Archive for January, 2010

Take a look at the commercial recently produced for a new local business, Face Rx:

If you knew it was there, they wouldn’t call it a blind spot. Hidden within your blind spot is your limiting factor, the thing that holds you back and limits your success. Find your blind spot and stare your limiting factor in the face. Acknowledging the reality of it is the first step to overcoming it.

Here are the most common limiting factors hidden within the blind spots of business owners:

1. Market Opportunity
(A.) Opportunity is staring you in the face and you can’t see it. SOLUTION: Open your eyes.
(B.) You’ve overestimated the potential of your trade area. Consequently, you’re bumping your head on the low, glass ceiling of a small population. SOLUTION: (a.) Expand your product offering or (b.) open in a second trade area.

2. Product Appeal
(A.) Your product is flawed and you can’t see it. SOLUTION: Find someone who has the courage to tell you the truth. Then correct the problem they show you. Don’t live in denial.
(B.) Your product has a characteristic whose appeal you’ve underestimated. SOLUTION: Promote the newfound characteristic.

3. Staff Competence
(A.) Your front-line people see opportunities and solutions you don’t see. You limit your success by not listening to your people. SOLUTION: Listen to them.
(B.) Your people aren’t nearly as smart as you think. You keep listening to them and they’re wrong, but dammit, they’re enthusiastic and they make sense and they’re just so sincere! SOLUTION: Make some executive decisions. Be the leader. Tell your employees what you want. If they can’t get on board with it, let them swim in the cold waters of unemployment. (If that suggestion horrifies you, then it’s almost certainly your limiting factor.)

4. Message Clarity
(A.) You understand the benefits of your product but have been unable to communicate them persuasively to the public. SOLUTION: Hire an experienced ad writer with a history of success.
(B.) You don’t understand how the public views your product category. Consequently, your ads are irrelevant to them.SOLUTION: Speak to what the customer actually cares about.

5. Message Delivery
(A.) You have a song to sing, you just haven’t been singing it. (In other words you haven’t been advertising.) SOLUTION: Sing, little bird, sing!
(B.) You know who would be interested in your product, you just can’t figure out how to reach them. SOLUTION: (a.) You can reach the online crowd with Google Adwords and/or use Search Engine Optimization to lift your website to the first page of search engine results. (b.) Reach the general population with a memorable message using mass media and then wait for them, or one of their circle, to need what you sell. Become the solution people think of immediately and feel the best about. Build your reputation with ads that have a high Impact Quotient.

6. Competitor Strength
(A.) Your category has a strong leader and it isn’t you. SOLUTION: Use the leader’s reputation like a basketball backboard. Connect yourself to them through indirect acknowledgment.

(B.) Your category has never had a leader because it’s a category that makes people yawn. SOLUTION: Say something memorable. Do something ridiculous. Push far enough beyond the norm to get criticized. Just make sure they spell your name right. Choose who to lose as a potential customer. You can’t have insiders without having outsiders.

Transactions can be immediate (exchange) or transactions can happen over time (interest).

The purchase of a “Flashing Blue Light Special” is an immediate transaction. I give you something. You give me something. Now we’re done. Transactions like these indicate an Exchange Market where customers are in Transactional shopping mode. Make no mistake about it: Big things can happen fast when you make the right offer in an Exchange Market.

The danger of an Exchange Market is that customers can be lost as easily as they were won. You might sell 10,000 customers in 2 hours but these customers were never attracted to you, they were attracted to your product and its price. If a snazzier product comes along, or the same product at a better price, “your” customers will become someone else’s customers.

Growing a fruit tree, winning the heart of a woman and building a brand happen over time, are like putting money in the bank and receiving interest on it. Big miracles that happen slow and steady are the product of Exponential Little Bits. Transactions like these indicate an Interest Market where customers are in Relational shopping mode.

The keys to winning short-term, Transactional customers in an Exchange Market are:
1. Make a compelling offer and
2. Impose a time limit, or
3. Make a limited quantity available.

The keys to winning long-term, Relational customers in an Interest Market are:
1. Specific details.
2. Honest evaluation.
3. Deliver what you promise.
(And be sure to leave a little bit unpromised so you can add “a delight factor.”)

iMEC recently collaborated with Wilmington Dental Care to create this fun commercial found below: