David Young | Branding Blog - Marketing Advice and Advertising Strategy for Small Business Owners

Is Your Store Smiling?

2009-11-03T21:04:13-07:00

As a postscript to Monday's post on Sniffing for Market Share, it occurred to me that one more thing you could do when you evaluate the look (sight) of your business is to watch for smiles.

That's right...smiles.

Rolex has always required dealers to display their watches with the hands showing 10:10 because it looks like a smiling face.

The current TV ad for American Express drives it home as well. The first half of the ad is a bunch of everyday shots that we interpret as unhappy faces. The second half is full of smiles.

Can you make your storefront smile? Are any of you competitors smiling brighter than you?

Want to see more? Check out the Faces in Places Facebook page, this search on Flickr, or just do your own search.

Sniffing for Market Share

2009-11-02T06:00:00-07:00

I've already talked about how this is a good time of year to work on the Personal Experience Factor of your business if the holidays aren't your busy time.

So…how do you actually go about deciding which improvements to make in your store, office or shop?

There are hundreds of ways to evaluate your PEF, and taking a global look at it will likely put you in paralysis by analysis. Yet, there's no better or direct way of grabbing precious market share away from your competitors.

Want a shortcut?

Come to your 5 senses!

What I mean is simplify the process by using your senses to rank competitors and look for opportunities and vulnerabilities. Make yourself a simple chart with the 5 senses across the top and your list of competitors along the side. Be sure to save ample room to make notes in your grid.

Now, go to your competitor's locations and have a look around. Make mental notes around the 5 senses.

Sight

Look at color schemes, newness and condition of things like carpet, paint, ceiling tiles. Look at your competitors from 1 block away, 20 feet away and 5 feet away. Trust me, your customers notice things about YOUR business that have become invisible to you. In your heart, you might hope that they forgive you for your business's visual blemishes, but they can't see your heart.

Touch

What is the tactile environment like? Are the carpets plush, the surfaces of countertops clean, the bathrooms spotless? Are customers greeted with warmth? Even if you don't shake hands (flu, colds and all that) you can at least use open arms and gesture to greet visitors.

Smell

Yes, smell. What are the odors wafting through the air in your competitor's shops? Take notes about industrial smells, medicinal smells, perfume, air fresheners or cookies. Mike Dandridge used a small convection oven and frozen cookie dough to add an irresistible odor to a hum-drum electrical supply distribution business. How about great smelling coffee?

Taste

Yes, closely related to smell. Are your competitors doing anything to please the taste buds of their customers? Are you? You don't have to be in the restaurant business to delight people with something tasty. Spend a couple of hundred bucks on a Nespresso 1-cup gourmet coffee maker and see what happens!

Hearing

Hark! What's that I hear? Close your eyes and make mental notes about what you hear going on around you in your business and your competitors'. Do you hear office staff gossiping on the phone or using bad language? Are you hearing private or confidential information about customers, patients or vendors? Is the environment simply too loud with the everyday sounds of your business?

COMPARE

After you have notes on all 5 senses, you can easily rank your competitors according to how well they do on each sense. Then, look for ways to improve your own place. Be just a little better than everyone in all 5 senses and you'll have increased your PEF in a way that will definitely move the market share needle in the coming year. Choose one sense and make a home-run out of it and you'll be generating Word of Mouth faster than those cookies and coffee can be consumed.

Would you like the worksheet?

Subscribe to my newsletter list and I'll email you a handy PDF worksheet that you can print out to use for your own sniffy-tasty-feely-sparkling-earcandy research project. Be sure to let me know how it works for you!

photo credit

Terry Pettit: Coach, Mentor, Author, Rockstar

2009-10-29T22:46:14-06:00

Every field of endeavor has its Rockstars. In the world of Collegiate Volleyball coaching, Terry Pettit is a Rockstar. As the coach of the University of Nebraska Volleyball team Terry Pettit's coaching record was an astounding 694 and 148 (82% winning record).

When Terry travels back to Nebraska from his current home of Fort Collins, Colorado, he is recognized in stores and on the streets where people want to re-live his teams' amazing feats.

His 2008 book, Talent and the Secret Life of Teams is a masterfully crafted collection of some of the best leadership lessons you'll find anywhere. Although written about volleyball, you'd have to be pretty dense not to see the applications for business, marketing, hiring and mentoring.

It was exciting news to find out that Terry would be attending my class at Wizard Academy this week. He was an engaged and inquisitive student, asking challenging questions and always wanting to know more detail and underlying concepts in our blog/web workshop.

