Bon Appétit!

This week kicks off Restaurant Week in several cities across the country, including Kansas City. It is a great opportunity for restaurants to showcase their cuisine and entice food lovers to get out of the house and try a new establishment or revisit an old favorite.

In the KC metro, this also serves as a fund raiser for Harvesters as participating restaurants donate a portion of their profits at weeks end. The growth in popularity of this event over the last couple years has been impressive. So I encourage you to participate at least once.

Now for your “food” for thought…Some friends of ours recently returned from a trip to the Northwest. One of their stops was a hotel on the Oregon coast. They said it was possibly the nicest place they ever stayed. As we learned about the actual hotel, it became clear that it wasn’t the product (hotel), but the experience that catapulted this place to the top of their list. They showed us pictures of the rooms, the view of the Pacific, flowers, and more; all were impressive, but certainly not unique in that area. So what was it?

“The best things in life aren’t things.”

- Art Buchwald

Products and services are things. Creating “the experience”, was more about the details than the actual hotel or its location. One of the examples they shared was that one of them has very specific food allergies. During the reservation process the hotel captured that information. Upon their arrival, the chef had created not one, but several options to choose from for every meal during their stay. The combination of unexpected, appreciated and generous makes it the kind of thing that people will talk about!

“The Experience” creates an emotional connection, the actual hotel is just a thing; it simply can’t compete with human emotions. Combine a quality product or service with an emotional connection and you’ve struck gold.

Restaurants spend countless hours coming up with the perfect adjectives to describe the dishes they offer. As you read them, sometimes you can actually taste the food they are describing! But what happens if when you get there, your table isn’t ready, the restaurant staff is rude, it is too loud, too cold, or something else that effects your emotions? I think you already know the answer.

As you make your way to your favorite eateries this week, I encourage you to think about two things.

#1) What is it that attracted me to this restaurant?

#2) What is it that will bring me back? (Repeat Customer)

No matter how long or short your answer; #1 will be more about “the product” and #2 will be more about “the experience”. And, what is really amazing about this, is that no amount of bricks and mortar or investment can impact “the experience” more than the people in the business. I am not saying there isn’t a cost, because it takes training and commitment to consistently deliver a high level experience, but for the most part it is free, it won’t require a large bank loan to attain. All businesses, including yours, have an equal opportunity to deliver a great experience – but it has to be a clear focus and priority if you want to pull it off.

So get out and enjoy some great food this week! You are helping the economy and you are helping Harvesters. And while you are doing so, ask those two questions. Then take the answers and the inspiration back to your business and put them to work.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this – feel free to share any great dining experiences you had this week and why they resonated with you.  Leave us a comment below.

Chris Steinlage Kansas City Business Coach

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Is your DSI super?  Wait…let’s step back first.  A DSI is a Dominant Selling Idea – think of it as the modern day version of the Unique Selling Proposition (USP).  Basically it’s THE big idea inside a marketing brand – it’s the selling idea that establishes you as the #1 choice within your category and specialty.  You can learn all about the DSI concept from the book “Why Johnny Can’t Brand” by Bill Schley and Carl Nichols.

When they talk about a DSI, they’re not talking about marketing fluff and being super funny or creative (although that’s not excluded from a DSI).  A DSI is about having a simple (sentence or two) way to communicate the value you bring to your customers that makes you the top of your specialty and category. 

An example of DSIs? 

There are lots of car brands…cars are the category.  A specialty within the car category is safety.  What do you think of when you’re looking for a safe car?  Volvo established their Dominant Selling Idea a long time ago as the safest car brand – they pretty much own that specialty.  Here are some others:

M&Ms – the candy that melts in your mouth, not in your hand.

Enterprise Car Rental – “We’ll pick you up”!  (They created their own specialty of rental cars not at airports).

Halls – with ‘Vapor Action’ (lots of throat lozenges, but only one with ‘vapor action’)

The beauty of an effective Dominant Selling Idea is that it automatically makes you the top choice within your selected specialty (assuming you can live up to your claim).

