Archive for the 'Marketing' Category

I’ve had my Apple iPod Touch for a few months now and I’ve been very happy with the device. With Apple’s $20 software update, I can now read my e-mail, get a weather report, check the stock market, and view the latest you-tube video quickly and easily almost any place that has a wireless internet connection.

The problem for me has been that it Did Not Work at Starbucks. Unless I paid an exorbitant amount for their T-mobile wireless access, I was out of luck. This all changed a month ago as most of our local Starbucks are now offering 2 free hours of Wi-Fi service daily if you register your Starbucks card.

This free service now means that I can stop by for a coffee and check my e-mail and get a weather report while waiting in line. If I am meeting a group, the wide screen web browser on the iTouch is available to browse the internet and have the ability to e-mail other members of the team.

The iTouch allows me to take meeting notes quickly and easily and then e-mail them to myself for later printing at the office. This feature easily pays for the iTouch in convenience alone. One of the other cool features is the map widget which pulls up Google maps for directions and traffic information. The expanding touch interface allows me to zoom into the map quickly and easily. (You can read my reviews of all the new productivity applications here)

Starbucks has taken this relationship with Apple a step further and is offering an interface with the built-in iTunes application and the songs being played in the Starbucks store. If you like the song being played just touch the iTunes button on your iTouch and you’ll see the currently playing song listed automatically. You can easily purchase the song from the iTunes store and be able to take the song with you… cool!

I think Starbucks has hit a home run by offering free internet access. There are over 10 Starbucks in the area that I live and I’ll be a much more frequent guest now. Not only will my iTouch find a lot of use, but my laptop as well.

Registering your Starbucks card online only takes a minute and you’ll be up and running. And registering the card brings other free benefits too. Check out their new customer focused web site where you can let them know what you want in your in-store experience.

This has been an exciting week for me. I had the privilege of attending a very engaging seminar by professional speaker, Sheryl Roush. She took many different subjects and wove them together into a wonderful 90 minute presentation. Her secret was her energy. I have never seen anyone muster up so much energy on stage and be able to transfer that energy to her audience.

I am still energized days after seeing the presentation and some of my co-workers who were there are still talking about it. This energy is contagious. This type of energy is what creates customer evangelists and product loyalists.

When I took a minute to analyze what made her presentation so engaging, I realized it was focused energy. Her entire focus was on her audiences’ needs. She had really done her homework before hand. She had people wear nametags and called everyone by name. She had included some pictures of people she knew would be in the audience in her slide show. Her entire focus was WIIFT (What’s in It For Them).

Tenet 1. Engage your audience by focusing on THEM.

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I have always been a big fan of Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba and their popular Church of the Customer blog. Their 6 Tenets of Customer Evangelism from their popular book, Creating Customer Evangelists, have been a driving force in many of my speeches and presentations. Their forth tenet, “Create community: Encourage communities of customers to meet and share.” to me is what blogging is all about.

And creating a community is what they have done. Their popular blog has over 175,000 subscribers and their Society For Word Of Mouth is now a thriving online community. The forums on the site offer book reviews, personal experiences, and offer a great way to get the word out about your product or service.

Tenet 2. Engage your audience by creating COMMUNITY

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Yaro Starak is the master of online marketing and entrepreneurship. His popular blog, Entrepreneurs Journey has helped literally thousands of people from around the world to create their own online presence. What sets Yaro apart from many other web marketers is that he offers many significant tools and tips for free.

By just logging into his web site you can spend hours with some of the best web optimization tips online. He’ll help you get a successful domain name, set up a blog, and give you the know how to write compelling content.

On of his popular articles is about The Magic of Engagement, which gives you the secrets of engaging an online audience. As I read through this article I was amazed at how in-depth it went. He offered testimonials from students of his Blog Mastermind program as well as some advanced tips to engage your readers and keep them coming back. His secret…

Tenet 3. Engage people by offering SOMETHING of SIGNIFICANT VALUE

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In conclusion, engaging an audience is about changing your focus and putting yourself in your audiences’ seat. Sitting in their seat, ask yourself what you want to get out of the presentation, book, or web site. Write down what you see, hear and feel. This will be the basis of your presentation. Go from there and create a masterpiece!

