John Singh

Are you a hunter or a farmer?

Hunters and Farmers

Seth has inspired me again today with his insight; thank you Seth Godin for your wisdom.

10,000 years ago, civilization forked. Farming was invented and the way many people spent their time was changed forever.

Clearly, farming is a very different activity from hunting. Farmers spend time sweating the details, worrying about the weather, making smart choices about seeds and breeding and working hard to avoid a bad crop. Hunters, on the other hand, have long periods of distracted noticing interrupted by brief moments of frenzied panic.

It's not crazy to imagine that some people are better at one activity than another. There might even be a gulf between people who are good at each of the two skills. Thom Hartmann has written extensively on this. He points out that medicating kids who might be better at hunting so that they can sit quietly in a school designed to teach farming doesn't make a lot of sense. 

A kid who has innate hunting skills is easily distracted, because noticing small movements in the brush is exactly what you'd need to do if you were hunting. Scan and scan and pounce. That same kid is able to drop everything and focus like a laser--for a while--if it's urgent. The farming kid, on the other hand, is particularly good at tilling the fields of endless homework problems, each a bit like the other. Just don't ask him to change gears instantly.

Marketers confuse the two groups. Are you selling a product that helps farmers... and hoping that hunters will buy it? How do you expect that people will discover your product, or believe that it will help them? The woman who reads each issue of Vogue, hurrying through the pages then clicking over to Zappos to overnight order the latest styles--she's hunting. Contrast this to the CTO who spends six months issuing RFPs to buy a PBX that was last updated three years ago... she's farming.

Both groups are worthy, both groups are profitable. But each group is very different from the other, and I think we need to consider teaching, hiring and marketing to these groups in completely different ways. I'm not sure if there's a genetic component or if this is merely a convenient grouping of people's personas. All I know is that it often explains a lot about behavior (including mine).

Some ways to think about this:

• George Clooney (in  Up in the Air) and James Bond are both fictional hunters. Give them a desk job and they freak out.
• Farmers don't dislike technology. They dislike failure. Technology that works is a boon.
• Hunters are in sync with Google, a hunting site, farmers like Facebook.
• When you promote a first-rate hunting salesperson to internal sales management, be prepared for failure.
• Farmers prefer productive meetings, hunters want to simply try stuff and see what happens.
• Warren Buffet is a farmer. So is Bill Gates. Richard Branson is a hunter.
• Hunters want a high-stakes mission, farmers want to avoid epic failure.
• Trade shows are designed to entrance hunters, yet all too often, the booths are staffed with farmers.
• The last hundred years of our economy favored smart farmers. It seems as though the next hundred are going to belong to the persistent hunters able to stick with it for the long haul.
• A hunter will often buy something merely because it is difficult to acquire.
• One of the paradoxes of venture capital is that it takes a hunter to get the investment and a farmer to patiently make the business work.
• A farmer often relies on other farmers in her peer group to be sure a purchase is riskless.

Who are you hiring? Competing against? Teaching? Living with?

Regards,
John Singh 

Do you offer Loyalty Card ?

I was ordering my daily dose of iced mocha at the much celebrated Lint cafe next to our office in Martin Place Sydney when the waiter serving asked me if I had a loyalty card. He mentioned that he sees me visit their cafe religiously every morning before work and he was surprised that I didn’t yet have a loyalty card which would entitled me to a free macarons (a biscuit) after every 5 cups of coffee. I thought about it for a second and I realised something....

I realised that I was visiting the Lint cafe daily because their products were remarkable; simply the best in the chocolate cafe industry and my daily dose was giving me the perfect start to my day. I didn’t need a loyalty card to keep coming back to their store. I tried to explain my theory to the waiter that only average cafes need loyalty Cards which is used as bait to try and have repeat business from their customers; remarkable businesses use the quality of their products and services as bait and hence don’t need to participate in cheap marketing schemes like loyalty cards. The waiter offcourse was speechless and I’m sure he would have thought about it when I had left.

