Amazon sells more than 550 private-label and exclusive brands on its e-commerce platform. Many of the private label offerings have been introduced in the last two years, creating shock waves throughout brick and mortar retailers and claims of unfair competitive advantages from manufacturers of everything from apparel to consumer packaged goods. Those initial fears that Amazon would devastate more established industries have proven to be unfounded. A recent Marketplace Pulse study of 23,000 products sold on Amazon found that consumers are not more inclined to buy Amazon private and exclusive brands even when Amazon elevates them in search results even though Amazon owns more than 50 percent of all online spending in the U.S.
Weekly, BKBG provides Shareholders with content in the Elevation Blog. The information in the Elevation Blog posts is likely of interest to your existing and prospective clients. The material is a tool that will help you appear on the first page of Google searches without having to pay for Ad Words, and you can use it to build your email list. Did you know that email marketing is one of the most cost-effective mediums to promote your brand? A recent study found that email marketing that works generates $50 in return on investment for every one dollar invested. With a 50 to1 ROI, it makes sense to build your email list. Here are several suggestions for doing so:
There may not be a more prophetic insight from Apple founder Steve Jobs than his statement, "Some people say, 'give the customers what they want.' But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do...People don't know what they want until you show it to them."
Today's job market is incredibly tight. Most anyone who wants to work can find a job. Unemployment levels are at their lowest levels in the past 50 years. The current environment places a premium on the need to provide a workplace and culture that attracts and retains best-in-class talent.
There are business benefits to laughter in the showroom. According to Alison Beard's Harvard Business Reviewarticle, Leading With Humor, laughter in the workplace reduces stress and boredom, increases engagement and well-being and spurs not only creativity and collaboration but also analytical precision and productivity.
Making cold calls is a fact of life for sales professionals. It's part of the job. However, a recent study found that nearly 50 percent of sales professionals are afraid of making cold calls. The primary reasons for cold calling reluctance are the fear of sounding like a sales professional and fear of failure, according to Weldon Long, author of Consistency Selling in an HBR blog post.
Nobel economics laureate Daniel Kahneman has spent his career determining how and why people make decisions. In his classic work, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow, Kahneman relates that there are two broad types of decision making. System 1 is thinking fast; simply reacting without much thought at all. You really don't have to think a lot about how you commute to and from work. It's instinctive after a short period. System 2 is slow thinking that operates at a more logical level.
Seth Godin is one of the most admired and respected minds in marketing today. He is the author of more than a dozen books and publishes a daily must-read blog for anyone who runs a business. Seth is unique because he looks at the world through different lenses, continually challenging the status quo to take fresh new approaches that work more often than not. He was among the first marketing minds to understand that the way people purchase had changed and recognized that it is necessary to change messaging to effectively respond to the paradigm shift that had taken place.
Seth Godin had another brilliant blog titled Managing Reputation in the Age of Infinity. Godin writes,
Amazon sells junk.
More junk every day. And they know this.
They sell junk that would never, ever be sold at a Wal-Mart store (or a BKBG Shareholder showroom). That's because in order to get into a store, a buyer, a human being with a reputation, has to allocate shelf space. The easiest way to lose your job as a buyer is to put brand-destroying lousy products on a valuable shelf.
In another brilliant blog post, Bernadette Jiwa (The Story of Telling) reminisced about the buzz that occurred when Ron Johnson, the genius behind Apple Stores, was named CEO of JC Penney. Immediately, Johnson tried to reverse Penney's decade-long practice of offering continuous sales and discounts and replace them with small store compelling customer experiences inside of a large department store. Johnson's goal was to convert Penney's into a place where people wanted to congregate instead of a place to buy stuff. Penney's stock soared when the strategy was announced, and the entire brick and mortar industry waited with bated breath to see if Johnson would succeed. Johnson's plan crashed and burned. Penney's stock price nosedived 37 percent, and Johnson was replaced after 17 months.
