We are planning to launch a website which facilitates online food ordering from restaurants, with a list of restaurants and their menu and a very easy platform for the users to order food online. I am presently residing in the middle-east (UAE) and it is a relatively new concept here. I would appreciate any input from your side. The name of the website would be foodie and i have been suggested a tag-line “ur ultimate hunger management guide”. We are planning to make the ordering experience as fun as possible with contests and coupons etc.

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Jay’s Answer: Your proposed tagline “Your Ultimate Hunger Management Guide” isn’t a strong tagline. Because the name of your website is “Foodie” (which doesn’t tell me quickly what your business is about — other than something food-related), it’s up to your tagline to explain the primary benefit of your business. Here are a couple of ideas to get you thinking:

• Hungry? Order Online Quickly!
• Order Food Online Easily

The great unspoken truth about Marketing is that while marketers create names, taglines, websites, social media campaigns, etc. – they are unlikely to know WHY people reacted positively to their work. They may think they understand, but odds are they’ve simply been lucky.

When we talk with someone else one-to-one, we think we’re having a heart-to-heart connection. We’re listening, thinking, and reacting. But the reality is, the other person has an entirely different world experience than we do. The better you know the person, the more you’ve heard their “stories”, struggles, and motivations. That gives you a glimmer of their true self. But you don’t truly know how they think, since you’re not them.

So imagine the difficulty trying to create a marketing strategy that will produce a desired outcome to a large number of people. If you’re starting afresh with a campaign – you start by understanding the logical/common/emotional motivations for your target audience. You spend a lot of time crafting the offer, the headline, and timing of your message.

Is that enough to cause people to understand and react to your marketing? Probably not. So, to be safe you add visuals (colors, pictures, typefaces, layout) and perhaps audio (background music). Can you confidently predict what % of the people seeing the campaign will act on your offer?

Let’s say that your marketing was a success. What was the magic that unlocked your prospects into action (copy, visuals, audio)? If you don’t know, then the next message that you send may or may not work.

That’s why smart marketing people are continually testing their marketing cause-and-effect using A/B split testing and/or multivariate testing. They know that they don’t know WHY until they understand WHAT. Our ability to rapidly draw conclusions (read: Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink for discussions on intuition) is a double-edge sword. The smart money’s in not assuming – but uncovering – motivation.

Photo by Patrick Fitzgerald

Do you know if your marketing efforts are backfiring on you? Look through the list to ensure that your well meaning work is actually causing you professional harm:

Talk LOUDER. If someone isn’t paying attention to you, you might be tempted to raise your voice. The first time you do it, it seems to work. But eventually people learn to tune you out, since you’re not saying anything new – just LOUDER. This is true not only for face-to-face conversations, but also in print (bigger font size, flashier graphics, etc.). Make sure your communications are worth listening to.

Talk Non-Stop. If you’re monologue-ing your conversation, you’re not listening to your prospect. First, ask questions to qualify them. Find out what types of problems they have and then craft a message that shows you listened.

Talk Repetitively. Don’t find 10 ways to say the same thing. While repetition is important to ensure that your key points aren’t missed, respect your audience’s intelligence. If the first way you say something isn’t interesting, neither will the tenth repetition.

Talk More Often. If you email someone once a month, then emailing them once a week is unlikely to endear yourself to them. If you have something new to say, say it. If you don’t, respect your prospect’s time.

Talk Nonsense. We get caught up in the latest buzzwords and keywords. Pretty soon no one can quickly make sense of what you’re saying. The goal is to talk simply to be understood. Once you’re sure your prospect likes to use buzzwords, by all means shower them with words. Until then, speak naturally in all your communication.

“The Story Of Israel’s Economic Miracle” can also become the story of how to launch/wildly succeed your own business. Dan Senor & Saul Singer answer the question, “How does a country of 7.1 million – surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, and with no natural resources - produce more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK?”

The authors have identified a number of key characteristics that can be translated to any business in any country:

Individual Generalists. Contrary to popular thinking, you want to endow your team with a variety of skills that allows them to understand and solve other areas of expertise. You want the brightest experts in a field working for you, but to make them even more valuable, they should be able to see how to solve other challenges in your company. Think about an artist who can fix your IT network, or a programmer who’s a marketing whiz.

Challenging The Status Quo. Israeli culture isn’t interested in preserving the status quo. They are constantly on vigil for new challenges to their country since their competition is evolving. Instead of being content following “best practices”, regularly question actions and results. This means that rigid hierarchical business models are flattened – anyone can question anyone else’s action, and everyone is responsible to sharing how and why they did what they did. By learning what’s working in a changing world, everyone in the culture wins, and everyone outside of the culture is never truly sure the response to their actions.

Empower People Early. In the Israeli military, after a short basic training, new soldiers are giving challenging missions and are expected to succeed. They quickly form teams, quickly analyze the problem, quickly given resources, and their results are measured (from all perspectives). Most businesses would never consider giving a new hire lots of responsibility (and a big chance to fail). But by empowering, you’re building strong teams quickly and truly valuing each team member’s ability to contribute.

Risk Is Good. Most larger companies are risk-averse. They’re looking to maintain their market share. But true growth can only come from taking wise chances. Be bold, study the competition well, and try. Afterwards, learn from the action and make sure everyone in your culture benefits.

Thanks to Michael Goodman for this book recommendation.