Individual Responsibility | Zoo in a Jungle Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘Individual Responsibility’

Be Good, Businesses

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

The plumber ruined my plaster ceiling.

A year later, the roofer broke my deck.

Does this look "right" to you?

They both told me, “I want to make this right.” Then, they did everything in their power to avoid paying. (With limited success. I’m pretty tenacious.)

In the age of word-of-mouth marketing, with Angie’s List, Yelp and girlfriends getting together for coffee, how could any business person be so short-sighted to think shirking a responsibility today would result in profit tomorrow?

Honesty and virtue are key ingredients to long-term success. It sounds old-fashioned, because there’s nothing new about being a good business with good people.

Dishonesty can lead to short-term gains–remember Enron?–but ultimately ends in business disaster. For the plumber, I wrote a reasonable yet scathing review of his business and chose one of his dozen competitors to be my go-to plumber. As for the roofer, I related my story to friends and neighbors, so they can make informed decisions in the future. I’m just one home-owner, but my influence extends beyond my own purchasing needs.

And the same is true of your customers. Each day, your customers are evaluating your dependability and trustworthiness. They are sharing their opinions with friends and family. Their opinions carry more weight than the most perfectly-designed marketing campaign.

So, be good. Do the right thing.

Your business will profit from it, and so will your conscience.

P.S. Bonus: The effects of unethical business decisions extend further than word-of-mouth. If you have customers who won’t pay anything until the last jot and tittle of the contract are fulfilled, they’ve likely been treated badly in the past. They feel the need to protect themselves. And who can blame them? We’ve all heard the lie at sometime or other, “I want to make this right.”

Tags: Business Strategy, Everything is marketing, Individual Responsibility, Motivating Customers, Personal Responsibility, word-of-mouth marketing
Posted in Customer Experience, Customers, Philosophy, Relationships, word-of-mouth marketing | 2 Comments »

Marketing Management: Keep Marketing!

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

Marketing management is an ongoing activity, and it’s key to your business’s success. Marketing is something you do everyday, whether you are conscious of it or not. From your customers’ perspective, every experience they have or belief they hold about your business has been crafted by your products and employes. Are you managing these experiences or leaving them to chance?

It’s fun and exciting to engage in a large marketing project like branding a new product or revitalizing your marketing with a social media blitz. But these large projects receive undue credit for a business’s success- it’s the day-to-day actions that cumulatively build success. Your customers need to be able to rely on you, not just when they first buy or when you launch a new campaign.

Here are some tips for managing your marketing:

Set goals. Set daily, weekly or monthly goals for how the frequency of your marketing activities. For instance, your goals could be one local event per month, one email newsletter per month and one Facebook post per week.
Make a schedule. Looming due dates have quite an effect on the human psyche. Set a firm schedule for your goals, like publishing a blog post every Wednesday morning.
Monitor and make changes. Some marketing activities keep themselves going. For best results, you should monitor these activities and make changes based on your observations. For example, look at your Google AdWords each month to see what you can learn.
Measure results. Managing your marketing can be hard work. Measure your results, so you can see which efforts are paying off and which aren’t. Stop the least effective ones, and put more energy into the producers.
Show discipline. All of these tips are rooted in having the discipline to keep marketing. Discipline is the number one ingredient for marketing management success. It’s not sexy, but it’s true.

By managing your marketing, you will create a compelling story for customers to buy into. You just have to keep at it, everyday.

If you don’t have the time or energy to manage your marketing, you could look into hiring a professional to manage it for you. Conveniently, Zoo in a Jungle Marketing excels at marketing management. Contact me to talk about your business: Amanda Cullen, 513.833.4203, amanda@zooinajungle.com.

Tags: Everything is marketing, Individual Responsibility, Marketing Plan, Social Media, Web Marketing
Posted in Customers, Marketing, Marketing Theory | No Comments »

Advertising, Courtesy of the Legal Beagles

Friday, February 11th, 2011

Sometimes, advertising legalese really goes over the top. While a case can be made for clauses like, “Not valid with any other offer,” each additional restriction discourages customers from trying out your product or service. Advertising, coupons and special offers are supposed to encourage customers, not put up obstacles for them.

