Friday 5 Marketing Observations – Sales Lessons From the 9 Most Successful Shark Tank Deals
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
I’ve just finished setting up our client’s Advertising Results Reports on Data Studio, Most of our clients have been raving about these insights of these reports.
If you like us to review your Ads to see we can reduce waste & exploit Keywords Search terms you could be missing out on. We’ll be happy to give you a hand.
This week a mixed bag & I struggles to shift through 20 articles I tagged. I guess We’ll get to some of them in the coming week. Enjoys.
Sales Lessons From the 9 Most Successful Shark Tank Deals
Shark Tank, a popular American reality television series on ABC, started its 10th season in October 2018. The focus of the program is the initial pitch made by hopeful entrepreneurs to eager investors.
While many of the 5 million people who watch Shark Tank do so for entertainment, some of us watch for the popular show’s weekly education on how to successfully sell your product to high-profile prospects.
And, believe it or not, we can take away a lot of sales lessons from those success stories. Below, we identify nine of the most successful Shark Tank businesses and share what you can learn from them.
- Tipsy Elves is a holiday-themed apparel company that specializes in ugly sweaters and even costumes and ski gear… Result: The company saw $600,000 a year in sales before appearing on Shark Tank. They are now bringing in more than $50 million in revenue. Their clothing is even worn by celebrities such as Ryan Reynolds and Jimmy Kimmel… Sales Lesson: Tailor your pitch to your customer’s pain points.
- Wicked Good Cupcakes – If you’re craving a cupcake, Wicked Good Cupcakes has your back. Cofounders Tracey Noonan and Dani Vilagie, mother and daughter, created gourmet cupcakes that could be shipped nationwide in cute jars while staying fresh. On Season 4 of Shark Tank, Kevin O’Leary invested $75,000 in exchange for a cut of every cupcake sold… Result: Wicked Good Cupcakes has generated $14 million in sales… Sales Lesson: Solve the customer’s problem, don’t sell the solution…
- Copa Di Vino Granted, wine company Copa Di Vino did not land a deal with the Sharks. Despite appearing on the show twice, the investors didn’t buy into the idea of wine packaged in small cups (although O’Leary did make an offer for the patents rather than the brand)… Sales Lesson: A sale isn’t always the right fit
Go Read – Sales Lessons From the 9 Most Successful Shark Tank Deals
How Wimbledon and Watson are using AI to curate video highlights
The Wimbledon tennis championship is among the world’s most prestigious sporting events. First held in 1877, it’s also the oldest tennis tournament in the world. Much has changed in the past 142 years — from the players’ attire to the quality of their equipment — but behind the scenes an AI evolution is transforming how footage is captured and curated for public consumption.
For context, Wimbledon has 18 grass courts, which host nearly 700 matches over a two-week period, spanning men’s and women’s singles, doubles, mixed doubles, and more.
- For the past six years, IBM has lent its Watson AI smarts to all manner of applications, but more recently it has been ramping up Watson’s use at Wimbledon, where it helps capture all the best bits of each game and package them as highlights within two minutes of a match ending, updating what had been a labor-intensive manual effort….
- Ai so powerful it analyzes such elements as players’ gestures and reactions (e.g. celebratory air punches and fist pumps) and listens to crowd noises, like gasps and cheers. For Wimbledon 2019 highlights, IBM says it trained Watson to leverage even more acoustics data, such as detecting each strike of the ball — which helps in terms of enabling tighter automated cropping of highlights around key action in games and could also help identify long rallies….
- Video highlights -Watson also taps gameplay statistics for further context… These stats are generated by tennis players (often county-level players) who are employed to sit courtside to identify subjective data points like unforced errors, in addition to other statistical tidbits — such as aces or double faults — and milestone moments in a tennis match, such as break point, set point, or match point.
Go Read – How Wimbledon and Watson are using AI to curate video highlights
Systems Thinking vs. Funnel Optimization (Dis-Solving Problems)
I’m writing the “full expanded version,” which I’ll publish here in a few weeks once it’s ready. Until then, I’ve republished the original email newsletter below.
