Dear Reader,
Hi from a true Fall weekend!
This weekend my husband and I celebrated our new red oak floor. So, we invited friends over for a home-cooked meal.
What made the dinner special?
Certainly not the piles of books tied with string huddled along our short hall.
Rather it was inviting friends over for a healthy dinner like we did in the “Before Times”.
Unlike my mother who would have searched for new recipes and tested them on my dad, my husband made comfort food, grilled chicken, browned potatoes and steamed broccoli. Easy-peasey!
We consider ourselves lucky. After a year and a half of the pandemic and staying socially distanced, we got to see our friends and to reconnect.
We got basic human contact.
Recommended Reading:
Actionable Marketing Lesson of the Week
► On-Demand Products
During the pandemic, a variety of new grocery delivery services like Instacart flourished. Due to fears, people turned to these new services.
To get groceries and necessities, people ordered online and got them delivered or picked them up at the curb.
While these services got people online and delivered food, they were far from perfect.
Long before the pandemic, I discovered this when my mom needed food delivered in suburban New York City.
For my mom, each shopping trip consisted of multiple stops: the fruit store, Trader Joes and a mega-size ShopRite. Also she made a monthly pilgrimage to Costco.
When my mom got sick, we started using Fresh Direct, one of the early online New York grocery services.
How did I choose?
They delivered to my mother’s address.
Fresh Direct always arrived during their delivery window and with foods at the right temperature. While their meat was good, the fruit and vegetables tended to be hit or miss.
During the pandemic, my husband and I didn’t have a regular shopping slot for a local delivery service. Living blocks from Trader Joes and Whole Foods, we didn’t worry because both managed the number of masked shoppers.
But our friends weren’t so lucky.
A friend in Southern California tried a delivery service and, like my mother, found the fresh fruit and produce were of poor quality.
Another friend in Florida used a food service focused on a plant-based diet. More than once the deliveries got delayed in the heat. So the produce came floating in melted ice.
What does this mean for your marketing?
► Make sure your business can deliver the customer experience you say you can.
► Or risk losing your customers and getting negative feedback.
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Further, these shortfalls leave opportunities for astute businesspeople.
For example, like many New Yorkers, friends of ours have a weekend house in the Hudson Valley. This is home to amazing farm produce and meats sold in New York City specialty food stores and restaurants.
Fleeing their city dwellings for full time life in their weekend homes around the New York metro-area during COVID, these people needed food.
To meet this new customer need, the owner of Home Goods of Margaretville changed her focus from housewares to food.
During the pandemic she used her customer email list to let people know they could order the quality food they craved from her.
At the same time, she created a market for local farmers. Since their main sources of revenue had disappeared.
As a result, her business grew and the dynamics changed. She sold more lower margin products with more frequent inventory turnover.
Last year she prayed for cold weather to keep her Thanksgiving turkeys cold. This year, she ordered a trailer truck and increased her turkey order by 50%.
Even better, she’s not going it alone.
► Instead, she’s co-marketing with a new local restaurant to deliver the full Thanksgiving Monty. In addition to the turkey, the restaurant will sell the related holiday goodies.
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What does this mean for your marketing?
- Figure out what products you can deliver the best. If you can’t deliver everything, then consider who or how you can partner to deliver better options for your customers.
Voice Notes
► Voice Turns The Tables And Goes Live
Bradley Metrock is the King of Zigging when everyone else is zagging. This week, he’s in Destin, Florida, taking the elite of the Voice Community to another level with an in-person event, Project Voice X.
During the pandemic, Metrock broke the rules by traveling across the US. And, while he received mixed feedback about his in-person activities, that didn’t bother Metrock because he discovered that founders, entrepreneurs and c-suite executives traveled despite the risks.
Unlike most conference planners, Metrock doesn’t worry about having thousands or even hundreds of attendees. A week before the Project X, Florida, Metrock persuaded Andi Huels, the Head of AI, North America at Lenovo to join him.