Additional Resources:

Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message by Ben McConnell, Jackie Huba Read more about this book…

Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force by Ben McConnell, Jackie Huba Read more about this book…

Heart of a Mother by Sheryl L. Roush Read more about this book…

The TV show Dancing With The Stars was a great study in crowd reaction and judging dynamics. From week to week you could see some of the top dance performers try different things to get a top score. From colorful outfits to intense music, plain was out and excitement was in.

I really enjoyed the colorful costumes and the incredible dance moves, yet it was also important to get all the steps right. A performer could wow the crowd with a jump or spin yet be marked off for lifting a foot off the ground. It was really important to put the entire package together.

Marie Osmond and her partner Jonathan Roberts, put together many incredible performances over the many weeks of the show. Marie is an entertainer pure and simple. What she lacked in dancing skill she made up for with flash and personality. At 48 years old she did an amazing job with jumps, spins and other very difficult dance moves.

What struck me though was her freestyle dance in the final round. Marie played a doll in her dance, and went from lifeless and limp to semi animated. Only in the final few seconds did she come fully alive. While the dance was creative and different, it just didn’t work. The audience and judges panned the performance. Instead of using costumes and excitement to reach outside the box, she used acting skill and emotion.

Marie’s dance was too different.

The judges didn’t know what to do with it and the audience had a hard time understanding the context. Marie put the dance together to reach out to her many fans that like her doll collection, but the general audience was lost. Her dance would have been perfect in a stage play where the context could be fully explored, but it didn’t make much sense in the 90 seconds she had in her stage performance.

I have had similar experiences myself. As a speaker in Toastmasters, I have competed in many speech contests. I always like to add some creativity to my presentations, yet sometimes I go too far and lose my audience. My presentation makes perfect sense to me, yet the audience becomes quickly lost.

This phenomenon can be referred to as The Curse of Knowledge.

This is actually a pretty simple concept. You know all about a subject or item and in your mind your facts and performance makes sense. Unfortunately your audience does not have the same knowledge and the performance fails to connect.

Chip & Dan Heath explore this fascinating concept in their book, Made To Stick. They make the point that instead of dumbing down a message, you need to find a universal language to reach your audience. And this language needs to speak quickly.

Dancing With The Stars was a great example of that. Many of the costumes that performers wore were instantly recognizable. As an audience member you quickly recognized the context and could understand what was going on. Marie did an great dance a few weeks earlier dressed in a 1940’s uniform. The dance came alive immediately, because everyone in the audience could relate.

Unfortunately, When Marie played a doll, it was difficult to fully understand what was going on. The dance started off slow and only came to life in the last few seconds. The performance lacked excitement and left you saying to yourself… what was that all about?

The bottom line is simple… For a speech, a dance, or other live performance, put yourself in the audience’s shoes and make sure you can understand what is going on. If you can’t tell immediately, you might want to consider something more universal.

In a previous post I talked about my adventures of shopping on Black Friday. This year I had an enjoyable time and I did most of my shopping early Friday morning. I found a short line at Office Depot at 5am and spent about an hour in line. Not bad to save hundreds of dollars on a computer system. From there it was down the street to Staples to pick up some technology gifts and then off to the outlet mall for clothes shopping. Almost all of my shopping done in four hours.

The interesting and almost unbelievable thing this year was the line at our local Best Buy store. People had started to line up on Wednesday, two days before the sale. By Thanksgiving night there was a whole tent city in front of the store. I could not believe my eyes when I drove by at 9 in the evening. There were at least 20 tents or canvas awnings setup and people sprawled on the sidewalk in beach chairs and sleeping bags.

