Oct 7, 2013 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy
Some years ago my Dad had a stroke, a nasty one that had a profound impact on his physical capability. We were assured by physicians that with intensive therapy and rehabilitation, he would regain a “quality of life.”
Compared to the prognosis without the therapy, this was certainly accurate, but compared to his life prior, is clearly nonsense. Never again would he walk a golf course, drive a car, take his grandsons fishing on the rocks, or just appear in public without being an object of curiosity.
Not a pleasant thought.
So, what brought this introspection on?
Recently I did a presentation at UWS that examined the 6 trends impacting on the balance between urban living, and the agricultural activity necessary to feed that urbanisation. Regularly over the past few years I have seen advertising for various developments that take farmland and turn it into massive housing estates, and the line used inevitably seems to be something along the lines of the “quality of life” they deliver. I saw another one last night, and gagged. it resembled an ad for a soap powder, or some other consumer product, full of hyperbole, “cutsey” pictures, and whimsical claims of the domestic bliss coming from buying an overpriced box on a tiny patch of dirt.
A short time ago this dirt was highly productive land that had fed Sydney for the last 150 years, and now it is an expanse of macadam, concrete, flimsy project homes, with a bit of green left for “family picnics” and a pond for any ducks that turn up to be fed.
At some point we need to define in what context we talk about “quality of life”, and how we will get on with that life without easy access to agricultural commodities, and the value added products they produce.
Sep 30, 2013 | Branding, Category, Marketing, retail, Small business
Consumers make purchase choices for a whole range of reasons, quality, size, experience, brand, price, freshness, produce provenance, and so on.
Supermarkets in Europe have for years been marketing their housebrands as much more than cheapo versions of branded products, they are brands themselves, with all the attributes of proprietary brands.
In Australia there have been housebrands for 35 years, I know, as I peripherally s involved in the launch of the first one, the now defunct Franklins “No Frills” margarine, in about 1978. For most of the 35 years since, Australian Housebrands were little more than cheap products, where the manufactures pulled out as much ingredient and packaging cost as possible, apart from the few regulated categories like milk where Housebrands did not appear until de-regulation of the distribution system, and ice cream where the dairy fat level is proscribed at 10%.
More recently, Housebrands have been repositioned to be more like “Brands” than cheap substitutes, and retailers are actively seeking to add product quality to the parameters, while still being extremely aggressive about product cost from the manufacturer, difference now is that the world is the potential source, not just Australian manufacturers.
However, the efforts appear to be flagging, as price remains the primary consumer purchase reason for Housebrands, but the consumers choice is being reduced as retailers allocate their shelf-space to their own brands in an effort to both build Housebrand sales and the enhanced margins they can deliver. Perhaps this is a contributor to the apparent renewed growth of specialty and niche retail, and the decision of many SME’s to avoid the two major retailers, and pursue alternative channels.
Housebrands are failing to be either guarantors of quality, as “proper” proprietary brands would be, and they are often no longer as cheap as they were, so consumers are getting confused.
In consumer confusion lies opportunity for innovative marketers.
Sep 19, 2013 | Marketing, Small business, Social Media
During the week, I did a short explanatory presentation on social media to a group of busy, skeptical SME operators whose typical age meant that they came to computers generally and social media in particular “a bit later” in their commercial lives.
In other words, their typical response to social media is something like WTF!.
I sought a metaphor that would explain the different characteristics and role of social media platforms having defined Social Media sufficiently widely to include, as well as the obvious, the emerging collaborative platforms like Airbnb, and established e-businesses like E-Bay. Whilst some of these may not be seen strictly as “Social Media”, they are nevertheless social platforms, so I felt they warranted inclusion.
I like “chips” French Fries to some of you, so they were the core of describing the role of various social media platforms.
Here are some of the examples, were I to describe my chip habits on each platform:
Facebook:” I like chips”
Twitter: “I am eating chips”
4 Square: “This is where I buy my chips”
Instagram: “Here is a picture of my chip”
Youtube: “Here I am, eating chips”
Pinterest: “Here is my favorite chip recipe”
Linkedin: “My skills include advanced chip eating”
Google +:” I am a Google employee who likes chips”
Slideshare: “The development of the chip market”
E-Bay: “What will you pay me for my chip”
Kickstarter: “I’ve invented this super-cool thing called a “chip”, wanna invest?”
You get the idea, and so did my audience.
Sep 18, 2013 | Customers, Lean, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Courtesy Michael Taylor
“5 why’s” is a tool that started life in the Lean Thinking toolbox, but in reality is simply common sense. In effect, make sure you understand the real cause of the problem facing you before you start deploying solutions, otherwise you risk treating the symptoms, not the cause.
It is a tool applicable to any problem or challenge, even the reluctance to engage with social media that I see so often with SME’s.
Following is an edited version of a of a recent conversation I had with a bloke running a successful small business, as he confronted his social media demons.
Bill: I have to get off my arse and start using Social media.
Me: Why?
Bill: Because all my competitors are using it.
Me: Are you losing any business to them, are you generating business you expect, or are you just lonely?
Bill: Don’t know, but I think it is expected
Me: Expected by whom?