The Test for a Super DSI

In Why Johnny Can’t Brand, the authors go through a lot of ideas and a process to help you figure out what your DSI should be.  It’s not easy…and not every business is going to be able to legitimately have a DSI, but here’s a test to help you figure out if you’re onto something.

Is your product or business idea:

1. Superlative

Are you as good or better than everyone else within your specialty?  Can you claim #1 in something?  Best in class within your boundaries? (i.e. best pizza in Kansas City).

2. Important

Does your differentiator – your DSI – address something that’s important for decision makers? You may sell cars that have top and bottom windshield wipers…but that’s not likely to sway many decisions.

3. Believable

Is it clear why we should believe your claims?  Do you have credible and important testimonials?  Does it logically follow that you would be good at this product or service? (Think about your favorite steak restaurant offering up an enchilada…probably not believable).

4. Memorable

Does your idea stand out from the crowd?  Does it link to an emotional feeling?  What would cause me to remember your idea if I looked at a dozen similar ideas within your category or specialty?

5. Tangible

This is where the rubber meets the road.  You might have created a great idea that establishes you as a believable #1 within your specialty in a memorable way, but if you don’t actually deliver on that promise you won’t last.  To have a Super DSI, it has to actually perform (and be more than just an idea on paper).

What I really like about the concept of having a DSI is that it’s not just clever marketing and it’s not just for big national players.  Any business or idea will benefit by positioning as a Dominant Selling Idea…and any business or idea will suffer without that positioning.

Think about the last time you told some friends about a great restaurant in your area.  Maybe you said something like; “They have the best fries…you’ve got try them!”  or “I was amazed at their service, I’ve never had an experience like that before!”.  That’s potentially their DSI…something they should build around.

Now think about how your customers describe your business…would they consistently isolate on your important strength?  Are you consistently positioning yourself as #1 in a specialty?

These are tough questions and they take a lot of time and soul searching to answer honestly, but if you can figure this out you will be successful.  A valid DSI can take you to new heights in your business.

What do you think about Dominant Selling Ideas?  Are you comfortable that you know what yours is?  We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

Photo by aka Kath

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I was talking with a client of mine the other day and we were brainstorming ways she could promote a new white paper / product offering and one of the things we talked about was using Social Media as a way to get the word out.  Through the course of our discussion it struck me that there are 4 levels of engagement that small business owners are using when it comes to Social Media and business.

You can find a lot of examples of each of these levels…especially the first one, which is unfortunately the largest of the four.  The remaining 3 tactics are all viable business strategies.  Which one you use will be driven by how much time you can invest in Social Business overall, what your personal style is and ultimately what you’re trying to accomplish.

The 4 levels of Social Business Engagement:

• Non-existent
• Visible
• Educate
• Engage

Let me take a shot at breaking this down into something more meaningful.  Here’s a quick diagram I drew up on my iPad.  The Y axis reflects the value a business owner gets from a particular tactic…higher is better.  The X axis reflects the amount of time spent on each tactic.

Level 1 – Non-existent

Although it’s not a tactic it is sadly the state that most business owners are in when it comes to their Social Business approach.  If you have a half filled out LinkedIn profile or a Facebook page that never gets updated or a Twitter account that was started but only has 2 tweets from last April (one of those being “Trying to figure out what this Twitter thing is all about”), then you are at the  non-existent stage from a Social Business perspective.

When you’re non-existent, you are not getting any value…in fact, you are potentially hurting your cause with an incomplete profile…but at least your not spending any time on anything.

Visible

The next level up is Visible, which is actually a viable tactic for a lot of small business owners.  This approach can provide a lot of value, especially relative to the small amount of time spent.  Being visible means that people can easily find you via search and get more information if they’re interested. 

In order to be visible, you need to pick at least 1 of the major social media platforms and invest a few hours into creating a quality profile.  I’d suggest LinkedIn if you are Business to Business and Facebook if you are Business to Consumer.

A quality profile includes a picture and a clear, interesting write-up on what you do and why someone else should care.  It should have at least a little bit of personality and include some personal information.  It should be easy to further engage with you and learn more – your profile should have a link back to your website.  You should also have a reasonable number of connections (say a couple hundred for LinkedIn…Facebook will vary based on what you’re doing) and you should spend an hour or so a week keeping it updated, posting status updates, answering questions, etc.

