Another brilliant post from the Duct Tape Marketing Blog. He states that there are five things that people buy. In his own words:

at the end of the day, your customers all buy some variation of the same five things.

So you better make sure you show them how you and your products and solutions are going to:
1) Make them more money
2) Save them more time
3) Allow them to avoid the frustration of doing stuff they don’t like (like wasting time and money)
4) Help them save or not lose money today and in future
5) Help them feel better about themselves

The Open Forum Blog has a great post on how to price in a recession. This is a great article ,but the part I like the most is that the post advocates using a ‘bundle’, or what we call a ‘value bundle’.

Your bundle: Think you sell one product or service? You’re wrong. “You’re offering delivery of your widgets,” Docters points out. “You are offering warranties, follow-on repair service, financing. You’re probably offering upgrades.” Smarter companies are adjusting the prices in their bundle of services, in response to shifts in customer priorities. Since new machinery may be out of reach, for example, “You lower the price of the widget, but you increase the price of the servicing or the repair contract.”

Customers are all about value now, so find a way to make your offers as valuable as possible.

Andy Sernovitz recently published a post on three ways small businesses can use Twitter.
Andy’s third suggestion is to find leads: search for people who are looking for something that you offer in your store. Some people, for example, might send a tweet that says “where’s a good car wash in Eureka?” Another might say “where can I get Hallmark Greeting Cards near the railroad station?” You can reply and hopefully the ‘tweeter’ will come in and make a purchase.

Yes, it takes time, but all social media does. And it is free to have a twitter account and to have access to all this information. So it might be worth it. Key word: might. We’re thinking more about this and will let you know.

Andy Sernovitz recently published a post on three ways small businesses can use Twitter.
The second thing Andy suggests is for small businesses to get market research. This is a great idea, especially if you have a good number of followers. You can ask about new products, new ideas, competitive information, and the like. People are likely to give you a quick reply and you can collect a lot of data fairly quickly.

You can also search for the name of your business and see what people are saying about you. That can lead to some interesting observations: maybe some things to promote, and other things to fix.

Andy Sernovitz recently published a post on three ways small businesses can use Twitter.

Twitter, as you might know, is a microblogging site. You sign up for an account, and you can post 140-character messages whenever you like. These messages are read by your ‘followers’…people who ‘opt in’ to reading your ‘tweets’. You can also read messages that others post; these people are people you are ‘following’. The key then, is to get people to ‘follow’ you. One way to get people to follow you is follow other people (with the idea that they’ll follow you back).

I’m not convinced that Twitter is a great thing for small retailers, since it can take a lot of time and energy to craft messages, follow others’ messages, and get followers. But Sernovitz is convinced. In fact, his first observation is that Twitter is the ‘easiest’ of social networks, and a Twitter account may be all some retailers need.

Certainly paticipating in social media is important, and all of it can be time consuming. And being on Twitter AND on Facebook AND in your own online community is a lot. So take a look at Twitter and see if it might be right for you.

Seth Godin’s blog has a good post encouraging small business to use YouTube for television commercials. It might be a fun idea to ask your customers to produce commercials for your store! Upload the ads to YouTube, encourage people to vote for their favorite, and give a gift certificate as a prize. You get some free advertising using some customer ideas, and you’ll probably be able to get a little press coverage for your efforts.

It is a tough market out there. Every one knows that. Now more than ever, though, you need to be positive. If you bemoan the economic situation, that negativity will pass on to your employees, and maybe to your customers. Instead, think positive! Things will get better, and you’re working hard to keep people employed and to offer your customers the right value in what they’re purchasing. Celebrate your locavore status, make people feel good for shopping local, and the positivity will spread.

With Father’s Day on the horizon, we should think a bit about fathers and marketing. We spend a lot of time talking about women (and moms), but men are changing: they are spending more time with their families, are more involved in household decisions, and given that many couples are working very hard, are picking some of the household slack more so than ever.

This story talks a bit more about the importance of dads.

This great post talks about how more isn’t necessarily better…how your store doesn’t have to offer 25 different flour tortillas/brands of shampoo/books about gardening. Why? People don’t want to take a lot of time to make many purchase decisions, and you have the opportunity to ‘edit’ your store’s collection of offerings to help people make good decisions quickly. Highlight what is a good value, what is a new product, what is a customer favorite, and that helps your customers be confident in your store and in their choices.

This recent post provides even more information about women’s usage of social media. Almost 3/4 of all online women use some type of social network, and many of these visit blogs regularly.

What that means for you: if you build it (it being your message board or your blog), AND tell your women customers about it, then there’s a good chance you’ll get women coming to visit. Give it a try!