Jan 17, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
Every day I get stuff by email that purports to make me some sort of compelling offer, something that some dill out there kids himself (herself?) that I need.
It often starts:
Dear Alan (wrong spelling)
I am the CEO of Buttstuffers & Co, we are experts at something that we know will add 50% to your bottom line. Hopefully you are the right person for us to talk to. (I do not care who is the CEO of Buttstuffers, I do not know who they are, what they do, all I care about is how in hell they got my name, and yes, I am the right person, because I can ignore you, or more satisfyingly, tell you to piss off)
I would like to offer you a free ???????????, guaranteed to work for you, just to demonstrate our goodwill. (too late, my quotient of goodwill disappeared when you misspelt my name, and since then you have just managed to annoy me)
Download our free whitepaper now for more information. (Why would I do that, all it does is confirm an email address, and give you more information to throw more crap at me that demonstrates you are simply full of it)
We are experts at:
Marketing automation
Marketing ROI
SEO
Creating client relationships
Etc,etc.etc.
(If you were expert in any of this, which I seriously doubt, you would not have sent me this. In former times, you would be selling snake oil)
It gets really tiresome, marketing flatulence like this just gives those of us who genuinely care about what you think, and how your business can improve, and how our expertise and experience may assist, a bad name.
I tell my clients it is part of the price we pay for the tools that the web delivers, but nevertheless, flatulence smells bad irrespective of the cause.
Jan 14, 2014 | Branding, Marketing, Sales
Perhaps following on from the success of McDonalds “Angus” strategy, Domino’s has launched a “Wagyu Pizza” for our indulgence.
I like a pizza as much as the next bloke, but it is not one of the major food groups, just an occasional easy cholesterol hit. Being asked to pay 3 times the going rate is asking a bit, even if a bit of a Wagyu does inhabit the topping somewhere, and the packaging is a bit fancy.
Wagyu is a term used to describe a small number of Japanese cattle breeds that deliver a high level of fat marbling, creating a soft, juicy and flavoursome steak. In addition there is the banding mystique that comes from the stories of individual animals being looked after like kings, massaged, fed specific diets including beer, and generally leading an exercise free and indulged life, until the chop.
In Australia, Wagyu cattle are usually grass fed and just finished on grain, but are increasingly just grass fed, keeping costs down, but compromising the marbling, and I presume the tenderness and flavour.
But the “Wagyu” brand remains strong, and combined with the scarcity, attracts a premium in fine dining locations.
However, I wonder what a pizza does to the Wagyu brand story? Not much I suspect.
Is anyone getting a Royalty? Is this the beginning of the end for exclusive Wagyu?
Dec 19, 2013 | Change, Customers, Sales
Had an interesting debate at a conference a short time ago, something that I think makes a big difference, but is not usually considered, at least in my experience. The debate was the merits of pitching Vs what I call “long form selling”
Selling is a process, it takes time, effort, and involves multiple touch-points as a relationship evolves that can lead to a sale. Obviously the process varies depending on many factors, you would not expect to spend much time considering the competing merits of different paper-clips, but power stations are a bit different.
By contrast, a pitch is a yes/no equation. You get one shot, a short time, little opportunity to build rapport and points of empathy with your audience. Make or break.
In some industries pitches are the norm, nobody thinks much beyond the immediacy, they are the all there is. In others, long form selling is the norm.
Often the forms are mixed up.
Being an account executive selling to an Australian supermarket retailer is usually called “selling” but the reality is that it is just a series of pitches, with little opportunity to build a relationship much beyond knowing the other parties name and a few commercial characteristics.
Clearly, the greater the imbalance of power in the conversation, the more likely each interaction will look like a pitch. The task of the seller in that case is to take control of the conversation, and ensure it is a process, with opportunities to revisit and review, not just a once off opportunity to sell.
I know which I prefer, but I also know which focuses the mind.
Dec 10, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, Sales
Recognising better is really hard when all offerings in the market appear similar. It follows then that you also must be different.
This brings in another challenge, being different is not enough, you also have to deliver. Being different just offers the opportunity to be seen, and perhaps to deliver, that you would not have had otherwise.
Take Seth Godins Purple Cow example. If you had rushed out and bought a purple cow thinking purple milk would be cool, then all you got was the same white milk that you could get from any old cow, then you would be disappointed. The “purple” did not deliver on the promise of the purple cow to be different, It got noticed, chosen once, but did not deliver.
Classic case, Red Bull is a beverage, a crappy tasting, caffeinated, cocktail of chemicals, and Co2, selling at a premium. Yet look at their website, they do not sell the product, there is almost nothing about the product on it, the site is all about the brand ,the excitement, the story, updated in close to real time, and tailored to your location. It is a storytelling masterpiece, one that almost all marketers would be well advised to understand.
Storytelling is more than a core skill of marketing, it is the critical ingredient, without which, your marketing will be hollow. To be sustainably successful, however, you need to live the story, do it, not just tell it. Steve Goldners post on the best facebook page ever eloquently makes the case.
Dec 5, 2013 | Change, Customers, Marketing, Sales
Some marketing activity is aimed at creating demand, alerting people to a value proposition. Other so called marketing activity is aimed at delivering an offer, an important but very different activity to demand creation.
Consider the difference between most ads on TV, and the yellow pages. The former generally sets out to tell you why you should buy something, whereas the yellow pages is a list of places where you can go to get delivery.
Which leads me to all the all the banner ads on the web, those persistent, annoying and endlessly crappy pop-ups that appear. I have just upgraded from windows XP to Windows 7 as I replaced my laptop, not wanting the leap to windows 8, just a step too far, and have not yet figured out how to avoid the apparent thousands of pop ups plaguing my screen. None are likely to get my attention beyond wanting to strangle the silly bastard who is paying somebody to disrupt me in the belief that I will react positively to the disruption.
The old laws of supply and demand still work. The supply of space into which to place a banner ad on the web is infinite, so any price is too much, and it does not work, like an ad in the yellow pages does not work to create demand, just where to get it once you have decided to buy something.
Dec 4, 2013 | Branding, Change, Marketing, retail, Sales, Small business
The produce branding model used by the agricultural so called marketing programs run by industry bodies all fail the basic test of being consumer centric. Generally they are retailer centric, using grower levies to fund discounts, and sometimes display space, never brand building. ”
“Australian tomatoes” is not a brand, it is simply a description.
Besides, the major retailers are exercising their control of the supply chain by not allowing proprietary brand building marketing anywhere near their stores.
The major retailers hold varying shares of produce categories. I suggest that hard vegetables like potatoes and carrots are in line with their overall share of around 75%, but their share of sensitive, seasonal fruit is probably more like 40%, with everything else falling somewhere in between. Where they fall depends on the “commodity” status of the produce, and consumers view of the trade-off between convenience and freshness, taste, and the more subjective things like customer service and product provenance.
Sydney Harvest is determinedly consumer centric. It is an evolving business model that creates a collaboration between the best growers in the Sydney Basin ands specialist produce retailers in Sydney to deliver field fresh, best quality, provenance assured produce to discriminating consumers, turning the usual supply chain into a demand chain.
Currently in pilot, the initiative is setting out to determine if there is a market in the niche, as there is certainly a niche in the market for such a collaboration.
