Pica Projectors

I believe mini, or “pica” projectors, will be the next must-have feature for smartphones. The ability to project a presentation on the fly, or share photos and graphs without having to lug around a laptop, would be greatly valuable for many consumers.
Although there are some pica projectors available on the market, Microsoft should devote resources into developing a great pica projector that is embedded into the phone, and doesn’t suck the life out of the battery, which is why I’m guessing more haven’t been integrated into smartphones yet.

A transformative music experience

With growing dissatisfaction with iTunes as a music marketplace, Microsoft could concentrate on providing a great music experience. Although Real Networks provides a music streaming experience, it falls short by not supporting certain devices, and lacking in selection. Pandora, Last.FM, and others provide more selection, but they are really “music discovery engines”, in that you put it the artists you like, and it won’t necessarily let you play those artists, or choose what songs you can play.
Microsoft could really differentiate themselves by providing a subscription-based music service. Services like this exist with Spotify, which isn’t available in the United States, only overseas, and MOG seems promising, but I haven’t tried it out, since it doesn’t have an iPhone application (yeah, personal disclosure, I have an iPhone).

These are just two quick things that could be done to increase interest in the Zune phone, what do you think? With my iPhone, there are so many little things that aren’t possible for one reason or another, do you think they could come up with something interesting?

That’s right, business is really a collection of stories. Think about it. Therefore, its probably the most effective way of marketing your product or service, but many marketing materials are lacking in stories and storytelling. Why is this?

Where I work, I’ve been beating the drum on making more stories out of our successes, mainly doing more case studies on customers who had a problem, and how we fixed that problem with a solution we provided. Its a difficult process, but something I plan on focusing on in the future.

Founding of the company

There is always a story to be told about the founders, the need they saw, and how they developed a product or service to meet that need. If you are in search of capital or funding, what really gets the company funded isn’t your made projections of revenue 5 years out, what really sells the bankers/VCs/friends and family is a compelling story more than anything else.

The prevalence of stories in business literature

Go through your Inc. magazine, Fast Company, Forbes, etc. and what do  you see? Although there are a number of charts, graphs and figures throughout the company, they really are filled with stories. Stories of companies, stories of founders, stories of business challenges, stories of customers, stories of success.

The same goes for where I’m working on my MBA at the University of St. Thomas – Opus School of Business. The Harvard Business Case Studies are stories, and even the textbooks are smattered with a number of stories, how the particular concepts outlined in the text can be related to what happened with a specific business.

Face it marketers, prospects don’t care about your product

I think something all marketers need to realize is that potential customers almost always could care less about your product or service. Are they buying what you’re selling? If they are, they have already identified a need and probably already have a consideration set in mind. In many cases, if you are lucky enough to find a consumer who is actually buying what you are selling, you are already behind, because someone else, through their marketing and sales, have set the rules of the game, and set them to their advantage.

Prospects don’t care about your features or functions

They don’t. I think marketers know this, but we continue to jam our marketing materials full of them, because its easy, and we want to depend on salespeople to turn these features and functions into benefits for the particular prospects they are in discussions with.

Features and functions have a place

They do, but its oftentimes well into the engagement. As marketers, I believe we need to develop more compelling stories for prospects. What do customers read in their free time for the most part? Stories, fiction, novels, things they can relate to. The laundry list of features and functionality that we as marketers put out is so opposite of what they oftentimes consume in their free time, how can we put all this effort into creating these materials and this content, knowing that it will probably never get written?

Writers of textbooks for schools, including college textbooks, have seen the writing on the wall for some time now, and choose to use bolded words and bullet points for important concepts and principles.

Why is it so hard?

Although I’ve been pushing hard to do  many more case studies, its been difficult. Looking at other marketers, it appears that they have some customer case studies, but its far from a focus. Many of the case studies appear to be glorified product brochures. I believe to increase the effectiveness of these case studies, we need to make them stories, with a setup, confrontation, and resolution.

Pushing the story beyond customer case studies

We can apply this concept of storytelling well beyond our standard customer case studies, can’t we? Marketers can work on developing a story piece that outlines how and why the company was founded, more about the founders, what meets did they see were unmet, and what did they do about it? Extend this beyond the founding of the company, and think about new products and services that are developed, think about companies that are acquired, and other major events. Don’t these deserve their own stories?

