Tag Archives: Business model

June 17, 2015 · 10:37 am

Getting Chosen

You probably have been spending a lot more time interacting with your mobile device over the last year.  You’re not alone, and much of that interaction takes place through apps.  I don’t know about you but I have a lot of apps installed (and even more that I’ve used and uninstalled over the years).  I just checked my phone and there are 131 app icons.  Putting aside that there’s probably a dozen or so that are pre-installed crapware from my carrier and the handset manufacturer (I ranted about that previously – you get a reprieve today), that’s still a large number of apps competing for my attention.  There are hundreds of thousands more in the app store too.

My reality, and I’m guessing yours too, is that I only use a couple of dozen of them on any sort of regular basis.  Turns out we’re not alone, at least according to the good folks at Nielsen:

Despite the increase in choices, the number of apps used is staying the same. A recent Nielsen analysis found that on average, U.S. smartphone users accessed 26.7 apps per month in the fourth quarter of 2014—a number that has remained relatively flat over the last two years. And consider this: Over 70% of the total usage is coming from the top 200 apps.

However, while there appears to be a consumer threshold to the total number of apps people are willing and/or able to actively use during the month, the time they spend engaging on those apps has increased. In fact, the monthly time spent per person has increased from 23 hours and two minutes in fourth-quarter 2012 to 37 hours and 28 minutes in fourth-quarter 2014—a 63% rise in two years! So the reward for being one of the chosen apps is heavy engagement by the user.

It appears our app usage mirrors our TV usage.  While we might have access to hundred of TV channels, most of us only watch 21.  As has happened with TV, the engagement deepens with the chosen few.  The challenge for any business is to become one of those two dozen.  The means making the potential user base aware that you are the best solution to their problem, whether it’s how to amuse one’s self or how to get to a place you’ve never been or how to get clothes that are reasonably priced and fit well.  It means avoiding the dreaded “uninstall” – that action that takes place whether you’re an app or not when a customer moves on since you didn’t deliver on the promise made.  Maybe you were boring.  Maybe you were bloated with ads.  Maybe you tried to sneak in a lot of extra charges.  Those things aren’t limited to apps but they’ll lose you the “chosen” status much of the time.

What are you doing to be chosen today?

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May 27, 2015 · 10:37 am

Working For Free

Given my topic this morning, this could be the shortest post ever. With respect to doing work for prospective clients or others without being compensated, it’s a one word proposition:

Don’t.

Let me explain, after my 7 years in consulting, why I feel this way. Yes, I do some pro bono work but that’s different. Helping out a charity or other worthy cause is different from helping a for-profit. Similarly, I try to be a resource for my friends, and have looked at many friends’ business plans, websites, social media plans, and analytics over the years with zero expectation of reciprocity (I know they will be there in a heartbeat if I need something).

What I’m talking about today is spec work. Obviously I realize you need to discuss the prospective client’s business issues with them ahead of time in order to figure out the scope of work. You might even want to begin to do a bit of a deep dive so you can pinpoint how best to move their business forward. That’s an exercise for ME, so I can establish a mutually beneficial working relationship and we (the client and I) make best use of the time they’re buying. Over time the focus of the work always changes as the business changes and grows, but you need to have a starting point.

That said, there is a difference between identifying the issues and opportunities and providing a roadmap to a solution. When clients demand lots and lots of spec work, I politely but firmly say “no.”  Much of why people hire me is for the expertise that comes from experience.  The strategic and tactical documents I give clients are roadmaps.  They probably believe they can find people with less experience and knowledge to follow that map.  They forget that the business road usually takes unanticipated turns after which it’s easy to become lost.  Who gets the blame?  The map maker (me!) so I’d like to be in the car with them to get them pointed back in the right direction.

A client paying for your advice is their skin in the game.  It also makes them pay attention.  I don’t like to spend my time providing guidance and observations that, ultimately, get ignored.  Inevitably the recipient makes the mistake(s) that I warned were going to be the outcome of their direction or decision. It is a waste of both of our time.

Your job is to remind them of the value (NOT the cost) of what you bring them and then to deliver.  The old saw about free advice usually being worth what you pay for it rings true to most clients.  To me as well.  You?

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May 26, 2015 · 10:09 am

TV And Disruption

I have been thinking about a conversation I had with someone about the future of TV. OK, to be totally accurate, the chat was about the massive disruption that’s going on across all legacy media – newspapers, magazines, and radio as well as TV. I said that while that disruption is just now really beginning to be felt on a mass scale by TV, the TV industry seems to be learning from the mistakes made by newspapers and radio. I thought those learnings would help mitigate the disruption somewhat. Let’s see what you think.

Over the last year you’ve probably watched less live TV (other than sports and breaking news) than you have in the past. You’re not alone – live viewership of broadcast TV is down 30 percent since 2008 according to some measures. Time-shifted viewing is up quite a bit, however. Obviously it’s not a lack of interest in the programming but a desire to watch it on the viewer’s own schedule via whatever device is handy at that time.

Unlike the newspaper folks, who vigorously resisted the “what I want, where and when and how I want it” reality of the digital transformation, TV seems to be getting it. In fact, total overall consumption of video based content is skyrocketing. Admittedly some of that is from non-TV content sources (YouTube channels, etc) but as more TV content becomes easily available to cord-cutters and cord-nevers, I suspect what we’re seeing with CBS (CBS primetime is generating more viewers now than it did in 2003) will be true of most TV networks.

Some of my former colleagues in TV are finding ancillary benefits as well.  None of us were ever delighted with the Nielsen ratings system and the vast amount of viewing and audience information that’s now accessible through other channels is incredibly useful from both a programming and a sales perspective.  Frankly, the TV set is the viewing channel from which we get the least data and what information we do get is probably the least accurate.

All of the above is a long way of saying that despite my occasional jabs at TV clinging to their old business ways and traditional business model, I do recognize that they’ve quietly been changing and adapting to the new realities of digital disruption.  It’s encouraging and a good lesson for any business.  Do you agree?

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