bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Every Monday I like to throw some ideas out there and see what happens.

They return to me in the form of ‘I’ve tried that and heres why it didn’t work’ or ‘that’s already been done’ or ‘feedback’.

This one I have been throwing around for ages and talked to a lot of people so I thought now was time to unleash it.

Think about the mass of learnings we make online, monetisation models, usability

Now let’s apply them to an offline situation.

Why?

Fundamentally we are all humans interacting with your website or service.  We all have the same basic needs and wants.  We engage with your product sometimes with an end goal in mind othertimes we get sold on that end goal.  

Imagine I have taken over the local cafe.

Monetisation

Hmmmm ok, immediately I think of two things.

1. Offer coffee for free or very low cost to boost volume. (adsense model)
2. Offer coffee for free but charge for the experience (freemium)
3. Offer unlimited coffee at a monthly charge.  Different plans better coffee (saas)
4. Offer a special coffee that comes nicely packaged with chocolates on the side. (price discimination)

Usability

I like this one

1. Remove barriers to your end goal.  Buying a coffee.  Have a sliding door, efficient ordering system. 
2. Rather than volume (above) make it usable, friendly help user have a compelling experience (create flow), they are likely to spend more. (something online world hasn’t tapped yet).
3. How quickly can i read your menu? how does the language affect my selection? do you have a top 10 list or ‘most popular’ items.  

I’d better stop you get the idea using usability you can keep going for a while.

Community

This one is already applied somewhat

1. Create a community of coffee lovers, run a coffee course, teach them how to make coffee.
2. Setup a monthly newsletter for your loyal fans
3. Give your loyal fans cards valid for a free coffee for there friends (help them spread your idea)
4. Offer free wifi and organise tweetups / meet ups (via meetup.com)

You get the idea.

Other filters you can view your cafe through: 

• Conversion Rates: Optimise your entry points and languages for certain products.  
• Authenticity: Have nice personable people greeting you, I’m more likely to open my wallet if I’m feeling good about my experience
• Colours: Colours affect my perception of the store.
• Analytics: Do you know what type of customers come when? how long they stay? what they buy? Most effective source?
• Leaking links: Do you advertise / have signs that are building others brands not your own?

Conclusion: Ben should buy a cafe!

You can see that we have this great platform of learning online, we should all be looking at how we can apply these learnings into new contexts.

I meet a company every now and again that say we have no marketing strategy [and therefore we don’t do marketing].

Your wrong.

You do.

You have the No Strategy Marketing Strategy.

In every transaction your organisation engages in you are marketing. Why? you are communicating.

Each of these interactions results in a story being told.  This is a story about you.

Is this bad? Not necessarily.  

However if you are already doing something (without realising it) – surely you can deliver more value by providing a focused strategy.

Sun Tzu’s famous strategy quote:

“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.”

Everyone can replicate the tactics of your No Strategy Marketing Strategy…..

So flag your No Strategy Marketing Strategy and get to it (you have all weekend!).

See my post re: Zig Zag.

Everyone zig zags between over analysing and glossing over making decisions on little information.

Sometimes you need to.

It’s called attention to detail. Paying attention to the details can be perfect.  Customers notice and you feel great.

(it’s almost instinctive, they can tell immediately that its polished and perfect)

So how can you tell when you’ve gone too far? or your not going into enough detail.

Questions I would ask myself:

• How to these details relate to my objective?
• What level of effort will i have to exhert to nail those details.  Now double it.  Is the payoff still worth it?
• Will the customer notice these? or notice the lack thereof?

Things to think about…… (maybe a little, maybe a lot haha)

How can my friend who is a one man band charge $175/hour excl gst one year and only $50/hr two years ago.

Simple he created scarcity.

He is in a unique position where he is the guy to get.

Resources in scarcity cost more and clients are happy to pay it as they realise how scarce he is…

So think about it, how can i become scarce in my industry?

Ideas:

– Be the best at it or at a unique mix ie social media in the public sector

– Build your personal brand

– Limit availability…i only work 20/hours a week and only have 5 clients

– Be different

– Do something no one else will ever do ie transparency in a walled garden industry

Sure you can come up with a few of your own.

(remember it’s all about the story your telling by being scarce)

Everyone likes a good story

That’s why we tell them / share them / grow them

Now look at all your actions, what story does this create? How can i make it a better story…

When giving a gift, what story can they (the recipients) tell themselves and others?

When dealing with customers, ie red bull gives me wings…….

Go on tell a remarkable story you know you want to

Philanthropy in the past has been limited to individuals of mass wealh or huge companies.

However every one does do their bit helping one another out and their local causes.

We view Philanthropy as out of our reach…. for now… maybe later in life.

Causes such as Kiva unlock this and unleash the long tail.  So we can all engage in helping others out (in $25 usd increments).

Kiva provides a platform for people like you and me to provide funds to micro finance companies in developing and third world countries.  On this platform you invest in their project or business and in return they provide blog updates and knowing you’ve had a direct hand in helping someone else out.

Your investment doesn’t end there.  Once its repaid you get the money back and can reinvest it in others.  Yup you get every cent back.

As a bit of a hobby economist this concept is awesome, using the multiplier effect (looking at how additional investment will flow in an economy) you can find how many times your investment will flow through the economy.  Simply 1/percentage of savings ie in Peru the savings levels are 17% so 1/.17 = 5.9.  Meaning your investment will add ~ $125 to the gdp of Peru.

Thats only on a basic level, there are further flow on effects.

