August 22, 2016 · 1:07 pm

Believe It Or Not

We’re busy prepping Rancho Deluxe for sale and so we’re in need of some outside services to perform tasks such as washing the roof (damn lichen). In our digital age, I’m doing what any person would do: checking the web for reviews as well as for potential service people. The problem is not finding information. The issue is knowing which information to trust. I suspect this is an issue for you and for your business as well.

There are review sites such as Yelp and Angie’s List. Yelp, in particular, has a reputation, justified or not, of having issues. Fake reviews are allegedly rampant and the company has been accused of elevating negative reviews to higher positions in the results if the company doesn’t pay to advertise on Yelp. As an aside, a court found that even if they were doing that, it wouldn’t be illegal, but it sure makes one question the validity of what you learn. Angie’s List has had similar problems, saying that they’re consumer driven when 70% of their revenue comes from advertising. That makes them less than disinterested information brokers in my book.

Do people really use reviews? A new study by Trustpilot suggests that 88 percent of consumers say that reviews help when deciding what to buy and where to buy it. The study also found, however, that only 18 percent say they think online reviews are actually valid, so do consumers believe them or not? As a business owner, can you believe what you’re reading or not before you think about taking action?

I don’t think there is a simple answer. Most fake reviews are fairly easy to identify. You look at how many other reviews have been written by the author, you check if there are multiple reviews with similar verbiage, etc. I’m a fan of Amazon’s identifier of reviewers who actually purchased the product via Amazon, and some sites let you see if the person has actually checked in. That’s more of a clue for negative reviews in my book. Yelp and other sites are probably more of a help as a consumer than they are as places to conduct business based on some of the alleged shady business practices. Check multiple sites and social media, gather a lot of information and form an opinion based on the preponderance of the evidence (can you tell I hang out with lawyers?).

Actually, that last sentence is probably good advice for anything we do in business, wouldn’t you say?

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August 19, 2016 · 9:52 am

Teaching The Master

It’s Foodie Friday! I was reading one of the many food blogs I follow when I came across a post from a baker who had updated his book on breadmaking. It was a very successful book and had won numerous awards but it was now 15 years old and the publisher had asked for an update. That isn’t particularly interesting since cookbooks are updated all the time – The Joy Of Cooking has been updated 6 times in the 75+ years since its publication. What is of interest to me – and which provides an interesting business point – is the mindset of the author.

There are two quotes in his post which resonated and which I think are instructive to us all:

  • Working on it (the anniversary edition) gave me a chance to examine all that has transpired during the interval, and to see where we might freshen things up to keep pace with all the developments.

  • Even after six thousand years of bread baking, we are still learning new ways to make it even better.

In other words, here is someone who is always learning and taking the opportunity to use what he’s learned to foster positive change in his endeavors. All of us should be reading, listening, and learning every day. No matter if we use RSS to digest dozens of sources of professional and industry information or if we just wander the halls speaking to people, one of the most fundamental things we need to do it to keep learning. In this case, we have someone who literally wrote the book on breadmaking and is considered a master. The only way to retain that sort of elevated status in any field is to keep learning.

The legal profession requires hours of Continuing Legal Education for members of the bar to stay admitted. Teachers are expected to keep earning degree credits and to publish once they get into academia’s highest realms. It needn’t be that formal. All that’s required is a willingness to learn, an open mind, and a fundamental curiosity about the world in which we live, both professionally and as humans. You with me?

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August 18, 2016 · 12:41 pm

Quit Pushing Me

We discuss engagement in this space fairly often. I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’m a believer in The Cluetrain Manifesto and that markets are conversations. Think about a conversation you’d have at a bar or a party. You would listen at least as much as you spoke and you probably wouldn’t keep tossing random lines at people, especially if those lines are only about you. Now let’s look at a piece of research.

According to The Future of Content: Rethinking Content Consumption, a national survey report, consumers want to discover digital content on their own and are skeptical of brands pushing online ads through interruptive channels. Rapt Media, recently surveyed an audience of more than 1,000 consumers to understand how content discovery is driving the content personalization trend.

Insights reveal consumers want personalized content experiences that are meaningful, helpful and valuable to their specific needs and interests. But equally important is their empowerment in discovering it on their own. The younger millennial generation is especially mistrusting of brands pushing interruptive online ads.

Key findings from the survey include:

● 95% take action to avoid seeing or receiving online ads
● 5% say ads influence their purchase decisions
● 57% of millennials block ad content because it is too pushy
● 43% say online ads are not personalized to their interests, but 62% say the content they discover on their own is personalized
● 61% say that even if content is customized, they still prefer to find it on their own
● 46% say content they find on their own influences their purchase decisions

I especially like this quote: “Programmatic push messaging is implicit personalization perceived by consumers as irrelevant and inauthentic.” Yep. The findings confirm that consumers have come to expect content personalization along with the opportunity to shape their own experience, so why are we spending time and resources on doing anything that delivers an experience other than that? Maybe we need to make our business behavior more like our cocktail party behavior (and who has ever pondered THAT before?)?

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