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Inaccurate labels and why we need them (and need to improve them)
Feb 9th
If I tell you, “I’m going to the baseball game,” it seems as though you’re likely to understand what I mean.
Of course, you won’t. When George Will goes to a baseball game, it’s a religious experience. Me, I don’t even like baseball. Or maybe it’s my nephew’s ball game (the playoffs), or maybe going to the game causes me to miss an important event, and on and on.
We label the experience with just two words, and two words can’t possibly capture the emotions and circumstance surrounding an event.
The same thing is true with brands. If I tell you that a new business was funded by USV, that might mean something to you, or not. Or if someone asks you to pay extra for a brand you trust, that’s stuck with you through thick and thin, that might be an easy sale. It certainly won’t be if your experiences with that label/brand/company are negative ones.
As soon as we put a word on it, we’ve started to tell a story, a caricature, a version of the truth but not the whole truth.
The label removes us from reality. It takes us away from the actual experience. But do we have any choice?
How else can I get you started down the path to understanding me and my life and my schedule and my projects… labels are just about the best thing available to us.
A well-written book, then, is far more powerful than a blog post, because the book can take more time to get the labels right, to help you see what the author means. Five minutes of a movie is probably more powerful than five minutes reading a book because the tropes of a movie (the soundtrack, the lighting, the dialogue) are capable of delivering more accurate labels if the director is any good.
When there’s a disagreement, it’s almost always over the interpretation of labels. When you think your job title or your purchase order or your reservation means something because of how it’s labeled, you’ll end up in conflict if you’re trying to work with someone who interprets those labels differently.
The key is in placing the blame where it belongs–on the labels, not on the individuals who are stuck. Get clear about the labels, clear about the promises and what they mean, and you’re far more likely to generate satisfaction.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
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Feb 9th
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Turn Your Business Into a Community Building Platform
Feb 8th
Turn Your Business Into a Community Building Platform
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I believe the future of business and commitment building resides in the idea of viewing your business as a platform for your community.
The notion of a platform is one that receives a fair amount of play in various contexts.
An author is said to possess a platform when they have built a following. Consultants might work with a business owner to build a platform through speaking, writing, blogging and connecting in social media. And finally, many tech firms have built platforms by creating open source software, such as WordPress, that allows other 3rd party providers to build commerce and community on top of their framework.
Amazon sells lots of books, but in order to do that they needed to develop lots of file serving and storage capacity and get very, very good at delivering lightning quick web results in one of the highest traffic demand environments online.
Amazon took something that had little to do with their existing business, but which they had become incredibly proficient at, and created Amazon Web Services that allows thousands of business to build on the Amazon framework. I host and stream all of my product videos using Amazon S3 servers.
Airbnb is a community marketplace that allows property owners and travelers to connect with each other for the purpose of renting unique vacation spaces around the world. I use it frequently and love how simple the service is to use. Airbnb is built on Amazon Web Services and uses their database tools to build their community.
I would like to suggest that the notion of a platform is one that we can apply to almost any business.
What is a platform in this context?
A platform is a system that helps people create products, services, profits, businesses, communities, and networks of their own. The dynamics that must be present to create a platform environment are openness and collaboration.
So, the questions you need to ponder are:
- How could you or your business act as a platform?
- What could others build on top of your business or products?
- How could you add more value through your platform approach?
- How could you grow a network on your platform?
- Are there other businesses that your platform could launch?
- How could your community generate value for each other?
- How could your platform learn from community members?
- How could you create something open enough to attract your competitors?
- What platforms already exist that you could build on?
- Could you use your existing purpose, culture or community as a platform?
- What could you acquire as a way to build a platform?
- What could you extend as a way to build a platform?
When you start to think about your business in this manner you can move beyond the traditional applications of the term platform and blend platform type thinking into your business model, your culture and ultimately how you engage and communicate with your community.
Find your unique framework for openness
The key is to locate your unique framework as the foundation for the platform. Often times this requires thinking far outside of what your core business was designed to do and looking purely at things you can do, things you’ve gotten good at doing, even if they are simply things you do to support your core business.
AppleTree Answers is a call center business headquartered in Wilmington Delaware. The company has built a platform of sorts by figuring out how to change the paradigm of the call center culture. The company has received numerous awards for workplace excellence and is a frequent member of the Inc 500 and 5000.
