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Tim

Forget Your Industry. How Safe is Your Job from Amazon?

by Tim on June 19, 2013

in Creativity,Leadership,Marketing,Strategy

Measures that matter The other day, I talked about industries getting “Amazon’d,” where technological shifts (largely brought to bear by the AGFAM-ily), disrupt traditional industry players. More importantly, I talked about how your business can adapt in such an environment.

However, a number of you wrote to me saying, “Screw my industry. What about my career?!?” Or something very much to that effect.

Now, I don’t want to offer false platitudes. (Y’know, as opposed to all those true platitudes going around these days.) It’s fairly certain at least some people will be displaced by these changes.

Unfortunately, that’s not new.

Equally unfortunately, many countries don’t have a great process for helping people transition to new opportunities (or, in the worst cases, few new opportunities exist).

As for whether these disruptive shifts signal “the end of work,” as Jeremy Rifkin called it in his 1995 book of the same name, I honestly have no idea.

In my defense, no one does. While Rifkin’s work may have been prescient, remember that the book was written 13 years prior to the current unemployment crisis. It’s possible his thesis foretold the future. It’s also possible it represents the proverbial broken clock, with the last few years representing one of the two times he’ll actually be right.

Even more telling, Rifkin’s not the first to make this claim. Theorists dating back to John Maynard Keynes in the 1930′s predicted an end to work brought about by a machine age (though, in Keynes’ view, massive technological shifts resulted in the “good problem” of what to do with an abundance of leisure time). And the original Luddites of the early 1800′s smashed machines out of fear of losing their jobs permanently.

So, the “end of work” crowd doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record here.

Of course, the fact that none of these folks have been right in the past doesn’t mean that they are automatically wrong now.

Me? I tend to follow a “plan for the worst, hope for the best,” strategy. Or, as put far better by computer scientist Alan Kay, “The only way to predict the future is to build it.”

Labor, yours and others, is a product. As a marketer, I’m all about products. Whether machines can do “all” the work, plenty of opportunities will exist to fill customer (or, if you must, employer) needs going forward.

The means of production and distribution are now, effectively, free. So use them to your advantage.

Sites like Etsy and Freelancer.com and 99designs and DeviantArt and Disc Makers and Threadless and, yes, Amazon, Google, YouTube, and on and on and on offer opportunities to put your work, your creativity, and your passion in front of potential customers.

Sources like Khan Academy and Coursera and MIT Open Courseware and iTunes U and YouTube and loads of others enable you to learn new skills (like, say, programming, network engineering, or training), on which those machines, their operators, and the capital behind them rely.

New customer segments like older, increasingly active adults, Millenials requiring mentoring, Boomers requiring reverse mentoring, and on and on and on will require myriad new products and services and features and benefits that you can provide if you follow my long-standing advice and focus on your customer (even if, in this case, the customer is somebody different than you’re accustomed to serving).

I’ve said many times that marketing is so much more than advertising. It’s creating products, and finding the right place, price, and promotional vehicles necessary to put those products in front of the right customer. At its core, it’s about helping people solve their problems.

And as long as there are people, there’s an opportunity for you to help them. For fun. And for profit. And if that’s not a job worth doing, I don’t know what is.

Interested in learning more about the future of marketing? Register to receive a special report I’ve produced in conjunction with hotel marketing firm Vizergy, “Digital Hotel Marketing in a Multiscreen World.” While it’s targeted specifically at hotel and resort marketers, the lessons apply to just about any business. You can get your free copy of the report here.

And you might also enjoy some of our past coverage of the social, local, mobile web and what it means for your business, including:

Tagged as: job, job seeking, jobs, Marketing, marketing 101, marketing strategy, work

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When More is More: Upselling as a Sales & Marketing Tactic (Travel Tuesday)

by Tim on June 18, 2013

in E-commerce,Engagement,Marketing,Strategy,Travel Marketing

Incredible growth onine image Here’s a staggering statistic about the hospitality industry: On average, roughly 30%-40% of all room inventory goes unsold most nights (obviously, the number varies depending on seasonality and the like).

