MiNeeds Blog

I’ve been writing about branding and positioning for a while. In this post, I want to mention an important component of branding : the emotional engagement.

In marketing, any effective and successful message does have an emotional component to it. It’s simple: people act on emotions. Among the emotions that engage the people the most and trigger action, “fear” seems to be the most exploited one by the marketers. I won’t be judging the ethics of advertising messages here but if you look at car and insurance commercials you’ll know what I mean. Even baby diapers and tissue paper is sold on fear as we all are familiar with the usual pattern of a disaster scenario in commercials, followed by a solution offered by the feature of the product.

From a branding perspective we thought of ways to create the right emotion with MiNeeds. We went through a lot of iterations on what kind of emotion we’d like to evoke with the brand. We were designing an internet service company for the consumers and the focal point of any emotional statement of the brand would be on the website itself.

Expressionism & Branding:
Back in school, I took several classes on aesthetics and history of art. It was my way of getting my mind off of heavy logic and math exposure from computer science. What stuck with me during those classes was the usage of emotions in expressionist art form.

Expressionists were opposed to academic standards that had prevailed in Europe at the time and they emphasized artist’s subjective emotion, which went beyond the actual appearance of things. The subjects of expressionist works were frequently distorted or altered. To evoke intense emotional expression, violent colors and exaggerated lines were used in paintings. Expressionists were trying to pinpoint the expression of inner experience rather than the objective reality.

Take a look at “The Scream” from Edvard Munch, Norwegian painter who was a major influence on German expressionist movement. Such a masterpiece…I have always been fascinated by the power of this painting to express and create emotions.

We wanted MiNeeds to evoke the right emotion and were in fact inspired by the expressionist art forms to communicate it in a composition using the web site as the form. You’ll see the elements of expressionism on our new design with hand drawn elements and vivid colors. There are some conflicting goals of designing an intuitive, high performing, fast loading site versus using colors and images to do the emotional-engagement part right. In my experience, that was the most challenging part

This is only one of the ideas went into branding MiNeeds to make an overall and unique brand statement. A unique way to shop local services, a unique business model, with a unique, highly differentiating and expressive user interface. Did we reach our goal? The market will tell. Actually it has been telling us for a while. With the feedback we’ve been receiving, we’re in the process of making a few enhancements on the design of MiNeeds. Will it move it a bit away from the expressionist theme? Perhaps in the sense of vivid color usage and heavy emphasis of hand drawn elements. But in the core sense of heavy emotional engagement, it will be even better positioned.

Best,
Deniz Erkan, co-founder of Http://www.MiNeeds.com - a new way to shop local services

Meet Pleo, the cutest infant dinosaur born this century! UGOBE is the mother designer. When it got pregnant with it, it knew that the internet is a great ally to propel its message about its coming product.

If you’ve attempted to do online marketing, you’ve realized how overwhelmingly chaotic and fragmented the Internet is. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of online social communities, blogs, groups, you name it! Where to start marketing and who-to could be a daunting question many face when they start attempting to market on the web.

The marketers of Pleo at UGOBE realized that in order to do an effective online marketing they needed to develop personas of their target audience. Initially UGOBE thought that the perfect “buyer” persona is children between the ages of 7-12. This is very logical, isn’t it? If you look at Pleo, it’s a captivating baby dinosaur with those wide eyes, engineered with senses of sound, sight, and touch. How can children not be the right persona!?

UGOBE found that it wasn’t right about the children being the main buyer persona. To determine the appropriate personas, they sent out an email survey (and regarding surveys I recommend reading my previous blog: The Business Idea) to 1,900 people who had registered at the pre-launch site they put together for Pleo. The biggest surprise they learned from this survey is that one of their main buyer personas is: women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s! Those women found that Pleo was wonderful and brings out a nurturing instinct that makes them fall in love with him.

The marketing team for Pleo now knew who to target for this persona. So, they developed a marketing message targeted for these women. And they positioned Pleo as the cute family pet.

