danniewriter

A festival of failure

I ran across a couple of articles related to a new museum opening next month: The Museum of Failure.

Psychologist Samuel West came up with the concept. Here’s a takeaway for you as reported by Leah Fessler of Quartz Ideas: Every failure is uniquely spectacular, says West, while success is nauseatingly repetitive. True innovation requires learning from the complexities of each failure—a skill that, he says, most companies fail to hone. (Word of caution, if you are offended by f-bombs there are a couple in the last paragraph of the story. Here’s the link: http://bit.ly/2ouLvIa)

Examining spectacular failures is not a new way to turn a corner. Many brave people have done so as a prelude to major breakthroughs.

Running a business, or managing a community non-profit, isn’t easy. Everyone goes through times of doubt, and even setbacks. I encourage you to look for stories of big comebacks. Here are a couple to start:

If you need a fresh look at your marketing and promotion strategies, or maybe you need to create a strategy for the first time, give me a call. I’d love to help. The initial consultation is free.

 

 

The point about touch points

In an exercise in taking my own advice, I’m

  1. Recycling content that I think has value, and
  2. Attempting to share posts that are concise … and brief.

A trendy term tossed around marketing circles is “touch point” which is mentioned in Dale Partridge’s excellent article on branding that I shared previously. Simply put, a touch point is every point in the customer/donor/employee process where those individuals interact with the company or organization. For example: Touch points for a small business could be a newspaper/TV/radio or online ad. A catalog, printed or digital, is another touch point. The process of making a donation and receiving an acknowledgement letter are a couple of touch points for non-profits. For your employees, touch points are the interview, hiring, training, performance evaluation, payroll and benefits processes.

No matter how small your business or organization is, it is a system that needs to be analyzed and reviewed frequently. You may find that your advertising and social media presence are effective, but customers are frustrated by the lack of parking near your store, or the online catalog that frequently times out before a sale is completed. Maybe your non-profit does a great job of quickly processing financial gifts, but it takes too long for acknowledgement letters to go out for in-kind donations. For your staff, maybe a failing touch point is in training or performance evaluations.

It’s easy to see that there are dozens of touch points that can impact your business/organization’s brand. As you gather data and feedback from customers/donors and staff, and make improvements, your brand will begin to stand out among your competitors.

If you need some assistance on finding out what your brand really is, give me a call. I’d love to help.

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