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 29, 2010 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
There are lots of web site optimisation tools around, including the free ones from Google which do a pretty good job, and there are many people around who will promise you the world by next Sunday. However, the tools are best used in selectively, conjunction with the situation. Remember the old saying, “to a hammer, every problem is a nail”
To optimise a site is a process of continuous improvement, starting with the objective of the site. One that is dedicated to sales will be subtly different to one that is there to spread an idea, or point of view. So, a simple process:
- Have a clear site objective, and be unambiguous about :
- How it adds value to you
- How it adds value to your “target” web browsers.
- Determine where your “visitors” are coming from
- Determine where they land
- Make sure the landing pages have the beginning of a trail that leads further into the process you have set out to achieve.
- Track how long they stay, and where they go, both on the site and into links you may provide
- Establish performance measures
- Continuously improve by experimenting and tracking outcomes.
- This is a creative process before it is a mechanical one, so don’t just leave it to the techos.
- In this connected world, site optimisation is also a window into your business, so make sure the visitors you get are the ones you want, and they like what they see. There is no point attracting those to whom you can add no value.
Mar 28, 2010 | Branding, Management, Marketing
Building a brand is a “one bit at a time” exercise.
Most aspiring brand managers look at Coke, Google, Microsoft, the local leader in their market, and think about how they can take them on, and win.
The process is useful, but the reality is that you can’t do it in one big bang, it is one brick at a time.
There are many metaphors, I like thinking about the process as a bike race. You need to be in there and fit, and have the support team all pulling for you, there will be ups and downs, opportunities to go faster downhill, and hills you have to really work at to get over, but over the distance, you if build up momentum, experience, consistency, manage the risks and take the opportunities, you may earn a place in the peloton, and if you are good enough, and your timing is right, you can get to the stage finish first. Then, there is just tomorrow.
Building a brand is similar.
Mar 28, 2010 | Management, Sales
The only way to win is to attack, you can prevent being beaten by defense, but as any football coach knows, defense will not win.
Same in business, you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses compared to the opposition, and exploit the strengths, whilst covering for the weaknesses.
Having an intimate understanding of the key customers, those who will spread the word of your product or service is as good as having the opposition playbook
The only way to get a crystal clear picture of the oppositions position is to experiment, continually ask the questions of them by experimenting, testing, & understanding their response, be restless, and inquisitive, probe, analyse, question, form and test hypothesis. Sounds a bit like the scientific method, and continuous improvement.
Mar 25, 2010 | Social Media
As a young bloke, I was given a “XY” graph that had “urgent, not urgent, important, not important” on the axes as a personal management tool.
I was advised to concentrate my effort on the “Important, not urgent” quadrant, as those are the things that will make the real difference, add the sustainable value, and told that things in the “urgent not important” quadrant are the ones would absorb all the time if allowed, and it would take only personal discipline to manage the allocation of time, and expectations of others.
Now we have a myriad of new distractions in the urgent but not important (but perhaps compelling?) quartile, the mass of stuff on the net, and the social applications to absorb our time, the task has multiplied, perhaps by logarithmic rates.
Tom Fishburne, as usual, collects the problem into one “iprocrastinate” cartoon. Lovely.
