Tag Archives: Twitter

Grace Under Pressure – Why No Hardship is No Good

Posted on September 7, 2011 by | Leave a comment

The economy is struggling, and small businesses have been hit the hardest. However, amid all the downsizing and leveling of growth there are lessons to be learned, ones which are forgotten in better economic times.

Money Means Frills – As a business owner, its easy to be seduced by things you think you need, especially when those in the same industry think they need them as well. I’m talking about spending money on premium designs and logos, fat stacks of high-gloss business cards, cutting edge ad space, and automated phone systems. As good as these made me feel, I honestly don’t think any of them really helped me make money. Sure they may have moved some more product, but too often they were tacked on expenses that didn’t do that much good. These upgrades are nice, but in times like these such investments should do two things: get customers to choose you over others, and keep them once they’ve done that. If it doesn’t do that, its probably a waste.

Debt and Focus – Reduced cash streams gets you focused on what matters. Less money means your unique sales pitch has to be absolutely top notch, since you can’t hide behind gimmicky layouts and flashy websites (see above). You have to rely on value alone. Your customers need to remember and talk about your products. In the end, low-budget marketing campaigns based on serious commitment to an excellent service is fun, authentic, and memorable, not to mention affordable.

Character. Innovation. Success. “Wax on. Wax off.” Like the Karate Kid, getting back to the fundamentals of business discipline will only generate revenue, and perhaps uncover possibilities you hadn’t seen before. Remember the scene from Gone With the Wind where Scarlet O’Hara makes a dress out of curtains so she can get $300. Desperate times lead to desperate measures, but ‘desperate measures’ often means efficient, bottom-line success.

“Bootstrapping”

For many of us, the idea of roughing it means reducing cell phone minutes. Here are a few guidelines for what effective reduced-cost strategizing should mean.

  1. Know who your customer, their needs, and why they would choose you. Answers to these three questions will help streamline your marketing decisions. If they’re hard to answer, think about other companies you go to as a customer. If you like Starbucks, describe yourself, what you look for in coffee, and why you go to Starbucks. Do the same thing for your favorite PC, insurance company, department store. Think about how your needs are being met, and do the same with your own business. And never be afraid to ask your customers!
  2. Tracking Expenses – Everything. And written down. Enacting a strategy where every coffee and ink cartridge gets recorded reduces these nearly invisible bleeds, and may even expose places where a significant amount of money could be saved. A little self-accounting could go a long, long way.
  3. Referral System – Referrals happen. They’re also great for business. Why not structure a simple referral rewards program that incentivizes loyal customers to spread word about your business and gives them a selling sheet to work from. Not only will your customers hear exactly what sets your company apart, your ideal customer, your campaigns, and how you treat new customers (reinforcing their loyalty to the business) but also generate new income by effectively drawing in new customers. All this for typing up a simple sheet!
  4. Embrace the Internet – Social media tools like blogs, LinkedIn, and Twitter can be thought of as “digital billboards.” Gone are the days of these as gimmicky, new-fangled arenas. They’ve been proven to increase communication with your customer base. Not only that, but your company appears up to date on the latest technological trends, and all this for free. Nowadays when people ask if you have a website, you don’t want to be the person who says no.

Companies who economize know the importance of close relationships. They know that loyalty and honesty are what matter most, and that will thrive in any economy.

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Is There a Place For Creativity, Fun and Games in Market Research?

Posted on September 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

When you think of creativity, fun and games, I’m willing to bet that “market research” isn’t the first phrase that comes to mind.  But not if you’re Betty Adamou, the editor of  Survey Analytics newest blog, GameAccess.

Betty is the CEO of Research Through Gaming.  When she’s not speaking or writing on the topic of gamification, she’s developing game mechanics that help respondents have a better experience taking surveys.

I don’t know much about Gamification besides what I’d read in the book Reality is Broken, so I was eager to see what I could learn from Betty on the topic.  I’d read some of her posts and found them really interesting and informative and I wanted to see what else I could learn from her.

Gamification was new to Betty too.  Well, it’s new to most people, but after Betty did some research on the topic for a research paper that she later presented at the CASRO conference, she knew that she had found a deep connection between two disparate interests in her life; artistic design and research.

In what ways do you see gameification or research games for industrial applications of research?

50% of CEOs play games on their devices – CEOs take time to stop and play a game and games are a top genre from the app store – it’s 30% of all downloads are games.  They like having little breaks to engage in something else.  If you put those two together you should have a winning formula.

