Entrepid

John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing says that marketers of services can learn a thing or two from retailers.

“All it takes is looking at your marketing from some new perspectives.

· What if you offered gift certificates for your services?

· What if you mailed those gift certificates to your loyal clients and encouraged them hand them out?

· What if you offered bridal or baby registry? (C’mon, get your neighbor’s kid a tax return for their wedding - way better than a toaster)

· What if you held over the top events for your clients? (I know a remodeling firm that buys out a Christmas tree farm for that year’s clients)

· What if you had a holiday, client only, sale or new service introduction?

· What if you held education forums aimed at very specific niches of your clientele? (single women, parents with kids going to college, sports minded families, people learning to be more green.)”

I think those of us in service businesses somehow think we are (or should be) above the kinds of things that those less-than-dignified product marketers do to move merchandise. And, while I wouldn’t want to copy some of the more outlandish ones, we can certainly borrow the tried and true and modify them for our service businesses.

What do you think? Do you have any additions to John’s suggestions?

I don’t often disagree with the folks at Creativity Exchange, but I have to on this post.

I think this is an excellent example of extreme marketing.

It’s not going to appeal to everyone - in fact it’s probably going to offend the majority of people. But for its intended market (young, male, X-game loving) it’s spot on. It’s tapping into the rebellious streak that describes these consumers to a “T.”

And while I’m on self-identified rebellion, ever think why 50-something stock brokers, doctors and lawyers ride Harleys? Rebellion seems to be in the American DNA. I wonder why.

A lot of marketing mavens (including The Hairless One) advise us to find and please passionate users of our services or products. It’s better to have prospective consumers either love us or hate us rather than have everyone be unconcerned/unconnected/unemotional. All it takes is a tiny portion of the whole universe of consumers to be passionate about us to create a successful enterprise.

So what happens when you reverse course and tick off your most passionate customers? They leave. And they tell 10 10,000 friends…and so on.

Building your business around passionate users is a two-edged sword. On the one hand you gain customers who don’t shop around to save a few pennies on price. But, and this is a big but, DO NOT MAKE THEM ANGRY! You won’t like it when they’re angry.

Hat Tip: Creativity Exchange

This article in Startup Journal describes the renaissance in dairy home delivery. I think this is an excellent example of widespread relative affluence and a desire for experience (by way of nostalgia) creating an opportunity for higher value products. Consumers aren’t just buying milk - they’re buying a piece of their childhood along with a healthier lifestyle. And they have the money to do so.

Crescent Ridge isn’t alone. There are home-delivery dairies and distribution services, big and small, from Connecticut to California, that are seeing stronger demand. Some have old roots like Crescent Ridge, while others are newcomers.

In 1994, Tom Rubino opened a delivery service called Hudson Milk Co. in Shrub Oak, N.Y., with just six customers. Today, his operation reaches some 300 homes. His biggest seller is the nostalgic half-gallon glass bottle of milk that Mr. Rubino gets from Byrne Dairy in upstate New York.

Older customers remember the glass bottles fondly and want convenience, Mr. Rubino says, while younger families are more interested in buying locally and making sure their foods don’t have unnecessary additives or hormones. “We were lucky and got on a particular trend at the right time,” he says.

In addition to milk, Hudson Milk also delivers items like cream, organic eggs, yogurt and Poland Spring water for a flat delivery fee of $2 — which has boosted his average order to $25.

I do have one quibble with the author…

And that appetite for wholesome fare, coupled with rising gas prices, is giving an unexpected marketing boost to some tiny dairies and local milk distributors, helping them compete against larger rivals who saturate store shelves.

I can’t remember the last time I made a special run to the store just to buy milk. I doubt that saving gas has much to do with this trend.

and comes away with a business lesson.

“…the people in that building were way too nice and way too smart to not know the many ways they could fix this process. The problem is that this bureaucracy, like most bureaucracies, has an attitude of minimizing, not maximizing. They want to minimize expense, not maximize benefit.”

You may not think your small business has a bureaucracy, but if you have even one employee in addition to yourself the bureaucratic disease gets a toehold. This idea will be the topic of a few future blog posts and maybe a newsletter article. But for now, my takeaways from Seth’s post are:

One, make it easy for your customers to do business with you. Whether you sell online, by call-in or in person be ruthless in eliminating the barriers hassles to your customers spending money with you.

Two, make it easy for your employees to do it for you. Eliminate the “rules” that get in the way and set expectations for employees to facilitate buying simplicity.

Is hosted at Geek Practitioner.

My favorite this week? Dispatches from Blogblivion’s musings on pricing business services.

Be sure to read the first comment too - “If no one’s pushing back on your price, then your price is too low.” I’ll second that motion!