Seeds of Growth - Be Persistent

Refreshing...

Joe Free — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:02:06 -0700

Today, according to predictions, we will hit 112 degrees in Mesa, Arizona. The AC units are running, the kids are out of school, and the streets look like a ghost town. "Winter" is officially here. (you know that time when everyone stays indoors because of inclement weather?)

At this time of year the word "refreshing" is particularly meaningful. Whether it is a tall cool glass of lemonade or dip in a cool pool. Both bring relief from the ongoing stress of the heat.

It occurred to me recently that some people are "refreshing" as well. Just like the lemonade, they bring relief from the ongoing stress of making a business work.

These are people that just "get it". You know the ones? They seem to know what you know and you find yourself talking excitedly together and sharing ideas and experiences and just enjoying the conversation.

That's what happened when I met Adam Toren. We got together to discuss Promoterz, our online service that helps businesses give a megaphone to their happy customers, become aware of unhappy customers, and increase the happiness of all customers. As we talked it was as if we were partners working out how to help other businesses succeed. Turns out that is what Adam does.

Adam and his brother Matthew are serial entrepreneurs. Among the impressive list of their ventures is a website, YoungEntrepreneur.com. They initially created this site to help youth become entrepreneurs but over the years it has become more to mean those that are young or new at being an entrepreneur.

The site has tens of thousands of members actively participating in its forums (http://www.youngentrepreneur.com). They also have a "refreshing" blog (http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/blog) as well.

If you are a business owner sometimes what you need, besides more hours in every day, is just to be "refreshed" as you read of others shared experiences. Others who "get it". I guess it is a sort of therapy.

I enjoyed their "10 Mistakes People Make When Starting A Business" and an interview with an Ebay founder on persuing your passion. As you read you find yourself saying, yep, I remember how I learned that. But you also get reminded of things you might want to revisit and you feel more committed to succeeding.

In the end, just as you are refreshed and ready to go as you finish the last of the deliciously tart and cold lemonade, you will have some good ideas and the courage to succeed in this thing we call business.

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Mark Cuban on Selling Powdered Milk and the Need for a Single Success

The Business Pundit — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:24:38 -0700

Mark Cuban's speech at Blog World Expo contained several funny anecdotes, but my favorite was his story about one of his first business ventures. He sold powdered milk. As Mark explained it, he thought it tasted as good as regular milk, you could store it longer, it just seemed to have a lot of benefits. He even sold some... to his parents.

I dug through Mark's blog archives and found an old post referencing the story. It's an excellent post over all about the need for just one success in business, and why it is worth it to keep trying.

In basketball you have to shoot 50pct. If you make an extra 10 shots per hundred, you are an All-Star. In baseball you have to get a hit 30 pct of the time. If you get an extra 10 hits per hundred at bats, you are on the cover of every magazine, lead off every SportsCenter and make the Hall of Fame.

In Business, the odds are a little different. You don't have to break the Mendoza line (hitting .200). In fact, it doesnt matter how many times you strike out. In business, to be a success, you only have to be right once.

One single solitary time and you are set for life. That's the beauty of the business world.

The post is a great motivational story, so go read the whole thing.

See article.

Promoterz is the hands-free, word-of-mouth marketing service that takes care of the details so you can focus on business. Learn more

Full

Seth Godin — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 09:52:23 -0700

Stay in touch. Be there when your customers are "unfull."

I've been thinking about frequency.
I've been thinking about frequency.
I've been thinking about frequency.

Clearly, you didn't need the repetition in order to get the point of that first sentence. In fact, the repetition probably made it less likely you read it.

So why does frequency work so well in marketing? Why did candidates spend more than two billion dollars on the last election... that's about $10 a voter. Clearly, the information could have been transmitted a lot more cheaply than that.

It starts with the fact that ten percent (!) of voters polled acknowledged that they decided who to vote for on the day they voted. Wow. Why wait that long? Surely the voter had some sort of inkling long before that.

I think people are full. They have too much to do, too much on their plates, no room for new ideas, new tasks and new challenges (or at least they think they're full). So when all those ads are hurled at them, they ignore them. They ignore them because they can, and because they don't perceive that they have a problem that the ad will help them solve.

