I’m starting to notice this meme popping up all over the place now.
I think why: Anyone who works with clients daily can understand they think you have this button you can press to make things happen immediately.
Kudos to Staples on an effective campaign.
A few interesting ones:
I find articles like this interesting because as a small company you’re always looking for ways to improve. It’s sometimes useful to get a sense what other companies measure. A great book which delves into this topic a lot is Less is More, which I think is a really interesting book.
Another thing I found interesting about this article is that they were asked about “measurements” and only a many of the answers did not focused on something that could be measured, but things that were more soft.
Scoble doesn’t do Plaxo as it would be something that “takes him out of his e-mail client”. Personally, once you have over a couple of hundred contacts in your Blackberry, I found it hard not to use Plaxo.
Just keeps everything nice, updated, duplicate free, etc., etc. Sure it annoys some folks, but if it didn’t annoy some people then the product would have no evangelists (that would be me) now, would it?
Guy mentions don’t be afraid to polarize people. I agree.
Don’t be afraid to polarize people. Most companies want to create the holy grail of products that appeals to every demographic, social-economic background, and geographic location. To attempt to do so guarantees mediocrity. Instead, create great DICEE products that make segments of people very happy. And fear not if these products make other segments unhappy. The worst case is to incite no passionate reactions at all, and that happens when companies try to make everyone happy.
Plaxo might be polarizing, but like the Blackberry itself it has a loyal community as well….
and btw Robert, Plaxo keeps you in your e-mail client. That’s the idea. 
Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: The Art of Innovation
Another cool post here. Money quote:
Think digital, act analog. Thinking digital means that companies should use all the digital tools at its disposal–computers, web sites, instruments, whatever–to create great products. But companies should act analog–that is, they must remember that the purpose of innovation is not cool products and cool technologies but happy people. Happy people is a decidedly analog goal.
My Greatest Lesson: Fast Company Article
Way cool. I love to read the thoughts of successful people and what they feel is most important to their world view. You almost hope that some of that sticks in your head, although it never seems to
Some neat people featured in the article
Very interesting interview on the Being Reasonable blog.
The quote I like best:
Let’s call loyalty what it really is - repeat patronage - nothing more than a series of mutual concessions: “You give me the feelings that I value (in a product, service, event, etc.) and I’ll give you what you value (money, time, attention, referrals, etc.) And if I decide to transact with you for a second, third, or fourth time it’s simply because I expect something in return. It has absolutely nothing to do with loyalty. It has to do with staying tuned in to your audience’s changing preferences. And being turned on to continuously seduce your audience with emotion, passion, and new and relevant products and services.
I love this as it summarizes some thoughts I’ve had for a while. In fact, one of my friends who is also an eBay seller, and not even one of our customers, said it best:
Your vendor is not your partner. Your vendor is your vendor.
I could just as easily finish his own paragraph and say something like “… and when my vendor doesn’t meet my needs anymore, I’ll find a new vendor.” I don’t care what kind of pricing model, gimmicks, or “You have a partner in us” BS messaging you came up with this week.
Sure when things are going well things may feel this way: on both sides even. But I think an important lesson for vendors is how diligent you have to be to stay on top of things. For example, if your primary application is delivered over the web, and it’s critical for someone’s day to day livelihood (and not just the Web 2.0 meme of the week), try having a week of downtime. Warm fuzzies: gone. Partner messaging: gone.
The first thing your customers will say is: Get your website back up and running, partner, while they start to look for a new provider in their free time. Which by the way, is only a Google search away.
I’m a big fan of the book Hardball. If you haven’t read it, I encourage it.
I’ll go further and say we don’t always espouse everything about this philosophy all the time, but we are a small aggressive company and I think there are a lot of interesting insights in the book.
Keeping that in mind, I’m a big fan of Salesforce.com: the way they define themselves, how they build their applications, how they do their marketing, etc. Marc Benioff, their CEO, could have written the book on hardball. Check out the image on their website currently:
You know, I would expect to see something about “Siebel users, please switch.” But something about Siebel employees? I laughed at that for a few minutes. That’s hardball.
There is a lot of interesting stuff here — more later. Some topics are related to startups vs big companies, innovation, tough projects, etc
Lots of interesting quotes in this article, but one of favorite is:
A startup is like a mosquito. A bear can absorb a hit and a crab is armored against one, but a mosquito is designed for one thing: to score. No energy is wasted on defense. The defense of mosquitos, as a species, is that there are a lot of them, but this is little consolation to the individual mosquito.
Church of the Customer Blog: The most influential media
1. Word of mouth
2. TV
3. Coupons
4. Newspaper inserts
5. Read article
6. Direct mail
7. Magazines
8. In-store promotion
9. Cable TV
10. Internet advertising
I definitely find this true. What I find more interesting is how high coupons come on this list: #3. This one is a real eye-opener to me. The fact that #1 is word of mouth isn’t so surprising to me.
Internet advertising moves up to #4 for 18-24 year olds…
Etsy has done their positioning well: "Your place to buy and sell all things handmade."
Positioning. How important is it?
You need to carve out a place in the minds of your customers. Upstart marketplaces are up against something: how can I compete against something as huge as eBay? Well, positioning is the answer. And that answer is: Don’t compete - coexist.
Positioning gives you a chance to tell your story to buyers. Where you fit in. eBay’s positioning is the ability to find or sell anything online. One problem with this mission is that if you are looking for specific kinds of things, sometimes it becomes hard to find just exactly the right unique thing. Etsy’s place in the market is handmade things — which I would definitely think is an underserved niche in a market where everything has been commoditized.
By carving out a space in the buyer’s mind separate from eBay, etsy can find a place for itself in a market even where there are several giants (eBay, Amazon, etc..).
How is your company unique? Does it have a clearly defined position in your customer’s minds?
The Pragmatic Marketing guys have a lot of good articles on the topic of positioning, for further reading…
You are currently browsing the archives for the Customers category.