Mindshare Marketing

Tomorrow, this blog will be one year old!  To celebrate this occurance, I’m re-posting my first ever article (albeit with a few updates).  Enjoy a recap of July 12, 2007’s Blue Oceans:

Saturated markets with intense competition, according to an article from the Harvard Business Review, are “red” oceans. Companies in these markets tear at one another like sharks, filling the blood with water. Innovative companies recognize opportunities to create “blue” oceans in similar markets but where there is no competition. In my experience, I have seen at least two different kinds of blue oceans. I call them icebreaker and parallel blue oceans.

The first, or icebreaker, strategy is effective for new companies. An example is the New Zealand company Icebreaker (the name of the strategy is merely a coincidence). This company recognized a void between the wool clothing and technical apparel markets. Thus, they established “merino” as a product definition that spanned both categories. The new market had little competition and fueled rapid growth for the company, which now has operations worldwide.

An established firm, however, would not be capable of such a strategy. Any innovative products released would be instantly related to existing ones, preventing the move into the blue ocean. The only avenue available to larger, established companies would be to found a subsidiary. The separate company would not have an existing brand identity and would be free to define its blue ocean and restrict entering competition.

The second strategy, which I call parallel, is used by existing firms. Rather than moving into uncharted waters with a new product, a parallel strategy involves stepping sideways into a complimentary market. The first example that comes to mind is NTT DoCoMo in Japan. DoCoMo was Japan’s leading mobile phone company when mobile phones were just starting to take off as a market. As other suppliers began to enter the market, mobile phones became a commodity, forcing DoCoMo to begin developing content for the phones and release its innovative i-mode. DoCoMo leveraged its existing relationships with phone manufactures and designed i-mode activated phones for its customers.

New companies would have issues implementing such strategy. They lack the networks and proven partnerships necessary to create such a parallel system. This strategy builds on the firm’s existing positional advantage. It harvests certain intangible assets (network, brand reputation, and negotiating power) and reinvests them in the blue ocean’s business model.

Blue ocean strategy seems like common sense, and essentially is just that. However, it provides valuable tools for evaluating the strategies used by different businesses. If Nike, as an industry leader, had tried to create the merino category before Icebreaker it would likely have failed. Moving in a new direction to create a new category requires a young firm if it is to be successful. Likewise, it would be ill-advised for a start-up company still operating off initial financing to attempt a parallel move into a related industry. Without these analytical tools, however, there is no concise way to evaluate certain market entry strategies.

This blog is just a few days shy of being 1 year old.  I thought I’d celebrate the occasion by sharing some of the things I’ve learned through blogging over the past year.  Here are ten things, in no particular order, you can do to build a stellar blog:

1. Post something every day: I realize I don’t follow this rule myself, but if you want to build a truly large following, you need to guarantee your readers some sort of fresh content every time they point to your site.
2. Read other peoples’ blogs: I can’t stress this enough.  If you want people to read and comment on your site, you need to return the favor.
3. Respond to comments: If someone is brave enough to fill in the box at the end of your post, you at least owe them a thank you.  Whether you engage them in on-going dialogue or just thank them for posting, two-way communication with your audience is important!
4. Make it easy to subscribe: I don’t like to actually go to every blog I read.  It takes too much time and energy.  Thankfully, almost every blog out there has an RSS feed.  Make it easy for your readers to find and subscribe to your feed so they can stay up to date without having to track you down every time you post.
5. Let people know you exist: “If you build it, they won’t care.”  Nope, that’s not the original quote, it’s far more true.  Just building a blog and publishing great content won’t bring the masses to you - you need to let them know there’s a reason to show up.  Post in other forums, link to your blog in an email signature, or open a Twitter account and announce your updates.
6. Stay consistent: Talking for three days in a row about how to disassemble an engine and then spending two days talking about how furry your cat is before explaining how to put the engine back together will just tick people off.  If you’re starting a “series” about a particular topic, then consistently post on that topic.
   • Also make sure your posts are of a consistently high (or low) quality.  Writing several 4-page essays interspersed with single-paragraph “my dog woke me up this morning” posts won’t be interesting to anyone … unless you ALWAYS do things that way.
7. Keep things simple: WordPress and Blogger are both great interfaces for building blogs.  They offer huge libraries of features and let you do just about anything.  But just because you can wear three pairs of pants and 6 sweatshirts at once in July doesn’t mean you should.  Don’t clutter your sidebar with unnecessary widgets and keep Google Ads to a minimum so you don’t confuse (or scare away) your readers.
   • Keep It Simple, Stupid.  It might not be the nicest way to remind yourself about simplicity, but it’s simple enough to be effective!
8. Shorten your blogroll: It’s great that you read 50 blogs a day … but that many links on your blog just gives readers 50 different ways to leave your site before reading your post.  Restrict links to, at most, a top 5 and refer to other sites as necessary in the context of your content.
9. Test in different browsers: I don’t own a Mac, so I never had Safari installed on my computer.  Likewise, I rarely (if ever) use IE.  However, I still test all of my sites in every major browser (IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari) to make sure the experience is the same.  When Mindshare first started, the sidebar was completely invisible when viewed in Firefox.  Likewise, the banners on the second version of the site were illegibly small in Opera due to a programming conflict.
10. Track keyword searches: People might stumble on your blog because they’re looking for a specific topic.  Tracking what keywords bring them to you and what keywords they search when on your site gives you an invaluable content-creation tool.  Why build something from scratch when you can look inside your customer’s head and see exactly what she wants to read?

That’s about it, for now.  Next time (Monday, since Friday is a holiday), you can look forward to reading the top 5 things NOT to do with your blog.

Biscuits and gravy, biscuits and gravy
Get ‘em all over your shirt!
Biscuits and gravy, biscuits and gravy
Eat ‘em ’til it hurts!

This is a song, well, more of a chant that we used to do at summer camp a few years ago. Every Wednesday for breakfast we would have biscuits and gravy. I loved it. The staff loved it. The campers, on the other hand, complained all week about the fact that something so “gross” would be on the menu later that week.

Anyone who’s ever had good old biscuits and gravy will tell you they make a filling meal, taste great, and (unlike cold cereal) can keep you going for a looong time. When you’re camping in the mountains and have to be on your feet jogging hills all day, there’s rarely a better choice of breakfast. Unfortunately, 11-year olds accustomed to sugary cereal pawned by cartoon characters don’t quite get that.

This is where the song/chant comes in.

Get people cheering something loud enough and long enough, and the words will stick with them. Make the cheer a competition between two groups and you bring passion into the equation. Even though they might have never had B&G before, they will get emotional about winning and tie the breakfast choice in with those emotions.

We had several people complain on Sunday about Wednesday’s menu. Even more on Monday. One or two more would join them on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the complaints were sometimes a chorus rising from the masses all the way until they were seated with their steaming plates of B&G. After the song, though, everyone was excited beyond comparison about breakfast … and they ate it all. I think I only ever got seconds once - the week we had half as many campers.

New products can be hard to get passionate about, particularly if you already have something that works for you. If consumers have a choice (as they almost always do) they will stick with what they know and trust and leave your flashy new (and superior) product sitting on their plate as they leave breakfast.

We sang songs and created competition to build support behind our “new product.” What can you do to build support behind yours?