Both Terry and I were scheduled to fly home to the Denver airport Thursday morning, but the weather intervened, requiring us to stay in Austin for an extra day.

Today, the tables were turned. I was treated to a personal seminar from one of the best leadership presenters I've ever come across. Pettit's stories of trust, collaborative leadership and talent are woven together with movie clips, insightful exercises and the wisdom that can only come from a lifetime of walking the walk.

A private seminar that coaches and corporations have paid tens of thousands of dollars to hear, went a long way towards making up for an extra day away from my family…not all the way…but certainly unforgettable and the best weather delay you could possibly ask for.

If you want to run into rockstars like Terry Pettit, you should come to Wizard Academy. I think Terry will be back one day soon.

What's Your Market Share? Do you really know?

2009-10-16T00:02:45-06:00

How much of the market for your particular product or service do you own?

Car dealers, real estate companies and other businesses whose transactions are tracked by the government have it made. They know exactly where they stand. Some businesses have an industry clearing-house that collects such information and shares it with members.

For other local retailers or service businesses, this can be a rather difficult number to calculate with any degree of accuracy.

So, how to keep score?

If you've been in the market for long, you actually know more than you think. I hope these steps help you.

1. Write down every one of your competitors by name
2. Order them from biggest to smallest
3. Estimate their annual billing by your BEST GUESS (you're probably close enough to at least make this a useful exercise)
4. Write this number next to their name
5. Show the list to your sales staff, spouse or managers and ask them to add the competitors that you forgot
6. Place your business and your sales number in its proper place in the list
7. ADD up all the numbers…this is your estimate of Market Potential
8. Divide YOUR number by the TOTAL…this is your MARKET SHARE

If the Market Potential seems like a much smaller number than you thought it would be, you've probably missed a few competitors.

What's the lesson from this exercise?

Now, you have a scoreboard!

All of the businesses listed ABOVE your name are targets! Your goal is to be stealing market share. Study them and learn how you can be better than they are.

All of the businesses BELOW you are either potential acquisitions or potential threats to YOU. They see a target on your back. Don't ignore them.

Signup Now for a free Bootstrap Business Book

2009-10-12T07:16:09-06:00

I wish I could have been in Austin for the Bootstrap Business Bootcamp debut at Wizard Academy. Rich Christiansen and Ron Porter had a super group of students a couple weeks ago.

I can't say enough good things about this book and the expertise behind it. I had a very early manuscript and I knew that it was just the kind of information that a person needs in the very early stages of starting a business.

Since then, I've been able to spend a fair amount of time with these guys. Rich has helped me put some proper focus into my own business and my life. These guys are the real deal. They live what they write about and they can teach you how to do the same...especially now that their Bootstrap program is up and running.

I've got an extra signed copy of Bootstrap Business: A Step-by-Step Business Survival Guide. (You can't have my copy...because it's dog-eared and full of notes and hi-liting)

Here's how to win it: Just enter your name and email address in my subscription form at the top of the right hand column. I just put this form on the site and I'd appreciate some help in testing it. I'll draw one winner from today's subscribers only.

I've got some pretty cool offerings coming up in the next few months, so subscribing will definitely be worth your while, even if you don't win the book. More on that later...

Evaluating the Two Signs for Business

2009-10-08T09:16:07-06:00

Right in the middle of a 2-part series on the importance of your signage, I managed to bring my blog crashing down. Sorry for the technical difficulties. Let's recap.

So, having looked at a Bad Sign for Business and a Good Sign for Business, have you taken action?

Have you at least looked at your business from the outside in? Make sure you ask someone else to give you their opinion. Be sure to ask for brutal honesty.

What did you find that you could improve TODAY in YOUR business? (anyone? anyone? Bueller?)

Good Signs for Business

2009-10-07T05:00:00-06:00

NOTE: This is basically the EXACT SAME STORY that I published yesterday. The only significant difference is the sign in the photo. Yet, it makes all the difference in the world!

The Personal Experience Factor (big lever #2 in the Advertising Performance Equation) begins before your customer walks through your door.

It actually begins the moment your store comes into view from whatever distance it can first be seen. In some cases, this can be miles away. For example, the local Cabela's store in my town has their colors and logo on a big water tower that can be seen from about 10 miles away.

For most businesses, this will be a block or two at most. In a mall, unless you have some outside signage, it will be walking distance and line-of-sight.

So, what's the first mental image (FMI) of your signage? Does it set the stage for the experience you plan to deliver once a customer crosses your threshold? Is it sending some unintended messages?

