Author Archive
Stable Competitive Advantage – Myth or Fact?
Trust me a Stable Competitive Advantage simply doesn’t exist.
Companies that have a unique competitive advantage that differentiates them from their competitors grow and succeed. However, given the pace of today’s global marketplace, businesses are forced to continuously improve and enhance their competitive positioning to keep the advantage they have created. The odds are your competitors are developing their own advantage and if they can’t they will imitate and sometimes improve on the profit-generating approach you created.
However, there is one thing they cannot easily replicate or standardize and that is the expertise of your employees. The experience of your employees and the training they have is one of the hardest differentiating factors to replicate. Many organizations have the technology to reproduce systems, computer software advantages, and other equipment that businesses depend on for their operations.
What employees can do, how they do it, and the body of knowledge they have learned during their tenures are at best difficult to duplicate. Experienced workers cannot be perfectly transcribed and reproduced. As Russell Coff, an associate professor at Emory of Organization and Management, argues, “ . . .human assets are a key source of sustainable advantage because…casual ambiguity and systematic information make them inimitable” (1994).
Human Capital the Ultimate Competitive Advantage
With this in mind, it’s clear that a company’s true competitive advantage may very well come from its human capital. If your company wants to remain competitive its employees must constantly be learning and adapting to changing industry standards and requirements.
Therefore, it is essential that employees learn how to leverage social media successfully. Long-term your company must offer customers a unique point of view and be able to contribute to the growing body of shared thought leadership in the social sphere. Often, companies launch “anemic” social media campaigns. These efforts are void of purpose or fail to make a salient contribution to the world’s information exchange.
While at times even weak campaigns have a margin of success in the short-term due to trendy appeal or well-crafted messages, long-term result are unlikely. If there is no substance, no informative content, or true value behind the effort to engage the effort will sizzle out.
A complete process to support and nurture those you engage is the only way to have long lasting results. Defining and sustaining a successful social media strategy frequently begins with an assessment of an organization’s goals and what is needed to reach those goals. One competitive advantage is the ability to make such assessments and turn the results into actionable plans.
The “fun” stuff is yet to come!
In the future we’ll cover things like how to structure a sales funnel and test your positioning against the competition. I’ll be sending these things out by email, so if you aren’t on my email list yet then you can join below. Thank you for reading and I’ll talk with you soon!
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Checklist Save Lives!
An interesting article I read a while back on how valuable, nay lifesaving, checklists can be in medicine and in particular for surgery got me thinking. If checklists can save lives, a good checklist might also improve marketing research. After all research projects have a ton of moving parts and we could all benefit from a good set of checklist items to help us manage complex projects.
I’ll get the ball rolling with one of my favorite checklists and I invite you to share yours [you are welcome to post your checklist on this blog as a comment or send us one and we'll post it for you].
Scope the Research Requirements: Dance the Two Step
The following provides a two-step check list to help structure the task of defining your (or your client’s) study objectives and than setting up project parameters consistent with those requirements. These are just simple guidelines and you should use them not as end-points, but rather as a starting point to develop your own checklist.
Step A. Understand the study (and stakeholder) Objectives (This is the single most important step):
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What business problem is the study trying to address?
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How do the stakeholders of the study think the research will help them address this business problem?
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Do stakeholders need results for an event, budget cycle, or strategic planning process?
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What is the time frame for completing the project? (i.e., # of days, weeks, or months)
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What beliefs and/or assumptions do stakeholders have about what the research will reveal?
Step B. Project Parameters:
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Type of respondent (e.g., CxO, LOB, Developers)
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Number of market segments (e.g., company sizes, industries, adoption criteria)
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Length of the interview (e.g., 10, 15, 20 minutes)
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Number of questions (e.g., 10, 25, 35, more)
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Data collection method (e.g., web-based, telephone, in-person, other)
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Geographic scope (e.g., N. America, Europe, World Wide)
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Total sample size (e.g., less than 100 or several thousand)
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Analysis requirements (e.g., descriptive, predictive, market weighted, multivariate)
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Type and scope of the deliverables (e.g., executive summary, presentation, report, seminar, white paper, cross tabulations or banners)
If you can address these points, you have a good grasp of the project. If you cannot, you may need to do a little more work up front before you pull dive into the pool.
Can you please share with me (in the comments below):
1 – the most valuable take-away you had from any of our blog posts
2 – what you want me to write about next
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Avoid the Slippery Slope of Researcher Bias
Research Bias is a Slippery Slope
In our zeal to provide clean datasets by removing questionable cases, we can commit another research “sin” – the introduction of researcher bias.
More than once, I have witnessed a researcher going through a dataset case by case to try to determine if a respondent is a gamer or simply unqualified. The person started out with some basic rules or criteria, but in addition made decisions on respondents’ qualifications from a subjective position, arguing, “No one with this [attribute here] would frame answers the way this respondent did.”
