davidpoulos.com

Category: Communications

  • Is Advertising Dead?

    Is Advertising Dead?

    Marketers, retailers and their agencies have been relying on advertising and it’s relatively high cost and low return to drive revenue for 75 years or more. Is the time of the ad behind us? Will banner ads and social media posts fill the void? Somehow, I think not . . .

    When we approach small businesses about increasing or even originating their marketing budget, their first thing they tend to think of is “Are we doing new ads, they didn’t work too well the last time” and the ears turn off and the eyes glaze over and the rest of the conversation is spent educating them on the value of other forms of marketing. Marketing and advertising have become so irretrievably intertwined in the minds of small business executives, that any conversation about one inevitably drives toward the other. While frustrating to our consultants, it tells us something about the perception that “only big companies can afford advertising,” which seems to pervade the landscape. With 500 cable TV channels, unending YouTube channels, and enough niche and general interest blogs and print publications to choose from, anyone can advertise. But can they afford to advertise in enough places enough times to break through the clutter and actually reach a select audience often enough and well enough to effect sales? That’s the real question.

    One element that will forever dog traditional advertising is accountability. No agency exec actually went into a meeting with a client and honestly said, “These ads that ran 60 times last week on all three networks and the Superstations, gave you directly a 5% uptick in product sales” – doesn’t happen, no matter how much they try. They talk around the results, talk about branding support, about number of impressions, audience reach and Q score of the spokesmen in the ad, but direct, 1-to-1 sales accountability ascribed to specific ads is the white Rhino of the advertising establishment – it’s been bandied about, but no validated sightings can be found in the literature.

    So with no direct accountability, why is something you can’t accurately measure, that costs a fortune, that can’t be tied back to the top or bottom lines, so hard to let go of? Perhaps because nothing else has come along that gives retail products the visibility, the bragging rights – “did you see our new spot on American Idol last night?” – and the complicit permission from the media outlets and media industries to charge based on demand, like a bushel of corn, driving both media and agency revenue ever skyward, that can replace TV ads. Social Media doesn’t do that, Search Engines don’t do that, E-mail campaigns don’t do that. Nobody ever turned to their neighbor at a barbeque and said “Hey, Bill, did you see that great e-mail from Purel yesterday?”

    Until something highly visible, ubiquitous to each household, device agnostic, easily monetized and publicly recognized comes along to replace it, advertising is here to stay. It’s utility may shift, it’s usage wax and wane with budgetary support and be temporarily dampened by the next shiny new thing that comes along, but I dont’ think it will disappear altogether any time soon, no matter what the digital pundits say . . .

  • Association Member Engagement Mountain

    Association Member Engagement Mountain

    Written by Dan Varroney

     Dan at Potomac Consulting has hit this right on the head, we fully believe and recommend to clients that the engagement puzzle be solved so that true growth can be achieved that is sustainable and manageable, not just a quick promotional bump in the numbers. This shows why . . .

    It’s important that in this day and age that Associations not “leave well enough alone.” The Stay or Go Imperative could impact an Association’s financial health and well being. If membership is a distraction instead of ROI, Corporations vote with their feet and instead invest in a different solution.

    Yes,  Corporations have smaller corporate staff, in some instances one executive may wear multiple hats. However, if this executive makes the dues decision, then a strategy or a change is  necessary.

    Read the Tea Leaves

    Companies look for the connection to business objectives as part of their membership evaluation process. If these connections don’t exist, it’s difficult for any Association to execute an effective strategy to engage members. Metrics are like tea leaves they both paint a picture and they tell a story.

    If Associations observe that conference attendance is equal or less to prior years, educational meetings and fly-in attendance is significantly lower, and member retention is down for three consecutive years,  it is time for an intervention. The marketplace could also signal one or more of the following: 

    • Negative view of the culture and overall effectiveness of an Association.
    • The Association is perceived as not being as impactful in educational, policy or advocacy programs.
    • Other solutions including coalitions, conference providers or other Association programs deliver greater value.

    Never Hit The Panic Button

    Associations should embrace the challenge and convert the situation into a strategic opportunity. When diagnosing, member participation and revenue fall-off rebuild the path to engagement: one company at a time, obtain clarity on business and policy objectives, and understand what members really must achieve from participation achieve.

    CEO’s can keep in mind that success and failure are never final, the road forward offers hope, and a more definitive path to member engagement.

