How To Find Your Free Prize
by John R. Sedivy
Do you remember pushing your way into a cereal box looking for the free prize? I do. The most annoying part is that the contents never quite fit back in right and I didn’t have the patience to finish off the cereal prior to claiming my prize. As a child, I was looking for something remarkable in an otherwise unremarkable product. The same holds true for consumers of a wide array of products and services – not just cereal.
Being Remarkable
What makes a product or service remarkable? Is it the high technology involved? Surely if you spend lots of money on research and development (R&D) something remarkable will come out of it – or at least something good.
Not necessarily. Check out Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin. In this book he debunks the popularly held myth that throwing enough money at a project will result in something remarkable. There are also a few other excellent points made – certainly worth your time – just like every other Seth Godin book I have read so far.
Let’s use Seth Godin’s definition of a Purple Cow; which is really just something that is remarkable. Something remarkable is just something that a customer is willing to make a remark about. Remarks promote discussion, which in turn leads to more discussion, which leads to even more discussion, which hopefully leads to word of mouth sales which multiply over time.
But how does one become remarkable? How does a product or service become remarkable? It isn’t by dumping money into R&D. It isn’t by buying big ads. If it were that easy there would be as many remarkable products as there is money – which obviously isn’t the case.
Thinking Softly
Seth Godin identifies “soft innovation” as being the path to becoming remarkable. A soft innovation is something on the side of what your product or service is, not really the primary focus – kind of an afterthought. It is dubbed the free prize because, once discovered, it has the power to bring in much more revenue than the cost of implementing it.
Free prizes are discovered by practicing edgecraft. Edgecraft is merely pushing yourself to the edges of your product or service. Conventional wisdom may be to operate in the middle ground as to not rock the boat, upset others, or take a path that is too risky. Edgecraft is counter to playing it safe and is literally pushing the envelope.
Consider the hours of a local store. Their present hours are 9 to 5. They are considering revising their hours from 9 to 5:30. If the competition of said store all maintain hours of 9 to 5, will this make a difference? Perhaps some, but not much. However if this same store made a shift from bankers hours to a 24 hour establishment – this could push them to the edge of their competition and result in a remarkable business.
I will provide a few examples of those operating on the edge who have been widely successful.
Practitioners Of Edgecraft
Seth Godin is an obviously example – he embodies edgecraft. His personal style, message, and presentation all push to the edge. Visit the business section of Barnes and Noble – I would be surprised if his latest book, Tribes doesn’t jump out at you. The original version of Free Prize Inside was packaged in a cereal box and the original Purple Cow was packaged in a milk carton. These were unconventional yet successful approaches.
Now compare this with the typical marketing or business book. Most likely the average book contains quite a bit of effort, research, and hard work. But in general, the message is lost in a sea of mediocrity. This is where pushing to the edge pays off. People notice the edge, they generally don’t care about the mediocre middle.
A second example that comes to mind is Ann Coulter. Regardless of if you agree or disagree with her politics, she is an author who pushes the edge. This is why she stands out among political writers and continues to churn out best sellers. As she pushes even further, her popularity increase and thus the cycle will continue.
Finally, Apple is a company that knows how to turn edgecraft to their advantage. Seth Godin used this as an example in Free Prize Inside, however I believe it is worth reiterating here. Apple has turned a commodity into a high-retail item. Against conventional business advice they have physical locations in high-end retail malls and are profitable in doing so. Why? Because they are pushing the edge of their industry. Apple does not simply make computers, they design a user experience.
I urge you to consider finding your “free prize.” It may be by taking an otherwise boring and lackluster topic such as marketing and transforming it into something entertaining as Seth Godin has. It may be by pushing to the extreme of the comfort level of most people as Ann Coulter has. Or it may be taking a commodity product and transforming it into a beautiful user experience as Apple has.
The key is that there is no single answer. Know yourself and your business and imagine the edges. Find an edge and persistently push towards it and you will find your free prize!
Find your free prize by pushing to the edge!
-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding
Asking Permission
by John R. Sedivy
Have you read Permission Marketing by Seth Godin yet? If not, I recommend you do so – especially if you are in marketing or sales, or if you are a business owner. But this book goes beyond giving technical business advice, it’s just plain good old relationship building.
Why Do So Many Pitches Fail?
Relevance. At least from my personal experience, most things that I am approached about are just not relevant. I have little to no interest, actually for the most part, I simply do not care. Even the things I do care about, I am highly skeptical if I do not know the source.
So it actually goes deeper than relevance – the root cause is relationships. If I have a deep relationship with a person, I am receptive to the message, regardless of the content. Sure, I care about some things more than others, but for the most part, I am more interested in the individual making the recommendation which transfers to the product or service. I value the opinions of those who I have interest and respect.
This may seem counterintuitive – but think about it. Most excellent people know other excellent people. Most excellent people who own a business and offer a product or service offer excellent products or services. Excellent people do not waste their time with mediocrity – whether it’s in the form of people, products, or services. If they did, and did so enough, they would develop a reputation as being mediocre and no longer be excellent.
Excellent People Ask Permission
Consider sales pitches you have either received through the e-mail, phone, or in person. Can you think of an instance where someone came out of the blue and offered you a life changing product or service? Not likely.
Anything of substance likely developed from a strong relationship built on a even stronger foundation of permission.
Consider the individuals who blindly blast e-mails that end up in your e-mail box with some variation of the following theme:
“Hello consumer, I am offering the following product or service. Click on this link to learn more, join my group, etc.”
