In this blog post—I’m gonna break down what you can learn about website design & marketing from Boy Meets World.
You’ll learn:
- Why you need to niche & can’t serve the whole world 🌎
- Why your call to actions need to repeat on your website 📣
- Why your website copy needs to speak to different buying styles 💰
- Why you shouldn’t cut your hair in the middle of a high school hallway 💇🏼♀️
(Never watched Boy Meets World before or need a refresh? Click here, here & here for the summaries.)
(PSA for this newsletter, I’ll be focusing “just” on the Boy Meets World & not Girl Meets World or the rewatch podcast to make this email easier to read 😊)
(Also PSA, if you’re looking for a good rewatch podcast—check out Pod Meets World 🌎)
Let’s start with the marketing & launch for Boy Meets World.
Boy Meets World premiered in September 1994 (last fall marked the 30th anniversary of the show & this November marks the 25th wedding anniversary of Cory & Topanga 🎉).
And just like the majority of shows that aired on cable TV—most of the marketing for Boy Meets World (sans sort of Cory & Topanga’s wedding website) was along the lines of “Please sit on your couch in front of the TV at 8/7 central every week”. <<< Which is VERY different than trying to get someone to go out to a theater before the days of streaming.
But it’s actually quite similar to marketing to your past clients—which is probably going to be easier statistically than acquiring new clients.
For example, let’s say you’re an artist & you’ve sold custom paintings to 100 people. Because they’ve already bought from you before—that means they trust you. Because people buy from people they know, like & trust.
So it’s going to be a LOT easier to sell them another painting because they already know what your work is like AND that they can trust you enough to hand over more $$$ (unlike, perhaps, Cory & Shawn trying to run a bed & breakfast out of Feeny’s house).
Boy Meets World has a wide variety of character types—which is good for an era of TV shows before streaming, when the whole family (different age groups) would watch a series together…
^^^ BUT your business can’t be for everyone.
Now, I’d argue that you don’t need to narrow your niece niche as far down as some people say—BUT you also can’t serve everyone & their dog in your business, because “When you try to serve everyone, you serve no one.”—The Pumpkin Plan.
Not to mention it’ll be easier to create content for your business for a specific audience—compared to a more general audience. For example, let’s say you’re writing a blog about marketing your business on Instagram. <<< That blog is going to look a LOT different if you’re writing it for a wedding photographer vs a plumber.
Of course, you can niece niche down the classic way by choosing only one specific industry to work with. But a way that I don’t think is talked about enough is by personality. For example, I know in my business that someone who’s very methodical & not interested in trying new things isn’t going to be a good fit to work with me.
Now even though you can’t serve everyone with your business…
When it comes to the 4 different types of buyers—you do need to appeal to all of them.
Just like people have different learning styles (i.e. Mr. Turner having the class read X-Men vs a “normal” Mr. Feeny-style assignment—or at least I think that’s how it works, I was homeschooled *shrug*)—people have different buying styles. <<< Meaning they need a different set of info to feel confident enough to buy something from you.
^^^ And this is achieved through your copywriting & how said copy is displayed.
Here are some notable quotes & plot points from the scripts of Boy Meets World that can help you with your website design & marketing.
Quote: Eric Matthews: “Feeny? Fa-fa-fa-fa-feeny!”
Business Lesson: The Feeny call—aka. the best call to action inspo I’ll probably ever find from a TV show. And while on the show it’s supposed to be funny—that’s basically what you want to do on your website.
You need call to actions on EVERY.SINGLE.PAGE of your website in almost every section of the page. Now do you need to repeat the same exact words on every button? No, but you also don’t need to change it up either—it’s dealer’s choice.
Quote: Topanga Lawrence: “This outfit with this hair? Hello? Buh-bye, I am *so* at the mall.”
Business Lesson: Topanga cutting her hair in the middle of the school hallway is kind of what DIYing your website can feel like—it sounds like a good idea, but once you get started it feels overwhelming (or even And Then There Was Shawn level scary). <<< My best advice to tackle this? Publish one website page at a time. And if you still can’t get your hair website looking good, then you can consider going to the salon working with a designer.
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