Before you start marketing online, I highly recommend you research and define your buyer personas. Otherwise, you could waste a lot of effort and money targeting people that might not be interested. Besides, your marketing message might end up being too broad and not targeted. Defining your personas before you start executing your marketing is important as you saw with Pleo’s example. It could reveal some insights about your buyers that you never thought of. In my next blog, I’m going to tell you how we developed personas for my company, MiNeeds.

Best Regards,
Raed Malhas
Co-founder, www.MiNeeds.com, A New Way to Shop Local Services 

Have you ever tried to build a table without tools? Try running a company without some. In a startup, your resources are scarce, yet your workload increases by the hour. Before you know it, you’ll have way too many moving parts that you need to manage closely: technology, website, customers, employees, a million emails, marketing, funding, partnerships, bills, and much more!

Your ability to manage all the clutter will be put to the ultimate test. And in many ways, in order to execute and deliver on your timelines and keep everyone happy, you must be organized. In my previous blog, I covered lesson #1 to shipping on time: Shave you head. In this blog, I’ll go over lesson #2, which covers some tools and tips that saved our lives, in my company MiNeeds, in allowing us to constantly keep the ropes pulled together and stay organized.

1) Evolution is a Must

You have to continue to evolve your organizing tools as you grow bigger. The good news is: if you’re small now, you should be able to get away with using a few simple tools. Then continue to invest in using better organizing systems when things get busier.

2) Easy Organizing Tools

My partner Deniz and I, having spent 8 years in Microsoft prior to starting MiNeeds, immediately applied all the tools we used at Microsoft.

There’s no better email and scheduling client than Microsoft Outlook, I highly recommend not relying on web clients to organize your emails and schedule. Non of the available web clients today are anywhere close to what Outlook can provide for with.

A great folder sharing platform is Microsoft Groove. It allows you to create a folder system, just like the one you have on your hard-drive, and share it between you and others. Any of the collaborators can modify/add files and all updates will sync to your Groove view automatically. You can see who updated what and when. The only downside to this tool is that you must connect to the internet in order for your changes to sync to other collaborator’s views. You can work on any of your Groove files when offline.

We used Google docs for a bit too. The great thing about it is you can do real-time collaboration on documents. Which means that you and I can write a document together, without having to be in the same room, and we’ll be able to immediately see the changes applied as we type them. The downside of Google docs is that you have to be connected to the Internet to modify them. That usually caused us to abandon using this tool. That said, I read a few months ago of a plugin Google created to allow people to edit documents offline. But then again, the notion of a plugin or download sounds complex so we didn’t use it. I think Google should just download this offline piece to your machine when you sign in to docs without asking you to download it separately.

3) Growing More? –> Invest in Better Tools

One of the challenges we started having at some point after we founded the company was that the product, MiNeeds, and our team kept growing. So, we needed a tool that organized our thoughts, ideas, documents, bugs we found, and communication between the team so we don’t lose any important little details. My partner, Honor Gunday, created a phenomenal tool that did all we needed. It improved our efficiency at least 50%. The most important part is that all those little notes we were worried about losing before are documented and tracked now appropriately.

Fortunately, I feel very good about the focus and organization of our team at MiNeeds. It did take us time and continuous effort to create an organized system, definitely well worth all the sweat. We even created guides for new employees to ramp them up quickly on the tools we use. We’re now on target to reach our ship date for beta by the end of this week. Wish us luck!

Best Regards,
Raed Malhas
Co-founder, www.MiNeeds.com: A New Way to Shop Local Services 

Brand performance is an interesting concept. The performance of a brand starts with the name of the company, supported by the tagline, messaging of the main specialty and differentiating aspect, and delivering on the same idea flawlessly, in harmony, through the customer interactions.

Picking a name is so important and not an easy task. It has to shine and has to be supported in unity with the rest of the branding elements. Picking a name is really a combination of art, marketing and consumer psychology. There’s a list of principles to abide by when picking a good name, among them are : Is it easy to pronounce, does it hint at the specialty, is it ownable?

Look at the story of eBizJets: Such a great name isn’t it? Without the tagline, slogan or the logo you get a sense of what the company does. eBizJets was an “aggregated charter”, a unique specialty as an answer to “fractional ownership” jet companies like NetJets. eBizJets would search thousands of affiliated charter operators to find the best deal for its business customers, promising them a value through better rate and flexibility. The business grew into a leading player with this model. Soon after, they faced a trouble. Somebody else claimed the ownership of eBizJets trademark, filed a suit and won. After that, eBizJets changed their name to “Sentient”.

Now, just imagine that you saw this name on a billboard or heard about it from your friends. What does that name mean? It’s not Sentient Airlines or even Sentient rent-a-jet, but just Sentient. It definitely violates the top three principles of a good brand name. This case study was covered in Bill Shcley’s great book on branding “Why Johnny can’t brand”.

Best,
Deniz Erkan, co-founder MiNeeds.com - A new way to shop local services 

In my previous blog entry, “Using Online Videos to Expand your Business“, I talked about how online videos are starting to play a substantial role in business marketing. I also mentioned that I’ll be sharing some case studies that show the powerful effects online videos can have for small businesses.

Below, I selected two case studies that I was fortunate to witness for a couple of business members of my company, MiNeeds. While analyzing the effect of the videos that we created for those businesses via our filming service, we saw some extremely inspiring findings.

Case Study #1: A Chiropractor
Holly Hochstadt practices a very unique style of chiropractic care, which is a gentle style care from a holistic perspective. Holly decided to create an online video for her business and post it on her service profile page on MiNeeds (click here to view it).

Soon after her video was posted, we closely tracked her service profile page to monitor if there were any changes in traffic. It was incredible what we saw happen! The traffic on her page went up by multiple folds compared to before. Traffic numbers to her page at one week were over a 1000 unique hits, and continued to be higher than other chiropractors’ pages on MiNeeds in Seattle area.

Case Study #2: An Artist
Consider Erika Brumett. An extremely multi-talented artist in oil painting, wood burning, candle making, you name it! Erika recently created an online video on her service profile page (click here to see it). While tracking the traffic numbers for her page, we at MiNeeds noticed a spike in the amount of traffic Erika’s profile page was getting soon after her video was posted on her page.  

We notified Erika of the traffic outcome. Inspired by the reaction of clients and the increasing traffic due to her first video, Erika bought her own simple camera gear and started filming herself while creating the art pieces. Her goal is to show clients how each art piece is made. Also, give her clients the opportunity to hear, in the artist’s words, what each piece means from every angle!

Imagine buying a piece of art and getting along with it such a video clip from the artist. What a unique smart gift! It’ll be hard to believe that clients won’t be loyal to such an artist for life! 

Summary & Thoughts
Online videos have the ability to give small businesses a great unique exposure on the Internet. It’s an easy low-cost method to stand out. It gives the business strong branding. And the fact that online videos are available for online searchers to view at anytime is a great advantage for businesses.

In the coming few years, I believe that we’ll be seeing a dramatic transformation in small businesses’ focus on utilizing online videos to deliver their messages/advice and describe their products and service – to the world wide web.

I’m very keen on having my company, MiNeeds, continue to monitor, track, and analyze online videos’ effectiveness for businesses. In the next few months, I’ll be tracking direct sale returns based on online videos for businesses on MiNeeds. I’ll definitely be sharing any interesting case studies that arise so other small businesses can leverage.

Best Regards,
Raed Malhas
Co-founder, www.MiNeeds.com: A New Way to Shop Local Services 

Not more than a decade ago, TV advertisements were the most dominant way to reach the masses and spread the word about a business, a service, or a product. Back then, television was the main hub that people used to get information and learn about their local community, its news, its services, and so on.

Today, the internet is rapidly replacing the traditional media, such as TV. People have become dependent on the internet to perform research about local services and businesses. Having credibility online has never been more crucial for businesses that want to continue to have an edge in their industry and local community. Therefore, businesses must be focused at presenting themselves in the most personable and approachable methods online. They need to educate their potential customers on the internet about their services and products.

The best way to educate your customers and let them know who you are and what services you offer is to meet them personally. Customers want to meet you and learn about you and your services. Therefore, creating an online video that describes your business values and services and possibly show your office space – is an extremely effective way to allow your customers to meet you before they even hire you.

