Years ago I worked in retail on both sides. I started out working for an electrical goods chain store, then moved onto a smaller local one.

Both jobs were great (at least for me), because they satisfied the tech geek in me. Surrounded by home theater kits and massive TV’s? Sign me up!

But as much as I loved working at the big chain store, it never felt fulfilling.

We had to pretty much stick to a sales script and only if we were lucky could we occasionally offer our own take.

We weren’t encouraged to be ourselves.

Same went for special promotions. If a brand was paying to be highlighted that month, you had to sell toward that brand, even if another product was clearly the better one for the customer. It was snake oil salesmen tactics at their worst.

Jump to the little store, however, and the difference was palpable. You actually talked with your customers; asked what they wanted; offered your advice; agreed on essentials versus luxuries; and built an understanding.

Most of all, you were talking as if you were the customer.

No BS; no sales crap; no false advertising. Just simple customer-to-customer selling. And it worked. And continues to do so today.

Think about it. When you last went to a record store, or DVD store, or video games store that belonged to a chain, did you come away with just a purchase or a transaction? Because there is a difference.

Did you feel that you had bought your purchase yourself, or had bought it because it was sold to you? And I don’t mean because the salesperson picked it up and showed you what was on sale; I mean it was really sold to you.

The Indie Effect

From my experiences, independent retailers score every time over the chain stores. Sure, you get the occasional bright spark at a major retailer who lets their passion shine through. But generally, it’s just a job to them.

Indie retailers, on the other hand, love what they’re doing. They live the atmosphere that the small store brings. They know customers by name. They know the difference between Product A and Product B because they use it and learn about it, and not because they’ve read some manufacturer spiel. Then they pass that learning on.

Sure, the major stores might get the big deals from the manufacturers, but as the collapse of some of the big brands in business show, it’s not always about the best deals. At least, not price-wise.

Instead, a lot of the success is coming from the little independent guys jumping in and making people know about their service. By talking to them. By listening to what their customers want. By being the customer.

Sound familiar?

Be an Independent Retailer

Social media. Marketing. PR. Advertising. Customer service. Business deals. Business building. Branding. Unbranding.

Everything you do day in, day out – are you being a major retailer or are you being the independent retailer? Are you saying and doing what all your competitors are doing or are you doing what you’redoing?

There’s a big difference in approach and sales time is fast approaching. So. What are you?

State of Independence originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a solo entrepreneur, a solo blogger, a solo musician or artist.

To truly build an empire takes more than the soloist you may be – it takes a team.

From a solo point of view, that can mean a variety of things.

For solo entrepreneurs, it’s your partner that encourages you when no-one else will. Or the bank manage who approves your loan when you first start. Or the contractor who gives you the part-time skills for that job you couldn’t do otherwise.

For solo bloggers, it’s your readers who give you strength to keep writing when you want to give up. Or commenters that validate your thoughts. Or the social community who share your blog with new eyes.

For the musician or artist, it’s the fans who buy your work when everyone else says it’s worthless. It’s the manager or agent who never gives up on you. It’s the supplier that provides your tools of the trade to make the magic happen.

For the business owner or leader that has employees, your team is easier to define – as is the fact that, just like the soloist, your team is everything. Without them, you have nothing.

Recognize that. Nurture them. Encourage them. Give them permission to err and give them the stepping stones to the right path the next time. But most of all, make sure they feel appreciated.

We can do a lot on our own – but with our teams beside us we can conquer the world.

Want success? Make it about the team. Always.

image: Carol VanHook

It’s Always About the Team – Always originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.

You wake up. You wash or shower. You shave (or not). You brush your teeth. You comb or brush your hair. You get dressed. Have breakfast, drink coffee. You go to work.

Safe. Routine. You know what you need to do so well that it becomes automatic. You don’t even need to think about it. Routine is good. Routine makes your day easier.

But your routine is also killing you.