So my idea to you is:

• Create a philanthropy focus in your company, commit some money to invest in projects like kiva.
• Let your employees pick the companies to invest in and follow their progress.
• Take it a step further and match the lend that your employees place in Kiva.
• Get your family together and place a loan in a business.
• Get your workmates together and all join in to support 1 business.
• Your local group such as Rotary / Lions or your church could support causes on this and get your members to keep up to date with what is happening.
• Help Kiva out with their operation costs by sending them a donation.

You can check out Kiva at www.kiva.org (my lender loan page is here).  Facebook group is here.

So jump on, lend some money, help make a direct difference and see what happens.

Your marketing decision can help others too.

Mash Ups… let’s mash up two pieces of information that aren’t typically associated with each other.

Mash ups are old hat.

Rice with seaweed? rice, seaweed…eww boring.  Combination = Sushi. Yum!

Music with shoes? No way.  Ipod + Nike’s = Exercise info.  Give me it now!

Maps with Traffic? huh? Analytics + Maps = Business Intelligence.  Can’t get enough of it!

Mash ups are just same old creative out of the box thinking…

Same game, different name

The best story ever told to kiwi’s

Put a speights ale house on a freighter

Take it to london

We need 4 blokes to man it

The greatest beer run of all time

120,000 kiwi males applied…. thats 6% or about 1 in 19 of ALL males in new zealand…

Crazy numbers

The story for them is i drank speights all the way to the uk on the greatest beer run of all time…

What a story!

What story can you tell?

Platforms are about opportunity.

Using our platform imagine the possibilities.

Using Fontera (a milk co-operative) as your platform you can suddenly reach unreachable markets.

Using Facebook as a platform you can engage with your customers in new ways.

Using Basecamp as a platform to organise your business from you can suddenly run your business from any location easily.

I have written about Platforms before but I’ve been chewing them over moreso of recent.

How can I turn these resources into a platform for others? How could I modify our systems to provide a platform for others (and operate as a saas)

Some ideas i’ve had is:

Turn my productivity system into a platform for others to use

Turn our research writing systems into a service to other organisations wishing to collate information

Turn our Marketing systems into Software as a Service

Stop and think about your existing systems / services, could you rebundle those into a platform? Maybe you should? or maybe just critically thinking about it will help you manage your existing resources or platforms better.

Big Buck Bunny.

Great video.  Check out www.bigbuckbunny.org (stream via vimeo here).

Big Buck Bunny was created to showcase the Blender software.

What better way to sell a product (although as its open source funded by donations not direct selling) than to show us of its capabilities.

Reminds you of classic sales.

Sell the sizzle.  The great animations you can make.

Don’t sell (pitch) me.  Show me.

Content is king is the oldage saying of Internet Marketing

It still is (we’re still telling stories right)

However is your content scalable?

Have you maximised the opportunity for it to spread?

If not.  Your wasting time.  Build some systems now for all content.

Make the infinity assumption.  My content will be out there for infinity.  Surely i should put some systems in now to leverage the time component.

Some ideas:

• Share via a blog
• Share on scribd.com
• Integrate social bookmarking (make it easy for friends to share)
• Destroy any barriers to accessing your content
• Get it syndicated

Patterns are heuristic shortcuts.

Patterns are what experts have.  It’s how doctors can sum up a patients state in a glance or how you can make snapshot judgments.

They come from experience and learning.

The are all around us, in our clothing, our behaviour, how we interact.

Identifying patterns helps in creating greater understanding.

Learning something new builds new patterns.

Doing something that makes you uncomfortable or afraid builds new patterns.

You should always be seeking new patterns!

Quite often the same patterns are everywhere.

Now use these patterns in your strategies, they will be more creative and remarkable than you ever thought possible.

(remember innovation is the application of patterns in new contexts)

Thursday evening I threw my 12 hour startup idea at a wall to see if it would stick.

It was at the monthly Auckland, Web Meetup (great event to meet people btw)

We did a 20×20 format.  20 slides, 20 seconds each.  So I thought i’d jump up and give it a shot.

12 Hour Startup is a way of bridging the gap between aiding traditional companies to becoming more dynamic.

Building upon my last post really is how to sell key stakeholders on trying this model.

How can you sell this to your management, It’s a marketing decision:

• to staff it says we value your input let’s give it a go
• to customers it says we are seeking new ways to help you
• to management it’s driving strategic direction from sales (ideas that work)

Furthermore:

• Validation of ideas
• Stimulate Innovation & Creativity
• Out of the box thinking
• Flow on effects – employees maintaining this mindset over time

Need I continue?

Again I am seeking case studies, thanks to those that have given some feedback really appreciated

(have uploaded a copy of my presentation with basic notes, the objective was to get everyone focused on me instead of the slides, which worked)

Marketing after the fact should be consistent.

Case in point.

I recently canceled my storage unit at a local storage firm.

As we held a bond and prepaid a month my account was in debit.

Awesome.  At this point in time I was happy with the service, helpfulness of the company.  On my recommend list.

6 weeks later my account has still not been settled even after numerous emails.  They then post a cheque to my old address (even though i explicitly stated when i finished up my address has been changed).

Now they offer to deposit it into my account.  That’s fine.

But

From my perspective.  You have wrecked what was otherwise a positive customer experience.  Do you think I would recommend them again? Doubt it.

Marketing continues after the exchange, it is in the sizzle consumers receive, do not burn a customer because they have switched brands or ended the relationship.  That way they never come back.  Or recommend you.

What do you do? what do you offer?

Is this clear? It should be.

You should be taking a stance. This is who we are. This is what we are about.

People love to talk about firms that take a stance. We are all about flowers. We are all about Art.

Take a stance NOW.

[Thanks to Jim Russell of Shag Gallery, New Zealand for inspiration for this. He does awesome art work. Check it out if you are driving past.]