Tag Archives: Business and Economy

August 17, 2016 · 11:18 am

Throwing Back The Small Fish

You’re probably a user of one free Google service or another. Odds are that you’ve used the search engine (probably at least once already today!). Maybe you get your email via a free Gmail account or watch videos on YouTube. It’s no secret that each of those services is provided to attract eyeballs (and usage data) for the ads Google sells.

Let’s think for a moment about the other side of that equation. How do those ads get there? Glad you asked! Google also provides a number of other free services to support marketers as well as other free services such as Google Analytics that provide data (to Google and others) about what’s going on in the web world. Lately, Google has been doing some things with those services that are instructive to the rest of us for our businesses.

What they’re doing is making those services less useful to marketers who don’t spend money with them. You might remember the outcry a couple of years back when Google stopped providing search term information in the free version of Analytics. At the time they said it would affect only a small minority of the data. The truth is that today nearly all of the search terms are (not provided), which is where Google lumps them when they don’t want to show them to you.

A few days ago, Google did it again. There is something called Keyword Planner which is used to plan search advertising. Google announced that “advertisers with lower monthly spend may see a limited data view in the Keyword Planner.” How much lower? No one knows.

How does this relate to your business? As you might expect, the response from the search marketing community has been outrage. This comment (and there are pages and pages of them on Google’s Advertising Community page) is typical:

First Google took your organic keyword data away. Now they are intent on impoverishing those without enough budget for the data.

There are many times more small accounts using Google for search than there are large accounts. Is it a good idea to favor the big spenders? Yes, it is, actually. Any good business rewards its best customers with perks. Those perks, however, shouldn’t diminish the ability of a small customer (or a new customer) to become one of the bigger ones. That’s what this change has done. Do I think it will drive marketers to another search engine? Maybe, but I’m guessing your business sector doesn’t have anyone who is as dominant in it as Google is in the search realm so you probably don’t have the luxury of not caring a whole lot.

The Boss wrote, “from small things, baby, big things one day come.” The only way to foster that growth is to provide support and tools, no matter what business we’re in. I think Google has taken a step in the wrong direction. You?

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August 12, 2016 · 12:14 pm

Give Them A Reason

This Foodie Friday comes in the midst of various companies announcing their financial results. One of those companies is Wendy’s, which reported weaker than expected sales growth. That’s not particularly unusual for any company, but I think there’s a business lesson in the thinking behind their reasoning for the weak results. Let’s see what you think.

Foto de una carretera en la cual se destacan a...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to Wendy’s, people aren’t dining out as much because it has gotten even cheaper to eat at home. Bulletin to the financial folks at the company: it’s generally been cheaper to eat at home. I can’t ever recall anyone I know saying let’s go out to eat and save some money, even when our destination is a fast-food place. In my mind, that’s not why people choose to dine out. It may be more convenient or they might just not feel like cooking. Maybe there is a time crunch (although unless you’re already out and about, you can probably whip up a couple of burgers in the time it would take to get to Wendy’s and eat). Wendy’s isn’t alone in either the weak results or the unusual reasoning, at least according to this article:

The results from Wendy’s follow disappointing sales from other chains including McDonald’s, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks. The other chains have cited a variety of reasons, including the political uncertainty created by the presidential election, for their performance.

Let’s accept that their reasoning is sound (hmm). Any of us in business realize that there are always any number factors beyond our control. Commodity prices, which can be strongly influenced by the biggest thing out of our control – the weather – are certainly one factor in the food industry. What we can control is how we give our customers a reason to come patronize us, regardless of the cost. We ought to be selling value. Unfortunately, in the food business “value menu” has become synonymous with “cheap.” That can only work for so long, especially, as in this case, as the costs of making our product or providing our service rise.

Solve consumers’ problems and provide excellent value at a reasonable (but profitable) cost. Give them a reason to turn off the stove and get in the car. Let’s see where that gets us.

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August 11, 2016 · 10:37 am

Transforming To The Digital Future

One of the questions clients ask is how they prepare for the digital transformation of their business. In some cases, the businesses are completely digital and the answers are much easier. For legacy businesses, however, the changes are often slow and painful, if they happen at all.

The folks at the MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte Digital released the fifth annual Digital Business Study. Called“Aligning the Organization for Its Digital Future, it presents an increasingly wide gap between the companies that have transitioned successfully to the digital world and those who are struggling to do so.

The report found that digitally maturing companies have organizational cultures that share common features, including an expanded appetite for risk, rapid experimentation, heavy investment in talent and recruiting, and the development of leaders who excel at soft skills. It also examined the different types of companies with respect to their digital transformation:

Additional analysis of this year’s study found three distinct cultural mindsets that relate closely to corporate stages of digital maturity. Some characteristics include:

  • Low appetite for risk– This mindset is common among early stage digital organizations. In addition to being risk adverse, early stage companies tend to have a hierarchical leadership structure, conduct work in silos, and make decisions based more on instinct rather than hard data.
  • Experimentation and speed– Conversely, digitally maturing companies value experimentation and speed, embrace risk, and create distributed leadership structures.
  • Collaboration– Digitally maturing companies also foster collaboration and are more likely to use data in decision making.

Nearly 80 percent of respondents surveyed from digitally maturing entities indicate their companies are actively engaged in initiatives that bolster risk taking, agility and collaboration. For early stage companies, the number falls to 23 percent.

Finally, they found that nearly 90 percent of digitally maturing organizations are integrating their digital strategies with their companies’ overall strategies. In other words, digital is not something that’s “tacked on” or just another channel.

Where do you fit in the spectrum? Do you have the skills – having a transformative vision, being a forward thinker, having a change-oriented mindset – the study found are critical for a successful transformation? How are you putting them to work?

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