Better Service Blog

Every monster has a big shadow

Seth Godin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:27:00 +0000

That’s what makes it a monster.

In fact, when you look the monster in the eye, when you calmly and carefully inspect the actual monster, you discover that he’s not so bad after all. It’s just the shadow that’s scary.

When in doubt, ignore the shadow.

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Here comes the paperback Kindle… as promised

Seth Godin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:13:59 +0000

The wifi Kindle, $139. Drop the first digit and you’re on to something. And it only took them six weeks!

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What’s The Purpose Of Your Web Site?

Allan Ward — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:09:18 +0000

I’ve been spending a lot of time this month updating the web page for my financial planning business. I’ve decided to move it completely across to WordPress using the Headway theme. This should help me with the SEO, and makes it a lot easier for me to add extra pages when I need to.

I’ve also been speaking with a couple of other financial planners about web sites. Usually the conversation goes something like this:

They start off by telling me they have an existing web site but they don’t like it. Usually this is a templated web site provided by the financial planning business they’re associated with.
They want to build a web site that’s more personalised.
If they do this, they’ll magically get more clients overnight.

I then have to explain to them that it’s not that easy!

I’ve learnt a lot over the past three years about marketing on the internet. I’ve set up a few blogs, and worked hard to get my financial planning website ranking well for certain keywords. But getting traffic to your site is only one piece of the puzzle.

When people come to your site, what do you want them to do?

This comes back to the post title – What is the purpose of your web site? When I ask planners this question, many of them can’t answer it.

When it comes to my financial planning website, I know exactly what the purpose of the site is and what I want people to do.

The web site exists for two reasons:

To stay connected with existing clients and pass on information to them.
To provide potential new clients with enough information on our business so they pick up the phone and call me to make an appointment.

So when people come to our website, our phone number is very prominently displayed on every page. At the end of every article is a call to action, suggesting that they call us to make an appointment. The website message is geared around providing information, but encouraging people to take the next step and contact me.

That’s Plan A. Plan B comes into play of people don’t want to pick up the phone at that point. If people don’t want to make an appointment, that’s fine, but I’d like to be able to keep in touch with them. To do this I have a sign-up box on every page for our Aweber email list. When people sign up we’ll send them regular, topical information that helps them learn more about our business. As they learn more about us, hopefully they’ll get in touch with us when they’re ready to get financial advice.

But the important thing is that the web site provides relevant content to our readers. And they can see that it’s updated regularly so they need to come back.

So when I speak with financial planners about their websites, I want to know what the purpose of their site is. A site built to generate leads could look very different to one that’s aimed at existing clients.

So what’s the purpose of your web site?

Are you blogging because you enjoy it, and just want to share information with people. Profit may not be your main goal.

On the other hand are you trying to make a living from blogging and marketing on the internet? The purpose of your web site may be quite different.

There’s no one ‘right’ answer – it’s whatever is right for you. The important thing is to take the time to decide on why your website exists.

Leave a comment below and let me know what the purpose of your website is.

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The problem with unlimited

Seth Godin — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:12:00 +0000

If you work out on a weight machine that has a limit–where you have to push the bar until it stops–you’re far more likely to to hit that limit than if you had left it to your own initiative to figure out how far is far enough.

People enjoy going to the max (or in the case of Spinal Tap, a little farther than max, to 11). But if there is no max, no limit, it’s much easier to satisfy yourself and declare that you’ve done enough.

If you want your best users to do more, one way to do it is to announce the most they can do. While this may dissuade a few people from pushing ever farther, it will in fact motivate a large number of people to up their game.

“The maximum number of times a week you can dine here is three.”

“The maximum bonus paid is $100k.”

“The maximum number of tweets per day is 30.”

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Getting unstuck: solving the perfect problem

Seth Godin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:51:00 +0000

The only problems you have left are the perfect ones. The imperfect ones, the ones with a clearly evident solution, well, if they were important, you’ve solved them already.

It’s the perfect problems that keep us stuck.

Perfect because they have constraints, unbendable constraints, constraints that keep us trapped. I hate my job, I need this job, there’s no way to quit, to get a promotion or to get a new boss, no way to move, my family is in town, etc.

We’re human, that’s what we do–we erect boundaries, constraints we can’t ease, and we get trapped.

Or perhaps it’s your product or service or brand. Our factory is only organized to make X, but the market doesn’t want X as much, or there is regulation, or a new competitor is now offering X at half the price and the board won’t do anything, etc.

There’s no way to solve the perfect problem because every solution involves breaking an unbreakable constraint.

And there’s your solution.

