Do you trust your customers first?
Do you love watching movies? Why did you watch the movies you watched?
Perhaps you watched them for relaxation. Perhaps you watched them for the adrenalin rush. Maybe you did get what you paid. But one thing is for sure. There will be one or two good movies you'll remember while the rest are forgettable. The good ones make you connect with the story and reveal to you a part of yourself that you never knew. It could be a scene from the movie, a phrase, an act or even a song. One movie that has stuck on my mind all these year is Forrest Gump. It's a story of a man with low IQ who rose above his challenges, and who proved that determination, courage, and love are more important than ability. One of the most famous phrase in the movie was, My momma always said :"Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." It is a simple sentence with very profound meaning. Do your business give meaning to your customers? Are you memorable or forgettable? She is up to something again this morning.
Kneading, wrapping, steaming a traditional food even before the sun comes out. My mom loves cooking. It could be that she never had a chance to attend school when she was young and she had to help take care of a relative's widowed kids. She picked up cooking at a very young age. She used to tell me a story about how she pleaded with an old grandma to teach her to make kueh bangkit, a kind of Peranakan cookie. The lady refused to teach her and told her off, "Young girl like you want to learn so much for what." Undeterred, she went on to make it herself and learn from her mistakes one step at a time. If the cookie turned out too hard, she'll ask if she had used the correct flour or too much of it. If it breaks, she'll find out if she added too much sugar. The first time she got someone to teach her make mini peanut puff, it was so frustrating cos the skin would just open up and the fillings flowed out once we put them in the oil to fry. The same thing happened when she first attempted to make curry puff. But she persisted despite the failures. Through countless testing, she is now an expert in making Peranakan cookies. Love letters, kueh buluh, pineapple tart, mini peanut puff, peanut cookie, spicy shrimp roll and nonya kueh are some of her specialties. She became so good that she started selling them during the Chinese New Year to supplement the family income. I remember when I was still in school, one month before the Chinese New Year, our home is turned into a mini factory. We'll wash the containers and sun them dry. Bought all the ingredients in advance. Waking up at 6am, most of my weekends were spent helping to churn out tins and tins of cookies. I'm probably the only student who sold cookies to my teachers in school. She'll sell dumpling during the dragon boat festival. Other times, she'll sew clothes to earn some extra cash. Though we were not well off, we never go hungry. We stopped selling them as she is getting older. Over the years, unknowingly, she has taught me a few precious lessons. You can teach yourself If no one wants to teach you, you can always teach yourself. Ask and ask When my mom goes to market, she will ask anyone, including strangers if they know how to make something she is trying to learn. She is not shy of looking foolish and not fearful of rejection. Never give up Try and try and try. One day, you will find the right recipe. Never take shortcuts In the past, we made love letters using charcoal. It's no joke to be sitting on the floor next to hot burning charcoal for 5 hours handling 30 molds at one time. You have to keep turning the molds to make sure both sides are cooked nicely. And getting burnt by the bloody hot mold is no laughing matter. Then someone invented the electric love letter making machine. Clean and easy. No turning of molds. No heat. No more sitting on the floor and straining your back. No danger of scalding yourself. The only drawback was it's so slow that you'll probably fall asleep waiting for it to cook as it cooked two at a time. But the most important difference is that love letters made over charcoal taste nicer and lasts longer. The longest time we've kept love letter is three months. No mould and totally still edible. And she insisted on not adding water to the ingredient which would dilute the fragrance of the coconut milk, even while others do so. Adding water allowed her to make more but compromised the taste and the crunch. Thanks for being a great teacher. What did you learn from your mom? Share them with us. Saves you time in pasting stamps.
Saves your customers' time in discarding them. Richard Branson
Oprah Winfrey Warren Buffett Steve Jobs More than just riches. IKEA still prints catalogues every year.
Google sends letters. Looking out of the kitchen window, a kid on his way to kindergarten was chasing after three birds.
