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Perfect vs. interesting
Apr 7th
There are two jobs available to most of us:
You can be the person or the organization that’s perfect. The one that always ships on time, without typos, that delivers flawlessly and dots every i. You can be the hosting company or the doctor that might be boring, but is always right.
Or you can be the person or the organization that’s interesting. The thing about being interesting, making a ruckus, creating remarkable products and being magnetic is that you only have to be that way once in a while. No one is expected to be interesting all the time.
Fedex vs. Playwrights Horizons.
When an interesting person is momentarily not-interesting, I wait patiently. When a perfect organization, the boring one that’s constantly using its policies to dumb things down, is imperfect, I get annoyed. Because perfect has to be perfect all the time.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Compared to perfect: the price/value mismatch in content
Mar 31st
“How’s the wine?”
You really can’t answer that question out of context. Compared to what? Compared to a hundred dollar bottle? Not so good. Compared to any other $12 bottle… great!
“How was the hotel?”
“How’s the service at the post office?”
In just about all the decisions we make, we consider the price. A shipper doesn’t expect the same level of service quality from a first class letter delivery than it does from an overnight international courier service. Of course not.
And yet…
A quick analysis of the top 100 titles on Amazon (movies, books, music, doesn’t matter what) shows zero correlation between the price and the reviews. (I didn’t do the math, but you’re welcome to… might be a good science fair entry). Try to imagine a similar disconnect if the subject was cars or clothing…
For any other good or service, the value of a free alternative that was any good would be infinite–free airplane tickets, free dinners at the cafe… When it comes to content, though, we rarely compare the experience with other content at a similar price. We compare it to perfect.
People walking out of the afternoon bargain matinee at the movies don’t cut the film any slack because it was half price. Critics piling on to a music video on YouTube never mention the fact that HEY IT WAS FREE. There is no thrift store for content. Sure, we can get an old movie for ninety-nine cents, but if we hate it, it doesn’t matter how cheap it was. If we’re going to spend time, apparently, it better be perfect, the best there ever was, regardless of price.
This isn’t true for cars, potato chips, air travel, worker’s comp insurance…
Consider people walking out of a concert where tickets might be being scalped for as much as $1,000. That’s $40 or more for each song played–are they considering the price when they’re evaluating the experience? There’s a lot of nuance here… I’m certainly not arguing that expensive is always better.
In fact, I do think it’s probably true that a low price increases the negative feedback. That’s because a low price exposes the work to individuals that might not be raving fans.
Free is a valid marketing strategy. In fact it’s almost impossible for an idea to have mass impact without some sort of free (TV, radio, webpages, online videos… they’re all free). At the same time, it’s not clear to me that cheaper content outperforms expensive in many areas. As the marginal cost of delivering content drops to zero (all digital content meets this definition), I think there are valid marketing reasons to do the opposite of what economists expect.
Free gets you mass. Free, though, isn’t always the price that will help you achieve your goals.
Price is often a signalling mechanism, and perhaps nowhere more than in the area of content. Free enables your idea to spread, price, on the other hand, signals individuals and often ends up putting your idea in the right place. Mass shouldn’t always be the goal. Impact may matter more.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Is There a Perfect Name for Your Business?
Nov 13th
Naming a business is like naming a baby — the name you choose reflects your hopes and dreams, your taste and style. A great name gives a baby and a business a certain leg up in the world. This is why big-budget start-ups hire naming firms. Even without an expert branding background, you can choose a great name for your fledgling business by investing a bit of time and thought.
Be your own guinea pig.
List 20 of your favorite existing business names. Do you see any trends? Do your tastes fall toward neologisms such as Acura or Kodak? Portmanteaus such as Microsoft and FedEx? Evocative symbols like Apple or Hot Italian? Your preferences are likely to resonate with your clientele as well. Use yourself as a bellwether.
Be Practical.
