Duct Tape Marketing

Posted on 2012/05/03 by

I really enjoyed reading this book.

Duct Tape Marketing [Book Review] – Deluxe.

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Why do restaurants fail?

Posted on 2011/11/16 by

I suppose I could ask that about any business, but I’m specifically intersted in restaurants.  Why do restaurants fail?  And I don’t just mean because of bad food or bad restaurant inspections, but why do they fail?

General reasons:
Bad Food
Bad Management
Bad Service
Bad Location
Bad Pricing

We’ve had two restaurants fail near us in the last six months.  They both had good food, good service and I assume good management, but yet they didn’t have enough customers.  Everytime we’d go there, they didn’t have a lot of business.  I don’t think the prices were outrageous, and the locations weren’t horrible.  So why did people avoid going there?

I’m open to ideas for further discussion.

 

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Enchantment – Giveaway

Posted on 2011/04/08 by

Happy Friday!

Thanks to all of you who entered our first book giveaway!

Since there were only two entries, we’ve decided to give both visitors a copy of the book.

Congratulations to Basil Lyberg and virtualDavis!

We’re thinking that our next book giveaway might be a copy of Seth Godin’s “Poke the Box“.  Please look for that in the coming weeks.

What are some other recent good business or marketing books that you’ve seen?

 

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April 8th Book Giveaway – Guy Kawasaki “Enchantment”

Posted on 2011/03/31 by

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions [Hardcover]

Welcome to our first book giveaway!

For our first book we’ve chosen the newest release from Guy Kawasaki:

“Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions“.

Here is the book description from Amazon.com:

Enchantment, as defined by bestselling business guru Guy Kawasaki, is not about manipulating people. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes the skeptics and cynics into the believers and the undecided into the loyal. Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it’s more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.

Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions. For instance, enchantment is what enabled . . .

* A Peace Corps volunteer to finesse a potentially violent confrontation with armed guerrillas.
* A small cable channel (E!) to win the TV broadcast rights to radio superstar Howard Stern.??
* A seemingly crazy new running shoe (Vibram Five Fingers) to methodically build a passionate customer base.??
* A Canadian crystal maker (Nova Scotian Crystal) to turn observers into buyers.

This book explains all the tactics you need to prepare and launch an enchantment campaign; to get the most from both push and pull technologies; and to enchant your customers, your employees, and even your boss. It shows how enchantment can turn difficult decisions your way, at times when intangibles mean more than hard facts. It will help you overcome other people’s entrenched habits and defy the not-always-wise “wisdom of the crowd.”

Kawasaki’s lessons are drawn from his tenure at one of the most enchanting organizations of all time, Apple, as well as his decades of experience as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. There are few people in the world more qualified to teach you how to enchant people.

As Kawasaki writes, “Want to change the world? Change caterpillars into butterflies? This takes more than run-of-the-mill relationships. You need to convince people to dream the same dream that you do.” That’s a big goal, but one that’s possible for all of us.

We will choose a winner on Friday, April 8th.

TO ENTER:

Entering the contest is easy!  Steps to success:

  1. Go to our main website and add a bookmark (feel free to look around).
  2. Subscribe to this blog.
  3. Most importantly, leave a comment on this post letting us know where you heard about this.

That’s it!  You’ll be automatically entered to win.

THE RULES:

  1. Only one entry per person, please. 
  2. No entries after midnight, April 7th.

Winner will be chosen randomly, contacted via email, and announced on Friday, April 8th.

Good Luck!

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Book Review: 9 Lies That Are Holding Your Business Back

Posted on 2011/03/10 by

9 Lies that are holding your business backI just finished reading 9 Lies That Are Holding Your Business Back: And the Truth That Will Set It Free by Steve Chandler and Sam Beckford.  I was very enjoyable and enlightening. 

Of course, we’ve all heard various sayings and beliefs growing up and also as we entered the business world, but did you ever stop to think how many of them are embedded in your subconscious preventing you from moving forward?

Here are the 9 lies (I don’t feel bad about listing them, because they are in the front cover, plus you need to read the book to find out why they are so bad for you):

  1. It takes money to make money
  2. All I need is to know how to do this
  3. We need to get our name out there
  4. Experience is a benefit
  5. I am a victim of circumstance
  6. You have to be tightfisted
  7. Customers are hard to figure
  8. I can do this on my own
  9. Lowering prices boosts business

Number 9, “Lowering prices boosts business”, was the most astounding of all.  Whenever I see a local restaurant add a sign that says “All you can eat buffet breakfast”, I usually feel like the end is near.  With so many restaurant chains opening, many small/local restaurants really feel the squeeze on customers.  The first knee-jerk reaction is to lower prices and offer special deals “2 for 1″, “all you can eat”, etc.  But this isn’t the best way to handle the situation.  What this type of behavior does is to attract value seeking customers who scurry from deal to deal around town.  They will never be a loyal customer.  Instead, you need to stand firm to your prices and talk about the benefits of the good food or service you are offering.  You should, in fact, consider raising your price and simultaneously raise your level of service or quality.  If you continually do this over time, you will find that your customers remain loyal no matter how bad the economy gets or what other businesses open nearby.