I snapped this picture on a recent trip to Canada. Let's talk about it.

(click the picture for a full-size pop-up view)

This business is located in a mall on the edge of town. It's down at the end of the mall where they put all the medical businesses.

Please note: The answers to the following questions are purely subjective. We know that it is wrong to judge a book by its cover. Yet, we proceed to do it. I don't know the owner of this store. Perhaps we can help give the owner an outsider's perspective of the message being sent to customers.

What do you think? What do you expect when you walk through the door? What will the experience be like? Given the workmanship of the sign, what can you expect from the rest of the shop? From the staff? What will the attitude of the owner be? How will you feel about yourself if you purchase here? Will you tell your friends that you purchased here?

Bad Signs for Business

2009-10-06T08:51:28-06:00

The Personal Experience Factor (big lever #2 in the Advertising Performance Equation) begins before your customer walks through your door.

For most businesses, this will be a block or two at most. In a mall, unless you have some outside signage, it will be walking distance and line-of-sight.

So, what's the first mental image (FMI) of your signage? Does it set the stage for the experience you plan to deliver once a customer crosses your threshold? Is it sending some unintended messages?

I snapped this picture on a recent trip to Canada. Let's talk about it.

(click the picture for a full-size pop-up view)

This business is located on a very busy feeder street 1 block from downtown. There is a sidewalk, but no appreciable setback from the street.

Just a few seats left in Blog/Web Workshop

2009-10-05T09:16:32-06:00

Roy Williams gave a nice plug to my blog/web workshop at the end of today's Rabbit Hole in today's Monday Morning Memo.

We'll be teaching the class using an innovative and relatively easy WordPress system. It's not the free blog you can get on WordPress.com, but it's an easier path than doing the whole self-hosting thing where you've got to buy hosting, do the FTP thing, apply themes, etc.

Who is the class for? If you've been using your computer for quite a while, but have never ventured out past the safe harbor of browsing and reading email, we can get you rolling. We've taken folks who didn't even know that there was such a thing as a right-click on their mouse and turned them into bloggers.

If you've experimented with pointy-clicky editing and content management systems quite a bit, you may find the course to be a bit more elementary than you would like. You are still VERY welcome to attend, but we may ask you to help your classmates along!

So, you'll walk away with a website and integrated blog. You'll have a much better idea of how the internet works and why blogs are a big part of the glue that binds it all together. You'll understand the basics of how a design is chopped up and applied to a site. You'll also get a bonus session where you'll develop the outline of an entire year's worth of blogging, or the outline to your next book.

You'll get all of that...if there's still a seat left.

Spending Your Ad Budget on Personal Experience

2009-09-30T21:37:24-06:00

The next 3 months are usually not the best time to "buy" advertising. I'm not saying it's a terrible time to run advertising, just that you should have already bought it before the traditional holiday push that depletes media inventories, driving prices up. I'll give you some tips on when and how to make media decisions in future posts.

So, where should you be spending this quarter if you haven't got an ongoing schedule? If you own a service or retail business that isn't reliant on holiday sales (HVAC, Medical, Financial, etc) think about putting some of your ad budget into sprucing up the Personal Experience of your customers.

Here are a few ideas…some more expensive than others.

Complete deep cleaning of your store/offices. Hire an outsider to help because they will see the dirt/clutter that has become invisible to you.
A fresh coat of paint can breathe new life into a store.
Interior decorators can help you imagine what your store COULD be instead of what it has become. Face it, you got into the business because you are an expert in your own field, not a designer.
New service vehicles…talk to your accountant to take advantage of end-of-year spending strategies…car dealerships might have screaming bargains just to move vehicles out of inventory before the end of the year.
New signage/Exterior remodel…evaluate how your business looks from 2 blocks away, 1 block and from the sidewalk. Are you invisible from any of these vantage points? Sometimes you become invisible just by having the same sign for too long. Many contractors would appreciate a commercial job in the off-season just to keep workers employed. Shop for good deals.
Spy season…hire some secret shoppers to visit your store along with all of your competitors. Don't use friends or you risk getting smoke blown up your….well you know. You want honest evaluations about how you stack up.
This is a good time of year to embark on some customer research. Offer a prize or discount to customers who will fill out a lengthy form or complete an interview. You'll be amazed at the good suggestions your customers will provide you when you simply ask.

The bottom line is….if the holiday season is slow for you, don't just sit on your bottom. Get busy doing something so when your own season rolls back around, your customers will be delighted by the "new" you!

QUESTION: This list isn't exclusive. What other suggestions do you have?