You'd be hard pressed to find two better marketers than Steve Jobs and Seth Godin. But the reason for their success is remarkably simple. They don't focus on marketing, on creating "an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others - Wikipedia". Instead they focus on selling.
A fantastic example of this is the state of the christian religions in the early 15th century. For thousands of years the church had been marketing religion. They told people what it was, how to do it and why it was important in to them. Then Martin Luther changed everything. His nailing 95 Theses to a church door kicked off one of the most important religious changes in history, the Protestant Reformation. He changed the face of religion because rather than market it to the people he put it in their hands, he sold it.
Jobs and Godin do the same thing. Jobs doesn't tell you why you'd want a mac or an iPod, he doesn't even tell you why it would make your life better. Jobs tells you what it is and lets you figure out why you want it. Seth doesn't give his perspective on marketing he sells a way of thinking about products and customers. When they speak they don't focus touch points or demographics, they don't rely on gimmicks or humor, they just sell.
If you find you're faced with a marketing decision don't fall for the hype, pick the one that sells.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Protecting a money stream
Forgive me for channeling Seth Godin for a moment.
Too often a company goes broke trying to protect their revenue stream. Once a company has found a source of income they become almost single minded in their focus on retaining it.
No one ever won a war trying to protect the land they'd captured.
And so it goes for revenue. If your company is going to survive it's going to have to continually find new products, new customers and new sources of revenue because eventually the conditions that got you where you are will go away.
At the moment the shining example of this is eBay, and it doesn't help that they didn't deserve much of their revenue stream in the first place.
eBay built their empire by courting two types of sellers, those that sold whatever they could find and those with a regular product source. Initially those sellers with a product source were simply happy to have a place to sell online, but as new opportunities (Yahoo Stores, Amazon, etc) arose it wasn't worth it to stick with eBay because of the yard sale sellers. Was it going to go any other way?
As a response to losing sellers eBay introduced new features without addressing the reputation of their sellers. So began their death spiral. Rather than innovating and looking for new revenue sources they focused on protecting the one they had, even if it never really wanted to be on eBay.
eBay isn't dead of course, but they've had to take drastic measures to maintain their revenue. They're still losing sellers and only recently started thinking outside the box but for many it's too little to late.
Too often a company goes broke trying to protect their revenue stream. Once a company has found a source of income they become almost single minded in their focus on retaining it.
No one ever won a war trying to protect the land they'd captured.
And so it goes for revenue. If your company is going to survive it's going to have to continually find new products, new customers and new sources of revenue because eventually the conditions that got you where you are will go away.
At the moment the shining example of this is eBay, and it doesn't help that they didn't deserve much of their revenue stream in the first place.
eBay built their empire by courting two types of sellers, those that sold whatever they could find and those with a regular product source. Initially those sellers with a product source were simply happy to have a place to sell online, but as new opportunities (Yahoo Stores, Amazon, etc) arose it wasn't worth it to stick with eBay because of the yard sale sellers. Was it going to go any other way?
As a response to losing sellers eBay introduced new features without addressing the reputation of their sellers. So began their death spiral. Rather than innovating and looking for new revenue sources they focused on protecting the one they had, even if it never really wanted to be on eBay.
eBay isn't dead of course, but they've had to take drastic measures to maintain their revenue. They're still losing sellers and only recently started thinking outside the box but for many it's too little to late.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Improving UX: The quiet revolution in socks
Most people don't spend their time thinking about their socks. And why should they? Socks are designed to go unnoticed, to give your foot a bit of protection from your shoe, to make your foot a bit more comfortable without you ever having to do anything more than put them on.
But is there anything worse than a sock that isn't doing it's job? If a sock gets twisted, or bunched, if the seam is too big or the elastic is failing, your socks go from unnoticed to intolerable, immediately to the center of your attention. Fortunately with today's socks this almost never happens. But there was a time not long ago when socks routinely misbehaved.
