Facebook’s free? Why didn’t I know this??

Although not quite an uproar, there’s a little nasty hum in the Facebook world over the changes that occurred yesterday. It’s a “circle of life” thing really… Fb makes changes, people complain, then others start scolding the complainers for grumbling over a free service that no one is forced to use. Wash, rinse, repeat.

People even take time to make cute little graphics about it.

I find this cycle mildly humorous, especially since the mental picture I get is of Mark Zuckerberg wearing a crown of thorns, suffering over the sacrifices he’s made to bring us, the humble masses, the great charitable service that is Facebook.

Puh-leeze. That dude’s suffering all the way to the bank.

Joking aside, I know Fb is free for users in the monetary sense of “free,” but don’t deny it: Facebook is big business.

For those of you living under a rock, the name of the Fb game is advertising. And, much like Google, the enticement for businesses to advertise on Fb is the wealth—like a crazy deep and wide amount—of information available, allowing them to target an audience with sniper-like ability.

And that information, my friends, is the price we pay to play in the Fb playground. So, while you may not be forking over cash to tell everyone you "Lurv @New Girl with @Zooey Deschanel," you pay your fare every time you post, like or update anything on Fb.

Ok, to make this blog useful then, what can small business owners learn from this?

It might be a little stretch, but I think it can apply to any business’s pricing model. I suggest you not think of the price of whatever it is that you’re selling solely in terms of a dollar figure. There are intangible costs that customers pay, whether or not they knowingly acknowledge it. In addition to cash, customers also pay in terms of the time they are/aren’t willing to wait, the level of quality they want, and the level of service they need.

Not a new concept, I know, but maybe a new way of looking at it. Consider this: why not offer a sliding scale that adjusts your price up or down depending on a customer’s requirements in respect to time, quality and service.

For example, businesses charge all the time for “rush service.” But why not flip that around and offer “now and later” pricing. Maybe instead of charging extra for rushes, your “regular” price is for the fastest turnaround you can accommodate, but then you offer a hefty discount for customers willing to wait a little longer.

Same could go for quality and service. If you, Customer, are willing to do your own X then we’ll take X% off the price.

So… maybe not entirely related to the great debate of Fb being free or not and our right to complain or not, but something to ponder nonetheless.

Good talk, Folks, now let’s go make some money…

~Sarah Warren, Emogen marketer

… well, now that that’s done, time to write a blog...

All joking aside, I am well aware—and beating myself up—that it’s been m.o.n.t.h.s since I last blogged. To be fair though, I’ve been busy with several new babies (both figurative and literal).

In this past year we welcomed our largest client to date, whom we love, love, love working for and with. We welcomed the “twins,” Wes and Anna, to the e-team. And in the personal arena we welcomed home our first son. (Yes, yes, it was I who gave birth to a 12+ pounder naturally, completely without medication. I’m awesome, I know!).

All that and I’ve had writers block to boot.

Coming up with content that is “actionable and instructional” is difficult when my day job is selling that same info as my business’s service. So like, if I tell you how to do it yourself, then what am I supposed to sell you? See the paradox? lol

And so I was reduced (or allowed myself to be) to ranting about sales and marketing faux pas, which was just making me sound bitchy. Or maybe that was the maternity hormones typing…

At any rate, here I am, ready to blog away. But what to blog about?

What I’d like to propose is that you guys out there in cyber-land throw out some topics for us to discuss. Call it a round of intellectual batting practice.

Any takers?

~Sarah, Emogen market-eer

Emogen and Design

In a recent interview with a graphic designer (who will join the E-team in a few weeks!) Brian asked about Emogen’s reputation among the local design crowd. That reputation isn’t necessarily directly impactful to our bottom line, but being thought of as a cool place to work certainly makes hiring all the easier.

Interestingly, the interviewee shared that designers are aware of Emogen and that we hire graphic designers, but it’s not well understood how design relates to what we do here on a day to day basis.

What’s hard for me to understand about that is how the relationship between marketing and design is anything but obvious. I’ll elaborate, though, so we’re all clear.

Stepping back a moment, let me begin with a quick discussion on “core competencies.”

A core competency is what a business does that’s really the heart of the business as well as what makes it unique from competitors. A core competency can truly be anything… a process, a special talent, the corporate culture, key customer or supplier relationships… really anything, so long as it’s hard for competitors to duplicate.

