Mystery of pricing exposed. How much would you pay to look smarter?
By Karen Post, on January 10, 2011
And what would you pay to live 5 more years? These questions and the answers are priceless, especially in business.
When you think of PRICE what do you think of? Shopping? How much money you’ll have to spend to get something you want? The cost of an iPad, new shoes or a dress?
That’s certainly one form of PRICE but it’s actually so much more.
The video below is not only super cool, but it highlights a compelling pricing twist in consumer minds…
What about The Price of friends? The Price of fame? The Price of Free? Or even The Price of the Future?
Turns out price plays quite a role in daily human choices, but it’s often a radially different cost process than you’d think.
I recently I learned about a new book by NY Times editorial board member, Eduardo Porter, called The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do, and found it very intriguing.
The premise is very simple: there is a price behind each call that we make, whether we’re deciding to have a baby, drive a car, or buy a book. We often fail to appreciate just how critical prices are as motivating forces shaping our lives. But their power becomes clear when distorted prices steer our decisions the wrong way.
This book is an eye-opener that will make you think. It also will expose you to some realities about PRICE that could shift your perspective in surprising ways.
This book is definitely a recommended read. And if you are interested in winning a free copy of this book, click here (you’ll need to sign up by the 11th) or download a free excerpt.
At this very moment you are putting a price on knowledge by clicking through or blowing it off. What are your thoughts about PRICE and why we pay what we do?
For more on pricing, view: Coupons, Groupon and gambling with a brand.
How to translate an hour of VH1 into potent research
By Karen Post, on September 25, 2010
Launched in 1985, VH1 hoped to mirror the success of MTV, but to an older audience. Through the years it’s jumped around with playing volumes of music videos to producing a wave of reality TV shows, some great, some worse than awful.
My love for music has kept me loyal to this brand. Since 1999, I’ve been big fan of The Top 20 Countdown show which runs on Saturdays and Sundays at 9AM eastern time and maybe once during the week too. If you or your company markets and sells to any one in the 24-40 year age segment watching this show is a must in your weekly consumer research routine.
Here’s just a few insights I picked up today.
- Pop culture trends
- Fashion week in NY high lights
- Concept metaphors
- Art direction ideas for broadcast (video) and print (CD covers)
Click here to see Bruno Mars ” Just the way you are”
- Strategies other big advertisers are using in their TV ads that run during the show (StateFarm, Burger King, Tide and YP.com)
- Sex still sells and so does pain
- Slang – RT (artistic), Collabo (collaboration)
- Seeing superstars like Adam Lambert and Chris Daughtry who took great risks and worked relentlessly to achieve their dreams. Both finalists in American Idol.
- Nobody is too old to be understand and create great marketing. Seeing Clive Davis the legendary music mogul, who is much older than me, still getting the music scene is encouraging as even the best marketing minds get older
Music is part of life. If you are not spending some time in the music space every week, you’re likely missing some very important beats in building your business and brand.
Measure your carbon footprint and make your business more marketable
By Karen Post, on June 29, 2010
What makes your business different from others offering the same services? If you can’t answer that question than what are you doing? New business owners need to clearly and quickly point out what is so special about the way they are doing business. If you don’t know, your customers sure the heck aren’t gonna know — which means they aren’t spending money with you.
We are in the age of going green. Any company worth their salt is considering their impact on the triple bottom line and consumers are demanding more environmentally sustainable practices and products. Check out what FedEx did to get ahead of the curve in sustainability practices.
You small business owners and entrepreneurs might be thinking “I am too small to worry about footprints and sustainability”. Wrong! Think about it. If your small business is running a green practice, no matter how small, that is something you can use to differentiate yourself on your websites, in your blogs, everywhere. Also, isn’t when your practice is small the BEST time to ensure you’re building a green practice? Isn’t it much harder and more expensive when you have grown to be a large operation? That’s what we thought. So here is a free tool from Carbon Trust to help you get it together.
Carbon Trust recently released a free guide to help you determine your carbon footprint. The guide shares how to perform two different kinds of eco-footprinting. The first helps businesses determine the carbon footprint of a particular product’s life cycle. The second helps businesses determine the footprint of the whole organization. The guide gives clear, step-by-step instructions for calculating these footprints. You will need to register (for free) with Carbon Trust, and the end of the guide is devoted to outlining the ways Carbon Trust can help your business.
Capture Quick Company Facts in a Pinch with Dataopedia
By Karen Post, on April 29, 2010
It’s Monday night and you just got word that a prospect you’ve been following for months suddenly wants to meet on Tuesday morning to discuss your proposal. You have less than 12 hours to learn all about their website and the company. What do you do?
Check out Dataopedia, a free tool that provides fast facts on company websites. This online service can be used as a research and performance measure tool if you want to get a preview of a company or track a particular website. Just type in a domain name and it will pull up a short bio of the website – when it was launched, its worldwide ranking, how fast it loads, traffic statistics, etc.