When I was growing up socks were split by a defining feature, they had a heel or they didn't. Socks with a heel were great, they fit right, they were comfortable, but they suffered one real problem; putting on socks with a heel was a pain. You picked up a pair of socks, pulled them on, and then invariably spent 10 minutes rotating each one on your feet until you finally had the heel in place.
The alternative was the tube sock. Tube socks had no heel so it could conceivably once you'd pulled the sock up it was on, no twisting required. Of course these socks still had a seam at the toe so if you wanted your feet to be comfortable you had to rotate them until the seam ran the right way, and eventually they'd develop a bulge or a thin spot where your heel was because they didn't fit the shape of your feet. I can only imagine that the inventor of the tube sock had a taste for schadenfreude and cackled with glee thinking of people wearing them.
So these then were your options, comfortable but annoying and a product conceived by someone who either hates humanity or has hooves for feet.
Fortunately a quiet revolution occurred in the late 80's and early 90's. This revolution was sparked by a simple improvement in UI (yes, socks have user interface) that drastically improved the wearers experience.
The addition of a gray heel and toe completely revolutionized socks, yet was so subtle that it isn't mentioned in the wikipedia article on socks. Immediately after the gray heel and toe were added people simply stopped putting socks on the wrong way. From across the room a person could see a pair of socks and simply know how to put them on. I'd like to think that the sales of tube socks dropped to zero within a week much to their inventor's dismay.
Now it's virtually impossible to find tube socks or socks without a different colored heel and toe. Heeled socks were always superior, but without the gray heel for many they weren't worth the trouble. Thanks to a simple change in user interface one area of our lives is drastically better without us so much as noticing.
In the end that's what great UI is it's something we don't have to notice. Occasionally some one might find a new feature or worth noting, but most UI revolutions are like the gray heeled sock, quiet.
But is there anything worse than a sock that isn't doing it's job? If a sock gets twisted, or bunched, if the seam is too big or the elastic is failing, your socks go from unnoticed to intolerable, immediately to the center of your attention. Fortunately with today's socks this almost never happens. But there was a time not long ago when socks routinely misbehaved.
When I was growing up socks were split by a defining feature, they had a heel or they didn't. Socks with a heel were great, they fit right, they were comfortable, but they suffered one real problem; putting on socks with a heel was a pain. You picked up a pair of socks, pulled them on, and then invariably spent 10 minutes rotating each one on your feet until you finally had the heel in place.
The alternative was the tube sock. Tube socks had no heel so it could conceivably once you'd pulled the sock up it was on, no twisting required. Of course these socks still had a seam at the toe so if you wanted your feet to be comfortable you had to rotate them until the seam ran the right way, and eventually they'd develop a bulge or a thin spot where your heel was because they didn't fit the shape of your feet. I can only imagine that the inventor of the tube sock had a taste for schadenfreude and cackled with glee thinking of people wearing them.
So these then were your options, comfortable but annoying and a product conceived by someone who either hates humanity or has hooves for feet.
Fortunately a quiet revolution occurred in the late 80's and early 90's. This revolution was sparked by a simple improvement in UI (yes, socks have user interface) that drastically improved the wearers experience.
The addition of a gray heel and toe completely revolutionized socks, yet was so subtle that it isn't mentioned in the wikipedia article on socks. Immediately after the gray heel and toe were added people simply stopped putting socks on the wrong way. From across the room a person could see a pair of socks and simply know how to put them on. I'd like to think that the sales of tube socks dropped to zero within a week much to their inventor's dismay.
Now it's virtually impossible to find tube socks or socks without a different colored heel and toe. Heeled socks were always superior, but without the gray heel for many they weren't worth the trouble. Thanks to a simple change in user interface one area of our lives is drastically better without us so much as noticing.
In the end that's what great UI is it's something we don't have to notice. Occasionally some one might find a new feature or worth noting, but most UI revolutions are like the gray heeled sock, quiet.
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