Two flew away and he went for the third one. Without a doubt, it flew away as well. He looked at his grandma who was carrying his bag and seemed to be asking "Can I stay here to catch the birds?" How naive kids are. Looking at the scene, it dawned on me that I am just like him when I was about that age. Chasing after birds and doing whatever that looked interesting, without thinking if it is ever possible. As we grow older, we are taught how to avoid danger, how things should be done, what is impossible and what will get us ridiculed at by others. We now live in a box with rules defined by others. And the rules seem to be getting longer and longer. If you are 18, you should be in school. When you are 25, you should at least finished university and found yourself a job with good prospects. By 40, you should be doing pretty well in your career, married with two kids. Maybe you no longer need to get married by 40, but you are bind by other rules. Don't dream of the impossible. Stay where you are and don't make mistakes in your job. Never challenge your superior. Don't play with fire. Written or unwritten, we live according to the rules taught or forced on us from our parents, friends, society, teachers, colleagues and corporations unconsciously or deliberately. Of course, some of them are useful to protect our lives. But others do more harm. Look at yourself and you'll see that your actions and decisions are the results of these programs you took in along the way in your life. But you can always change what you don't like or what's not working for you. Whenever you find yourself thinking or talking yourself out of an idea that sound or feel stupid, remember the little kid in you running after the birds. Singtel, a mobile operator in Singapore, launched a new service today. It's called WhatsApp plan, a prepaid mobile plan to allow users surf the web and send email and instant messages. It's for those who do not have a data plan for their mobile line. Of course, with this service, a user can use the popular Whatsapp messaging service to send instant messages to others without incurring SMS (Short message service) charges. That's why the name Whatsapp plan. The terms for Whatsapp usage include fair usage of 1GB per day and for use within Singapore only. Yet it claimed a user can use it to send and receive messages, images and video with no extra data charges. The weird thing about this plan is that they have the options of 1-Day, 7-Day or 30-Day at 50 cents, $3 and $6 respectively. It just does not make sense to subscribe to Whatsapp plan for only one day. Unless their intention is to make subscribing to 30 days looks more value for money.
Before Whatsapp became available, the only messaging service we have on our mobile phones is SMS. Most mobile subscription plans will come with a limited number of free SMS. Any SMS sent above the free ones will be charged at 5 cents per SMS. Those users who used to SMS frequently must have paid through their nose on those years. This reminded me of a news I read about Singtel and StarHub's (another mobile operator in Singapore) plan to launch their own messaging service to counter Whatsapp, which has been responsible for the declining usage of SMS and revenue for the operators. Singtel must have discovered that instead of developing their own messaging application, it's easier to collaborate with Whatsapp. It's a cheaper alternative too. But getting people who haven't use Whatsapp to pay $6 per month, or rather $72 per year to use it is a big challenge. Those who need Whatsapp are probably already using it. Those who are still not using it will probably never need or want it. $6 is enough to send extra 120 SMSes; 1440 SMSes for a year. When writing your sales copy, you have to know who are your readers.
Are they end users or decision makers? Are they layman or experts? What is their level of knowledge in your area of expertise? Many of us tend to think that our readers are as knowledgeable as us. We use words that we know and assume they understand what these words mean. While it's true that customers are now smarter and educated, that does not mean they understand the terms you use. If you use jargons, make sure the target readers understand what these terms means. In situations where you are selling to a niche market of technical staff or experts, you should use jargons if these are the standard name commonly used by people in the industry. It's clear and everybody know what you are talking about. But if you are selling to a market where the knowledge level can varies from basic to expert, it's best to use simple words. The experts will know the scientific or technical terms of the things you are talking about. The majority of them will understand. Unless you are selling medical products to medical practitioners, do not use medical terms in your advertisement. If you must, explain what these mean to your readers. Very few people know what Glucosamine HCI, MSM, Chondroitin Sulfate means. Much less their benefits. I saw this sign board of a new bakery on my way to the supermarket.
It was placed facing the stairs of an overhead bridge, which spans across the expressway. The bridge is the only shortcut to the supermarket for people living on the other side of the expressway. So every one crossing the bridge to the supermarket will not miss it. Guess how many people visited the bakery after seeing it? |
AuthorOutrageous Marketing Archives
May 2020
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