marketing

Your customer’s point of view – walk a mile in their shoes

August 17, 2016

Sometimes, I think the best marketing advice I can give someone is before you say it, do it, print it, record it or announce it – find a way to see it from your customer’s point of view.

Many times, we get so caught up in our own world that we make the false assumption that everyone in the world sees and experiences things exactly as we do. When I say it that way, you shake your head and say, “No, I recognize that there are many different viewpoints.” Intellectually that may be true but when you’re scrambling to get some marketing element done and out there – you very quickly forget that reality.

Let me give you a few examples:

When your voicemail system invites me to hit zero at any time to talk to a real, live human being – do not send my calls to someone’s voicemail. Let me talk to a human. (Technology should make it easier to talk to you, not more difficult.)

When I unsubscribe to your enewsletter – do not take me to your sales page. Take me to a page that confirms that I’ve unsubscribed. (I want to be reassured that you got my message, not pitched a product.)

When I interrupt your uninvited sales call with a polite, “I’m not interested,” – do not keep talking. Gracefully accept my answer and say goodbye. (If you aren’t good at cold calling, don’t do it unless you want to alienate the prospect.)

Are you shaking your head at the silly people who do the above? You would never do something so dumb, right? How about any of these:

When I walk into your store, don’t have your sales people swarm me from all angles, talking to me about everything I touch. (There’s a fine line between helpful and hovering. Most sales people have not been taught the difference.)

When you send a media release out, don’t call or email the reporter to see if they got it. If they want to cover the story, they’ll call you. (Just because you think its news, doesn’t mean they have to agree.)

When you get a new fan/follower on social media, don’t send them a bunch of direct messages or sales pitches. Ask them questions, share helpful tips and be interested in them. (Social isn’t for sales, it’s for helping/sharing.)

When someone signs up for your helpful ebook, cheat sheet or infographic, don’t follow that up with an email inviting them to speak to a salesperson. That’s like going from “can I buy you a drink” to “will you marry me” in five minutes. (Cultivate a lead by being so valuable and helpful that they can’t imagine not having access to you before you put your hand in their pocket.)

I’ve personally been the victim of every one of the blunders I just listed and I am betting that you have too. Bad marketing is everywhere and much of it boils down to bad manners. Honestly, I think all of them could have been avoided if the marketing team had simply said to themselves – “Would I want to be treated this way?”

Marketing should always be created with the prospect in mind. Ask yourself these questions before you launch anything.

Will our audience:

• Find this useful/helpful?
• Be inspired or encouraged by this?
• Feel like we understand them and their world?
• Pass this onto someone else?
• Learn something or be reminded of something important?
• See a new opportunity or a solution to a challenge they’re having?
• Be grateful we communicated this?

If you can’t answer yes to all or most of those questions, then ask this final question:

Why would I think this is going to be effective?

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Is your Facebook page dead in the water?

June 29, 2016

The organic (natural, without paying any money) reach of your Facebook page has never been something to write home about (you’d be lucky with 13-18%) but now it’s even less.

The simplest explanation is – as more content is created (by both our friends and the brands we’ve liked) there simply isn’t enough real estate. Facebook cannot fit all of the content into our newsfeeds. And it’s estimated that the average Facebook user’s total number of pages liked increases by 50% every year.

So we are adding more friends and more pages and everyone is adding more content. There’s simply no more room.

Add to that the fact that Facebook is trying to give each user the content they care most about, based on a mix of factors like:

• The interest level of each recipient
• The type of post it is (status update, sharing a link, a photo etc.) and the level of interest each recipient has indicated for that type of post
• Who the creator is and how well their past posts have been received
• How popular this specific post is with the people who have already seen it
• How recently the post was published
• A whole host of other factors that Facebook has personalized to every single user

There are a few reasons for this:

• Facebook figures that you’d rather see content in your newsfeed from the people you are closest to, based on your interactions with them
• They also believe that you’re more interested in people than organizations
• They’ve given you the opportunity to both like and follow a page, and if you really want to track their content, you can add it to an interest list
• They want to make more money by selling you ads and boosted posts

So what’s a brand to do? What Facebook is saying to you is – you need to earn your spot. You need to consistently produce content that your audience cares about enough to interact with it.

