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Mar 19 2013
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How to Practically Guarantee Every New Offering Is a Winner

You sweat and toil and create new products and services that you just know that market is dying to get their hands on.

You put it out, a few sales trickle in and then, nothing. You tweak the sales page, lower the price, kick the cat and still, nothing.

community build

photo credit: Steve Rhodes via photopin cc

Creating new product and service offerings, even those that the market should need and want, is always a bit of a guessing game. Even when you employ some market research you can’t be sure how a prospect or customer will embrace something until it’s live and in the wild.

There is a model for product and service development that can help you forgo the pain and agony of the total flop and even turn what starts as an okay idea into a sure winner.

The best way to guarantee that your new offerings succeed is to develop them with your customers instead of simply for your customers.

Instead of creating something and then turning to the market to see if they like it, you tap your community to help you build it the way they want it and the way they will buy it.

Here’s how the Community Build process works.

Let’s say you want to create a new online training course.

  • You create the seed of an idea with little more than an outline and you take it to a handful of customers and ask them what they think.
  • You take their input and develop a full-blown course layout and a first draft of the positioning for selling the program.
  • Then you take what you’ve developed and have a larger group from your community comment on exactly what they would hope to learn and how they would get the best results from a program like this.
  • From that research you develop the main workings of the program and allow some small controlled group of community members to enlist as alpha testers. (It’s free, but they have to agree to help make it better.)
  • You measure and gauge all manner of things from the alpha testers including UI, logic, flow, content, value, results and overall benefits derived from the program in order to more fully develop a platform for beta testers. (Again, it’s free but they agree to help with more input and typo alerts.)
  • The collective collaboration effort should help you create a program that makes sense, delivers value and is packaged the way your market wants it. Of course it’s just as likely that along the way you’ll discover there is no market for what you’re trying to create, but that’s an equally awesome finding if you think about it.

Now of course you’ve still got to market the thing, but all this community involvement will quite likely also help you turn up lots of comments, suggestions and feedback that will inform and create a very strong value proposition as well.

One of the best examples of taking this thinking to an extreme is t-shirt printer Threadless. Their Community Build model is the entire business. Community members submit t-shirt designs, community members vote on the designs for the week and then Threadless produces what is ultimately already a guaranteed winner and sells it to their community of over 2 million members.

A large number of their employees come from their community and continue to participate in the community build process even as they pack and ship product in the warehouse, allowing the community participation process to come full circle.

Yes this process takes more time, but ultimately it will ensure that you’re not trying to build things the market doesn’t want and your good offerings will turn into great offerings with real community input.

Some of what I’ve describe here is just basic common sense and good customer focused development, but it’s amazing how few organizations, big and small, use this powerful development process.

Filed Under: Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Strategy Tagged With: , ,
Aug 4 2011
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5 Collaboration Tools Demonstrate How the Future Web Will Act

TalkWheelThe ability to collaborate with individuals and groups around the world is one of the greatest gifts offered by the new breed of online tool. These tools, and perhaps the web in general, are evolving to become more interactive and feature rich.

With the eventual adoption of HTML5 and its heavy support for AJAX, web pages are quickly becoming web applications in a foreshadowing of the next standard for web sites. Take note of these new tools as they will usher in the expectation that all sites begin to function instead of merely house information.

Below are 5 new breed collaboration tools making heavy use of HMTL5.

Groupzap – This one wins the coolness award in my book, but offers a really powerful set of tools for instant collaboration and brainstorming meetings and white boards on the fly. Marry it with Skype and you have a no cost tool that is hard to beat. You can drag files into the space, document with notes and save the entire session as a PDF. Nobody has to register you just send out a link via IM or email.

Microsoft Office Web Apps – (okay, this one probably doesn’t use HTML5 as IE doesn’t add support for it until IE9, but it still fits the new breed label) – Using the Office Web Apps and SkyDrive you can open a document with a group of people and  co-author and edit in real time with the entire group participating, making changes and viewing the changes live.

Google + Hangouts – One of the most talked about features of the much talked about Google + is Hangouts – a video chat function that allows you to invite or simply host an on the fly group video meeting. (There is now a Facebook plug in that mirrors this and you can add a Group Meeting plug in to your own WordPress blog)

TalkWheel – TalkWheel is an instant messaging platform that works more like a roundtable discussion than the linier stack of the typical IM. It actually create a visual representation of the conversations and filters and relates topics. Looks like a very cool way to keep track of conversations from around the web and I can see lots of focus group and brainstorming uses with its visual presentation.