The way to solve the perfect problem is to make it imperfect. Don’t just bend one of the constraints, eliminate it. Shut down the factory. Walk away from the job. Change your product completely. Ignore the board.

If the only alternative is slow and painful failure, the way to get unstuck is to blow up a constraint, deal with the pain and then run forward. Fast.

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15% changes everything

Seth Godin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:56:00 +0000

When a newspaper loses 15% of its readers or 15% of its advertisers, it goes out of business. There are still people who want to read it, still people who want to advertise, but it’s gone.

When a technology company increases its sales by 15%, profits will double. The sales line doesn’t have to increase that much for profits to soar.

It’s so tempting to head for green fields with a new thing, a new market, a new business. But in fact, 15% right here and right now might be exactly what you need.

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Running away vs. running toward

Seth Godin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 09:35:00 +0000

Every brand, every organization and every individual is either running away from something or running toward something (or working hard to stand still).

Are you chasing or being chased? Are you leading or following? Are you fleeing or climbing?

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But who will speak for the trees?

Seth Godin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:37:00 +0000

Defenders of the status quo at newspapers, book publishers and the magazine industry are in a panic. Some are even misguidedly asking for government regulation or a bailout.

All three industries are doomed (if doomed means that they will be unrecognizable in ten–probably three–years). And yet…

And yet there’s no shortage of writing, or things to read. No shortage of news, either. And there doesn’t appear to be one on the horizon. In fact, there’s more news, more images and more writing available to more people more often than ever before in history.

No, just about all of the whining is about protecting paper, the stuff the ideas are printed on, not the ideas themselves.

It’s paper that makes the economics of the newspaper industry work (or not work). It’s paper that creates cost and slows things down and generates scarcity. And scarcity is what they sell.

It’s paper that makes the book industry what it is. As soon as you remove paper from the equation, the costs change, the timing changes, the barriers to entry change, the risk changes. And defenders of the status quo don’t like change.

Is there not enough paper in your life? Why are we wringing our hands about the demise of paper as the economic gating factor for ideas? In fact, some of the trees I know are delighted that we’ve found a better, faster, cheaper way to spread ideas.

If the demise of paper means that good people doing good work in important industries will have to find faster and better ways to do their jobs, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

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The art of seduction

Seth Godin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:36:00 +0000

Carole Mallory was Norman Mailer’s mistress. Seducing him probably wasn’t that difficult, though, as he was already on his sixth wife at the time.

Marketers seek to seduce. So do painters, authors and job seekers. The most important thing to understand about seduction is this: it only works when the other person cooperates, contributes and is at some level interested in being seduced.

In short: it’s a lot easier to seduce someone who’s worldview and attitude makes them open to it. If you want to be successful at whatever form of seduction you have in mind, seek out the right people.

Some people were seduced by the iPad. Many ignored it. It wasn’t that the iPad changed from person to person, what changed was the audience’s worldview and openness.

And yet…

And yet as marketers we seem to want to treat everyone the same, want to please everyone, want to come up with the magic words that open every heart.

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Getting to scale: direct marketing vs. mass market thinking

Seth Godin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:24:00 +0000

A mass marketer needs to reach the masses, and to do it in many ways, simultaneously. The mass marketer needs retail outlets and fliers and a website and public relations and tv ads and more more more and then… bam… critical mass is reached and success occurs.

Best Buy is a mass marketer, but so are Microsoft and the Red Cross. Ubiquity, once achieved, brings them revenue, which advances the cycle and they reach scale.

The direct marketer, on the other hand, must get it right in the small. That pitch letter can be tested on 100 houses and if it gets a 2% response rate, then it can be mailed to 100,000 houses with confidence. That business-to-business sales pitch can be honed on one or two or three prospects, and then when it works, can be taught to dozens or hundreds of other salespeople.

The key distinction is when you know it’s going to work. The mass marketer doesn’t know until the end. The direct marketer knows in the beginning.

The mass marketer is betting on thousands of tiny cues, little clues, and unrecorded (but vital) conversations. The direct marketer is measuring conversion rates from the first day.

That’s the reason we often default to acting like mass marketers. We’re putting off the day of reckoning, betting on the miracle around the corner, spending our time and energy on the early steps without the downside of admitting failure to the boss.

Of course, just because it’s our default doesn’t mean it’s right. Business to business marketing is almost always better if you treat it like direct marketing. Most websites that do conversion as well. Same with non-profit fundraising. As well as marketing goods and services to the bottom of the pyramid, people who live in villages where mass media and mass distribution are difficult and have little impact.

Get it right for ten people before you rush around scaling up to a thousand. It’s far less romantic than spending money at the start, but it’s the reliable, proven way to get to scale if you care enough to do the work.

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