This was once the sole domain of unscrupulous spammers, unfortunately this cold calling and e-mail blasting appears to be creeping into reputable businesses as well. Perhaps as a sign of desperation resulting from the new economy.
Now consider if this same individual contacted you by means of a mutual friend or business associate who had a reputation for excellence and knew you might have a mutual interest in a given product or service. Permission is established up front through your contact and then the individual contacts you – relevance is established up front through permission.
Your friendship with this individual is built on mutual trust, so you are intrigued. However, the initial e-mail seeks only to establish initial contact and only requires permission on your part to proceed to the next step. Once you grant permission, the solicitor educates you on their product or service slowly over time. Once you feel comfortable doing so, you make the initial purchase. When you are satisfied, the solicitor slowly sells you additional, relevant product or services over time, but in a non-intrusive way.
Permission is gradual – it increases slightly over time. Although permission takes time to establish, it becomes a strong bond and serious asset which should be carefully guarded. Seth Godin likens the process to dating. The key is gradual permission over time which is granted slowly after trust is established along the way.
I believe that if more people grasped and put into practice permission marketing that the overall business experience would be better as a result. Therefore I am recommending that you read Permission Marketing by Seth Godin. Although the concept has been around for some time, I believe it is even more relevant today given the increased influence of the Internet and the changing business environment brought about by the new economy.
Permission trumps cold-calling and e-mail blasting every time!
-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding
Alexa Summary, July 2009
by John R. Sedivy
This article serves as an update of our Alexa performance that we initially started with What Is Alexa? and continued with Alexa Summary, June 2009. Each month we are tracking our Alexa rank and posting the updated stats for all to see. This will serve as a benchmark for us as we continue with this blog or introduce other blogs in the future. Most importantly, we believe this will help our readers as far as what to expect with a blog in terms of traffic and related stats when developing your own blog.
Key Metrics
As of the last article posted on July 24, 2009 called Alexa Summary, June 2009, I had recorded the following performance of Cape Cod Branding and CCBbuzz:
1. Traffic Rank: 341,375
2. Average Time On Site: 25.5 min/day
3. Pageviews/User: 19
4. Sites Linking In: 13
5. Demographics: 87.1% (United States), 9.9% (India), 3.0% (Other)
6. Global Reach: .0002%
7. Global Pageviews: .000052%
8. Bounce Rate: 27.5%
I will provide the updated stats in the following sections with accompanying screen captures. In addition, I am introducing two additional metrics this month – Search Percentage and Search Terms.
Updated Metrics
Refer to Figure 1 for our current traffic rank as reported by Alexa:
Figure 1. Traffic Rank
As shown, our Traffic Rank has decreased from 341,375 to 301,316. When compared to last month our descent to the top 100,000 spot is slowing, however this is to be expected as our rank continues to improve and the competition increases.
Hand-in-hand with Traffic Rank are the Demographics of our visitors – or where they are coming from. Figure 2 provides the Demographics for Cape Cod Branding:
Figure 2. Demographics
As shown, 95.2% of our traffic originates from the United States, 4.8% is from some other source. Last month, we had listed 9.9% of traffic originating from India – but strangely enough that country has since disappeared from the list.
Our U.S. traffic rank is 50,519 which decreased from 51,142 the month before.
Figure 3 shows our Average Time On Site:
Figure 3. Average Time On Site
As shown, our Average Time On Site increased from 25.5 minutes/day to 29.5 minutes/day, a slight but important improvement as it means that visitors are staying on our site longer.
Figure 4 provides the number of Pageviews Per User who visits our website:
Figure 4. Pageviews Per User
This increased from 19 the previous month to 22. What this means is that not only is our traffic increasing, people are staying longer, and they are, on average, viewing 22 pages each time they visit.
Figure 5 provides the Global Reach for Cape Cod Branding.
Figure 5. Global Reach
As shown, the Cape Cod Branding Global Reach is 0.00023, a slight increase from last month’s global reach of 0.0002%.
Figure 6 provides the Global Pageviews for Cape Cod Branding.
Figure 6. Global Pageviews
The Global Pageviews for Cape Cod Branding is 0.000067%, a slight increase of 0.000052% when compared to last month.
Figure 7 provides the Bounce Rate for Cape Cod Branding.
Figure 7. Bounce Rate
As shown, Cape Cod Branding has a Bounce Rate of 24.4%, which is an increase from the previous month of 18.8%. Although a bounce rate of 24.4% is still respectable, it is not as good as the previous months value, so we are slipping a bit here.
Additional Metrics
This month I will introduce two additional metrics, that of Search Percentage and Search Terms.
Search Percentage
This metric is meant to capture the amount of traffic to your site provided by search engines as a percentage of overall traffic. Figure 8 provides the percentage of search engine traffic for Cape Cod Branding.
Figure 8. Search Percentage
As shown, Cape Cod Branding has received 4.1% of its overall traffic from search engines – this is a decrease of 78% when compared to the past three months. Clearly there is more work to be done in terms of search engine optimization.
Search Terms
Search Terms are basically the words that individuals enter into search engines which bring them to your site. Figure 9 provides the search terms which bring people to Cape Cod Branding.
Figure 9. Search Terms
The search terms are arranged by importance. For example, the number one search term that brings people to our site is hubspot website grader. The least important term that brings traffic to our site is wikipedia reddit. Note that the terms do not always make sense, however they are what individuals enter into a search engine.
-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding
