The Human Factor: The Contribution of Common Sense to Marketing
February 26, 2008
Lee Odden of the Online Marketing Blog is in London for the SES Conference in London and he’s graciously sharing with us the highlights from the session Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions.
He reports:
Link building is a chicken/egg situation. To get the links you need content but to get the content found and linked to, you need the links.
When you have excellent content you need to kickstart it - get it out there. There are both free and paid methods of doing this.
Free methods include: Social bookmarks, Usenet, company newsletter, blogs, forums. Be sure not to spam forums and blogs. (Does that mean it’s ok to spam social bookmarks?)
Contribute to the forums and blogs before you start recommending specific content. (emphasis is mine)
Um… excuse me but a speaker at an international event has to remind audience members to CONTRIBUTE TO THE FORUMS AND BLOGS BEFORE YOU START RECOMMENDING SPECIFIC CONTENT?!?!
In other words, when you ask the lady out on the first date, don’t extract the condom from your wallet and begin to apply it before she has a chance to accept or decline.
Course example? Yes, but it’s an effective word picture.
Even if your goal for the date is to end with a romp between the sheets, you still don’t lead with that proposition!
The same is true when you try to utilize… not only forums and blogs, but also social networking sites as well. It seems to me that this is merely a matter of common sense and we should ALL be encourages to apply a healthy dose of common sense to our online marketing efforts.
The problem with online marketing is it’s "easy" to forget that you’re communicating with other human beings. OK…maybe forgetting that marketing is merely another form of communication it’s not just a problem with online marketing…. maybe it’s a problem with ALL marketing and advertising.
Remember the customer…. maybe that’s the key to marketing made easy.
Customers can’t measure quality….
February 22, 2008
Those words jumped out from the screen as if they were written in neon.
CUSTOMERS CAN NOT MEASURE QUALITY
The man who wrote those words is is Mike Wagner in his post Customer Service: Lessons from the heart
Customers don’t understand quality. Most customers have no way to measure the quality of the goods/services you provide - all they know is the experience that surrounds the sale.
To this day I can’t judge the quality of my heart operation. It would take a trained heart surgeon to look at the repair to deem it a “quality” job. I know how I was treated, I know the conditions I experienced in the hospital, and like most people I allow my experience to form my opinion about quality.
Insisting your goods/services are the best doesn’t mean anything without a great experience - without great customer service.
The reason those words literally JUMPED off the page to me is it’s a realization I’ve been wrestling with recently.
In my work with individual clients…. I spend what they may think of as an inordinate amount of time working on their communication skills. "Hey, this is supposed to be about marketing, not public speaking!" Ah, but there’s the rub. The great communicator will beat out the skilled craftsman most of the time.
Quality is an illusion… perception is EVERYTHING! Heck, perception is the ONLY thing!!!
Whether you’re a web developer, an attorney, a heart surgeon or a dentist…. your patients/clients/customers don’t have any way to guage the "quality" of your work outside of the experience of doing business with you.
Long ago and far away, as an adult I had to have my tonsils removed. The surgeon was a likeable fellow who was "a bit too fond of the drink", a fact I wasn’t aware of at the time. About four days after the procedure, I returned to work only to find myself hemmoraging from my throat. My affable surgeon wasn’t on call, but his associate was. Looking back, I can see why he was so gruff with me at the time. Here he was, a very competent surgeon called into "clean up" the shoddy work of his associate who was too drunk to cover his call. However, as he literally saved my life, I was thinking, "What a JERK!" His behavior towards me, the nursing staff and the ER doctor were simply unexcusable.
As I said, it was only when the second surgeon left the area to set up practice in another state that I got the FULL details of the real situation from a friend in the know. The second doctor, the one with the HORRID bed side manner, was actually a highly skilled surgeon who was extremely frustrated by constantly bailing out his bumbling yet affable partner.
I couldn’t measure the quality of my surgery… and chances are your customers can’t judget the quality of your goods and services either. The only thing they CAN judge is their experience. If it’s pleasant… then their perception of quality will be high. If it’s negative, then their perception of quality will be low.
Branding as advertising defined
February 18, 2008
First, the basics…. let’s play the "define branding" game. Let’s start with the source….the ones who successfully "captured" the domain name. according to Brand.com,
"Brand is the proprietary visual, emotional, rational, and cultural image that you associate with a company or a product."
HUH? A bit esoteric for my tastes…. See, it wasn’t all that long ago that the term "branding" was used to describe scarring an animal to denote ownership. Oh how times have changed.
Branding is now the hot BUZZ word to describe, in essence, marketing or advertising messages that work at conveying what you do in your business to the casual observer. It’s the magic bullet, the mystical trick, THE WAY TO WIN at this whole marketing game.
The traditional thinking goes that if you effectively "brand" your messages, that consumers will be better able to recognize your ads as belonging to you and will then be more likely to do business with you.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there is value to creating easily recognizable cohesive advertising campaigns. However, creating cohesive advertising campaigns filled with creative and compelling content is only the TIP of the "branding" iceberg.
Allow me to reveal the other 98% of the branding iceberg to you…..
