Today I was reading about a company that entered into an agreement to be sold of to a different company. It seemed that for the most part operations wouldn’t change drastically as they will simply be operated as a separate subsidiary. However, they decided to not announce this detail to the customers and of course news did break out about it. Afterwards a lot of loyal customers were scared of the deal and are already planning to do business with a different company as to them this showed instability.

Kind of interesting I thought as I guess if you are one of those suit and ties in the corporate level you would think that no regular consumer would bother to read about these kinds of things. However, with almost everyone connected to someone in the know online nowadays odds are fans and consumers of a business will pick up on the news immediately. Therefore, it’s not something you can ignore. I would imagine even some kind of simple acquisition message is better than simply saying nothing too.

I heard an interesting debate today where if you were running say a retail business and your goal was to try and attract a lot of shoppers would you do this by spending it on advertisement or making a product so ridiculously cheap where you are losing money that the hope is that sale will go viral? For example, if you had a marketing budget of $10,000 would you use it to develop like a video ad or would you simply price a lot of items at a loss? For example, a $500 laptop would be $99.

Interesting scenario I thought. I’m almost inclined to say nowadays maybe the at a loss routine may generate more buzz and attention since almost everyone is using some form of social media. As well, the post affect of it would probably be good too as a lot of people enjoy taking pictures to brag how cheap they go various items. Of course, this would probably only work best for a semi established company. It does make me wonder though why more businesses don’t use these kinds of strategies as sometimes even if there are only like three items that are available it is still good advertising.

There was an individual I was speaking to ho seemed to have done a lot of work for his business where he is growing fairly decently as he has a lot of happy customers. Ne thing he wished did happen though was if he could get more customers as he mentioned his biggest obstacle was getting people to trust him enough as he doesn’t exactly have the same marketing and brand name power as a large corporation. I was then asking why he didn’t have any kind of testimony or public feedback for his company as that in itself can be a huge seller to many. He mentioned that it didn’t seem like any of his customers wanted to do it. I then simply asked if he ever even asked them and the answer was no.

I personally think that is a key marketing material that is so easy to get if you provide a quality product or service as many times it simply doesn’t cross the consumer’s mind on how much a testimony can help you in your business until you ask them for one. I never saw a case personally where the person would say no if they ended up very happy with the product or service provided. Don’t be bashful I say as it’s not like you are asking someone out for a date or anything and those simple feedbacks can go a long way in gaining consumer confidence and showing how there are real genuine people behind the business.

Guess I was a little late in hearing this news as I was reading how a very popular file sharing site called Megaupload was closed down by the FBI. The funny thing was that at first I thought this was simply something to do with the SOPA protests lately. In a nutshell it seems like the site was closed down with accusations that the site is a haven of sort for people to freely upload illegal material. There must have been thousands of people that bought lifetime memberships to that site too and now they are out of luck.

The interesting thing in all this is how other sites like Filesonic were so quick to adjust the way they do business as a result of this. For example, on that site apparently now you are only able to download files that you have uploaded yourself as there is a big message on the site saying “All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.”

I was just thinking again at how many people have paid for one of those lifetime membership plans only to now not be able to use it as intended. For some reason a lot of people seem to be taking a lot of fascination into the company owner and how he spends the fortune he made such as with these posts:

http://gizmodo.com/5877987/the-best-worst-photos-of-megaupload-kim-dotcom

I don’t think I remember another incident like this where rival competitors are so quick to adapt to events like these. Even when they had all those disputes about music sharing online for example many people waited to see what happened to the companies that got targeted first. Lucky I don’t rely on services like these myself. I can imagine the headache right now if say companies used this to transfer large video files and revolved their company operations around it.

I was just looking at some products to see what is currently in demand during the Christmas holiday. For the most part I wasn’t too surprised as everything that I thought would be highly anticipated was there. What was interesting to me is how so many companies seem to be making limited edition packages that sell so easily to the fanatics.

Some of them don’t seem that special to me either such as the limited edition is nothing more than just a different box cover art. Makes you wonder too how much in sales you can increase for your products if you try to find something really cheap like say making an inexpensive plastic coin that is themed around the product and say it is a limited edition item if you buy the products now.

If it is something like a 300% increase in sales then that wouldn’t bee too bad of an idea I guess. Usually for me as a consumer though these types of things only interest me if it is something substantial such as a limited edition bobble head or something. I guess it’s mostly due to personal perception too on whatever bonus you get is just as valuable on its own.