Remarkable businesses don’t need cheap strategies such as ‘Loyalty Cards’ to have repeat customers, the customers choose to be loyal because they offer remarkable product, service and experience. The fact that they are remarkable makes people come back over and over again and they go and tell their friends who also get addicted to the experience and tell their friends and the success of the business spreads like a virus, I call this the remarkable virus and in my 10 years experience in studying successful businesses, this is the common DNA that all successful business share; they are simply remarkable.

The same is true for online businesses. Successful online businesses know their business is not for everyone but it is for someone. The most successful online businesses very brilliantly bring together a community of people with shared interest and give them something that they want; they don’t try and be all things to everyone. Deals Direct did it well by gathering a community of bargain hunters when they were only trading on ebay and switched that community to their ecommerce shop and continued to grow by providing discounted products to their community, who spread their word to other likeminded people and their community grew big enough to make deals direct one of the most successful ecommerce businesses in Australia. Zazz did the same thing, they were remarkable because they had a unique business model (just 1 product offered at a heavily discounted price per day) and they very successfully gathered a community who because raving fans and spread the word of Zazz and made them successful. Facebook is another perfect example of this and so is Gumtree or UniqueCarSales.

The secret to success offline or online today is simple but not necessarily easy:

Step 1:  Don’t try to be all things to everybody but rather be remarkable to somebody. Only focus on what you can do best and be the best at that.

Step 2: Gather a community around your product and service. If your product or service is remarkable, people will find you and they will get addicted to you and they will talk to their friends about you who will also find you and get addicted to you and your business will grow like a virus.

Step 3: Repeat.

Talk to Macquarie IT today and ask us how your business can become remarkable, I am certain it has the potential to be a lot better than what it is night now. All that is missing is your initiative and our partnership.

Kind Regards
John Singh.

30 Ways to grow your business - No room for excuses now.

Today I want to show you a great way to highlight some instant ways for you to bring in more customers and grow your business.

The following are 30 questions that will immediately pinpoint where your business is doing well – and where you can take action that will produce rapid results.

These are the questions that I ask my clients – and my experience has been that if you are willing to spend a few minutes giving them serious thought – the results can be quite profound.

You should be aware that each question you answer ‘no’ to probably means that you are losing out on untapped profits. But the purpose of this process is not to have you feel bad – it’s to motivate you to make marketing a top priority. Have fun!

1 Can you and your team name three things that set you apart from the competition?

2 Do you communicate the benefits of your product or service in all of your promotional literature, websites, letters etc?

3 Have you tested Telemarketing to attract new customers? Did you accurately measure the results?

4 Have you tested Direct Mail to attract new customers? Did you accurately measure the results?

5 Have you tested PR to attract new customers? Did you accurately measure the results?

6 Are your ads powerful direct response ads that compel the reader to contact you – or are they mundane like all the competition?

7 Do you advertise in certain publications just because your competitors do?

8 When you speak to a potential new customer, do you use words that set you apart from the rest and immediately capture the customer’s attention?

9 Have you tested pay per click search engine advertising?

10 Have you tested Internet Advertising?

11 Do you send regular email communications to your customers and prospective customers?

12 How much time each year do your key team members spend learning leading edge sales skills?

13 Do you have an excellent lead generation process in place?

14 Do you set up an ongoing communication with qualified leads consisting of phone calls, letters and emails?

15 Do you obtain and use testimonials from your best customers?

16 Do you have an excellent referrals systems in place?

17 Did you know there are more than 90 ways of obtaining referrals?

18 Do you offer something of value to your website visitors in exchange for their contact details?

19 Do you know how to write a press release to instantly grab the attention of the person reading it?

20 Do you personalise your email newsletters?

21 Do you know the most important piece of marketing information there is – your clients’ birthdays!

22 Do your team understand that the best way to sell is to ask questions?

23 Do you rent or purchase mailing lists of your target customers?

24 Do you take amazing care of your current customers?

25 Do you know why it’s important to include a ‘PS’ in all of your sales letters?

26 Do you communicate by mail, email and telephone on a frequent basis to your current customers to ensure they know what you have to offer?

27 Do you use just one or two ways of marketing to promote your business? Do you know why you should be using between six and ten?

