Business Coaching

What is the one thing your company does that others in your category don’t do? Is it a method of delivery?

Is it customer service?

Or is it something else that uniquely defines your business, a unique way you manufacture your product, or an interesting geographic location?

Whatever it is, identify it, define and it and start using it to differentiate yourself in the market place.

Don’t think that a “commodity” product can have a USP? Just go online and look at how the grass seed company Scotts markets its “Turf Builder” line of grass seed.

Don’t know if a “small” company can define itself against a larger competitor? Pick up a copy of the book about the US-based company, In-N-Out Burger, which beats McDonald’s in terms of overall profitability and same-store sales, with fewer stores and less menu items.

Wonder if you can profit in your small niche? Take a look at Porsche, which targets a select few customers at a very high product performance level and price point, and in turn, is one of the most profitable car makers around.

Next, offer a guarantee.

While every business is required to make good on its products or services, add some extra value to your guarantee, and make it part of your overall customer experience.

For years, top-tier retailers have all had generous guarantee and return policies, and those policies have only strengthened customer loyalty to their stores.

Can you make your guarantee stand out? Can it become the industry standard?

If so, start telling your customers and your prospects and start making it a distinction you can sell in the marketplace.

And don’t worry about getting ripped-off with a strong guarantee. Sure, some will take advantage. But in the end, your reputation and additional sales will more than make up for the single digit percentages that look to scam you or take advantage of your policies.

Once you do these two things, not only will your marketing efforts start to generate real results, you’ll be able to compete on everything other than price.

You’ll also find once you and your customers get price out of the way, you’ll be a lot more creative in your added value propositions, your marketing and your customer service. You’ll also have much bigger numbers on your bottom-line.

As you probably know from your inbox, there are lots of people who love to kill time playing FarmVille, CityVille or Mafia Wars on Facebook and the company that produces those games, Zynga, is rolling in the dough thanks to this phenomenon.

According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Zynga has over 230 million active monthly users and posted a net income of over $90 million on revenue of $597 million last year. Those numbers are up almost five times over 2009 and in the first quarter of 2011, the company’s profit was nearly $12 million.

But how has Zynga posted such strong numbers when their products can be used for nothing?

Thanks to selling virtual goods, Zynga is doing very well, but when you look closer you see that, like most businesses, Zynga is a slave to the Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. Only Zynga’s numbers are far more extreme than the usual 80/20 split.

In reality, only about 10 percent of those registered users spend money on these games and less than one percent accounted for anywhere from a quarter to a half of the revenue the company produced.

If you happen to play FarmVille, you can purchase animals, crops, equipment and the like for just a few (real) dollars.

You can pay for these items through tokens earned by playing the game, but for those who don’t have the time (or energy) to play all the time, they can just pull out their credit card and buy what they need.

And some people spend an awful lot of money on virtual goods.

According to Bloomberg, there are as many as 200 people who spent more than $10,000 on Zynga’s virtual goods last year. And Zynga has made it even easier for these “whales” to buy from them, offering discounts as well as giving these people the ability to wire sums as large as $500 directly from their bank account to Zynga.

This tells us that no matter what you sell, the 80/20 rule is something that most, if not all, businesses have to keep in mind when marketing their products and services.

Zynga isn’t going to make any money marketing to the bulk of their users, but if they market to their “whales” let them know what they can buy, when and how they can buy it, they have a good chance at seeing an outstanding return on their investment.

So how do you take advantage of the lessons taught by the 80/20 rule in your business? How do you make it easy for your “whales” to buy from you?

When a business is marketed correctly, it isn’t based on price or even what is sold. Instead it’s based on the reputation of the brand itself and how that image connects with the customer base.

Take Red Bull for example. A couple of decades ago the energy drink industry was a very small one that was dominated by Gatorade while coffee was the energy drink of the working man and maybe a cola could provide that boost of caffeine you might need late in the day. Plus a cola tasted good.

Then along came Red Bull. Red Bull was the first energy drink of note and it had a strange taste people weren’t used to at the time. What Red Bull did have was a great way to connect with the customers they wanted and they also had a growing target market.

Over the last few decades, more and more people became adrenaline junkies or developed a taste for “extreme” sports.

Skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing and others were growing in popularity and the people that took part in those activities were exactly who Red Bull wanted as their customers.

So how did they connect with them?