On your Facebook page:

• Be interesting enough that people not only like your page but also add it to an interest list. In other words – talk about something other than yourself
• Think interactive when you think content. Ask a question, ask for stories or reactions, or say something that will trigger a response
• Don’t play the “like this post for the free XYZ” game. It’s annoying and FB will penalize you for it.
• Buy ads and pay to boost your posts

While many companies are calling foul on this trend, I think that’s a little ridiculous. Facebook is a company built to make money for its stockholders. Since they’ve given us our personal accounts for free – how did we think they were going to generate revenue?

Probably the most important adjustment you can make is to level set your expectations. Facebook pages have never been and will never be the end all and be all of free advertising and marketing. I worry about the small businesses out there who have been sold a bill of goods and believe that a few posts a week (where all they do is talk about themselves) is the golden ticket to success.

There is no magic bullet and marketing is neither free nor easy. Your Facebook page probably still has a place in your marketing mix. But how large a role or how much business you can drive from it is really dependent on whether or not your audience values what you share.

Hmm, are you sensing a theme?

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Branding – The Inside Out Rule

June 15, 2016

Branding is one of those marketing terms that everyone uses but very few actually embrace. When companies try to brand themselves, they often suffer from the “can’t accurately describe the bottle from inside the bottle” reality. One of the other huge threats to a branding effort is when a company does not follow the inside out rule.

Disregarding the inside out rule in branding is such a common mistake and the risk it poses to your efforts is significant.

When a company identifies their brand position, the typical normal roll out process is to change their tagline, maybe update the logo and introduce the new positioning through their marketing efforts. They might tout the new brand promise in communications with existing customers as part of their announcement. Some companies might even hold an internal unveiling to share the new assets with the employees as well.

That’s all cart before the horse thinking. The truth is – if you want your branding efforts to be more than a new coat of marketing paint, then you’re going to be stepping out into the marketplace and making a bold promise. That promise isn’t going to just impact your marketing department or your sales team. It is going to change the way that each and every employee approaches their work. It should change policy. It should change your decision-making process.

For your brand to have real meaning to your audiences – it’s going to have to make a promise that most of your competitors would not have the courage to make. You can’t pull that off on your own and neither can just your marketing department or your C-suite. It’s going to take all of you to keep a promise that big.

Real branding needs to be built and nurtured from the inside out. It can’t be displayed on the outside of your building if it’s not on the inside of how the company is actually run. If your brand rings hollow in the accounting department, it’s not going to survive. If the HR department doesn’t see their role in honoring the brand, it can’t possibly become a part of your culture. If your newest and your oldest employees both don’t understand how they either do or don’t keep the promise, then you’re sunk.

The most important step of building an authentic brand that truly will differentiate you from your competitors is the step that is almost always skipped. Why?

Impatience and short-term budget thinking.

Businesses and their leadership are under a lot of pressure. Things need to happen fast. I get that. But branding can’t be forced and it can’t be rushed. If you want it to work, you have to be willing to commit the resources.

The toughest to commit? The time. In the branding process that my agency developed, we allow for a year of internal work, identifying the policies, processes, products and internal workings that get in the way of someone keeping the brand promise and one-by-one, remove them.

The value of this effort is two-fold. It removes the things that prevent you from keeping your brand promise and it communicates to your entire staff that this is not a passing fad. When they are a part of the process – you will get both their ideas and buy-in.

That doesn’t mean you can’t externally launch the brand at the same time. But without the work on the inside, the brand’s candy coating shell can only last so long.

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Referrals don’t happen by accident

April 26, 2016

Referrals don’t happen by accident. When I talk to some small business owners they proudly tell me that most of their new customers come to them via referrals. And I congratulate them – there’s no better marketing than having a customer rave about your work.

But relying on your customers to decide that they’re going to actively recruit new clients for you is probably not a brilliant marketing plan.

Think of a product or service that you really like and use regularly. Okay – now, how many people did you talk to today about that product or service? How about yesterday?

For our example, let’s pretend this product/service that you love is your barber. It’s not that you don’t love him. But you have other things going on in your world. So unless someone mentions they’re looking for a new barber or compliments your hair, odds are, you aren’t going to mention your barber. Even though you are a raving fan.

