5 Marketing Trends; Zuckerberg’s Q&A; Automate 175 Tasks; July 8 Bob Bloom

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

Free Course with Bob Bloom July 8 -- Southwest Airlines was birthed in his office; he went on to lead one of the largest ad agencies in the world. More info below, but first...

Automate 175 Everyday Biz and Life Tasks -- I spent a week with Ari Meisel, author of Less Doing, More Living, and witnessed how unbelievably productive he is. Now he's teaching all of us his tricks. More info below, but second...

5 Ways to Turn Precision into Profits -- my latest Fortune Venture column is online (and on the newsstands) and discusses five new trends in marketing prowess:

1. Use dynamic pricing - Amazon and Uber price real time based on demand - shouldn't you?
2. Try "MASK" marketing - much more powerful than mass marketing
3. Map it - better to see your marketing data visually
4. Craft precise pitches - Tom Sant is the guru here
5. Hottest new skill - have these people on your team or get crushed (read the column to find out!)

Take 1 minute to read through the five short tips online. Then discuss at your next weekly marketing meeting.

Mark Zuckerberg Answers Questions -- Tuesday Mark hosted another of his regular Q&A sessions with Facebook users (what's your routine for connecting directly with customers - a key marketing habit?). "His $1 salary, definition of happiness, fitness plan..." were some of the many topics he addressed. Questioners included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arianna Huffington, and physicist Stephen Hawking. It's worth 2 minutes to scan down through his answers and see how he handles questions like this.

1000 Home Visits -- taking a page from Intuit (creator of accounting software QuickBooks and Quicken), this recent USA Today article on IKEA notes:

To send the company back on a growth track, Ikea has plans to make 1,000 house calls a year at customers' homes, poking through their cabinets, observing how their kids play and determining the biggest headaches people encounter when running their households.

Nothing works better, from a marketing standpoint (making decisions about product, price, place, and promotion) than observing customers in their own environment. Thanks to Gazelles Certified Coach David Baney for pointing me to this article.

Backwards Bicycle -- lots of lessons in this "Backwards Brain Bicycle" video when people try to ride a bicycle re-engineered to turn left when you turn right - it just can't be done without six months of rewiring! It's amazing the ruts we get in and how are brain get quickly hardwired a certain way. Notes Steve Hall, founder of DriversSelect.com who sent me the link:

I found this video to not only be really funny but it sends such a great message in that "whether we think we know it or not we are looking at the world all the time with a bias and perceiving it as reality."

So be careful when you observe customers - and get lots of people in your company to do it to average out the biases.

Steve Jobs Movie Trailer -- due in theatres Oct 9, here's a link to the just released 2.5 minute trailer.

Automate 175 Tasks -- July 13 Ari launches his next Less Doing Bootcamp - online each week for an hour and all archived. We've signed up one of our team at Gazelles to participate (yes, we paid the $2k like everyone else) with a goal to automate 25 tasks each quarter for the next four quarters - so 100 little tasks that are eating up minutes and hours of our time but professionally and personally. Great for the person in your company that is the organizer - choose someone and have them start the process. Just one of Ari's ideas has already saved me almost 30 minutes/week - I'll detail more as we implement.

July 8th Course Viewing -- marketing genius and WPOer Bob Bloom, author of The Inside Advantage: The Strategy that Unlocks the Hidden Growth in Your Business, has discovered that every enterprise has at least one strategic asset --one existing strength-- that can form the foundation for future growth. He calls this an Inside Advantage. This strength usually lies unrecognized in an activity the business is currently performing or in a concept or an idea that the business already owns. Finding this hidden potential and becoming well known for it will grow the business. Register Here for a FREE Course Viewing of The Common Sense of Business Growth by Bob Bloom on July 8th. Register now to SAVE $99. Length: 75 Minutes. Language: English.

COACHING:

Interested in selecting a coach to help your company Scale Up? Check out this video explaining the "4+1 Rule of Thumb" for choosing the right coach.

TECHNOLOGY: Align Software puts everyone on the Same Page - Literally! See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progress on their priorities - alongside how these Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer and on your phone.