28 If you used ten ways to market your business have you any idea how wealthy you would be?

29 Did you know that if you follow up a mailshot with a phone call you can increase response rates by 100 – 1000%

30 Do you realise that your competitors probably answered ‘no’ to even more questions than you did!

Now here’s a Free Tip. Pick just three of the above that are important to you and take some action today to improve those areas. Print out this email and come back to the checklist in the weeks and months ahead. You can use it as a very good way of measuring your progress as you implement the marketing strategies that are going to make a difference.

10 Successful Advertising Strategies

1.      If your Advertising isn’t working – STOP IT!
Let’s start with the simple stuff. If you are running advertising that is not working, please stop it!

I know it sounds obvious but here’s what often happens: People run advertising because they feel they ought to. They’re not really sure if it’s working but they are hesitant to stop it because it may be one of their main forms of marketing.

By the end of this report you will have enough information to ensure that you are never in that position again. You will either be running great ads that produce great results, or you will be spending your marketing money elsewhere.

2.      Only use Direct Response Advertising
There are two types of advertising – direct response advertising and brand advertising.

Understanding the distinction between the two will immediately save you a fortune.

Brand advertising is used by companies like Coca Cola and the large car manufacturers to build and increase awareness of their brand. Unless you have huge amounts of money which you are happy to lose, you should avoid brand advertising at all costs. For a small business it is a complete waste of money.

The only type of advertising you ever want to consider is direct response advertising. The only purpose of direct response advertising is to produce a clear response.

The type of response may vary depending on the type of business you are in and your overall marketing strategy. You may want the response to be an immediate purchase. You may want the response to be for someone to contact you to ask for a brochure.

The great thing about direct response advertising is that you can instantly tell whether it is working (see the next point) It either produces a response or it doesn’t. One of the reasons that most small business advertising does not work is that it’s a combination of half hearted direct response and highly ineffective brand advertising.

Fortunately, you now know the difference. In the land of the small or medium business, direct response is King!

3.      Testing and Measuring
It is absolutely essential that you test and measure all of your advertising.

If we are going to engage in direct response advertising we obviously need to be able to measure that response, otherwise we are not going to know if the ad is working.

At the very least we need to know how many people responded, how many of them were converted to a sale and what that is worth to you. Then you need to compare that figure to the cost of the ad and you can immediately work out how profitable the ad was, or whether you should stop running it.

So many businesses just allocate a certain mount of money to an advertising budget, spend the money every year…and they’ve only got a vague sense of whether the ads are working are not. This is crazy. If your ads are working, you want to roll them out on a larger scale. If they’re not, STOP and use the money on one of the dozens of other marketing strategies that can bring you a 100 or 200 or 300% return on your investments.

You will obviously need some sort of system for asking people who contact you for the first time where they heard about you. If you have a larger business, you may even want to set up a separate phone line with a number that only appears in your ad. If you’re directing people to a website, you may want to set up a special web page that also only appears in your ad. This will ensure that you can clearly identify when people are responding to your advertising.

4.      Your Headline is the most important part of your Ad
In the ad itself the most important element is the headline. The headline is either the heading that goes at the top of the ad or if there’s no heading it’s the first words of the ad. The headline needs to grab peoples’ attention. One change in a headline can produce a 50-100% increase in response.

One of the biggest challenge that any advertiser faces is getting people to read their ad – let alone for the ad to produce a result. So the main purpose of the headline is not to sell your product – it’s just to get people to read your ad.

The headline should be about your readers – not about you. If your headline has the name of your business in it, you are probably losing out. Imagine you owned a company selling fire alarms. Which of these headlines do you think would be most likely to get the reader’s attention:

Simpson Fire Alarms - Your Guarantee of Safety

  OR

Is your Family's Life worth the price of a round of Drinks?

Be adventurous with your headlines. Test different versions to see what works best. There are no rules – except what works.

5.      Remember AIDA
There’s a classic formula used by advertisers and it’s well worth remembering. The formula is AIDA. This stands for

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

If you follow this formula in every ad that you write, you will greatly increase your chances of success.

Attention – the first thing your ad needs to do is grab the reader’s attention. You achieve this with your headline.

Interest – once you’ve got their attention, you need to create an interest in your product or service.