One of the main advantages of online videos is that customers can learn about you at their convenience, whenever they do a search on your service. Unlike TV, your online video doesn’t just air at a certain time on a certain date; it is always there to stay. Anytime a user is searching for you, they can find your video and meet you online.

At my company, MiNeeds, we highly encourage businesses to create extremely personal service profiles so customers can learn more about them. We’ve been closely monitoring the profiles that contain videos and comparing them against other business profiles within the same industry category with no videos. The findings are amazing! In a nutshell, businesses that added online videos on their profile pages substantially increased their traffic. Moreover, their traffic became multipliers of the amount of traffic that other businesses are getting within the same domain that did not have videos.

In my next blog, I’ll be sharing some case studies from service providers on MiNeeds that created online videos, and share data on their traffic and how videos altered the way they think about marketing their business.

Best Regards,
Raed Malhas
Co-founder, www.MiNeeds.com; A New Way to Shop Local Services 

As traditional advertising and marketing models are being challenged by not being as effective as they used to be, viral marketing has been one of the hottest topics lately and there are tons of books, studies and workshops on it. Viral marketing…word-of-mouth marketing…guerilla marketing…buzz marketing…Different terms for the same problem : how do we get the attention of the consumer in this world of attention deficit disorder, caused by the plethora of products and services in almost anything you can imagine. And, more importantly, once we get the attention of the consumers, how do we become sticky enough to jump start an epidemic where they talk about your business?

This week, my first post will summarize the principles presented in “Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. In my second post, I’ll outline an approach to engineer social epidemics using those principles and in my last post of the week, I’ll talk about how it inspired us and we used it in building product features and marketing strategies of MiNeeds, my new startup.

Tipping Point covers all types of social epidemics from revolutions to spread of diseases to even how fashion and trends in clothing take place. However, in Entrepreneur’s Journey, we’ll take a different slice of the book, looking at the principles from an entrepreneur’s point of view and outline how to use it for small businesses.

First, the 3 principles of a social epidemic according to Gladwell:

Law of the Few:
Gladwell defines three types of people: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. Connectors are the type of people who know unusually large number of people, and thus are connected to separate and unrelated circles of social networks. These people are very enthusiastic and personable which makes them excellent at building networks.Mavens are the type of people who take a special area of interest to the levels of near-obsession who acquire such detailed knowledge of a product that others turn to them repeatedly for advice. These are the people who make massive amount of research just to buy a $500 TV set or would read everything about drive terrains and suspension systems just to make their next 4×4 car purchase. Salesmen are the type of people as the name suggests. They convince people on new ideas, turn seemingly complicated features of any product into understandable, affectionate and appealing product statements to convince people to sell the idea or product. 

Stickiness Factor:
How do you hold the attention of people long enough to deliver a message that really sticks. Sticks, in the sense that, the message is a memorable and remarkable one that stays within people. It’s like your friend repeatedly whistling “Deck The Halls” with a new blues twist, and next thing you know, you unawarely sing the same song all day as it sticks with you. In the modern world of constant exposure to advertising and ideas, attention deficit is a major issue and stickiness factor plays a huge role in re-defining or re-engineering the whole marketing message and the product around it to stick.The Power of Context
Power of context is about how people change behaviors in a given context. The context here could be the environment from a micro scale, say in a family, to a massive scale, say at the Nation level. Power of context also talks about how a certain idea could tip in a given environment while others don’t. Timing and environment are very important here. Think of a clean subway station where everybody tries to keep it clean, whereas at a nasty and rundown subway station, same people don’t seem to care as much. This is a typical example of how the same people would act differently in a changing environment.

Best,
Deniz Erkan, co-founder of MiNeeds - A New Way to Shop Local Services 

There are several things you need to know when you file a patent that could lower your filing costs. In this blog, I’ll go over some tips that I found very helpful in bringing my filing costs down. Consider the following:

1) Provisional Patent:

Consider filing a provisional patent. This type is extremely useful if you have limited funds. It gives you a window of 12 months to file the full-fledged non-provisional patent. The cost of having an attorney prepare a provisional patent application is substantially lower than the non-provisional type. To read more about it, please refer to my blog “Types of Patents“.