The thing is, this isn’t news. According the AH&LA, hotel occupancy has ranged between 63% and 70% since the 1960′s. This, despite loads of new distribution models, shifting industry alliances, consolidation among suppliers and distributors, and on and on and on.

So, here’s a thought: Why bother? I’m serious (at least to a degree). Instead of working like crazy to drive increases in occupancy, why not look to improve revenues from existing customers?

That’s the premise behind a new whitepaper sponsored by Nor1 that I’ve written for HSMAI, “When More is More: Upselling as a Sales & Marketing Tactic.”

Upselling offers hotel marketers and revenue managers the opportunity to increase their share of wallet from existing guests by providing these guests valuable options following their reservation. It’s all about understanding what your guests value and anticipating their needs. And it’s a great example of offering your guests more value throughout their purchase path.

The paper examines best practices for making upselling work in your business, highlighting the importance of:

Process. This includes identifying all products available for upsell; reviewing amenities in the hotel, including room types and views, to offer your guests the greatest value; and determining the appropriate time and at what price to offer these amenities.
Data. Including tracking your guests’ preferences following their stays and using predictive analytics to suggest offers, timing and pricing based on guest behavior.
Technology. Making best use of the tools available to hotel marketing teams to help track your guests’ changing needs and offering the right value to guests at the right time to capture the sale.
Personnel. Getting every member of the hotel team to work together to provide your guests a great experience during the reservation process, and providing guests the best offer at the right time such as via pre-arrival email blasts, at check-in, during the stay and following the stay to ensure both repeat visits and increased satisfaction.

Of course, upselling isn’t a “silver bullet.” When seeking to initiate an upselling program, make sure you avoid the following mistakes:

Upselling before closing the initial sale. Don’t present an upsell offer too early in the process or you’ll risk the overall sale. You must first sell something to the guest before you can upsell them.
Worrying about guests ‘gaming’ the system. Properties avoid upselling in fear that the guest will request and receive free upgrades on subsequent stays after enjoying premium amenities. However, selling upgrades can enlighten the guest to what all the hotel has to offer, and once they experience a premium service, they are likely to request it again.
Improperly valuing the upgrade. Consumers focus on the relative value of one thing compared to another, and price upgrades should come accordingly. Guests are unlikely to pay for a service that costs twice as much as their hotel room but may be enticed by an upgrade to a suite for a diminutive cost.
Not investing in the appropriate tools. It’s difficult to anticipate a guest’s needs without having known his or her purchase history and preferences. The correct tools can lead to better guest experiences, retention and recommendation.

The paper covers these topics and a whole lot more in much greater detail. You can read HSMAI’s press release here or register with HSMAI and Nor1 to receive your copy here.

And you might also enjoy some of our past coverage of the social, local, mobile web and what it means for your business, including:

Tagged as: conversion, conversion rate, conversion rate optimization, Marketing, marketing 101, marketing strategy, revenue management, travel, travel marketing, upselling

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How Safe is Your Industry From Amazon?

by Tim on June 17, 2013

in E-commerce,Facebook,Google,microsoft,Mobile,Strategy

Your industry is dying. And it’s all Amazon’s fault.

Many existing companies, and entire industries, exhibit a siege mentality. Travel long ago shifted away from travel agents and towards online players. Newspapers and magazines seem locked in a race to the bottom, competing for fewer and fewer ad dollars. Big-box retail is screwed. Just this week, Derek Thompson at The Atlantic noted,

“[JCPenney] …is just the latest bold-faced retail brand on the brink of extinction. Circuit City is dead; Best Buy is dying. Borders is gone; Barnes & Noble is shuttering storefronts. Kmart has closed 40 percent of its stores in the past decade. As recently as 1998, Sears was in the Dow 30. Today, Sears Holding isn’t even in the S&P 500. “

And it doesn’t matter how strong your brand is. During a recent panel discussion, Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg sat in front of a rapt audience and,

“…predicted an “implosion” in the film industry is inevitable, whereby a half dozen or so $250 million movies flop at the box office and alter the industry forever. “

George Lucas echoed that point, stating,

“‘You’re talking about Steven Spielberg and George Lucas can’t get their movie into a theater,’ [George] Lucas said.”