    Develop Data Driven Strategies

    Associations need to build a data set to help them understand why participation and revenues have fallen.  However, it’s key to put heavier weight on relationships; in a complex world the human connection matters. One member at a time, collect the following information:

    • Is the Association perceived as staff or member driven?
    • Does participation help executives achieve company business objectives?
    • Why do executives participate in other Associations or Coalitions?
    • How important is networking?
    • Would Social Media engagement on platforms such as LinkedIn reflect an attractive alternative?
    • Are educational and or certification programs relevant to career advancement?

    While Associations may develop additional or different questions, these open the door to constructive dialogue with disengaged members. Tally the responses, create internal task forces of senior managers and key staff, develop solutions and new strategies, assign performance metrics and then execute.

    Association Member Engagement Mountain

    For Association CEO’s who have or who are looking into the abyss, there is light at the end of the tunnel. An Association Executive confronting the worst dues loss in decades once reported record gains in member participation, advocacy effectiveness and revenue growth. Stepping back, building an Association wide member focus with data driven strategies proved to be a year long process worthy of the effort.

    Yes, the participation, retention and growth outcomes were record highs but the data really reflected stronger member connectivity.

    Climbing the Member Engagement Mountain is vital and necessary for every Association. It can also be the determining strategy helping Associations achieve revenue growth.

    How does your Association drive Member Engagement?

  • Customer Service is Still Your Best Marketing Weapon

    Customer Service is Still Your Best Marketing Weapon

    I’ve traveled all over the country for years for business and personal reasons, and have a Louis-Vuitton sized trunk full of travel nightmare stories as a result, most involving air travel, but not all. I have also had some wonderful experiences, largely due to the people I’ve met or interacted with along the way.

    Recently I was traveling for business and collected a huge, whale of a tale to add to my collection. I was going to Chicago for a meeting, landing in our favorite Midwestern hub airport, for just a few hours, and then intended to return home that afternoon, both on, notably enough, United airlines.

    Now, as a matter of full disclosure, I have traveled to Chicago on United for years, and have had only a handful of bad experiences, most were minor in nature. I’ve recently had friends and relatives traveling for pleasure take United and experienced horrific treatment, unconscionable delays, poor service and extended travails and battles with management. I can’t count those as part of my story-luggage, but I should have kept them in mind when booking this particular trip.

    I boarded at BWI, on time, with no significant incident (beyond being treated like a criminal by TSA, but that’s another story for another day). Flight arrived at O’Hare without incident, but promptly upon hitting the ground, the ordeal began. Apparently, FAA regulations (and I haven’t looked this up), prohibit planes from entering the ramp area if there is any lightning within five miles of the airport. This was news to me, having taxied and deplaned in some horrific storms in the past without incident or mishap, and having been on planes that were struck by lightning. Their feeling was that sitting on the pavement fifty feet away from the building was safe, but not fifty feet closer to the building. Is the pavement different?

    After 40 minutes of delay waiting for the lightning to move a little further away, we deplaned and I went on my way to my meeting.

    My return flight was scheduled to board at 7:48 PM that same day. At 1:46 PM I get an e-mail from United saying my flight was cancelled, and that I had been re-booked on a flight at 11:48. . . AM the following morning, that connected through Newark airport and would have me arriving at home at approximately 6:30 PM, nearly 20 hours after my initial arrival time! I had no room, no luggage, no anything for an overnight stay, including a charging cable for my phone. No one bothered to call and ask if this booking was satisfactory to me, or even possible!

    Rather than try to negotiate this issue through a swiftly expiring mobile device, I called my office and had someone book me on another, available, direct, one-way flight leaving at 9 PM that evening, but landing at DCA, 90 minutes away from my destination airport where my car was parked, at my own expense. I figured I could grab a light-rail train and get to the other airport and pick up my car, and drive home from there – total delay time roughly 5 hours – not a tragedy by any stretch, especially compared to waiting until the next day.

    I received a total of 8 e-mail messages from United, alerting me to delays, cancellations and re-bookings as the fluid situation changed, all caused by a little rain in the center of the country. In the end, my original flight had been cancelled and re-booked three times, and my arrival time had extended until 6 PM on Friday, for what was intended to be a quick two hour meeting and return the same afternoon. My one-way flight, when it eventually took off, left at 10:30 PM, got me to DCA at 2AM local time, and left me with an additional 90 minutes of driving to get home, arriving at roughly 4 AM, 23 hours after I had set off on my journey.