As an example, Steve Yastrow wrote a great article on Tom Peters’ blog about the error of forcing pharmaceutical companies to tell us a drug’s side effects in a soothing, sing-songy voice. His point is that no one should trust an advertisement to tell them everything they need to know about a drug. Consumers need to ask their doctors.

This week, in a Val-Pak mailing, I found another great example of advertising legalese run amok. As a marketing professional and graphic designer, I get a kick out of Val-Pak mailings. There are always a handful of instructive coupons that show precisely the wrong way to design an advertisement. Check out this outlandish instance of legalese:

“First time clients only. Valid ID required…Coupon may not be bartered, copied, traded or sold.”

Can you imagine showing identification just to qualify for a $5 haircut? Checking IDs may be a foolproof way to ensure no existing clients use this coupon, but it is an unreasonable invasion of customers’ privacy.

Not only does this legalese clutter the advertisement and send an unfriendly vibe, it’s completely unenforceable. How will this company know if someone sold their $5 coupon for $3 or traded it for a baseball card? And why would they care? (I’m not a legal expert, but aren’t barter and trade synonyms?)

When writing your advertising copy, don’t get carried away by the legal beagles. If customers feel like you are trying to outsmart them, they will respond in one of two ways. 1. They will ignore your offer as not worth their time. 2. They will take it as a challenge to outsmart you, and they will probably win.

The most effective advertising, special offers and coupons will bring you smiling, happy customers. Aim for that goal, and skip the legalese.

Tags: Advertising, Individual Responsibility, Steve Yastrow, Valpak, Writing/Editing
Posted in Advertising | 1 Comment »

Public Relations has come a long way.

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

Public relations is a great marketing tool for small businesses and is much more effective at reaching consumers than advertising. People remember stories better than taglines and trust articles more than direct mail.

Local media- newspaper, TV and radio- love covering interest stories that involve local small businesses. Small businesses online can earn similar coverage from special interest blogs, Twitter users and other Internet media outlets. Basically, if a small business can craft a meaningful, intriguing story, they can get really useful PR.

Consumers can learn more about a small business through in-depth coverage than they would from a 30-second spot. Good PR helps consumers make more informed decisions by illuminating what makes businesses interesting, such as involvement in charities or social activism.

As great as PR is for businesses, media and consumers today, the discipline has come a long way since its founding in the early years of the 20th century. Then, it was seen as a way to manipulate consumers into consuming more. The father of public relations, Edward Bernays, said of PR:

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?“

Bernays also asserted,

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.”

Certainly, Bernays’ tactics were successful in his day. He was instrumental in popularizing cigarette use among women, and he was horrified to learn that a dog-eared copy of his book, Crystallizing Public Opinion, resided on Joseph Goebbels’ shelf.

But his approach to PR no longer works. After years of being manipulated, consumers grew skeptical of marketing claims. Now consumers do their research and often know more about your products and services than your salespeople do. Effective PR in 2010 means being truthful and crafting stories that are of genuine interest to consumers. Businesses must ensure they are ethical and respectful of consumers’ rights. Because if they aren’t, consumers will find out, and they will learn that there is such a thing as bad press.

Tags: Communication, Edward Bernays, Individual Responsibility, Public Relations, Purpose
Posted in Marketing Science, Public Relations | No Comments »

Implementation means, “Keep at It”

Friday, July 30th, 2010

So, you’ve developed a strategy that informs where you want your company to go. You’ve involved your team in developing and planning for this strategy. Together, you’ve made sure this strategy communicates with customers in ways that are meaningful to them and ensures your company is easy to do business with. You’re probably feeling pretty satisfied with your progress. But your work has only just begun.

The most difficult part of any plan is implementation. It’s not because the tasks of implementation are hard. Usually accomplishing these tasks don’t require great skill or superhuman brainpower. The difficulty arises because implementation requires dedication and tenacity. You have to keep at it. Every day.

For many small business entrepreneurs, this process is boring, and implementation is often cut short, displaced by more exciting strategizing and perceived opportunities. But a small business can never reach its potential without completing the initiatives it starts.

Here are some tips for implementation success:

Pay attention to details. Read my recent blog post about a business had a failed advertising strategyby ignoring the details on the printed piece.
Develop easy-to-understand success metrics. Know you’re succeeding (or failing) by establishing milestones along the way to your goal. These milestones should have due dates to create a sense of urgency.
Hold quarterly or monthly check-up meetings. Grade your company’s success on a regular basis with progress reports on your milestones. Make these meetings short and to the point, or everyone will dread them (don’t you hate meetings that drag on and keep you from work?).
Don’t be a roadblock. Often small business owners are the bottleneck in the company’s decision-making process. Decide which decisions you don’t need to make. It will free up your time and speed up your strategy’s success.
Use your team’s strengths. If you find it difficult to stay on track, someone on your team likely has strong implementation skills. Give them authority to check in, set meetings and make sure progress is made.

Now use these tips to go forth and implement!

Tags: Implementation, Individual Responsibility, Passion
Posted in Business Plan, Individuals vs. Committees, Small Business | 4 Comments »

A Tribute to Small Business Dads

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Father’s Day is on Sunday, and as I reflected for today’s blog post, I realized my dad is the reason I am a successful small business owner today. My dad, Mike Kinslow, has been a small business owner since he was 22. My parents bought a car wash and soon after started a changeable letter sign operation. They opened a custom hot tub store during the infancy of the spa craze. Using his car washing expertise, my dad invented and patented a radical new idea for car washing – a glass car wash building named Lighthouse Carwash. He morphed the business from simply selling products to offering entrepreneurs an entire turnkey business model.

Why I love small business marketing

My dad taught me almost everything I know about small businesses, and he is why I love small business marketing. Over the years, I’ve learned that he is entrepreneurialism personified. Here are some of his traits that I find are common to most small business owners:

My dad has an incredible work ethic. Small business owners know that working hard is the answer to their success. However, one of my dad’s favorite sayings is, “Work smarter, not harder.” He would be the first to chastise anyone for laboring without first thinking about how it could be done more efficiently.
Before making decisions, my dad always considers how it will affect his family and employees. Family values and faith in God are of utmost importance to him, and his generosity knows no bounds. This kind of heart is prevalent with all small business owners. You don’t just want to make money. You want to do the right thing.
My dad has earned his living searching for ways to fix other people’s problems. Relentless pursuit of the next big idea gives him an adrenaline rush. Without this passion, small businesses could never thrive.
If the going got tough, my dad would just work harder. All experienced small business owners know there are lean times at some points in their entrepreneurial lives. The key is to never quit, work harder and keep up that relentless pursuit of the next big idea.
And, yes, my dad even has the tendency to micro-manage in order to ensure perfection. All of you small business owners out there know, deep down, that you have a micro-managing spirit. It’s the sense of pride and attention to detail that has allowed you to become successful in the first place. But be careful. Often it is better to delegate decisions that are outside your area of expertise.

So, I dedicate this Father’s Day post to my dad and small business dads everywhere. (Don’t fret, small business moms. You’ll have a turn next Mother’s Day)

Tags: Entrepreneurs, Individual Responsibility, Lighthouse Carwash, Mike Kinslow
Posted in Entrepreneurs, Marketing Theory, Small Business | 2 Comments »

Small Business Marketing Spotlight: Legacy Farms

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Legacy Farms is a family farm in Indiana, owned by Paul and Jessica Kinslow, along with their children Alyssa and Brett. They breed and raise show-quality Boer goats. Paul Kinslow also sits on the Board of Directors for the American Boer Goat Association He is the Director for region 14 containing Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky. I caught up with Paul this week to chat with him about their small business.

The inspiration for their farm came from Jessica’s father, Jim Misiniec. Paul remembers, “Jim told us Boer goats were the next up-and-coming show animal. Jessica thought he was a nut. She had grown up showing hogs. He kept on us, and he finally convinced me.” Jim’s influence extends to their farm even today, “Our farm name, Legacy Farms, comes from the legacy that Jim left us. He taught Jessica the skills and work ethic that we are passing on to our children today.”

I next asked Paul to tell me his favorite part of owning a small business:

“What I enjoy is our family time. It’s not your typical small business. We travel, show, care for the animals and make buying decisions as a family. It allows us to do things together. It’s not all fun, but it’s valuable time. The work ethic I’ve been able to teach Brett and Allie is that you get out of life what you put into it. In Allie’s first year she was the Junior Showman. In her second year, she was the Intermediate Showman at the Indiana State Fair. I’m proud of that.”

Paul and Jessica credit their faith as being the biggest reason for their success. Paul says, “We try to pray about every decision we make and try to put God first and foremost.” He also credits Jessica with having “a great livestock eye.” She has developed that from years of being part of the livestock industry.

They also emphasize the constantly changing environment inherent in the livestock business. Paul advises, “It’s not so much luck as learning and applying that knowledge quickly. You have to be able to change your business plan very quickly.” He explains that standards and trends change each year, as new animals are named Grand Champion at the fairs and shows. It is of utmost importance to track those trends to stay ahead of them.

Legacy Farms approaches its marketing from an interesting angle. Their animals are their advertising. As they travel around the country, each show or fair presents an opportunity to increase the value of their farm and animals by how they place. This model can work for any livestock farm. Paul says, “We try to update the website every 2-3 weeks with photographs and animals for sale. But for the most part, you have to be seen. I could have the best animals in the country, but if no one sees them, it doesn’t matter. If you go to the shows and consistently place in the top, then people take notice of you.”

As we parted, Paul wanted to give some advice to livestock entrepreneurs thinking of starting out with Boer goats or other livestock:

“Start small. Ask a lot of questions. Livestock people are very willing to help. They have a very good work ethic and are all about the children and growing the industry. Pay attention to the market. When we got into it, we bought what we thought was pretty. We wasted a lot of money that way, and it took me two years to sell off the original livestock we bought. Learn what you’re buying. And don’t put yourself into a position where you can’t take care of the animals that you purchase. If you only have room for three goats, don’t buy five– no matter how much of a bargain it seems.”

The American Boer Goat Association is having their National Show in Louisville this year from June 7-12. There will be 1,200 head of animals represented by 400-500 exhibitors. Anyone interested in Boer goats is encouraged to attend. Call (325) 486-2242 for more information.

Tags: Individual Responsibility, Legacy Farms, Livestock
Posted in Entrepreneurs, Small Business, Small Business Interviews | No Comments »

Web Design Essentials for Small Business

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Web marketing starts with a visitor-friendly website.

For most businesses, the ultimate purpose of web design is to encourage a visitor to become a customer. To achieve that goal, websites need to be visitor-focused. Every decision about the website should answer the question, “Will this be better or worse for the visitor?”

One person needs to be responsible for the outcome of the design, and that person needs to be visitor-focused (not CEO-focused or sales-department-focused or technology-focused). There is a snide response to the adage that a symphony can’t be played by just one person: No committee ever wrote a beautiful symphony.

Just like a composer learns music theory to help his symphony achieve his vision, web designers should use the body of knowledge we have concerning good design to meet your company’s goals. This article will discuss some of these essential principles.

As I wrote week, good design is passionate and purposeful. We have established that the purpose of website design for businesses is to encourage visitors to become customers. (We’ll visit how to grow the number of visitors to your site in a future article).

Donald Norman wrote The Design of Everyday Things in the 1980s. The book is so brilliant that his design concepts remain crucially important and can be applied to website design today. He writes,

“Design should… make sure that:

The user can figure out what to do, and

The user can tell what is going on.”¹

For example, if your website visitor wants to send you an email, you should make it easy for her. If your website is trying to load content for her to view, she should be able to tell what is happening.

“Okay, but how can I make things easy for my visitors?”

