The Business Growth Blog by Rob Cuesta

UBC10: What makes a product into a Five-Star Experience?

Well, it's after the end of January and I only managed to make 9 posts, but I'm going to keep going with the Ultimate Blogging Challenge, and get to 31 by the end of February instead :)

About 13 years ago I bought a coffee maker. It was an espresso machine - you know the ones, just like you see in Starbucks, lots of steam coming out, lots of noise (mostly from you banging the old coffee grounds out of the holder).

Most importantly for me, though, it was a machine from a "real" coffee maker brand: the people who make the coffee machines in Italian restaurants.

Well, my espresso machine has finally been retired, and last week I bought a Nespresso machine. It's made by Magimix, the blender people. Not a name I'd associate with fine coffee.

And yet...

And yet...

And yet... I feel so much better about the Nespresso purchase than when I bought the old machine.

And it's not just about the fact it makes excellent coffee (and anyone who spends much time around me knows I *LOVE* my coffee).

It's about the whole experience of opening up the box.

When I bought my old espresso maker, it was about £140 ($210), and that was 13 years ago, so maybe it would be a £200/$300 coffee machine by today's standards.

The Nespresso was £110/$175.

It's a cheaper machine. So I had lower expectations...

UBC7: Stuck for ideas? Read this!

I’ve been reading. It’ll be no great shock to anyone who knows me or indeed who has followed this blog over the years. The fact is, the demise of Borders merely made way for more time sitting in Costa downloading ebooks to the Kindle app on my iPad rather than sitting in Starbucks leafing through paper books 

But my latest read has been a “real” book. With hard covers no less!

UBC Post 2: Breaking out of a Niche: Belgian Sake anyone?

I was out earlier on today and passed a rather unusual bottle. It was labelled "French Vodka". I've never seen French vodka before, nor for that matter Russian cognac.

Now, I don't know if there's even such a thing as Russian cognac (I suspect there is), but if there was I'm not sure I'd want to try it, any more than I was tempted by the idea of French vodka.

So it's nothing to do with the reality of what the drinks are like. It's just that in my mind (and I suspect yours too), the French make cognac, and the Russians make vodka.  Think of it as each country's brand in the drinks market.

And never the twain shall meet.

That's the thing about brands: they're more often based on the associations and notions attached to a brand rather than on reality. French vodka may be really nice. I'll never know.

When we try to go beyond the confines of a brand or niche--when we do things that are outside our position or reputation--it's not necessarily a bad thing.

French vodka doesn't work for me.

But what about an operating system manufacturer releasing a games console? (hands up if you own a Microsoft Xbox)

Or a computer manufacturer releasing an MP3 player (iPod anyone?)

So what's the difference?

Well first,making a French vodka puts the French in direct competition with a "brand" that is already established and dominant in the vodka market: Russia.

Second, in the world of drinks, "French" summons up ideas of grapes, wine, distilled wine (brandy, including Cognac), etc. All very different from vodka.

Third, I'm not really sure what being "french" adds to a vodka.

The Xbox and the iPod were both products that were launched into markets where there wasn't a dominant player.

The iPod succeeded because it was sold to existing Apple customers in the first instance, and solved a different problem they had (how to carry around a lot of music to listen to at will). Compared to existing MP3 players, it added an integrated store to buy and manage their music (iTunes) which at the time was unique. Finally, Apple leveraged its reputation for delivering beautiful bits of kit to then introduce a whole new group of consumers to the Apple tribe.

The Xbox struggled initially because the overlap between the world of games players and PC users wasn't perhaps as great as might have been expected. It was saved when the Kinect was launched, and added a whole new level of interaction to the world of gaming that wasn't available anywhere else (even Wii was left behind). The Kinect has allowed Microsoft to bring many diehard gamers to their platform.

So there's the clue to breaking out of your existing position or reputation and entering a new niche when the time comes:

1. don't take on major players in a niche or market head-on
2. use existing customers as a springboard
3. deliver something unique that's missing from your competitors' offers
4. leverage the strengths of your existing reputation to attract new people into your tribe.

OK, that's it for today. I'd love to know your thoughts (especially if you've tried French vodka!)

What a Dominatrix taught me about Marketing

Sometimes it's hard for marketers to think outside the box. Take painkillers. No-one likes pain, right? Why would anyone want to keep hold of pain? Unless they were weird...

Quick Growth Tip #12: Focus and Thrive

One surefire way of failing in business is to try to do everything for everyone, and for coaches, consultants, therapists, and other service professionals, the temptation is very string. After all, we have a toolset that is designed to solve problems - any problems - and to do it quickly and effectively.

The "problem" is, though, that no-one wakes up thinking "I have a problem, I must go and find someone to help me solve it!"

Quick Growth Tip #8: Who's Coming To Your Tribal Dance?

The days of going out prospecting are far behind us. People don't want to be sold to any more - after all, in most western countries we're lucky enough to lack for very little. We get a whim and we satisfy it.

The biggest hole in people's lives these days is LEADERSHIP.

We're all looking for someone to help explain the world, someone to show us the path that avoids all the traps and pitfalls, someone to make our problems and challenges and questions just go away. Someone to be our leader.

Quick Growth Tip #4: Have a Unique Promise of Value (UPV)

There are a LOT of other coaches, consultants and trainers out there. Your Unique Promise of Value (UPV) should be the core theme of your marketing. It answers the question "why should *I* (your prospective client) do business with *YOU* rather than the 9,999,999 other coaches, consultants and trainers I can find using a search engine? What can you do for me that no-one else can do?" 

When things go wrong...

...what your customers want is a swift and painless fix.

What they often get - particularly from large organisations - is a descent to Dante's 7th Circle of Hell, as they get passed from person to person in a call centre.

I was renewing my 1shoppingcart.com account tonight and somehow managed to create a second account instead. Mea culpa - I messed up. I admit it.

So I called 1SC's support desk...

"Your account has been credited"

I'm fanatical about looking beyond words to the meaning behind the structure. It's something I picked up even before I got into NLP and marketing, and the study of the mind and motivation, when I was studying linguistics at university, more years ago than I care to admit these days :)

As a result I almost can't help myself when it comes to questioning everything that I see or read.

Which is why an email from my VOIP provider caught my eye a moment ago.

Stand for something. Anything. But stand up and be noticed!

For a while I've complained that there is no truly neutral news service here in the UK. All the newspapers have their own slant, and so do the TV news bulletins. Even the newspaper "The Independent" has it's own opinions. We just can't get unbiased reporting. It struck me as a gap in the market.

Until today.