And then suddenly, election day arrives (or you run out of flour or need to hire a consultant or fly on a plane to Singapore or whatever). And now you have a problem. You don't know how to choose. So you let some ideas in. You're momentarily unfull, and then, when you're full again, you go back to ignoring the world.

But who do you let in? Which ideas get a shot?

You've probably guessed already. It's the ideas that were in line, patiently waiting. The ideas that earned their place in line because of those ads you say you ignored. You don't consciously remember them, of course, but they were there all along, laying the groundwork, just waiting until you were unfull.

So, all marketing analyses that ignore time are wrong. There's a big difference between a message that arrives when I'm full and when I'm unfull. And there is a big difference between a first impression and tenth one. Even if I can't remember the first nine.

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That magic moment

Seth Godin — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 09:44:36 -0700

The only way to be there at the right moment is to stay in touch.

Halloween costumes are 70% off today.

Last week, some of them were worth a crazed drive through traffic and a possible parking ticket.

The costumes didn't change, of course--the moment did.

In the right moment, something goes from ordinary to precious. From everyday to essential.

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10 Free Advertising Ideas

Small Business Branding — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 17:23:17 -0700

More creative ways to spread the word about your business.

Jake Wolf started his landscape business after posting “Landscape design student needs your home for portfolio development” on a local yahoo group. Within a week of his post he received 30 calls and had lined up enough work to quit his job.

Jake’s plan for 2007 is to have 100 customers signed up for his monthly fertilizing and pesticide program. Here are his plans for signing that first 100:

My plan for signing up 100 new customers by the spring rush.

Send out a thank you email to all existing customers and alert them to my plans for next year.
Join as many local online groups as possible. Many allow new members to introduce themselves.
Call up landscapers who don’t have pesticide licenses and work out an affiliate deal with them to take care of their fertilizing and pesticide applications.

Start writing an email gardening newsletter and heavily focus on local needs and resources.
Offer free gardening classes just like a Tupperware party with someone hosting and bringing several friends over. Trust me, this beats giving free estimates.
Film educational gardening clips using local people and host them on youtube.com. Include links to the most recent one in every email signature.
Forget the website, almost no one visits the current one. Get listed in free local directories instead.
Say hi to every neighbor of existing and new clients. Pesticide laws require neighbor notification. Why not knock on their door and say hi?
Offer a travel savings discount to your customers if they help you get more work on their block.
Say something new and always include a call to action. Everyone already knows landscapers cut lawns, mulch, top soil, prune, snow removal, bored yet, insect control, fertilize, retaining walls, mickey mouse, landscape design, irrigation, ponds, pavers, oy this is too much and this is only half of it!

Jake will make his 100 new clients. How do I know? Look at the list. He’s actually ‘doing’ things to grow his business. He’s not just sitting by the phone.
More ideas soon. In the meantime, click on the “comments” link and leave your favorite way to advertise.

cheap advertising, marketing

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It seemed important at the time

Seth Godin — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 08:30:48 -0700

Is your product ever vital? Do your customers hear from you when it is urgent?

Last week, I was running from one meeting to another in the city when I passed an old friend on the street. "No time to talk, sorry!" I said as I hustled off.

When we connected by email a bit later, he said he hoped I had a good meeting, and that it was worth the hustle.

I couldn't remember where I had been headed.

It seemed important at the time.

I've got two takeaways for you:

the first is that a lot of our day is spent doing stuff that seems urgent but really isn't.
and the second is that most people buy most things in a state of urgency, not relaxation. We pay what we pay when we buy what we buy because right then, in that moment, it's not just important, it's vital.

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Happy Birthday Beans

CoolBusinessIdeas — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 17:49:28 -0700

There is no end to the different ways you can stay in touch with your customers. Send them a magical bean!

DailyCandy: Greeting cards are so passé. E-cards? Totally tacky. Singing telegrams work only in the movies, and skywriting is bad for the environment. How in the world are you supposed to get your message across?

Well, we’re spilling the beans. The style-setting Japanese have done it again, creating the perfect vehicle for all your well wishes: the message bean.

Housed in an adorable aluminum can, each already planted bean is laser-printed with a message (Thank You, Love, Good Luck, or Happy Birthday) and a complementary image (the Japanese character for thanks, a heart, four-leaf clover, or music note). The recipient simply peels off the foil top, adds water to the soil, and voilà! A week later the bean sprouts and the message is revealed.

The Magical Fruit [DailyCandy]

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links for 2006-09-29

Church of the Customer — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 22:19:21 -0700

Good ideas for "conversational" marketing. Are you doing all the talking?

iMedia Connection: How to Talk WITH Your Customers

Nanette Marcus from iMedia interviews John Battelle, Tom Hespos, Mark Naples and Jackie on "conversational marketing."

(tags: marketing blogs)

If you are not regularly staying in touch with your customers someone else will. How do you stay in touch? Learn more

Is Advertising Dead?

Guy Kawasaki — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 09:02:22 -0700

How are you going to stay in touch with your customers in the future?

This is a video of a Churchill Club panel (9/20/06) that I moderated called Next Generation Insights. It featured six Silicon Valley young adults whose ages ranged from fifteen to twenty four.

These are some factoids that I found interesting:

They send as many as 4,000 text messages per month from their phones.
They watch one to two hours of TV per week. And they use Tivo or a recording device to fast-forward through commercials during that short timeframe!
They all have iPods, and they are very loyal to Apple.
They buy approximately forty songs a month on iTunes.
Helio is the hot phone (though none of them had one). I had never heard of it before!

Here’s a good analysis of the panel. The bottom line message is that before you waste your marketing dollars, you should watch what the panelists had to say about these topics:

Their fascination with MySpace and FaceBook.
How they use their cell phones—and seldom use a landline.
How they use computers—and Microsoft Office!
The surprisingly high degree to which they resent being “marketed to.”
The even more surprising degree to which “old media’ like magazines (specifically Wired for the males and US for the females) are effective.
Their dislike of online advertising whether banner, pop-up, or an ad running before or after a free video clip.

When I asked how advertisers can get to them, there wasn’t a lot of good news. Product placement may work if it’s subtle (specifically in The OC, Tivo be damned), but it sure appears that most forms of digital/online advertising are dead in the water for reaching young people. This is a whole new world...

One panelist’s mom followed up with me and gave me this list of the sites that her daughter visits:

To put it mildly, I didn’t exactly have these bookmarked or in my RSS feeds. :-)

One more interesting point that has nothing to do with the panel. Note how useful it is to have tags in a video like this— that is, the difference between Veotag and GoogleVideo.

Promoterz is the hands-free, word-of-mouth marketing service that takes care of the details so you can focus on business. Learn more

12 ways to encourage user-led innovation

Business Innovation Insider — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 05:11:17 -0700

Invite your customers to help you improve. Here are some ways to do it.

Patty Seybold, author of Outside Innovation, recently attended a meeting of Professor Eric von Hippel’s MIT Innovation Lab and walked away impressed with the level and quality of user-led innovation initiatives across a broad range of sectors and industries. Below, Patty highlights 12 "best practices" from companies that have been successful in encouraging various forms of "outside innovation":

(1) Foment organizational transformation from the outside in -- invite lead users to create derivative works out of your intellectual property, to share their creative ideas with one another, and to build their own “solutions” (gadgets, mash ups, applications, etc.) leveraging your company’s branded IP;

(2) Host co-design sessions with lead users;

(3) Encourage customers to contribute ideas and content, to pose and solve problems, and to interact with one another in public online community spaces;

(4) Encourage your own employees to leverage customer-contributed content, ideas, and deliverables;

(5) Provide tools -- like high-level programming languages and toolkits to promote lead user innovation -- and offer training on those tools;

(6) Get all your stakeholders aligned around customers’ desired outcomes;

(7) Create expert networks and link customers to networks of experts;

(8) Empower local community-based problem solving;

(9) Provide tools to end users/customers to manage their own complex situations rather than trying to do things for them;

(10) Provide electronic design tools to interested end users/customers to design their own products and to design your company’s products in open design communities;

(11) Encourage customer designers to critique and vote on each others’ work;

(12) Harvest user-generated ideas from across the Internet.

