Strategy Stew

Historic Carousel

Ancient carousel great cool down.

Old and New Together

Old rides bring back memories .... and lunch

Kennywood Knows Profitable Positioning

I'm in Kennywood today. This is a living amusement park museum. With so many modern trendy parks struggling, Kennywood thrives on a rish diet od tradition and history.

Kennywood ihas found its differentiation in keeping it small and cosy. They have tight real estate and don't have the space to expand without purpose. Product rationalization is an annual necessity.

Nostalgia and history are powerful emotional triggers for loyalty. The price can go up -- but you can't stop us from going. The memories are priceless.

What'tsit gonna take for you to create that in your business?

Link Love - Interesting Marketing Info

Indisposed,
originally uploaded by ivanataylor.

As you can see, I'm a little indisposed right now. Luckily, I'm able to write this post and features some wonderful bloggers while I do my time.

Take a look at these:

Daniel Sitter at IdeaSeller has a terrific mantra for every salesperson (and we are all salespeople! "If you want to EARN, then you have to LEARN."   it's the whole "wax on, wax off" zen approach to selling.  Those skills you learned in training need to be practiced so that you can hit your mark blindfolded - no emotional attachment, no anxiety - just natural performance.

And you MUST jump over to smallbiztrends to check out yesterday's post on the 4-Hour Work Week.  Anita has a wonderful conversation going on - so get over there and add your two cents.  And today, Deborah Brown is Anita's guest author writing about acting extravagantly. In other words, don't be afraid to give, give give.

This brings me to the latest book I've been reading by Jon Spoelestra called Outrageious Marketing (he's also written another book called Ice to Eskimos).  I'm a little late on the uptake because Jim Kukral  was all over this in this article (it's an oldie but a goodie).  The book talks about some basic marketing principles that we all seem to forget sometimes.  The single best point in the book for me was asking the question: "What's it going to take to...(insert your goal here)?"  Just ask yourself that one and see what you get.

Who Really Controls Your Image and Message? (hint) not YOU

I'm losing my control,
originally uploaded by [Kantor].

One of the key components of any marketing strategy is controlling your image, your message and that fragile corporate personality that keeps your ideal customers choosing you.

In the past, marketing departments and corporate communication departments kept these messages very controlled. Now, blogging , tweeting and wikipedia entries and independent review sites can derail your positioning before you've had the first cup of coffee.

Jeremiah Owyang has an outstanding article this morning on what truly defines your corporate image -- he says that "Google is your corporate homepage."  In other words, when people search on your company name or your name, what they see on that first page in Google is what will define their opinion of you and your company.  This should have a lot of corporate CEO's shaking because public opinion drives brand value.  (But it probably won't)

I have to admit that I'm one of these rebel corporate marketing types that is thrilled at the prospect of letting the market decide which companies are actually delivering value. 

So what's a company to do to maintaint their positioning?

1. Be authentic. PR appears to be evolving into a form of corporate journalism.  Consumers are far too connected and realistic to believe the fluff that a company puts out about themselves.  They will give third parties more credibility than anything else.  So instead of managing and manipulating your corporate image, do your best to haved your corporate image be a more authentic representation of you, your company and your employees.
2. Treat employees respectfully.  Employee Evangelism is real.  Employees are more than your most valuable asset, they are your most active and most important investment in advertising.  Employees will talk about where they work.  The company gets to choose if they speak positively or negatively.
3. Participate and share.  Competition is out and sharing is in.  Embrace the Open-Brand mindset and let your customers into your world.  Anywhere there is a high-involvement purchase which strikes an emotional cord with customers - you have an opportunity to create community.  When customers connect with each other and have the opportunity to share - amazing things happen.  New ideas, product improvements, increased loyalty and profitability. It's all good.

How would you complete this list?

There are many more .  What are yours?

Lessons in Loyalty

Willie Sings the Blues at the Yearling,
originally uploaded by ivanataylor.

While I was visiting my friend Joyce in Ocala, she took me to a wonderful restaurant called "The Yearling." While she savored her venison cutlets, I lit into some local allogator and spicy fried conch. We also listened to the authentic blues sounds of Willie Green.

Everything about this experience was authentic. The location, the food and Willie.

None was the "best" I'd ever had, but the total experience ranks among the most uniquely satisfying and entertaining. I would go back again and again. I bought a t-shirt and almost a CD, but I contained myself.

This made me wonder why so many of us try to excel at so many aspects of our business, instead of focusing on the overall quality of our customers' experience.

The informal relatiomships we build with customers is what keeps them coming back for more. So in what ways can we build on those to build loyalty and profitability?

1. Being found by your ideal customer.  The Yearling is packed most evenings by self-described locals.  When I asked Joyce why tourists don't come here, she mentioned that the only real "ad" that we saw was a billboard on a local road - that only locals travel.  Lesson:  The world doesn't need to know who or where you are - just the customers that count.  Where do your ideal customers spend their time and money?  In what ways can you be a part of that?
2. Make friends.  Create a customer community around the experience you offer.  You know that the "Yearling's" customers feel comfortable when they call themselves "'crackers."  Lesson: There's an understanding among them that feels like family.  In what ways can you promote frequency of customers using your product or service?  Another restaurant I've heard of actually sells memberships and has customer  member events.
3. Eliminate pain.  Many of the "Yearling's" customers are farmers of some sort.  That means when they walk through the door, they know that their work is done and now it's time to have some fun.  It didn't cost the restaurant any additional money to do that.  Lesson: How can you position yourself as the place that ends or eliminates pain?
4. Make "Happy."  No matter what you offer, you're selling some form of "happy."  Lesson: How can you make your customers happy?  Does your offering eliminate tasks they hate?  Do you give them more time, money or security?  What is the "Happy" you provide your customers? 