What do you see as the future of gamification?

It (gamification) will supercede TV advertising – it’s two way.  No one is making you play these games, and that it’s free and you have to pay for it – it’s all voluntary.  It shows that your consumers are engaged with you.  And you don’t have to target demographics, they are doing all this for you. 

Consumers want to talk and have interactions – brands that don’t take on gameification, their businesses are going to suffer.  The smaller your business is, the more you have to do this stuff.  If you’re small business, you’re competing with the big guys and if they have all the money sitting there and they aren’t doing it – the companies that are doing it will look like they understand their business more.

So, if you talk to Betty, you’ll see that there is definitely a place for fun and games in the world of market research.  In fact, there is not only room for it, but a requirement to engage respondents on their own terms.

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Are Market Research Tools an Alternative for Social Media Haters?

Posted on June 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Social Media has been around for well over five years, yet many CEOs just don’t see the point.  Most of them leave the social media activities to the marketing folks in their organization.

In a post on DIYMarketers, we explore the idea the some of today’s newest, coolest market research methods can actually be a great alternative for CEOs who hate all the hassle of social media, but want all the results.

Here is a summary of the alternatives:

  • If you hate the idea of losing control of your message, then create your own customer community.  You can create a customer or user panel with whom you are in regular conversation.  Ask the panel questions, via survey, they will give you answers.
  • Still question the ROI of social media?  Create a crowdsourcing space on your site where your customers can tell you their ideas for improvements and new products and you can respond.  Create a real-live brain trust and conversation that gets your customer involved in creating a product they will love and talk about.
  • Sick of people’s stupid updates?  Run surveys and polls on the SurveySwipe mobile platform.  You can blast out a question to our existing community or upload a list of your own.  You’ll get feedback in less than 2 hours!
I was one of the first people in line to criticize CEOs who weren’t taking advantage of the power of social media.  But as I got to really listening to their complaints — I really GOT IT.
The alternatives I’ve described here use the social media platforms, technologies and elements of fun and then target them toward ROI rich, time saving and customer engaging results.
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The Power of Asking “What if” and “So What”

Posted on April 20, 2011 by | Leave a comment
How many times have you run across an innovative product and service and thought “Why didn’t I think of that?!”  Or maybe you’re like me and have these “hairbrained” ideas, decide that they are silly and ignore them only to see them advertised or written about as the next great innovation!

The really neat thing about this interconnected internet and social media culture is that we all have the ability to actually reach out to those people and simply ask them how they got the idea and what they did after that.

One of my new-year’s resolutions was to do exactly that; reach out to people I thought had an amazing idea, product or service and start a conversation with them about what they were thinking and how they made that idea come to life.

And you know what?  The answers I got were not earth-shattering.  They were actually very simple and driven by two questions most typically asked by your average three-year-old: “What if….” And then “So what?”

Here are just a few snippets of interesting conversations that illustrate this point:

Prasad Thammineni, CEO OfficeDrop.  When Prasad graduated from the Wharton School he found himself in possession of thousands of paper documents that contained the sum of his hard work during graduate school.  Inside these paper folders and files was some potentially useful stuff – but it was taking up tons of space.  He asked himself the question “What if ….I scanned all this stuff and made it electronic?”  Not a novel idea exactly, but this got him thinking about the fact that other grad students wanted to do the same thing.  Then he asked “What if there were other people that had documents they wanted to keep, but not in boxes?”  And OfficeDrop, the online document storage site was born.

David Garland is a young entrepreneur who had already sold his successful hockey-themed web site and was on to another entrepreneurial venture.  He and his partner sat in a coffee shop and chatted about Donnie Deutsch’s show “The Big Idea.”  They loved the show but it made them ask the question “So what?”  That simple question started a brainstorm of “What if we did a TV show that focused on young entrepreneurs and provided education as well as entertainment?”  In less than two months David had sponsors and a show.

I’m going to stop at these two very-very brief examples.  But I can tell you that I have at least five more and am averaging at least one per month.   That means that in an economy that everyone says is down, there are people who are choosing NOT to participate.  These people  have consciously set aside their adult mind-set and are asking the “child-like” questions that lead to opportunity.
Asking “What if…” brings out the idea.  But asking “So what?” makes it marketable.  These two simple questions are the root of real, authentic and buzzable differentiation.

