What Should You Do With A Dying Industry: Run or Reinvent |  |
- What Should You Do With A Dying Industry: Run or Reinvent
- LetsLunch: A Matchmaking Site for Business Lunches
- Scott Mitchell of LoopLogic: The Importance of Story Telling in Business Video
- Translucent Accounting
- Starbucks Triggers Customer Service Drama
| What Should You Do With A Dying Industry: Run or Reinvent Posted: 28 Sep 2012 01:00 PM PDT Things change. The business owner knows that better than any one. Change can alter the impact of your company. And if it's not the kind of change that you're looking for, it can kill your bottom line. We change everyday.
Our favorite items may not be our favorites any more. When we change our mind, we alter our spending to match our new taste. It's the same for your clients, they can change their minds and their spending habits. Consequently, Industries Change We've seen this before and we'll keep seeing it. In the music industry instead of:
We now download our favorites and leave the rest of the album in the digital store. In the book industry, when we're not downloading reading material the way we download songs, then we:
But that's only for the ones who still love to hold their books — like me. Recently, I walked into a local Wolfe Camera store. Excited, I was eyeing and investigating my next purchase. Feeling loyal to the company — mainly because of the former warranty program — I was determined to buy from them. Instead, I discovered another industry in flux. Like Tower Records and Borders Book Store, Wolfe Camera is closing their stores (and a quick online search revealed that this may be old news — but I didn't need a camera until I needed a camera). Maybe it's the cell phone industry that created a major shift for them. I did just use my phone as the impromptu photography equipment at a recent birthday party. And if you have a good eye, you can get some pretty good shots. And pretty good is good enough for the average amateur photographer. But What About the Client Who Wants More? This is where reinvention comes into play. Every change always creates some type of niche market. The question is will that market pay for what they want? And can you meet that need in a way that gets them to open their wallets to you? The beauty about small business is our potential agility. Of course, a sluggish mindset can slow everything down. The key to change and making the most of it relies on 3 core small business decisions: 1) Pay Attention In this economy, you can't open your doors, make your money and just coast. You have to watch out for the changing needs and desires of your market. Which means using what you sell and/or constantly communicating with the people who use what you sell. Staying involved can cause you to organically discover your next move. 2) Pursue New Avenues Yuki Noguchi in “Why Borders Failed While Barnes and Noble Survived,” highlights some differences in the two bookstore's decisions. Borders choose to expand the physical store and outsource digital sales to Amazon. While Barnes and Noble, reports Noguchi for NPR:
As the industry continued to change, one was able to capitalize on that change and the other became a causality. Finding the natural upgrades to your product or service can position you to win different by setting the curve instead of chasing it. 3) Push a Team Ideas can come and go with very little impact, the same way highly talented people can have mediocre careers. The difference between success and failure is identifying a smart idea and focusing on it. In large part your team will draw their passion and focus for the new project from you. If you're half-hearted about the company upgrade, then don't waste your time and money. Because wishy-washy leadership will constantly undermine team effort. As the head goes, we go. Because everything is in constant motion I am left with 2 constant questions:
I Wonder As we become more health conscious, how will it change the fast food industry and pockets of the prescription drug industry? And if the price of gas continues to dance around our wallets — feeling like a game to figure out just how much it takes before we park our cars — how will the gas and/or electrical industry adjust? Change happens, and if smart change isn't happening in your industry, how can you make relevant waves to help it along? Fortunately, in business death isn't automatic. The death of a business has a lot to do with:
Things change. Or better yet, why not change some things? Running Businessman Photo via Shutterstock The post What Should You Do With A Dying Industry: Run or Reinvent appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| LetsLunch: A Matchmaking Site for Business Lunches Posted: 28 Sep 2012 11:00 AM PDT LetsLunch, a networking site that aims to help business professionals meet up for lunch, has just launched version 3.0 of its service, adding some additional features as well as expanding service to the U.K. The service works by allowing business professionals to sign up and create a profile that outlines their industry and interests, as well as when they might be available to have lunch with other users. Then the site matches you up with other business professionals in your area who might be relevant to your interests and you can choose a specific time and place to meet.
