| Loyalty is what we call it when someone refuses a momentarily better option.
If your offering is always better, you don't have loyal customers, you have smart ones. Don't brag about how loyal your customers are when you're the cheapest or you have clearly dominated some key element of what the market demands. That's not loyalty. That's something else.
Loyal customers understand that there's almost always something better out there, but they're not so interested in looking.
Loyalty can be rewarded, but loyalty usually comes from within, from |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-09 04:30:00
| Charlie Huston used one of his books (no longer free) to get me hooked on the rest of the series. Get one free, buy three. Backwards but effective.
Another: To spread an idea you believe in (where money is not the object).
And: To create hoopla for a new book launch. Josh Bernoff is doing a freebie with his new book, just this week. (Sorry, US only--publishing rights are largely a pre-digital artifact).
When the marginal cost of the interaction is zero, the marketing opportunities of spreading an idea increase dramatically.
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- Last Modified: 2010-09-08 16:47:00
| [this short essay (long blog post) is inspired by and related to this video. You can engage one without the other, but they go together.]
Part 1: The bottom is important.
Almost a third of the world's population earns $2.50 or less a day. The enormity of this disparity takes my breath away, but there's an interesting flip side to it: That's a market of more than five billion dollars a day. Add the next segment ($5 a day) and it's easy to see that every single day, the poorest people in the world spend more than ten billion dollars to live the |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-08 04:58:00
| then do marketing.
You can learn finance and accounting and media buying from a book. But the best way to truly learn how to do marketing is to market.
You don't have to quit your job and you don't need your boss's permission. There are plenty of ways to get started.
If you see a band you like coming to town, figure out how to promote them and sell some tickets (posters? google ads? PR?). Don't ask, just do it.
If you find a book you truly love, buy 30 and figure out how to sell them all (to strangers).
If you're 12, go door to door sellin |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-07 04:48:00
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Neat idea, free PDF... will differently (definitely) make you think. HT to Lucas.
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- Last Modified: 2010-09-06 12:59:06
| Not Labor with a capital L, as in organized labor unions. I mean labor as in skilled workers solving interesting problems. I mean craftspeople who use their hands, their backs and their heads to do important work.
Labor was a key part of the manufacturing revolution. Industrlalists needed smart, dedicated, trained laborers to solve interesting problems. Putting things together took more than pressing a few buttons, it took initiative and skill and care. Labor improvised.
It took thirteen years to build the Brooklyn Bridge and more than twenty |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-06 04:52:00
| If you worked on the line, we cared about your productivity, not your smile or approach to the work. You could walk in downcast, walk out defeated and get a raise if your productivity was good.
No longer.
Your attitude is now what's on offer, it's what you sell. When you pass by those big office buildings and watch the young junior executives sneaking into work with a grimace on their face, it's tempting to tell them to save everyone time and just go home.
The emotional labor of engaging with the work and increasing the energy in the room is |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-05 04:09:00
| Passed a store the other day. The sign read 99 CENTS! And the subtitle was, "Everything $1 and up".
The 99 cent store was never popular because there's some magical power about the price that is a penny less than a dollar. No, it's because it represents an attitude, that this stuff is CHEAP. Not absolute cheap, just relatively cheap. Not even a good value, just cheap. Cheap compared to its non-cheap competition.
At the other end of the spectrum, the prices at the Hermes store appear to be missing a decimal point or two. The attitude is, "wow, |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-04 04:06:00
| One way to start every morning with your team is to have them check in. Go around in a circle and let people update and contribute. It's not a silly exercise, in that it helps people speak up and it communicates forward motion.
Another way, probably a better one, is to have each member of the team announce what they're afraid of. Two kinds of afraid, actually. Things that might fail and things that might work.
What are you, chicken?
Yes, we're chicken. We're afraid. The lizard has us by the claws.
So, tell us. What are you afraid might happ |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-03 04:45:00
| Most of the time, particulary in b2b and luxury sales, the competition is nothing.
"I will buy this treat or I will buy nothing, because I don't really need anything."
"I will buy your consulting services, or I'll continue doing what I'm doing now on that front, which is nothing."
None of the above.
"I will vote for you or I'll do what I usually do, which is not vote."
"I'll hire you or I'll hire no one."
While you think your competition is that woman across town, it's probably apathy, sitting still, ignoring the problem... nothing.
Stop |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-02 04:36:00
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