How to build a super effective customer ‘Persona’
Who is your ideal customer, the one who will not haggle the price, who loves the product you sell, and proselytises for you? Knowing that person in great detail would be marketing and commercial gold. Like all gold, it is hard to find, subject to...
‘Organic’ investment should be the saviour of (some) retail.
I went into a retail store last week with a problem, not really expecting to find anyone or anything that remotely met the immediate need I faced. My web search had revealed many solutions, none of which gave me much confidence for one reason or another,...
The downside of FMCG retail scale.
Woolies and Coles have around 75% of FMCG sales in this country, depending on whose numbers you believe, and which categories are included. They have huge scale, from the farm gate through the supply chain to the consumers wallets. As a result, their cost...
A marketers explanation of Net Present Value (NPV)
'What the Hell is NPV?' the marketer cried Accountants seem to love to baffle with jargon, but that is not, usually, what they set out to do. Rather , they use terms as a shorthand to describe what to them makes absolute sense, but to the rest of us, mere...
Three metrics by which to measure the value of marketing content.
All marketing content I have ever seen is driven by one, or a combination of three things: Vanity They have something to sell They have something to say. There is always some overlap, but when you dig deeper, the motivation is always one of the three, and...
How does the Amazon innovation formula keep replicating?
Amazon is an astonishing company for a whole lot of reasons, but there is one that is not front and centre in most conversations I have seen and in which I have been involved. This is the means by which Amazon just keeps on innovating, genuine, disruptive innovations,...
8 clichés every entrepreneur should consider
Clichés become clichés because they make sense, and are widely used, so they pass into the language. Unfortunately, common usage often makes them appear flippant, a throw-away line that means nothing. That they take on that label does not make them any...
Your ‘enemy’ makes you stronger.
Strategy is as much about what you will not do as it is about what you will do, perhaps even more so, as it forces difficult choices. Equally, the old marketing buzz-word 'positioning' which was defined in my university days 45 years ago as 'how your...
9 reasons why SME’s should invest in a governing board
Very few of the small and medium sized businesses I interact with have a governing board of any real quality. Many have a 'board' required under the various regulatory regimes they must meet, but very few have a board that acts in the manner of a...
What governments can learn from small business.
Apart from the obvious, of doing sufficient due diligence on the important detail, such as knowing your nationality, there are many other lessons to be learnt. Amongst the key ones is the depth of consideration small business owners need to give to the...