Your clients are the same way. They may love what you do but most days, they’re not thinking about you or telling other people about you. So does that mean growing your business by referrals is a bad thing? No – it just means you can’t leave it to fate or your customer’s undying love. You have to give referrals a helping hand.

Want to figure out how to boost referrals, try one (or more) of these ideas:

Throw an exclusive party: Create an event that your best customers would love to attend. Not like – but love. I’m talking take a day off work to go if they had to kind of love. Send them an invitation and explain that it’s an exclusive event – that only your best customers are being invited. But, as a special thank you for their business – they can invite one guest. The only caveat is the guest cannot be a current customer.

Promise them that they’ll be no sales pitch or selling. You just want to meet more people like them and you want them to be able to share this cool event with someone. Now, you’ve got a buzz worthy event which will generate its own word of mouth marketing and your best customers are walking prospects right to your door.

Love them: At MMG, many years ago we created our own holiday called Who Loves Ya Baby Day. (A hat tip to Telly Savalas in his Kojak days). On that day, which happens to be Valentine’s Day – we shower our clients with love. We let them know how much we value them and their trust in us. We create a special card to thank them and literally to say that we love them. Because we do.

In your own way – you need to let your customers know that they’re more than a buck in the cash register to you. Create something that overtly expresses your affection for them in a way that they can’t help but talk about.

Be shareable smart: Everyone wants to be helpful and be perceived as being on top of their game. Become a reliable resource of useful insights and information for your customers. Send them tools (e-newsletter, infographics, tip sheets, etc.) that they can and will pass along to their peers because of their value. Then, without even meaning to, they’re referring people to you with each share.

Which, of course, means what you send them has to be truly valuable, not self-serving. No one is going to pass along your sales flier or promotional materials. The added advantage of this tactic is not only do you get the referral but your content also reinforces the message that you really know your stuff.

Referrals are an incredibly valuable way to grow your business. But even your biggest fans need a little nudge.

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The future of personalization

January 20, 2016

If you haven’t been thinking about the future of personalization — you should. The CMO Council released a fascinating study today, looking at how marketers are viewing/using personalization and what that means for all of us down the road.

 The study, done in partnership with Pegasystems, is entitled “Predicting Routes to Revenue, and found that nearly half of marketers say their current analytics programs have the ability to give a clear view of past performance but do little to shed light on the road ahead.  The study is based on insights from more than 150 senior marketing executives surveyed primarily across North America and Europe during the fourth quarter of 2015.  You can download the complete study here.

The study also found that marketers looking to deliver exceptional customer experience will increasingly turn to personalization as the key driver to maximize customer value. This will require redefining data¹s value and primary role, moving away from using data as a vehicle to calculate past performance metrics and into a critical tool to uncover new, real-time insights about customer behavior.

The study also found that marketers looking to deliver exceptional customer experience will increasingly turn to personalization as the key driver to maximize customer value. This will require redefining data¹s value and primary role, moving away from using data as a vehicle to calculate past performance metrics and into a critical tool to uncover new, real-time insights about customer behavior.

Gone are the days of simply including a customer’s name in an email and considering that to be personalization. Today, customers expect that brands will understand who they are, what their habits are, what they want to see on their device screens, what they want, how they want it, when they want it…and the list of expectations goes on. These requirements are making it all the more imperative for organizations to be able to craft robust experiences that are targeted to the needs and desires of all of their customers.

A one-size-fits-all approach reveals to the customer that a brand does not understand them and opens the door for customers to defect and leave a brand’s fold in favor of one that does. In a world where customers have a multitude of options for nearly everything they are looking to purchase—and where new contenders are willing to offer almost anything to gain their business and loyalty if given the opportunity—the demand to know and effectively engage customers has never been greater.

Read more about the study’s findings and the recommendations from the CMO Council and Pegasystems and then identify personalization opportunities inside your own organization.

Seems like the time is now if you’d like to be an innovator in this space.

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Becoming a marketing master

June 2, 2015

You don’t have to be a good writer or have a mind for marketing to set a goal of becoming a marketing master. You just have to be willing to do the hard work of learning how to do it and practicing it regularly.

There’s a huge body of research that has studied how people who are at the top of their game got there. Many people assume these superstars had a wealth of natural talent that gave them a huge advantage over the others in their field.