Vokle – I’m probably stretching how some might view collaboration with this one, but I just love what you can do with Vokle. Vokle is actually a live streaming video platform, but it makes it very easy to have two people present or invite virtual guests to create a talk show kind of feel. You can also share a computer screen as the guest to flip back and forth from live presenter to slides or images. The entire stream can be recorded for future playback as well.

Filed Under: Social Media, Web Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
Aug 2 2011
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Your Next Hire

It’s become pretty standard business advice these days to suggest you need to “hire for fit” rather than experience or job skills.

Hire for fit

Torley via Flickr

Most interpret fit to imply fit with the culture of the organization. While I agree that your recruitment should aim to attract people that share your mission, vision and values, it’s also essential to consider how they might fit in the new reality of business.

There is a specific skill set required these days in order to be successful in the world of marketing and business owners need to start finding ways to uncover these skills in the people they recruit.

Most of these skills aren’t taught directly and come more naturally to some than others, but an employee that lacks them, or worse, questions them, is going to contribute significantly less to your organization in the coming years.

While I can define the new skills, you still have to find the ways to unearth them and bring them out in your culture and your employees.

The good news is that these are the same qualities it takes for any business to compete and if you can make these qualities the central theme of your hiring, they will carry over into the central theme of your business in general.

Collaboration bias – Today’s business teams are as fluid as ever. They move from project to project, plug and play with virtual members and draw from around the globe. Work today is basically collaboration on all fronts. If any past experience matters it’s experience that demonstrates ease with contribution and collaboration. Some people thrive on this way of work, some people don’t.

Design character – Creative people just see the world a little differently than most and, when balanced with stated business objectives, this can be a powerful tool. Look for people that demonstrate a feel for design, even though that may not be the primary or even secondary function. Creativity in design easily blends over into creativity in ideas, problem solving and collaboration.

Social knack – Recent college grads take note, social business is not Facebook. Social knack isn’t a tech platform at all. It is a skill that engages your ability to have a great conversation, to know how to find what makes people tick, to present ideas to a group and to innately look for ways to help others get what they want. If your staff possesses these qualities naturally, they can make whatever the tool of the week is pay.

Tech curious – Technology is an incredible game leveling tool in the hands of smart business owners. Blending high tech capabilities with high touch customer experience is the killer play in todays plugged in world. Employees that are curious about new technology and gadgets as a means to creates a better, deeper and richer customer experience are a must. Hire self-proclaimed nerds and let them fuse the technology with proven processes.

Bundle vision – This is quite likely the hardest quality to identify, (certainly in a 30 minute interview) but it may be one of the most important. Business, technology, tools and trends evolve so quickly these days that every business owner and every staff member needs the ability to appreciate how seemingly disparate parts might come together to make something remarkable. This is perhaps the combination of all of the traits described above and when you find this trait and hone it, it will become one of the most valuable assets your business develops.

Filed Under: Social Media, Vision Tagged With: , , ,
Feb 4 2011
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How and Why I Use Dropbox

I’ve been covering a number of tools I depend on in this “how and why” format and people seem to be enjoying this so I’ll do it as a regular feature for a bit.

File storage with Dropbox

Image: redjar via Flickr

Today’s subject is the tool Dropbox. Dropbox is not a new kid on the block and lots of folks speak lovingly about this online file storage service. There’s a free version that may be robust and large enough for most, but I’ve chosen the full meal deal because I use Dropbox so completely.

There are other tools that can do all of what I’m going to describe, but from a file handling standpoint, ease of use, and set-up the way I work, Dropbox is killer.

