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 

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 

Right when I was forming my software startup, MiNeeds, I read a book called Purple Cow by Seth Godin. This author is one of the Gods of marketing; I wish I can hire him for just one hour! Maybe someday… Anyway, the book is an explosively inspiring read that I highly recommended for all the creative insane entrepreneurs who crave to be unique and different.  

The idea of the book is this: if you are a brown cow, then you’re no different from all the other boring cows. But if you are a purple cow, now that’s a view that’ll constantly attract attention!

Creating a purple cow business means you dare to be remarkable! This doesn’t mean that you have to spend a lot to do so. It just means that you have to think smartly to be purple! This can be through a phenomenal customer service you provide, an innovative technology you build, a super cool store you design, and so on. What is that one thing that you want your customers to leave wowed by every time they visit your business?

I have 3 purple cow stories to share.

Car Chip Repair via Wi-fi!

If you’ve driven around Microsoft campus recently in Redmond/WA and you came across a van with an installed tent around some car, you know you’ve just met the purple cow of chip repair!

The van owner created a remarkable chip repair business by creating the following innovative business model: If you work on Microsoft campus and have a chip on your car that needs fixing, you send the van owner a picture of the chip via email. He receives your image instantly on his van through his laptop that has internet connection, I’m guessing through a broadband card. He then sends you an estimate. If you decide to work with him, he drives to your car that’s parked on campus, assembles his little tent to cover from our lovely rain, and repairs your chip while you are at your desk working!

Why do I have a feeling this person is more successful than a lot of the other chip repair shops in Redmond area!? He is very lean without the office costs. The sole existence of his van on campus is serving an extremely effective targeted marketing. His advertising cost must be zero! 

Dog Pictures in an Ivy League School Application!

Even if you’re an extremely bright kid growing up in Istanbul, it’s still pretty difficult to convince some of the Ivy Leagues to admit you, unless!!

What if that kid dumps the boring university applications and creates a little story book about the unique things in his life which also contains pictures of his house, dog, backyard, friends, etc.? What if he submits this little story book along with the deadly application to all the Ivy Leagues and top schools? What sort of crazy application is that?

The happy ending of this true story is that this creative kid gets admitted to 18 out of the 20 Ivy Leagues and top schools he applied for! He chose Stanford. The coolest part about this story is that this person happens to be one of my partners today at my software startup MiNeeds.com, this is Honor Gunday.

A Kids Coffee Shop! (this is a virtual story)

On Queen Anne hill, where I live in Seattle, I can count eleven coffee shops in less than a 2 mile radius! You have the commercial and the smaller ‘organic’ branded ones. Is there room for yet another coffee shop on this hill? Can a new café attract some of the regulars of the other cafes and convince them to stay? I think absolutely, only if that café is remarkable!

Queen Anne is an area with a good percentage of young married couples with kids, LOTS of kids! Imagine a new coffee shop opens up there that allocates a small space just for kids. Assume this café pays a high-school student $8 an hour to do face painting for kids once a week. Imagine the lines! Think of kids telling their friends about their experience! What a great word of mouth marketing those little fellows will create. A forceful one too since most parents can’t say no. What if the owner was even smarter and decided to gather emails of parents so the café can inform them of such activities. Do you really think those parents and their kids won’t stick to this café!?

Conclusion & Recommendations

To create a remarkable business, ask yourself: how can I be different and have people leave with something to talk about? How can I give people one heck of an experience? Think of all the shops you’ve visited and people you’ve worked with recently. Do you remember any of them? If so, why? What was so special about their business that stuck with you?

Start thinking differently, allow yourself to imagine the coolest possible business you would really want to go experience that is extremely different from anything you’ve seen. I recommend you keep a log and write all your ideas in it. After you have a few options, look at them and examine the cost within your budget. Start implementing the ones that has the most viral marketing effects on people and are affordable.

Being remarkable doesn’t mean building expensive things. It can be simple ideas that are extremely creative which can differentiate you from the rest.

Best Regards,

Raed Malhas 

Co-founder, www.miNeeds.com: A new way to shop local services 

Read my “Entrepreneur’s Journey” blog at the Seattle PI Newspaper: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/entrepreneursjourney/ 

We’re super excited to announce one of the really cool services offered by MiNeeds : Get Filmed!

A professionally done video advertising is not only an excellent way to express yourself and your business, but it also impresses your customers and creates trust. Video advertising has long been a dream for many small businesses, however, due to the high costs of video production, video commercials were limited to big enterprises with sizeable marketing budgets.

MiNeeds did an intensive study and re-engineering of the commercial video production process to cut costs and adopt it for web consumption to make it affordable for small local businesses. Instead of paying thousands of dollars for a commercial video, we were able to bring down the price to an affordable level so that all small businesses can benefit from this service and have a presence on the web!

 To see our promotional price and a sample Get Filmed! video, click here.