But even when you look at remarkable performers like Tiger Woods or Warren Buffet, it’s not true. We’ve all heard the story of how Tiger started playing golf at 18 months and had over 15 years of regular practice before he began competing at a national level. Warren Buffet admits that he knew very little but invested significant time studying business and financial statements to learn how to spot patterns and trends.

In fact, the research is so consistent it has evolved into what is commonly called the ten-year rule. It states that the most accomplished professionals, no matter what field they’re in; need about ten years of intense study to get to the top of their game. The ten years isn’t an average, it’s a minimum.

And there’s one more element that matters. It can’t be casual or haphazard practice. It needs to be what is called deliberate practice. It’s you doing things with the explicit goal of improving your performance that will push you past competent to a level of excellence.

Why does all of this matter to you, in terms of marketing?

• It means for you to develop and execute effective marketing, you need to be deliberately practicing on a regular basis.
• It erases the excuse “I’m just not wired to be good at this” when it comes to marketing your business.

Like most other aspects of running or owning a business, it boils down to doing the hard work and committing to it for the long haul.

And there’s one other benefit to taking this sort of approach. In the case of marketing – unlike a golf game or investing, you have a potential audience and that audience requires many marketing touches before they start paying attention. The fact that marketing is a marathon not a sprint works well with this “practice every day” philosophy.

Very few marketing tactics deliver instant results and when that happens, it’s more dumb luck than anything else. Marketing is a cumulative effort. Your efforts stack up and create that consistent drip drip drip marketing that we’ve talked about before.

In many ways, marketing is the perfect skill to develop, given the ten-year rule. You have to do it consistently and intentionally to get better at it and your audience needs you to do it consistently to notice you. So the more you practice, the better you get and the better results you’ll experience.

Now the question is – what do you need to do to put this idea into play?

Daily Practice: What marketing tactics can you commit to doing on a daily basis? Is it a Facebook page update? A customer thank you call?

Weekly Practice: What can you do every single week? An insightful blog post? Sending out targeted direct mail pieces and then following up with a call?

Monthly Practice: What, come rain or shine, will you do every month? Writing a helpful newsletter that establishes your expertise? Running an ad in a niche publication aimed at your primary audience?

Be sure you build your skills by practicing every single day and before you know it, you’ll be on your way to becoming a marketing master. Not only will you get better every day but you’ll get also more customers as you practice!

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Creative versus strategy

March 6, 2015

Creative versus strategy. For as long as I’ve been in advertising and marketing – there’s been that age-old tug of war.  Should advertising and marketing tools be creative/clever/funny/pretty or should the emphasis be on strategically driving the sales message?

As you can imagine – the real answer is both.  An ad, website, brochure, e-book etc. that is visually interesting and has a compelling message is much more likely to have impact when it comes to trial or purchase of whatever is being sold.

But sooner or later, compromises need to be make due to budget, timeframes, or other considerations.

When it comes to the creative side of the equation, your materials need to be:

Aligned with the visual brand: Carry the look and feel of your brand through everything you do.  Don’t ask your consumers to try to play connect the dots.  You should use creative elements to link each piece back to your brand.

Professionally produced: Yes, I know you can make a brochure in Microsoft Publisher.  That doesn’t mean you should.  I can use a pair of my own scissors to cut my hair too.  But I think we can agree it’s going to look better if I let a pro cut it.

Using graphics/photos that connote quality and that you do this for a living: Unless what you sell retails for $3.99 or less, clip art isn’t going to cut it.  There was a day when it was new enough that people found it cute or quirky.  But today, it just screams cheap.

Attention grabbing:  If your ad look like every other ad in the paper – no one is going to look at it.  Whether it is with words or visuals – you need to pop from the page, whether that’s on the web, newspaper or trade show booth.

Everything should be on purpose: Think through every element of your piece from font selection to size.  If you can’t explain why an element has to be there or be a certain way – it should go.

On the strategic side of the equation, your materials need to be:

One piece, one message:  If there is a universal sin in marketing – it’s that everyone writes too much.  Cut the copy in half.  At least.  You can’t possibly tell the whole story in a single ad or marketing piece.  So focus on one core message and make your point powerfully and succinctly.

One piece won’t cut it: Consumers want multiple pieces, in multiple places so they can browse, download and review over time.  They’re going to be shopping you for a while, so don’t bore them with only one thing to look at.

