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Aaron Wall comments on how your price point can often reflect the impression people have of your product and service. Pricing to Sell vs Selling Yourself Short The article is written with SEO in mind, but can be equally applicable to florists. Most florists desire high-end clientèle while competing with the grocery store on rose prices. Most certainly, the two shall not mix.

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Ok, Aaron didn't like me enough to get my username right, but he did publish an extensive quote of mine on his blog when I decided to step into the Pay Per Post and Paid Links debate. As much as I respect Matt Cutts, Aaron and I (and a few thousand others) were upset with Matt's transparent use of inappropriate and extreme examples to try and justify Google's Jihad on paid blog posts. Ryan PS - As a side note: remember to "nofollow" any links to Wikipedia. They hoard pagerank and refuse to share. Bad wiki, bad.

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To Nana, Stacey & Janis ... who said it couldn't happen in 15 minutes. To those who mocked ... Ten minutes flat - job done! Now who's laughing? Ryan PS - Told you I'd blog it!

This post is from from my other blog here

Forgive the title, I've been reading a lot of Vanessa Fox lately. Today's topic deals with how customers feel when interacting with your website. For a moment, try to pretend you've never seen your website before. For some, this is will be quite difficult (I know of one OC florist who probably sees his site behind his eyelids during those precious few ours of sleep). For others it won't me much of a stretch to pretend they haven't seen their site. What is your initial impression? If you didn't know a thing about flowers, would your website help you make an informed purchase? It might help to switch gears a bit. Think of an area of your life where you hate having to make decisions because you feel totally uninformed and are afraid of being taken advantage of. (For me, that would involve any home reno sites! For many of the florists on FC you might be thinking about web design or technology decisions :)) If you knew you had to buy a TV within the next 24 hours, would you be comfortable going to a website that listed 700 options, categorized by price, size and manufacturer? Or would you start asking questions like: "What is the difference between LCD & Plasma?" "Why does model A cost more than model B?" "What's the appropriate size for my livingroom/bedroom/kitchen?" Side note: I'm in reno hell trying to stain some furniture. Big box stores were no help at all! Too many choices, not enough guidance. Let's step into the shoes of a customer who has suddenly been put into the position of having to buy flowers for a funeral. There is pressure: time pressure, social pressure, personal pressure. There is the resistance of being overwhelmed by choices (enjoy filtering through millions of Google results, anyone?) only to be faced with more choices (700 wire service images). How remarkable would it be for a customer to be relieved when they visit your site? How memorable would it be for that customer to feel comfortable selecting an item from your site because they've been given the tools to make an informed choice? How much investment of your time would be required to take the expertise you already have, condense it the way you already do (by phone or in person) and present it to someone who likely doesn't have the time to call or visit you? What would be your reward for making a truly remarkable customer experience on your site?

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I just can't resist joining a new venture, so you can now find me on Gooruze :) rkf.gooruze.com They have a section for florists, so all my FlowerChat people can come and be enlightened,

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After 19 years, WalMart is changing their slogan from "Always low prices" to "Save More. Live Better." When the largest retailer in the world makes a decision like this, it's wise for the rest of the retail world to take note. Replacing the bouncing yellow rollback happy face will be adverts focused on the people who shop at WalMart, the experience and the benefits of saving by shopping there. By taking the focus off the price and putting it on the experience WalMart highlights an important piece of the marketing puzzle. Numbers, prices and discounts are cold and analytical. They are impersonal qualities that don't form an attachment to your customer. However, showing what a customer can do with the $2,500 per year they save by shopping at WalMart fires the imagination! Good marketing should tell a story that absorbs the customer. Once they have imagined the experience they will be much more likely to form an attachment to the marketer. Needless to say, there is still the need for relationship-building and targeting in your marketing efforts! You have to create the right experience for the right customer. Interestingly enough, WalMart's decision coincides with a decision by McDonald's to redesign many of their North American restaurants. The new designs will feature a warmer, friendlier exterior and a lounge area inside the restaurant complete with fireplace, leather chairs and bigscreen TV. Yes, we're talking about THAT McDonald's.

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Tamara Adlin of UXPioneers interviews Seth Godin and the result is one of Seth's favourite interview experiences. Some highlights:

• ... same kind of safety marketers hide behind all the time. If you can't touch a person, you can treat them differently. Some people treat other people better and some people treat other people worse.
• My philosophy then, and my philosophy now, is that learning the first 80% of something new takes 20% of the effort. ... my goal was to understand the framework of as many disciplines as I could.
• Fear is far and away the largest impediment to doing great things. There's way more fear outside the United States than inside the United States, but there's still too much fear here. There's too much fear to act like an owner; too much fear to announce that the Emperor is not wearing clothes; too much fear to do the right thing in the moment. As a result, a lot of stuff is mediocre and a lot is riskier than it would be if people did things that felt scary.
• I realized recently that I have never been satisfied with the status quo. I don't know why. It's probably a little bit of a curse. But the status quo isn't enough of a reason for me to accept something. Part of being an entrepreneur is about going into a place where something isn't happening, making it happen, and having the marketplace thank you for it.
• And my favourite quote: Right; it's not for everybody. The thing is, the stuff that's for everybody is already sold to everybody. So you can't win by being more average than average, because that slot's taken.

