Target Your Audiences: Why Men Hate Going to Church

I just finished reading this book about why men either don't pay much attention in church or don't go at all. You don't have to be a Christian to realize the conclusion of the book: Males are not well represented in churches because they do not like the feminine qualities of the church. In other words, if churches would make changes to appeal to a larger audience that includes males and then market themselves to that male audience, male attendance might rise.

Knowing your target audience and developing ways to attract that audience matters.


What have you done to target audiences? Why do you think targeting audiences is important?

Pic Tip Friday: Be the first, brand something unqiue

Pic Tip # 9: Create a unique product. Be the first to brand a genre. Do something different. Combine two genres or two things to make something interesting and new.

Pic Tip Friday: Jokes - Have Fun

Pic Tip # 8: Do something fun and unique.

Pic Tip Friday: Be aware of the times

Pic Tip #7: Be aware of the times and take advantage of current trends or events that might give a new or creative spin to your product, business or service.

Pic Tip Friday: Details, details, details.

Pic Tip # 6: Keep the details in mind.

Pic Tip Friday: Where the action is

Pic Tip # 4: Put yourself or your product or service in the middle of where the action is (like TKTS in Times Square).

Pic Tip Friday: Reinvent

Pic Tip # 3: Reinvent (like Lincoln Center did), but without completely throwing out the original. Slow change is better than huge change all at once.

Pic Tip Friday: Extraordinary Placement

Pic Tip # 2: Put your product somewhere out of the ordinary where it will stand out.

Music, videos and digital copies

I love combos that come with DVDs, Blu-ray disc, and digital copy. They give you a lot more for your money - or at least they make you feel that way - so you're more likely to buy them. So why haven't music companies started doing this yet? Charge a little extra, but make it look like a good deal by offering to give the customer the MP3s for free to have the music immediately while you wait for the physical CD. After all, the physical CD is phasing out. It's all about digital now.

Pic Tip Friday: All about the display

For the next few weeks I will be posting short marketing tips based on various snap shots. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so see what you can learn from the photos I'll be posting.

Here's Pic Tip #1:

Find creative ways to display your product or service.

Netflix changes its mind.... again

Remember my previous posts on Netflix's bad moves in price hikes and splitting the streaming and dvd services? Well now they've changed their mind again based on customer complaints and are staying the same, but keeping the price hikes.

I know they're trying to please customers, but even worse than making irrational, unpleasant changes is staying inconsistent in your brand by going back and forth of the teeter totter. Netflix has a lot of damage control to do, and the Marketing, Public Relations people aren't doing a good job at it so far.

What do you think? Is Netflix making the right decisions?


Here's the letter Netflix sent out with its most recent announcements:

Dear Harmony,  

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. This means no change: one website, one account, one password…in other words, no Qwikster. While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes. We're constantly improving our streaming selection. We've recently added hundreds of movies from Paramount, Sony, Universal, Fox, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax. Plus, in the last couple of weeks alone, we've added over 3,500 TV episodes from ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, USA, E!, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC Family, Discovery Channel, TLC, SyFy, A&E, History, and PBS. We value you as a member, and we are committed to making Netflix the best place to get your movies & TV shows.

Respectfully,
The Netflix Team

The Advantage of Hands On Marketing

People like hands on stuff. Look at the Nook vs. the Kindle. You can go to your local Barnes and Noble and try the Nook out. But you have to buy the Kindle on faith. Give the customer a taste, and he's far more likely to crave your product in the future. Just look at Edmund in "The Chronicles of Narnia." He really liked his sweets, didn't he?

What have you done to make your company or product more hands on and interactive? Are samples as effective as they seem?

A Social Media Cheat Sheet

Visit Sociable Blog (the original provider of this graphic) for the accompanying article.

Get your audience involved

If you want more followers.... get your audience involved.
If you want more customers... get your audience involved.
If you want more results......... get your audience involved.