Branding is not something you choose to do to your business. It’s something that your CUSTOMERS do to you.
Just as the unsuspecting calf is branded by searing metal pressed into it’s flesh, so is your business branded by your customers.
That’s right. Branding is not an "inside out" process, though it is a process that begins deep within your company. Instead, branding is the process through which you imprint what it is your company is about upon the minds of your target audience.
Because branding is an ongoing activity, it occurs constantly. Every interaction between your business and your customer (or potential customer) is building your brand, whether you like it or not. With that perspective on branding, it’s easy to see that the task at hand is to control your customer’s perceptions of your company as much as is possible.
With this perspective, you may suddenly realize that the surely angst ridden teen who is running your cash register after school is helping to building your brand. Nancy, in accounts receivable is also building your brand as are your technicians who go out into the field.
Every time someone you employ has contact with other people, they are in fact helping to build your brand. If this doesn’t frighten you, nothing will.
The "experts" want you to believe that branding is something you can buy. Can you blame them? It’s much easier to say, "Run your ads here and be sure to use use the right colors and font faces in those ads," than to look beyond the ads at the business behind the ads.
Advertisements, even well branded ones, are simply invitations to your business. Invitations to strangers asking them to do business with you. Implementing a methodical identity program (a.k.a. branding program) will allow you to determine exactly how you want to portray your company or product to the outside world. However, what happens once those customers do business with you will, in the end, determine your company’s "brand."
In the end, your brand is merely the way you are perceived by your customers. Branding is merely identifying the image you want to portray to outsiders. Your goal should be to make certain that brand accurately reflects what your business does. Once you’ve done that, then you can determine what promises you should make for your business to deliver.
Building your business by treating customers well…
February 15, 2008
I talk a lot about targeting your marketing efforts to focus upon a specific niche market. This practice, however, can be a dual edged sword. By targeting a tightly defined niche market, you can experience the benefits of your customers referring others like them to you and your business. However, treating those customers with disresepct can have disasterous consequences.
There’s a sign that is posted in back room of retail establishments that reads, "The customer is not an interruption of your work, he/she IS the reason you are working!"
In marketing speak, when you respect your customers and strive to treat them with respect and meet their needs, it’s called "brand loyalty". When these "brand loyal" consumers tell their friends, family and neighbors about your magnificent product or service, it’s called "WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING". This creates an ever widening circle of "brand loyal" customers or clients who tell others about your MAGNIFICENT product and/or service. This is the beauty of niche marketing.
When you engage in routinely disrespecting your customers, it’s called "the demise of brand loyalty".
Michael Scrage at Financial Times defines it perfectly (the emphasis is mine):
In reality, the declared demise of brand loyalty is 180 degrees misunderstood. A review of the past decade reveals customers have not been cavalierly unfaithful to established brands; quite the opposite. Established brands have cheated on and betrayed their most loyal customers. They charge more and more for less and less; they chase after the youth market or the hot segment du jour; their "innovations" frequently add more complexity than value; and their willingness to apologise and compensate for errors or mistakes is nil. The more provocative marketing argument is that "brand inertia" far more than "brand loyalty" has kept so many customers for so many companies for so long.
He continues with
Consumers are neither sheep nor fools. They can sense when companies are consistently more loyal to investors, employees and regulators than to the people who buy their products and services. They behave accordingly. Customers are not being disloyal; they are being discriminating. The central marketing question confronting brand leaders therefore is not "how can we radically increase customer loyalty?" but "how can we radically increase our own loyalty to customers?"
In other words… you can’t fool your customers. If your focus is upon the bottom line… they’ll know and they’ll react. If you’re lucky, they won’t be able to find anyone else who cares less about them than you and your business does and they won’t jump ship.
For some reason, the Walmart story comes to mind. Long ago, Sam Walton respected and cared about his customers… and his business grew. Sadly, he died but the company he created lived on. One by one, his heirs lost access to the inner workings. For a while, it wasn’t obvious to the consumer that they were being viewed as "sheep and fools" by Walmart’s management.
Then, Walmart changed ad agencies and suddenly, the message began to disintegrate. How many slogans has Walmart had this year? How many ad agencies have they gone through?
I’m sure the jumping from one agency to another is a desperate attempt to find someone who can "capture" the lie…. "Walmart really cares about you, our customer!"
Sure… that’s why Walmart quit offering layawys…. why they then launched their own "reloadable bank card" product. WAIT? I thought the reason free layaways were discontinued weeks before Christmas was because the niche customers didn’t need it? They had credit cards to use.
Even when you’re as BIG as Walmart… when you view your customers as "sheep and fools" it’s IMPOSSIBLE for it not to show through in everything you do!
Respect your customers…
Don’t TREAT them with respect… because you can’t do that if you really do NOT respect them.
Your customers aren’t stupid, they aren’t lazy and they aren’t sheep. If you think they are, then it will show through in your marketing efforts.
Disrespect of your customers is a CANCER in your business. If you overhear an employee talking about your customers in a disrespectful manner, NIP THAT IN THE BUD!