And when Huel’s boss found out about Project X, he wanted in as well. So last minute airfares and reduced travel schedules didn’t stop the right core of people from attending.
And, this has catapulted Metrock to build a different product offering on his Project Voice base. With Marc Ladin, Metrock put together Project Voice Capital Partners focused on providing early seed money for voice and AI based companies.
What does this mean for your marketing?
► Keep your ear to the ground and listen to what’s actually happening, not the noise.
► Then adjust your strategy to meet the long term goals of your business.
Recommended Reading:
Social Scene
► Make It Fit
Do you repost your content in its original state everywhere? That’s a recipe to be invisible.
Because you must consider how your content will stand out on a social media platform.
Many marketers and others overlook the power of context. When a visitor sees your content on a specific social media platform, they have certain expectations including the content format, length and related action.
In I Hear Things, Tom Webster explains how he jumps on Facebook to relax and scroll through a few new posts. If he sees a video, give him the “greatest hits” version in less than 60 seconds or he’s
gone.
To get the maximum results from your social media posting, consider what your average viewer wants to know.
To this end, create versions of your content to fit in different social media environments to maximize the impact and stand out contextually. These different views build brand impressions for your viewer.
New kid on the Social Media tools block Lately uses AI to create pre-tested Social Media posts from your long-form content in minutes. So you have no more repetitive or irrelevant posts.
Recommended Reading:
NYC Marketing Marketing Minute
► Marketing Inside The Book
The marketing lesson you can take away from Clark:
Use every element of every piece of content and marketing you have.
Clark does this eloquently in a section entitled “Further Resources”. Across pages 227 through 229, Clark spotlights her portfolio of work to-date including her books, articles and community.
She also adds a last line to her back flap bio encouraging readers to visit her website:
“Learn more and download your free self-assessment at dorieclark.com.”
By contrast, most authors overlook using their books to promote their business and other products. I spoke about this at Digital Book World last September.
Recommended Reading:
Why does this matter to you as a marketer?
Use every promotional and marketing option to ensure success.
(In case you’re wondering how this is a New York Marketing Minute? You guessed it—Dorie Clark lives in New York City.)
Actionable Marketing Tip:
- Take a step back and look at your product more broadly. The key questions aren’t the usual marketing options. Instead think in terms of your augmented product to answer:
► What can I add to this offering to make it stand out to my best customers? It’s not about having more customers. It’s about how to fulfill the needs of your best customers.
► What other revenue streams can I create out of this product and related content? This is at the heart of Joe Pulizzi’s Content, Inc.
Recommended Reading:
Marketing Reads
New Posts on the Actionable Marketing Guide:
► 31 Halloween Social Media Marketing Tips You Need To Drive Awesome Results
Halloween social media marketing tricks drive measurable results!
While Halloween only lasts one night, let its spirit fuel your social media presence over time.
Even better, scare off your organization’s social media naysayers.
Recommended Reading:
► Blogging Research 2021: What You Need To Know To Drive Measurable Results
For the 8th year, Andy Crestodina and the Orbit Media team have asked 1,000+ bloggers 20 questions about blogging.
Blogging Research 2021 shows that blogging continues to yield measure results.
Plan Ahead: Mark Your Calendar
Join me at these marketing events:
► October 28 – AllDayDevOps Conference. Six tracks, 180 speakers, 100% live and 100% FREE. Connect for 24 hours of inspiration, knowhow, insights and data on everything DevOps.
► October 29 – Project Voice X Worldwide. The virtual counterpart to this week’s in-person event in Destin, Florida. Project Voice X Worldwide brings together the global community of voice technology and conversational AI. FREE!
Welcome new members: Andrey, Sonia, George, David, Raul and Blane.
Happy Marketing,
Heidi
P.S.: If you like the content in this newsletter, would you please share it with a friend or colleague.
P.P.S: Did you miss last week’s AMG Newsletter?
Previous newsletters can be found in the AMG Newsletter Archive.