Even relaxing vacation experiences provide lessons and opportunities for loyalty strategies.  I think it's interesting that so many success stories do these things naturaly.  But the real lesson is that chances are YOU do your own unique experience naturally too - it's just that when you look at yourself, you don't see the uniqueness.

That's the real lesson.  Take a fresh look at your business and see the elements that you can use to build loyalty.

The Secret to Hitting Your Target Goal

Air rifle target,
originally uploaded by guvava.

The description for this picture says that the object isn't to hit the center of the target once, it's to hit it 10 times. "Shooting is repeating his or her action constantly."

That means that just setting a goal and coming up with strategies and tactics alone isn't really enough.  You have to put the consistent and repeated effort and energy behind each effort to hit that goal.

A great example of this goal achieving process in action is Bill Jelen a.k.a. Mr. Excel.   When I first met Bill, his goal was to stop trading time for money.  So we converted much of the content on his web site into book and information products.  This allowed him to literally make money while he spent more time with his two growing boys.

Our next goal was to triple his revenue - I had always wanted to say that my strategies tripled someone's revenue, and Bill always wanted to make more money.  So, we had a shared goal.

Whenever someone asks how we did that, I always said - we started by taking his current revenue and multiplying it by three.  I didn't say that to be flip, I said that to illustrate that you have to start with a clear concrete target.  Then we started looking at all the ways that we could hit that goal and putting actions in place to get there.  Not only did we triple his revenue in a year - it quadrupled in eighteen months!

Now, Bill has a new goal, to distribute 5 million copies of his new book, "Learn Excel 2007 from Mr Excel"  His site gets over 500,000 per month, so it's not an unrealistic goal.  He's even offering the digital version for FREE!

What can you do to aim ten times at your target?

Blog Stew to Inspire Your Appetite for Something New

Wild reindeer stew on a bed of lemon sauteed spinach,
originally uploaded by hazymat.

I've been away for a while. A few weeks ago, I was down at the Jersey Shore in North Wildwood. Then I took a quick trip to Ocala to visit a dear friend and collegue - who continues to evolve her business. And today I'm back at the keyboard and thought I'd catch up on my favorite blogs.

So come along with me through my RSS feeds and let's see what my blogging "peeps" are up to.

My first stop this morning was at Hill on Sales. Today's topic is about the big sale that got away.  Why do we all have this need to go after "big names" that promise big upfront dollars and little profits?  The lesson for me in this post is to focus on profitable customers - and not just big names. Healthy revenues are only healthy if you get to keep some of them in the form of profit.

Speaking of profit, let's see what my buddy Rafi is up to today at Pricing for Profit. "The Secret Cash Cow for Gas Stations."  What?  Gas stations have a cash cow?  Say it isn't so.  But Rafi does a brilliant job of showing us how gas stations use a little known psychological brain quirk and combine it with their process of creating 89 octane gas to product a few more pennies to their bottom line.

And now for something completely different Jack/Zen is talking about keeping things sacred and practicing mindfullness.  This is easy to say, hard to do and sometimes feels downright silly when you're doing it.  but mindfullness requires attention to the simple activities in life.  The mind and energy you put into each activity is transferred to the one receiving or interacting with that you've made.  It reminds me of a wonderful book and movie called "Like Water for Chocolate" where characters feelings of sadness, passion and joy are literally transferred into their food and then to them.

Writing about mindfullness makes me think about how powerful authenticity is as a strategy and how mindlessly we ignore the most effective marketing vehicleout there - our own enthusiasm.

So there you have it.  What is your blog roll teaching you today?

Get Within Arm's Reach of Your Customers

I'm writing this post from a sunchair at the Jersey Shore . Every thirty minutes or so a man comes down the beach sometimes screaming, sometimes yelling and sometimes singing "Ice cream! Fudgy Wudgy, Italian Ice..." and a long list of descriptive, yummy sounding treats. That''s distribution atat its best.

There is a boardwalk about a quarter mile away with more ice cream than you can imagine -- but that would mean thata I would have to go to the ice cream. But this guy brought the ice cream to me.

That has me thinking of the many creative ways we can put our offering within arm''s reach of our customer - and maybe charge more for the convenience.

A New Definition for Lemming Law : Harnessing the Power of a Responsive Customer Community

March of the lemmings,
originally uploaded by ro_nya.

Lemmings have gotten a bad rap.  All we know about them is that they they are believed to commit mass suicide.  That's actually NOT true.  What lemmings actually migrate as a large group in search of new food sources. And that's not a bad thing -- it's a smart thing.

So, I'd like to re-define "Lemming Law" as a good thing.  It's what all marketing strategy shouod stive for - a customer community that moves on command in the direction toward choosing you and your offering.

That's what "segmentation" is for.  The purpose of segmenting our markets is to greate groups or communities.  It's just that we never had the tools and vehicles to CONNECT these people to each other.  Their only connection was through the company itself.  But with the advent of social media, customers have been craving more connection to each other.

Communities like the ones you can create for yourself on LinkedIn or Twitter are a powerful resource of expert advice.  When a photography expert recommends a camera to the community, why would you waste time doing research when you can simply follow the expert?

Another example of the Lemming Law at work is the Small Biz Trends Community.  This is a huge community of small business owners and providers with an expert in just about any area you can imagine.  These experts often provide reviews of products, services, software and products that they've gleaned from years of trial, error and experience.  Why should I do all that work in an area that I don't understand?  I've actually decided to use several products simply based on the reviews and advice I've gotten from that site.

I've recently discovered that I've become the expert in helping industrial and business to business companies harness the power of community and that has proven to be not only profitable for all of us, but fun and insightful for me.

In what ways are you practicing the Lemming Law in your organization?