Educate

As a tactic, Educate includes everything on the Visible level and also includes regular educational updates across multiple channels. The best way to educate is to create great content…it could be blog posts, videos, podcasts or anything else that adds value to your target market.  With an Educate approach, not only can your prospects and partners find you, they also can see your enthusiasm and expertise – especially as you consistently share great stuff over time.

This approach can be effective with as little as a 2 to 4 hours per week – that would be the time it takes to write 1 blog post and share it in multiple places (and interact as you would for the Visible tactic).

Engage

Finally the Engage tactic is the high end of Social Business strategies.  Engagement is when you immerse yourself into 1 or more social media platforms and consciously and consistently develop your own tribe of followers (Customers, prospects, partners, etc.).  Engagement strategies are often built on education, but there are other successful engagement strategies built on personality, customer service or just being part or leading a community.

If you can successfully Engage in Social Business, you will create a fan base that can dramatically amplify your message and help drive word of mouth and opportunities your direction.  Done the right way, it’s extremely powerful and beneficial.

However…Engagement takes a lot of time and presence (there’s an expectation of real time responses, so you need to be always ‘on’).  Additionally you have to genuinely enjoy the process of connecting with your virtual tribe – if you don’t have the right kind of personality you will struggle to make this work.

How are you investing your time?

Every business owner should at least be at Visible on 1 platform.  It takes a low investment of time, anyone can do it and it will greatly enhance the number of people who can find you…remember if they can’t find you, they can’t do business with you.

Going beyond Visible is a choice.  I’m a big proponent of content marketing and Education, but there are a lot of small business owners who aren’t set up to make an Educate tactic work…and they certainly don’t have the time or effort it takes to Engage.  However it’s not all or nothing.  On the chart the levels show as discrete options, but it’s actually a smooth curve and you can scale your efforts up and down depending on your resources.

Where are you on the Social Business Engagement spectrum?  Does this model make sense?  I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments…Engage with me in the comments below and let me know what you think!

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

Photo by JD Hancock

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I’m a big fan of LinkedIn.  They have a clear focus on professional business networking and they’ve created an extremely effective tool that every business owner should be using.  In fact if you’re not using LinkedIn, now’s the right time to create a profile and start linking!

One of the things I really like about LinkedIn is the steady pace of innovation they’ve had over the years.  They don’t score a hit with everything they roll out, but they are constantly improving and adding new useful functionality.  Considering LinkedIn is a free site that offers a ton of value for business professionals, that’s a pretty good deal!

Just in the last year or two, they’ve made changes to groups, the advertising functionality and even some minor profile changes, but what you should really check out as a business owner is how they’ve been quietly adding stuff to the Company page functionality.  It started when LinkedIn added the ability to follow companies and more recently they’ve added several other worthwhile capabilities worth checking out.

New Company Page capabilities from LinkedIn

- A Careers tab that allows you to centrally post for jobs at your company along with lots of other customization and capabilities (some of which cost money).

- A services tab which allows you to create detailed descriptions of the services you offer (and allows people to post recommendations / testimonials for those services directly.

- An analytics tab that gives you a breakdown of page views, unique visitors, and a trend on followers.  (We would love to have more followers at Aspire…here’s what our page looks like.  We’re still adding some things to it).

Finally – LinkedIn also just added the capability to do Company Status updates.  Note – you have to edit your company page and specify who is allowed to make an update in order for the field to show up.

Kind of unrelated, but LinkedIn also just added a Classmates feature which helps you find anyone who went to your college at the same time you were there.  There was always a way to do this via search, but they’ve done a nice job giving you information and the ability to filter a lot of different ways.  Check out LinkedIn Classmates

Have you created and updated your Company page lately?  People are looking for you and the more positive information they can find, the better off you’ll be.  What do you think of Company Pages?  Any success stories or concerns?  We’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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As a small business owner, you have lots of people telling you that you MUST be on social media if you want to thrive…or even if you want to survive.  It’s not just Social Media anymore, it’s Social Business. 