The other eight lies are equally exciting – check it out, and while you are at it – maybe you can think of some other lies that we’ve tucked away over time that hinder our progress.

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The Centric Data Daily

Posted on 2011/02/21 by

The Centric Data Daily is a compiled newspaper of tweets from the people that @centricdata follows.  It’s a very interesting concept created by a company called SmallRivers.

Here is a note from their site:

A (very) short introduction

SmallRivers is a privately held startup incorporated in Switzerland (Lausanne) and located on the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL campus.

Co-founded by Edouard Lambelet and Iskander Pols, the company is focused on facilitating the discovery of relevant content and other people of interest on the web. Paper.li is our latest development, and by far the most promising. This is why the company is now entirely devoted to making it even better…

We like the semantic web, we look for simplicity, we respect content creators and we thrive on feedback – make sure to read our blog to get the latest news, or follow us on Twitter: @smallrivers.

A daily summary of all of your twitter activity is great for two reasons:

1) You don’t have to manually look through your twitter account for something interesting.
2) The summary posts each day to your twitter account which could help build followers – this post also includes links to people who contributed the most in each release.

The only disadvantage that I can think of is that you will probably want to monitor it and your twitter followers closely to make sure the content stays within the bounds that you’ve set for yourself.  (ie, don’t follow a lot of porn publishing twitters and then be surprised when something pornographic shows up on your daily newspaper)

If you don’t have one, you should consider it.  You can start by logging into your twitter account and going to their site: http://paper.li/

 

Posted in Marketing, Twitter | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Five ways to get your customers email addresses

Posted on 2011/02/18 by

You have a great company, good products or services, and loyal customers.  Wouldn’t it be great to reach out to them and say “Thank you”, or just to tell them about something new?  How about asking them to tell their friends about their great experiences with you? 

If only you had their email address.  Obtaining email addresses isn’t rocket science but in these times people are a lot more protective of this information.  If you’ve ever added your email address to an online site and then been inundated with spam, you would probably think twice the next time someone asks for your email.

Here are five legitimate and unobtrusive ways to obtain your own customers email addresses:

  1. Ask them while they are in your store
    Have you ever been to a large store and had to provide your email address at the register?  Did you think twice about it?  If you are like me, you probably did.  Honestly if you are at the store anyway and you already shop there, giving them your email address isn’t a horrible task.  As a business owner, you have an advantage with your own customers — they are YOUR customers.  Usually they want to see you survive and they’d be willing to help you out.  Set up an email sign-up sheet right near your register.  At the top of the sheet make a simple note like “Sign up for our email list”, add a note about confidentiality and state that you won’t sell or trade their email address (*important* – Don’t sell or trade their email addresses!)  You’ll be surprised how many people will give you their email.
  2. Put a fish bowl on your counter
    A great way to quickly and easily get your customers to provide an email is to ask for their business card.  You’ve probably seen one of the “Drop your card in for a free lunch” containers more than once.  This is an outstanding and quick way to get your customers to provide their contact information without having to borrow a pen from some guy trying to eat a hot dog.  You don’t have to offer a free product or service via a “drawing”, but it could help.
  3. Add an email sign-up link to your web site
    Your customers and prospective customers may only hit your site when they are looking for your phone number or a product that you offer.  You should take advantage of that moment and have a prominent spot on all of your web pages pointing to an email signup form.  You should put a link to this sign-up on all of your emails as part of your signature.  You could also place business sized cards on your counter at your business location pointing to your site and asking your customers to visit the site and sign up.  To make the signup as painless as possible, consider making the only necessary fields their “First name” and “Email Address”.  Any more requirements than that could prompt them to just close their browser.  Remember to apply the same courtesy here as on your signup sheet: note confidentiality and don’t forget “please” and “thank you”.
  4. Give something away
    You can put together a quick monthly or weekly giveaway of a product or service such as a “Free Lunch” or “Free Air Conditioner Inspection”.  Whatever the giveaway, on the sign-up slips, require an email address.  It would be smart to mention “Only one entry per person” or some guy will enter 100 times and spoil all the fun (and cause you to have to enter the information multiple times or otherwise remove the extras).  Yes, you will probably have duplicates to existing customers but that’s okay.  You could use the information to track how many of your customers are really interested in this type of campaign.
  5. Use your social media connections
    This almost borders on getting prospective customer emails which is a great topic for another post, however if you have an active Facebook page you probably have access to many of your customers already.  Getting their email address should not be difficult. Take the time to ask your connections for their email address.  It is a fairly simple process to post a link to your web sites “contact us” page on your Facebook page or even just to say “Hi, could I get your email address so I can send you our company newsletter?”  Many people will provide their email address when asked by an established connection.

Above all, please remember to value the trust your customers are giving you when providing their email.  Next time we will look at ways to gather email addresses of prospective customers.

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