The internet has gone mainstream

The “old days” of searching for information on topics such as the Loch Ness monster have given way to looking for old friends on Facebook most of the time. Obviously, the internet is no longer the sole domain of “techies” or even intellectuals. Although people still go on the web to research products, concepts, and ideas; more and more they are going on to check on what their friends are up to. This is all because, humans are ultimately, social creatures. Although there are obviously exceptions, if most had their choice, they would be finding out how they could relate and communicate with their friends better, rather than researching old episodes of Star Trek.

People are filtering before they reach the search engine

People are using more specialized search engines to find what they want. The major search engines can still be “gamed”, but internet users are getting smarter at taking note of what site they are visiting before they click the link. I know for specialized searches, I’m more likely to use specialized “search engines” like Gamespot if I am looking for video game information, Metacritic if I am looking for reviews, Amazon if I am researching music, or Wikipedia if I need a top-level overview of a topic. For these specific searches, why would I go to a general search engine? I’m used to the interface and results I’ll receive from these search engines, and I’m assuming that many others are doing the same.

There are other ways to find new information

Content discovery and information seeking used to be the sole domain of the search engine. You have a crazy idea or want to find out more about something, you would go to a search engine, type in a search term and click “Go” to find out more about the subject you want to know about. Now that mainstream media sites have committed fully to the internet as a viable media outlet, and other technologies like Twitter and RSS exist, there are many other ways to collect yourself with users, and leverage other ways to discover content that is geared towards your interests.

Is Search Not Relevant Anymore?

Not necessarily, but in my opinion, its not as relevant as it used to be. We need to figure out unique ways for our users to get and stay engaged, and stick around, and pass the word on. SEM and SEO will still be valuable, but as consumers get more internet-saavy, they will probably be more hesitant to visit sites they aren’t familiar with unless they are looking for something extremely specific.

All this comes around to the same basic principle, that interactive marketers need to focus on their users. Think about what your target market needs, and how you can deliver it. The more highly-educated and internet-knowledgeable your audience is, the more you need to focus on them instead of black- (or white-) hat SEO techniques to drive traffic.

1. Use correct grammar and punctuation.

I couldn’t believe how many of the responses had spelling and grammatical errors. I posted an ad stressing how important it was to have the job done right, so the chances I would use a someone who couldn’t even write an email without speling and grammar errors are virtually nil. Like I said, the information I had to choose between respondents was very limited, so why would you screw up the little chance you had to make an impression?

2. Don’t respond if you can’t meet the price.

For all of the Craigslist ads we’ve posted for work, we’ve had numerous people offer to do the job for less. So, if you are quoting a price higher than what was posted, include a comment that you think the price offered was a little high, and you were worried they wouldn’t get any respondents, and what you think would be a fair price.  Otherwise, if you are quoting a price higher than the one posted, include a good reason (you have 35 years of experience, you’ve won awards, you will go above and beyond what the ad requested, etc.).

3. Read the ad before responding.

I had a few people ask details, such as what the size of the holes were, that were already in the ad. I did not respond to those ads. If you are too sloppy to read the ad you are responding to, I don’t want you fixing my house.

4. Be careful when clarifying questions.

I took a decent amount of time writing the ad, to make sure I was on the right page with the respondent from the start. I outlined who would pay for materials (them), and provided as much information as I could. I had plenty of people responding with various questions, which I didn’t feel like answering, because there were plenty of people responding, that weren’t asking questions. To clarify, many of the questions asked details like, “what is the texture of the walls?” I can understand asking these questions if my ad read something like “looking for someone to fix two holes in my walls”, but not if its a detailed post. Sometimes you need to take calculated risks, and avoid asking inconsequential questions.

5. Have a website (or Facebook link, or LinkedIn link, or something).

So, trying to make a decision based on limited information is hard, and worrying, since the person needs to come into my house, I wanted some sort of assurance. I’m not expecting anyone to get their own domain, maybe just setup a blog at blogger.com, or Squidoo, post a few pages and some information about yourself. Show your customers that you have done some work in the past, and remove some of the doubts a potential customer would have in their head about you. I would think even a Facebook or LinkedIn profile would at least show people that you are at least normal enough to have Facebook friends.

So, that’s most of what I was able to learn from my Craigslist encounter. Although I picked someone without a website, I did pick someone with a contractors number that started up. It was difficult and a bit overwhelming to pick one out of the 40+ respondents I had, based on the fact that most of the responses were 2-line emails. Hopefully this helps out some of the others who are trying to get gigs from Craigslist.