Emogen’s core competency, we think, is the combined talent of our team (which hopefully doesn’t sound egotistical!). Here’s why we think this is the case…

Part 1 - Brian’s talent is selling ideas. Maybe it’s the idea that a product can save you money. Maybe it’s the idea that a service can help you achieve more. It could even be the idea that an organization can make an impact in a particular area of service. The bottom line is that he’s a gifted salesman, which is based on his intrinsic talents of reading people and communicating with them.

Part 2 - My talent is refining Brian’s ability for mass consumption. What he can do on an individual basis, I can extrapolate and reshape for application to a larger audience. Unlike Brian, I don’t have the best interpersonal skills, but I’m good at written communication and making what may be complex ideas concise and easy to understand.

Part 3 – Enter design. Graphic design is all about presentation of a message.

Take a simple business card. A piece of paper with your name and contact info will do the job, but a card with a professionally designed logo and layout is more likely to catch someone’s eye and draw their attention to your name… which helps with recognition and recall.

The same works with advertising and sales collateral. Could you imagine a newspaper where “ads” were typed out just like the rest of the paper? Or a plain Jane sales flyer that looked like every other one in your mail box?

So, Brian figures out the sales pitch, I figure how to put that into words and our designers figure out how to present it. All those parts together—sales, marketing and design—create Emogen’s core competency, which is sharing an idea with people, either individually or en masse, to elicit a positive action from them.

~Sarah, Emogen marketer

But Then, A Story About the Decision to Blog or Not to Blog

A little while back we at Emogen committed ourselves to blogging daily about topics relevant to our line of work: marketing, advertising and graphic design. We did fairly well but then…

Isn’t it funny how there’s always a but then? I was doing great on my diet, but then I went on that cruise. My portfolio was really going strong, but then the bottom fell out of the economy. The Cubs were hanging in there, but then the curse kicked in.

There’s always something to distract us and get in the way of good intentions. There’s always a but then.

Emogen’s but then was an onslaught of business, which, although awesome for us, is not so good for our intentions of daily blogging. But does breaking that commitment really even matter?

No and yes.

NO
A deli showcases its meats in a glass counter. A car dealer has that large lot out front. Those kind of display options don’t exist for a service company, so we’ve adapted our blog to work with our portfolio to showcase our “goods.” The point being, of course, to promote our expertise in order to acquire new business, so the fact that we’ve taken on several new clients as of late takes some pressure off of those efforts.

YES
However, it’s imperative to press on with a marketing initiative—whether blogging or some other form of advertising or promotion—to maintain momentum.

Rarely do you get the results you want from one ad or one single sales activity. Customers usually have to encounter your brand and message several times and ways before they even really pay attention to it much less make a purchase decision. The corollary is that it takes ample effort and resources to build up a campaign to the point of realizing the desired outcome. For that reason, you can’t hang up the towel as soon as the first phone call comes in. If you’re looking for a regular inflow of new business, you have to provide a regular outflow of information to those prospects.

So what does this mean to the fate of the Emogen blog? In lieu of our diminished time, the decision has been made to forego short daily blogs and instead post a lengthier, meatier blog once a week… at least until the next but then makes itself known.

~Sarah, Emogen marketer

Shhh... It's the Secret Marketing Recipe

The AMA approved definition of marketing is “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

Wait, what was that? I fell asleep.

The more concise Merriam-Webster version is “the act or process of selling or purchasing in a market.”

The rest of us would say it’s “selling something.” And I think it’s safe to say that everyone pretty much gets that concept. It’s almost as if making money is the survival instinct of the 21st century. But when push comes to shove, how does one actually market. And, more importantly, is there some secret recipe for how to reap the most profit possible from your marketing?

Believe it or not, there really is a term for the secret marketing recipe: marketing mix.

In yesterday’s blog I discussed marketing mix in terms of utilizing a variety of media to communicate a brand; however, the phrase has a much larger reach and refers to what is commonly called the Four Ps of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

The Fours Ps came about in the 50s or 60s as a way to classify the elements of the marketing mix. Think of them as the ingredients for the marketing recipe.

Product refers to what’s being sold (a service would also fit into this category). Price is how much the product is sold for. Place is how it will get into the hands of the end user. And, finally, promotion is how details about the product are communicated to customers.

The 4Ps are simple concepts, I know. Unfortunately, there's no secret recipe for combining them. Each business is unique, and the 4Ps are all moving parts that directly and indirectly impact one another in countless ways.

In order to maximize the bottom line, you must know what to move and when to move it. So, much like gourmet cooking, great marketing is a balance of science and art... a talent partly learned (science) and partly God-given (art).

-Sarah, Emogen marketer

You’re fired!

