Turn Your Products and Services Into Experiences

It's easy to think you offer unique products and services, but in today's world, you're probably wrong. It doesn't take much for a competitor to start offering the same products or services - and often that competitor can be somebody in China building the same product, or somebody in India offering the same service. Sometimes your competitor is even the customer themselves!

Travel agents are a perfect example. In the past, consumers used travel agents because they had access to special information - flights and fares, accommodation discounts, package deals, and the like. Now on-line travel agencies have equal or better access to those facilities; and consumers themselves often book their own travel.

To compete, the travel agent has to offer better experiences - for example, by organising customised tours, special packages and personal service.

Joseph Pine, author of The Experience Economy, describes different kinds of economies, and how they have developed over time. We started with an agrarian economy, which became an industrial economy, which became a service economy, and we're now moving into an "experience economy".

As the economy has changed, so has the value we place on products and services. Pine uses coffee as an example:

As a commodity, the coffee beans required for a cup of coffee are worth about 2-3 cents. Grind them, roast them, package them and sell them as goods on a supermarket shelf; and those same beans are now worth about 10-15 cents. Brew them in a diner and offer this as a service: That's worth about $1. Turn this into an experience at a café or restaurant, and now you can charge $4 (for what started out as 2-3 cents worth of coffee beans).

What changed? Clearly there are more raw ingredients in a cup of coffee than just the beans, but not $4 more (A friend of mine who owned a small café estimated a coffee cost her about 50 cents in total - including the ingredients, labour, and other overheads). The answer is that we're paying for the experience surrounding the coffee, not just the coffee itself.

Clearly this applies to some other products and services as well:

Apple users pay more for a supposedly better user experience. Dining at a five-star restaurant is as much about the experience as it is about the food. A day at Disneyland is all about the experience. The premium for flying first class far exceeds the airline's cost of providing the additional services.

In these cases, it's obvious the customer is paying extra for the experience, because the experience is part of the product.

What can you do to build - and sell - better experiences to your customers and clients? If you aren't constantly looking for ways to improve your customer experience, you'll be at the mercy of competitors, and you'll be missing out on profitable opportunities.

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Tips for Editing Your Audio Products

You don't have to be an audio engineer to create a high-quality audio product. All you need to know is how to do basic editing to polish a recording, and that's good enough for most audio products. Here are some tips for editing and polishing your audio products.

Record at high quality

The easiest way to create a high-quality product is to record it at the best quality possible. Although it's possible for a skilled audio engineer to improve a poor recording, it does take a lot of work. So it's far better if you can get it right the first time.

So choose a quiet environment, block out outside noise, use a good microphone, and speak clearly. Also do a short test run to be sure everything is working as expected.

Keep going when you make a mistake

If you make a mistake during the recording, don't stop it and start all over again. Instead, keep the recording going, pause for a few seconds, and then repeat that section. Later, when you're doing the editing, you can identify these sections (because of the long pauses) and delete the mistakes. This is much faster than starting all over again.

Use simple editing software

The world of audio editing has a language all of its own, and it's confusing and daunting if you don't have a background in it. So use simple editing software only - such as Garage Band for the Mac, or Audacity for the PC. You should only be doing basic editing only, so you don't need the fancy features of more advanced software.

Remove mistakes

Play the recording in your editing software, listen for any mistakes (which you've corrected immediately afterwards - as described earlier), and delete them. It should be easy to select and delete that precise section, and the listener won't be able to detect anything unusual in the final product.

Adjust the volume for different speakers

If one speaker is particularly soft or particularly loud, you might need to adjust their volume; otherwise, it can be frustrating for listeners who will be straining to catch one person's words. However, it's better if you detect this in the test run, and adjust the volume during the recording (for example, asking them to speak louder, or moving the microphone closer).

"Top and tail" with music

Adding a short burst of music to the start and end of your audio product makes it seem more professional.

Don't use copyright protected music, though! This means only using music you have explicit permission to use. Search Google for the phrase, "royalty free music," and you will find a number of Web sites that provide music clips that you can then use in your programs. "Royalty free" doesn't mean that the music itself is free; rather, it means you can buy it and use it without having to pay a fee (royalty) every time you use it. For example, you might use one piece of music as the "theme music" for all your products.

Of course, the other way to get music is to have somebody compose and perform it for you. That's obviously more expensive, but if it's something that you're going to use over and over again, then you might consider it a very good investment.

"Top and tail" with a professional voiceover

An alternative is to get somebody to do a professional introduction and close for your products (sometimes this is backed with music as well). For example, if you're publishing a regular podcast, you can have a standard introduction and close, which you simply add to the start and end of each episode.

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