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Don’t be color blind. Color and how it can impact your marketing efforts.
Love the infographic. And love how color is interpreted differently amongst different cultures. Obviously this has import on all marketing functions and branding efforts. Enjoy.
To achieve progress, you have to progress.
As I was admiring this year’s new models at the Car Show a couple weeks back, I observed that American car makers are apparently betting on the automotive equivalent of a throwback jersey –– Ford, Chrysler, and GM all displayed what amounted to new variants of older models.
Car makers from Italy and Germany, however, revealed category-breaking designs and technology. Meanwhile, as American car makers are playing it safe, betting on the goodwill of old designs, their competition is busy innovating.
Perhaps resting on old designs is a relatively safe bet. I get it. But what might this safe bet cost in terms of long-term opportunities lost, or at best, delayed?
Since the first organism evolved from the primordial soup, every single nanosecond of life on earth has been about innovation. Innovation is how living things adapt to
changing environments. When there is a threat to the survival of a species, it innovates. Why should this truism be any different for a company or an organization?
You have to innovate. Especially in a down or stagnant market. You may be inclined to hold back, lay low, play it safe. But while you’re being cautious, you can be sure that one of your competitors senses that fear in the atmosphere, and is investing in innovation of some sort.
If you’re not sure about how you can wisely invest in innovating your products, services or process, market research is the answer. That research might even reveal something that the market wants, and doesn’t yet realize it wants.
Now that’s innovation.
My wife and I were invited to a behind-the-scenes tour of the Cleveland Museum of Art exhibit, Art of American Indians: The Thaw Collection. The curator told elaborate stories about how this fantastic art came into being, weaving in thought-provoking tidbits and anecdotes.
We snaked through various rooms, all adorned with wonderful art. As the curator completed the tour, we found that we had seamlessly been deposited in the gift shop. What struck me was that this was earned income in use.
The CMA provided a terrific tour and service. We were all enthralled and didn’t want the experience to end. The collection, lighting, wall colors, the confident voice of the curator, all contributed to a fantastic experience–one that I wanted to take with me, even if in a very small way.
So when debating whether your NPO should consider earned income, frame your thinking in terms of the benefit, the unique experience your organization provides the community or even our culture; it may be symbolized by the product or service you offer, or perhaps it needs a catchphrase, a memorable slogan or clever encapsulation of what your mission is all about.
If you’re not sure how to turn the positive contribution your organization makes, into earned income of some kind, we can help.
OC
There is no such thing as a “non-profit organization”.
Many people feel that “non-profit” is a less than ideal term. For instance, it has been said that non-profit organizations shouldn’t be defined by what they are not. But doesn’t every NPO need to make a profit to survive—let alone to thrive?
The non-profit world would profit from adopting business practices of the for-profit world. Take publicly traded companies. They reveal financial data, and this transparency allows companies to measure themselves against benchmarks in their categories.
Say you’re opening a soup kitchen. How many people are other soup kitchens feeding per dollar they raise? It sure would be great if you could measure your organization against certain ratios or metrics.
Plus, to have the numbers of the top performers in their sector could provide impetus for NPO’s to achieve even greater things. Or if you’re struggling but your ratios are good, then you know there’s at least one unnoticed inefficiency.
The NPO sphere is in crisis. Transparent metrics could be one solution to this quagmire.
OC
Choose your research— and your researcher—carefully.
There are two types of research: exploratory and descriptive.
Exploratory helps you understand market shifts and trends (although no research has yet adequately explained the trend of men wearing capri pants). Descriptive research builds on the exploratory research, as it attempts to understand the specifics of your target market’s preferences, desires and sensibilities. As its name suggests, descriptive research provides the color, the nuances…it fills in any gray space.
Both research types are indispensable—but remember, exploratory is the horse, descriptive is the cart. Doing them in reverse order would be a disaster.
Conduct exploratory research every three months. One relatively simple way is to sign up for Google Alerts. You type in keywords associated with your business, and this program will alert you whenever that term is Googled. Before long, trends will emerge, which should be shared internally. Get feedback, and decide if a descriptive study is warranted.
But, if you’re going to conduct exploratory research on a larger scale, or your circumstances call for descriptive research of any scale, make darn sure you seek out respected marketing research firm, and then meet with their principals before making your choice. You need researchers who have objectivity, who know where to source data, and who have sophisticated analytical techniques to amplify the color.
But in the meantime, start small with exploratory research, identify the trends that emerge and then conduct descriptive research to unearth insights.
OC
Money helps non-profits achieve their missions. So let’s make more of it.
It’s probably fair to say that changing the world would be difficult enough for the 1,000,000+ non-profit organizations even if they never faced funding issues. So now that economic conditions are cutting down these entities right and left, perhaps it’s time for NPO’s to get smarter about their organizational model.
To be crudely blunt, your noble intentions and giving natures are not enough. You need to think like a businessperson. Don’t worry, your mission won’t change. In fact more money will help ensure that you’re still around to fulfill that mission in the first place.
You need to achieve better leverage on your existing resources, and come up with creative, unthought-of ideas for earned income. It could be a matter of increased efficiency, or maximizing value from (probably limited) resources, or revenue-generating activities, or all of the above.
You need help from people who know business. We repeat, your mission won’t be compromised—only fortified and safeguarded and perhaps even attained more quickly.
Not sure what to do? Talk with ColemanWick. We have one black shoe-clad foot in the for-profit world, one sneakered foot in the non-profit sphere. We’ll probably have ideas for you that have never crossed your mind. Or perhaps we’ll conduct some research to ferret out the wisest next steps your organization should take.
Take your hunch and shove it.
Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time in the field of market research has plenty of anecdotes about companies that either didn’t see the value of research, or claimed they couldn’t afford it, only to find themselves with a financial calamity that properly conducted research would have circumvented.
A fairly recent study conducted by AcuPOLL Research showed that 80-95% of new product introductions fail. It’s been estimated that one out of every five thousand inventions progress to successful product launches. One third of all new businesses fail within their first six months.
Heaven only knows what percentage of business initiatives fail, or, perhaps more commonly, drain enormous amounts of company time and resources before being shelved for what could be any one of countless reasons.
The fact is, people make mistakes. All the time. Smart people, experienced people, successful people all make mistakes. They thought they were right, as they’ve been many times before; but they were wrong. Heck, ex-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan admitted he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets. The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards didn’t think “Satisfaction” would be a hit. There are a million stories like these. There are a million books about stories like these.
So “What’s the cost” isn’t the important question about market research. The important question is “What will it cost me not to conduct market research”?
How to choose a market researcher – ego matters!
In a perfect world, all market research would be free from the personal biases of the researcher. However, research is always influenced by the researcher’s personal biases. The only question is the degree of influence.
If you pay very close attention, you’ll notice that most conversations contain misinterpretations, and presumptions that pass for understanding. For example, someone might say that they find a breath mint’s flavor to be “interesting”, which, if they’re someone who doesn’t like to say anything negative, is a way of saying they didn’t like it.
But unless one knows that person well, or is extremely perceptive, or ideally, probes deeper to see what they really meant, their use of “interesting” could easily be taken to be a positive appraisal.
A marketing research and advertising veteran of over 20 years tells of how he has observed over 100 focus groups in his career, and in virtually every case, he felt that some or much of the true meaning of the participants’ communications were not fully and/or accurately understood.
Every research firm will sell you on their superior listening abilities, their superb analytical knowhow, their people skills. But the only truly effective market researchers are those who are able to discern, moment by moment, whether the data they’re receiving is open to interpretation, and therefore requires more analysis.
Which really comes down to getting your ego out of the way.