A lesson in Complacency

Welcome everyone to this blog. I hope you enjoy the posts that have collected over the years. I love having business discussions with my children and a recent conversation with my son inspired me to share this along with the recent Businessweek cover article. Before I share with you about the car ride conversation with my son, the Businessweek cover story was how Amazon is transforming the book publishing business over the past decade. We also know how Apple changed the music industry and you could also argue how Redbox and Netflix changed the video rental business.

The point is that business is dynamic. Trends change, people change, and each new generation sees the world a little different than their parents.

Case in point. My son questioned a recent billboard we passed along the way to town.  The phone number on the board had

“call 586-CARS”.

He could not understand how you dialed numbers. This brings up a bigger issue. More people call from their cell phones than the home phone. The numbers on my phone do not have letters on them. Actually, my phone has letter keys.  So as my children use my phone to call, they are not accustomed to the classic letters on the phone buttons.

How long will the phone number be important in any business marketing strategy. Does a 1-800 number mean anything as consumers use Skype, wifi, and cell phones to make calls?

My business has to adapt to these changes every day. Is yours?

I will leave you with this story. Encyclopaedia Britannica was an amazing brand that reached sales in 1990 of 650 million dollars.  However, the owners of that business were too late to the threat from a simple CD-ROM (think Encarta).

Do you have a “CD-ROM encyclopedia” that is headed your way to transform your industry?

Happy 2012,

If you are  like us, you are ready to grow your business this year, maybe double revenue and profits, or even triple revenue. The goal is to have a goal. Something to set your sights on.

There are so many things to focus on related to revenue growth, but today I want to focus on email marketing. The reason is that despite the buzz about social media, google search, and all that jazz, the real emphasis needs to be building a relationship with your customer base.

And that may need a couple of touches, a few more emails, a sequence of reminders, before the customer decides it is time to buy.

Email can be very effective in this mission, but you need to have the customer open the email to get that message.

So today we will focus on email subject lines.  And remember this. Their only goal is to get the recipient to open the email. That is it.

So you need to evoke curiosity in your subject line to get them to open. You can also touch upon other emotional elements like fear of pain, fear of missing out, discover new secrets, tips, etc.

Here is a recent post that does a great job of providing examples of subject headlines from the retail sector. You can learn from these and develop some of your own “best of” email subject lines in 2012.

Carpe Diem,

Brian

Know Your Readers

Make it Unique

Add Personality First, then Worry about Design

Solicit Feedback

Include Your Contact Information

Here is an interesting story about how BestBuy plans to double online sales from 2 Billion to 4 Billion. The main strategy is adding more product offerings. I think BestBuy realizes that have retail physical floor space is basically unneccesary to increase sales. Costco has adopted this model, as well as Sears and Walmart.

The benefits of a great ecommerce platform is the ability to have a near endless catalog of products ranging from sporting goods to bakeware. The issue for BestBuy is to figure out how to transition their image as a consumer electronics retailer to a general merchandise retailer. Amazon was successful moving from books to products from A to Z, but NewEgg struggled in its strategy of offering more items than just electronics. It recently shut down NewEggMall and will try to put unrelated items onto their NewEgg store.

The push for coupons, deal of the days, and everyday low prices seem to be here to stay.

With commodity prices increasing and inflation in China, it seems that stores like retail stores will feel pressure to keep their margins. Successful retail operations will have a low cost infrastructure to manage this wholesale inflation.

Just this weel, 99 Cents Only Stores disclosed that it had received a $1.3 billion takeover offer by Leonard Green & Partners and the company’s founding family. Typically, investor interest in sectors indicates a sense of growth opportunities and discount retailers have really benefited from the extended downturn.

The goal for any retailer is to leverage their catalog across multiple channels as efficiently as possible to maximize revenue potential without additional variable or fixed costs associated with that expanded retail presence.

This ability to offer sales, promotions, and basic price competition can be a poweful competitive advantage in retailing.

Just as Wal Mart did in the early nineties, consumers can become loyal to the brand and the low prices once the recession is over. I would expect that if Walmart was not already saturated in the US market in terms of retail locations, then Walmart’s growth numbers would be stellar.

It seems that we have already become a discount nation for basic consumer goods. Will fashion and luxury items be next or will it be the last preserve? This depends heavily on the specific strategies of luxury brands. Without their strict guidelines on pricing, channel partners, and minimal advertised pricing (MAP), I would expect discount chains would have attacked this part of the retail market.

If you know more than five people in this small town, chances are you now know someone who declares themselves a social media internet marketing expert. How can you tell if that person really understands the secrets to great internet marketing? Just because your friend joined Facebook over the past two years does not make them a person in the know. The Conversation Marketing blogger recently took pen to paper and wrote a tongue in cheek quiz to determine the expert’s gravitas, and I thought it would add some value to give some additional content to understand the reason behind the correct answers.

Here is his short quiz. It is written so that you can ask each question and take the appropriate action:

1: Do you have a blog?