    The following day, I drove back to BWI to pick up my car, and stopped in to the terminal to try and untangle the thicket of cancellations, re-bookings and ticket changes. The ticket agent I spoke with had no power to take any action to refund or cancel my still existing flight, despite the obvious fact that I clearly wasn’t going to be on the flight from Chicago if I was standing in front of her in Baltimore! She called a supervisor of some sort, who after no less than 6 re-tellings, however inaccurate, of my story, agreed to refund my expense for the half of the original flight I wasn’t going to use. They refused to acknowledge any responsibility for the delay, the need to purchase an additional ticket, or to refund the price of the newly purchased ticket, any meals, or the two hotel rooms I had booked, based on their poor track record of flights actually leaving the airport that day, one of which got used by a colleague trying to do the same thing I was – get out of Chicago! No one seemed the least bit remorseful, apologetic or even willing to recognize that there had been a problem.

    Now the marketing moral of the story. If they had treated me like a person, disclosed information about the nature and duration of the problem, asked how I would have liked it handled, admitted that they had not fulfilled their end of the contract, or wanted in any way to treat me like a valued customer, I wouldn’t have written this, and then sent the link around the world, spreading the negative story globally for all potential flyers to see and read. Not only will my experience preclude me from flying on their airline again the foreseeable future, but I will tell this story to anyone who will listen and try and persuade them to do the same. I’m now a REVERSE EVANGELIST for their company, the exact opposite of what their corporate branding and marketing department has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve. All it would have taken was one person from the company to send me a message saying, “we’re sorry you were inconvenienced, call this number and we’ll see what we can do to help you out.” For the lack of that sentiment, a customer, and possibly many others, was lost. For lack of customers, an airline was lost.

    Good luck, United.

  • Professional Membership Has Great Value for the Member and the Organization

    Professional Membership Has Great Value for the Member and the Organization

    The new revolution of Social Media and its marketing potential has been one of the most heavily written about topics in recent years. The success of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a host of others has been postulated to stem from a need for human interaction in an increasingly isolating world. Is it really a cure, or is it another contributor to that isolation?

    There are some obvious drawbacks to the use of social media, including the threat of loss of privacy; the anonymous and random nature of the “friend” phenomenon; and the fact that there are a huge number of valuable, brilliant people in the world who have no concept of these systems and don’t participate in them at all, and likely never will. They are too busy leading real, enriching, empowered lives outside the cyber realm, interacting with people face-to-face.

    Social media is more likely a ready replacement for the old-fashioned method of meeting new people, seeking out like individuals with common interests, traits, social circumstances and desires – networking events. Meetings, conferences, charities, and professional and business trade associations were the centers of the business and social universe. Members joined to meet new people, those of similar interest to their own. They were from similar backgrounds, similar socioeconomic circumstances, (mildly) similar income and often depending upon the type of organization, geographically similar. They were by definition, a group.

    Some groups are more social than others. Neighborhood associations, fraternal and community, civic organizations, like Optimists, Rotary Clubs, Shriners, Civitans, Elks Lodges, Oddfellows, Masons and such are often built around a charity or fundraising for a specific cause or issue, but are largely social in nature. Professional and trade associations are more businesslike, especially the latter, which has corporations as members, but uses individuals as volunteers. However there are strong social components, including an annual meeting, sometimes a secondary meeting focused on specific components of their industry, continuing education opportunities throughout the year, and of course committee work and volunteer projects to recruit new members, maintain dues and enrollment renewal, and other fundraising projects to keep the organization running and viable. One of the truly valuable benefits to belonging to such an organization is this social component, and the benefits are myriad.

    To form true business relationships, one must find familiarity and common ground. One way to do that is through such business-related organizations where some of the screening has already been done and the common interest is displayed up front. One such organization whose reason for being is to help promote this type of professional interaction is Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI). It is a 74-year-old international group with 10,000 members in 30 countries and throughout the United States, whose sole reason for joining is to meet other top business professionals in their sector and enhance their professional knowledge and standing. SMEI offers a certification program for Sales, one for Marketing, and a Management certificate, recognized internationally as a sign of professionalism and excellence. Meeting frequency and purpose varies by chapter, but all have a business relationship-forming function of some sort, based on five founding principles: Professional Standards and Identification, Continuing Education, Sharing Knowledge, Assist Students, Support the Free Enterprise System. Benefits of membership include professional recognition and respect, enlarged professional sphere of influence, strong professional network and enhanced community and professional outreach.

