Utilizing a free focus group

There is a local radio station in Vancouver that does something I've never heard another station do - ask their audience what they think about the music they are playing. Sure other stations have phone lines and email addresses that allow you to contact them and indicate whether you like the music they are playing, but nothing like what 102.7 The Peak does. 

Every week or two I will get an email from them (I signed up as one of their Peak VIP members) asking me to take part in their "Rate the Music" survey. I click a link and listen to 30 seconds of 25 songs that they are currently playing or thinking of playing and let them know if I've heard of the song, how it rates from 1-5 and whether or not I'm sick of hearing the song. This last question "Are you sick of hearing this song" is an important and very sneaky one for the station to employ. They love to be the station in Vancouver that plays music no one else does and the first to bring new, hip music to the masses. Their group of passionate listeners has grown large as they introduce bands like Mumford & Sons, Alt-J and Black Keys to people in Vancouver.

Now they have an even better chance of continuing to provide this service for their music loving fans thanks to their willingness to give people a chance to interact with them. All this group of fanatics wants is a chance to feel like they influence the music on the station they listen to regularly. The Peak gets the benefits of having an almost weekly focus group with their customers without having to do much other than hit the Send button on their email software.

Wake up and smell the desperation

McDonald's has made no bones about trying to take a big chunk of the coffee market away from such companies as Starbuck's and Tim Horton's. They pursue this for a good reason, the coffee market is a massive one worldwide and McDonald's already has the distribution and locations in place.

They have tried a number of different marketing tactics from the McCafe setting to advertising their coffee as being high quality for a lower price. Well they seem to have settled on the "free sampling" idea in the end. It seems like every week I am seeing a McDonald's commercial offering people the ability to try one of their coffees for free. And the period of time keeps getting longer and longer - the latest one I saw just yesterday was offering two weeks of free coffee time.

The tactic is a pretty good one, you get people to try your product because you are confident you're making a quality product. The people try your coffee, love it, and become hooked on McCafe coffee! Unfortunately now it is starting to get desperate in my eyes. What it may break down to is coffee snobs who enjoy a fresh brew to start the day, just don't trust the guy that works the fry-olator to make their morning fix. Understandable. There is a certain message that is communicated based on the type of coffee cup you show up with in the morning. Maybe McDonald's isn't matching up in that area.

But how would McDonald's go about fixing those areas? They already have tried the McCafe setting unsuccessfully, and the overhead of hiring a professional barista to work the morning shifts wouldn't make economic sense. So maybe sampling is all they have left, and is somewhat working for them. God knows they could use the revenue.

Will salesmen Always Be Closing?

I finished reading Chris Anderson's Free a few weeks back and although the book wasn't quite as great a read as I was hoping for it did the job of making my brain whirr away with thoughts and started me thinking on many spinoffs of "Free".

One of the chief thoughts that has been swirling around in my head over the last little while is "What does the future hold for salespeople?"

This thought has been percolating because as is noted in the book, there are so many sources of free information these days and this dearth of info is only getting larger and larger as the internet continues to increase in popularity and more and more people have access to it. You combine that with a younger generation that grows up online reading forums, wikis, and interacting with discussion groups and online friends and you start to see why salesperson could be an interesting occupation to watch the development of down the road. What is a salesperson possibly going to tell people that they haven't already been able to find out on their own or from someone else online?

I, in fact, am a perfect example of this. If i'm looking for something specifically the first thing I will do is go online to try to find it. I'll check out specs, prices, and shop around. One such purchase I made recently was a portable sound dock for an ipod player. I search Future Shop, Best Buy, and London Drugs' websites comparing prices and features, reading the odd review that I could find on products that matched my needs. Once I had finished this part of the purchase cycle, I merely walked into the store, grabbed the product and marched up to the counter. In and out in 2 minutes.

But electronic retail stores aren't the only example of a possible death of the salesman. On the evening news last night they ran a story on how more and more people are using online stock trading tools to do their trading for them instead of using a stock broker. Will this effect the industry? I should think so. Granted stock traders provide a lot more value than people probably give them credit for as they research deep into potential companies to invest in, talk to the owners, and provide personalized recommendations to match your investing style. But more and more people are going to be doing their own research and using eTrade or another online brokerage to make their trades. Some people may not have much luck using this method and therefore end up back in the arms of an awaiting broker, but those that do have success could greatly influence the movement of the stock market as opposed to the traditional powers of brokerages to provide upward and downward momentum on specific stocks based on what they put their word/clients into. Somewhere down the road instead of seeing "Cannacord Capital forecasts targets of $30.00 per share for so and so corp" you may see "Facebook member ChunkyMonkey53 forecasts an increase of $1 per share by the end of the year according to their status update".

