Exercise equipment should have a magazine holder. Like this.
I’ve started to see very fancy machines from TechnoGym that don’t. They are very nice machines. Top of the line. Lots of hotels are buying them.
But I don’t care about all the other features if my reading material keeps falling on the floor (and resting a book on the touch screen stops it mid-workout).
So … I avoid hotels that have TechnoGym gear. I tell the manager why.
Hotel loses business. TechnoGym can’t figure out why repeat sales aren’t happening.
Solution: Study your customers — in real life. The problem would be obvious in a day, and they could solve the problem overnight with a quick stick-on plastic strip.
Our brains can’t handle a hundred facts. We need one big reason why something is good.
Look at the photo. What do they feature? “Awesome Private Yard.”
I’m sure there are other nice features of the house. But you only need one feature for this sentence: “Honey, let’s check this place out. I hear it has an awesome private yard.”
Much more effective than “the house with a bunch of stuff.” I can’t remember a long list, so I’m much less likely to share a long list.
Lesson: Try removing most of the features from your sales pitch. Give people one great message to repeat.
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When you need help or a little advice, it never hurts to just ask. A few opportunities to do it:
1> For fans
2> For help
3> For savings
4> Check it out: Let them sing it for you
1> For fans
Looking to add more fans to a particular social network or list? Sometimes all you have to do is ask. In an email to their Ambassadors, Maker’s Mark casually invited them to become fans of the brand on Facebook. In just over two hours after the email, they added almost 2,000 fans. In less than a month, Maker’s has added nearly 25,000 to their fan page. And while it doesn’t hurt that they’ve got nearly 500,000 Ambassadors they can email, it didn’t require a fancy campaign or some overblown contest. All they had to do was ask.
The Lesson: Whether you’ve got 500 or 500,000 fans, it never hurts to ask if they’d like to follow you on a different network.
2> For help
Having trouble making a difficult decision? If it’s going to affect your fans and customers, why not ask them? When the folks behind the popular blog Cool Hunting were going through a redesign, they asked the fans to help them pick their font. While Cool Hunting was leaning toward the retro look of Courier, readers expressed it was too much strain on the eyes. After a vote, everyone settled on a more traditional font — and everyone seems pretty happy with it.
The Lesson: When making a big decision, don’t overlook opportunities to get feedback from everyone involved, including your fans.
Are you offering your customers an extra service that’s both expensive to you and something they don’t consider necessary? The only way to find out is to ask. Starwood Hotels recently began testing this as part of their “Make A Green Choice” program, offering guests the chance to opt-out of housekeeping during multi-night stays. Guests who agree earn a discount on their total stay, and the hotel saves a little money too. Shortly after rolling it out, Starwood said about 8.5% of guests had opted for the program.
The Lesson: If you find an opportunity to save you and your customers some money, why not ask them if they’re interested?
The next time you need to send a note to a friend, try having Billy Idol, Elton John, and Don McLean do it. A little like a digital singing telegram, “Let them sing it for you” reads what you type and then pulls clips from classic songs.
Come to BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media on April 7 in Cincinnati to hear Dell, Duke Energy, Procter & Gamble, Hilton Worldwide, AT&T, Tyson Foods, Graco, and General Mills share case studies in corporate social media.
You’ll learn how to get started, get past roadblocks, and make your social media program phenomenal — and you’ll see some brilliant presentations like this one from BlogWell San Diego:
Scott McIlnay’s big idea: Social media isn’t just for brand-to-consumer conversations.
Scott’s case study covered how Navy officials collaborate on social media, how they’re fostering conversations among moms of Navy kids, and how they use basic guidelines while building formal policies.
We’re all flooded by offers from companies we do business with for unrelated products. Like the airline that wants to sell you a credit card.
It’s easy for the company to think they’re making easy money by selling these ads, but I think it’s a mistake:
Consumers will only accept so many offers/communications. You get X chances to sell them something. Why would you waste that opportunity selling someone else’s product instead of your own?
Every irrelevant communication results in unsubscribes. It’s dumb to lose your ability to email someone forever to get a quick buck from a sponsor.
Customers stop listening. To avoid sales pitches, your own customers start filtering out everything — including your important, relevant messages.
No one trusts your brand. I gave you my money, my business, and my trust. And you sold it to someone else.
Choose your Easter basket:
A. Candy bunnies
B. Chocolate poop, a gummy rat, and a 36″ candy snake?
One will be appreciated, the other will be remembered and talked about all year.
Lesson: Anything worth doing is worth making remarkable. It’s not harder or more expensive, but it will be remembered, appreciated, and generate long-term word of mouth.
(See what [...]
A: You give them something to show their friends.
Great example: I bought a pair of amazing pants from Cordarounds. Everyone started asking where I got them.
Guess what? In the box were a dozen little cards, each featuring a unique product photo and their web address. That gets a dozen face-to-face referrals, 20 cents each. (Get [...]
[Welcome back to the Damn, I Wish I Thought of That Email Newsletter. This is text of the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.]
Sometimes a great way to refresh your business and earn some buzz is by shaking things up and breaking [...]
Brian Goulet makes handmade, inscribed wooden pens. Truly fantastic stuff.
But how does a one-person business stand out in a mass-produced, mass-marketing world? A small business can’t advertise their way past the clutter. You can’t do a mass-outreach campaign.
But you can use your uniqueness to your advantage.
Do what Brian did: Start giving unique products to loud [...]
Exercise equipment should have a magazine holder. Like this.
But I don’t care about all the other features if my reading material keeps falling on the floor (and resting a book on the touch screen stops it mid-workout).
Clorox: Using gaming strategies to grow community
BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media
