Tag: Economy

Posted on

Creative heads in the clouds

Creativity in advertising can help catch people’s attention and win customers. Yet some advertisers’ heads seem to be in the clouds when they don’t pay attention to the conversation taking place in their market. Creative approaches need to link with the customer’s world to provide returns.

 Sometimes you just wonder how “creative” advertising can be so detached from its real world surroundings. It’s much too easy to criticize someone else’s advertising so I will mention just one short falling of an advert I saw in a national business weekly. It totally missed a big opportunity.

The advert was about cloud computing and gave examples of its applications in society and ended by mentioning the company’s contribution to global computing. All very good except that this ad was run on the Sunday midway through the COP 17 climate change negotiations in Durban. Surrounding pages in the business section were plastered with ads about climate change and solutions for a low-carbon future. Now, how possibly could the advert fail to mention any reference about climate change? It’s sort of like walking up the road from King’s Cross Station and not being aware that the place has social problems (which we won’t go into here).

After reading the advert on a flight to Durban I asked the passenger sitting next to me: “What do you make of this?” He took a look and said, “They could at least have mentioned something about their e-waste and what they are doing about it.” Later the passenger mentioned that he was the climate and environmental advisor to the presidency of a country in Africa.

Being present to the conversation already taking place

So what is the real message for marketers – off-line and online – with this advert? Simply put, to be present and listen to the conversations already taking place among customers. Surely, the team that put together this advert could have thought about what would be going on when the ad would appear? If they had, they might have recognised that COP 17 would be a major topic of discussion in the papers and online during the negotiations taking place in Durban.

They could have come up with a quick short-list of examples of solutions that their computing is bringing about to help mitigate climate change. It would have then been easy for them to join their customers’ conversation which would have certainly included climate change and the global climate change negotiations. The other advertisers had thought about their timing – some even used leaves symbolically acting as the blades for wind turbines to promote renewable energy.

Creativity doesn’t mean generating ideas that are detached from people and the marketplace. Products of creativity are meant to inspire, entertain, influence perhaps and ultimately sell. Even a five-minute session with a basic idea generation tool would have assisted in this instance with developing the original idea and making it so much more powerful.

Loosen up and fire your imagination

By joining the customer’s conversation, understanding their interests, problems and aspirations, businesses become more relevant and real when they try to connect with customers. Communicating with worn-out come-ons or unsupported authority in a competitive marketplace is just not authentic or meaningful. But to get there companies need to loosen up and become more creative.

The problem is that the words “creative” and “creativity” are such catch-all terms that they have come to even have negative connotations. What we mean here by these words is to come up with new ideas that will profit your business. It involves a search for ideas using creative and innovation tools that help you generate a range of possibilities that hold the potential to produce amazing results whether for your product, service or business.

Encourage expansive thinking

Such expansive thinking may itself sound like needing to put your “head in the clouds” but it is vital when your business is under threat or you need innovation to compete against increasingly strong competition, especially in 2012. Innovation, coming up with new products, services and new ways of doing business, is essential for responding and anticipating a changing business environment. For smaller businesses that are much closer to their customers whether on main street or in industrial parks innovation is critical for maximizing returns on any investment.

Posted on

More ideas, better ideas – innovate now

Dealing with the challenges in your business has become increasingly urgent with the economy as it is. Yet we know that some business people thrive under any circumstances. These far-sighted business people take measures to innovate their business despite prevailing circumstances.

A business owner* who runs a media and website business was experiencing a gradual drop in his conversion rate from quotation to sales, which was leading to lower revenues. At ideaaccelerator.co.za we jump at such challenges and offered to help solve the problem using the idea-generation and ideation expertise we’ve developed over a number of years.

At first he was skeptical. “But how can creativity and new ideas work for my business when all I have is a sales conversion problem?” he asked. Our reply was, “Why not give it a try and see what happens. You haven’t come up with a solution now and who knows when you’ll stop the decline so using these idea generation techniques and processes could help you right now, wouldn’t they?”

Steps to produce amazing ideas

We started with a closer enquiry into the possible cause of the lower quotes to sales conversion. Next, we took the business owner through a series of steps to produce ideas that were imaginative and energizing. We tried to disturb the usual thinking patterns that keeps us stuck in familiar thinking ruts – the same tired ideas that get raised in brainstorm meetings that never seem to fire inspiration or let alone work.

He had an initial resistance to these new approaches but we guided him into the processes we have developed. We’ve found that it is often better to just get on with following the tools and processes and finding new solutions than to get into detailed, arcane explanations that will only really be understood once they are experienced when the results start flowing.

The tools and techniques used to assist this business person to generate ideas were suited to his temperament and natural curiosity. Knowing what works best with individual customers is important so that they remain motivated to complete the necessary steps.