2) Do it Yourself

You can always do a big part of writing up the patent application yourself. If you have the time, you can even file the patent yourself without the use of an attorney. If this is something you want to pursue, I highly recommend you read the details of how to do so on the US Patent & Trademark Office website:
http://www.uspto.gov/main/patents.htm

This would be something to consider when filing a provisional patent. On the other hand, if your patent is a more complex one, I recommend you hire a patent attorney or a professional to do it. The cost might be well worth it.

A note about the patent application queue:
It is important to know that when you do file a patent, most of the time your patent application sits in a queue for a while at the patent office. When they finally get to it, many times they will reject one or more clauses in your application. So, you’ll have to revise it and send it back. This is very normal so don’t let such an occurrence discourage you. Stay at it and respond as quickly as you can.

3) Patent Bar Professionals vs Patent Attorneys

Attorneys are not the only people that can file high quality patents for you. There are some great professionals out there that have passed the patent bar exam that could do a great job as well. The patent bar gives those professionals great knowledge in filing patents. And since these professionals are not attorneys, then most probably their cost for filing patents will be lower than attorneys.

Attorneys who have earned both their state bar and the patent bar are the most expensive in the market. They are of course attorneys and would have a lot to bring to the plate when filing patents especially with those two degrees. But just remember that an attorney with such credentials doesn’t necessarily do a better job than a non-attorney professional who passed the patent bar. Some of these professionals have a background similar to your invention (technology, biology, etc.), and might actually do a great job on your patent application.

Best Regards,
Raed Malhas
Co-founder, www.MiNeeds.com; A New Way to Shop Local Services 

There are several types of patents you can file for your invention. Knowing which one to file is important. There are also more affordable options available that are important to be aware of. In this blog, I’ll explain each type of patent. In my next blog, I’ll share some tips on how to save on patent costs.

Before I begin, a couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog titled “Should I Protect/Patent my Idea?“. If you’re contemplating whether or not to file a patent for your invention, I highly recommend you read that blog first.

Types of Patents:

1) Utility Patent (Non-Provisional Patent Application)

This is the full-fledged patent application you would file for inventions. As the name indicates, it is filed for a certain novel ‘function’ of the invention. Some examples are: In technology, this would be a new software algorithm, a mathematical model, an innovative circuit, etc. In Biology, this would be a new way to decode the human genome, and so on. In upholstery, this is a new type of Velcro material, etc.

Cost: $8,000 - 12,000. A general rule is: the more complex the filing application needs to be, the higher your cost will be.

Recommendations: Before you hire someone, do research online to find out how much should you be paying for your patent. I would research two things: the type of patent you need to file and the average cost of patents in the field of your invention. This will give you a good idea of your cost.

2) Provisional Patent Application (the affordable short-term option)

This patent application was designed by the USPTO (U.S. Patent & Trademark Office) to provide inventors a lower-cost patent filing option. This patent type gives you 12 months to file the non-provisional patent application. To make one thing clear, in order to get a utility patent for your invention, you must file the non-provisional application before the 12-month period of filing a provisional one has passed.

But does it make sense to file a provisional first then a non-provisional within a year? You’re right, the cost will be more eventually when you add the two. But, the great advantage of having the option of filing a provisional patent application is that: if you are short on funds, and you really want to protect your idea, the provisional option will give you the peace-of-mind that your idea is protected while not draining your limited funds. Also, within 12 months from the conception of the idea, you might not even want to pursue it. So, not spending that big payment on a non-provisional patent upfront might be a wise option to do.

Of course, if you have the funds and know you’ll still be pursuing the idea in a year, then it makes sense for you to go down the route of a non-provisional patent right away. Cost: $1,000 - $4,000. Again, depends on the complexity.

3) Design Patent

As the name indicates, this patent relates to the visual characteristics of a creation. It could be a certain glass design you invented or a design of a website, etc.

4) Plant PatentThis is used for inventors who have created or discovered and asexually reproduced a new variety of plant.

