myRetailer.ca

Outsmart competition by borrowing ideas from other industries

Flickr - waloshin2008

Sometimes the best way to outsmart your competitors is to completely reinvent your business. This is often done by taking ideas from outside your industry and applying it to your business.

This is what Rick Krieger and his partners Douglas Smith, M.D., Steve Pontius and Kevin Smith, RN, FNP did when they founded a company called QuickMedx (later renamed Minute Clinic in Minneapolis in May 2000). As the story goes, Krieger brought his son to the emergency room one  night to get a strep throat test. After waiting for two hours to see a doctor, he thought there had to be a better, more efficient and convenient way to receive treatment. From there, along with his partners, he founded, what was eventually renamed Minute Clinic.

Minute Clinic essentially uses sound retail concepts and applies them to health care services. The clinics are small kiosks, located inside other retail establishments and is staffed with a nurse practitioner and/or physician assistant who are licensed to diagnose and treat common illnesses, minor injuries and skin conditions. By taking a retail approach and providing convenience, efficiency and customer service at low cost, Minute Clinic revolutionized one small segment of the health care industry. (more…)

What I’ve learned from Verne Harnish – Business is a series of sprints.

In his teachings, Verne Harnish talks about how businesses and business leaders run their companies in a series of sprints. Businesses grow in bursts. This is important for anyone business owner to realize and keep in mind. Successful companies go through hard pushes and high growth, then they’ll tend to relax a bit, before pushing hard again. This is the natural way for leaders to lead and business teams to operate.

Anyone that I’ve met who has tried to run their business in one long marathon (lasting months or even years) has either ended up hitting a plateau and stopped growing, or the owner/leader became burnt out and the company lost ground as a result.

The most successful companies will rally the troops for concentrated periods of time and accomplish great advancements. Then they take a breather review what they have done prior to taking on a new challenge and opportunity.

This is important to realize and remember as a business owner. You cannot run your company like a marathon. It is not healthy for you, it is not healthy for your staff and it is not healthy for your company. Tackle your business in a series of sprints and you’ll grow faster and become more successful as a result.

How can you leverage ‘FREE’ to gain customers and grow business?

I recently read Free – The Future of a Radical Price, a fascinating book by Chris Anderson that really got me thinking. In his book, Anderson goes into great detail about how certain businesses, especially in today’s digital age, have built entire businesses models based on a single price – $0. Think of companies like Google and Facebook, or even free iPhone apps and free ebooks, what do they all have in common? They give away their core product for free.

If you consider an author or consultant, they may give away free partial or full ebooks on their site (as I do on Retailer’s Roadmap to Success), in efforts to gain more readers who will become familiar with their work, in hopes that they will turn into paying customers by purchasing an upgrade, the full book, or perhaps a speaking engagement at some point in the future. (more…)

The Yays and Nays for Marketing a Small Business

Yes, Maybe or No? via Flickr from ‾olǝƃuɐ‾

Marketing is not what it used to be. What used to be all about newspaper, radio and TV advertising, is now all about internet, social media and direct mail marketing.

When you look at your own business, have you changed your marketing strategy in the past five years, or are you still trying to do the same old thing and achieve new results? In my opinion, here are a few Yays and Nays to consider:

Marketing Nays

• Newspaper – news print readership is on the decline, yet advertising is still expensive.
• Radio – with so many stations diluting the market, it no longer has impact.
• TV – very expensive and too much dilution.
• Yellow Pages – (unless yellow pages online) usage of traditional yellow pages has plummeted in recent years, replace with assorted online websites. Carrying ads on their site is also more expensive then other mediums
• Twitter – I haven’t been able to prove the  ROI / economic value to my businesses using Twitter, yet. It can be a time suck, and reach a different market then I’m intending. But, I remain optimistic and continue testing.

Marketing Yays

• Websites – make your website easy to find, informative, up to date and relevant.
• Staff Blogs – builds an online community and encourages people to visit your website regularly.
• Facebook – setup a fan page to help build an online community and to become a part of their online community. It doesn’t take a lot of time, and its an additional place to be found and push out your promotions
• Facebook Ads – a very effective marketing tool that enables you to narrow in on a very small and specific niche in the market place. They’re also less expensive then you think
• Google Adwords – a very effective advertising tool to get in front of people searching for something that you’re hopefully selling. If you know what you’re doing, this can be very effective. There’s lots of help available in this field if you want to outsource.
• YouTube Segments – this can be a very effective tool for providing informative content to your customers, and using a flipcam, video can be fun and easy to create.
• Email Campaigns – not as effective as they once were, as long as you have permission, you keep them relevant and you don’t abuse the privilege, it is still a very useful tool.  When looking at pushing out promotions, email is still king.
• TV Listing Channel Ads – if you must do TV, then do the TV listings channel. It is more reasonably priced and you’ll get more bang for the buck.
• Direct Mail – whether it is via email or snail mail, direct marketing to your customers works every time.  It may be time consuming, but know that the response rate on Direct is the highest of all channels.

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Children May be the Key Consumer Influencers To Business Success

Win over children and you can win over the biggest influencers of all time (anyone who has kids, knows exactly what I mean).

Roy Prevost, in his book entitled Turbocharge Your Retail Business, tells about a story of a small business retailer who has things figured out.

It has to do with a pharmacist who runs his own store. He has a fool proof way of gaining influence into many of his customer’s households, he gains the influence of the children. He has become somewhat of a legend in his hometown. He goes onto explain that he has a simple strategy that any retailer can do.

A pharmacist explains:

“Whenever a parent and a young (five years or younger) child enters the store, I approach them, and with the parent’s approval, I crouch down beside the child and ask in a very gentle way: ‘Hi, My name is Bill… what’s your name?”

“The child, shy or not, will say his or her name. (for the purpose of this story, let’s say it’s ‘Stephanie’)

“I then say, ‘Stephanie, do you know what day it is today?”

“Stephanie will then usually shyly say, ‘I don’t know!”

“Then I will say, ‘This is your special day! Come with me…”

“Then I take the child by the hand and walk them over to a candy display that I specifically put together for that purpose, and hand the child a mini pack of Smarties. Then I say, “This is for you because it’s your Special Day. And remember, my name is Mister Smartie!”

Does this strategy work? You bet!

Will that child ask his or her mother to go back and visit Mister Smartie? I guarantee it!

The strategy is so simple, it make you wonder why more retailers don’t do the same thing, or something similar.

Children are one of the biggest influencers in any household. Why not get them on your side?