Dataopedia also provides a short company bio, the executive management team, and any employment availabilities. The data can be accessed not only through the website, but also on your mobile device and using embed-able widgets.
For more information, visit Dataopedia.
Reaching the single largest economy – women buyers
By Karen Post, on February 6, 2010
It’s no understatement to say women rule. They make up over 85% of the driving force behind the largest consumer purchases. Yep, they are a $5 trillion dollar buying machine. So what’s the best way to connect these powerful femmes?
Like I reported earlier, I’m in Memphis addressing a group of healthcare executives and here’s what I told them. Women process information significantly differently than men. Make sure you are speaking their language and that you are relevant to their worlds.
9 ways to connect your brand to women buyers.
1) Connect the benefits to their needs (What’s in it for me?)
2) Be likeable from the get go. Marketing begins at the first touch point.
3) Gratitude is very important. Thank yous earn big loyalty points.
4) Understand the sales cycle with women is slower. Many times, 6-8 conversations are needed before they act.
5) Women buy with their heads and hearts. Use emotional messaging.
6) Justification is part of most buying processes. Spotlight a multitude of reasons why they need your offering.
7) Details add richness and value. Easy comparison methods also further justification. Give a woman a reason to rationalize her purchase and she won’t think twice about buying it.
Women respond to convenience. Save them time. Make it hassle free. And women want to know you care, about them and others. Women will pay 20% more if they feel like their choice will help the community, the world and others.
9) Keep your pulse on popular women’s Web communities like: cafemom.com, Dove.com, capessa.com, ivillage.com, wowowow.com, and shespeaks.com.
Can you share any other marketing to women insight?
Do you have any favorite campaigns that you believe get it right?
Need a global industry reports?
By Karen Post, on December 21, 2009
www.free-research.com has over 3902 industry reports on 27 diverse sectors. This site based in the UK and focuses on non-US studies. You can search by industry, country, company and associations.
Cost: Zero
Oddpodz review: This site is easy to navigate, requires registration and also offers fee-based research reports. I downloaded several industry studies related to a client am writing a marketing a plan for. I found them credible and helpful and they fit in my budget, too.
Need a fast FREE, opinion group?
By Karen Post, on August 30, 2009
Ask500People.com is brought to you by Wondermill. Here you will find tools to survey groups of people quickly. Questions can be answered by image choice, scale of agreement, YES or NO or with an open word or reply. Ask500People touts a FREE survey for businesses. I signed up and, yes, it was FREE and fast. However, the pool size was 5 votes on question, hardly enough to provide me any valuable insight.
Cost: Zero
Oddpodz review: Nice site, nice idea, easy interface and pricing reasonable ranging from 50 people for $29.00 to 1,000 people for $374.00 to conduct a survey. Did I find there FREE offer rewarding? Nada.
FREE research tools to get the skinny, the stats and the scoop
By Karen Post, on June 17, 2009
Throughout my 25 years in business, one of the most important weapons I’ve used to win business or to solve a problem is information I’ve dug up via research. This info includes: industry stats, info on a company’s background or market opinions. When you have big budget you can find lots of valuable sources to get the good stuff. But what do you do if your budget runs dry?
Quick backgrounders on a company.
FREE 7 day trial, easy access to company profiles.
Goliath is The Gale Group, a part of Cengage Learning’s online-business content service, providing global company and industry intelligence to business executives. They provide online access to millions of records including business articles, industry reports, company profiles and executive contacts pulled from business data resources. While they offer comprehensive paid reports and intelligence in a variety of categories, if you need a fast snapshot of a company, their executives, revenues etc. you can sign up for a FREE 7 day trial.
Cost: Zero
Oddpodz review: I was recently pitching a client and needed some background info. This is an old guard firm that did not even have a Web site. Within 5 minutes, I had company’s history, contacts & officers, comparable companies, product & brands, company financials, divisions & subsidiaries and business rankings. A credit card is needed to sign up, however, canceling a subscription was easy and fast. It provided useful and timely information.
Website Archives
By Karen Post, on April 22, 2009
Wayback Machine
You want to find any information that you have read on a website years ago but which seem to have been removed from this website? Use the Wayback Machine which archives websites pages and saves them.
Where do I find an airplane window?
By Karen Post, on March 26, 2009
ChaCha is like having a smart friend you can call or text for answers on your cell phone anytime for free. ChaCha works with virtually every provider and allows people with any mobile phone device – from basic flip phones to advanced smart phones – to ask any question in conversational English and receive an accurate answer as a text message in just a few minutes.
What’s your question?
Simply text your question to 242242 (spells ‘ChaCha’) or call 1-800-2ChaCha (800-224-2242) from your mobile phone to ask any question.
Cost: Zero
Oddpodz review: This innovative service gets the bright light. Well done, easy Web site and got to love the name.
