Monica O’Brien is a guest writer from Twenty Set, a blog about personal and professional development for millennials.
One of my friends graduated in June 2007 and was headhunted for a startup after posting his resume on CareerBuilder. He was 20 years-old and had a choice: do the startup or take the other, much safer offer at a larger company. He chose the startup and joined a team of nine employees who built robots for large firms - in the CEO’s father’s basement.
What I failed to mention is how I met my friend - we’ve been coworkers for the past four months. The startup company was doing great business by building the top robots in the industry - but went bankrupt five months after my friend started due to lawsuits from the CEO’s old company.
But my friend survived his first affair with a startup, and you can too - because startups aren’t that risky. Here are three reasons why…
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Picture the average customer of your product or service: how old is he/she? What does he/she do on the weekends? Where does he/she work? If you can’t answer these questions, you probably don’t know who your customer is.
I recently started a blog called Twenty Set which is about personal and professional development for the millennial generation. In truth, I’m not actually writing for all the people in my generation, and on my About page I say exactly who my “customer” (in this case reader) is. Here’s the first paragraph:
“Twenty Set is for people in their twenties who are interested in living their own definitions of successful and fulfilling lives. The Twenty Set is the set of people between the ages of 20 and 29 who want to become their best selves. Members of the Twenty Set are unique and intelligent go-getters who enjoy learning, discussion, ideas, and self-improvement.” (Shameless plug: If this describes you, why not subscribe to my feed?)
As you can see from this description, I’m targeting a small segment of my generation with a technique called customer profiling. Customer profiles are by nature stereotypical descriptions. They don’t apply to every customer, but rather give an idea of who a target customer might be.
Benefits of Customer Profiling
- Better targeted ad campaigns
- Better targeted future products and/or services
- Learning who your best customers are - they are the ones you should work hardest to sell to
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Monica O’Brien is a guest writer from Twenty Set, a blog about personal and professional development for millennials.
With the US and world pending an economic recession, smart business owners are looking to their own businesses to see how they are going to minimize its impact in 2008. Here are some things to consider in case of an economic recession:
Less Consumer Spending
Depending on your industry, your business may be hit when consumers spend less due to financial troubles. This doesn’t affect just expendable products, but also “nice-to-have” services that companies think they can go without, like marketing research or consulting services.
Tip: Make your products and services indispensible by solving problems with your products and services and by developing relationships with your customers.
Less Business Growth
Again, this depends on the industry, as some industries like the food industry will stay constant and a few industries, such as tourism in the US, will grow. Most businesses, however, will experience a loss of sales and have stagnate or declining business growth.
Tip: Prepare now just in case by reevaluating your business budget and cutting back as needed. Consider if you can grow your business by diversifying your customer base. Try moving some business to other industries or other countries that haven’t been hit by recession to make up for losses.
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Monica O’Brien is a guest writer from Twenty Set, a blog about personal and professional development for millennials. This is her first of hopefully many articles on YGG.
About a week ago my dad send me this email:
Subject: Riot! by Paramore
Message: Get a copy of this CD. There are at least 6 good songs it. My son lent me his copy.
Two things intrigued me about this email: 1) my father rarely recommends products and 2) my brother is 18 years old. So how in the world did my baby boomer father like music written by teenagers so much he sent an email to about 40 of his closest friends and family (of all ages) recommending this CD?
It turns out my dad isn’t the only person over 35 who enjoys Paramore. The group has as many parents at the show as they have kids, and the parents love every minute of it. Intrigued, I went to Paramore’s MySpace page and listened to some of their sampler music. It didn’t take me long to realize this was the same band I’d heard (and liked) on the MTV reality show, The Hills. I also vaguely remember some of the songs from riding in my brother’s car over Christmas break.
I checked out their list of hit singles on Wikipedia and noticed they’ve been gaining speed since the middle of 2007. Judging from their sold-out shows in the UK, I’m predicting they will continue to gain fans and hit super stardom in 2008. There are a few things I believe has contributed to Paramore’s snowballing popularity that will serve all musicians (and businesses) well in the future:
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Monica O’Brien is a guest writer from Twenty Set, a blog about personal and professional development for millennials. This is her first of hopefully many articles on YGG.
As consumers, we are careful of the type of personal information we give out and who we give it to. As an entrepreneur trying to market a new product or service, however, understanding your customers’ needs is essential. In an age where identity theft is rampant and telemarketers and spam mail are avoided at all costs, there are many consumers who would rather take their business elsewhere than risk privacy invasion. So how can you do marketing research on buyers’ purchases without alienating saavy consumers?
I believe there are two key characteristics of companies who will be able to collect useful marketing data without losing the trust of their customers - customer anonymity and company transparency.
Allowing the Customer to Keep Anonymity
Seth Godin recently wrote a post on his blog about how consumers don’t actually care about data collection as much as is believed. In it, he writes:
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