    Those benefits mirror many other organizations’ benefits, but few are stated so clearly and succinctly, and lived by the membership so obviously. Not only does the individual member benefit to a great degree from their participation, but the organization benefits from the aggregate efforts of professionals at this level, working on their projects in their “native” turf – sales and marketing. This is true of few organizations of this type – typically the officers are elected based on popularity first and competence second or beyond. They may have an accountant as treasurer if they’re lucky, or an attorney as President for a year or more, but that’s often the extent of it.

    Professional trade associations with professional staff’s who specialize in Association management are an entirely different animal. These organizations are typically well-run, offer great benefits to their corporate or individual members, the principal of which varies from group to group, but usually include some sort of government lobbying and public marketing for the industry, education of the industry, standards and practices for the industry, statistics for the industry, and occasionally innovation and regulation within the industry. The social component as an adjunct to those benefits comes in the form of an annual meeting, some sort of recognition for outstanding performance within the group or industry, a commercial exhibition of some sort, continuing education opportunities, and networking as a byproduct of all of the above.

    The most important thing you can do to build your personal and professional reputation is to be active in your own industry, and that means joining and most importantly engaging in activities sponsored and structured by your industry associations. Find a way to justify the value of your dues payment, and the easiest way to do that is to get involved – this is truly an environment where you reap what you sow. Join a committee, work your way onto the board, pick a project and give it some time, effort and commitment – new business and an expanded sphere of influence are the smallest possible returns, and those are valuable indeed.

    Based on these types of organizations, the electronic version doesn’t even come close to the power of a personally interacted business relationship. Human beings sense elements of each other’s personality through a number of different channels, including the interpretation of body language, clothing choice, vocal inflection and word choice. Interaction with others on a face-to-face basis is essential to forming fully informed business relationships. All that meta information is lost in the cyber realm, leaving you with just the filtered choices of text and images to work with when forming conclusions about this person’s character, intent and sincerity.

    The next time you’re filing your friends on Facebook, or counting your connections on LinkedIn, ask yourself if you’d associate personally or professionally with all of those people if it meant meeting them face-to-face in a professional or social situation. Would you invite them into your home, meet them at a local hotel for dinner, recommend them for a job, refer them to your banker or broker? If the answer to any of these is no, are they really productive, solid, reciprocal relationships that foster business, or are they more like artificially garnered acquaintances that know more about you than you might like?

    If you found this valuable and thought-provoking, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

  • Are These 12 Roadblocks Stopping Your Valuable Trade Show Leads?

    Are These 12 Roadblocks Stopping Your Valuable Trade Show Leads?

    Scott Llewellen of TPS Displays Express put this together, and I thought you’d all enjoy these tips – they’re right on the money!

    Most trade show exhibitors put the vast majority of their effort into creating their presence at a trade show – the trade show displays they build, the staffers they send and house, and for some, the promotions they do to create greater activity in their booth space.

    Unfortunately, too many waste these valiant efforts, because they fall down on managing their trade show leads.  That’s because there are more hidden roadblocks than they realize, obstacles to getting the full value from their leads.

    So let’s bring those roadblocks out into the light.  I believe the list below includes the 12 most common obstacles to effective lead management – how many of these are issues do you need to address?

    1. Incomplete lead management process
    2. No single person responsible for the entire process
    3. No consultation with sales about what information needs to be gathered at the show
    4. No training of trade show booth staffers about what makes a qualified lead, how to record lead quality
    5. Qualifying information from leads is not captured with a lead card or a lead retrieval system
    6. If complete information is captured, it is not conveyed to the appropriate sales person after the show
    7. Slow, incomplete, or non-existent lead fulfillment
    8. No computer system or customer relationship management software in place to facilitate lead management
    9. Lead fulfillment packages not chosen nor prepared in advance
    10. Lead fulfillment is generic and does not respond specifically to what individual attendees asked about while visiting your trade show exhibit.
    11. No one pre-assigned to data enter and fulfill the large quantity of leads
    12. No accountability for sales people to follow up on leads within a specific, short period of time after the show

    Any of these sound familiar?  Fixing this will take a team effort, including your sales, marketing, and information technology teams.  Get them all in a room and work to knock down these obstacles. For motivation, bring to the meeting a pile of your latest trade show leads, a spreadsheet of the costs of your show, and the highest level exec you can get that these people all report to.

    Then you can work to avoid all 12 of these obstacles and create a smoother lead management process that gives your company the full potential value of your trade show leads.

  • Big Brands Use Big Data To Engage Customers

    Big Brands Use Big Data To Engage Customers

    Recent economic indicators describe a consumer climate that is different than virtually any in recent history, and consumer product and service businesses are having a tough time closing sales and encouraging sales traffic, both brick-and-mortar and online. This enforced stinginess on the part of consumers is wide-spread but not universal. Some products fly off the shelves and some companies are wildly profitable, while the majority seem to be pushing a rock uphill.