It’s probably been the single most impactful email I’ve ever written, which I have to say has been a surprise (having received over 200 responses from peeps so far).
I share these email screengrabs below not for my ego (although it is fragile and loves positive feedback), but to impress on you that reading this is worth your attention.
- Andre gives us a series of emails he wrote for a project… I found the screenshots very helpful showing good copywriting. sequence…
- The big idea is that no single part has an independent affect (note: not *effect*) on the whole. Or, said another way, cause-and-effect can’t be isolated to a single point… Peter M. Senge, a systems scientist at MIT, calls this the “Rebound Effect.”
- Messing around with the parts of your “funnel” won’t necessarily improve the system as a whole (and may make them worse)… As marketers, our “funnels” are a system (a whole)… The visitor path may seem as tho it’s a linear flow — that starts with an ad and ends with a sale — but the system in which the flow happens behaves differently.
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Go Read – Systems Thinking vs. Funnel Optimization (Dis-Solving Problems)
How IKEA Flawlessly Brings The Customer Journey Mapping To Life
IKEA — the mystical land of flatpack furniture and Swedish meatballs.
There’s much to be said about this Swedish marvel of a business, starting from the fact that it remains the world’s largest furniture retailer and one of the most loved businesses worldwide.
So, what is it about the endless maze of open floor plans and decadent room displays that pulls us in? It can’t just be the pun-worthy names each item of furniture is endowed with or the neatly stacked rows of flatpack furniture just waiting to be unpacked and assembled
- “Customer journeys are the roadmap of a business. IKEA takes it to the next level. There’s more to their floorplans than carefully laid out aesthetics and room segmentation. IKEA’s floorplan is, in fact, a very carefully curated labyrinth that brings the customer journey to life,” Garreth Dorey NTWRK co-founder and chief customer and people officer…
- I love Ikea Maze brilliant. “IKEA’s level of genius isn’t just about trapping their customers within a seemingly inescapable maze with only one exit. Granted, some people might feel like mice trapped in a maze, but IKEA’s floor plan is in fact, genius. The customer’s literal journey through the store allows them to experience the buying process at their own leisure”…
- If you ever noticed when you go to Ikea with a plan to get a lounge, Table or something you get caught in the moment and you have a bag of impulse buys. This didn’t happen by fat luck & chance this is planned.
Go Read – Google Ads Customer Match: A Step-By-Step Guide (With Real Results)
The 7 Industries Amazon Could Disrupt Next
Since 1999, Amazon’s disruptive bravado has made “getting Amazoned” a fear for executives in any sector the tech giant sets its sights on. Here are the industries that could be under threat next.
Jeff Bezos once famously said, “Your margin is my opportunity.” Today, Amazon is finding opportunities in industries that would have been unthinkable for the company to attack even a few years ago.
Throughout the 2000s, Amazon’s e-commerce dominance paved a path of destruction through books, music, toys, sports, and a range of other retail verticals. Big box stores like Toys R’ Us, Sports Authority, and Barnes & Noble — some of which had thrived for more than a century — couldn’t compete with Amazon’s ability to combine uncommonly fast shipping with low prices.
- CB Insights researched the 4 industries where Amazon’s disruptive intentions are clearest today — pharmacies, small business lending, groceries, and payments — as well as 3 industries where Amazon’s efforts are more nascent. The disruptive possibilities in these industries — mortgages, home & garden, and insurance…
- When it comes to pharmaceuticals, there are several reasons that Amazon — and its direct-to-consumer model — could be a good fit in the industry,Convenience, Customer experience, Partnerships, Pre-existing customer base and distribution capabilities, Physical stores & Streamlined distribution…
- I find this interesting & an exciting prospect Small business lending: A direct, data-driven source of financing… Over the last two decades, the percentage of Amazon sales completed by third-party merchants has increased from 3% to 58%. These SMBs have succeeded on the Amazon marketplace in part because Amazon has, in Bezos’ words, invested in and given them “the very best selling tools we could imagine and build.”
Go Read – The 7 Industries Amazon Could Disrupt Next