Lucky means “occurring by chance” according to Google. Essentially, the less likely for an incident to occur, the luckier (or unlucky depending on the outcome) you are.
In poker, you are considered extremely lucky to hit your “one-outer” on the river. The chance of that happening is about 2%.
I saw a post on Facebook the other day that someone was told that he was 99% unlucky. Now Facebook has about 350 million users worldwide today. Assuming that you think Facebook is a good thing (because you choose to use it) and my math is correct, you are among the top 5% in the world (6 billion population) blessed with that privilege.
Combine that with health, water, food, shelter, and numerous other things that we often take for granted, just how much luckier can we get?
The truth is that not every business is going to turn out like Apple or Google or Zappos. Most of the time, we are just like everyone else.
So if you run an average business, sell an average product, or have an average website, the very least you should do is to make it a little above average.
In this day and age, businesses who can figure out ways to deliver the least expensive products/services to customers in the shortest amount time, with the best customer service, wins.
That’s the reason why newspapers are failing: they can’t beat free, take an extremely long time to publish (by online standards), and basically offer no customer service.
Just because you are working hard, it doesn’t mean that your customers should care or be willing to pay you, not when there are far superior choices available.
Whatever message that you are trying to convey with your marketing campaign, you are probably hoping that it would somehow catch your audiences’ attention. And if you repeat the process enough times, you are hoping that people would then spread the words on your campaign and eventually remember and choose your brand at the time of their purchase.
I believe you should aim higher though — above everything else, you should seek to be missed by your audience, as that is the true mark of a great brand. Example? If Apple announces that they would stop making new products today, millions of Apple fans would be crushed.
So next time you decide to launch a product or run a marketing campaign, perhaps you should have this question in the back of your mind: Will it help me to be missed by my customers?
If you own a little shop in a big mall, and for some reason, the mall directory keep sending random people to your store, would you ask the people who make the directory to pay you?
Of course not! You should pay them, or at the very least, thank them.
It wouldn’t make any difference even if 90% of the traffic are unqualified buyers for your products, would it?
According to MarketingVox.com, this marks the 14th straight quarter of total revenue declines for the newspaper industry, while online revenue has fallen for six quarters straight. Online newspaper advertising revenue dropped by 17% in Q309, while total newspaper revenue shows a 28% decline. Classifieds plunged 64.7%, while real estate and auto both saw 43% declines.
All in all, things are not looking very pleasant for the newspaper industry. Of course, they are still searching for the answer to transform business models to position themselves as top players in a “multiplatform media universe”.
The thing to pay attention in this case, though, is that when the whole industry is in such bad shape, it probably means that your past proven methods are no longer working. Obviously, you are not being beaten by your direct competitors.
Secondly, you should realize whatever improvements or modifications that you are looking to make on your past proven methods will probably fail you. Instead, it is time for you to completely blowup your current business model and start a brand new one. Think invent, rather than re-invent.
Sometimes it’s inevitable for the once highly touted technologies to fade. The question is, how would your business/industry deal with the painful road of the continuous revenue decline which appears to be both hopeless and endless?
Michael Jackson might be worth more dead than alive.
The King of Pop — arguably the most influential figure in Pop music history — who lived a life full of amazing accomplishments and controversies, is worth more dead, than alive.
What a sad statement to make.
Relatives, friends, and anyone and everyone who had the slightest relationship with him are popping up everywhere, trying to claim to their piece of the pie, all after the death of the pop star. The irony here, of course, is that had they shown this kind of interest and care 2 years ago, their share of the pie would’ve been a lot bigger.
It’s a shame that we sometimes let death be the only sign of us losing something precious.
Go ahead, start today, treat someone as if they have just died. Don’t be afraid to show that you care. My bet is that it’s much more fun to visit their houses instead of their funerals.
Now before you get all sensitive about your privacy, take a minute and think about this: we don’t have any problems handing out credit cards at gas stations, business cards at trade shows, or drivers licenses at motels, all to complete strangers who if they wanted, could use the information to their benefit.
What makes disclosing our information online so different?
No, I don’t mean that every website should have access to our private information, and I understand perfectly that one of the most unique aspects of the Web is its anonymity. But for anyone who wants to run online businesses, review products, or provide local services, doesn’t it makes sense to ensure their customers that at the very least, it’s a real person behind all the operations?
It isn’t all that difficult.
All we need is a reputable and trustworthy organization to collect and verify all of our “sensitive” personal data, and assign an unique id to us — just like a driver’s license. The infrastructures are already pretty much in place. Gmail addresses, Facebook usernames, and MSN Messenger ids could all be used as identifications. What’s missing, of course, is just the final verification and authentication process.
As a marketer or a brand, you automatically fall into the untrustworthy category. It’s not your fault. It’s the end result of numerous (online) scams that have been trying to take advantages of consumers for many many years.
Today, when consumers hear something that seems too good to be true, their first reactions usually are, “it’s probably just another scam.”
Trust has to be earned.
It takes years to overcome years of misbehavior by your peers. You need to keep delivering on your promises for as long as it takes to earn back the trust which has been lost.
Don’t expect shortcuts.
If you don’t see the success you’d like to see, it doesn’t always mean that your are not on the right track. Instead, it could very well be because you haven’t sustained your efforts long enough.
Quitting while you have a better alternative is not the same as simply giving up.
Here is an interesting video from Jason Calacanis on “how to kill Google”.
Basically, he is suggesting that the top 10 publishers in the United States should all team up and sell the right to index their content exclusively to the highest bidding searching engines. If Google refuses to join the bidding war, then there is chance for them to lose a major chunk of its users to other search engines who are willing to pay — much like what Rupert Murdoch is planning to do with News Corp.
Realistically, this probably won’t happen.
I, for one, am going to be furious if it did happen: Why should we, the consumers, lose our right to choose among search engines, just so that some greedy rich media companies who simply can’t figure out the Internet could get paid?
Along with millions of others, I have heard the “airline safety announcement” countless times. And I think I can safely say that none of us actually pays attention to what it says. Sure, sometimes the announcer makes it funny, but you hear it, laugh about it, and then forget about it completely.
So instead of repeating is obviously ineffective process over and over again, why not try something different? For example, offer to have a passenger do the announcement, and whoever can complete the entire announcement gets a free ticket for their next trip.
It takes courage to admit that what you have always done might not be working well anymore. Alas, not many businesses/people are capable of doing that.
