How would you like to look into your client’s business future before they leap into a major advertising campaign? What if you could input their product idea, marketing plan, sales presentation or service into a computer to find the success rate of the idea before investing precious time and hard earned money?
Doug Hall is the author of “Jump Start Your Business Brain” and founder and CEO of Eureka Ranch, a Cincinnati Ohio “invention & research think tank” with offices in London, UK and Monterrey, Mexico. The Ranch specializes in creating new products and services for corporate clients including American Express, Ford Motor Company, Nike, Inc. and The Walt Disney Company. Doug's technology is in the form of a marketplace simulation computer that forecasts the probability of success for your business ideas. He calls this artificial intelligence Merwyn Technology.
The technology wasn't built overnight. The research and development team at Eureka Ranch spent 6 years and $20 million to create Merwyn Technology. Through pain staking analysis, Doug has distilled an amazingly large number of variables down to the following three essentials that he says make up 75% of the information you would get from his full analysis – one that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. In order to achieve maximum results for your clients, their campaign must include the following.
Distinct benefit
Their product or service offering must have a very distinct benefit for the target. Features are not benefits. Organic is not a feature. Describe what they will feel with your product or service. For example, a concert series was promoted as “An evening with the music of Bach, Chopin and Liszt” with little success. The name was changed to “An evening of romance” and sales increased 50%. The same series improved attendance over 100% over 2 years (who says sex doesn’t sell!)
Credibility
Their product or service has twice the chance of success if it is believable. In no continent is trust in a more dismal state than in North America. For example, in the United States, government, business, and media are all distrusted by respondents (ages 25 to 64) to do what is right, even with a new administration elected to power. Trust in U.S. business—at 38% down from 58% last year—is the lowest in the Barometer’s tracking history among informed publics ages 35 to 64—even lower than in the wake of Enron and the dot-com bust. What do you have that people have a reason to believe? People have a high degree of skepticism about sales pitches so be real, tell them the truth and do what you promise.
Dramatic difference
The product or service has 3 times the chance for success if it is dramatically different. Obviously this is the most difficult thing to have but it is very important. Your product or service will die if it doesn’t offer something. If you have no difference, then you are a commodity. How low will you sell? Profitable business is not for wimps. Hard to execute should not be a deterrent. It should be an opportunity.
If the client’s product or service doesn’t meet all these requirements, figure out how they can - or they will probably fail and so will you at developing a repeating customer; you will only get a sale. Get over how difficult it is though; the low hanging fruit is all been picked.
No comments:
Post a Comment