Remember that the end user of your name is your clientele. Choose a name that helps them make the right associations with your business. Names that evoke the value of your services are preferable to names that are generic, non-sequitur, or simply cute. Consider the case of MicroMidas, a start-up firm that turns waste microorganisms into useful industrial polymers. How might we perceive this business differently if it was named Northern California Polymers, or worse, Poo Plastics?
Thinking again about the needs of your client, be careful with unusual spellings and foreign language letter constructs. Your clientele might not know the correct pronunciation of the Vietnamese ng-, the Mandarin qi, and the French –ix. As a result, they’ll avoid saying your business name, even to recommend the excellent services they received from Jerry Nguyen’s Chamonix Chalet.
Brainstorm.
It’s time to get out your pencil! If you have weeks to decide, keep a growing list handy. If you’re short on time, try to make yourself create ten names. Do this even if you have your heart set on one idea; it takes just a bit of time and you’re likely to find an even better name. If you haven’t tried it before, see if you can invent a new word or two to add to the list.
Now look at your list. Which names match your business, your style? Which names appeal the most? And which names are likely to create unflattering double-entendres or awkward acronyms? Consider Gap’s doomed brand, Forth and Towne, or the discarded salon name Blow.
When you’ve narrowed the list to three or less, search them on the Internet to make sure that you will neither infringe on a trademark nor accidentally name your business after a porn star.
Make the Call.
If you’re having trouble choosing between your top two or three, survey friends, coworkers and clients. Choose bravely and wisely and be confident in your decision. Your business has a great new name! Time to celebrate.
Above all, don’t let the name be your business’ bottleneck. The great secret of naming is that there is no perfect name — just a lot of great ones. Within the bounds of reasonable taste, no name will make or break your business. The substance behind the name ultimately trumps any label.
Sonia Mansfield is the content editor for PsPrint and editor of PsPrint Blog. PsPrint is an online printing solutions company, which you can follow on Twitter and Facebook.
View full post on Business Pundit
5 Steps To the Perfect Client
Nov 3rd
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Image credit: Photofinish 2009 via Flickr
One of the foundational elements of any marketing strategy is a narrowly defined target client. For the small business I take that a step deeper to something I call the ideal, or for the sake of this post, perfect client. That one perfect kind of client is what all business should understand and I think it’s unique to each and every business.
You can’t simply define a set of demographics to find the ideal client – the ideal client finds you, but then you’ve got to build your entire business around that understanding.
The 5 steps below, applied to your current client base and worked in order, will tell you more about your true ideal client than any marketing class or book ever will.
- Find your most profitable clients
- From the above group identify those that refer
- From that even smaller group find common demographic characteristics
- Take the time now to understand the behavior that makes them ideal
- Draw a fully developed biographical sketch to use as your marketing guide
I explain each of these steps in great detail is this week’s column at AMEX OPENForum.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Finding the Perfect Business Idea
Sep 29th
| But before we get started, let’s clear up one point: People always wonder if this is a good time to start their business idea. |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
Cheat Sheet to the Perfect Cup O’Joe
Aug 6th
This one really appealed to my inner barista…
Image: Plaid-Creative.com
View full post on Business Pundit
Seven steps to nailing the perfect social media guidelines
Aug 5th
| With more and more companies flocking to Twitter, Facebook and the rest, brands that want to take social media seriously and start getting wider internal… |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
Webinar: Building The Perfect Listing On Yelp
Aug 3rd
Last week Yelp Marketing Director Dylan Swift and Business Outreach Manager Luther Lowe joined forces to present a webinar on how to build the perfect listing on Yelp. The hour-long talk took small business owners on a tour of all the tools and features available to help them build out their Yelp listing. Here’s a rundown of what was covered in case you missed it.
Creating The Perfect Listing
The meat of your Yelp listing is housed in the Business Information Tab. This is where users will find basic information like your address, phone number and site URL; additional information like parking or delivery options; your hours; specialties; your business history; owner information; and your recommendations for other nearby businesses. Because so much of your vital info is housed in this area, you want to make sure you fill it out as completely as you can. Google and other third-party sites also pull this information for use in their own indexes, so making sure it’s correct can have big rewards.