When looking for users to lunch with, you can view short bios, a list of professional interests such as online media or entrepreneurship, and even reviews from other users who have lunched with them in the past. You can also see links to social networking sites like Twitter and LinkedIn if you wish to connect with them further. Version 3.0 gives users the option to become "sponsored lunchers," helping them to be seen by more users of the site and thus making the most of their networking opportunities. Other upgrades include social media integrations, group lunch features, and of course expansion into the U.K. market. The whole idea behind LetsLunch is to "make your lunch break count." Instead of just eating a sandwich at your desk or picking up fast food, you can actually make new contacts that might help further your business interests. Though there are plenty of sites that allow business users to meet others and talk online, this one actually facilitates face-to-face meetings, so there can be more chances for expanding your actual network. Many business owners and professionals may prefer a more traditional or organic form of networking, but many aspects of business are being changed by the Internet, so this type of site may not be such a huge leap. Especially for people who may have a hard time building their business network naturally, such as those who work remotely or have recently moved to a new city. A service such as this could prove valuable in a number of different capacities. The post LetsLunch: A Matchmaking Site for Business Lunches appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Scott Mitchell of LoopLogic: The Importance of Story Telling in Business Video Posted: 28 Sep 2012 08:00 AM PDT Everyone loves a good story and not just one told in print. Story telling in video can have a big impact on the videos overall success and also bring benefits to your business and web site as well. Tune in as Scott Mitchell, CEO and Co-Founder of LoopLogic, joins Brent Leary to explain why story telling is important and shares his insights on tracking views, engagement, interest and how to reap SEO benefits. * * * * *
Scott Mitchell: Sure, I have been in technology for over two decades. I was once a programmer. In fact, I am probably still 75% geek, but 25% business. My Co-Founder and I, we started this company, LoopLogic, in order to make video on the Web just a little bit easier. Small Business Trends: Can you talk a little bit about the story telling aspect of video? Scott Mitchell: When you think about video, using it either for your business, which is obviously the focus of your audience, or even at home, you do want to have a story arc. It does not matter if you are creating a highly produced piece or if you are going to create something as simple as turning on your phone to do a quick 30 second interview. You will always want to think about it as a beginning, middle and end. The three act structure has been around for a longtime for a reason, and you want to make sure that you do that. Create a buildup to making the point and end having a good conclusion. So that the viewer is able to walk away from it feeling informed and persuaded. Small Business Trends: Is there a big difference in telling a story that will help a business as opposed to telling a story from a personal standpoint? Scott Mitchell: When it comes to the structure, there might not be all that much difference – when it comes to the content, it is very different. With content marketing for businesses, the focus is less and less on the product in business, and more and more on human needs of people. The hallmark of modern marketing and the hallmark of modern video and things like email marketing, has been a move away from, “Hey, here is bunch of features.” Trying to explain how to use the tools for maximum benefits in your business. That type of content marketing, that type of storytelling to your customer in this modern age, is much more appealing. We have tracked this with our technology. Small Business Trends: How do you go from having a finished video to using it to drive leads and build relationships from it? Scott Mitchell: What you want to make sure is that anywhere you are posting the video, you are able to track who is viewing it. When are they viewing it? For how long? So that you can better understand how the video is working. Is it engaging people? The other thing that you want to do is not just place it in one place, you want to try to distribute it through multiple channels, being able to place that video on a syndicate of affiliate sites. But again, whenever it is being posted in those sites, being able to have the analytics on those sites about viewership can be important. So what you might find out is that, maybe the video performs extremely poorly on your blog, but low and behold, it performs extremely well on one of your affiliate sites. Another place that we've seen more and more people using video is embedding it in their email marketing. In the past, that would typically mean if you had your email marketing message that would say you have been around us for 30 days and we want to teach you a little bit more about X,Y, or Z and here is the link to a video. Well people click on those links at about half, or even as low as a quarter, of the time that they will click on a nice thumb nail of the video, inside of your mass email program. Small Business Trends: You have a way to set some responses based on who views the video, and what they've seen in the video. I think that is the critical part from a business prospective. Scott Mitchell: For some, posting video to YouTube provides a lot of SEO love back to your site. If you are looking to get some of that love back to your site, absolutely post on YouTube. What we can actually do is, we can always put a wrapper around that YouTube video. So you will get all of that YouTube love, but you will get all of the tracking you talked about. Back to the tracking, let's say you send out a video through you mass email program. We can track it down to a named individual. The reason why that matters, is you can start pushing people into different groups. Here is a group of people that didn't even click it, fine. Here is a group of people that watch the video, but they only watched it for a couple of seconds, they push play. Then here is a group of people that watch 50% of it. Okay, the people who push play and the people who watch 50%, those are very different people, in terms of a level of engagement. I can have a very different conversation with those two groups. That is the problem of a "view of a video." A lot of times, like on YouTube, it shows you how many people viewed it. But you don't really know down to the named individual how much they viewed. What we have started doing is using the analytics to actually trigger actions in your other systems. When somebody passes that 50% threshold, or let's say 75% threshold, add a tag in the CRM system saying, super interested in X. Then they pass the 90% threshold, super, super interested in X. Now you can use those tags in order to do future email marketing. Or, if you are lucky enough to be using one of these automated marketing tools, you can automatically trigger the sequences. Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more? Scott Mitchell: Check out our site and go to LoopLogic.com. Scott Mitchell – Looplogic by smallbiztrends The post Scott Mitchell of LoopLogic: The Importance of Story Telling in Business Video appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2012 05:00 AM PDT
Making things “transparent” has become popular in recent years. Transparent accounting, transparent processes, transparent government… it’s one of those words that sneaks up on you and then all of a sudden – it’s everywhere – modifying all sorts of other words. Of course, it makes sense that there would be some sort of backlash somewhere. And the idea of translucent instead of transparent accounting made me laugh. Sure, you can see it, but you have to squint and it’s a little out of focus. If I’m the guy on the right in this cartoon, I think I’d be looking for another job soon. The post Translucent Accounting appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Starbucks Triggers Customer Service Drama Posted: 28 Sep 2012 02:30 AM PDT Ignore your customers when making a business decision, and they'll let you know it. Take the example of café chain Starbucks, which recently announced discontinuing free soy milk and syrups for loyal customers. Customers weren't happy and responded. Your customers are probably the same. Customer service is an important thing, and if you forget about it, even for the benefit of your bottom line, you may find other unfortunate results. Here's more on the story and what other business bloggers have to say about the importance of listening to customers. Where Starbucks Went WrongThey giveth and they taketh away. Free soy milk and syrups that is. These usually cost 50 cents extra, but have been offered free to customers as a reward for making at least five purchases on a registered Starbucks card or mobile app…until now. Of course, the company says they are now tweaking another part of the rewards program by offering its gold-level members, those who make at least 30 purchases over the year, a free drink or food item with every 12 purchases from the cafe chain instead of after every 15 purchases, as before. Wired Here’s the announcement from Starbucks. Customers were not impressed. One possible reason is that the cafe chain tried to spin the news into something positive, even though company representatives should have known it would be unpopular with customers. After all, the “rewards” they were adding to the program (a free drink or food item) were less popular than what they were taking away. Some customers make the choice of soy for health or other reasons, so it is more than a preference. You can see some of the customer comments below. Starbucks Blog From your customer’s point of view. Small business marketing consultant Steve Miller insists Starbucks’ biggest mistake was not trying to see things from their customers’ point of view. In other words, Miller says Starbucks just called up their marketers and had them create an announcement that tried to make their unpopular decision, probably made purely for business reasons, sound like something good. Had they taken a moment to see things from their customers’ point of view, they would have known better. Two Hat Marketing Small Biz Customer Service IdeasMeeting your customers’ expectations. Consistency is critical in every business. Customers must get the service they have come to expect, or they may not remain customers. This is most important when the customer relationship moves from the offline to the online world, says business owner and blogger Joanna Ellis. Creating the same great customer experience online as in your offline experiences translates into better conversion rates and more revenue. Property Management Insider When things go bad. Customers who do become perturbed have never had more tools at their disposal to express their anger at your company or brand. One of the most popular places to do this online is Yelp. When you read a bad review of your business there, the first instinct is to strike back. Keep calm, says Rieva Lesonsky. Take some time to figure out what went wrong with this particular customer and the try to reach out and make things right. Grow Smart Biz Awesomeness is as awesomeness does. The key to being awesome at customer service is not just shining on your good days. Customers should be able to count on the fact that even on your business’s worst days, you will meet or exceed expectations. Belinda Weaver, blogger at Copywrite Matters, argues that a business owner must desire to make good customer service decisions, even when things go wrong. In fact, she says, business owners should treat these problems as opportunities to do the right thing. Copywrite Matters Making them drool. Blogger Sharyn Sheldon says there is a way businesses can go beyond merely satisfying their customers on a regular basis, to a point where, as she so colorfully puts it, competitors will be drooling with envy. That’s because Sheldon thinks she has the answer for the kind of customer service every business owner dreams of, one where you not only meet customer expectations, but gather input to improve from their suggestions. Byte-Size Learning The post Starbucks Triggers Customer Service Drama appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
| You are subscribed to email updates from Small Business Trends To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment