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I totally understand the need to manage a business carefully and to know what your financial status is at all times.
But building a generous business is investing for your future. The nice thing is that you can totally decide how you want to exercise this. For example:
- Giving your employees the opportunity to contribute time/money/products to causes they’re passionate about
- Letting your customers have more leeway than is normal in your industry
- Doing high-visibility sponsorships to expand your brand image
- Working with key partners in win-win scenarios to benefit your community
But what does it mean to approach things with a spirit of generosity?
Read the rest of this entry »What’s the motivation behind your marketing efforts?
This is a real struggle for many businesses right now, because many existing efforts don’t seem to be working. They’re advertising like crazy, but sales have dried up because customers are extraordinarily cautious.
And the strong “buy my stuff!!!” messages can seem overbearing and insensitive.
Customers are the lifeblood of a business. You’re delivering value to someone, and in return they pay you for that value.
So why do so many companies make it hard for an interested person to connect? It’s almost as if they don’t really want the business.
Sure, customers can be a pain sometimes. They … want stuff. They’d rather have it their way than the way you currently do it. But I assume you’d rather have customers than not. Right?
Read the rest of this entry »I heard an interesting article on the Innovation Hub radio show recently, talking about how riskiness affects people’s decisions. It got me thinking, because I’ve wondered for many years about the connection.
When we’re working on connecting our products and marketing to the customer need, we often start with their needs and desires. The customer desires a phone which is functional and attractive, with long battery life and easy-to-use apps.
That’s fine as far as it goes, but it’s a pretty surface-level way of thinking.
Read the rest of this entry »
RECENTLY I WAS TALKING with a colleague this week at a Conscious Capitalism meeting. We were exploring why customers should even care about the character of your business.
It’s a great question, and an area which is shifting.
Customers look for the best deal, right? So they’re not going to let you get away with even two percent higher prices just because you think you’re the “good guy” in the industry. But there are many, many counter-examples.
YOU’RE DEDICATED TO YOUR CAUSE of making the world a better place to live. So much, in fact, that you’ve built it into your business model. You have favored charities. You actively promote certain causes.
So now it comes your marketing, and you get stalled.
It feels like you’re bragging. Are you?
AS I WAS DRIVING DOWN THE STREET YESTERDAY, I saw a business proudly displaying a sign out front:
“We care about our customers and what’s best for them”
This kind of thing just drives me crazy. Seriously, somebody thought this would be an effective marketing strategy?
HOW OBVIOUS is your company’s mission?
Is it so compelling that customers can tell you what it is, in their own words?
Is it so clear that your employees are thinking about it in some way every day?
THERE’S A LOT OF FAKENESS in the world.
I would imagine that it’s always been this way, I suppose, but now it’s so much more obvious when people aren’t showing their company authentically in the world.
And consumers are getting really quite sophisticated in detecting fake messages.
YOU’D LIKE FOR THE WORLD to be a safe place. After all, you’ve put your heart and soul into your business, and it would be terrible to have it fall apart.
So you try to play it safe.
But there are different kinds of safety. You could run close to the edge on being legal – but if you step over that edge, the regulators will shut you down. Permanently.
The Values-Based Business 