Last night I saw a commercial on TV for a child’s toy called Fuzzoodles. It’s basically a set of little fuzzy pipes and pieces that you put together to make crazy looking characters. I’m pretty sure I have actually bought some of these in the past when I saw them at Wal-Mart. It’s a cute product, and the fact that it is on the shelves of Wal-Mart is proof they know how to sell it. However, watching this commercial last night, I was appalled at what, in my opinion, is a bad marketing mistake.

The point of the commercial was to get you to call or go online to order a special set of Fuzzoodles. The website address shown in the commercial was www.poof-slinky.com

Say what? What does “poof-slinky” have to do with Fuzzoodles?

A URL used in an ad for a product should be tightly linked with the name of the product.

It should also be easy to remember.

This URL uses two words, joined with a hyphen, that don’t seem to have any connection to the product. The only reason I made note of the URL in the commercial was because of how shocked I was at what a poor choice it was for a URL. And even then, I still had to rewind and pause the TV so that I could write it down. Otherwise, I never would have remembered it!

A URL in an ad is another opportunity to reinforce the name of the product in the consumer’s mind, and hopefully convince him to visit your website. If the URL is completely disconnected from the product name, then you’re forcing the consumer to have to remember multiple pieces of disparate information. Keep it simple!

This, in my opinion, is bad marketing for what I think is a reasonably good product.

Contact Work Media at info@workmedia.net to avoid making these types of Internet marketing mistakes with your business.