Archive for November, 2011
Nissan sells more than 20,000 Leafs in first year; Fiat, Not So Much
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/30/nissan-sells-more-than-20-000-leafs-in-first-year-high-fives-co/
Excerpt: Only a few months after announcing that it sold 10,000 all-electric Leaf cars in international markets, Nissan stated at the Tokyo Motor Show today that the company has sold over 20,000 Leafs since the car went on sale in December of 2010. The company also added that it expects to sell more than 10,000 Leafs in the U.S. by the end of 2011.
SOURCE: http://adage.com/article/news/francois-fights-fiat-fiasco/230033/ This contrasts with Fiat, which went to great expense to make branding commercials with JLo which stirred more “huh’s?” from audiences than sales. One former auto-marketing exec Peter DeLorenzo called “quite possibly the worst automotive spot of the last decade, hands down.” No official sales numbers were mentioned, probably because it was too embarrassingly low to mention.
Who are they advertising here… the car or JLo?
SOURCE: http://blog.web.blogads.com/2011/11/22/j-los-shameless-strange-and-sad-fiat-fiasco/ Widely denounced, shameless and strange product placement and promo during JLo’s performance at the American Music Awards.
Watch the whole bizarre performance here (The Fiat stuff starts around 1:15):
Spending Tons Of Money To Attract New Customers Is A Stupid Idea
If you’ve ever tried to explain the concept of “make new friends but keep your old ones” to a five-year-old, you have a pretty good perspective on how many high-growth businesses approach customer acquisition and retention. Growing businesses tend to spend so much of their time and money acquiring new customers that they often overlook their best source of growth: retaining and growing their existing customer base.
One of our clients has more than 90 percent of its resources–people, marketing budget, etc.–focused on creating millions of new customers a year. Their business model is based on monthly recurring feeds, much like the cable or wireless industries. Customers come in and they stay…until they don’t. An analysis of the client’s historical data shows that the average customer stays for an average of 2.5 years. Because their customer acquisition cost is lower than their expected customer lifetime revenue, they reach a break-even point in less than two years. So it’s a great business, as long as they keep generating new customers, right?
Wrong. The problem is that as the management team’s growth expectations increase, it gets increasingly harder to acquire more customers. As a result, customer acquisition costs go up and the quality of customers, in terms of how long they stick around, goes down.
To solve this growth dilemma, the client needs to ask three key questions:
- What revenue growth will we achieve if we keep our existing customers for just one additional month, on average?
- What will it cost us to do this by, say, improving customer service or adding customer benefits?
- How does this growth compare, both in magnitude and cost, to acquiring new customers?
The answer for our client will be the same as it is in almost all businesses. It’s cheaper, easier, and more effective to retain current customers than it is to acquire new ones. In fact, if this business can retain all of its customers by just one additional month on average, they can achieve an additional 3 percent of annual growth. If they can retain their customer base for four additional months, they can create double-digit growth–without adding a single customer.
It’s simple math–something that even a five-year-old might understand.
This post originally appeared on Inc.
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See Also:
- 11 Entrepreneurs Reveal How They Turned Former Employers Into Clients
- How To Run A Business When You’re The Only Employee
- The Story Behind A Guy’s $14 Million Tofurky Business
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The Smartphone Is Becoming A Goliath In The Retail Industry
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-smartphones-are-revolutionizing-the-shopping-experience-2011-11
A study by the Times finds many retailers–including major ones like Best Buy, Nordstrom and Amazon–offer the most promotional deals for smartphones, which generate millions, if not billions, in revenue.
Amazon, for example, will make $5.37 billion in sales through mobile devices by year’s end, according to a recent survey by Internet Retailer.
Flash deal and group-buying sites are also jumping on board with mobile-exclusive deals of their own. Gilt Groupe, for example, started offering special holiday promotions on Friday, November 25 at 6 a.m.
Surprisingly, it’s bricks-and-mortar stores who will be making the biggest mobile-deal push. One of the main reasons is because they must compete against the growing consumer trend of using price comparison apps, says Time Moneyland’s Brad Turtle. These apps let you scan an item, compare retailers’ prices and read product reviews, which have become increasingly popular in the last year.
What’s funny, though, is how many retail stores started arming their salespeople with the same equipment. Reuters reports that companies like Lowe’s, Best Buy and Toys R Us gave their people smartphones of their own to research products, check rival’s prices and even make purchases.
More than 40 percent of retailers now have a policy of competing against lower online prices through mobile phones, according to the research firm RSR.
Lowe’s alone is using over 42,000 Apple iPhones and distributing them to 1,700 of their stores.
With the equipment, employees can engage customers more effectively by using iPhones to track down the same information consumers are tracking. They’ll also be able to quickly see if products are in stock, or still available on the website or at another nearby store.
Some companies are also allowing their employees to either match or beat prices that a consumer finds somewhere else on their phone—good news for the consumer.
Check out 8 amazing and free phone apps to help you save >
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See Also:
- Here’s Why Cyber Monday Will TROUNCE Black Friday
- Infographic: Which Cities Spent The Most On Black Friday?
- Cyber Monday Is Just Another Hyped-Up Marketing Gimmick
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These Time Magazine Covers Explain Why Americans Know Nothing About The World
It’s not news that Time magazines uses different covers for its different regional editions, but it’s only when you gather them all together — so you can see what Europe and Asia read in Time compared to what Americans read in Time — that it becomes clear how insular the U.S. edition of Time is.
If you live abroad, the current edition of time features a dramatic picture of an Arab rebel wearing a gas mask under the headline “Revolution Redux.” In America, we got “Why anxiety is good for you”:
Hmm.
Publishing ain’t easy, of course. Editors need to pick what sells (and what sells advertising). There are good reasons why the U.S. audience won’t be as interested in Tintin as Europe’s would be, which explains why Tintin dominated the foreign Time covers on Oct. 31. In the U.S., to Time’s credit, that edition featured “The China Bubble,” a piece about whether economic growth in the East is sustainable.
That laudable example aside, however, this collection of recent Time covers does make us Americans look like we’re just not that interested in the rest of the world.
While the rest of the world gets a thoughtful piece about Islam, the U.S. gets … chores!
Cold Turkey
Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan may be the key democratically elected Muslim leader who stands at the crossroads between East and West, but hey! What about these inventions?!
Mom liked them best …
The Nov. 14 editions were soft features in all regions, but American exceptionalism was alive and well.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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See Also:
- Everyone Hates Jennifer Lopez’s Fiat Ads (And She Didn’t Even Go To The Bronx To Film Them)
- This Anti-Semitic Vodka Billboard Will Be Removed From Manhattan’s West Side Any Second Now …
- How Much Is a Facebook Fan Worth? $10. Or Possibly 2 Cents.
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Restaurants plan DNA-certified premium seafood
Source: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-restaurants-dna-certified-premium-seafood.html
(AP) — Restaurants around the world will soon use new DNA technology to assure patrons they are being served the genuine fish fillet or caviar they ordered, rather than inferior substitutes, an expert in genetic identification says.
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