WITFM:  Your audience wants to know how what you sell is going to make their life easier, better, etc. They need to know you’re credible so unless your brand is a household name, you do need to tell them a little about you. But they want the focus to be on them so think 80/20 and no, you’re not the 80.

Location, location, location:  If I can’t find you, you don’t exist.  And I want to find you in multiple places.  Being found on Google and the other search engines is mandatory today. But you also need to know where else your consumers go to look for you and be there with bells on.  Don’t assume that online is the only game in town.

Most B2C marketers tend to lean too heavily on the pretty (think the Super Bowl ads) and most B2B marketers are a bit like the old Dragnet’s Joe Friday – the facts ma’am, just the facts. (Think most niche B2B magazine ads).  The key is finding the balance between the two because at the end of the day creative versus strategy isn’t an either or.  You need both.

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JWt’s trend report for 2015

January 10, 2015

This is always my favorite (and I believe most insightful) trend report that comes out around this time every year.

In JWT’s ninth annual forecast of trends for the near future, they explore how consumers are both welcoming and resisting technology’s growing omnipresence in our lives. For many, technology serves as a gateway to opportunity and an enabler of hyper-efficient lifestyles, but those who are most immersed are starting to question its effect on their lives and their privacy. One result is that more people are trying to find a balance and lead more mindful, in-the-moment lives.

Here’s their 2 minute snapshot of the findings.

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEzeSym8v3c’]

 

If we want to drill down a little deeper — According to the JWT site, the 10 trends they identify and explore are:

1. IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES: Entertainment, narratives and brand experiences will become more immersive and altogether more enveloping in a bid to capture consumers’ imagination and attention.

2. DO YOU SPEAK VISUAL?: We’re shifting to a visual vocabulary that relies on photos, emojis, video snippets and other imagery, largely supplanting the need for text. “Visual” is a new lingo that needs to be mastered.

3. THE AGE OF IMPATIENCE: With the mainstreaming of the on-demand economy and our always-on culture, consumer expectations for speed and ease are rising exponentially. As businesses respond in kind, making the availability of their products and services more instant, impatience and impulsiveness will only continue to increase.

4. MOBILE AS A GATEWAY TO OPPORTUNITY: In emerging markets, the mobile device is coming to represent a gateway to opportunity—helping people change their lives by giving them access to financial systems, new business tools, better health care, education and more.

5. TELEPATHIC TECHNOLOGY: Thanks to the rise of brain-computer interfaces and emotion recognition technology, brands are getting more adept at understanding consumers’ minds and moods, and reacting accordingly in a very personalized way.

6. THE END OF ANONYMITY: Thanks to an array of new technologies and a growing drive to collect personal data, it’s becoming nearly impossible to remain unobserved and untracked by corporations and governments. As anonymity becomes more elusive, expect pushback from consumers and a growing paranoia around technologies and services that affect privacy.

7. RAGING AGAINST THE MACHINE: As we move further into the digital age, we’re starting to both fear and resent technology, fretting about what’s been lost in our embrace of unprecedented change. We’ll put a higher value on all things that feel essentially human and seriously question (while not entirely resisting) technology’s siren call.

8. REMIXING TRADITION: With social norms quickly changing and a new anything-goes attitude, people are mashing up cherished traditions with decidedly new ideas, creating their own recipes for what feels right.

9. PROUDLY IMPERFECT: Imperfection and even outright ugliness—the quirky, the messy and the clearly flawed—are taking on new appeal in a world that’s become all too polished or mass-produced. The imperfect is coming to feel more authentic, and also more comforting and meaningful.

10. MINDFUL LIVING: Consumers are developing a quasi-Zen desire to experience everything in a more present, conscious way. Once the domain of the spiritual set, mindful living is filtering into the mainstream, with more people drawn to the idea of shutting out distractions and focusing on the moment. 

The report is over 100 pages of examples, marketing insights and suggestions on how we will see these trends come to life over the next year.  Whether you’re in marketing or just love to study cultures and people — you’ll find it a fascinating read.

This report is the result of quantitative, qualitative and desk research conducted by JWTIntelligence throughout the year. The report includes input from nearly 70 JWT planners and researchers across more than two dozen markets, and interviews with experts and influencers across sectors including technology, health and wellness, media and academia.

You can purchase the report here.

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