Ben Curnett

Posts Tagged ‘Ben Curnett’

What Makes A Good Customer?

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

In a word: Fit.

Businesses used to go for low margins and high volume, which meant anyone fit the model. It made sense for business to appeal to the widest number of people it could.

Customers aren’t like they were. The crowds that used to line up to buy are now overloaded with the number of choices they have. There’s no way you can undersell the internet.

So why try? It makes more sense to charge for originality. And that’s where customer fit plays such a crucial roll.

If you’re paying attention to your entire online presence, you can tell who’s responding to you and who’s not. Take a look at your posts. Are more people reading about vacations than about adventure? Those are the people who want a good fit.

When the big kid on the block starts to take over your market, you can try to compete. But what if you don’t? There are lots and lots of people out there that don’t want to play with the big kid. They want a company that will hand deliver, that will call them by name. They want to find the business that fits.

On reason people want fit is because it’s just as easy to find a quality experience as it is to find a low priced experience. The lowest price tour is a click away. But so is a list of customer reviews. Read some reviews, find a product that fits, and you know what happens next. They buy.

And still, fit is at a premium. People that make products that fit can charge more than the ones that try to sell to everyone. Everyone is cheap. The people who want a good fit will pay for it.

It pays to find customers that fit.

What are your thoughts? Exceptions?

Tags: Ben Curnett, business relationships, business trust, content marketing, content strategy, Digital Marketing, Marketing
Posted in Digital Marketing | No Comments »

What Everyone Should Know About Writing Inspiring Copy

Monday, March 8th, 2010

It’s risky.

There’s a lot more safety in writing something else. And by that, I mean writing something that won’t offend anyone. Won’t make you stand out. Won’t draw criticism.

The best way to go about doing that is to google “5 paragraph essay” and start from there. You can get all your information into a neat package. Everyone will be satisfied. No one will complain.

Of course, no one’s going to read it. But that doesn’t matter. Your assignment was “We need copy for the web site”. You did your job, right?

Mission Accomplished.

Tags: Ben Curnett, blogs, Copywriting, Digital Marketing
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Who Gets To Say “I Don’t Get It” ?

Friday, March 5th, 2010

If your customer doesn’t get it, you have three options:

1. You can try to make them understand, and explain why they should be interested in you.

2. You can reshape your product to fit them.

3. You can write the customer off.

Number one can be done with a lot of work ahead of time. With a good content strategy and a clear idea of your vision, you’re heading off most of the problems at the gate.

Number two usually has the worst results. The customer is rarely satisfied if your product is changed, even at their request, and here’s why: You do it the way you do it for a reason. Because it’s the best. You’ve found the product that will deliver exactly what you propose to offer. When you change that around to fit everyone’s needs, an essential element of your business breaks down. It’s what made you you.

Number three should be done a lot more to avoid number two.

Tags: Ben Curnett, business relationships, business trust, content strategy, marketing strategy
Posted in Digital Marketing | 1 Comment »

Best Ideas Of The Week 2/8 – 2/12

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Hi again. Here we are on another Friday. We’ve started to call it “Beer Friday” around here; our new office is right above the new Studio B Gallery, which just happens to sell some of the world’s best craft beer. Lucky us.

Looking for a great idea? Look no further…

-It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Seth Godin. Is he the most quotable guy of the 2000s? Maybe. He’s definitely been a big inspiration for us to think about the same old things in completely new ways. Here’s a post he wrote this week called “Frightened, Clueless or Uninformed” that I liked a lot and wanted to pass on to you.

Take a read and think about whether or not you fit any of those categories. At one time or another, I’ve been each one. The difference is that, now, I’m not afraid to admit it.

(BTW, the only thing I don’t like about the post is that Seth doesn’t use a second comma in the title. It’s called a serial comma, and as a certified grammar dork I’m totally questioning why it was left out. All great thinkers use serial commas. What gives?)

I’ll also pass along this great idea from Seth, probably the most succinct piece of advice in the history of business:

Make big promises. Overdeliver.

That’s worth putting on your wall.

-I wrote a post a while back about going fractal with your marketing. The whole idea of fractals is a fascinating one, best explored for laymen (that’s me) in this documentary. If you’ve got 20 minutes or so, it’s definitely worth watching.

This week, a very patient math geek posted a video of a fractal in the Mandlebrot Set (the basis for extending fractals to infinity) that zooms in so far that the entire image, at that magnification, would be bigger than the universe.

Chew on that for a while.

The video is a little hard to watch because the colors are so loud. But what’s interesting is the information on the magnification. I can’t begin to understand an image that’s bigger than the universe. But there it is.

-Another great idea from Google comes in the form of the Street View Snowmobile. This is a real thing that’s a happening in anticipation of the Winter Olympics in Whistler, B.C.

It’s a great thing to take people up on one of the world’s best ski mountains via their computers. The only better way to do it would be to explore it on skis. I’m the kind of person that gets excited just looking at trail maps; I can’t even imagine how cool it’s going to be to take some time to “ride” around Whistler. Good thinking, Google.