Here’s why

  • I have a small staff and Dropbox is our internal server. We store everything and exchange and collaborate on files just like you would in any server environment. The main difference, of course, is that our Dropbox server is in the cloud and we can easily access all files (even those being worked on by folks back at the ranch) when I travel or someone works from home. (If you elect to Kick Out a team member they will no longer have access to the folders and the files will be permanently deleted from their hard drives.)
  • Dropbox uses a technology that only needs to upload changes so you can make tiny edit to a huge file and it syncs in seconds.
  • I have business partners in other countries and I can share and collaborate on specific files and folders and know that we are all working from and using the right document.
  • I speak to groups in seminars and workshops almost weekly at times and Dropbox allows me to work on a PPT presentation save it and then share a public branded link with groups that need to approve my presentations or as a way for me to share my slides without have to transfer or upload anything – I just save the file as I work and then share the public link on my last slide (I wrote about setting up my own branded link shortener here and I love to create custom links to my presentations like ducttape.me/sxsw for example)
  • All of our files are automatically backed up and synced in multiple places at all times.
  • I have iPhone and iPad Dropbox apps that allow me access all files on these devices as well. I’ve made more than one presentation on my iPad and I love the remarkable intimacy of that tool.

How I use it

As I said in the beginning of this post, there are free and low cost options that most people can use and get tremendous value. Because I depend on this tool so much I’ve opted for the Team Version and we pay an annual fee that may seem pretty steep, but the no hassle factor is worth it.

With Team we get to share the giant storage quota, Rewind to any version of a file, and encrypted transfer and storage.

  • We create and organize folders just like you would on any server for all of our most important work categories and then everyone works from those folders and saves the work directly to them. The feature that makes this work so well is that the Dropbox app loads on all of our staff’s hard drives and then all files show up on their computer just like they would on a hard drive. There’s no need to go to the web, the files are just there.
  • We also create personal folders for each team member to act like their MyDocuments folder for work in progress.
  • I backup all my websites and blog databases routinely to Dropbox.
  • I store a portable version of Firefox on Dropbox so that if I get stuck and need to use a loner computer I have all my extensions and bookmarks
  • I back up my entire music library to Dropbox and can access it from any computer

So, have you found any other great uses for Dropbox that I may not have considered?

Filed Under: Marketing Plans, Marketing Strategy Tagged With: , ,
May 25 2010
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Why Social Media Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Talk to the handThe hype over social media still echos, but it just doesn’t really matter anymore. Recent surveys suggest that small businesses are still slow to adopt social media and it also doesn’t matter anymore. Social media agencies, departments, and experts don’t matter anymore.

The idea behind the hype, measurement and rush to claim guru status revolved around the tools and the platforms, all of which were new, none of which really were the point.

The reason social media doesn’t matter is because, upon further review, it doesn’t exist beyond a label. While all the categorizing, classifying and departmentalizing was going on, that which was called social media simply settled into the center of marketing and business strategy and behavior. Everything that we called social media is irrelevant and mislabed – there’s a new way of doing business and marketing for sure, but it’s a behavior and focus on customer involvement that’s become a new norm – and that’s all there is to it.

We don’t need social media tools, social media plans, social media agencies, or social media departments, we need marketing strategies and tactics that are informed by a terribly heightened customer expectation. I’m not the first marketer to suggest this for sure, the idea of engagement has always been a part of the social media thread, but we aren’t moving fast enough to stamp out this idea that social media is somehow still a new and meaningful concept – now that we understand what actually happened it’s time to drop the term, concept, and confusion and focus on what really matters.

Prospect engagement matters

If we’ve learned one thing over the last year or two, it’s that prospects are drawn to the ability to interact with the companies, brands, and messages that they choose to absorb. Marketing and sales must include this desired behavior in order to even get an invitation into the prospect’s decision making world.

Customer experience matters

Traditional lead generation is dead, we’ve all accepted this by now, but what’s replaced it? If being found by prospects is the new form of lead generation awareness, then trust is the new form of lead conversion. Trust happens rapidly when customers have an experience worth talking about. A remarkable customer experience is the most effective form of lead generation

Collaboration matters

The Internet has enabled a world where we can work in conjunction with prospects, customers, suppliers, mentors, advisors, and staff in ways that make the finished work a personalized experience infused with the real time input. Community sourcing is a practice that underpins all product, service and business development activities.

Fusion matters

Another powerful lesson gained over the last few years is that offline activity is enhanced, rather than replaced, by online activity. The careful fusion of hi touch business building that’s done face to face with hi tech business building that enables more frequent, personalized contact and communication is the secret to delivering the most advanced customer experience.

Let’s stop measuring adoption of social media and go to work on simply measuring effective interaction in marketing. I suppose as much as anything this is the major thread that runs through The Referral Engine

Filed Under: Marketing Strategy, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,