I’ve never really been a fan, but for some reason I’ve been following this season of Celebrity Apprentice. I know it’s a TV show, but I’ve been particularly fascinated by Donald Trump’s boardroom demeanor, primarily his way of taking the emotion out of decision making.

Even when the celebrities get all riled up, Trump keeps his cool, goes through the details of their performance, and then drops the “You’re fired.” bomb out of no where. No blinking. No apologies. He just does it.

As a small business owner (SBO) one of my greatest flaws is keeping the emotions out. I know I’m justified in being emotional… this enterprise is my family’s sole source of income and is the basis for all of our futures. Heavy lifting, if you get my point. But keeping decision making emotion-free is critical. Emotions cloud judgment and cause us to make poor, irrational choices.

One area that can be particularly emotional for SBOs is in customer relations.

Some customers are a dream… they are fun to work with, their expectations are reasonable, they don’t haggle on price, they pay on time, etc. etc. Others are not so wonderful. They demand more for less and quicker, and then they are slow to pay the tab. What is a SBO to do, though; we need all the customers we can get, right?

Not so. A blog I read recently said it wonderfully, “The customer is always right -- if it's the right customer.” Good customer service is a must, but you’re just not going to be able to please everyone and for plenty of perfectly normal reasons.

One of the greatest necessities in a client relationship—especially for those of us in a service industry—is chemistry. You and your customer need to like one another on a personal level in order for your professional relationship to really work.

But let’s say you’ve begun working with a client and it’s just not sparking. Or, worse, sparks are turning into flames, but not the good kind. What do you do?

Fortunately we haven’t been in that situation too many times at Emogen, but we have had to “fire ourselves” more than once. In those instances, we contacted the client and explained our decision and the basis for it. We also provided recommendations for our replacement and offered to assist with the transition (providing files, data or artwork) to their new provider.

I feel confident in saying that the times we’ve had this discussion, the client recognized the situation for what it was and was ok and maybe even a little surprised that we would direct them to a new provider and assist in establishing that relationship.

It’s really ok that you can’t work with everyone. It’s normal. Instead of becoming a slave to a bad pairing, though, take a lesson from Trump and remove the emotion from the situation. Ask yourself if the extra effort required for the relationship is going to be worth it in the long run. If not, then it’s probably wise to call it quits.

-Sarah, Emogen marketer

How Are You Bent?

We had a fun discussion at the office this morning about things we did or said as kids that hinted at the occupation we’ve found ourselves in today.

Jake, our head graphic designer, recently found something he wrote as a youngster in which he claimed he would either become “an attorney or an artist, but probably an artist because he likes to draw more.”

In the early days of our marriage some 12 years ago, Brian and I habitually concocted entrepreneurial schemes. Looking back, we tended to focus heavily on branding and promoting our imaginary endeavors. Go figure.

Because of that inclination, I stand amazed sometimes at how oblivious some people are to sales and marketing techniques. I mean, it’s so simple… right?

A proclivity toward marketing is how Brian and I came to be where we are today, but if we’re not vigilant our bent could potentially hinder communication with clients who think differently.

Today, I challenge you to take a stab at determining your bent, and then make an effort to figure out how your customers bend differently. Altering your communication to accommodate a client’s perspective could make a world of difference in the relationship.

-Sarah, Emogen marketer

Just Say No

If you’re not in a sales position, you might find this next statement hard to believe: Salespeople want to hear “no”.

Ok, so truthfully sales people really want prospects to say yes, but we all know that’s not possible 100% of the time. But instead of saying yes or no, clients many times send salespeople “toward a most useless place: The Waiting Place,” to quote Dr. Seuss.

The problem with the Waiting Place is that a salesperson can burn up a lot of time and resources wooing a client that knows the answer is inevitably going to be no.

So how can a salesperson get down to nuts and bolts to come away with a definitive answer?

First, you’ve got to be sure you’re talking to the decision maker. If not, you’re wasting your time; if so, be sure you’ve asked that yes/no question. It’s possible you just haven’t asked for the sale plainly enough.

If you can’t get a definitive answer by asking, then assume the answer is no. The prospect is likely stalling because he is uncomfortable and/or doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. Move on, but (depending on the situation) consider checking back in from time to time.

For all of you decision makers out there, hear this: a sales person’s time is valuable, too. Be respectful and tell them no if that’s your answer. You have a reputation to keep up, and stringing along a salesperson (or being rude) could come back to bite you. Remember, a salesperson's job is talking... to lots of people... who could very well be your prospects, too.

-Brian, Emogen sales strategist