I’m sure you’ve heard the statistics:

- 1 out of every 9 people on the planet is on Facebook (750 Million +)

- Facebook now tops Google for weekly online traffic

- People upload 3000 images to Flickr…every minute! (here’s my page)

- 1 in 6 marriages are people who met online (nearly twice the number who met in bars)

- Sadly 1 in 5 divorces is being blamed on Facebook

The reality is that Social Media has arrived…and you do need to be doing something with it for your business…but it’s not a silver bullet.  You have to find an approach that makes sense, isn’t going to overwhelm the business, but still gets you out there.

Here are 4 fairly simple steps that can help you make sure your Social Business efforts aren’t wasted.

1. Recognize that Marketing has changed

The world has changed in the last 10 years, and it’s no surprise that marketing (and sales) have changed along with it.  10 years ago, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube didn’t even exist.  Mobile?  You could kind of get to the internet on a mobile phone, but it sucked and it wasn’t really worth the time or the effort.

Fast forward to today – if a consumer wants to buy something, wants to learn something, wants to get opinions, they will go online and search for it themselves, no matter where they are.  They don’t want and they don’t trust traditional advertising.  So where does that leave us from a marketing standpoint? 

“Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t”.  Seth Godin

If you want to market your business successfully, you need to be found online (because that’s where people are searching) and you need to attract potential buyers…not interrupt them.

2. You have to have a plan

Just being online isn’t enough.  You’re going to invest time and money to support your online marketing efforts (although probably a lot less than you would have had to invest in traditional marketing).  And since you’re investing, you need to be clear on a few things:

• What are you trying to achieve (drive traffic, generate leads, educate, raise awareness, support customers – all of these might drive to different strategies).
• Who’s your target (and where do they hang out)?  What are they looking for (keywords)?  What do they want?
• What’s your message?  What benefit or outcome are you delivering?  What problem are you solving.  If you can’t be clear on this, you aren’t going to attract anyone.
• What’s your call to action?  What do you want them to do next?  Call you?  Download a report?  Visit your location?  Buy something?  Be clear and keep it simple.

On top of all of that, you need to have a quality website.  It doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy, in fact simple is probably better.  But it does need to be clean and professional.

3. Develop a Social Media Presence

Once you have an idea of what you’re trying to achieve and you have a sense of who your target is, you need to pick a starting point for where to go with your social media presence. 

If you’re selling something to consumers and it’s visual or has an emotional component, then Facebook is probably the best place to start. 

If you’re selling to professionals or other businesses, then LinkedIn is probably your best bet.

Twitter is great is for engaging fans and supporting customers and there are lots of other choices out there that are smaller more niche plays (i.e. Lawlink for Lawyers or Bakespace for people who love to cook).

Whatever makes sense for you, pick one site to start with, set up an account and start listening.  Listen for people who are talking about your industry, your product, your competitors…get a feel for what’s being talked about.  then start using that information to engage with the influencers.

Use Google Alerts and tools like Tweetdeck to setup searches to help you stay on top of things without spending hours every day doing it.

4. Develop Great Content!

Finally – the real secret to Social Business success is to develop great content (and host it on your site).  Content that will especially appeal to the potential customers you’re attracting.  That content could be a Blog, it could be a series of reports or great emails, it could be videos (check out Will It Blend) or even podcasts or webinars.

The point is that you need to create great information that will inform, educate maybe even entertain the people you are trying to attract.  They get to know you, they get to see that you know what you’re doing and talking about and they have enough information to decide if they want to take the next step with you.

On top of all of that, Google loves great content because it drives backlinks to your site and builds out a lot of context for keyword searches…which just means that your Search Engine Optimization will be a lot stronger than if you didn’t have content…always a good thing.

Bottom line – your prospective clients are looking for you online, so if you want a shot at them, you have to be found.  And when they find you, they want to get to know you and understand you.  They want to learn from you, they want to be sure you can solve their problem.  It’s not easy, but if you can do all of that, you will be in great shape in this new world of marketing and social business!

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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