Beware of Being the “Affordable" Choice When pricing your product it can be really tempting to position yourself as the low-cost alternative in the market. After all the thinking goes, if your product’s price is more affordable this will drive traffic and even though you’re making less per item, you’ll be able to make up the difference on the volume sold. It’s a popular tact taken by many businesses mostly because it’s simple and straightforward and, you don’t need a lot of marketing “know how” to pull it off. However,
Making Someone Feel Important. “You is kind, you is smart, you is important.” – Kathryn Stockett, The Help I love this line from, The Help. It’s so simple, and powerful. Did you know that feeling that we’re respected; in essence that we matter is the one quality we humans crave most in our interactions with others? We want to feel that we’re important. You know, when you think about it, making people feel that they’re important or that they have value is really such an easy thing to deliver
Surprise! People Just Want What’s Familiar. Does this ever happen to you? Your traveling in a new city and find yourself wanting to buy a cup of coffee but you don’t know any of the coffee shops in the area. I suppose you could do some research or ask a local, you could take your chances on the first place you see, or, more likely you could just go to the nearest Starbucks (If you haven’t gone completely off the grid, there is surely a Starbucks in the area.) Now,
Mentor Schmentor Have you ever felt during the course of your career that you were floundering a bit and thought, “Gosh, if I only had a mentor, someone to help me along, things would surely be different.” I know I have. And yet, I never fully understood the relationship between mentor and mentee. It all seemed very loose to me and frankly it was hard for me to imagine that an ambitious, successful superior focused on his or her own career would have the bandwidth or interest to be a sounding
Buyers are like toddlers. Give them fewer options. If you’ve ever been around a toddler you know that asking them to pick between multiple options is a recipe for disaster. For instance, if you offer a toddler breakfast you shouldn’t say “Would you like cheerios, or pancakes, or maybe yogurt?” Why, you ask? Because as any parent will tell you odds are the toddler will a) be confused by the options (which may all sound good) and b) become paralyzed by indecision. In all likelihood this will result in a
Marketing’s Law of Attraction Why do we do what we do? Why do we choose to befriend one person over another? Why do we decide to wear certain clothes? Why do we buy this type of car and not that? No doubt there’s research out there that professes to answer each of these questions in ways that sound very scientific. But in truth the social sciences aren’t based firmly on scientific fact as much as they are a collection of well-supported observations about human behavior. If we were to just
Steve Jobs Rules for Success 1. Be passionate 2. Be a great talent scout -Jeanine (Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Extroverts are “Natural” Salespeople, and Other Lies. How many times have you been at a cocktail party or networking event and seen that guy, you know part Max Headroom, part Mr. Incredible, with the toothy grin and the bone crushing handshake who seems to be sucking all the oxygen out of the room as he makes a point of introducing himself to each and every person at the event? We’ve all seen this at one time or another and then no doubt thought to ourselves, this guy MUST be in
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned about success, I learned from a fish. I was recently chatting with a friend about her job at a company at which she’s been employed for many years. I asked how things were going, to which the friend replied that things were fine. “You know, it’s a job.” She confessed that she really didn’t love the job, but she said, “it’s a good company, I make a decent salary and I know what’s expected of me. It’s comfortable.” I’ve replayed that conversation
Pick One Thing and be “Crazy Good” at it! Deciding which of your business’s features to highlight when crafting your marketing message is a whole lot harder than it seems, don’t you think? After all, if you pitch too many features you risk confusing prospective customers and not being remembered for anything in particular. If you say too little you risk limiting your appeal to a broader audience. So then what’s your business to do? As brutal as it may sound you’re better off focusing on just one thing and