Think about your business. Your customers. Your clients. Your contacts.

Are you routinely writing a press release and mass mailing it?

Are you routinely messaging your email subscriber list with the same routine message and the same routine deals and information?

Are you routinely offering the same Happy Hour drink deals or 2-for-1 meal offers?

Are you routinely displaying the same point-of-sale banners with the same discounts?

Why? Why are you doing this? Is it working for you? Or are you losing mailing list subscribers? Losing sales? Losing customers? Losing contacts from your media list?

Break the routine. Differentiate your contacts, your customers, your clients. Tailor the message. Look at your trends and who’s buying or reading and on what days, weeks or months. Make that information your routine.

Routine is good. Routine is safe. But routine also leads to automation and boredom. Break it up a little.

After all, would it really hurt you to brush your teeth before you shower?

image: welovepandas

Change Your Routine Or Be Routinely Ignored originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.

Fact – too many businesses still need to wake up and realize that social media is not “one of these Internet fads” that will disappear.

Fact – because of this mindset, too many businesses are potentially missing out on extra business that could mean the difference between staying afloat and going under. So why the problem?

One of the main reasons is that businesses – whether it’s the CEO, top-tier management or otherwise – are looking at social media as an individual medium, much like PR or marketing.

This is where the cracks start to appear. Social media benefits companies the most when it’s used as part of an integrated campaign.

Social media is also perfect for reaching out and connecting with your audience, as opposed to just selling them something. Sure, you’re still selling your brand or product – but this time, it’s in an “encouraging to ask questions” approach instead of “this is us and you’ll like it” one.

Accepting that social media needs to be approached as an integrated strategy rather than a standalone campaign is the first step businesses need to take. After that, the job gets a little bit easier.

Define Your Audience

Just like any market or product, social media is made up of different audiences. As a business owner, you wouldn’t launch a new product onto a more traditional marketplace without some in-depth market research first – don’t ignore this on social media.

Knowing your audience is key to succeeding in business social media. You need to know if your audience are participants or promoters. Why the need to differentiate? Simple -

• Participants are social media users that may use numerous social media sites and applications, but don’t really “take part” in the medium. They’re like the visitors to your business website that may purchase something and then interact with you no further. There’s nothing wrong with this – but as a method of expanding your brand, you may need to look elsewhere.

• Promoters are the users that like to share information – whether it’s recommending something via Twitter or their blog, if they come across something they like they will pass that information on. This is where your use of social media can help build your name. Just remember that social media works both ways. Don’t try and cheat the system – give back just as much (more, even) as you receive.

Have a Clear and Defined Goal

Another area where businesses are failing to adapt social media to their needs is that they don’t have a clear goal on what they want to achieve. Many hear the phrase “social media” and immediately feel they need to be a part of this buzz, jump straight in without any forward thinking, and are then disappointed with the (lack of) results.

Ask yourself who you want to connect with and why, and then research the areas of social media that are most relevant to your needs. Demographics are one of the key points of knowledge for any campaign – make sure you know where your demographics are playing online. A social map can help here.

Again, though, don’t try and play the system – cheaters will soon be found out, and your brand can suffer irreparable damage if seen as merely a self-promotional company on social media.

Tools of the Trade

Once you have your audience and your goal set out, you need to use the tools that will help you the most. There are numerous available, and this is where building your social media connections can help, by advising what ones they use and what results they achieve.

Some of the best free examples of business tools include Monitter (which allows you a view on Twitter discussions of keywords); Google Alerts (giving you insight into what’s being said about you); and Social Mention (letting you gauge social reactions and reach to your topic or keywords and allowing you to jump in on conversations elsewhere).

Getting into social media shouldn’t be a hard decision for businesses to make – it’s either right for you or it isn’t. Social media is a long-term strategy, not  a short-term fire sale.

Understand that, and you begin to understand social media.

Image: fredcavazza

Introducing Social Media to Your Business originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.

