Category Archives: Consulting

November 6, 2013 · 10:43 am

Newsflash: They’re Alive! Newspapers Are Alive!

The folks at comScore released some information about newspaper readership the other day that might just be of interest.

Newspaper colour

(Photo credit: NS Newsflash)

The interwebs are filled from time to time with headlines blaring about the death of newspapers.  As it turns out, not so much.  As Media Post reported:

September was the busiest month ever for newspapers in terms of digital traffic, with 141 million U.S. adults visiting a newspaper Web site or using a newspaper mobile app.That figure is up 11% over June and represents 71% of the country’s total online adult population, defined as the total number of adults accessing any type of digital content.

I’m a believer in the “content is king” theory.  Great newspapers are content generation machines.  Besides developing their own reports on events of the day they commission other content – reviews, feature stories, etc. – that can be what’s lovingly called linkbait here in cyberspace.  That content is often circulated beyond and by the initial audience, furthering the reach.  What crappy newspapers do is cut and paste wire copy after gutting their content-generating capabilities.  I don’t know that those sort of newspapers are dying; it sees more like suicide.

What’s also suicidal is an insistence by any business on preserving a business model that is ceasing to work.  We saw it in the record industry and in many cases we’re seeing it with newspapers.  Smart newspapers jumped into digital with both feet.  Admittedly, many of those are still struggling with the appropriate business model: subscription vs. metered pay wall vs. ad-supported vs. some hybrid.  The formation and implementation of whatever the right model is get slowed down by the constant shift of technology and platforms.  As content consumption shifts to mobile – and the total mobile audience for U.S. newspapers was 77 million U.S. adults in September, or 55% of the total audience – the model needs to be thought out again.

What this research demonstrates again is that we need to emphasize business over tools.  Newspapers do an excellent job of using all the latest tools.  The best ones continue to produce great content, the core of their business.  What still needs work is the business model, which was stable for almost 200 years and has changed forever.  They’re not alone:  it could happen to your business in a relative instant.  Are you ready?

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October 31, 2013 · 8:34 am

Churn

We have a statistic in the television business called churn.

English: Butter churn, Dunserverick Museum One...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Actually, it’s more about the cable TV business and it’s short for churn rate.  As is sometimes the case, Wikipedia defines it nicely:

Churn rate, when applied to a customer base, refers to the proportion of contractual customers or subscribers who leave a supplier during a given time period. It is a possible indicator of customer dissatisfaction, cheaper and/or better offers from the competition, more successful sales and/or marketing by the competition, or reasons having to do with the customer life cycle.

Obviously, if a company is to grow, that growth needs to exceed its churn rate – you need to gain more customers that you lose.  Simple, right?  It points out pretty clearly that keeping customers is at least as important as adding new ones.  That simple thought is what popped into my head as I read the results of some research from the Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Survey.  You can look for yourself here.

What they found was that companies are not working hard enough to stop consumers from switching. In fact, among people who changed service providers – banks, phone companies, retailers – 81% said that the company could have done something differently to prevent them from switching.  Maybe it’s not as simple a thought as it might appear?  As MediaPost reported:

The report says that while service providers… have more data and insights into consumer desires and preferences than ever before, providers have failed to meaningfully improve customer satisfaction or reverse rising switching rates among their customers.

Ouch.  So what does that mean specifically?

  • 91% of respondents are frustrated that they have to contact a company multiple times for the same reason
  • 90% by being put on hold for a long time
  • 89% by having to repeat their issue to multiple representatives
  • 85% of customers are frustrated by dealing with a company that does not make it easy to do business with them
  • 84% by companies promising one thing, but delivering another
  • 58% are frustrated with inconsistent experiences from channel to channel

Marketing is often focused on growth.  However, as any financial person will tell you, improved profitability can come from cutting expenses as it does from growing revenues (and I’m a strong advocate for the latter since those cuts often kill growth and revenues but that’s another screed!).  Churn is the cutting of losses and helps reduce costs – I think it’s cheaper to keep a customer than to acquire one.  It’s also something that businesses can fix if they focus on it.  None of the study’s findings are difficult to address IF there is an awareness and a commitment to do so.  Is your business ready to do that?

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October 30, 2013 · 10:19 am

Turn The Chair

I was having a coffee with an old friend the other day.  We plopped ourselves down in a couple of overstuffed chairs at one of the local Starbucks to chat and it became apparent in a couple of seconds that the sun was streaming right into her eyes.

Free chair, new fence

(Photo credit: Kentucky Photo File)

I mentioned that fact and asked if she wanted us to relocate.  She sat forward and said “no, if I sit like this it’s not an issue.”  It wasn’t, but since I had no desire to watch her contort herself nor to see her back go out from sitting in an awkward position, I suggested she do something to remedy the situation: turn the chair.

That, in three words, is pretty much what I do.  I help clients to come up with solutions that might not be obvious to them in the moment but which are readily apparent to someone who isn’t caught up in the problem.  Questioning the underlying assumption and changing the paradigm is what many businesspeople fail to do on their own (and what just as many of us do in the “real” world outside of business as well!).  It gets back to the “what if” conversation we explored here a little while ago.

My friend could have sat sideways and waited for the sun to move so it was out of her eyes.  That would have distracted her from our chat at best and left her with a sore back or half blind at worst.  In a sense, it would have been the equivalent of blaming a business failure on a bad marketplace.  When the market turns – when the sun moves – things will be fine.  I don’t think any business really has the luxury of that sort of thinking and turning the business’ figurative chair is how the enterprise can carry on despite unfavorable circumstances.

I’ve been told that consultants are a luxury in good times and unaffordable in bad times.  As you might expect, I disagree.  We’re the folks keeping the sun out of your eyes and the sun is always shining in business.  While we might know a lot about your business (in fact, we need to!), we’re not caught up in the day-to-day, in the politics, or the latest office drama.  We have a different perspective.  Not better – different, and sometimes, that’s all that’s needed to move forward.

That’s my take – what’s yours?

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