B2R | Back 2 Revenue

An App Store Isn’t A Marketing Strategy

Great article from Carlo Longino on MobHappy today.  Developers: An App Store Isn’t A Marketing Strategy

Mobile App stores are not a new science, in fact they  are no different to having your product listed on the Web, in a mail order catalogue or a retail store.

 First you need to get in store - oh how much fun this can be.
 Second you need to develop your sell through through awareness, good copy, search etc. In the case of app stores this can be self-fulfilling, develop sell-through - get a better chart position, sell more!
Andy lastly its about developing your brand presence within the store. Become a famous brand like Heinz, Apple, an author or U2. Go to any good retail store and see this happening in the world of atoms and then apply your learnings to pixels and bytes!

In retail you pay for position. Bets on which will be the first tier one app-store to let you pay for position?  GetJar and Mobango have built entire businesses around this!

Dell shaking the trees on Twitter

Just saw this on El Reg this morning "Dell tweets 3min revenues"

I was recently in a sales meeting at a client. With one week of the month to go it looked like they were tracking to be 10% under target.

I remembered when I worked in AutoCAD distribution business the end of month process of  "shaking the trees." Its amazing how this frenetic calling activity produced results. How many times have you meant to order something but not got around to it yet?

Shaking the trees can be accelerated with additional incentives i.e. get something extra for free. I prefer up-sell incentives to "Buy one get one free" type deals which can often result in a shortfall in next months numbers.  A quick study of mobile operators pre-pay top up incentives shows how the huge (apparent) extra value can often be delivered at no cost e.g. free evening on network calls and  unlimited texts to on network friends if you top up £15. This is a huge percentage up-sell of from average monthly top up of £11 or £12!

Best of all, the Web now enables us to execute these campaigns in private, at great speed and without huge manpower resources. They can even be planned in ahead of time and form part of a good CRM programme or even virally  as Dell has shown with Twitter.

What would Google Do?

I have been reading What would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis I like it. In fact I like it a lot! 
I have seen many of the concepts in the book in applied pre-internet e.g. Autodesk won the battle for PC CAD by building a Virtual Corporation of sales people, training centres and service providers, or as Jeff would put it "They built a platform and let others prosper!"

A few short blogs posts to follow soon.

TYPEPAD EMAIL ADD

More biz model acronyms B2B, B2C, B2R, B2T, B2F, C2C, C2De, W2MW

Thought I'd start a list. I am sure it will grow!

TRADITIONAL

• B2C  business to consumer
• B2B business to business

INSPIRED

• B2R    back to revenue
• C2C    clone to China 
• C2De  clone Web business to German e.g. Frazr, StudioVZ
• C2I    clone to India
• B2t   business to Twitter
• B2F - business to Facebook
• B2i - business to iPhone
• W2MW - Web to MobileWeb

Why You Should Fire Your PR Firm!

Don't get me wrong, I like PR and have really benefited from good PR and if I only had a very limited marketing I would probably spend it on PR every time. But, if you are startup and watching your precious cash, can you really afford to be paying a monthly PR retainer that is simply not delivering?

A PR firm has traditionally delivered many things such as a press office, distribution of press releases, press conferences for product launches etc. But the Web has changed many things and much of this value is available for free or on a low-cost as needed basis. Just Google "press release distribution" and see for yourself what is available. And why pay for press-clippings service when Google Alerts probably provide 90% of the coverage for free!

The Web has also changed the way that journalists research and collate the stories that they are paid to write. They will watch the blog feeds to see what is hot, search Twitter for comments rather than recycle and serve up the dribble in your press release. Some PR firms such as IF Communications are building specialist digital teams to exploit Twitter and blog channels etc.

One key value area that your PR firm should bring and that is hard to replace, is relationships with key journalists and bloggers. In time you may well develop your own relationships with these but this is unlikely to replace the once removed relationship of your PR.

The bottom line is that your PR firm should be proactive in delivering you measurable value across traditional and digital channels in your target media (this includes geographic targets). 

Their job should also include building the profile of  your/your business positioning you for speaker spots (did I mention this is the best way to network expensive conferences), positioning you as an expert for features and comment on TV, radio and mainstream press. 

If your PR not doing this for you then you should probably be calling them to account, reviewing their objectives, their plan and their retainer! Or maybe you would be better off cancelling the PR contract and using the cash to hire some measurable business development or sales resource (oops should declare my interest - see ABOUT)

Skype hype. 1 million downloads so what!

There has been a lot of hype around Skype for iPhone. 1 million downloads - in 48 hours. This is impressive but only 0.2% of the Skype customer base, an impressive 500 million (minus 1 as I have just cancelled after they tried to auto-top my account which I have not used for over six months).