Desire – There is a big difference between being interested in a product or service and desiring it. You need to convert the reader’s interest into a strong desire for what you are offering.

Action - Even if someone desires what you have, it is not enough until they take action. At the end of the ad you need a call to action. Tell people exactly what they need to do to follow through and make it easy for them to do so.

6.      Benefits, Benefits, Benefits
One of the principles that should drive all of your marketing is communicating the benefits of your product or service.

The copy of your ad needs to be a personal communication to the individual reading it. And it needs to be about them. It needs to address their needs, desires and fears and it needs to constantly communicate the benefits of what you are offering.

Nobody will buy anything from you until they have explicitly understood how they will benefit from what you have to offer. So here’s a useful tip. When you’ve written your ad, imagine stepping into the shoes of your prospective customer. From this perspective does the add fully convey what those benefits are? If not go back and fine tune the ad until it feels right.

7.      Don’t Advertise on a Left Hand Page
This one piece of knowledge can turn an unsuccessful ad campaign into a successful one. This has been tested again and again. When you read a publication, your eyes are drawn to the right hand page as you flick through so statistically, more people will see your ad if it’s on the right hand page.

If you look at the big national magazines and newspapers, you will see that most of the large advertisers are on the right hand pages. The few that appear on the left hand pages will be paying less because their advertising agencies know that less people will see the ad.

When you book your ad space, tell them you want it on a right hand page. Very few people in your position ask for this, so the publication will normally oblige. If they tell you they can’t guarantee it – tell them you’ll advertise in a future edition when they can guarantee it. You’ll soon discover how obliging they can be!

8.      Never pay the full rate for advertising
Apart from knowing that you want your ad on a right hand page, the person selling you the advertising needs to know very early on that you have absolutely no intention of paying the full rate.

Most advertising rate cards are far too high and you can always negotiate. If you’re a small business remember that large companies who use ad agencies are buying based on the readership or audience levels rather than the rate card - so haggle and negotiate. If you can pay 20 or 30% less for your ads it can turn an unprofitable ad into a successful one.

Here’s another handy little trick to pay less for your advertising. The closer to the deadline you can book your ad, the better. Sales teams work towards targets and as the deadline approaches they get more desperate to fill the ad space. They become far more open to negotiation.

9.      Don’t Follow the Competition
One of the biggest mistakes people make is advertising in publications just because their competitors are in them. Don’t for a minute think that all your competitors are there because their ads are producing great results. They’re more likely to be there because everyone else is and most of them wont have a clue whether their ads are working.

In fact, this is a well known sales trick used by the people selling ad space. If they can get one or two of your competitors to advertise, they can call you up and tell you how you’ll lose out if you don’t advertise too. What they fail to mention is that your competitors probably never test their advertising, often haven’t got a clue how to market and are only advertising because they think you will. This is a highly effective way to sustain the advertising industry. It’s not a great way for you to run your business.

10.  Don’t buy into the myth that Advertising is essential for your Business Success
Now that I’ve shared some of the strategies for making your advertising work for you – I’ll let you into a secret. I’m not a huge fan of advertising for small businesses. If you can get it right it works brilliantly – but generally, advertising is one of the least effective ways to grow a business.

There seems to be a cultural myth that to run a successful business, you must advertise. Whoever came up with that one is the same person who said that if you get a university degree you’re guaranteed a great, fulfilling career.

Advertising is just one of many marketing options that you have. But you really shouldn’t be dependent on it. In fact, here’s a strategy I use with my clients which is really powerful:

When I work with a client, one of my goals is to get them to the point where they have so much great marketing going on it makes little difference to their business if they stop advertising.

Why do I do this? Because quite honestly I’ve seen more business owners pull their hair out through advertising problems than anything else. Ultimately, my work isn’t about marketing. It’s about Freedom. It’s about giving business owners the freedom that comes from having a successful and profitable business which is supported by multiple pillars of marketing.

It’s hard to be free when the future of your business involves trying to get a couple of ads to work in a crappy local newspaper.

So start to think out of the box. Ideally, you should be using a combination of up to at least ten other marketing strategies to grow you business. They include (but are not limited to). 