I could go on, but I won't. You get the point. Contests, interesting content, discussion... GET YOUR AUDIENCE INVOLVED.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying has done a good job of this. The Broadway show held a contest for its fans. See the winner in the video below:

Amazon announces new color touch Kindle Fire

Amazon is releasing a series of new Kindles, including the color touch Kindle Fire, which is a cross between a Nook and an iPad. It includes the size and convenience of the Nook Color, but also the video and music capabilities of the iPad. It will certainly drive a lot of traffic to Amazon's non-book products such as its film streaming Prime service. And it has this Nook user wishing she could trade in her Nook Color for the Kindle Fire (not that I'm not grateful and satisfied with what I have). Plus it's cheaper ($199). And so are the other three new Kindles (as cheap as $79). Watch the video below for details.

What do you think? Is there a market for the Kindle Fire? Will it make things difficult for Nook Color? Will you be switching to Kindle now?

Instant is Golden

Despite Netflix's recent mistakes, Instant is still in style. Many Netflix customers are now switching to Amazon Prime or Hulu Plus. And now the Metropolitan Opera is offering instant operas and concerts, streamed over the internet for one of several price options.

The basic truth is - people like things to be delivered instantly. It's all about convenience, today. Even if you're not a streaming service, you can think about ways to make your information, to make what you have to offer more accessible and instant.

The Met is also capitalizing on being the first to offer a unique kind of streaming - streaming of operas. So, think about how what you can be first in.

How have you made your organization more accessible?

Netflix redeems itself... sort of

Back in July I wrote about Netflix's decision to split the prices and charge separately for instant viewing and delivery by mail. I felt satisfied, as I am sure many other Netflix customers did, when I recently saw an article on the extreme drop in Netflix customers after its announcement on the price changes, which went into effect this month.


Now, Netflix co-founder, Read Hastings, has sent out an apology letter to all members and opened a forum for discussion on a similar blog post. Watch the video announcement at the end of this post. Here's an excerpt:

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

Turns out, Netflix is renaming its direct mail service Quixster and keeping the name Netflix for streaming.

We realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

Personally, I don't like the new Quickster logo, but I understand their reasoning, branding-wise. They would have been smart to hold off changing prices until the announcement about the new brand, though. It might have saved them a lot of complaints.


The problem remains, however, that people like things simple. Netflix was the original "have movies sent to your home" service, and it was one of the first to offer streaming of movies online. I think a lot of people liked Netflix because it combined the two and made it simple. If Netflix wanted its new branding to work, it would have kept the Netflix name for both streaming and direct mail, but started a new streaming/instant brand and worked that up separately without the Netflix association. Then they could have slowly weaned out the instant on Netflix and referred people to the new brand.


So, while this new announcement and apology has redeemed Netflix in some ways, it has made things worse for them in other ways.


What do you think? Where did Netflix go wrong? Did they have the right idea for all these changes?
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Hollywood Bowl Part 2: How Open Should We Be With Social Media vs. Copyright

My recent troubles with the Hollywood Bowl (which I wrote about yesterday) have led me to wonder how relevant and important copyright rules are these days. They're greatly needed in a lot of ways, but when it comes to allowing photos and video at, say, the Hollywood Bowl, or allowing people to tweet and Facebook from their phones at a performance (like Broadway/L.A. recently did for a performance of Shrek the musical), should we allow it or should we say no no? Or maybe we could just beat them to it?


The way things are so open today, it's probably a good idea to have some leniency. And if you beat the customer to it by providing your own media (i.e. videos, photos, etc), maybe people won't be as inclined to break the rules. So point number 3 from yesterday's post is Get Involved and Be Modern!


There's a similar controversy over whether fans should be able to write fan fiction because fan fiction infringes on copyright.

Thoughts? What is your opinion on the great copyright versus social media "war"?

The power of words and calls to action

Words have power beyond Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is about getting people to find you, but in the social media world, they've already found you, and it's up to you to keep them active. Here's an interesting graphic from Copyblogger about the most powerful call to action words. Read the full Copyblogger blog post here.

What are some of your own power words and calls to action?

Please ReTweet and Facebook this post.

Reinventing and rebranding yourself

When it's old, don't be afraid to reinvent it. Just look at Simon Cowell. As American Idol got old and boring, he left and recreated it in the form of a new brand: The X Factor. We'll see how it goes for that show. Rebranding by creating a new product has worked for plenty of other companies before FOX.

Are rebranding and creating new products successful and reasonable actions? Will X Factor succeed and American Idol fail?