I can already hear you saying “If it were only that easy!”  Have you considered recruiting some kids as an advisory group?  I’m completely serious about that.  I’ve heard of large companies recruiting kids as problem solvers and brainstormers because of their un-fettered ability for unconstrained thought.  What have you got to lose?

Kids of all ages (especially elementary school age) love being included in what we are doing.  What makes it boring for them is the cumbersome corporate speak that we use to hide the fact that we are basically unclear about what our value is to customers.
In addition to the personal benefits that you’ll gain by engaging kids in your business, think about what you’ll be teaching them?  You’ll be showing them that their unbridled creativity has value.  You’ll be showing them that just by thinking in a certain way, they can create opportunities for themselves and for others.
And in an economy that has so many people seeing themselves as victims, what kind of a gift would you be giving by creating a new economy of entrepreneurs?

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Generate More New Business By Being at the Right Place at the Right Time

Posted on April 6, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Timing is a powerful business model or differentiating strategy.  Domino’s built their brand using a “Timing” positioning strategy “30 minutes or less” but that’s so 20th Century!

2011 brings with it a new twist on using timing as a differentiation strategy with the advent of nearly perfect information about products, price, communication and distribution.  There’s never been a time in history where we knew so much detail about people; their needs, wants, comings and goings.  In fact, small businesses have been more focused on the social media tools and smart phone technologies that make all this possible than on the profitable possibilities of using these low-cost, high-impact vehicles to get and keep more ideal, profitable customers.

WHEN is the Buying Decision Made?

When you stop and think about it, buying decisions aren’t made when we thing they are.  For example.  If you were buying a new car, it’s unlikely that you made your buying decision the first time you stepped onto a car lot.  Chances are, you started thinking about buying a new car after something significant happened; an expensive repair bill, an accident, when your car hit 100,000 miles, etc.

The point I’m trying to make is that we tend to assume that our prospects started thinking about something the instant WE found out about them as a prospect.  And the truth is that they started thinking about something AFTER something interrupted their comfortable routine.

That interrupting event is called a “trigger.”  And you can learn more about it in Craig Elias’ new book SHiFT.  He has mapped out how people buy using the following model:

  • The Status Quo: It’s a physical law of motion that applies to people too.  People will not change their existing behavior unless their world is interrupted by a third force.  Prospects will only change or make an effort to buy when the pain of NOT taking action is greater than the pain of doing something differently.Try This: Look at your existing customers and find out what triggered their choosing YOU instead of some other option.  The answers might surprise you.  Don’t just take their first answer, dig deep to find out what event happened that caused them to take action.   Once you know this, you can find ways to fish in THAT pond.  If your best customers come to you after they’ve had a baby, then you need to explore OBGYN’s as lead sources or your local maternity ward.
  • Window of Dissatisfaction: At this stage of the game, your prospect KNOWS that what they’ve been doing is no longer going to work.  Taking our “new baby” example further, if you sell baby furniture, your prospect will be more likely to make a purchase as their due date draws near.  There is a certain time between the trigger event that shocks them out of their comfortable coma and when a purchase has to be made.Try This: Target the “ponds” where your ideal customer is most likely to go when they experience this trigger event.  Then be sure to understand what’s important to them when they are trying to make a purchase, and be their guide.  You are already ahead of the competition if you are already associated with the trigger event, by default, you will be among their choices because you are simply THERE.  You increase level of value by how well you answer their questions and help them choose.
  • Searching for Alternatives: This is where MOST every other business (who doesn’t understand timing) is selling.  But your prospect has already narrowed their choices down AND suddenly their value expectation has risen mainly because they’ve already looked at some of the alternative solutions that were there during their window of dissatisfaction.  Every other alternatives that complicates the process starts to literally upset them because they have a need and an intention to purchase as well as a need to see every alternative.  Vendors or businesses who make this process difficult will lose the sale.Try This: Offer exceptional value that is significantly different and sets you apart from the early birds.  Look at your “points of purchase” for example, do you take credit cards, do you have easy terms, do your customers want to buy on line, can you offer special rates if they decide today?  There are many options, consider all of them.

Selling to the Executive Decision Maker

This is also a big timing issue.  Most industrial sales people are selling to purchasing people or middle managers or engineers.  If that’s the case, you are already late to the party.  Recent research has shown that the CEO of a company starts thinking about problems that they are having in their business and searching for educational information online years or months before potential vendors are even considered.

