Thinking fast enough?

Apple announced that iTunes had become the number 2 music retailer in the U.S., behind only Wal-Mart.

“We’d like to thank the over 50 million music lovers who have helped the iTunes Store reach this incredible milestone,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We continue to add great new features like iTunes Movie Rentals to give our customers even more reason to love iTunes.”

The rankings are based on NPD Group’s MusicWatch data. iTunes has sold over four billion songs, with 20 million songs sold on Christmas Day 2007 alone. iTunes has overtaken Best Buy which previously occupied the #2 spot.

Keep in mind what a change this is. The second largest seller of music in this country is a computer company. A company that many people refer to as still having an insignificant market share. My purpose here is not blowing them up as a computer seller my point here is to highlight how much this entire market has changed in a very short time and what an different direction it went. The markets are changing much faster than the brick and mortar stores and most hardware makers are.

Thinking ahead of your customers means you’re ahead of the market, considerably. Thinking in time with the market means you’re, at best, a little behind. Thinking that what worked last year will work this year and even result increases over last year is dangerous, at best.

February 27, 2008 | Filed Under marketing news, marketing thoughts, music | Leave a Comment 

Need a home?

You can see images I shot displayed for Realtor, Gerry Beane at a site he created for the homeowner here. And sure, this is self-serving but it’s refreshing to see a real estate professional who really works hard for their clients. I’ve been looking at a lot of real estate in the last few months and most listings are a few cell phone images and a bad description. To me, it’s unthinkable someone would try to sell something worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in that manner but I suppose it used to work.

Well, it’s a different world now in real estate and Realtors like Gerry are the ones that I think will get well-deserved attention for their focus on detail and time invested.

And if you need a nice little home in Marrieta, check it out.

September 19, 2007 | Filed Under company news, marketing thoughts | Leave a Comment 

Real estate

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This year’s Fulton Award Winning home from the 2007 Lancaster Parade of Homes. Built by Costello Builders in Bent Creek.

I’ve just sent an offer to local Realtors to shoot images for their listings. I have no idea where this will go. The few Realtors that I’ve spoken with about the plan tell me it’s an excellent idea and from my own extensive research, it’s a market that could really use a serious level of professionalism (photographically speaking).

For a number of reasons I’ve spent a lot of time on various real estate sites and I’m appalled, there’s no other word for it, at the mediocre or non-existent images that some Realtors have connected to their listings. To me, this is crazy. Especially in a market which, nationally, is getting tougher and tougher, to not spend a minimal amount of money to image your listing professionally is reckless.

Here’s one comparison. Go to eBay. Check out some of the listings for, well, most anything. You’ll find the majority of items, especially higher ticket items have at least some images attached to them and many of the auctions have a complete set of very nice images to help sell the item. Yet, when some Realtors list a home, selling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, there’s maybe one or a handfull of bad images. Yes, there are exceptions. But they are very few.

Don’t believe me?

Visit www.realtor.com and plug-in your local zip code and see how many are “showcased” with multiple images and see how many have one image and how many, most of them, have none at all.

Then, visit this gallery. It’s a collection of work I’ve done for WeeBee Audio/Video. I think that bringing this type of imagery to home sales is going to make any potential buyer or seller more interested in the listings.

If you’re a Realtor, drop me a line, let’s talk about how I can make your homes more appealing.

August 23, 2007 | Filed Under company news, marketing thoughts | Leave a Comment 

It’s mostly simple

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The most frequent advertising question I hear is, “what should I be doing?”

My answer, almost every time is, “something.”

Rather than digress into what venue for promotion works the best, gets the best ROI or trying to measure marketing investments by some other metric, I think the first thing to do is cover the basics. Generally speaking, this is also the least expensive and most cost effective way to build your business.

Do you have a mailing list? Do you contact your list on a regular basis? If you do, when you do send something to your list, is it important? Compelling? Interesting?

Are you using the net? Do you advertise there? What about your web site? Is it up to date? Do you regularly update it? Does it accurately reflect your business? generally speaking, net marketing can be some of the most effective and most overlooked out there, still, in 2007. Ten years ago ignoring the net was just not being a leader, now, it’s clearly putting you behind most everyone else.

Because of the type of market that Lancaster is sales and service follow-ups are also critical. You need to absolutely capitalize on everyone contact with a customer and use that contact firmly establish that your business is the unquestioned go-to source for whatever it is you do and there is no better time than when you are actually in the process of conducting business. Do you send out “thank you” cards to customers? Do you check back with established customers to tell them about new products and services? What about long term follow-up? Executing tasks like these will not only make your customer feel special (beause they are) but it will firmly esconce you in their minds in a postive manner. It leads to referrals and additional sales.

So before you take advantage of some exciting new promotional opportunity in one of the more traditional media, make sure you’re doing all these basic things perfectly. Then look to expand further with investing inother advertising.

May 18, 2007 | Filed Under marketing thoughts | Leave a Comment 

Adapt or die

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I had an interesting conversation this morning. While discussing how client’s competitor was on the verge of filing chapter 11 we got around to one of their vendors being delisted from NASDAQ. In this case, a vendor whose business model has not changed while the market has changed, significantly, around them. And rest assured, this didn’t take Nostradamus to see. Their sales have been down every quarter since 2002 yet to look at their product line you would think it was 1995.

Businesses, especially entrepreneurial and small businesses love to say that success is reason enough. And while that’s true, it’s an exceptionally narrow view. It’s an unchanging one. It’s not a view that encourages introspection and thought.

No one owes you a successful business model. You have to be constantly re-evaluating the market and changing with it. As I said, adapt or die. The music industry is perhaps one of the most vivid examples of this. A once thriving and profitible industry, as a whole, is now mostly irrelevant because rather than change with the market, they tried, as most businesses do, to reshape the trends to benefit them. And we know how that is turning out.

Sure, there are exceptions but very few. Much more prevelant are the examples of those who the business version of Darwin wasn’t so kind to. The buggy whip makers, the town gas distributors and the like. Keep your eyes open. Listen to your customers and change with the market.

There’s another bunch of new photos up at the Flickr Gallery. Some racing stuff, some dandelions and some vintage material as well.

May 11, 2007 | Filed Under marketing thoughts, new in the Flickr Gallery | Leave a Comment