Maybe the researcher was correct and the person was not a legitimate respondent, but this is a slippery slop and we should not take the task of deleting cases lightly. You should use both valid and repeatable criteria when you delete cases from a dataset.
If you are not careful you can start sliding down the slippery slope of researcher bias and not recognize it until it’s too late!
Please share your thoughts on this topic – leave a comment.
Learn more about market research best practices at http://www.atheath.com
At Least Check Your Bounce Rates!
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Ask yourself this, “would I stay on my company’s home page or landing page more than 3 seconds?” Website experts tell us that new website visitors decide whether to stay and look around or leave a site in about 3 to 5 seconds. If this is true, and we believe it is the answer to the above question is critical.
It’s hard to be honest about this in regard to your own website, the only way to get a fair answer is to see what people do when they arrive at your website for the first time. A bounce rate analysis is just what the doctor ordered – think of it not as a cure, but as an x-ray that you read to see if there are any problems. However, you cannot just take one x-ray, you have to take different views more like a CAT scan when you explore bounce rates.
First step separate new visitors from returning visitors. Next, compare the bounce rates of these two groups. Now explore the new visitor group by the page they landed on to examine which pages are especially problematic. Then look at how visitors found these pages on your site.
Keep digging until you have a clear picture of what is driving your overall bounce rate – focus on the area that generates the highest bounce rate, fix it [often easier said than done] and move to the next problem. Systematically identifying and addressing bounce rate issues will make a material difference in the performance of your website.
Please tell a friend about this blog. Thanks!
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Social Media for SMB – New LinkedIn Group
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The Social Media for SMB Group is designed to help address the needs of small and midsize businesses. 
It is where business owners, and executive teams that run businesses ask questions on how to leverage social media marketing, social media research, and the broad area of internet marketing and business research to advance their opportunities.
Professionals with credentials to offer guidance, advice, how-to suggestions, resources, and other information are invited to bring their expertise to the group.
Please join Social Media for SMB Group to learn and share your knowledge!
Special Report: Website Traffic Businesses and Experts Speak Out 2012
Secrets of Blogging – Business Owners Speak Out
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Here are a few best practices for writing and promoting your business blog taken from suggestions business owners and blogging experts recently shared with us. One important goal of a blog is to inform an audience and thereby elevate the blogger’s authority within a specific area of expertise and a specified target market.
In doing so the blog owner typically hopes that blog readers will follow him or her via email communications often in the form of a newsletter. “You must create and distribute content that is going to benefit your prospects’ lives and businesses. Don’t sell on your blog, educate.” You can promote your offering but do it in an educational format.
First, you must publish regularly. Exactly how regularly is a topic for debate, but the anecdotal evidence strongly suggests the more often the better and the definition of “more often” is 3-4 times weekly.
Do you have to post that often to have success? No, you don’t. However, if you do publish at least weekly and better yet twice weekly you will see results. Want to see the strongest results? You guessed it, publish posts 3-4 times per week (or more).
That said, if the content is poor publishing more often won’t help you. If you want to promote your blog (a.k.a. your message), than publish the best content possible.
To recap: Great content published regularly is the formula for getting attention!
Think not only about the audience you have but about the audience you want; find what they are reading and engage them. Find out where they hangout online and go there to talk about your content.
Find popular blogs and ask the owner about guest blogging. Offer content that he or she doesn’t have that is highly relevant to the blog’s audience. Add a well placed link back to an article you wrote that relates to the blog topic at hand. In addition, refer to one of the blogger’s earlier posts as a source for your new post. This builds back links between your two sites. It also increases visibility with both audiences and will attract the other bloggers attention, giving you an opportunity to strike a deal.
Of course, you can simply begin a relationship with another blogger by commenting on their blog. You may also want to ask them to write for you and as you build the size of your audience this will become an increasingly attractive offer. However, don’t wait until you have thousands of readers – a small but relevant audience is sufficient to attract another blogger’s attention.
Your blog post will only provide you with a positive impact if someone reads it! Therefore, publishing a post is only the first step. Next, you must make some noise. One good way is to announce the post (via hyperlink) on Twitter and other sites. Creating one or more tweets (2-3 tweets highlighting different aspects of a post) will bring visitors to your blog. Of course, this assumes you have developed a reasonably large Twitter following, a subject for another time.
Equally, valuable and perhaps more targeted is the announcement of your post to your LinkedIn connections. Once again, the impact will depend on the number of connections you have developed.
Of course, you don’t want to turn your Twitter account into a stream of broadcasts that only promote your blog posts. You need to vary the content and interact with your followers.
We all have limited time. Therefore, we recommend that for best results you should use fewer networking platforms (3-4 not 6-10). Do it well rather than trying to be everywhere. Of course there is no harm in adding to your roster of sites and activities overtime.
Summarizing:
1. Quality content – no point in building traffic if they won’t like what they read
2. A decent quantity of content, added to regularly – whenever you add more content the chances are your traffic will increase.
3. Comment on other blogs, linking back to your blog and of course, aim for blogs with a similar readership
4. Write guest blog posts whenever you have the opportunity and create opportunities by commenting on other blogs.
5. Add links to your posts on your chosen social media platforms – automating them is okay, but tailor the associated comments.
6. Acknowledge people who respond to your posts and reply to comments thanking people who re-tweet your tweets.
7. Use keyword hyperlinks in your posts, but don’t overwhelm your readers with them and risk lowering the quality of your content
8. Track your blog stats; note the times people read your blog and the posts they read. (If you use WordPress try WP Slimstats)
9. Work on promotions that focus on the most popular posts and the most popular times.
10. Be as generous as you can. Use your blog and social media networks to help people link to others’ blogs.
11. Link to clients (e.g., when they have good news or you finish a project with them), retweet great content – you get the idea.
12. List your blog on your social media profiles and make it very easy to spot your homepage(s).
13. Build relationships on social media before you need them!
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Attention “Marketing Minded” Business Owners
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If you are a small or midsize company and would like to expand your marketing efforts please contact us for a no-cost consultation. We design programs for “Marketing Minded” Executives and Business Owners!
The AtHeath team restricts the size of its client base, only accepting new clients as resources permit. We currently have room for two new clients. We are very hands-on and provide one-on-one coaching as well as strategic and tactical guidance.
Our programs are customized to your business model and goals – we take nothing for granted!
Call 508 400 6837 or email me at Carey.Azzara@AtHeath.com Let’s see how quickly we can advance your business!
Testimonials:
Promote Your Website – Eight Worthy Tactics
There are many best practices for promoting websites and/or blogs through social media and other internet venues. However, just because a practice works for Joe and Debra doesn’t necessarily mean it translates into a workable solution for you.
For the best return on your marketing investment (RMI) you need to ask yourself a few important questions; and be honest about your answers. Here are four questions worth the time to consider:
Who are your readers?
What is important to them?
What are their needs?
Where do they congregate online?
It’s a waste of time to share your posts on Facebook if your customers and prospects don’t use Facebook.
Audit your readers. Ask them to give you feedback either informally as comments or formally by conducting a research project (survey). Write blog posts and measure reaction by checking your user analytics and monitoring the comments.
Compare your baseline analytic results (if you don’t have baselines start collecting them now) with data you collect during and after a marketing event. Understand the aggregate information you have on what target market your audience represents.
Once you know who they are and where they congregate you can create a presence and share your content with them and the extended network.
Here are several specific tactics worth consideration:
Read the rest of this entry »
The Power of Sales Cycle Analysis
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Sales cycle analysis is a powerful tool to help you better understand your markets. Gaining a strong appreciation for the good and bad news about your market positioning in relationship to your competition isn’t always easy to do. Moreover, if there’s bad news it’s difficult to hear. However, not knowing where you stand is, at best, dangerous and could prove fatal.
Understanding why you do or don’t get on the short list of your prospects (or stay on the short list of your customers) is critical and sales cycle analysis helps to answer this very important question. You need to know what will facilitate or impede your progress toward becoming a preferred supplier – the position we obviously all want. If knowledge is power than sale cycle knowledge is supremacy.
Clearly, there is more than one approach to achieving insights related to sales cycle dynamics and how customers and prospects perceive a business. We won’t try to explore the options here.
However, it is worth noting that a commitment to exploring these dynamics is not a one shot deal. If you and your company are serious about sales and the factors that propel your sales, you will be well served by tracking the metrics required at least annually.
We all know markets continue to evolve quickly. A very good way to stay informed is to track market activity systematically. Creating a baseline of information and measuring against that is a great starting point and an essential part of sales cycle analysis.
You can structure sales cycle studies to help maximize your reach tactics. Knowing how to best reach your audience is a function of understanding how they search for information. More precisely it is about how customers and prospects search for information at each stage of the buying process. In addition, the new reach equation includes social networking and social media, again fast moving targets.
In addition, studies on sales cycles, almost by definition, provide competitive insights. It’s not enough to know if you’re on the short list you need to know who’s on it with you.
Combining information on brand and product positioning with a continually updated view of reach dynamics is a powerful tool in the hands of a savvy marketing professional. What are you waiting for? Get started!
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Why Unnatural Links have Turned the SEO World on It’s Head
Recently, AboutUs published a very important update titled, “How to Avoid an Unnatural Links Penalty.” This is important information to have and I want to make sure my readers are in the “loop.”
As the article states, “Google is constantly adjusting its search engine algorithm in an attempt to serve up the best websites and most relevant results to searchers. They’re at it again, and this time it’s a doozy.”
Trust me they are not exaggerating this can cause more problems than just a few SEO leaks. It behooves you to be on top of this new change, which clearly is and will continue to affect the SEO world.
For more details simply click on the link below.
AboutUs has done a very good job of laying it all out, and they provide guidance on what to look for and what to do. The 50 plus comments also provide valuable insights and a balanced perspective – Read it!
How to Avoid an Unnatural Links Penalty
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