Best Practice for Small Business. Marketing ideas for small business.

Following on from our post on the pricing strategy from Radiohead in releasing their new album, we have an interesting post from Seth Godin’s blog that discusses the importance of innovation. It looks at the difference between those who lead the pack (who will reap the rewards), and those who decide to wait and see before taking the plunge (who will always struggle to escape the clutches of mediocrity).

Radiohead and the mediocre middle

I got a ton of email this week about the Radiohead rollout. The short version: Radiohead (a million-selling rock band) launched their new album as a pay-what-you-want MP3 combined with an expensive boxed set. This is the sort thing I’ve been talking about for seven years and many unknown bands have been doing for at least that long.

A lot of pundits have jumped in and talked about how this is the next big thing. That the music industry is finally waking up and realizing that they can’t change the world… that the world is changing them.

But that’s not the really useful insight here. The question is: why did it take so long, and why did we see it from Prince (CD in the newspaper), Madonna ($120 mm to leave her label and go to a concert promoter) and Radiohead?

Most industries innovate from both ends:

The outsiders go first because they have nothing to lose.

The winners go next because they can afford to and they want to stay winners.

It’s the mediocre middle that sits and waits and watches.

The mediocre record companies, mediocre A&R guys and the mediocre acts are struggling to stay in place. They’re nervous that it all might fall apart. So they wait. They wait for ‘proof’ that this new idea is going to work, or at least won’t prove fatal. (It’s the impulse to wait that made them mediocre in the first place, of course).

So, in every industry, the middle waits. And watches. And then, once they realize they can survive the switch (or once they’re persuaded that their current model is truly fading away), they jump in.

The irony, of course, is that by jumping in last, they’re condemning themselves to more mediocrity.

from b2bsee * The Market Research Blog

Companies, and their decisions, can be driven by a number of different factors. It is something that we look at very often at B2B International, but usually from the customers’ point of view. Seth Godin has posted his interpretation of what can drive decisions within companies.

MARKET DRIVEN: Lots of people claim this one, but few achieve it. Creating what the market wants. I’ll put JetBlue in this category.

MARKETING DRIVEN: Much more common. This involves creating what the marketing department wants. Like American Express.

FASHION DRIVEN: This involves changing the market to have it want what you just made. Armani, certainly, but also an art dealer at Basel.

FOUNDER DRIVEN: Idiosyncratic activity, usually by the person who’s name is on the door. I’d put Virgin in this category.

SKU DRIVEN: More titles = more success, even if it’s not true. Publishers live this model.

SUBSCRIPTION DRIVEN: How do we transform a stranger into someone who uses what we do, all the time. Intuit, certainly.

PAYCHECK DRIVEN: This is what happened to Home Depot under Bob Nardelli.

TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN: When you launch products because you can, not because they’re particularly useful. HP did this for a while.

LITIGATION DRIVEN: Lawyers with an open checkbook to bill for letters sent and actions brought. The RIAA, or any of a thousand law firms representing estates by sending out reams of mail.

COMMUNITY DRIVEN: Making decisions based on what’s best for the community you serve. Room to Read makes my list.

TROLL DRIVEN: Growth by enragement. Engage others, say annoying things that aren’t true and bask in the attention. No examples will be given, which is the best way to deal with trolls.

MONOPOLY DRIVEN: Create a system and a standard and charge increasing tolls to travel on your roads. iTunes.

EGO DRIVEN: Just be sure you spell my name right.

REVIEW DRIVEN: Don’t worry about the public. Worry about people with a pen. Broadway certainly qualifies.

IDEA DRIVEN: This includes the Segway.

PHILANTHROPICALLY DRIVEN: Paul Newman is well into giving away a few hundred million dollars so far.

SALES DRIVEN: In which the salesforce runs the operation. Car dealers.

ASSEMBLY LINE DRIVEN: Keep the line moving, at all costs. Detroit, alas.

from b2bsee * B2B Blog

Within this article on business copywriting procedures, we will look at how to structure your copywriting when working for a client. There has been a great deal of copywriting done through the years and it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel every time you want to write copy. We will specifically be focused upon the sales letter because this could have the greatest impact for you, especially if you decide to do SEO copywriting.

One particular school of thought speaks to making your website one large online sales letter. Continuing in this train of thought, this could present a great opportunity for you. You could write for both off-line businesses as well as for online business using the format of a sales letter.

Within a sales letter, there are three main components that will make a difference whether or not your product will sell.

The first component is the headline. If you do not grab your prospects’ attention right away, you will have wasted your time in developing the rest of the copy. The second component of a sales letter is the offer. This part is important as you must be explicit with the offer to give the prospect what he or she now wants. It must be something that will entice the prospect to take action upon the completion of reading the letter. The final component of a sales letter is the postscript. This is the second most read portion of a sales letter after the headline. When you are writing this, this is the extra incentive that you will be using to motivate your prospects to take advantage of the offer that you presented right away. When you are focusing upon writing a sales letter, you should take each particular step of the sales letter in order. You do not sit down and just writes a sales letter completely through but rather take it step by step. This entails writing the headline followed by writing the offer and then followed by writing the postscript. Following these copywriting procedures will ensure that you will have set yourself up for great success.

If you do not have a great deal of experience within copywriting, make sure to follow the examples of copywriting procedures set up by some of the foremost experts. One of the key authors who you should look into is Dan Kennedy. He has written some great books over the years and is a great resource for you to use.

For more powerful and persuasive copywriting tips visit www.copywritingtip.com.