Bill: Customers?
Me: Which customers, and what do they expect?
Bill: Not sure?
Me: wouldn’t it be wise to be clear about what you wanted to communicate, and to whom, which might offer some clues about how to best achieve the outcome?
Bill: Probably.
That conversation led into a useful session better defining his value proposition, then considering the tactics to be deployed to reach his best prospects, which included some “toe-tipping” into social media.
Social Media is not a panacea, and it is not a description of one thing any more than a label of “Cars” is a description of all the cars available. You still need to decide what you want to do with it, how much you will spend, and how you will measure satisfaction before you make the shortlist, and eventual choice. It is just pretty clear that in a modern world, just like cars, it is hard to avoid Social Media, it is everywhere.
Sep 2, 2013 | Communication, Management, Small business, Social Media
Digital technology has offered all of us an astounding range of opportunities to challenge and interact with our social environment, creating as we go. Gary Hamel has summarised them into a “5 C” list,:
Contribution
Connection
Creation
Choice
Challenge.
You read them, you just know the truth of it, but the next step, the really hard one, is how to harness the potential energy unleashed by these revolutions.
As a consultant to small businesses, I find no lack of energy, determination, and intelligent, informed risk taking, but I do find that the digital revolution has marched past the capabilities of many of the established businesses, and as time passes, the gap just becomes wider.
Recognising the presence of the capability gap, and finding a way to bridge it is rapidly becoming the most significant challenge faced by SME’s. Until that bridging has happened, digital is a millstone rather than a freedom, and freedom feels great!.
Go for it.
Jul 18, 2013 | Management, Marketing, Small business
As I talk to small businesses, there is a very common set of things they should all be doing, remarkably common.
So here they are:
- Doing what they currently do 10% better. Even if what they are doing is sub-optimal, doing it cheaper, faster, better, must be of benefit, and is usually very low hanging fruit indeed.
- Get your digital house in order. Websites, blogs, social media, all consume resources, but worse, most SME’s treat them as one-off activities, items to be ticked off a list and left till next year, or left to the pimply faced intern to do in their spare time. Wrong. You need a strategy, allocated resources, and the capability to do all this stuff, it is after all the window to the world, and is not an optional expense, it is an investment in commercial longevity.
- Sort out who your current high performance customers are, and build relationship s with them. They will not necessarily be the biggest, they may be the least cost, highest gross margin %, have most potential, be the ones who are prepared to engage with you on more than a transactional level, whatever it is, engage, as it is far easier to extract another dollar of revenue from an existing customer that find and extract from a new one.
- Understand the market segments you work in, and which deliver you the best returns, and work the segment harder. This may be similar to the best customer list, but it may not. It is really all about understanding the characteristics of the type of customer to whom you can add the best value with your product and service offerings.
- Actively seek and work for referrals. The cheapest form of marketing is to have an existing customer refer someone to you, so be creative about seeking referrals, and reward the referrers. Oh, and ask for them, most do not ask, but if your customers are happy with you, 9 times in 10, they are happy to give you referrals, they just do not think of it on their own, and you have to make it worth their time.
- Create and leverage alliances. If you are running a shoe shop, it makes sense to be working with the dress shop around the corner to cross-refer, co-promote, and collaborate to build a customer base loyal to you both. Halves the marketing costs, and leverages the dollars you do spend.
- Create and leverage data bases. Capture every transaction, and do something with it, follow up, see if the buyer is happy with the purchase, send a “thank you for your business” card, ensure the product met expectations, provide an offer for the upcoming birthday, etc, etc, etc. It is now so cheap to build and leverage databases that it is insane for small businesses not to be doing it.
- Keep your eyes open for opportunities. Most small business operators are so engrossed in the day to day bun-fight that they do not take the time, or make the effort to look around, see what their competitors are doing, look at the trends in your market, and those adjacent to you, look at the evolving technologies that may impact, or be of use, see who is going well, and who is going broke, and understand why, etc, etc. Opportunities usually come from unexpected places, and you have to be ready for them when they do.
- Measure, measure, measure. Understand your costs, not just of your products, and the stuff clearly articulated by an invoice, but the often subtle or hidden ones, customer acquisition costs, wasted time in the office, using untrained staff, breakdowns in the factory, etc, etc. Some measures will be more enlightening that others, and you need to be cognizant of the costs of collecting and analyzing the data to give you the measures, but rather than not measuring, do it for a while and determine if there is a value to the continued measurement and leverage the data gives you, then continue, or leave it if the return is not worth the effort, or the opportunity cost is too high.
- Work on why you do stuff, rather than just what you do, and how you do it. I considered making this number one on the list, but it is a bit esoteric, so it is here, with a link to Simon Sinek’s presentation that in my view should be compulsory viewing for small business people. Watch it, think about it, and act on it.
- Do something different, now. Pick from the list, and do something about it. I could go on about planning, assembling resources and capabilities, and all the other consultant stuff, but for small businesses people, the primary task is to act, watch how it works, and be prepared to change direction quickly if necessary, and move ahead again.
Oh, and a last one, so important that it is on its own, WATCH THE CASH!
