Where oh where are your URLs? (oh where or where could they be??!!)

It's a great question ... just not sure about the answer

I was flipping through the NOMIS Publications little yellow book someone brought back from the ICCFA Convention this past week and was admiring how cute and compact it was. As I was flipping through the listing of funeral service providers through my state of West Virginia ... then Wisconsin ... then randomly Vermont, Florida, South Carolina and so on ... the one thing that stood out like a bleeding red sore thumb was ..... "Where are the web site addresses for most of these advertisers???"

Nada. Zip. Zero. ... Why?

Well, I have to say ... just a handful of advertisers had the foresight to add their web address on their display ads. But overall, I would have to say that more than 90% appear to have not.

So first I have to ask myself why would anyone purchase advertising space in this little yellow book or any magazine or radio or television ad and not *once* mention or provide their web address location?

I can only think of a few reasons:

• the graphic designers of the actual advertising ad said there wasn't enough room to spell out your URL (and you believed them)


• the death care services provider has a web address but didn't think the URL was worth mentioning in the ad


• the advertising is being placed into a publication where web site addresses are absolutely banned for all eternity (bad little URLs, bad, bad, bad!!!)


• no one in your marketing or PR team thought to think about the web address because they were too busy printing out direct mailing labels from your 1980's dot matrix printer

and the worst reason of all possibly would be (drumroll, pleeeeze.......)

• the funeral home, cemetery, cremation service provider does NOT even have a web site at all to let anyone know about

Egad!

This is painful for me to write about (pausing to search for tissue ... wiping away a tear from my sad digital marketing eyes .... ok, back to writing) ... I just don't know what it will take to convince a large population in this industry that their slow adoption of technology and the internet is a risky gamble to play. It's a flirtation with being irrelevant and non-progressive. The only result from this positioning and dated way of thinking is, ultimately, extinction.

Why suppliers but not providers?

Why do industry suppliers always plug their URL everywhere on planet earth ... but if you search planet earth for URLs belonging to death care service providers, your search results will be minimal?

• Why do the suppliers "get it" and the providers do not?


• Why do the providers still wrestle with the notion and importance of digital marketing?


• Why do I always lose ** at least ** one sock when I do my laundry?

These are some of the things that really make me go "Hmmmmmmmm????"