Golf Gift Cards

Over Christmas I was surprised on how many gift cards I received and how many I saw for sale. Supermarkets in our area, King Soopers and Safeway, both had a wall full of gift cards for sale for a variety of places, but they were mostly restaurants.

We got Visa gift cards for our daughters so they could choose some of their own gifts. This was in addition to our other gifts. It cost $5 each for the privilege of the card but it allowed them to be able to buy songs of iTunes and other things online. They are too young to have their own credit cards.

One of my clients, Golf Guys, sells golf gift cards. These cards are good at more than 13,000 around the U.S. It's nice for the recipients to be able to try a new course in their town. It is especially good for being on the road. The Golf Guys web site has several hundred courses to choose from. If the course you are interested in is not on the site, then you can call them to make a reservation. It's very simple to use.

One of my favorite gift cards from this past Christmas was for Chipotles. I'm fortunate to have one of their restaurants open a mile or so down the street this past fall. Those cards don't spent much time in my wallet before being used.

New Article: Designing a Cost Effective Web Site

You have a great idea for a web site but don't have a design for it yet. What are you going to do about it? Depending on your online marketing budget and how skilled you are with designing websites, there are several options available to you.

[Read the rest of the article]

Creepy Yellow Page Marketing

I got an envelope from Yellow Pages the other. It looked like it was an invoice. I didn't think I'd signed up for it, even though I do market my business in several places.

As I read the fine print, it said that this was an invoice but only used for marketing. If I wanted to, I could sign up for it for a couple hundred dollars a month.

I think it really stinks that Yellow Pages would send something so deceptive. There are plenty of ways to market a company without having to go to such deceptive ends. I'm never going to do marketing with Yellow Pages because of this.