What do consumers want?

They want an experience. They want customization. They want to be happy.

People tend to spend more when they're happy. Customizing and making things more of an experience will make customers happy. 

Offer a lady a glass (or 3) of wine while she's getting her hair done and she'll hang out longer. Have a 'man cave' in large department stores that men/women (I don't judge.) can escape to while holding their wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend's bag as they try on their 13th outfit or pair of shoes. Daycare in the mall/department store (!!!!!) would be super useful for parents who have to get that shopping done, but can't get any help.

Any of the above would make my personal experience better. I would definitely spend more to do business with these companies.
 

Inventions ahead of their time...

**My random thoughts on what they were, why they didn't work (yet) & what their successor ended up being...

Did you know the vending machine was actually invented in the 1st century? Yep. It was originally invented to dispense holy water in exchange for a coin. Hmmm... Wonder why that didn't work out... It was another 2000 years before the vending machines we all know and love for our sweet & salty fixes was reintroduced. I guess there wasn't much of a market back then.

How about Ask Jeeves? Does anyone else remember that site or am I just showing my age now? Ask Jeeves was the bomb.com when it came out, but technology wasn't ready for it. Think of it as a pre-Google.

Handheld gaming. Did anyone else have the Electronic Quarterback by Coleco? My step-brother & I used to fight over that game constantly! Again, not a huge market yet. Parents weren't fans of these little distractions yet. Hell, the Nintendo Gameboy didn't release for another 12 years after this. We all know how that worked out. 

If you're interested, there's tons of things like this...

Parachutes
Picture phones (FaceTime, Skype)
Apple Newton (iPad) 
WebTv (Smart TV's)

 


 

Maximizing or Missing Marketing Opportunities - Your opinion versus mine.

This week I'm going to write a response to one of our classmates. Their stance was that UAB Football missed out on a marketing opportunity by letting people into the UAB House Party to see Sam Hunt perform for free. They felt that people should have been required to purchase a season ticket or at least regular game ticket in order to attend this show to financially support the UAB football program.

Some things to keep in mind, not all Sam Hunt fans are UAB fans or even football fans, and on the flip side, not all UAB fans are Sam Hunt fans.

 I see this as a maximizing opportunity for both the football program and for Sam Hunt. By allowing "outsiders" into this show with no purchase necessary, they introduced a lot of football fans to a new (to them) performer & a lot of country music fans to a damn good football team. Those country fans could not like football (unlikely) or be Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, etc fans who would've never went to a UAB event otherwise, but have now been introduced to a new team. A new LOCAL team. A team they can go see regularly, who's tickets aren't outrageous. That can introduce so much more income for the program; letting people decide they want to spend their money there vs. forcing them to do so. On the other side of things, Sam Hunt earned himself a lot of fans through this, I'm sure. People who had never listened to his music before, but happened to hear him at this event or people who heard of his support in doing this show at no charge are now downloading his songs, looking into future concerts, etc.

'Forcing' people to spend money isn't always the best way to market. The way I look at it, the UAB Football program and Sam Hunt probably made a lot more off of not charging for that show.

Were things really better in the 90's?

Ok, let's discuss the differences in marketing in the 90's vs 20XX's, for they are plentiful.

What I found to be the most eye opening, but also the most obvious was the different ways that technology affected the types of marketing needed. In the 90's the sellers had the advantage when in came to accessible information. They shared exactly what they wanted you to know, what they 'knew' would sell their product/service to you. With the turn of the century, technology took that away and with the help of the World Wide Web, put that information at our fingertips. We have to work harder & smarter in our marketing.

The cost of a web page... in 1995? $50,000!!! I created my own for nothing, but even to have a pro do the work, you can get a basic site for less than $2,000.

Visuals... have you seen the differences? The ads in the 90's were mostly family based, but only same race, nuclear families. Today, there are single parent families, mixed race families, same sex families; the difference in acceptance is staggering.

This blog is everywhere. I have no explanation. I couldn't get my thoughts to flow this week. It is a holiday weekend, perhaps that's it. My brain is on vacation. We'll be back on point next week. I'm sure of it.