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Our cottage on Georgian Bay has suffered from a drastic drop in water-level over recent years. The net effect of this drop of 3-4 vertical feet is that our shoreline now begins about 35 metres out from our 2 metre high breakwall. This newly emerged land has become home to a large patch of reeds that threaten to take over the entire beach. When the reeds first appeared, a few of us concluded that they were being sheltered by some rocks piled out in the water, and began moving the rocks. Our neighbour approached, very concerned, and requested that we stop at once. You see, our neighbour's beach has been plagued for decades with seaweed, reeds and debris from being in the pocket of a point of land built by his neighbour. Our neighbour had now become so paranoid of anyone altering the landscape that he was afraid moving the rock pile might cause more harm to his property. Fast-forward a few years and we've come to learn the reeds, now completely dominating our beach and his, are in fact an invader species that is known to choke out local plant life. The solution? Move the rocks, let the water from the lake erode the island the reeds have built and hope to start taking back our land. My neighbour had been bitten once by a decision (building the point) that had seemed like a good idea, but later backfired with terrible results. The problem is that he was afraid to take any other actions that might be beneficial, because of his fear of the consequences. By not taking action when the opportunity presented itself he has lost the enjoyment of his cottage, reduced his property value and created much more work for himself just to get from cottage to shoreline. By not doing something, he now has to work harder just to stay the same. Many - all? - successful people and businesses have failures in their past. It's the ability to rise beyond these failures and continue to strive towards being remarkable ( (c) Seth Godin) that sets them apart. Are you afraid to make a bold, risky decision that might benefit your business, just because something else (or the same thing) failed once before? As soon as we become too scared to take a risk or go out on a limb we are better to cash out and close our doors. The most dangerous thing you can ever do is nothing.

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According to marketing guru Seth Godin, rumours about Google's (as yet unconfirmed) gPhone point to this potential iPhone killer being low-cost, open to all carriers, and funded by geo-targeted and personalized (relevant) ads. This concept highlights once again the misconception that people - especially the under 35 crowd of cynics - hate advertising. We don't! We just hate high-noise, low-signal interruptions that are not relevant to our life / taste / needs / locale. Truth is, studies have shown that we love to be provided with relevant advertising, tailored to our tastes, our location and our needs. As a reformed frequent traveller, I can testify to the value that I would place on ads for affordable local restaurants delivered based on the GPS location determined by my phone. How about finding the nearest florist on my drive home to an angry wife? The real lesson here is that as business owners we need to learn to develop relevant targeted advertising that applies to our clients, or those people we desire as clients. The age of the one ad draws all customers approach is ten years dead, but still businesses spend billions collectively on generically trying to shout louder than the competition instead of beginning a conversation with a few key people in a niche. (If you don't know what "Long Tail" and "Permission Marketing" (not talking about opting in to email lists, either) mean, it's time to hit your local book store or Amazon and read up!)

This post is from from my other blog here

I visited a small local zoo, today, with my wife and two young children. As we completed our first circuit we came to a pond with about 50 obviously healthy and well-fed trout circling in the water below an old-school candy machine that dispenses "trout-grub" in small handfuls for a quarter. As I watched, the space around the dispenser was never empty for long as family after family arrived to feed the waiting fish. It was clear how clever, even if not unique, this system is. Your clientèle pay for the privilege of maintaining your assets, so you not only avoid the cost of feed, you make a profit on it. The zoo also has animal feed packages available for purchase as you pay for admittance. For the low, low price of $2.50 you can have a small ice cream cone filled with a handful of animal pellets along with one banana. Cost of goods? Can't be more than a few dimes. The zoo makes a significant % profit off these small purchases. The families visiting profit by the experience of feeding a giraffe or lama, and watching a gorilla catch a chunk of banana out of mid-air, something they will surely remember and tell their friends about (not to mention the hundreds of pictures bound for Facebook that will come from these zoo adventures). What's impressive is that the zoo has found a way to offer their customers a remarkable experience that is profitable to the zoo. Here's the challenge: What can you do in your business to make your menial tasks a remarkable experience for your customers? This might require taking a completely different look at your company and the way you do things. Trust me - it will be beneficial. Did I mention that at this zoo, you can get really close to the action?