Becoming Essential   How marketing really works.

I’m only about 2/3s of the way through, but Setting the Table by Danny Meyer is a book that every business person would benefit by reading. It lays out clearly why your hospitality is more important than your tangible product. They’re both crucial. But people tend to really lapse when it comes to hospitality.

I judge whether a company brings real value to people by whether they do the most important step of marketing. That’s inventing a product that has real, highly differentiated value.

Products like Coke don’t have real, highly differentiated value. Coke is a commodity, dressed up as something special.

LessEverything is a Ruby on Rails Development company that understands marketing. And, you can see from their site, they do great work, which is, as Allan says in this blog post, great marketing.

Some of you have asked when our next web marketing roundtable is with slots available. My friends Mike Belasco from seOverflow and Jon Clark from Aten Design Group and I have a few openings for our event on May 14th. If you’d like to attend, just leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you…

Update to Nigel’s website…and brand…

Nigel Clayton is the best business coach there is, period.

I just did a new website for him that tries to capture the essence of who he is, what he does, and, most importantly, how it helps.

I’m a devout follower of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, as are many. The book is 267 pages long. That’s about 266 and a 1/2 too many.

Here’s the whole thing:

Don’t keep track of anything in your head.

For example, when you speak to a client and need to follow up in a week, don’t try to remember to follow up. You need to create a reminder for a specific time a week later and put it into a system that INTERRUPTS you. Putting the reminder in a day-timer that you don’t examine at least several times per day won’t work. Instead, put the reminder in your PDA, your laptop calendar, or a computer program that waves its arms in front of you via email, SMS, etc. I recommend two options:

If you are a PC user or web-centric: Remember the Milk

If you are a Mac user: OmniFocus

Now, go out and read 266 and a 1/2 pages of something frivolous.

I designed a quick website for a friend recently. She’s a great gal, but a devout price shopper. The short term cost of the thing is what’s important to her. She doesn’t think of spending money as an investment; she thinks of it as a drain.

Price shopping is a disease that will lead you to ruin: don’t do it. I’m not talking about seeing if you can find a $1200 designer suit for $200. I’m talking about budgeting $200 for a suit and then going out and buying one that lists for $200 retail. If you are hard up, don’t buy a $200 suit. Figure out what type of clothing ensemble you can wear that’s well-made, elegant and that meets your budget. Maybe it’s a simple pair of slacks and a really nice sweater.

Don’t be a price shopper.

If your marketing efforts are to impact sales, you must understand this: every company has two product lines.

The first product line is the ACTUAL product: If you are a ski retailer, it’s a pair of skis. If you are a dentist, it’s a root canal. If you are a web designer, it’s a website.

The second product line is how you TREAT your customer before, during, and after the transaction.

If you are a ski retailer, it’s:

• the speed with which the customer is able to make their purchase
• the ability of your salespeople to match customers with the best pair of skis
• the flexibility of the return policy

If you are a dentist, it’s:

• your patient’s physical comfort during the root canal
• how the patient is put at ease by the environment of the dentist’s office
• how clearly you explain what a root canal is, why the patient needs it, and what they will feel like the next day

If you are a web designer, it’s:

• how quickly you can deliver the design
• how you are able to satisfy client whims and still produce an outstanding site
• what kind of help you are to the client, after deployment

It is especially crucial to remember this fact if your ACTUAL product can’t realistically be differentiated from the product of the competition. If you are a coffee shop or a consumer electronics store or a lawn care company, there’s a limit to how much you can differentiate your ACTUAL products. There’s a limit to how easily you can differentiate the taste of the coffee, your selection of TV’s and stereos, and the greenness of your lawns.

That means, you’ve got to concentrate on how you TREAT your customers.