Maybe I’m missing something but the deals were not that great. You could save about $300 on a low-end Sony laptop, or get a flat panel TV for $899. There were deals like this at all the stores. I can’t imagine camping out for days for any of the deals in their ad. My time is much more valuable than that.

As I was standing in the short line at Office depot, I struck up a conversation with some of the people in line behind me. We wondered aloud why people would camp out for days for just so-so deals at Best Buy. What we came up with is a great business opportunity for some budding travel entrepreneurs.

Here is how it would work… Two days before the sale…

Offer free RV parking in the Best Buy parking lot.
Offer to stand in line while the RV’s are getting setup
Offer local catered meals delivered from local Pizza Restaurants
Offer Starbucks delivery service
Provide custom awnings for sun relief
Provide custom beach chairs with the latest wireless technology
Provide a party atmosphere with great music into the night.
Offer portable bathroom facilities.
Offer to sell the purchased items on E-Bay for a small commission.

This whole package could be sold for Best Buy’s all over the country. It wouldn’t take much time to get things setup and coordinated and if you had multiple customers you could make a tidy profit.

You could run a simple ad in the travel magazines such as…

Discover Beautiful Downtown Seattle
Camp at the Best Buy Store Downtown.
Three days -two nights.
Full accommodations, including high tech comfort chair, wireless internet, fully loaded video iPod, sun awning, as well as three fully catered meals including the best pizza in town and Famous Starbuck’s coffee. Come enjoy free RV parking and some of the most friendly folks in town. Party late at night. To top it off, you’ll save big on the latest technology!
Make your reservations today… only $295

This deal is just waiting to be setup… Success Begins at Best Buy

It’s that time of year again, with the pigskins flying, the barbecues blazing, and the big screen TV showing football in all its glory. Whether it is your favorite College team on Saturday or the latest NFL rivalry on Sunday, football is definitely our national pastime. The big match-ups are starting to form, the fantasy picks are going like crazy, and the word Superbowl is forming in our minds. It’s football season in all its glory.

But then it’s Monday morning, the games are over and its back to work. Another five days of anticipation. The only relief might be a Monday night or midweek game. The water cooler is ablaze with scores, player talk, and bragging on the newest victor. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could bring the game of football to work. A big-screen in the lounge… playing game after game. But unfortunately football at work is out of the question.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have a miniature stadium on your desk, complete with your favorite teams. The runner on one team heads down the center of the field, ball in hand. His only mission in life is the goal post 80 yards ahead. He runs full steam on and the opposing teams looms ahead. One by one he systematically powers his way past defender after defender. Within seconds he has crossed haloed ground and a goal has been made. The crowd goes wild and your co-workers cheer loudly.

Until now it was just a dream. But now you can have it all in one quick download to your computer. Introducing Power Goal Football, where you bring the game and the stadium right to your desk. Here is how it works…

You download the Power Goal Football zip file to your computer.
You grab some light weight card stock, a pair of scissors, scotch tape, and a handful of change. You are ready.

You open the five templates in Microsoft Word and modify the names to match your favorite teams. You send the finished documents to your local inkjet printer and soon you have a complete football kit in your hands. You grab some scissors and start cutting out the pieces.

Once all the pieces have been cut out, you start assembly. The stadium field is taped together and the stadium stands are folded and attached to the sides of the field. The goal post is cutout, folded, and taped to the field. The colorful players are quickly cutout and the power launcher is folded and taped in place. You take dimes and tape them to the bottom tab of each player.

You are ready. The gleaming stadium is now ready for action… right on your desk.

You take a nickel, which represents the football and put it in the power launcher. You release it and it rolls down the field imaginary yard after yard. It goes straight for the goal post, only to be stopped by the green player. It’s now second down and the ball is launched again. The ball flies past the red player only to be stopped by the duo of yellow and purple…. arrgh.

It’s now third down and the crowd is in anticipation. The ball rolls, but this time there is no stopping it. It powers through the players like they were standing still and crosses through the goal post … Touchdown!!