Ian’s answer is that if the expert answers ‘no’, then you need to follow up. He mentions that you should ask something like ‘Oh, you’re using Posterous instead?  If the expert looks puzzled, you can end the meeting there because the person is not in the know.  If the expert says they have a blog, get the address and go look. If they’ve been blogging for less than 2-3 years, and there’s no explanation like “I had to move my blog”, again, end the meeting. The bottom line is that any social media expert has been somehow participating in the conversation for a long time.

2: When did you start in social media? The best answer for this is to identify someone who is an early adopter of technology. If the person just started six months ago, they are not deft at staying up on trends. Especially when it comes to internet marketing, you need a person who is an insider.  Social media marketing just went mainsteam over the past year when Facebook went from 100 million profiles to 400 million profiles. But you have to remember that  Facebook only opened their network to the general public in 2007. Even Youtube did not gain popularity until 2005, so the age of social media is still fairly young. If the person said 1992, then they may be too old for social media. Back then is was about bulletin boards, Gopher, and Usenet.

3: What is social media?

“Blogging and Twitter and stuff”. This reminds me of my wife when people ask her what I do for a living. She says he does computer stuff. It is just a big bucket to make sure people don’t roll their eyes. However, you don’t want your expert to explain to you that social media is just stuff.

If the person answers “All of the conversations going on between people and people and businesses and such online”, then maybe they understand the principle behind web 2.0. It is about creating relationships with your user base. Moreover if the person answers “A trendy term to describe a new kind of mass media”, then the person is beginning to get burned out about the hype.  This is perfectly acceptable. Just think of all the computer programmers who could not understand the excitement over the PC when in their head, it was just a computer. But you have to remember that some things seem new to the people that finally discover it for themselves.

4: What’s a social media campaign?

“Voting something to the front page of Digg using my proxy server and 35 computers”. This is a funny answer, but it needs clarification. The answer described someone using “blackhat” spamming techniques. Of course you do not want to be associated with a spammer. That is why the original post said to back way slowly, and get to a minimum safe distance as soon as possible, and don’t hire them.

If the expert answers “Developing a great message and then reaching out to people, while giving them an incentive to ‘pass it on’”, then you can feel comfortable that they understand that a campaign is about multiple messages around a theme.

5: How do you monitor social media for a client?

Once again, if the person looks bewildered, and their face expresses “Huh?”, then your next step is to look elsewhere. One way an expert should monitor is to set up “Google alerts”.  You can also set up twitter search filters.

6: How did you learn all this stuff?

Bad answer – “Oh, I read this book I bought from Amazon.com”. Why is this so bad? By the time that book went to print it was out of date. No go.”I’m always learning” is a good answer as well as “I read a lot of blogs, and try to use as many different tools as I can”.  The other great approach is when the person attends conferences. It shows that the person believes in investing in their own education.

These six questions are just the beginning to help qualify the person before you hire them. However, what makes internet marketing more an art than science is because the platforms keep changing and reinventing themselves regularly. The main point is to find a person who is involved in internet marketing on a daily basis so they are aware of the changes and know how to adapt. Following these guidelines will help you get a better return on your money.

All the best,

Brian Metzger

I went to Discovery Basin ski resort in Georgetown Lake, Montana and an article about a bed and breakfast in a nearby town, Philipsburg, was framed on the wall. It was an interesting story for the business, but what I found most interesting was the owner’s act of placing his own bikes in front of his business to attract customers. These motorcycles are referred to as “decoys”, similar to duck decoys.

We all know the reason duck hunters use decoys. It works. Ducks flying by see other ducks at the pond, and feel a comfort level to land there. The same sense of insecurity potential customers feel about your business can be alleviated if you have testimonials from your existing customer base.

I am not recommending you create decoy “testimonials” to lure customers to your business. Integrity is worth more than gold. Fake testimonials can harm the business reputation, and should never be practiced.

I do recommend soliciting feedback from your customer base to build social proof for your offer. Gaining permission to share the feedback with other potential customers can help remove a potential objection a new customer can have towards your business.

Follow up Immediately

Manage expectations.

Practice Permission-based Marketing

Be Persistent

I shared this strategy at a Bozeman Internet Marketing gathering and they were impressed, so why not share to a larger group.

It is a three step process:

1. The Bar Conversation

2. The Elevator Pitch

3. Close the Deal

The first step is to virtually climb into your prospect’s mind and identify their problem. Consider it a simple sales conversation.

The second step is all about being respectful of the prospect’s time. You want to explain enough about who you are and what you do.  Think of it this way: Here is who I am, Here is what I do, This is why you need us, and Here is what you need to do now.

The third step is all about closing the sale. The key is not to sell from your heels. Be willing to ask for the order. You can persuade people by eliminating the purchase risk, being specific, and sweetening the deal.

To summarize, you are aiming to:

Grab the reader’s attention amidst all the chaos & everything else that is being shown to them

help them realize this is what they need and want

show them that you’re the the right business partner to help them succeed.

When you execute on these goals, you will find it easier to capture the sale.