·         Telephone Marketing

·         Direct Mail

·         Internet

·         Email marketing

·         Direct Sales

·         PR (Why spend money on advertising when PR gives you coverage for free)

·         Strategic Alliances

·         Lead Response Marketing

·         A multi level Referral system

John Singh.

The truth about Blogging

Why are blogs gaining mainstream popularity so quickly this year? What's the attraction? Why are they so darn powerful when applied to business or politics?

The answer is simple when you consider the history of marketing and communication. A blog exponentially multiplies the world's oldest, favorite and most-trusted form of information sharing--word of mouth. People love sharing what they know with like-minded friends.

Think about it. Whom do you trust the most to give you advice, recommendations and information about opportunities, purchases or choices?

If you’re like the vast majority of people, it’s someone you know and trust--someone whom you feel is just like you.

That type of trust comes from personal communication, conversations and relationships built with people who share a common interest. When your blog is integrated into a complete new media marketing strategy, it delivers all that and more.

Blogging Myths Exposed
Blogs are not merely online journals (at least not for the savvy business owner or marketer).

Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you to easily update your content, create relationships and build trust with your target audience.

The power of blogs is not in the technology. As cool and convenient as blogs are for business marketers, the power of blogging is in the two-way conversations that create personal connections.

A blog becomes a personal extension of the author, who builds relationships by responding to the feedback from clients and readers.

Blogs are not a billboard just for press releases, product updates or company news. Blogs are an open door to communication where customers and prospects can voice their opinions, contribute to product development and become part of your company family. Blogs are not to be ignored as a passing fad. Blogs are so popular and have grown to wield so much power so quickly that innovative marketers are now using them as accelerators for everything from SEO to hubs for a complete new media marketing strategy.

When mega-internet players such as Google and Yahoo! alter their entire business models to adapt to a "trend," you can bet it’s not a passing fad.

Blogs provide the public with a more reliable way of getting news and information free from mass media manipulation and interruption marketing.

Blogs have moved beyond being a tool for publishing digital journals and commentary. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using blogs, some without even realizing it.

What this means for business owners and savvy politicians is that your markets are organizing themselves into tribes engaged in digital conversations. Consumers are more in control than ever before, and they are controlling the conversations on the internet. Blatant advertising and marketing messages are being shunned.

Consumers want a more personal business experience that allows them to ask questions, offer feedback and have more facts before purchasing (or voting). Consumers and voters alike want control. And now, thanks to blogs and other new media tools, they have it.

Blogs allow you to build relationships around your brand, your business, your products and your services. Relationships are the key. The rules of engagement have changed. Your markets are faster, smarter and more organized. Now, business blogging positions you where no web marketing 1.0 method has ever gone before.

Blogs are search engine magnets whose viral link-sharing capabilities allow ideas and traffic to be shared quickly and broadly. To get the benefits we’ve shared here, you must be business blogging as opposed to following the example of personal bloggers or your average political blogger.

A few of the practical ways you can use a business blog:

• Increase targeted traffic to your site;
• Reliably boost your search engine rankings;
• Build rapport and trust for more sales;
• Multiply the lifetime value of your existing clients;
• Prove your expertise as a respected authority in your niche;
• Transform your clients into raving fans and customer evangelists;
• Replace or complement your e-mail newsletter for 100 percent delivery; and
• Generate press exposure and offline media coverage.

Blogs are not just used for sales, marketing and buzz. There are dozens of business areas where blogs can improve information flow and increase efficiency. Here are seven ways that a business blog can boost performance internally in your business:

• Enhance collaboration among team members across the hall or across the world for project development and management.
• Centralize company information and distribution to eliminate duplication and redundant research.
• Introduce a nearly instantaneous client and customer feedback engine that allows companies large and small to nip consumer issues and complaints in the bud.
• Reduce e-mail overhead and improve general team management by answering a question once--and only once.
• Engage a low-cost, instantaneous update system that automatically distributes premium “must have” information to clients and customers--with no worries about delivery issues or spam filters.
• Organize and coordinate your in-house and outsource agent teams.
• Develop an online, creative think tank where internal company teams or industry peers from across the country can brainstorm on a topical basis.

There are actually dozens more. In fact, the number of business-boosting blogging applications is only limited by one’s imagination.

John Singh

Marketing Secrets for making money on the Internet.

Secret #1: Discover and sell what you are passionate about. What is your mission in life? You need to determine this because you are more apt to be successful if you work in an industry and/or niche that you feel passionate about. Find something that you can see yourself doing for several years down the road. Your passion will help you achieve success over any obstacles that may come your way.

Tip: Your business exists to support you…you don’t exist to support your business.

Secret #2: Target your marketing to a niche market. Get rich in your niche.

Secret #3: Find a lead product or products that your target market desires. Create low cost products under $100.

Secret #4: Build and develop your own profit pipeline. You want to have a wealth funnel. This helps you maximize the amount of profit you can earn from your entire business. Profit pipeline is when you find leads and introduce them to your product through promotion and at the end of your pipeline you earn profit.

Secret #5: Up sell your customers with your medium cost and high profit backend products. High ticket products are those that are $500 or higher. You only need to sell a few high ticket items to make as much or more than selling a bunch of low ticket items. Therefore, strive to sell these high ticket backend items.

Benefits of own opt-in (emailing) list:

1. Builds your credibility in your niche market.

2. Builds a relationship with a large number of people. You use technology to build human relationship. In other words, you use your website to grab their attention and you talk to them on the phone to create a human component of your relationship.

3. You can convert subscribers into buyers more often than just having a list of readers.

4. You earn more money through multiple streams of income that incorporate your list.

5. You insure monthly income as long as you provide pertinent content and offers.

6. You can engage in free, instant market research by surveying your list. For example, your survey can help you create a product that your customers want.

7. You are able to promote others through joint ventures. For example, you can promote their book on Amazon to your list.

8. You have a massive amount of people that you can interact with and brainstorm with everyday.


All the best and feel free to contact me on mail@johnsingh.com for more tips on making money on the internet.

Regards

John Singh

Mmmmm Beer, Poor marketing at its best

                                                            
Mmmmm Beer. There's nothing like a cold sip to wash things down smoothly. When recently, in passing, I asked a group people about their views on beer, I was offered a spectrum of different views: it's a comfort factor, an every day drink, the beginning of (or perhaps the end to) a wild night out, a lazy Saturday afternoon in front of the TV, a frat boy's drink, and for some (like a loquacious group of old men who ritualistically visit their local pub,) just a way of life.

Whatever its connotation for you, it's clear that beer, more than any other alcoholic drink, has a deeply entrenched fan following. A recent BBC article on beer got me thinking - perhaps the lessons we learn from beer can also be applied elsewhere.

The article lists 5 reasons as to why beer sales have slumped - apparently they are at their lowest level since the 1930s.

Health: There is a misconception that beer is less healthy, and more fattening, than other alcoholic beverages. But studies have shown that beer drinkers and drinkers of similar volumes of other alcoholic drinks, gain the same amount of weight around their stomachs (refuting the notion of the beer-belly.) The British Beer and Pub Association argues that a beer with the typical 4.6% of alcohol is less fattening than wine, and significantly less fattening than spirits, which contain 6 times more calories even without the sodas they are so often mixed with.

Dr Martin Bobak, an epidemiologist at University College London, argues that the idea that beer makes one fat stems from the fact that less educated people show a stronger proclivity to drink beer. In the West the less educated one is, the more obese one is likely to be, and hence, he relates beer drinking to education, and in turn to obesity.

The lesson here for everyone else is pretty obvious: people are becoming more and more health conscious. In an age of gym memberships and organic foods, if your product is labeled as having health issues, it could knock you out of the game. Keep this in mind as your research, innovate and market.

Food: Over the years, pubs have boosted their emphasis on food, and as a result beer has suffered. People tend to drink wine with their food over beer, plus nowadays people go to pubs not just to drink beer, but sometimes solely to eat.

