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It’s a tough economy for so many businesses, and in times like this most spend their time watching cash flow, cutting expenses, and not a whole lot of time figuring out how to do things differently for new customer acquisition or repeat business from existing fans.

Sometimes, new ideas don’t involve cutting prices, changing your product, or anything having to do with your product or service, in fact. New innovative ideas are ones that solve a problem for your customer or speak THEIR language, meet a need in THEIR world, not yours.

Here’s a quick example that might get you thinking differently long enough to come up with something that works for you: I took my family, again, to a restaurant here in Greenville for breakfast that has become somewhat of a family tradition. Good food? Yup. Service? Average typically, and once-in-a-while great, like today. Bathrooms? Way too small. Cost? Overpriced ($50 w/tip, for 2 adults, 3 kids). So what’s the catch? Fish tanks. 2 massive fish tanks. My kids (3,4 and 7 yrs old) have named all the fish. Freddy the fish. Wally the white fish. Yippy the yellow fish. Bubba the blue fish. Goofy the green fish. Peppy the pink fish. Oscar the orange fish (buggy eyes, the goofiest of them all!). Bubba’s my favorite. He makes my youngest, Alana, laugh hysterically.

My point is this: Almost every Friday night when I tuck them in, after we pray and they kiss me good night, they say, “Daddy, can we go see da fishies in da morning?” They couldn’t care less about the food, quality, service, convenience, or price. But these 3 kids, for the breakfast restaurants in my city, are driving the purchasing decisions of a household for a market segment, based on 2 fish tanks.

Pause. Breathe. OK, now look at your customers’ lives, not your business offerings. What do your customers LOVE and value, and how can you incorporate it into your brand experience?