 Astounded at the quality of ideas

The business owner was astounded by the number and quality of ideas produced. His problem became how to sort through all the ideas and prioritise them. We gave him a simple prioritization grid which quickly helped him select the best ideas with the fastest and biggest payback that he could action in his business right away.

 The result of the ideas produced and implemented was a 200% increase in quotes to sales conversion. All this was achieved through working on tangible and intangible parts of his service and increasing benefits for customers.

 “We increased our sales conversion by 200%”

“Using ideaaccelerator.co.za’s ideation process, we came up with new ideas for our business that helped us increase our sales conversation by 200%,” the business owner told us afterwards. “We generated so many ideas that it will take a year to implement them all. We’re already started on actioning just three and the results are amazing.”

 Leapfrog competitors

By generating more and better ideas small businesses can leapfrog their competitors through innovative ways to do business. Unless idea generation is purposeful and directed towards a clear, definite end goal the results will be less than spectacular. The idea generation facilitator needs to be experienced or very familiar with business and the success factors for small business because a high level of experience is required. While business is often considered a science by the business schools, it’s more of an art that requires a high level of judgement and ingenuity to activate the levers that will produce the best results.

Businesses faced with the challenges in the marketplace today with lower demand, varying customer buying patterns and price-sensitive customers have a choice to wait and do nothing until disaster strikes or innovate their businesses to produce stronger profits and stay ahead of their competition.

* Details of the business owner and managing director of this case study can be made on request to chesney@ideaaccelerator.co.za

Posted on

The power of generating low-cost promotional ideas: a fight-back strategy

Come up with your own free, easy and low-cost promotion ideas that can help you to lift sales in a difficult economy

In this rough and tumble economy, some business people sit, like frogs in a pot immobilised with the water temperature rising. Even when the temperature hits boiling point, they remain in the pot. If the frogs suddenly stumbled into the pot of boiling water, they wouldn’t hesitate to jump right out. Why then don’t small business people react quickly when they recognize warning signs?  

Many business people seem to stubbornly believe that they can rough it through the difficult economy doing business in the same familiar way, despite turnovers in some cases plummeting by a third or more. Small business has such a high mortality rate in “normal” economic conditions but when economic activity declines, the mortality rate rises.

Riding high and spending less

During the good times small business owners were riding high. They spent less on their marketing as customers walked in and bought whatever they wanted. Small business owners were spoilt as they had to do little personal selling or advertising.

Now, when times are tough and small business owners and entrepreneurs are more concerned with meeting personnel expenses and covering overheads they are even more reluctant to spend money on promotion. Yet clients and customers are holding onto their cash, waiting for times improve, hanging onto their homes, cars, computers, household appliances for longer, repairing them instead of replacing them.What should store owners and small service businesses do?

Ignore selling and promotion at your peril

Even though small business owners have seen turnovers drop many are wary of spending money on promotion. Some are trying to play it cheap by bringing in well meaning family and friends to help them promote their products and services. Other owners knuckle down on the technical areas and processes in their business, ignoring selling and promotion at their peril.Promotional ideas need to work

Little do those businesses who use retail space or have high visibility and walk-in customers realise that if they don’t do something to promote their business and lift sales, they will be forced into operating the business from home to chop overhead. Running a business from home ironically means needing to acquire a whole set of new marketing skills.

How do you go about promoting your business in a stormy economy where every cent counts? Small businesses and entrepreneurial enterprises cannot pour vast sums on vague institutional (image) advertising with no way to measure sales. Entrepreneurs need to generate sales — even when advertising in traditional print media, adverts have to be “keyed” and have special phone numbers specific to adverts. This way they can measure their advertising conversion. A small travel agent told me recently that she had a separate phone number for each advert to measure response. If the newspaper, magazine, radio or television advertising didn’t pull, it had to go.

Test, test, test

Promotional ideas that work are specific to each business and the mind or emotional triggers of their customers. Small business owners need to brainstorm ideas that they think will work for their business. Try some no-cost, low-cost ideas out first and see how they work. Remember to test, test, test. As Claude Hopkins said, “Almost any question can be answered, cheaply, quickly and finally, by a test campaign.”

To get fighting fit in this economy small business owners and entrepreneurs need to focus their attention on attracting customers to their business through a variety of low-cost, no-cost promotional ideas. Idea generation techniques can be effective as can meeting with fellow business people to share and swop ideas. In the next article on www.ideaaccelerator.co.za we’ll look at tips, strategies and other ideas to promote your business. In the meantime, take a look at what your competitors are doing as well try to spot other businesses that seem to be doing well no matter how hard the harsh economic winds blow.