How smart are you? How do you rack up compared to your peers; your competitors; your parallel people?

There’s all sorts of smart, but only one that counts. It’s not high school diploma. It’s not college degree. It’s not university PhD.

It’s experiential smart.

Your experience. Your knowledge. Your ability to act. Your ability to react. Your ability to pro-act. It’s your fluidity. Your flexibility. Your awareness that smart is not not being dumb; it’s not being the dumbest.

Smart marketers see an opportunity before the opportunity presents itself.

Smart sales close the deal before the meeting.

Smart customer service prevents the issue before it leaves the manufacturing plant.

Smart human resources see through cubicle walls.

Smart public relations knows it’s not the story.

Smart comes in many guises, but the real smart? That’s what the smart folks have already figured out. Have used. Have profited from. And have moved on.

Smart is not last year’s model. Smart is not yesterday’s news. Smart isn’t even tomorrow’s headlines.

Smart – real smart – is all the stories you never see until they’ve happened. But you made them. And now you’re telling new ones as everyone else regurgitates yours.

And that? That’s smart.

Smart Is Not Last Year’s Model originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.

If I asked you the most important part of your business, what would you say? Marketing? PR? Perhaps advertising or sales?

Now what if I said they’re all irrelevant? What if I said you don’t need sales to be successful? You’d probably say (fairly sarcastically), “Why not just hand my business over to my competitors while I’m at it?”.

And you’d be right – if I were serious.

Of course PR, marketing, advertising and sales are relevant, and hugely important parts of your business. But they’re not the most important part.

“But they’re the ones that bring the customers and make money, and money equals profits!”you might say. And again, you’d be right. But take a look at that sentence again.

“Customers… make money and money equals profits.”

That’s both sets of customers, new and existing. So why are so many businesses concentrating on the new and forgetting about the existing? Is the mindset, “Well, they’ve stuck with us so far, they must be happy”? If it is, be prepared for a wake-up call.

Just because a customer has stuck with you doesn’t mean they’re satisfied. They may be tied into a contract or they may feel it’s too much effort at the minute to find a new vendor. But satisfied? Not necessarily.

Be Vocal

Have you asked them lately how they’re feeling? Have you asked how you can improve your service (don’t fall into the trap that your service has reached its plateau – nobody’s thatgood)? You do have ways of asking these questions, don’t you? If you’re not sure, ask yourself the following:

• Do you have a customer feedback form on your website?
• Do you have a proactive approach at asking your customers what they’re thinking?
• Do you collect your customer details and use that information to personalize your relationship?
• Do you have some form of customer service performance in place?

If you can’t answer “Yes” to at least one of these questions, you might want to check and see how many of your customers have dropped off the radar in the last 3-6 months.

As important as your sales team is, or your marketing team, or your PR team or your advertising team – as important as all these elements are to your business’s success, they all cost money.

Your customers, on the other hand? A happy customer is your sales, PR, marketing and advertising teams rolled into one. Your most loyal employee. Your most vocal supporter – and they don’t take wages from you. So look after them.

Be Pro-Active

If you collect contact information, use it. Call your customer up and ask how they’re finding their time with you. Ask how you can improve and what you can do to make their lives easier when shopping with you.

Don’t collect information initially? Fine – have a feedback form on your site and have that (or a customer feedback phone number) printed on your receipt. Encourage interaction and communication.

Or, if you have a Twitter account, for example, have “Don’t forget to tweet about us on Twitter” printed on your receipt and then monitor your mentions. And this works both ways – you can salvage a negative impression immediately or emphasize a positive one.

Start a forum on your website where customers can chat with each other about how you’re doing, and how you can improve. Involve your employees throughout the company on the forum, and talk to your customers like human beings instead of just sales figures. Sure, you can advise on what employee can say what, but at least offer the voice to open up to and converse with.

