Traffic Magnets

With imagination and a clear sense of their customers, Earth Treks and Merriman Capital Management keep their Web visitors coming back for more.

Web Awards: Marketing

Using a formidable sense of their customers, Earth Treks and Merriman Capital keep their visitors coming back for more.

Most people can only imagine what an attempt to reach Mount Everest's 29,035-foot summit is like: laboring to find oxygen, battling snow blindness, tunneling through 60-mile-an-hour winds. But a climbing center and professional-guide service based in Columbia, Md., is doing everything it can to bring the experience home.

Since 11-year-old Earth Treks Inc. ( www.earthtreksclimbing.com) launched its Web site, in 1999, the guides on its seminannual expeditions -- from Ecuador's Cotopaxi volcano to the Himalayas' Mount Everest -- have regularly posted journal entries online from on high, detailing the travails of their excursions for anyone who wants to read about them. "Eighteen hours of snowfall make Camp 2 a living hell," reads one E-mail entry sent from an Everest trek last year. Notes another from the same climb: "Most of us picked up on news from passing climbers that someone had taken a fatal fall somewhere between steps 1 and 2, a somber note to close the day on."

That Earth Treks' revenues have nearly doubled over the past two years isn't surprising, given that the company has matched its marketing efforts to its customers' mind-set. People who are into climbing are fascinated by the challenge and the exhilaration of the endeavor. They are also drawn to communities of like-minded individuals. By inviting its Internet audience along on its adventures, Earth Treks not only generates a sense of camaraderie online but also creates the perception -- among both serious mountaineers and hobbyists -- that the company gets it.

Moreover, Earth Treks has built into its marketing strategy programs to cultivate its next generation of customers. With the aid of two Baltimore-area teachers, company founder Chris Warner recently started Shared Summits, an online program that enables local students, ages 6 to 18, to follow his staff's adventures while earning academic credit. In addition to learning about different cultures, geography, leadership, and teamwork as expeditions unfold, students can also E-mail the climbers, view digital photos, and check out real-time videos of the trip, shot by guides and streamed by satellite with the help of partners that provide IT and financial support. What's the question that students most often ask Warner in their E-mails? "How do you go the bathroom up there?" he says, laughing. (The answer: using suits with front-to-back zippers for easy access.)

Earth Treks invites visitors on adventures both outside its walls, in the Himalayas, and on them, at its indoor-climbing center in Columbia, Md.

Warner says that the program has received "tremendous response" from current customers and from the community at large, in the form of coverage in local media such as the Baltimore Sun. For example, on Warner's last trip to Mount Everest -- a successful attempt to reach its peak in May -- the CEO received 483 E-mails from children in suburban and urban middle schools. And largely as a result of the media exposure, 50,000 visitors logged on to the site on the day that he reached the top. Of those visitors, 20,000 have signed up to be notified automatically whenever Earth Treks posts new journal entries.

Sales are soaring, too; they reached $1.4 million in 2000. The company is fielding a record number of inquiries from people who want to scale the world's highest mountaintops, and revenues for the indoor climbing center have jumped by nearly 40%. Among the new customers are families hosting their children's birthday parties at Earth Treks and youngsters signing up for the Youth Rox climbing program, in which kids age 10 to 14 learn how to scale the gym's more basic mountains under the supervision of instructors.

Needless to say, Earth Treks has made back many times over the $3,000 it spent to launch its site and the $7,200 it spends a year on its Webmaster, Warner's sister-in-law.

Show me the money

Though dramatically different from Earth Treks' site in look and feel, FundAdvice ( www.fundadvice.com) is thriving for the same reason as its fellow Web Award winner: its marketing reflects the personality of its particular audience. The site, which is sponsored by 18-year-old Merriman Capital Management Inc., a $3-million Seattle-based investment-advisory firm, targets investors who are seeking financial advice from a dependable source.

Aware that investors are looking first for security, FundAdvice's top priority is to establish credibility. One way it does that is by providing a link to SoundInvesting.com, the online arm of a one-hour investing show that airs in Seattle on Sundays and often features commentary from Paul Merriman, Merriman Capital's president. After downloading the appropriate streaming-media software, visitors not only can hear audio clips from the most recent program but also can tap into an archive of the shows that have aired during the past five months. Another way the site establishes credibility is through links to some of Paul Merriman's distinctions, including press awards that FundAdvice has garnered and mentions of the high-profile publications that have quoted the president (nine), the national TV shows on which he's appeared (five), and the three investing videos he's produced.

 1 | 2  NEXT