At the same time, if you've ever been on the BullBoards on Stockhouse you will realize how much crap there is out there and how it can be tough to trust the majority of information you read on some of these sites. Hence the role of a broker to de-crapify this information and make sure you get the appropriate facts you need.

Recently I even purchased a pre-sale condominium and to be honest, aside from writing up the contract, I'm not sure what the salesperson did to sell me. I found out all the information online, I looked through their display suite on my own, I talked to the bank on my own. So how much value are they really providing to be getting a major cut of the money that the company is getting off me.

Well now that this is seemingly spinning into a rant i'll close off here. My brother is a salesperson, and i've been a salesperson in the past, but I don't know if I would encourage my children to get into the profession in the future. It could be one of those things a few generations down the road that our great grandchildren miss out on, just like stamps, home phones, and paperback books.

My 2 cents on Free

There is a large discussion going on in the marketing world these days about Chris Anderson's new book Free - The Future of a Radical Price. Now, I haven't read the book yet but you can basically get a sense of what it is about by reading some of the reviews/postings about it (they are all available on this squidoo page). Some of the biggest names out there have chimed in including Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, and Mitch Joel. This clearly is a topic of great interest/debate.

From what i've read so far, the book is about the idea/marketing of Free as opposed to charging for something. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a review that didn't take Chris' side and has sparked Godin, Joel and others to come out on Anderson's side. These blogs actually provide some fascinating reading and some very interesting points of view regarding how the digital landscape is taking the world towards getting most anything "Free".

In my mind the process of moving towards a Free world is essentially already happening as we speak. More and more companies are making things available to their consumers without charge, and many of them are finding this as a great way to build brand loyalty, cross-sell, and up-sell. Now, they aren't giving away everything for free but they are providing value to their consumers without charging for it. Maybe Coca-cola has a water park set up for a weekend for children to enjoy free of charge or as discussed in the book Amazon gives away Free shipping for purchases over a certain amount. Free is being leveraged everywhere and is a great way for your company to keep your customers engaged and satisfied. Mitch Joel and Seth Godin are giving away their marketing/digital/management opinions for free on their blogs, would any company have given away their intelletual property 50 years ago? 25 years ago? 10 years ago? The digital landscape and the transfer of information as a result have changed business dramatically and your company had better be willing to adapt and take advantage of this new world. Otherwise your competitors will snag your customers for Free.

Google makes my life easier

Maybe thats why their stock is completely overpriced?

Last week I talked about how Google sent me this great offer that made me feel like an important part of their monstrous engine. I blogged about it. This week I had the follow up call with a competent, nice, helpful optimization strategist to further discuss their offer. Here's what she told me the offer is:
- They will come up with an optimized adwords campaign for our main line of business
- 3 different text ads and the keywords that go along with each ad
- Using a qualified adwords strategy team that will work personally to help improve the value of our adwords
- Will return the proposal with the completed campaign in 5 working days

oh, and did I forget to mention that this is all.....FREE. All my company has to do is promise to use their proposed ads for a month since they will be putting their time into it.

Yeah, as in doesn't cost my company a dime, and hopefully will help return a greater ROI with the current money we are spending on adwords.

She was basically daring me to say no. How can you possibly turn that down.

I'm getting Google's search expertice, their knowledge in adwords, and a finished marketing campaign for $0. If I didn't know they had more money than God himself, I would feel sorry for them.

But it just goes to show you how well Google knows how to play the game. I can't even imagine the number of companies that use Adwords as a main source of their marketing, so when they are offered a way to use this chunk of their marketing budget more effectively they might just be a little excited. Hmm maybe that will lead to some goodwill towards Google, a blog entry, a mention to a colleague in passing. Well played Google, i'm thoroughly impressed.

When you add that to the list of other things that Google does for me for free (Analytics, maps, etc.) it makes one wonder: Why Bing! when you can Google?