To enter it, just log into biz.yelp.com to claim or create your listing.
Two areas you want to pay special attention to are the History and Specialties tab. Unlike the other sections, Yelp gives you 1,000 characters to sell customers on your business and provide additional information here. What do you sell that people can’t get anywhere else? Why do people come to your business over a competitor? This is your chance to tell them.
One thing I wasn’t previously aware of was that business owners can introduce themselves and their management directly on their listing through a Meet The Owners section. By uploading a photo and leaving a personalized message for Yelpers, you can make your page stand out and show customers that you’re behind your Yelp page.
When you’re filling out your information, remember that Yelp is a search engine. Make sure you use keywords to help make your business and listing more discoverable.
Using Your Analytics
If you’re not taking advantage of Yelp Analytics, you should be. Yelp is a transactional platform. No one is searching for [dentist los angeles] for fun. They have a toothache and they need to know where to go. That kind of searching behavior makes your analytics a goldmine of information that you can use in your business.
Last summer I wrote about how to get the most out of Yelp and spent a good chunk of time detailing the Yelp Analytics dashboard, that may be worth an additional read. To access your dashboard, click on the Summary tab to view business trends. There you’ll find a graph that will help you identify which days are most popular for your business, what seasonal patterns exist, what days you should hold contests or promotions to get people into the store, and other sales patterns. You’ll also be able to see whether traffic for you page is increasing or decreasing to keep you aware of traffic flow.
Use Offers & Announcements
Another area that could help small business owners drive customers into their business is the Offers & Announcement area of Yelp. Here, business owners can tell Yelpers about upcoming events, special promotions they’re running or off special discounts for Yelpers. Both Luther and Dylan agreed that the more enticing you could make the offer, the better. Some recommended tips for getting mileage out of your offers and announcements:
- Make the offer/discount good enough that people will actually bring it up. Customers won’t take advantage of discounts if they make them feel “cheap”.
- Use interesting numbers.
- Have them mention Yelp to get the coupon.
- Use a date of expiration for that offer so there’s incentive to come in today.
Offers become way more important as more customers begin using mobile apps like the Yelp mobile application while they’re on the go. Yelp has a button on their application that will help customers find special offers near them. If you’re not listed, they can’t mention yours.
I really appreciated Luther and Dylan taking time out to help small business owners get more from Yelp. As a SMB, Yelp is one of those sites that you have to be paying attention to. If you haven’t claimed and built out your listing, I’d encourage you to do so. Remember, these days this information doesn’t just stay on Yelp. It’s being integrated into the search results and even on Google Place Pages. It’s important that it’s up to date.
Webinar: Building The Perfect Listing On Yelp
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Getting unstuck: solving the perfect problem
Jul 26th
The only problems you have left are the perfect ones. The imperfect ones, the ones with a clearly evident solution, well, if they were important, you’ve solved them already.
It’s the perfect problems that keep us stuck.
Perfect because they have constraints, unbendable constraints, constraints that keep us trapped. I hate my job, I need this job, there’s no way to quit, to get a promotion or to get a new boss, no way to move, my family is in town, etc.
We’re human, that’s what we do–we erect boundaries, constraints we can’t ease, and we get trapped.
Or perhaps it’s your product or service or brand. Our factory is only organized to make X, but the market doesn’t want X as much, or there is regulation, or a new competitor is now offering X at half the price and the board won’t do anything, etc.
There’s no way to solve the perfect problem because every solution involves breaking an unbreakable constraint.
And there’s your solution.
The way to solve the perfect problem is to make it imperfect. Don’t just bend one of the constraints, eliminate it. Shut down the factory. Walk away from the job. Change your product completely. Ignore the board.
If the only alternative is slow and painful failure, the way to get unstuck is to blow up a constraint, deal with the pain and then run forward. Fast.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
