Category: Audience (Consumer)

Territory

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I just saw a stray cat enter our backyard much to the distain of our moggy. You know what happened…

There was a lot of hissing, a couple of left jabs with claws out, bushy tails and the obligatory chase up over the back fence.

Territory is about physical space, location, proximity to food, water and shelter. The basics which sustain life. Our cat was simply protecting what it needs to survive. Humans do it too. And so should your business or startup.

Cats are pretty smart. They know that there isn’t really enough room for two in most houses. It’s no different with brands. Great brands are always territorial. When the local alley cat turns up for a feed, the incumbent brand wont move to the left and share the food bowl. There’ll be fight, every time.

But the trick is this, brands are only territorial about their house (read here key distribution point). If you’re getting a great feed elsewhere, they won’t even notice. You can build some momentum and cashflow before they notice you’re gaining size and power. If you want to get off the street like your local alley cat, stop living day to day, then you and your startup have to find a new place without a cat. Be nice to the owners (your customers / audience), offer them something emotional and they might just adopt you.

Empirical evidence

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

By the time an insight is empirical, measured and proven, it is no longer an insight.

Here’s how startup blog defines the term Insight as it pertains to marketing:

A revelation of consumer understanding, which is not currently being leveraged for profit.

It needs to be a revelation to be an insight. If we are leveraging… “The insight of…” – that is the insight everyone agrees on and knows about, we’ll just be swimming in competitive soup.

12 seconds

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I really like the idea of ‘small’ – Making the macro, micro. 12 secondsTV does it: www.12seconds.tv

As far as marketing insights are concerned it proves that categories don’t converge – but split.

We recently used it for rentoid to kill a few birds with one stone:

  • Rewards passionate fans with a bit of fame,
  • Create an important dialogue
  • Generate some ‘realworld’ market research to boot.

The cool thing is that we’ll publish what people think about rentoid good and bad – so then we have to act on any mooted improvements. Check it by clicking here:

So in the spirit of involvement – I’d love to get a 12 seconds.tv spot from the startupblog crew – ‘yes that means you’ with any piece of business / entrepreneurship or life advice you feel approporiate.

Put your 12 seconds link in the comments and I’ll put it up as it’s own post with a link to your blog / startup / business or whatever.

Get on it.

Dreams for sale

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a truth all entrpreneurs must know, embrace and accept. Our selling skills are more important than our technical genious, web wizardry, or financial footwork.

If we can’t sell we better find someone who can work with us. Running a succssful startup requires the dream to be sold – for someone to buy our dream. Until we’ve sold this dream we are nothing – We do not exist.

Good news – we can always learn or outsource it.

Testimonials

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Testimonial pages are fairly predictable. Find a bunch of your best customers, get them to say something nice. Convince new customers you and your team are a bunch of trustworthy, nice people to do business with.

Problem is this: predictable = skeptical

Here’s an idea: Take a random sample of comments including ‘some’ bad. The implicit assumption here is that we have more good reviews than bad. If we don’t forget the testimonials and fix your stuff.

Once we’ve got a representative sample of testimonials including some negative what we’ve done is taken our brand into the realms of reality. Result: Increased levels of trust and reduced skepticism.

  • We are saying that we are real – we occasionally make mistakes.
  • We are saying we are honest – which is refreshing.
  • We are saying we can’t please everyone – which is authentic.

Startups out there – differentiate your self with some authenticity.

Media diet – startup style

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

As promoted in the 4 hour work week a media diet is a nice way save time. For entrepreneurs a different type of media diet is required.

A business trends diet

Here’s how – avoid all business related articles as they pertain to new strategies & trends.

Here’s why – We already know enough to be successful. Our problem is doing the stuff.

Unless we are just starting in the business world – we’ve heard every strategy and the fact is that most ‘new’ business ideas are simple derivatives of business theories which have been around since the birth of commerce. Cables channels and tech stuff is the worst. Who’s got the time to read 86 posts from techcrunch every day? – not me.

We ought just trust our judgment and make the call that we know enough to get moving…and the rest we’ll learn on the job…. So in the spirit of this blog entry, ignore the articles you were about to read and get back to your stuff.

Engage your customers

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Really the title should say “people” – we don’t do business with customers, it’s the greatest lie of all time. People trade with people. But I just gave it that title so I could teach people this who stumbled upon this blog entry…

So here’s how we do it at rentoid.com

We have a live chat session with our people. Answer all their questions, assess their concerns and just get to know them. Tonight we are doing it at 7.30pm Aust Syd / Melbourne time.

Go here to log on: http://rentoid.com/live

You can see the startup blog author in action live and see if he (me) can deliver it all live. So tune in, tell your friends and get a shout out!