The key thing is, sales and marketing and the rest of the new business team is exactly that – new business. And you absolutely need that. But you also need existing business to build on and let you have the means to go after the new. Your customers – and by association, your customer service – are the real profit makers.

Isn’t it about time you treated them accordingly?

image: Nemo’s great uncle

Looking After Business and the Real Profit Makers originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.

Both similar. Both different. Both entwined. Both separate. But each one defines your success and longevity.

Ask yourself a question and approach it from Could and Need to decide your next step.

This bill could wait until next week. I need to pay this bill to keep my business open.

We could make a change in design if necessary. We need to start from scratch.

This could help our strategy. This needs to be in place for any of our strategy to work.

Similar paths, but very different forks in the road at the key junction.

So. Could you, or do you need to?

The Could and Need Effect originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.

There’s a mindset among many business owners that they need to be on social media. Specifically, they need to be on Facebook; or Twitter; or LinkedIn; or have a blog; or look ahead to business options on Google Plus.

This is usually fostered by fly-by-night consultants and agencies who tap into the fear factor so many businesses have about social media, and use blinding statistics and numbers about these platforms, and why a business needs to be on them.

You get the usual soundbites, like Facebook is the equivalent of the third biggest country in the world; or Google Plus has the fastest adoption rate of new users across all social networks; or if you’re not blogging, you’re not reaching your audience.

But so what? All these numbers and stats are doing is taking a generic approach to social media.

The consultants and agencies peddling them are doing so because they know big numbers sound impressive, and that any business owner would be a fool to miss out on 750 million potential new customers on Facebook, or 20 million and counting on Google Plus, or any other millions of potential customers on other networks.

But, again, that’s being generic. And customers are anything but.

The Collective Individuals

Sure, you can segment customers into groups. For example, you might have a product that appeals to women between 25-45, with kids and a sporty lifestyle. Or you might attract gearheads. Or teenagers.

But they’re still individuals, even as part of a collective.

There’s no guarantee that a million sporty moms will all love the same product; or that 500 gearheads will all be tempted by your latest sale; or 1,000 teens will all want to see the same teen movie.

As consumers, we don’t work that way – so why would we approach our business strategy that way to attract our audience? Why would we think generically? Because we’re told that’s where the money is, according to the people with the awesome social media numbers?

Be Your Customer

If you’re a brick and mortar store, and you attract a very niche audience based on location and age, do you think having a generic blog is going to attract new customers?

If you’re a mom and pop business that sells classic 78 RPM vinyl, do you think a Facebook group full of teens talking about video games is going to work for you?

Yes, social media and a solid online presence can – and does – bring in new business. But that’s after research defines where that new business is, not because someone tells you that you could reach almost a billion potential customers simply by having an account.

Seriously, if it was that easy, we’d hear more success stories of how social media is the secret sauce, as opposed to digging in deep and finding out for ourselves what we need to be doing.

You’ve built your success up so far by being smart about your business – why would you want to stop now, just because someone shows you some bright lights and inflated sales potential?

• Research. Learn how you can use the likes of Twitter and Facebook (and others) to find out if your audience is there for you and, if so, how you can get in front of them.

• Plan. If you find your target audience is in a specific place, make sure you understand the platform and the different approaches on each one.

• Strategy. Much like you wouldn’t offer a sale on meat to a vegan, look to use different strategies and promotions depending on the information and statistics your research finds.

Sure, numbers are great (despite what girls tell us guys, size does matter, or so I’m told).

But size only matters when it’s appropriate – make sure you’re not getting sucked in by size, when you should be looking at the overall package…

image: MrWoodnz

Your Target Audience Is NOT Generic originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.

by Danny Brown and Geoff Livingston

Much has been said about marketing on Google+. Both of us have been intentionally conservative about marketing on the new network due to a statement from Google+ specifically asking business and brands to wait until it formalized its business offering. This offering is rumored to include an open API for applications and data usage. Yesterday, a confirmed report from KCET-TV in LA surfaced that Google+ community managers are enforcing the brand “no fly zone.”