The biggest marketing mistake industrial or technical organizations make is making their web sites searchable for the products and services they provide and NOT the problems they solve.  For example, if the CEO is looking for ways to “reduce lead time” he or she will only find 518,000 results searching Google.  But if the CEO searches on “ERP Systems” (computer systems that could ultimately reduce lead time) he will find over 4.2 million entries.

Use Social Media Tools to Help

Today’s social media and smart phone technology makes a timing marketing strategy not only doable but cost effective.  Imagine actually knowing WHAT you’re looking for as you search LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter.  Start by simply identifying the event triggers that shock your prospect into dissatisfaction and then go searching for other people with the same problem.  You’re likely to find better, happier and more loyal customers in the process.

LEARN MORE!

In the latest Marketing Sherpa CMO survey on Marketing Automation 76% of CMOs reported that generating high quality leads was the most pertinent to their organization.

Sirius Decisions found that an integrated approach to sales and marketing results in a 24% increase in growth but what is the simplest most effective way to align sales and marketing.

APRIL 12 WEBINAR WILL SHOW YOU:

  • Which digital assets attract the most profitable prospects
  • Where to place content so it drives the best prospects to your web site
  • When are the three best times to pass a web-based lead to your sales team
  • How to get sales to give you the data you need so they get the leads they want
  • How to create a simple seven step system that aligns your sales and marketing efforts
  • Which sales and marketing research results in the greatest payoff for you and your sales team

Craig Elias, author of 2011′s must-read book for salespeople, marketers and business owners  – SHiFT Selling AND Ivana Taylor, publisher of DIYMarketers will explain the Trends, Triggers and Tools that you will use to be at the right place at the right time.

FIRST - Register for the webinar TODAY

THEN – Click over to the SHiFT Selling web site and download FREE preview chapters to get you started so that you can get the most out of this webinar.

SPECIAL TOOLS AND RESOURCES – We’re also working on a sweet “Won Sales Analysis” template that you will have access to when you register for the webinar!

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What Do YOU Think? Will Social Media Replace Traditional Research Tools?

Posted on April 4, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Vivek Bhaskaran passed this link around the other day from an Ad Age article titled “Will Social Media Replace Surveys as a Research Tool?”   As a marketing practitioner — meaning that I use BOTH social media and surveys — I was taken aback.

Here is an except from the article (but I encourage you to click over and read it yourself as well):

Joan Lewis, global consumer and market knowledge officer of Procter & Gamble Co., with its $350 million in annual market-research outlays, made the statements during and after a panel discussion on “How Market Research Must Change” at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:Think 2011 conference in New York.

The industry should get away from “believing a method, particularly survey research, will be the solution to anything,” she said. “We need to be methodology agnostic.”

Social-media listening isn’t only replacing some survey research but also making it harder to do by changing consumer behavior and expectations, Ms. Lewis said in an interview after the panel.

“The more people see two-way engagement and being able to interact with people all over the world, I think the less they want to be involved in structured research,” she said. “If I have something to say to that company now, there are lots of ways to say it.”

I’m not sure if it’s just me (so pipe in here), but it would NEVER dawn on me to replace every survey with social media.  Social media has certainly changed the landscape of how we gather information.  The two-way interaction and communication with customers is often a free focus group.

But not every business is P&G.  Many products and services don’t have the brand presence or the audience on social media channels to garner enough valid feedback.

In fact, I predict that surveys will change and that the only thing I can hope for from social media is that it does away with stupid survey questions that don’t deliver good decision-making information.  But again — this is making the assumption that my respondent is talking about Bromobutyl rubber compounds on Twitter.  (Just searched Twitter – not a Tweet on bromobutyl or Facebook) But if you search it on LinkedIn, you’ll find some potential respondents to a survey perhaps.

Am I Sounding Defensive?

Another point in the article is to stay method agnostic — and I think this is a great recommendation.  As research professionals, it’s out job to get to information that helps us make good business decisions.  I don’t particularly care which method we’re using — as long as it can help me run my business.

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Will Video Make Focus Groups Obsolete?

Posted on March 21, 2011 by | Leave a comment

What if you could actually watch consumers interacting with your brand in their natural habitat?  That is what a new application, Qualvu is offering brand managers and marketers.  In the video explanation on their home page, they show how their platform allows you to target consumers all over the world and get video from them as they interact with your brand.

What do you think?  How would you use this new tool?

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How Small Businesses Buy Technology — Like You and I

Posted on August 25, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Industrial buyers are people too!