Tags: Ben Curnett, ideas
Posted in Inspiration | No Comments »

Snowday!

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

We’re going out to play!

(You should take one, too.)

Tags: Ben Curnett, Pat Strader
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How To Treat Your Fans

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

I’m not a huge sports guy.

I like to catch games every once in a while. I know enough trivia to hold my own. But I don’t follow things day to day.

It was easier to be a fan in the 60’s. If I had been alive then, I’m pretty sure I’d have a team that I’d follow, and be one of those guys: “Well, our right tackle is out with a hangnail that’s hung around since last season, but I think he’ll end up playing through it in the post-season.”

Now the players move around, the money’s big, and it’s hard to look away from the business side of things. I’m not turning this into a post about free agency or anything else. I’m just saying that’s the landscape.

Still, there are fans. Huge fans. To me, it seems they get neglected in bad ways and in a lot of places.

So when you see something like Lombardi-gras, it really changes the focus. Yes, New Orleans deserved to have a big win. A big something for the city that needed it.

But if you know the story, you know that this had built up long before the playoffs got started. There was an investment by the team to reconnect with the fans, to make this about more than a trophy. This championship was about the fans, start to finish.

If you watch that video in the link above, you can see how excited the players are to be there. They’re sharing their moment. It was all about this time, from the start of the season. The team was the engine, but the fans were the spark.

What about your fans? When you do great work, is about the work, or is it about the people who set you up to do it?

Your co-workers. Your clients. Your social network. Your local businesses. Your sources of inspiration. Those are the people that deserve to get your light shined on them. They’re your fans.

What are you doing for them?

Tags: Ben Curnett, business relationships, business trust, marketing strategy
Posted in Partnership | No Comments »

Best Ideas Of The Week, 2-1 to 2-5

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Actually, I’ve got to rename this post.

This week, it’s only going to be one idea. The only thing to show this week is that the future is here.

Pranav Mistry is an inventor. Or an engineer. Or a User Experience designer. It’s hard to say: the bio on his website starts off, “Nothing can be and can not be one and at the same time and I am, I am Pranav Mistry.”

I don’t know what the hell that means. But I kind of feel that way every time Pranav opens his mouth. The things he talks about are brilliant in a way I don’t think I’ve ever been exposed to before. It’s like he just plucks his dreams out of the air, and then builds them for everyone to share.

His latest invention is called SixthSense. I don’t know if I can describe it any better than this: Science fiction is now science fact.

What I mean is, now, everything is “interactive”. If you look at a wall, you can send email from it. Or leave a message on it, digitally. Or take a picture of it with your fingers. Really. This exists.

It’s a combination of a camera, a projector, and computer operating system that a user wears around their neck. The camera track hand movements on the interface, which is projected onto, well, anything. That means that not only can you see your computer screen anywhere, but everything becomes a computer screen.

Think about that for a second. A piece of paper. A basketball. A hairbrush. Computers.

In a sense they’re just objects, still and yet. Until you see how a piece of

Tags: Ben Curnett, blogs, motivation, relatonships
Posted in Inspiration | No Comments »

Is Today Really “Anything Can Happen” Day?

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

You do your best work when you’re inspired.

Doesn’t matter what. If you’re in love with selling vacuums, something about something will turn you on, and then you’ll turn that into declaration on pulling up dirt.

If I learned anything from the Mickey Mouse Club when I was a kid, it was that “Anything Can Happen” day is every single day. It’s only when we’re adults that we figure out that “anything” also includes “nothing”. Nothing can happen for a long, long time if you’re not careful.

That’s the thing about inspiration. You never know where it will come from, or when it will strike. One thing’s for sure: You can’t wait for it to find you.

But those people that say you have to make your own inspiration are only half right. There’s something untamed about inspiration that keeps it from being an “on demand” resource. Inspiration, like energy, is neither created nor destroyed. It just is.

The best you can do is increase your odds for having inspiration strike. To truly take advantage of Anything Can Happen day, you’ve got to be ready.

-Expose Yourself Be near ideas. Use a feed reader to keep in touch with whatever it is that gets your blood moving. Meet up with others in your field. The ideas are out there.

-Get Proficient You do what you do well, but you can do it better. But don’t strive toward perfection (a sure way to kill inspiration). Instead, just get good. Get miles. If you write more, you’ll get better at writing. If you train your dog more, you’ll have better walks.

-Love Something Doing what you love doesn’t necessarily mean do what you love for a living. But if you ignore your passion, you’ll find it hard to get inspired about anything. Remember that anything can be a source of the inspiration that will later go into your work. That’s a lot easier to find if you’re involved in something you can be passionate about.

For me, it’s being with my family, going outside to play, and writing, and reading good writing. Every time I’m doing one of those four things, the chances of me being inspired goes way, way up. It’s not going to happen every time, and I’m not looking for that, really (that would be waiting for perfection). But these things work.

Why? Because I’m opening myself to them. Because I’m good at them. And because I love doing them.

What about you? I want to know what you do to get inspired, if you want to share it.

Tags: Ben Curnett, business relationships, marketing strategy, writing
Posted in Inspiration | No Comments »

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