Design your website to behave in ways they expect and are comfortable with. Through research, we know the most viewed spot of your website is the top left corner. You can use this area to tell visitors who you are and what you do. Typically, visitors expect to see a “Contact” link on the right side of the top navigation bar.

Your website should be designed to allow visitors to use their web-browsing habits to discover content on your website. Visitors refuse to learn a whole new way of browsing just to use your website. In his book Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore, Neale Martin makes a compelling case that most human behavior is driven by habits, and if a habit is broken, a person will experience a feeling of dissonance.² For something as basic as finding the FAQ’s on your website, a visitor should never feel dissonance.

Visitors also hate to be annoyed. Many companies, in an effort to help visitors learn as much as possible, will have every link open in a new window. After closing a dozen open windows, what the visitor really learns is to never visit that site again. A good rule of thumb is to have links referring to your own site open in the same window, and links referring to outside sites open in new windows.

We can please a visitor’s sense of habit by following more advice from Donald Norman. He advocates making the most common things visible, using “natural mappings” and giving the user feedback.³

Make Things Visible

Don’t hide the most important information in menus on your website. If you want visitors to contact you, put your contact information on the home page. This is a very easy-to-understand principle that just as easily gets suppressed through design-by-committee antics.

Use Natural Mappings

Norman writes, “Mapping is a technical term meaning the relationship between two things, in this case, between the controls and their movements and the results in the world”⁴ In other words, if you want your car to turn right, you turn the wheel to the right. Unnatural mapping explains why so many drivers find it difficult to turn while backing up; you have to turn the wheel the opposite of the way you want to go.

Mappings are especially important on websites because everything on computers is virtual, not tactile. For example, if you have a slideshow on your website, make sure it behaves as quickly and naturally as flipping a page in a magazine.

The Apple Mobile Me service has an admirable slideshow feature,
which showcases the use of natural mapping.

Give Feedback

A visitor won’t know they have completed a task successfully unless you tell them. So, if they fill out a web form, direct their browser to a thank-you page. If they sign up for your newsletter or buy a product from your site, let them know it was successful.

There’s no need for fancy animations that take time to load. Visitors won’t stick around to see them. The average visitor will give your website one second to start loading before moving on to the next search result. If it takes longer than ten seconds to load, no one will wait for it.

For more detail on these aspects of design, read the first chapter of The Design of Everyday Things (or even better, read the entire book).

Website Design Examples

The best way to experience the importance of website design essentials is to visit good and bad websites. As you visit the links, ask yourself the following questions:

Website Design Checklist
What does this company do?
How would I contact this company?
How would I log into this site?
Is it pleasant to visit this website?

We’ll start with the bad websites.

If you can endure the rousing repetition of the “William Tell Overture,” this angelfire.com site is a great example of design gone horribly awry. Fortunately, it was intentional. Unfortunately for the rest of these companies, their website design was intended to attract visitors. Poorly designed websites can be found in all business sectors. Procter & Gamble is a global company, with a large marketing budget. It doesn’t matter how much money you invest in a website if you don’t design for your visitors.

	Brill Publications
	Web Marketing Magic
	Procter & Gamble
	Coastal Heritage Society

Now for the well-designed websites.

Ask yourself the same questions as you visit these well-designed websites. None of them are perfect, but they are all visitor-focused.

	Apple Shows good navigation bar design.
	Google Makes searching, the most important task, prominent
	Peter Yastrow’s Blog Lets the visitor know what Peter Yastrow writes about.
	Overnight Prints Easy-to-find contact info and prominent special offers.

Decide for yourself if the following sites are well designed or not. I’d like your opinion. Leave a comment or email me at amanda@zooinajungle.com with your feedback.

Footnotes

1. Norman, Donald A. The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books, 2002. 188.

2. Martin, Neale. Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore . Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press, 2008.

3. Norman, Donald A. The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Chapter 1.

4. Ibid., 23.

Tags: Design, Donald Norman, Habits, Individual Responsibility, Neale Martin, Small Business Websites, Web Marketing
Posted in Customer Experience, Individuals vs. Committees, Small Business, Web Design Tips | 4 Comments »