I used to go crazy working in a manufacturing environment and hearing sales people or executives go on and on about how “our customers” were different.  They were “industrial buyers”.  They were part of a buying center or committee — as if they had no pulse or something.  (Well, that part was true for some of them).  But in most cases, buyers are actually people; living breathing human beings who had a cup of coffee that morning or took their kids to school.  They thought about what they would do with that bonus and how they might get a little something nice for their spouse.

PEOPLE Make Decisions – Not Titles or Committees

So,  you can imagine how happy I was to see this latest study come out of Ivy Worldwide,  an integrated social media marketing company.  The short skippy of the results is that even when they are buying technology, business buyers behave like regular consumers.  Yup.  They buy computers and servers much like you and I buy a laptop or TV.

First they search the internet looking for what criteria they should be considering.  The same way that I’ve been searching for the internet trying to figure out how to compare these new HDTV’s; should I care about whether it’s 60Hz or 120Hz?  What about WiFi?  Nothing in the results points to any behavior that’s unlike standard purchasing behavior by the rest of us.

Next, they rely on word of mouth.  Once they understand what criteria they are looking for and which alternatives have that criteria, they are checking online reviews and  experiences by colleagues and friends.  The study also showed that most purchasers were not committed to a brand as they went through their purchasing process.

However, random conversations on Twitter and Facebook have little influence .

Buying technology for business is often an online purchase.  The study shows that 70% of their respondents purchase online.

And finally, the respondents said that large companies miss the mark when marketing to the small and medium sized business owner.  That’s no surprise.  I remember needing to update my virus software and going to McAfee.  While the site was very nice looking,  it was completely targeted to the large industrial IT buyer.  I couldn’t easily find the product I was looking for and quickly got frustrated and left.

What Can Provider’s Do

While this particular survey focused on technology purchases, I think the results are extremely useful for every company selling into the small and medium sized business market.

Who’s doing it well?  Hewlett Packard comes to mind (and was also mentioned in the survey) as a company that’s really committed to connecting with the small business.

I have personal experience with their small business marketing and they consistently show their commitment to connecting with and understanding the particular nuances of their market.

Download the full technology buyer results here and tell us what YOUR feedback is.

What company do YOU think does a great job at selling to you and which one does the worst?

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If You Haven’t Been Following The Social Media Research Trend – Start Now

Posted on June 2, 2010 by | Leave a comment

If you’re still on the conversation of whether social media has any value — you are way behind.

The conversation isn’t whether it has value — it’s how to use all the value it has.  Using social media tools for research is not just a trend — it’s happening.

Read this article over at Research Access to learn more about how market research companies can stay relevant.

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You’ve Had the Ask. Now Here’s the Listen!

Posted on May 26, 2010 by | Leave a comment

A Google search on your company or brand is elementary in this digital era and finding a mention on a blog or a re-tweet on Twitter is still pretty simple. Point is: finding and counting brand mentions are easy – the next step is something researchers have not quite harnessed yet, until now.

Social Voice, recently devised by the social media market research experts at Peanut Labs and Conversation Strategies, represents the next generation of market research. A product designed for researchers by researchers, Social Voice allows researchers to scientifically measure opinions registered in social media.

While there are many programs available to monitor customer sentiment, Social Voice provides the necessary variables to transform unstructured social media conversations into data that mirrors traditional survey research data. Grounded on scientific fundamentals, Social Voice empowers researchers to:

  • Now easily access social media data…
    • Gather millions of records from thousands of website sources.
    • Take advantage of Social Voice data quality processes that identify only quality data.
    • Obtain continuous sentiment scoring for every record.
    • Utilize over 1200 predefined constructs as well as custom constructs tailored to meet each client’s needs.
    • Apply unique processes…
      • Choose the quantity and diversity of data that meets specific needs.
      • Use the same statistical programs applied to survey data.
      • Apply similar modeling to all data sources.
      • Produce data tables that match desired outputs.
      • Standardize box scores to exact specifications.

A call to all researchers out there, Social Voice speaks the same language as traditional market research. What is the difference, you ask? It uses social media conversations as its source of information – going beyond social media monitoring, researchers can now conduct fundamentally sound “social media market research” by both asking and listening.

About the Author: Sean Case leads the market research division of Peanut Labs, Inc. This includes managing the company’s client services, sales and marketing team. He has over 15 years of experience in sales, management and operational development both inside and outside the market research industry and brings over six years of experience within online market research.

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