They reached into that community and played an active role in building it. They sponsored both athletes and events, putting the culture on a bigger stage than it had ever been. Soon events like the “X-Games” were on television and there were the ubiquitous Red Bull signs in the background at all of these events. In fact, Red Bull began to sponsor, and produce, many of the events themselves.

Today, more than two decades after selling their first energy drink, Red Bull sponsors literally hundreds of “extreme” athletes.

They also sponsor a number of events around the world, including auto, motorcycle and plane racing, and their own “World Series” events such as The Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour, The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series and The Red Bull Air Race World Championship.They even produce a monthly magazine that targets extreme athletes.

With all of the events and marketing that Red Bull does, it is important to remember that Red Bull only sells four products, their original energy drink, their sugar-free energy drink, Red Bull Energy Shot and Red Bull Cola.

Yet they sponsor hundreds, if not thousands of events every year in promoting and selling those four products and they are successful (over 4.2 billion cans of Red Bull sold last year alone) because they connect with their target market while building an image much bigger than that of just an energy drink.

With this kind of focus on both product and customer Red Bull has been able to expand not only its business, but the entire “extreme” sports category, creating an ideal synergy between their product’s image and their customer base.

Apple is beginning to market its iPad to seniors.

Apple probably never really thought about the need to tap into the market that’s age 65 and up, but with the iPad, it makes enough sense that they’re trying.

Think about it: senior citizens have lots of time, money and curiosity…if they also want to take the time to learn how to use “newfangled gadgets.”

Why not push beyond its traditional customer base — the younger, tech-savvy crowd?

According to an article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the iPad’s “book” size is appealing to an older crowd, and it’s forgiving of mistakes when using it, unlike a PC. Another plus Apple is saying about the iPad? It could help seniors fight dementia.

It doesn’t sound all that impossible when you put certain factors in perspective…do you think Apple can successfully market the iPad to the elderly?

Want to try your hand at video marketing? OpenForum.com suggests making a video that provides intrinsic value.

Customers need to know why they should watch your video, why it’s important, and what’s in it for them. How do you show all these things in your video? Try showing it in these four forms:

Inspiration: To bring to light inspiring stories of courage and bravery.

Enlightenment: These are documentaries similar to what you’d see on PBS or the Discovery Channel. Example: Worse Than War, a documentary you can find on YouTube about genocides.

Entertainment: Some videos are plain and simple guffawing funny. Example: the Evian Roller Babies that people have watched twenty-seven million times.

Education: Educational videos show how to do things and use products. Example: how to fold a t-shirt in two seconds.

For more tips on how to make videos for your consumers, read the full article here.

Several sources, including the media, which produces print news, have been crying that print is dying for a while now. But…are they really sure?

Folio Magazine ran an interesting column by Joe Pulizzi, a content marketing strategist and co-author of Get Content Get Customers, called “the Handbook for Content Marketing” by McGraw-Hill, where he says that print, because it is so scarce, is actually an untapped source for marketing.

And his points ring true. For example, Pulizzi says with the increase in junk email and decrease in physical mail, a custom print publication to your target market stands out. There’s just less mail, so more attention is paid to each piece.

Another great point is that, in a way, what’s old is new again. Social media, online content and iPad applications are all part of the marketing mix today. Still, what excites marketers and media buyers is what isn’t being done.  They want to do something different…something new. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve heard many marketers talk about leveraging print as something new in their marketing mix.

So, apparently, if you want to think outside the box…think print.

To read the whole column, click here.

Yes...that's a beer in a squirrel. A dead squirrel.

Next time you find roadkill, you’ll be looking at a marketing idea from a Scottish craft brewery.

Scottish craft brewery BrewDog produced a beer with 55 percent alcohol called “The End of History.” But that’s not its highest selling point, according to BrewDog —  this beer comes packaged inside a taxidermic rodent. At £500/$760 per beer, and from photos of the product, at least it’s not just roadkill wrapped around a cheap beer.

What BrewDog did was take an “out there” idea, and combined it with an in-demand product — a beer with a high alcoholic percentage. Combining two otherwise completely separate businesses and products might not normally work — such as beer and taxidermy — unless it’s very well-thought out and marketed well.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: the first batch of the beer served in dead rodents sold out on its first day on the market.

Can you think of any other small business that has combined a highly unusual product with its own to test and measure how that effects sales? Why do you think this idea was so successful?