Declaimer: the cost numbers I shared in this article are based on my personal experience and research. The cost may vary from these ranges. Moreover, the description I provided is summary information of what I found useful to understand when filing a patent. For more information about the types of patents, please visit the US Patent & Trademark Office website at:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/types.htm

Best Regards,

Raed Malhas
Co-founder, www.MiNeeds.com; a new way to shop local services 

Continuing on summarizing Peter Drucker’s strategies and grouping them into my own list. For all practical purposes, my goal here is to have a summary sheet of possibilities for you to really take a step back and reconsider your strategy.

I’ll be discussing 5 different strategy patterns to be used by entrepreneurs. These strategies have different flavors and can be used together. Once you have the 7 ways to look for entrepreneurial opportunities, which I covered in my previous post, this is how to harmonize those points into a strategy to execute.

○ “Being fustest with the mostest” which aims at creating a new market and customer. This is the one which aims at dominating the market it chose for itself. it’s considered riskier than other strategies, but could be very rewarding if executed successfully. It’s a difficult strategy to adjust once set target on and needs careful analysis before execution. Often times, coming up with a brilliant idea typically is not enough to do this, and more innovations fail using this strategy than succeed. It has the risk of failing because of poor analysis, not enough resources to execute, not enough concentrated and orchestrated effort in productizing the innovation. This strategy is typically good for established organizations with high capital.

○ Creative Imitation which is the perfection and positioning of an existing product or service. The terms sounds conflicting, isn’t it? How can an imitation be unique or creative? In this one, you exploit the success of others instead of inventing a new product or service. You perfect it and re-position it.Apple came up with the first personal computer. The idea did not exist before. What Apple did was a remarkable innovation, however it had its own weaknesses in terms of software support and distribution channels. IBM took advantage of it, using the same set of features as Apple’s personal computer, it created more software and distribution channels. It creatively imitated Apple’s first personal computer. Creative imitation doesn’t create new markets, but serve the markets the original inventor created. High tech is a good area to use this strategy. It’s less risky than the “being fustest with the mostest”, however it requires tremendous amount of alertness, flexibility and massive hard work.

○ Entrepreneurial Judo is the one where you exploit bad habits of competitors.
Is starts with a beach-head and once the opponent establishes his position on that limited zone, it moves up to invade the whole market. It’s always market focused and market driven. Typically, the established leader overlooks the unexpected change patterns in consumer’s reality or uses its monopolistic power to cream the market and does not innovate, giving small players areas to exploit.To use this strategy, you have to carefully analyze an industry with its consumers, suppliers. Study their habits, outline their policies and strategies. And then, to come up with an alternative strategy and hit the market on the weakest spot of resistence. However, there needs to be some innovation here. The new comer has to offer better service and better value proposition than the existing players in the market. What do you think of Google’s attack on Microsoft’s Office line of business with free spreadsheets and word processors? Looks like an entrepreneurial judo to me.○ Niche Strategy where the goal is to monopolize a small area. The 3 strategies discussed so far, aim at establishing a dominant position in the market. The Niche strategy aims at control, not dominance, in a smaller area. In fact this small area, typically created by a dominant player, is so obscure or small that the chances of receiving competitive waves in the market is pretty slim. You probably know major automobile brands, but few of you can name companies which build frames or brakes. This kind of opportunity is rarely found by accident and is typically a result of systematic survey of an industry and using existing relationships.

○ Changing economic characteristics of a product, market or an industry, which in essence is converting an old product into something new. Unlike the 4 strategies above, where there’s a new product or service hitting the market and the strategy is how to execute it, in this last strategy, product itself is the strategy. Sounds paradoxical, isn’t it? Let me explain. This is exactly what McDonalds or Starbucks did. They took an existing product and built a new experience with it by creating a new market and a customer. And thus, the innovation itself is the strategy.Entrepreneurship always needs to be market focused and market driven, strategy is where the entrepreneur makes the decision as the risk taker. It’s neither gamble nor exact science. It’s judgmental. Best,
Deniz Erkan, co-founder of MiNeeds.com