Developers always want to develop for the latest and greatest, often forgetting the total available market.

I use the Royal Ocean Racing Club in St James as my London office. Its not the usual digital media hangout, but its cheap and amazing who sails and whom you meet there. Just the other week media mogul, Ted Turner was in town  and renewing his membership.

A few days back I met a fellow sailor who specialises in technology transfer from universities to the commercial sector. He was working on an energy saving motor technology. I had spent 3 years in wireless power industry with Splashpower and we chatted about his progress. He was doing well the technology was going to be made compulsory  and he had secured an industrialisation partnership with a  Japanese trading house who would sell the technology to motor manufacturers. But they were running out of money and the lead time to have this new feature designed into new capital equipment that would then need to be sold seemed long. This was fine for a Japanese trading house but no good for a technology start up running out of money.

"What about the legacy base?"  I asked. "If I have a factory of sewing machines or machine tools, could I retrofit your technology?"

They had not considered the retrofit market. A licensing partner in this sector might offer substantial early revenue and build awareness for the later "built-in" technology.

I see that Skype's hype is great news for other mobile VOIP vendors able to address the much larger legacy opportunity.

The Village Butcher

So what has the Village Butcher got to do with business development for revenue businesses you ask, when was the last time you saw TechCrunch  or GigaOM blogging about village shops? Let me explain.

I live in a small village in East Sussex. The village has a mainline railway station, good schools, 4 pubs (3 of which do very well) and a village club and a smattering of shops including The Village Butcher shop. I say butcher, but they also sell fruit veg, proper fresh bread (which I can help myself to at 7 a.m.)  a few groceries and the best selection of wine in the village. I really enjoy having local shops and try to support them whenever possible. I rarely venture to the nearby supermarkets.

Whilst the The Village Butcher provides a good product at a reasonable prices (competitive if you buy in bulk) he is under pressure. Pressure not just from the Credit Crunch and supermarkets but from a newly opened second butcher shop on the edge of the village. The new shop is difficult to find and actually part of a farm. It only sells home produced Beef, Pork and Lamb and fantastic sausages. It is very smartly presented and only opens on 3 days a week (The Village Butchers opens 6 1/2 days per week) and promoting itself through inserts in the local freebie paper and door drops. But this is not all. A butcher from a nearby village has won the considerable trade from the village gastro pub.

My Village Butcher is perfectly sited for maximum traffic but their promotion is poor, relying on tatty blackboard and dayglo orange and green stars on windows and A-boards to promote special offers. I call them headache boards.

So what can he do to build his business?  The same principles apply to any business trying to develop revenues whether in technology or retail.

Here are a list of things that my local butcher could try to develop more revenue that may also well apply to your business:

• Really know your target customer and target market. Some buy value but others want premium products. Offer a range of products at price-points to match
• Really understand your competitors messaging and pricing
• Get your promotional messages right - I don't want to buy 5 Kg of chicken breast but might purchase 1 Kg of higher value locally produced produce.
• Look for new low-cost places to place promotional messages e.g the station, schools, A-boards at major junctions and door drops. Include a redeemable promotional voucher
• Ride the hype and leverage your competitors promotions e.g  offer meal deal with recipe cards to compete with the supermarkets
• Up sell and cross-sell e.g. get a bottle of wine for only £5 when you purchase any Sunday roast
• Prevent churn, reward loyalty eg. money off your next purchase voucher
• Leverage partners. Win back the gastro pub's business and ensure you get plugged as the local supplier

Happy to hear comments from carnivores and vegetarians alike :-)

A little humility - back to reality and my first post!

Here I go with my first post on my B2R - Back to Revenue blog. So whats with the humility?
Some might say that co-founding  Trutap  with Doug Richard and burning through over £7 million with no revenue is something to be humble about. The business did start with a revenue plan based on subscription billing but we got caught up with the "build a community first and then monetise it crowd". If Twitter sells to Google then this strategy might just be proved right.

Trutap is not dead, a skeleton team keeps it going and the community is growing every day and one day it will find a new direction. In the meantime it is Back To Reality for me.

I have started a new business B2R Associates. No this is not a typo of B2B or B2C. B2R is my acronym for Back to Revenue!  B2R Associates works with venture backed and start up companies to identify and implement revenue growth strategies.

I have been doing business development work for around 25 years and whilst the technologies have moved on leaps and bounds with the arrival of PCs and then the Internet, the principles have not changed. Its just got easier and faster to target, design, implement, measure and adjust.

So to end my first post I want to invite feedback and debate on my posts. The sooner we all get revenues flowing again the better the economic environment will get for us all. And, if you are interested to get my thoughts and input on how your own or your portfolios business could be growing revenues, just drop me a line. The first couple of hours are free with coffee or lunch on you!