AppleTree’s rapid growth then has come about by acquiring other small call centers and installing Appletree’s unique framework of openness. Appletree’s strong culture is the platform they’ve built all of their expansion on.
It’s all about building more value
A major dynamic of the platform component is value creation. No matter what your business does it will sink or swim based on the value (perceived or otherwise) it creates in someone’s life. This is extremely so when we talk about the community aspect of a platform.
Further, if you want to differentiate your business from others that are already providing value to a market, you’ve got to find a way to create more value as a competitive edge.
Many people default to adding features to products and services as a way to address value, but I think the real impact in value creation comes from strategically finding ways to add value in the way your business delivers a unique experience to its customer rather than through some sort of product enhancement.
The beauty of understanding value creation at the strategic level and then forcing that thinking into every tactical decision is that this is some of the most profitable work you can do. When a market comes to value what you have to offer as the “go to” choice you’re on your way to a premium pricing opportunity. People will pay dearly for an experience that helps them get more of what they want out of life.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
How do they know you’re not a flake?
Feb 8th
Before your link gets clicked or your proposal gets read, a busy person is going to triage it to find out if it’s even worth glancing at. Since everyone is now connected, the new permeability has created a deluge of noise, and just about everyone worth contacting is taking defensive measures.
- Do I know this person?
- Did someone I trust send them over?
- Where does she work? (Ideo? the FDA? The New York Times?)
- Has she won an award? Is she famous?
- Are there typos and is the design sloppy?
- Are they pestering me?
- Do I already follow this person online?
- Does music play when I visit the website?
- Will my boss be pleased when I bring this project up?
- Who else is pointing to/referencing/working with this person?
- Is it too good to be true?
Notice that all of these questions get asked before the idea is even analyzed. Doesn’t matter that this might not be fair, it’s a hurdle you have to cross.
Not all good ideas are pre-proven, sophisticated and from reliable sources. That’s not your fault. Doesn’t matter. In a noisy world filled with choices, you can’t blame your prospects for ignoring you. I know that you’re talented and have a lot to offer, but do they?
View full post on Seth’s Blog
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Feb 8th
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Is Your Marketing Producing the Results You Expected
Feb 7th
Is Your Marketing Producing the Results You Expected
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Image:One-Fat-Man via Flickr CC
The poll question above is a bit loaded and, not that I want to skew the results, the answer for most lies in the fact that they don’t really know what results they expected or what result they are actually getting. Mostly they know the results aren’t what they had hoped for, but that’s another issue.
Setting expectations
One of the simplest, yet most effective, things you can do is set expectations or goals for your marketing. You can create overall revenue goals, campaign goals or more product or service specific goals, but either way, simply defining a target number will prove to be one of the best first steps.
Goals are like magnets in a way. If we define them and measure our results towards achieving them, they can produce some pretty dramatic pull.
I know this is an obvious bit of advice, but experience tells me that few businesses actually set real, tangible and meaningful targets. How many widgets do you need to sell this month? How many press mentions do you want to add this quarter? How many newsletter subscribers, webinar attendees or trial evaluations must you complete this week?
Measuring results
Once you define your marketing expectations you must define and track the most important indicators that will tell you if you are on track.
You can make this is a simple as a weekly sales total or as complex as the results of multivariate ad element testing, but the key is start measuring something and sharing the numbers.
If you’re not measuring anything, break a few key numbers down and figure out a way to produce a weekly spreadsheet that you use as a guide and also use to share with team members. Then start looking for ways to add key indicators to the list so in addition to simply measuring results you can start measuring individual effectiveness.
Add Google Analytics to your web site and pick up a copy of Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity
by Avinash Kaushik.
If you’ve been measuring key indicators and you’re comfortable with a tool like Google Analytics, consider looking at a more advanced form of measurement from the use of a tool like KissMetrics. This tool can measure so many things that it can also overwhelm, so don’t start here unless you’ve mastered the basics.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Horizontal marketing isn’t a new idea
Feb 7th
But it is the new reality for just about every organization.
Vertical marketing means the marketer (the one with money) is in charge. Vertical marketing starts at the top and involves running ads, sending out direct mail and pushing hype through the media. Your money, your plans, your control. It might not work, but generally the worst outcome is that you will be ignored and need to spend more money.
Horizonal marketing, on the other hand, means creating a remarkable product and story and setting it up to spread from person to person. It’s out of your control, because all the interactions are by passionate outsiders, not paid agents.
Most marketers instinctually want control. We reach for the budget and the ad and the press release and most of all, the powerful media middleman. We buy SuperBowl ads or shmooze the reporter.
Horizontal marketing, though, requires giving up control. We spend all of our time and money on a great story and a great service and a remarkable offering. The rest is up to the market itself. You can’t control this, and you can no longer ignore it either.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Commission Powerhouse
Feb 7th
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This Is a Message from Your Heart
Feb 6th
This Is a Message from Your Heart
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I had a heart scan the other day – mainly because I’m old and my spouse is convincing in the most loving way.
a4gpa via Flickr CC
If you’ve never done it, it’s a pretty incredible experience to get to watch the awesome mechanical miracle that is you heart spray blood in and out through a series of valves, tubes, chambers, levers and doors that any engineer would be challenged to recreate.
More often than not the heart is the subject of poems and songs about romance and love but in addition to being a physical masterpiece I believe it is a formidable business tool.
The idea of love as it relates to business is a tricky one. People talk about loving or not loving a business or the products and services of a particular business, but rarely is love looked at as a strategic way to run a business or lead a team.
The heart is seen as weak and squishy and emotions like love have no place in cold hard world of commerce.
But, here’s what I think. It takes incredible courage and strength to lead with your heart, but it’s actually the most natural and freeing way to do so. The heart isn’t all sappy and bending at all, it’s a ridiculously appropriate and intuitive decision-making tool.
May I suggest that you lead with your heart.
Heeding the mind body connection that comes with following your heart is how you fill your business with passion and purpose. It’s how you make the decisions in every instant that are right for you and most likely right for others involved.
Try this – get up and walk across the room and focus on leading with your heart – literally taking steps with the mind to push your heart out in front with every step. As physical as this action seems you’ll find that it also creates an immediate emotional sense of confidence and well-being.
Running coaches and yoga instructors alike frequently urge their students to lead with their heart as they perfect their form and move gracefully from pose to pose.
When it comes to building your business, tapping your passion, brining a sense of higher purpose to your work, making decisions that determine the outcome of a situation that impacts your life and the lives of others – lead with your heart.
Your heart – or at least that sensations that you receive as you ponder a decision – will instantly tell you the right choice to make, if you only pay attention.
But let me warn you, lest you think this is simple pop nonsense – making a decision out of love is much more difficult than making one out of fear.
Have you ever made a decision or taken an action in the heat of the moment, maybe in a moment of doubt or fear, only to regret it or overturn it when you regained some sense of calm and you thought more about it? That was your heart regaining the wheel.
Have you ever experienced that “something about this doesn’t feel right” kind of moment and then learned later that you’re instincts were dead on? That was you listening to your heart.
The heart is good for business because it cherishes
- Love over hate
- Faith over doubt
- Hope over despair
- Light over darkness
- Joy over sadness
- Passion over indifference
Leading with the heart is good for business because it prefers
- Giving over receiving
- Lifting up over tearing down
- Teaching over dictating
- Abundance over scarcity
- Understanding over telling
People frequently advise that you must find something you are passionate about in order to succeed and, while I believe there is merit in that advice, I further believe you can fall in love with whatever you do if you choose to lead with the heart.
The opportunity to lead with your heart is the absolute best part about doing what you love.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Who is your customer?
Feb 6th
Rule one: You can build a business on the foundation of great customer service.
Rule two: The only way to do great customer service is to treat different customers differently.
The question: Who is your customer?
It’s not obvious.
Zappo’s is a classic customer service company, and their customer is the person who buys the shoes.
Nike, on the other hand, doesn’t care very much at all about the people who buy the shoes, or even the retailers. They care about the athletes (often famous) that wear the shoes, sometimes for money. They name buildings after these athletes, court them, erect statues…
Columbia Records has no idea who buys their music and never has. On the other hand, they understand that their customer is the musician, and they have an entire department devoted to keeping that ‘customer’ happy. (Their other customer was the program director at the radio station, but we know where that’s going…)
Many manufacturers have retailers as their customer. If Wal-Mart is happy, they’re happy.
Apple had just one customer. He passed away last year.
And some companies and politicians choose the media as their customer.
If you can only build one statue, who is it going to be a statue of?
View full post on Seth’s Blog