Back in the “Web 1.0″ world of 1995-2001, people called this trend “getting Amazon’d.” Meaning, of course, that the web retailer (or similar players in other industries), was making off with your customers by offering lower prices, product innovations, or, more rarely, improved customer service.

To be fair, it wasn’t/isn’t just Amazon. It’s also Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft (or, as I call ‘em, AGFAM). And it’s their smaller competitors, nipping at these larger players’ heels — or, more commonly, building on their platforms.

I’ve been talking about these changes for a while (for example, here and here). But Daniel Burrus on LinkedIn succinctly explains the importance of these changes,

“Three digital accelerators have been driving the transition from change to transformation for many years, but due to their predictable exponential rate, they have now reached an inflection point — a point where processes, products, services, and careers no longer change; rather, they transform. The three digital accelerators are processing power, digital storage, and digital bandwidth.”

Or, as they’re also known, Moore’s Law, Kryder’s Law, and Butter’s Law, respectively.

Because these laws foliow an exponential curve, they get bigger, faster, than most people can get their head around.

For instance, Moore’s Law effectively says that a given amount of computing power doubles once every 18 months. That means in practice that computing power gets 10 times more powerful every 5 years and 100 times more powerful every ten. The corollary states that the price for a given amount of computing power will decrease by half in 18 months.

Put another way, the mobile phone in your pocket will be 10 times as powerful in just 5 years and almost 100 times more powerful within 10 years. You can see why that’s tough to grasp. So, to put it more simply, the current top-of-the-line iPhones, iPads, and Android devices will cost between $1.99 and $6.99 within a decade.

Don’t believe me? Microsoft recently placed a print ad in Forbes magazine that functioned as a T-mobile wireless router. Even with Microsoft’s deep pockets, you wouldn’t throw away hundreds or thousands of brand new routers, would you? Of course not. But you could afford to throw away 10-year old ones.

But the real question is whether this has to be this way.

I say of course not.

Now, obviously, advances in computing power and storage and bandwidth will change the way your customers interact with your business and your industry. I don’t dispute this fact. And of course many companies (such as the AGFAM-ily) will seek to exploit the opportunities these advances provide.

But as Thompson notes in the Atlantic piece, while highlighting customer-focused retailers like Costco, Trader Joe’s, Wegmans, and QuikTrip,

“Increasingly, there seem to be two kinds of stores—those in a race to the price bottom, and those closely guarding the patina of a shopping experience. Perhaps that’s because, more and more, there are two distinct kinds of customers.” [Emphasis mine]

Marketing is always about meeting your customers’ needs. Period. It doesn’t matter whether two types of customers exist, three, or a dozen. Technology advances offer an opportunity to meet the needs those customer types have head on.

A former boss of mine used to talk about “the power of ‘and’.” Meaning, that most things weren’t “either/or.” For example, it’s not Amazon or you, Google or you, Facebook or you. It’s all of these at the same time.

Don’t run in fear from Amazon (or Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft). Embrace the realities that Moore’s Law (and Kryder’s Law, and Butter’s Law) create. Take a good look at what your customers are doing, how their needs are changing, and how the tools offered by the big boys (and their smaller competitors) help you address those customer needs.

Your industry undoubtedly faces challenges from the folks directly in the AGFAM group and those using their platforms to challenge the status quo. Those efforts will likely cause your industry, at least as you know it today, to die. But by focusing on recognizing and adapting to your customers’ changing needs, no one says you have to die with it.

And you might also enjoy some of our past coverage of the social, local, mobile web and what it means for your business, including: