masochistic. You will 1. Deal with slimy salesfolks 2. Pay too much 3. Have poor service. If I could give 20 negative stars, I would."
I wonder if the sign caught anyone's attention besides mine. Probably not... but it only takes one, and then you have a blog post, and it is probably going to automatically get posted on my Facebook page, and I'll bet somebody there tweets about it. If it wasn't for the intriguiging, oddball sign, I would have never looked them up, and would have never seen the Yelp review.
This demonstrates why companies need to monitor their online reputation diligently. Somebody please tell Mattress Discounters that they really need some marketing/web help. I'd be happy to provide a consultation.
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