Putting all your eggs into one basket
February 13, 2008
If you’re a small business acting as aservice provider, you have to make a choice. Will you court other small businesses as your clients or will you try to land a “big fish” corporate client.
Experienced business owners know that landing the “big projects” takes time… time and money. Landing a big contract can take months, even years and the small business owner who chases those big fish can find maintaining cash flow to be a significant challenge.
But in addition to the time it takes to land a big client, you’re faced with another problem when you choose to fill your practice with one or two large clients vs 10 smaller clients. It’s what I refer to as the “Primate Pen” theory of client management.
As you build your business, you have a choice of which primates you want to include in your “Primate Pen.” If you choose to focus on smaller clients, then you’re choosing to fill your “Primate Pen” with smaller species… such as chimpanzees. You might be able to have 8-10 100 lb chimps living comfortably within your “Primate Pen”.
On the other hand, you might choose to fill your “Primate Pen” with a single 800 lb gorilla.
In both cases, all of your time and resources are consumed caring for your “Primate Pen”.
Without a doubt, the single great ape would be “easier” to care for once acquired. It would receive all of your time and attention and, upon recruiting such a specimen, you could focus exclusively on the care and feeding of the single specimen.
However, should the great ape die or escape, you’ll find yourself in a sticky situation.
This is the situation faced by Walmart’s advertising agency of record Bernstein-Rein back in 2006. During the 32 year relationship, Bernstein-Rein ads played a critical role in shaping Wal-Mart’s public image as it morphed from a small-time retailer in Bentonville, AR, to the nation’s No. 1 mass merchandiser. It created the smiley face character and also the low-prices tag line which appeared on everything Wal-Mart from ads to employee smocks and even was painted on the trailers which hauled Wal-Mart products up and down the highways as traveling billboards.
Bernstein-Rein reported a gross income last year of $59.3 million. While Wal-Mart’s contribution to that is not disclosed, it is known that the Wal-mart is considered to be a $578 million ad account. Since standard agency commissions are 15%… it doesn’t take a math wiz to figure out that the loss of that great ape dealt a significant blow to the income generated by the Bernstein-Rein “Primate Pen”.
Of course it’s more difficult to capture and maintain 10 chimps than it is to capture a single giant ape. However, it’s possible to have a 10% reduction in chimps while with the single ape, it’s all or nothing.
David Wallace over at the search engine guide provides a more recent case study. In his post, Why you should not put all of your eggs in one basket, David reports that IncrediMail learned this lesson the hard way.
In early 2008, Google suspended the IncrediMail AdSense account. Google Adsense is a program where web site owners allow Google to display ads on their web site in exchange for a portion of the revenue generated. For sites with heavy traffic, Google AdSense provides a cheap and easy way to earn revenue.
While IncrediMail also had income from products sales, offering subscriptions to their content database, and by selling paid advertising on their Web site and e-mail client, the company admits that Adsense made a significant contribution to the company’s income. When Google decided to suspend their account, IncrediMail’s stock dropped 45% to a new 52 week low. They definitely had too many eggs in the Google AdSense basket.
As you build your service based business, remember that it’s far easier to capture and care for one great ape, but if that is your strategy then be prepared for the time when the great ape escapes or dies.
This lesson applies not only to revenue but also to marketing tactics as well, as anyone who has foolishly placed all of the marketing eggs into the Google search engine basket will tell you.
Advertisers phoning it in on Superbowl XLII
February 5, 2008
You’ll notice Superbowl XLII didn’t generate much "buzz" about the advertising this year. The spots were dull and boring…. almost as if everyone was just "phoning it in". After all… the outcome was inevitable if you listened to the "experts". No one was expected to watch the massacre! Why even bother playing the game…. just crown the well deserving (cheating) champions and let’s get on with it.
OOPS! Turned out Superbowl XLII was an INCREDIBLE game. It was a classic "David vs Goliath" and by gum, David (a.k.a. the Giants) pulled out a win, with the game being won with a mere 2 seconds left on the clock.
So, with 97.5 MILLION viewers at stake, advertisers who had previously turned in "game winning " performances on the advertising front didn’t this year. Salesgenie.com’s ads were so horrible, I can’t help but wonder if they did more harm than good! It certainly didn’t make me want to sign up for their services… and as a business owner, I AM their target audience!!!
I never have understood phoning in any advertising campaign, but especially not one as expensive as a Superbowl ad buy!
Hear that? It’s the sound of 97.5 million viewers who weren’t even tempted to sit through the commercial breaks by the third quarter. It’s the sound of getting more eyes than you paid for watching your ads. It’s the sound of a collective yawn nationwide.
The only exceptions were these mildly entertaining spots:
- the Budweiser ad with the Clydesdale and the Dalmation
- the Bridgestone ad with the screaming squirrel/wildlife
As if to add insult to injury and to commemorate their mediocrity, this year there’s a myspace page featuring ALL the (mostly) crappy ads! Yet another reason for advertisers to NOT to phone it in that was ignored.
If you’re a small business who feels like you’ll never "understand" how to effectively market your business… take heart. All the money in the world doesn’t seem to be able to buy good marketing sense.
