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10 Reasons People Buy Your Product Or Share Your Idea
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing
People buy your product or share your idea because…..
1. It makes them feel…better, smarter, more beautiful, healthier, safe, loved and on and on.
Online courses, Jimmy Choo shoes, perfume, gym membership, life insurance, organic fruit.
2. They are looking for a shortcut. Information, more time, easy payments or something else.
Paypal, lawn mowing, TripAdvisor.
3. They want to feel more connected to the group, to belong.
Instagram, live events, Startup weekend, book clubs.
4. It works.
Think Dropbox, WordPress, Amazon, FedEx.
5. It makes their life easier.
Fruit smoothies, online groceries, Thermomix.
6. It gives them a story to tell.
A Tiffany & Co bracelet, dinner at Jamie’s Italian restaurant, Christian Louboutin red soled shoes.
7. They need a solution to a problem.
Online dating, personal training, gluten free bread.
8. It helps them to get from where they are to where they want.
Gym membership, consulting services, design.
9. They like what you stand for.
Wholefoods stores, Method clean products, Patagonia outdoor wear.
10. Their friends are doing it too.
Facebook, dinner at a new restaurant, drinking Jägerbombs.
How many of these boxes are you ticking for your customers?
Image by Zurich Tourismus.
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Your Biggest Obstacle
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing
“Here’s what I’ve got.” Joe said, as he held out his product to me. It wasn’t just a product though. This was something that had consumed him and five figures of his hard earned cash for months.
The market research he’d taken as a green light to get going a year earlier hadn’t paid off.
Joe had inventory and no buyers. His potential customers had evaporated and by now he was desperate to convince them. Knowing that people didn’t want what he was selling didn’t make it any easier for Joe to regroup.
It was easier for him to contemplate shifting the worldview of an entire market than to change his own.
The truth is it’s not always the market that needs to shift it’s thinking. Sometimes it’s you.
Your biggest obstacle might be closer to home than you think.
Image by Oliver Frank.
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Sales Is…..
sales
noun
1. The exchange of a commodity for money; the action of selling something.
2. A quantity or amount sold.
Actually sales is understanding how your customer wants to feel, not what she wants to buy and doing everything you can to get her there.
Image by Ed Yourdon.
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Winning In The Story Economy
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Back to my hair salon.
Sally shows up on time. She gets through two colours and three trims buy lunch, then waits impatiently for the hands on the clock to turn the next four hours until closing.
Carmel makes five minutes to chat to the pensioner who took two buses to get there. She remembers that the awkward teen just started university and forgets to take a break. The clients who ask for her by name are happy to sit and wait until she’s free. The day is gone before she realises it.
The story we tell both as people and in our work is our impact. You might think it’s impossible to make this scale in a big organisation. And yet story is how Airbnb has grown a hugely successful business with a presence in more than 33,000 cities and 192 countries around the world.
The truth is that story scales and in an increasingly connected world business is built on interactions and not transactions.
Image by Ed Yourdon.
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Credentials And The Fraud Police
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
If I had a dollar for every person I know who is making a difference doing something they care about yet feels insecure about their right to be doing it, I would be funding a very nice round the world trip.
There’s the interior decorator who longed to be a stylist but doubted that she could pull it off. She was doing the work anyway without realising or charging for it when she consulted her clients about colours paint effects. That’s all changed now and she has even launched her own lifestyle magazine.
Then there’s the tech guy turned baker who began his business with an obsession and an email list of friends who waited with bated breath for his loaves once a week. He taught himself everything he knows. In the end he left his job and opened a bakery where he pours a whole lot of love into his recipes and the service he gives his customers.
I could tell you stories about successful authors who published because they could, not because they were anointed with a book deal. About the film editors without diplomas, the consultants with no MBA and the movement makers without permission.
Every one of us will question our right to be doing that thing that matters. Second guessing ourselves is part of the human condition. I love how Neil Gaiman described this phenomenon in his commencement address using his wife Amanda’s expression “the fraud police”. We’re going to worry about not being good enough, or being found out, or not having the piece of paper and the proof.
Here’s the only thing you need to remember. Legacies are not built on credentials.
