The XBox Marketing Secret

In our last email we talked about standing up to big businesses with a little marketing savvy. Rather than being knocked out of the arena, the little guy might need to have a few tricks up his sleeve.

Sometimes it pays to find out exactly what the giant competitors are doing. Let’s sneak a peek at Microsoft – an obviously successful giant. Here’s a little secret you might not have known… Microsoft is losing big bucks on its Xbox 360. That’s right! They lost more than $3 million dollars on $157 million in revenue from Xbox sales.

Bill Gates and his marketing guru’s can’t be denounced as marketing illiterates, though they are getting a few raised eyebrows over the Xbox 360 losses. So you can bet there’s a reason to their madness… marketplace dominance. They are willing to sink millions into dominating a “market in the making” – a video game console market. Why? Yeah, marketplace dominance works!

Heck, you probably don’t want to go out on a million dollar limb to get your name on the top of the list in your marketing niche. But you do want get yourself to the top of the list in a hurry. Your goal is to be the first name to come to mind when someone mentions your marketing niche. For example, when someone mentions computers what do you think? Yep…Bill Gates and Microsoft.

That’s the reaction you’re looking for - instant recognition, or marketplace dominance. The best way to become dominant is to keep your name, face, logo, message and voice in front of your potential customers constantly.

Here are a few things you can do to achieve marketplace dominance:

1. NEVER allow a customer to slip away without getting contact information.

2. EMAIL: send out about 52 emails over the course of a year.

3. PHONE: have a sales associate make phone calls about four times every year. 4. MAIL: 18 mailings each year will make your name and message familiar.

Communication on a consistent basis will have your business linked to their subconscious and ready to rise to the surface in an instant. You’ll be like family… heck the kids probably don’t even write home 18 times a year!

Join me next time for some more great insight about what successful people do to win.

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.

Taking Down the Bully - Big Business

Marketing, marketing, marketing… it’s been disguised as everything ranging from door-to-door salesmen to big-wig consultants, but the goal is always the same. Make the sale!

What’s the catch? Heck, if you call the odds against a gawky pipsqueak successfully climbing into an arena to face off with a heavyweight champion a catch, then you know what we’re up against here. It’s big business with gloves on ready to knock out the small business competition.

We thought franchises were supposed to even out the odds a little. Unfortunately, that’s no longer true. It can take a million bucks in net worth and $500,000 in upfront cash to get a hamburger stand up and running.

So what do you do when you find yourself “pennyless” and face-to-face to big business competition with millions for pocketchange? Get market savvy! Advertise smarter. Communicate your message more clearly. Promote your product more effectively.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Believe me, it can be done. There are small businesses that are just as successful as the Wal-Marts of our generation. They’ve stayed in business for generations and outlasted the ups and downs of the economy, and the string of marketing fads that have swept across America.

Don’t be bullied by big competitors. Next time we’ll talk more about smart marketing that will give the competition a left jab to the nose.

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.

Dock Side Delivery…Creativity at its Best!

There are two kinds of successful people in the business world – those who follow the blueprint of other successful businessmen and women and imitate their success, and those who explode the market with a novel idea.

Well, okay… there’s a third. That’s the business mastermind that takes an idea that has already been tried and adds a new twist to it. In other words, adding creativity to innovation (something we talked about in our last email).

I recently read a story that really made me sit up and pay attention. Who hasn’t heard of Domino’s Pizza? Yeah, you’d have to be part ostrich with your head stuck in the sand to not know about one of the most successful pizza delivery businesses in America.

Imagine this… ordering a pizza and having it delivered right to your dock. Nope that’s not a typo, dock is correct. Not your typical delivery style, but an interesting approach to shaving miles off of delivering by road to customers you can see right across the lake.

One young Domino Pizza franchise owner found himself in this predicament.

What did this savvy, young entrepreneur do? He set about setting up the first dock-side pizza delivery, which took some upfront investment.

First he had to invest in painting numbers on all of the docks so his delivery “mates” could figure out where they were delivering, then put up some lighting so they could deliver after dark.

The next snag was rough water… hey, it wasn’t always easy sailing. Customers aren’t fond of scrambled pizza, so a new way of keeping the pizzas in place had to be invented. Was all of this effort worthwhile? Yep! Tom Monahan’s franchise was one of Domino’s most successful. You can’t beat that!

Have you thought of a great way to improve on a good idea? Market it; incorporate it, or whatever it takes. Step out on a limb, and be creative.

Do you have market savvy? Find out next time!

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.

Innovation… the Common Denominator for Uncommon Success

Have you ever stopped to look at truly successful people? Heck, they come in all shapes and sizes. Some are starch-stiff, every hair in place, and even their socks are designer items. Others look like a windstorm carried them through the door and dumped them, rumpled and mismatched.

What about personalities? Believe me, they come in every color in the rainbow… bright and cheery, tough and streetwise, suave and hip… just to name a few. Oh yeah, don’t forget to factor in a few nerds.

What am I trying to say? You don’t need to be just like Bill Gates or Donald Trump to find success of your own. Individuality is part of the formula for success. There are, though, a few underlying common denominators that successful people share regardless of appearance or personality.

Probably the most important of these is innovation. Think about it. How much has the world changed in the past decade? Don’t just look at the Internet for changes – although it has totally re mapped the business world. Look around the next time you head for town.

I’ve been wondering when the service stations disappeared! Just last week the very last of these dinosaurs finally closed its doors in my home town. Sure there are quick lube places all over town, and hordes of self-service gas stations, but the old fashioned service stations have become extinct.

Was it by chance? Nope! Someone began seeing an open market years ago, employed some innovation and started opening quick lube shops. Guess what? It worked, and worked quite well.

Was it easy? Imagine presenting the idea of a quick lube to an unimaginative banker who had his oil changed at the local service station for 25 years. Not easy, but in the end innovation paid off.

Keep your eyes peeled for brand new ways of doing business. Who knows if you’ll be the next Bill Gates!

Next time, we’ll look at another common denominator you’ll find among successful businessmen.

Dedicated To Your Further Success.

All the best,

Allyn Cutts

PS To contact me via email, Click Here

About the Author

Allyn has spent over 24 years helping businesses like yours find new customers and increase sales to current customers.

Allyn consults personally with clients to design and deliver offline and online direct marketing strategies that focus on metrics and measurable results. You can learn more about Allyn Cutts at http://AmazingMarketingStrategy.com or you can call 610.437.4106 between 10 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time Tuesdays and Thursdays

You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and the resource box at the end intact.