Marketing Insight Archives - Page 42 of 62

Permission marketing in action

Posted on September 20, 2007 by Steve Sammartino

I recently spoke about newspapers being a good forum for simple permission marketing.

We’ve just done exactly this for our start up rentoid. We approached the local western district newspaper called “the Leader” and discussed the community and environmental benefits of the rentoid service.

It worked and the article can be seen here.

The other reasons we started with a small newspaper is it’s in line with our clustering strategy and it gives us experience before we approach larger circulation media.

Consumer benefits

Posted on September 19, 2007 by Steve Sammartino

Marketing expert Ben Rowe was ahead of his time on the Gillette Fusion launch, as can be seen here.

The jury’s in. For the first time in their illustrious history, Gillettes latest innovation hasn’t become their best seller. Gillette Fusion 5 blade razor launch has failed for two reasons. I speak with authority as a former employee at Gillette.

Reason 1: We don’t have a shaving problem

Reason 2: Innovation and research are not consumer benefits

Reason 1 details:

The Gillette Mach 3 and its various spin offs have made shaving about as good as it can get given we are running a sharp blade across our faces. We no longer have a shaving problem. It’s smooth, safe and comfortable. They’re trying to fix something that doesn’t need fixed. In this situation very few people will trade up, before we even consider the price premium they’re asking.

Reason 2 details:

8 years of shaving innovation and research doesn’t translate into an actual consumer benefit. It’s a diary, not a benefit. They’ve even placed stickers on other Gillette shaving products trying to convince consumers to switch. We won’t.

In the early days the Gillette strategy of obseleting themselves was a good one, but no strategy works forever, and there is always a point of diminishing returns. Seems Gillette has reached theirs.

Start up lesson: If your innovation doesn’t solve a problem or significantly improve the consumer experience, you haven’t got one.

Keeping promises

Posted on September 13, 2007 by Steve Sammartino

We’ve recently challenged ourselves at rentoid as part of our clustering strategy. We promised our members in ‘Melbourne Australia’ that rentoid has ‘anything’ they could possibly want to rent. Especially given our moniker for Rentoid is “the place to rent anything”. The promise can be seen here.

Some may think this is crazy. The fact is we couldn’t possibly have everything available for rent. But that’s where the depth of idea is:

Here are the possible outcomes:

People search Melbourne and see the depth of items for rent.
They may find what they need, or not.
If they don’t, we have promised to find what they need.

(unless they ask for something like elephant tusks!)

We’ll find what they need by asking other members if they have it, or we’ll find it through other means. In short we’ll keep our promise. We’ll find them what they need.

The idea ensures we stretch ourselves to serve our customers and it gives us an authentic way to create a positive customer experience. Which we hope they’ll talk about.

If you’re in Melbourne, test us!

Simple Permission Marketing

Posted on September 11, 2007 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a really simple way to execute some permission based marketing. Get a story of your business in a newspaper.

Pages need to be filled. Business writers are interested in reporting on new businesses. Start with a small local newspaper. Tell them why the local community needs to know about your business. We must focus on what’s in it for them – not us.

Most big newspapers are also interested in start ups these days, and even run entrepreneur and enterprise specific sections. So why not go for some big fish:

The New York Times?
The Australian Financial Review?
The Wall Street Journal?
The London Daily Telegraph?

It’s permission based marketing because people choose to read or choose not to read the article. If they do read it, they’re engaged and obviously interested. The article title tells the reader if it’s for them. It’s content, not interuptive advertising. Simple permission marketing.

Here’s the trick: It’s got to be news worthy.

Quote

Posted on September 10, 2007 by Steve Sammartino

Collingwood Football Club president Eddie McGuire offers this retrospective on cheque book recruiting:

“I’ve never seen anyone who won the lotto become *Kerry Packer”

*insert revered businessperson’s name here…

Entrepreneur lesson:

Hoping and luck is never the same as learning, creating and building.

Momentum

Posted on September 6, 2007 by Steve Sammartino

Momentum is the key to the success for any start up.

In classical mechanics, momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. P=mV

The start up blog definition is a bit simpler:

Momentum = How big you are X How quick you do things.

Hence, the momentum of anything will increase if either of the above factors increase while the other factor remains constant. That is, you don’t need both factors to gather momentum.

A small thing moving fast can gather momentum. A big thing moving slowly can gather momentum. This is why big companies (although they react slowly) still have momentum, their mass helps them maintain their forward motion and ulitmate power.

The lesson for start ups is simple;

We want to gather momentum

We are small

We must focus on speed