This is pretty specific to beer and pub food, but there is something of a takeaway: Changes in context matter. Consider the bigger picture when you make business decisions. Is setting up a website going to erode your magazine for instance? Is allowing customers to sit around and read at Barnes and Noble, or listen to music at Virgin going to prevent them from wanting to make a purchase? A rise in something else's popularity, even if mandated by you, could erode your own market, so look before you leap.

moreWomen: Pubs have become more women-friendly, but sales of beer have not kept up with the increased clientele. Women tend to avoid beer in favor of other drinks, due to cultural factors, and image association issues: beer is seen as a "man's drink."

My thoughts after reading this -- unless you have a very specific target audience, make a conscious attempt to cast your net wide. If your clothes aren't just for hipsters, your tofu not just for tree huggers, your social network not just for teenagers and your beverages not just for men, well market yourself accordingly.

Cultural Changes: The article collates several cultural reasons for beer's decline - the decline of manual labor, the drink driving campaign of the 80s, the availability of beer in supermarkets coupled with the rise of satellite TV at home, and a rise in club culture that has made the use of recreational drugs more common.

I don't really have much to say on this one: cultural changes will happen. Companies and marketers just need to be aware of, and possibly foresee, these -- in an attempt to engage in damage control or to exploit potential opportunities.

Fashion: A quest to be more fashionable and adventurous, as well as an increasing range of choice in the beverages market, has also contributed to the slump in beer sales.

My take on this: You can't prevent other products in your market from mushrooming, but you can make an attempt to stay competitive by identifying, and where possible catering to, emerging trends, and by innovating.

Something to be careful about however is the danger of taking a perfectly good brand or product and innovating just for the sake of a fresh look or a wider audience. Beer for instance is particularly hard to innovate with, and breweries could risk diluting their existing markets by attempting to do so. The trick may be to leave the product untouched and attempt to influence consumer perceptions, or recruit new consumers, through smart marketing campaigns.

John Singh

Marketing Illusions - Is perception really a Reality?

A few months ago as I came outside the Four Seasons Hotel on George Street in Sydney, a hair-dressing saloon caught my eye as it had the words TRUMP written over the saloon. It was a nicely decorated saloon on George Street next to the hotel and was filled with men and women getting their hair done. One interesting observation I made was that there were hundreds of hair saloons on and around George Street but this saloon was defiantly the most vibrant and filled with people at any given time.

Obviously the name TRUMP rang a few bells and automatically I started believing that this business was part of the empire of the celebrity billionaire Donald Trump whom I have admired for many years, as I’m sure you have too.

I couldn’t help myself and I went straight into the saloon where I was greeted with professionalism and despite my efforts of booking an appointment I was told that the saloon was booked for another 3 days so I made an appointment for a hair cut in a week’s time and I was handed a slick business card with the details of the appointment. A week later I did attend my hair appointment where I felt treated like royalty and the hair stylist gave me one of the best haircuts I have ever received (no exaggerations).

Over the last 4 months I have visited the TRUMPS hair saloon once a month and it was only yesterday when I found out that this saloon was not part of Donald Trump’s empire and infact it is owned and managed by a local Sydney lady who had simply leveraged off an already established brand name to achieve a level of success with her saloon. With the exceptional level of customer service and an already established brand name, the TRUMPS Hair Saloon has become one of Sydney’s most succesful  small businesses winning various awards including the 2005 City of Sydney Business Award and the Small Business Champions award.

The success of TRUMPS made me think of other such small to medium businesses that have levered of the names of already established brand names and reached a level of success. I started researching companies from many different industries and was quite amazed to find that there were at least a handful businesses in various industries I had researched who were leveraging off the already established names of successful companies and many of these small business were reasonably successful. I even had the opportunity to talk to a lawyer friend of mine who happens to specialize in Trademark Law who confirmed to me that this was a common practice of small businesses and the law has many loopholes and majority of such businesses were covered by law as they were operating under independent registered businesses and approved trademarks.

Most people take perception to be the reality and get fooled by the intelligent marketers and get persuaded into illusions and rarely come to know the truth. Some may say that truth itself is an illusion whilst others may be happy and satisfied with believing illusions to be the truth. I think a person must be aware of everything so that they can make better choices in life but sometimes your awareness can fool you as it did in my case and other times your awareness can work in your benefit as it did it the saloon owner’s case.

John Singh