Your work is your proof. The difference you make in peoples’ lives is your proof. The smiles on faces and the brighter start to someones day. They are your proof.
That’s all the proof you need.
Image by Remon.
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Tina Roth Eisenberg On Trusting Your Gut And Following Your Passion
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
Have you ever had an idea you thought might work that still hasn’t seen the light of day?
If you’ve longed to bring something you’re passionate about to life it might be time to watch the video chat I had with Tina Roth Eisenberg.
Tina is a Swiss designer based in New York who runs the hugely popular design blog Swiss Miss. She also happens to be the founder of Tattly, the best temporary tattoo company in the world and the gorgeous to-do app TeuxDeux. Tina is the brains behind Creative Mornings, which has been labelled “TED for the rest of us”. It’s become a movement with chapters running events in cities all over the world.
This lady knows how to take an idea, run with it, make it work and bring people along for the ride. Enjoy the nuggets she has to share.
Image by Bekka Palmer.
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The Third Secret Of Great Marketing
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing
It’s the reason Dropbox’s revenue hit $240 million in 2011 despite giving away their product for free and how Instagram has grown to 100 million users.
Stand in your customers’ shoes. Start with their story.
Image by Trey Ratcliff.
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The Death Of Retail. The Symptom Is Not The Problem
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Georgina owns and operates a speciality gluten free food store in Brisbane and like many retailers she’s experiencing a problem. Increasingly people are coming to browse but not to buy. The perception is that if I can get it cheaper or faster online why would I make the trip to your store?
So Georgina has resorted to charging customers a $5 fee to look because she’s tired of people just coming in for advice and then leaving to buy from supermarkets or online stores. I feel her pain and her desperation but I doubt that this will solve her problem.
The reason bricks and mortar stores are closing left and right has everything to do with the perception of price over value. Customers are no longer willing to drive across town to your store, find a parking spot and browse your shelves in the hope that you have the very thing they wanted in stock. They are not going to make a trip just to complete a transaction because they don’t have to.
The value of bricks and mortar stores was that they were the only places to get the thing you wanted. When you can get that thing in two clicks of a mouse where does the value lie?
It lies in the potential of the interaction. The way you make customers feel. In being generous. In finding ways to give people more than you put in their shopping bag. So much more that it’s worth the effort to come back, not for the gluten free flour or a paperback but for the connection with you and the story they can tell themselves.
The retail stores that are dying are trying to sell something (anything!) to everyone instead of finding the people they can delight. The people who aren’t just looking for a bargain. The ones who want something to believe in and who will cross town to pay more if they have to because you touched them.
The businesses that survive won’t have more shelf space and cheaper prices, or even rules to discourage customers from coming in to engage. They are the ones who can work out a way to capitalise on the things the big guys can’t and won’t do.
What’s killing retail isn’t the world wide web, it’s that retailers forgot about creating meaning while they sold commodities. The solution is not to punish people for having a choice. It’s to be the better choice.
Image by thisisbossi.
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The Exponential Value Of Being More Than
So I’m standing at the service counter of the hair salon receiving the bad news that my usual stylist is sick today.
“What are you having?” the receptionist enquires. “If it’s just a cut everyone here is capable.”
Of course she’s right. Most clients don’t leave with blue hair they didn’t want. Most shop assistants can process transactions. Most nurses administer the right medication on time. Competence and efficiency are standard now. It’s what we expect but it isn’t what we care about.
Time and again the businesses that succeed find ways to be more than just okay.
Capable might get you to the end of a shift but it isn’t what’s valuable now.
Image by Ned Trifle.
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Brand Vs. Branding
Branding is…..
“The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers’ mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme.”
—The Business Directory
Branding in the traditional sense was designed to create recognition and awareness of commodities. It was the way business persuaded customers to decide.
There’s a difference between being branded and becoming a brand. A distinction between recognition and significance.
It’s possible to shift a lot of breakfast cereal through brand recognition. But if your brand isn’t loved then it’s replaceable.
Branding might enable you to be top of mind. Top of mind isn’t the same as close to heart.
Ask Microsoft.
Image by Luke Chan.