Tags: outside innovation MIT innovation Patty Seybold

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Sensational Sources to Send Out Your Message

Small Business Branding — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:29:41 -0700

Here are some good ideas and resources for spreading the word. What are you doing?

I love the work of John Reese. It’s so professional and valuable to the point when I consider buying something of his, I have no choice but to get it! So, how did he brand himself that way? Well I think that he positioned himself as professional, valuable and desirable in the minds of his consumers by promoting it on credible, powerful and appealing sources. Positioning is a tool which we use to differentiate products in a market where things are similar to each other and to target niche markets (or in John’s case charge a premium).

In this article I’m going to teach you the ins and outs of a very powerful way to help position your brand and deliver your message. As a matter of fact with this technique alone, you will be able to deliver your brand message more effectively than over 80% of businesses! (And I can bet your competition is in there somewhere too.)

By now, you should have no doubt that when sending a message to your target market, the place you choose to promote your message (aka. The source of your message) will reach different target markets. I suggest going out and finding some advertisers which are suitable for reaching your target market and taking them through a couple of hoops to see if they’re worth it.

1. Find out how appealing the source is as an advertiser.

First of all, is the source appealing? Does it get the attention of your target market and effectively convey your message? Well to determine how good it is, you can analyse it in three different respects as highlighted by my article on targeting:

The similarity between the source and your target audience.
The familiarity that the prospect has with your brand.
The extent to which your brand is liked by your target market.

While similarity develops a little bit of appeal, likeability fosters the most amount of appeal. So, if you find a source which people really like, then you’re onto a winner. Albeit, the best of these sources are likely to be expensive. So why not scour your local community for outstanding people? Or, go to the web community in your industry and get someone to stick a good word in for you. They might do it for money, a reciprocal word or even just a bit of what you sell. No matter what happens, as they are associated with your product, they will add value to your brand and help convey your brand’s identity.

2. Is the advertiser powerful/influential?

Secondly, does your source have power? Does it have a lot of influence on the people who buy your products? If so, then this is an awesome source! Not only are people going to this source for guidance, they are also looking at your product to satiate a need of theirs. Say for a moment, that you’re an electronics manufacturer who designs wireless webcams. If you want to create a stir in the market, try distributing some free cameras to the big reviewers in the industry. They’ll pop out a review with pros and cons and often times will be able to give you feedback on your product, whilst marketing your product to your target market! Amazing huh?

3. Does it have street cred?

Lastly does the source have credibility? Do your target market respect and credit the source as if it were gospel? If you can’t answer yes to this question then you should SERIOUSLY consider whether you should advertise through them. To illustrate this best, I’ll give you an interesting example. In Australia there is a con artist who runs a newsletter on success and finance. For a short while I was unaware that the guy writing the newsletter was a convicted con artist until a friend of mine pointed out an article to me. Now, whenever I receive a newsletter from him, I’m incredibly skeptical and critical of every word. Often times I even totally disregard his emails without a glance. In fact, if it wasn’t for his excellent copywriting, I wouldn’t receive it at all.

As you can see, the source you choose can have a great impact on whether or not people will recognize your message as clutter or something remarkable. If you look into it even further, take a look at all the points about a particular advertising source which will add to your brand meaning. As I outlined in Bolstering up Your Brand, you need to consider whether the place you advertise on has similar values to your business. If not, then think carefully whether you are adding or taking value from your brand.

Word of Mouth and Viral Marketing

By far, one of the most interesting and interactive sources you can use to promote your business with is that of Word of Mouth. Kammie K., right here from Small Business Branding has written a fairly nice article on this topic and for your convenience, I’ll explain it to you guys again. Have you ever found a business or something so amazing that you just have to tell a friend? Well that’s what we call Word of Mouth or WoM. I’m going to show you why I think it is powerful as it is by taking a look at it through a marketer’s perspective:

Step 1.

How appealing is it? Well a friend will have all three types of appeal. Specifically, they’ll have likeability appeal because you like them, they have familiarity appeal because you know and see them and they may even have similarity appeal if they are similar to you. Wow… isn’t that something? As it turns out, a friend is a really appealing source for you to push your advertising through.

