Monthly Archives: March 2019

March 6, 2019 · 12:38 pm

Servers And Small Customers

I wasted some money the other day. I thought I was being smart and using my knowledge of social media marketing to promote my franchise consulting business. I was looking to acquire some new candidates who are ready to change their lives so I created an audience of folks whose demography matched that of most of the candidates with whom I’ve been working. What I found weren’t leads but I did get a great deal of information and I want to share some of that with you today.

One truism I’ve always sworn by is that you can tell someone’s character by how they treat people who can do absolutely nothing for them. Servers, for example. Oh sure, they can bring you your order but they’re not going to help your career along. Receptionists are another example. When you treat people who you perceive to be in a subordinate role like dirt, it shows an awful lot about your personality and character.

The same holds true for how big companies treat little customers. The big guys get all the attention because they have all the dough. What’s forgotten is that the big guys were once little guys, either in sum or in their spending with you. To cultivate budget growth you need to treat every customer as if they are the most valuable.

So why the rant? My lead campaign generated several leads from Facebook. The cost per lead was substantially better than I usually have to pay to generate a lead. The problem is that when I went to download the information from Facebook I received a file that contained digital garbage. I don’t mean bad leads; I mean unreadable digital garbage. I sent a note to support to ask if I’d done something wrong. Crickets. A few days later, I sent another note which is still unanswered, not even with an autoreply letting me know that my message was received. I’m assuming that if I were one of their big customers (the Russian Internet Agency maybe?) I’d have a dedicated rep who would get back to me immediately. As a self-serve slob, I’m pretty much on my own.

Any business can learn from this. Sure, millions of small customers can’t each have a personal rep, but you’re a tech platform, dammit. Put some of those technical smarts to work and figure out how to support the little guys. If you’re not a tech platform, find one that can help you and use the reporting it will offer to make sure you’re treating the little guys the same. After all, you’re nice to the person who serves you your meal, aren’t you?

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Filed under digital media, Helpful Hints, Huh?

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March 4, 2019 · 11:53 am

Timed Out

I’m exhausted and I bet you are too. It seems as if there is just too many things screaming for my attention and it makes my brain hurt. More importantly, I and many others have maxed out on our ability to spend time with various things. This is important and has ramifications across many businesses, including maybe yours.

There are only 24 hours in a day. While many of us would like to follow the old Warren Zevon line about “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” (he is, by the way), we do need sleep and that cuts into those 24 hours. But the rest of the day is one demand for our attention after another. In fact, many businesses are built entirely around their ability to grab and hold our attention. Any advertising-based business certainly is. So are many subscription businesses such as Netflix or HBO. Video game studios need to hold us to justify the $50 price tag.

So what happens when we all are maxed out and have no more attention to give? It then becomes a land grab for share. We can’t make more “attention hours” during the day. This is from a media research firm called Midia:

Engagement has declined throughout the sector, suggesting that the attention economy has peaked. Consumers simply do not have any more free time to allocate to new attention seeking digital entertainment propositions, which means they have to start prioritizing between them.

They’re writing specifically about video games but it really applies across the spectrum of attention-based businesses. Attention does not scale. There is only so much time in the day and only so many ads one can see much less pay attention to. Yet ads are everywhere and that’s why they’re becoming less and less effective. We’re ad blind because it’s all noise. 99.5%+ of people don’t respond to banner ads and I’m willing to bet that some of those who do click do so by mistake.

So let’s start the week by asking ourselves how we get beyond the attention economy. Better service does. Better products too. Fortnight has by being a great experience that’s free. It’s not just a game – it’s become like the old virtual worlds we thought would be big back in the 1990s. E-sports are taking away from real sports, maybe because anyone can dunk in virtual basketball. We often see more fans watching people play videogames in person than we do attending real games. How are they winning the time-suck game?

Thanks for giving me some of your attention today. Who else is earning it and why? More importantly, how can your business do the same?

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Filed under Consulting, Thinking Aloud, What's Going On

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March 1, 2019 · 1:38 pm

The Mysteries Of Food

It’s Foodie Friday and today I’d like us to consider some of the things about food that I, for one, find mysterious. As usual, there’s a business point we can take away from these questions as well.

Let’s start with an easy one. What are the different flavors of Froot Loops? Purple in food tends to imply grape and yellow, at least in cereal, makes me think banana. Well, as it turns out, there is exactly ONE flavor and it’s neither strawberry red or blueberry blue. Why do the loops taste different to some folks? It’s a mystery.

Why are French Fries called that? No one knows, exactly, although there are a few theories. They’re “frites” in France and “chips” in Britain. The History Channel attempted to get to the bottom of the question but came up without a definitive answer, just theories.

Why are deviled eggs called that? I know that “devilling” originally meant making it spicy or searing it over high heat. What changed in the interim? Why is steer meat “beef” and pig meat “pork” but chicken is…well…chicken? Why are the holes in Swiss Cheese disappearing?

I could go on but I’m trying to show you that even the most basic things that we take for granted can raise questions, and those questions often don’t have definite answers. We find that all the time on business but we have to be willing to ask the questions first. One of the most formidable business weapons is an inquiring mind. A mind of that sort which is open to having their assumptions rebutted is an even greater tool. This happens in science all the time and that’s where many great discoveries are made as knowledge grows based on questioning the world around us.

You might not know what’s in surimi (it’s fish, not crab) but you can enjoy it just the same. Still, you might ask why “Krab” or “Froot Loops” or “Cheeze Whiz” are spelled that way. That first question leads to many others (not the least of which is do I really want to eat this). We need to constantly question thing in business too, don’t you think?

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