To date, ABC News Radio, LAUNCH and Boing Boing have all been removed, or have voluntarily taken down their Google+ profiles. In the face of complaints about brands being unceremoniously dispatched, community managers have indicated that Google+ will focus on optimizing community interaction between people first.

Both Bonsai Interactive and Zoetica represent real brands, corporate and nonprofit. We are posting this advisory to provide clear guidance for our clients and network on how to approach Google+ during this interim phase:

1) Do not invest in formal brand marketing on Google+. As we have seen, Google+ is now policing its network and you risk losing your entire time investment. Further, until the business offering is created by Google, no one really knows how corporations and nonprofits can successfully navigate this new social network. In essence, until Google+ for business is released efforts are likely to be all for naught

2) Do experiment on Google+ and learn how the network works using your personal profile. It’s too soon to formally say that Google+ will be a significant consumer network, but with reports of 18 million followers and growing, momentum indicates the network is succeeding. Further, as demonstrated by its policing of the network, Google is clearly focused on community first. Becoming knowledgable through participation on Google+ is prudent at this point.

3) Be wary of marketing services firms and individuals who are seeking paid fees for Google+ marketing insights. Again, per the first point, no one really knows how to market on Google+. Investing financially in Google+ is not a good use of resources until finite offerings are available. Ethically speaking we would not charge our clients for advice and strategies in the face of such uncertainty.

Google+ is starting field trials with brands in the immediate future. As Google works through the kinks and formalizes its offering, it is a great time to become comfortable with the social network.

Many of our fellow bloggers are openly sharing their insights and learning together in a fashion we have not seen in years. Enjoy this time, friends. This kind of new social network launch is unprecedented.

Update 21 July 2011 11.41am: NBC News is the latest to remove their Google+ profile.

image: Sean MacEntee
image: KCET-TV 

Advisory: Google Begins Booting Brands originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.

People are hungry creatures by nature.

Hungry to be liked; hungry to be loved; hungry to be respected; hungry to be successful.

That’s good. Without hunger, we have no drive. Without drive, we have no goals. Without goals, we have no yardstick to base our success on. And so the circle comes back around.

The problem is, people are more often than not getting speed hungry. They want the like, the love, the respect and the success yesterday.

So they buy the books; the audio tapes; the DVD’s. They read the blogs; they buy the products; the courses; the Rome-in-a-Day guides. And they sit in their rooms; their offices; their backyards; and prepare to be liked. Loved. Respected. Successful.

And then fall flat on their face when nothing works, and they’ve just built the world’s most useless library of hard copy and digital memorabilia.

Why It Doesn’t Work

The problem is, they’ve just jumped in feet first and expected someone else’s success to work for them. For someone else’s strategy to work for them. For someone else’s words, speeches, elevator pitches, etc, to work for them.

But it won’t. And doesn’t. At least not wholesale.

Because much like our fingerprints, we’re all different. We all have different ways of approaching things. Of speaking to people. Of presenting ourselves, and the products, services and knowledge that we have to offer.

So the wholesale approach of taking everything from someone else and applying it to you trips you up, and all you have to show for it is less space on your bookshelf.

The Non-Original Approach to Originality

People are successful for a reason. They’ve taken someone else’s formula; or success; or failings; and stripped it down. They’ve ejected the parts that aren’t for them, and reassembled the remaining parts into a map for their next steps.

This is what you need to do too.

There’s no such thing as real originality anymore – but there are ways for you to be originally non-original. Others have already done the hard work for you – use it.

You can be a success; just not on someone else’s terms. Take the best of what’s relevant for you and refocus into what’s best for you to move forward, on your own terms and with a structured map in place.

We’re all hungry. We just need to make sure the food’s right for us.

You can do that. Can’t you?

image: megadem

Why It’s Not Working For You originally appeared on Danny Brown - under a Creative Commons license.