Your co-workers want a turn, and this little stadium on your desk is soon moved to the lunch room for a tournament. Who will be the victor? Will it be fast hand Sally from accounting or maybe systematic Steve from marketing. After 15 minutes, Sally raises her hands in victory. Her symbolic Colts have won over the Patriots!

Download Instructions:
Download the Power Goal Football zip file.
Unzip and open the documents in Microsoft Word
Change the team names and colors to match your desired football favorites.
Print the pages on 60-80 pound light card stock
Use white card stock for the players piece and the stadium sides.
Use colored card stock for the field pieces

Assembly Instructions:
Take scissors and cut out the pieces on the players sheet and the stadium sides. On the stadium sides, do not cut on the side lines but cut all the way to the edge of the paper, so they are the same length as the field pieces.

Assemble the field. Put both field sheets upside down and tape together vertically so they come out like the picture above.

Assemble the stadium. Fold the stadium side pieces on the gray part at the angle in the picture shown below. With the field pieces upside down, tape the folded side pieces to each side of the field (have them upside down to do this). Turn the whole field and stadium over when you are done. It should look like the picture above.

Assemble the goal post. With the goal post cutout, fold the bottom tabs back at a 90 degree angle and tape the goal post unit to the goal area of field one as shown in the picture above.

Assemble the players. Cutout each player and fold the bottom tab back at a 90 degree angle. You can just cut them square to make it easier. Tape a dime or washer to each player with scotch tape as shown below.

Assemble the launcher. Cutout the launcher and fold it on the lines leaving the bottom of the fold about 1/8 wide. Tape the folded launcher to a mini clip as shown below. You can put a small piece of tape at the top of the launcher to hold the sides to together. Just make sure to leave a gap so the coins will roll freely. You may have to experiment a little with this for best results.

Games You Can Play:

Put a coin in the launcher (nickels and quarters work best for this) and aim the launcher towards the goal. Release the coin and you’ll see how fast and far they roll. Practice this for a few minutes until you get the hang of it. You may have to adjust the launcher width to make sure the coins roll free. Once you get the launching down you can play the following games…

Power Blast: Put the launcher at the non goal end of the field. Put 4-6 players at the other end of the field spaced out a few inches from the goal. Your task is to power through them to get your coin through the goal. Your opponent can arrange the players as they see fit to block you. You have four tries (downs) to make a goal. Take turns with other players.

Points Blast: The same as the game above, but you can use the yardage marks on the field to determine points. The further back the more points you get for a successful goal.

Center Blast: Space six players in two columns about a half inch apart a few inches in front of the goal. Space the players about an inch apart behind each other. Your goal is to get the coin through the half inch column between the players without knocking them down and making a goal. You can modify this with different spacing and using the field markers to adjust points.

There are many more variations you can try on these basic concepts. Please let me know different games you come up with.

Here’s to Your First Touchdown!

Pick up a new iPod Touch from Apple and you’ll enjoy video and music like never before. Take your new iPod within a 100 feet of any Starbucks coffee shop and you’ll instantly be connected to their wi-fi network. With one touch you’ll be able to download the music that is playing in the store or any other music on iTunes directly into your new iPod touch.

The prices for each song are the same as regular iTunes and this marketing move is brilliant.

Here is how it will work: When an iPod touch owner is near a Starbucks (isn’t there one on every corner?), a Starbucks button will appear on the display, which will allow users to buy whatever song is playing inside the store with a single tap of the finger and also the last 10 songs played. The iPod touch will also get free access to the iTunes Store from Starbucks as the result of the partnership announced between Starbucks and Apple.

With a 3.5 inch wide screen display, built in wi-fi web browser, and a touch screen interface this new iPod will fly off the shelf at $299.00. You can see the promo video of this amazing device here. Amazon and other retailers should have the new Apple product line in stock within a few weeks.

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