Also visit the Squidoo lens on Copywriting tips for the rest of the article and more copywriting tips

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10 Tips For Writing A Highly Persuasive Ad

10 Ways Web Site Text Can Impact Your Reader’s Buying Decision

10 Ways To Propel Visitors To Your Order Page

10 Order Pulling Ways To End Your Ad Copy

10 Motivational Triggers That Make People Buy

10 Mind Altering Words That Make People Buy

10 Ways To Make Your Ad Command Attention

10 Sizzling Ways To Improve Your Ad Copy

42 Deadly Ad Copy Sins That You Can MaKe

10 Persuasive Triggers To Plug Into Your Ad

10 Psychological Desires To Insert Into Your Ad

Ad copy Secrets 10 ways to jazz up your ads

Hopefully this article on copywriting procedures will help you in becoming a better copywriter. The key behind successful copywriting is to use the formulas that have been developed while putting your own spin on what you’re writing. Copywriting procedures are important because people have developed these in a certain method to be successful for a reason. There is no need to reinvent the wheel because this will only be frustrating for you in the long run as you’ll find that you have less sales while putting in more effort. By taking the time to follow operating procedures, you’ll set yourself up to maximize potential sales when developing a sales letter.

from b2bsee

Ethnographic research has become something of a buzz in the market research world. It has been around for ever, used by anthropologists who observe their tribes and work out what is going on.

The video camera has made this tool much easier for us to use in market research and today’s article from the Financial Times shows how it was used by Unilever to test dental products.

The mind boggles at having a camera watch you doing your ablutions, but it shows what is possible. Although this is a consumer example, the principle can be adapted for b2b research. A video camera could watch people use a product in the office or factory. It could watch people buying products in merchants and distributors. It could observe buyers in negotiation. None of these ethnographic situations would be easy to set up, but all are potentially possible. Welcome to an interesting new tool for our kit bag.

‘Big Brother’ family pioneer research

By Carlos Grande, Marketing Correspondent
May 29 2007

A Sussex family have lived with round-the-clock cameras in their home as market researchers put techniques popularised by Big Brother, the reality television series, to commercial use.

Alex Blue, 30, and Anthony Hemsley, 34, of Angmering, and their two children had web cameras in their living room and kitchen for three months.

Footage was stored in a small computer server in the house, and retrieved daily over the internet by a team from Brainjuicer, an online research group listed on the Aim stock market. Researchers could watch events from the house live and telephone to make specific requests.

The couple, who were paid about £500 a month for the project, were permitted to switch off the cameras if they wanted or at the request of someone else entering the home.

But the domestic focus - researchers asked to see how the couple brushed their teeth or prepared a meal - was worlds away from the tabloid-esque Big Brother series that returns to Channel 4 this week.

The technique is part of the school of ethnographic research, which uses close observation of small groups to discover how people behave and interact.

Compared to surveys or focus groups, ethnographical research is expensive to conduct and difficult to expand practically. Sceptics also claim that the researcher’s presence changes people’s behaviour.

Ms Blue, a former finance analyst turned full-time mother to Florence, three, and Arthur, 10 months, said that after about a month, the couple tended to forget the cameras. “It didn’t really intrude on our day or change our behaviour, though maybe it made us a bit more pro-active about tidying up.”

Brainjuicer, which is partly owned by Unilever Ventures, the venture capital arm of the consumer goods group, said the technique could be used to test new products. A Unilever dental product was given to the family during the project.

from b2bsee * B2B Blog

One of the great of the ad world, David Ogilvy, once said that advertising people who ignore research are “as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.”

Whilst most people in advertising accept that they and researchers are on the same side of the battle for business and consumer hearts and wallets, it’s often an uneasy alliance.

Dan O’Donoghue, Worldwide strategic Planning Director with Publicis Worldwide says “All the great advertising people, whether you consider David Ogilvy or John Webster or Bill Bernbach, you’ll find they were all advocates of market research.”

“What’s happened in the last 10 to 15 years is the creative area’s been taken over by loonies. They see researching, understanding people who they need to sell things to as a bad thing. That’s led to a bad relationship between advertising and research, but it’s historically inaccurate.”

Loonies or not, something’s clearly soured the relationship. So, where has it all gone wrong? The problem seems to be not so much with the research itself but the way the results are delivered or interpreted.

“A lot of planners would say market research gets in the way!” Says Jon Steel, planning director with WPP, the media group led by Sir Martin Sorrell that includes creative agencies Ogilvy & Mather, Bates and JWT.

“What they’re talking about is bad market research or market research applied wrongly by the client. I’m in favour of any information that can help me make a better decision, but some people take what it says too literally, and if you follow research findings to the letter, you’ll make big mistakes and your work will be very dull. You have to believe in a healthy degree of opinion and intuition.”

The founder of Sony, Akio Morita, used to say that if he’d listened to market research, he’d never have launched the Walkman.

At creative agency BBDO Europe, there’s no policy on when, how much and what kind of research should be applied to a campaign, but market research, particularly qualitative research, is seen as a vital part of the process of creating and testing advertising. BBDO has DaimlerChryler, FedEx, Pepsi and Ikea among its list of clients around the world.

“Without proper research, I think advertising becomes simply a game of chance and nobody wants to play a game of chance with the kind of sums we’re looking at” says Williams Eccleshire, the agency’s Europe chairman and CEO.

Undoubtedly it’s a help if it’s used properly but if it’s misused, it becomes simply a crutch to support a bad decision.”

These is a growing focus on research meaning researchers need to provide insight in addition to facts and figures.

In the future research will spilt into two divisions, one to carry out fieldwork and the other to have more of a consultancy and interpretive role.

The future of the relationship between market research and advertising will not, it is clear, be without its challenges, even though the prospects are looking up.

If you wish to know more on this topic, there is a B2B International White Paper on “Making the promotional pound go further.”

from b2bsee * B2B Blog