My Complete Event Blog

“Buyer Beware”…The Knot is a wonderful website. It embodies nearly everything— and anything —couples getting married require/desire for online planning and information. The Knot is exceedingly content-rich, offering wonderful “tools” for Users. MCE applauds The Knot…Why should potential The Knot Clients “beware?” The answer… Brand Equity. Presently, The Knot owns and/or manages a myriad of websites, including the very well executed The Nest. The websites of greatest significance to both The Knot Clients and Prospects are the Wedding Channel and Party Spot because they are bundled in an exposure “package” inclusive of placement upon The Knot. Wedding Channel was formerly a competitor to The Knot, and The Knot did what successful companies often do…they bought the competition. Yet, instead of “marrying” both The Knot and Wedding Channel under a single name…keeping them separate was deemed most beneficial. Why? Because the Wedding Channel had created enough Brand Equity (“good will”) that maintaining it as what appeared to be an independent entity was economically favorable to The Knot. No cause to be concerned or “beware”…yet. Apart from The Knot and Wedding Channel, stands Party Spot…which is indeed “absolute cause for concern”. Why? Consider the name Party Spot; it does not evoke any sense of alignment with The Knot and/or Wedding Channel Brand. Would naming Party Spot, “Party Channel”- “Event Channel”-“Party Knot”-“Event Knot” have been more aligned with the identity of the Brand? Absolutely! So “why” did The Knot select the name Party Spot? The rationale is very simplistic, and most probably seemed logical. The Knot perceived Party Pop to be the most significant competitor within the “non”-wedding online directory segment. The basis for this determination was entirely due to Party Pop rightfully promoting itself as “Always being on the first page of search engine results for keywords that include party, event, birthday, function, and weddings”. The Knot determined that the name Party Spot was ideally suited to create a degree of confusion between itself and Party Pop. Online Users querying for Party Pop were most apt to erroneously type the words Party Spot in that precise combination. The result was effective to realizing the singular goal that The Knot possessed for Party Spot, that of nearly instantaneous recognition via Search Engines, which would be favorably reflected in analytics/site visitors. In turn, this would make Party Spot an easier “sell” whence bundled with both The Knot and Wedding Channel. The early results are that the logic is “working”, actual traffic to Party Spot is fractional in comparison to Party Pop, yet Party Pop is showing signs of decline. Furthermore, the vast majority of traffic to Party Spot is emanating from Search Engines. Where Party Spot traffic is originating is critical, because The Knot and Wedding Channel are phenomenal “referral” sites…yet they don’t account for a significant number of visitors to Party Spot. Confirmation that Party Spot is a proverbial “ugly duckling” can be found upon The Knot homepage. The link for The Nest is prominently displayed upon the header with a “splash” of brown coloration. Whereas, Party Spot is listed/linked amongst the “sibling” sites found upon the homepage footer. Unfortunately this naming “logic” is short-sighted and does not enhance either Brand Equity or the inherent value to The Knot Clients and Prospects for being listed upon Party Pop…err, ahh Party Spot! So “beware”! Team MCE.

Welcome to the MCE Blog! The MCE Team will be frequently updating our Blog with News-Opinions-Information regarding MCE. Our Blog objective is pretty simple, we want to provide you with a unique experience that provides salient information…and most importantly isn’t a bunch of “fluff”. In the coming weeks several relevant and interesting articles shall be added, and hopefully you will find the MCE Blog to be both entertaining and informative regarding a broad spectrum of topics relevant to the Internet in general, and the MCE mission specifically! Thanks again…and welcome…to the Next Generation in blogging !!!

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