Step 2.

How powerful and influential is it? I don’t know about you, but if all my friends like this night club, then I’m going to be more inclined to like it too. Not only this but a little management theory called ‘group think’ comes to mind here. When a leader in the group says something, then everyone will go along with it and agree. For instance, if everyone in the group says “Gee, I really love Marilyn Manson,” you’re not as likely to burst out “Errr… he’s crap, I like Kylie Minogue better,” are you? I wouldn’t think so. It’s not the best etiquette either. So, when you look at WoM in this regard it’s still a winner!

Step 3.

Finally, ask this: Is WoM credible? If you think about it, that’s like asking whether people trust their friends? I don’t think that is a question needed to be asked at all. Provided the guy knows what he is talking about, you should have a very powerful source.

WoM Facilities Just For You!

If you take a look around now, a lot of businesses are realizing how beneficial WoM is for promoting their message. One such business I admire is called Promoterz who advocate the importance of being remarkable and worthy of your customer’s attention. By exhibiting remarkable attributes it makes it easier for you to use the very contagious and cheap WoM marketing tactic.

Also, another place which I admire is Digg. If you have something on your website or a new, innovative product, you can submit it there and get a tight target audience looking at your space. Due to the nature of Digg as an emerging technology and trend, it doesn’t reach as wide a target audience as other WoM facilitators but if it suits your target market then you’re in luck.

Getting the word out and about

Of course, as a believer in using lots of different types of advertising, you shouldn’t just rely on WoM. If you go through the steps I went through above, you too can analyse where you are best off putting your ad spend. I guarantee that you will be extremely surprised at the effectiveness of your advertising when you send your message through a sensational advertising source. As always, I welcome your comments and until next time…

Best of Luck Branding,
Robert Kingston.

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Email is powerful...

Seth Godin — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 03:51:39 -0700

Staying in touch by email is powerful. Be sure to pay attention to the details.

More powerful than you realize, probably. The reason I killed my email list years ago was that it was too good at provoking a reaction. People are listening (which is good) so you better be very careful what you say and how you say it.

Even better, save your email for things you really and truly want to say.

Take a look at this email, just received from Amazon. Ouch.

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How Effective Is YOUR Advertising?

Small Business Branding — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 16:00:16 -0700

Your customers are seeing 1200 ads per day. What are you doing to cut through the clutter?

There is a ton of advertising in the world today, in fact studies show that consumers are typically exposed to 1200 ads per day, yet most only notice 76 of them. Of course some audiences are exposed to many more so it’s definitely a harsh market out there. Today, it seems that it’s just not enough to toot your horn, advertising “BUY NOW!” at your prospects. Now you need to deliver your message in a way which captures and subtly directs their attention to your message. Thankfully though, by avoiding some common pitfalls and implementing just a couple of simple techniques, you can increase your advertising effectiveness exponentially! So, over my next few articles I’ll be revealing some fundamentals which will help you to better your branding and advertising. Off we go…

Target your prospects with sniping accuracy.

Aim and FIRE your message at the right spot for the greatest impact. Without a doubt the greatest thing you could possibly use to develop your advertising is to aim it at the right audience. Now you’re probably thinking, “Well durr… of course you don’t sell sewing machines in a gun magazine!” Although what I’m trying to show you is that even the most minute facet of your advertising can have a dramatic impact on the way people perceive your product, service and brand. Furthermore by having a distinctive and clear identity in the minds of consumers, your advertising will stick out so much more than you could possibly imagine. So, let me ask you this now - How targeted is your advertising really?

When people see an ad, they take in much more information than you would ever imagine. They establish the brand’s identity by associating it with all of the information inside the ad and its environment. That is, they take in:

Colours, Images, Symbols, Metaphors and Writing style
The surrounding environment
Value and pricing
And hopefully the product/service/brand being promoted

All of these factors contribute significantly to whether or not you get your message across. Ever heard of the saying, “A picture tells a thousand words,”? Yep, this especially rings true in good advertising.

