There's nothing better than community.
Today is the final day of voting for American Express Open’s Facebook Big Break for Small Business. The clock stops ticking at midnight eastern time.
The tiny community of Dixon, Il and their neighbors are pulling out all the stops to help Bud and Jim at Distinctive Gardens win. You can vote here, if you haven’t already.
Here’s the comment stream on the pic. Would your neighbors do this for you? Just fantastic.
A recent Brains on Fire blog covered a topic I’m passionate about – business relationships. One paragraph is particularly important, it speaks to the convergence of instant gratification, relationships and reality.
“The instantaneousness of technology gives you the feeling that you can get anything you want, right now. But that’s not how real life works, and it is definitely not how relationships work. They take time, hard work, and patience. Our desire for instant gratification is not neutral – it requires careful handling.”
Technology is changing many processes. Mostly, the steps in the process are rearranged because of what technology makes possible. Traditional step 4 may now be the new step 2. And it may occur much sooner than it used to after step 1. But that doesn’t mean there are fewer steps to take.
Do you believe in instant gratification in relationships? And if you do, are you a seeker of or a giver?
Consumers have changed. The economic crisis caused more than a gut-check, it has caused a cultural shift on how we perceive value.
Last Thursday (Oct. 14, 2020) The Archer Group brought John Gerzema, co-author of Spend Shift to Wilmington, DE. Archer started doing a speaker series called “What’s Now, What’s Next.” Gerzema was the 1st presenter at the 2nd installment of the series. The premise of his session – the economic crisis and the shared experience of losing our security net has changed the consumer. It will likely be a generational change. Gerzema and his co-author dive into what has changed and what the consumer of now (and likely the future) look like.
Wall Street has been bemoaning the lack of “C” in the GDP equation. Gerzema spells out pretty clearly that they should quit holding their breath – things have changed, big time. If businesses continue waiting the by-product will be an even longer recovery. Gerzema and D’Antonio (his co-author) spell out what’s different.
The book is not about marketing. There’s a fundamental shift happening that business visionaries need to wrap their heads around. Read the book or get to a conference where he’s speaking so you can figure out how to reposition your value to today’s buyers. Waiting for “normal” to return will kill you.
Consumers are interested in being approached differently. They see value fundamentally differently than they did 2 years ago. And they are willing to pay a premium for value that resonates in their life.
Here are my notes from Gerzema’s session:
There’s a lot I missed, if you were there please add your take-aways in Comments. Here’s a PDF of the tweet stream. (It’s unabridged, so you’ll have to wade through the duplication and retweets to find the nuggets.)
How can your business adapt to this new consumer? What are your ideas, let us know in comments.
Personal note: many of the topics Gerzema discussed hit close to home. Greg and I both lost our jobs within 2 weeks of each other during the Great Recession. Our family is markedly changed from the experience, just ask my kids. His conversation pointed out “it’s not just us.”
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| From SocialPie videos |
Snaps to my local Applebee’s. They are doing a great job promoting where customers can find them on the web.
These fliers were on the hostess desk when we walked in for dinner. They’re cheap and effective. They were printed on regular typing paper on somebody’s printer. They were very nicely cut, not at all sloppy. And that is a key indicator of how they view themselves. (Don’t mess that up.) I couldn’t tell they were thin paper until I touched it.
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| From SocialPie videos |
When we got to the table this coaster sized card was in the table tent holder. Same info, reinforcing the stuff on the little flyer.
The other thing – notice the “text to 32665” “like applebeeskennettsquare.” What better way to get interaction from customers than to give them someway to do it while they wait for their food. Brilliant!
Twitter knows it’s really simple platform can be difficult to master. And they know that’s a problem that turns large number of businesses off.
Recipe for Quitting
Twitterettes would like businesses to use it, but know how tough it is to find the time to master something when you are already working half days (whichever 12 hrs you want.) Enter Twitter 101, specifically for business. Take a look, what do you think. Is it persuasive, does it simplify the mastery? Does it make you want to try? Let me know what you think.
Relationships Drive Business 