Filleting Cabella’s

Want to better understand the competitive landscape of the 21st Century? You need look no further than my friend’s father in law, Captain Jim.

Captain Jim runs a charter fishing business out of Milwaukee. He’s renowned for taking people out on Lake Michigan and actually catching fish!

He’s also proven to have some pretty amazing skills when it comes to landing web visitors, search engine rankings, YouTube views and clickthrus on his websites. Who knew that a guy who spends much of his time navigating Lake Michigan would be so adept at navigating the World Wide Web?

Need proof? Try Googling “Milwaukee fishing”. Yup – that’s him (Bluemax Charters) ranked at #2.

Want to witness the Charter fishing experience first hand? Here he is on YouTube, complete with video customer endosrement!

Here’s one of his videos.. His videos are attracting about 15 views per DAY. (Prediction: Captain Jim is gonna need a bigger boat.)

Need fishing spoons? There he is (badgertackle.com) at #3.

Cabella’s (who just opened a mega store last year, just north of the city), is ranked #9 on the same page. They’re also found as a Sponsored link (along with some other national outdoor sports companies). While the big boys are paying for clicks, Captain Jim is ranking higher for a number of reasons.

1. He’s passionate about fishing… and it shows.
2. He builds a connection with his customers….and it shows.
3. He’s an authority on Lake Michigan fishing and has endoresments and how to videos to prove it.

Now put yourself in the place of the marketing team at Cabella’s. You sell thousands of products….. and you’re in competition with thousands of Captain Jims. The competition is so small, so fragmented, that it’s not even on your radar screen. Until it’s too late.

And that’s how you fillet Cabella’s. One product at a time.

Is Your Website Green?

On Digg today was a link to an interesting blog widget. When installed on your blog, the widget calculates the “carbon footprint” of the electricity used by your blog’s visitors’ computers – calculated based upon the length of visit on your site.

They also offer the ability to purchase carbon offsets, to help make your web presence completely “carbon neutral”. Carbon offsets are a “tax” meant to subsidize the development of “clean” energy development and deployment, like solar, wind powered generators etc…

Interesting concept.

About 15 years ago, I was Director of Marketing for a business to business catalog company. We were environmentally aware (I couldn’t call us sensitive, since we mailed hundreds of thousands of catalogs) and so we did a couple of things to reduce our environmental impact. First we printed all catalogs on recycled paper stock, using water soluble inks.

Secondly, we reduced the amount of catalogs we mailed, by actually asking mailroom clerks to help us “clean” (update) our mailing lists (which in the business world, get out of date pretty quickly).

We also used account scoring techniques (to help us better predict who would buy) to reduce our mailings into each company.

I think if I were in the same position today, I’d consider applying this widget to my online shopping website and convince my boss to devote a portion of our sales to the purchase of carbon offsets.

If your corporate mission statement contains phrases like “environmental responsibility” or if you’re selling “natural” or recycled products, this widget might just help reinforce your environmental responsibility message.

Is this something your company might do?

Am I alone in this?

On Being Remarkable

Seth Godin always talks about how companies need to be “remarkable”. Here’s an example of what he means…

Who would have thought that a flight attendent would receive applause after the manditory announcements! As of this writing over 78,000 people have “tuned in” to Southwest’s announcments.

Now that’s remarkable.

Letter to Santa

I heard this morning that people have already begun their Christmas shopping – no doubt inspired by the Christmas tree displays already popping up in the stores.

And so it is with this premature Christmas spirit that I’m composing a letter to Santa.

Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is a user friendly, well designed, simple to use, web hosted ERP system.

Thank you.

Dave

It won’t happen, of course. Not that I’ve been bad this year – but even Santa has his limitations.

The problem with ERP systems is that they’re designed to be everything to a very few (huge) companies, rather than trying to appeal to a much larger audience of small to mid-sized businesses. They’re “sold” at the Board level but have to be used by everyone else. So little consideration is given to the thousands of end users – they’re just something that the implementation team has to “deal with” as the system goes live. A necessary evil of big system projects.

You see, the marketing of these systems has changed, but the product hasn’t. It’s too difficult for the application architects at Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft to reduce “functionality” (aka features) because they’ve spent a lifetime building them in.

Simplifying your application is very hard work. Making complicated systems easy to use is almost impossible – especially when you’ve never done it before.

It’s the reason that in ten years, much of the country will be using someone else’s product.

Fast forward to Christmas Day, 2017… You open up your gift from Santa.

Inside, just underneath all the wrapping is a shiny new hyper-link to your new ERP application, complete with userid and password. After you login, you’re greeted with:

A friendly video guide then walks you through your “role” in the new system. (S)he explains how the Purchasing process works, and how you as a Purchasing Agent, will do your job. After a video tour of the application, you’re presented with an invitation to test out some of the functionality.

The text is inviting, not intimidating. The designers want to ease you into testing out the system for yourself. Because the application is so well written, intuitive, with “chunked” input screens so you never feel overwhelmed by data fields. It features icons that guide you though the application without having to ask for help.

Sprinkled throughout the application are links to more video help and company forums

It’s written with the application user in mind.

And it explains why the guys at 37signals (from whom I swiped the images and examples) write applications that are so popular.

And it’s the reason I believe that something better is coming to replace those bulky, over-engineered ERP applications.

Now get writing guys…..

Why Enterprise Software Sucks….

Here’s a great post on Signal vs. Noise about Why Enterprise Software Sucks. If you’ve ever been involved in a big ERP, CRM or HR systems implementation, you know what these guys are talking about.

Storytelling as a Change Management Agent

I just stumbled upon Steve Denning’s presentation at a BIF (Business Innovation Factory) Conference.

Steve was the driving force behind a corporatewide knowledge sharing initiative at the World Bank. He relates how storytelling was an effective means of getting the notion “heard” in the midst of huge resistance to the idea.

Here’s the video.

How Sticky are You?

Welcome to Guy Kawasaki’s Stickiness Apptitude test. It was inspired by the Heath Brothers’ book “Made to Stick” – one of my new favorite books.

This simple and fun test helps measure how “sticky” your ideas, innovations and communications are.

It takes just a few minutes to complete.

Enjoy.

Dumbing Down S.M.A.R.T. Goals

If your company isn’t getting the desired employee performance results from the use of S.M.A.R.T. goals, the guys at 5Rules tell you why.

Hooked on Video

I have railed for some time now, that marketing and training MUST make the transition to video. No one I know takes the time to read brochures, marketing materials, policies or procedures. We barely have time to read our emails.

But we always find time to watch a video. We’re a nation of watchers.

Latest example…. Steve Jobs (okay it was some server) sent me an email today announcing Mac’s new OS X (Leopard).

I don’t own a Mac. I don’t intend on buying a Mac in the near future. But I watched anyway. I had to. I admit that I’m hooked on Mac marketing.

But then I got thinking. Even though I don’t own a Mac, why doesn’t my PC do these things?

Even though Apple wasn’t selling me anything (today) they started planting seeds of doubt about the product I’m currently using. They got their message across.

And after all, wasn’t that the point?

Seven Leadership Secrets

Great advice from Carmine Gallo in the article Seven Secrets of Inspiring Leaders.