Colours and Advertising

You might have heard before that different colours have different emotions. Well, it’s all true. Despite the contextual differences which change them, they ultimately have a profound impact on the delivery of your message. For your convenience I have taken some juicy information from this site here:

Red: danger, excitement, fire, passion, blood, fight or flight, some sexual connotation.
Purple: Wealth, royalty, sophistication, intelligence.
Blue: Quietness, serenity, truth, dignity, constancy, reliability, power.
Black: Sophistication, elegance, power, rebellion.
White: Purity, cleanness, luminosity, vacuum.
Yellow: Warmth, the sun for many cultures, brightness, joy if little saturated.
Green: Nature, fresh, vegetation, health, green/blues are the favourites of consumers

You might want to pick a colour and use it as a recurring theme throughout your advertising or you might want to target different audiences and use different colours to differentiate them. There is an important point to keep in mind though, colours draw their meaning from the context they’re in. So, if I could just get you to imagine for a moment… red mixed with a picture of people doing business may elicit a different emotion than what you might expect from using blue in the same picture.

Pictures

This also brings me to my next point. Pictures. Try and get a clear picture of what your product, service and brand means and use elements of that picture in your ads. For maximum impact, you could even use symbols and write with some metaphors to engage your audience. The Red Cross does this very well, mostly its due to them being first in best dressed. By getting them to decipher the message you are almost challenging their mind to receive your message and look deeper into your brand meaning. Just look at how popular the TV show Lost is. Another company which does a good job of this is Microsoft and their XBOX 360 Launch – Do you remember those strange websites where you had to decipher problems to get the hidden message?

Marketing with Appeal

From what I know, there are three different types of appeal your ‘voice’ can have: From the weakest to the strongest, they are similarity, familiarity and likeability appeals. By knowing about these types of appeal you can effectively leverage attributes about your product/service and brand. Similarity appeal is where your brand is the same as your target audience, such as in the case of Hard Yakka. Familiarity appeal occurs when people see you around so often that they begin to trust you - when was the last time you questioned the hygiene of food at MacDonald’s? Probably the best appeal you can instill is that of likeability which is where people like your brand out of it being cool. I can’t quite explain it, but have you ever wanted a Porsche? Anyway, if you can find out what draws your customers to your brand then you could make your ads stick out like a diamond in the rough.

Also, when designing ads, marketers have to determine whether they want to use fear, humour or information to catch their audience’s attention. Each type of ad has its benefits, but humor ads tend to be remembered better. If you look into using one of these, think about these points:

Fear: Don’t over do the fear, or otherwise people will disregard your message, thinking, ‘It’ll never happen to me.’
Humour: Don’t overuse the humour or people won’t get your real message.
Information: Make sure you capture people’s attention with relevant and motivating information.

Product Attributes

If you even want to take things a step further, then how about focusing on attributes of your product? If you are selling a book to grandmothers who want to learn how to use a computer, then you might want to use bright colours and large text so they can use it properly. You might even use language inside the product which appeals to this audience. The fact of the matter is your target audience won’t buy something which doesn’t help or appeal to them. So go and find out what they want and incorporate it into your product. If you’re lucky enough to be able to talk with your customers, find out what they like and don’t like about your product.

A Projective Technique

I’m going to go a little off topic here but a great way to ask customers how you could improve your product is to use what we call a projective technique. Approach them saying, “Hey [customer], [blah, blah]… I have had some [X] customers who have only been moderately satisfied with my product. What do you think these customers might enjoy in the product.” This will avoid putting them on the spot and will also tap into what they REALLY think, based on their core attitudes, values and beliefs.

‘Putting things right’

Finally, determine whether or not you are you distributing it to the right people in the right places. It’s probably not the best idea having a thrift shop in the trendy part of town. Likewise, it’s probably not a good idea selling burgers off your website and deliver them via snail mail. Keep in mind, that if you are to maintain your image, you must place everything you can about your brand in places you want to associate with your brand. So, if you have a purely online presence then why not try advertising offline a bit more, to get people thinking about it in other places? Also, if you sell cheap products in a store, you could try re-decorating your website or store to reflect the fact that it offers cheap prices and lots of value. Take for example Bunning’s Warehouse in Australia – They purposefully leave things in cardboard boxes to make them look cheaper. There is so much I could go on about but I’ll save it for next time.

