Jul 28, 2010 | Leadership, Small business
The measure of effectiveness is the extent to which you get things done, and how well they turn out, not how well you theorise, discuss, and promise to “move forward”.
There are lots of highly qualaified, smooth young operators out there who do a great job at the talking bit, but who actually do little, and there are lots of older, (mostly) blokes with years of experience, and innate common sense born of that experience, who may have less in the way of academic qualifications, but who are able to apply their experience and get stuff done.
The great shame is that we appear to value the former, over the latter, and as a result have lots of youngsters with multiple degrees who cannot tie their shoelaces in senior positions, and their older former mentors in many cases out to premature pasture.
Which would you rather have running things for you, an older bloke who has made his mistakes, and is unlikely to repeat them, or a youngster, full of vim, vigor, and testosterone, who will spend your money getting his experience?
Jun 27, 2010 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Small business
“Cheap” implies less of everything that is important, not built to last, minimal attention to the detail, and certainly little customer service. However, “Frugal” implies a discipline that ensures that waste is eliminated, unnecessary features eliminated, but the basic performance is not compromised.
Cheap is never the outcome of good marketing, but Frugal is a very potent positioning in most markets, and is often ignored in the search for wider customer appeal.
Next time, ask yourself, if it is cheap, in which case, don’t buy or produce it, or frugal, in which case it may be a good deal.
Apr 3, 2010 | Marketing, Small business
One of the huge barriers to success in many small businesses I see, is that they tend to think that because they have a great product, produced with care and attention to detail, they should be successful, that customers will find their way to them.
By default, they believe marketing is not necessary, or it is a lesser priority than maintaining the product integrity and operational efficiency of their plants.
Hello!
Finding, engaging and satisfying customers who care about your great product is the game, marketing is the name. Producing a great product, at a value price, and providing the backup necessary to be competitive, is just the entry price.
Mar 30, 2010 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy
Trader Joes in the US is not a huge chain, but they are one of the ones to watch to see what the others will be doing in the future.
Joes has a rich history of being different, and their customers love it.
The latest move is to announce that they will be rapidly changing seafood supplies to sustainable sources, of seafood, and if history repeats, this will be the first of many to follow that line. It is probable that Woolworths or Coles in Austalia will follow closely, there may be an opportunity emerging for aquaculture suppliers to gain shelf sapce, and for the retailers to lift the poor performance of their seafood counters.
Mar 21, 2010 | Marketing, Small business
Yarning to an old mate last week, the usual wide ranging stuff you examine with someone you know well, he said “you know, what you do is forensic marketing, exhuming the deeply held assumptions that distort the outcomes, simplifying the jargon, identifying the make-work activity, seeing with a fresh eye the alignment of priorities”
It struck me as a very useful description, so I constructed a simple list of the starting points:
- Who are your customers?
- Why are they your customers?
- What do they buy?
- How much could they buy?
- What do various customers have in common?
- Why do they buy from you, and not your competitor?
- How much & what do they buy from your competitor?
- How do you define their Wallet?
- Is it the same as they would define it?
- What keeps your customers, your competitors, and you awake at night?
- Which customers have you lost, and why?
- What would you have to do to get them back, and is it worth the cost?
- If you were seeking to enter your market now, how would you do it?
- What are the barriers to better performance of your products?
- What are the markets where your capabilities rather than just your products have relevance?
- How do you communicate with customers?
- How do they communicate with you, and what is the quality of that communication?
- How engaged are you with your key (not necessarily biggest) customers?
- Where are the markets that have evolved that use different versions of your key pieces of capability?
- What can you learn from them?
- How do the demand chains work?
- Where in the chain does the real leverage reside?
- Where are the sources of waste in the chain?
- How do you innovate to eliminate them?
- How can you turn those who inhabit your demand chain into collaborators?
- What are the key competitive capabilities of your competitors?
- How do competitors react to the tactics you employ?
- How effective are their reactions?
- How has their response fed into your planning?
Once I started the list, I found it just went on, and on, and on, pages of it.
What changes is the way elements interact, apply differently to different situations, and the means by which experience, deep sector knowledge, and the wisdom that comes from hard lessons steers you towards a smaller range of drivers that warrant deeper analysis in any given situation.
A review of marketing, that can be best described as “forensic” can deliver real benefits from the insights that evolve.
Mar 1, 2010 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy
It is very tempting for marketers to become all sweaty about the prospect of a message going viral, all that free awareness, when in the old days, it would take lots and lots of advertising, costing big dollars.
If only it was that easy, just make a funny video and load it up!
It is still a matter of deciding who you want to delight, executing, and then you have a chance that they will spread the word, but without the focus on the small group to whom the experience of whatever it is you are selling is compelling, it is unlikely anyone will make the effort to spread your word for you.
In the early stages, it is inevitably, “one at a time” marketing, and the web does not make it easier than it has always been, it is just a different tool.