Before I let you go though, you will want to take all these things into account when you’re developing strategies and tactics to propel your advertising and branding to success. I can’t stress enough how important it is for small businesses to create a solid and specific identity which helps to position them away from their competitors. It can be suiidal for a startup if you can’t get it right – I guarantee it. Put what you’ve learned here into practice and your advertising will certainly sing!

Best of luck branding,
Robert Kingston.

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(Author: Robert Kingston)

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The Starbucks Online Coupon Fiasco--Venti Size

Dave Free — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 22:47:24 -0700

Just about everybody with a blog commented on Starbuck's recent problems with online coupons. You can read the story here . John from Brand Autopsy asserts they never would have done something that dumb in his day (used to work there) and recommends more limited expiration dates. Seth has some additional principles for avoiding such issues. Countless others also weighed in on how it could have been avoided and what Starbuck's should do now that it has happened. All good stuff, but I hope the baby (online coupons) doesn't get thrown out with the bath water.

In a nutshell, Starbucks created an online coupon with about a thirty day expiration date for a free iced coffee drink. They gave the coupon to a few employees in select areas and expected it to stay limited. It didn't. It took off like wildfire thanks to the internet and they ended up posting signs in their stores saying "regretfully" they would no longer be valid at any Starbuck locations.

In my mind, the real story is not that online coupons don't work, but quite the opposite: online coupons work well--in this case too well. Remember the old days when you had to pay to get coupons printed in a newspaper or to hand out. You had to pay for every one! Not so on the internet. They multiply without costing you a dime. Isn't that just what you want to have happen? It should be. So the lesson is this: make sure that any offer you put on an online coupon is something that you would be happy to see proliferate. Tools to do that? Limit the expiration date, make it a "buy something to get something" offer, give away something with no hard costs. Have other ideas for creating coupons you're happy to see proliferate? Post them here.

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Bringing the Diners Back

Dave Free — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:30:40 -0700

Restaurant Hospitality recently listed some of the tactics that big casual dining chains are employing to try to lure diners back to their restaurants after suffering a poor 3rd quarter showing. Consensus seems to be that same store sales have slowed down due to economic conditions, an increase in the number of casual dining restaurants and a shift of consumers to a relatively new category of food service called fast casual. Fast casual is quicker than full sit down service and higher quality than basic fast food. Big chain solutions?

Reduce Prices--Applebee's has got a dinner combo including dessert for $9.99, TGI Friday's has got appetizers discounted up to 50%, Cheesecake factory has reduced portion and prices significantly on lunches, and Outback has reduced steaks by $1.

New Menu Items--Applebee's is going to try out star power by teaming with Tyler Florence from Food Network, 23 new items on TGI Friday's menu, and Cheesecake factory has 16 new items on the menu.

Seems like nothing more than the obvious to me. Any time sales go the wrong direction the knee-jerk reaction is to reduce prices and add features. Eventually that strategy is not going work. Great news for those of us that aren't big chains, but it is going to take some effort. The Restaurant Hospitality article notes:

you may have to fight to keep the business you've got, but it's still there to be gotten.

So how do you fight? Here are a few thoughts:

Get in touch with your customers. Walking around asking them how their meal was is great, but what happens when they walk out the door? Do you have a way to stay in touch with them? Start gathering email addresses and stay in touch regularly with your loyal clientele.
Ask your customers for feedback. Hopefully you didn't wait till sales dropped to realize that your customers want a high quality food faster. Is there someway you can meet that need for them? What else do your customers want? You should be closer to your customers than the big guys and able to move faster.
Get your word-of-mouth on! The best way to "fight" for more business is to develop a force of loyal customers that are actively telling their friends and associates what a great restaurant you run. Don't leave it to chance, get a program in place that makes it easy for your customers to spread the word.

Word of mouth fills seats, now is the time to get started.

You work hard to make sure your customers are happy. Don't waste happy customers. How easy is it for your customers to share with their friends? Learn more