     

    Consumers are caught in a vicious cycle economically, have been since 2008. Profit is down on a per unit basis, write-downs and charge offs notwithstanding. Employment is down from knee-jerk reactive cost-cutting measures trying to stem the tide of red ink, the unemployed numbering in the many hundreds of thousands, and the underemployed doubling that. Equities in general have been stumbling along the bottom of the trough for the last two years, with a 3% growth number putting them back at break-even since before the crash. Spending is down, savings are flat, foreclosures are restarting their relentless march, debt is way too high, both consumer and governmental, and consumers are cautiously nervous.

    For retailers, this is the perfect storm of nightmares. Consumers are too scared to make those bigger purchases due to income uncertainty. Retailers won’t or can’t hire due to low margin, and can’t add jobs, reducing the unemployment numbers. Investors get lousy returns, and therefore can’t invest in riskier companies, so they can’t expand and add jobs. Consumers who have jobs are unsure they will keep them, but are doing the work of three and trying to keep their own head above water, cutting back on discretionary purchases. So, as a marketer, how do you break through the fear and engage consumers?

    In a word, “Trust”.

    If you scan the list of most profitable or growing consumer product corporations*[1], you’ll notice that they don’t have a common theme in terms of product offering, or price point or position in the marketplace, although they all tend to be number 1-4 in their category. The common thread among them won’t likely jump out at you from the list itself, but if you dig a little deeper, the theme becomes clear. These growing, smart, stable companies have been conservative in their growth plans, aggressive in defense and development of their brand, and firm believers in keeping their brand promise, leading to outstanding customer loyalty. They make products that people want and need no matter what their economic circumstances, and maintain loyalty through consistent quality assurance, product development speed and flexibility. In short, they give their customers what they want, and have done so long enough and consistently enough to have garnered long-term customer loyalty, and more importantly, trust.

    As marketers, we can’t often affect many of the attributes listed above that these firms have in common, but the few that we can, need to be the very best expression of the brand promise to establish that trust. We can’t affect QA directly, for instance, but we can certainly pitch the promotions to the correct consumer level and keep public perception on the right aspects of the product if QA is spotty or suspect. Product development is sometimes seen as Indian territory for the marketing department, but in these high-profit companies, our studies show that marketers are deeply involved in not only accumulating consumer data to feed product development, but provide assistance and expertise on consumer preferences, brand extension and alignment, and even assessing product features and elements, to be sure they meet consumer preference and demand. Perhaps this characteristic above all others may be the critical element in the continuing romance between these companies and their customers. In almost every case, companies that get the marketing staff involved early in the development process and have a defined process for creating, developing and launching new products are more nimble, responsive and profitable than those who simply launch and market products after the fact.

    That’s great for companies that create a range of new products regularly or update their flagship product routinely. But what about some of those firms who have been riding the same product year after year? How do they engage their customers and engender such loyalty to the brand?

    Many established and older brands that have let research and development languish, either through lack of resources or short-sighted thinking, find that they need to create or establish a new angle, a new application, a new extension of the existing product to create interest from new customers and renew interest from existing customers. Clorox might be an example of this, especially 10-15 years ago. Household bleach is a staple, has few innovations or moving parts, and aside from updating the package, and not much of that, it is basically unchanged since the 50s. Recently, they have innovated within the category, created new applications for the product and formed partnerships with other products to bundle or reinforce their products. Adding their product to other cleaning products gets the brand into households that might not welcome them otherwise, and sets or reinforces the expectation that bleach is an enhancer of cleanliness.

    Making the product “portable” in the form of a stain removing stick was a recent innovation that was launched in response to consumers’ increased mobility and need for instant gratification. Yet despite it’s age, Clorox continues to move off the shelves in predictable and growing fashion and avoid becoming a commodity, despite strong shots from competitors, generic versions manufactured overseas, and reduced profitability from price increases on raw materials and distribution challenges. A marketing team that can come up with a new angle for a 50+ year old product is a strong, flexible one indeed. What has kept them going is strong customer loyalty, and trust in the quality and integrity of the product to perform as advertised day in and day out over many years.

    But engaging customers doesn’t always mean product innovation, or even marketing innovation. Sometimes it has more to do with taking the appropriate approach based on customer’s expectations. One of the companies on this list, Harley Davidson, is a champion at delivering it’s message in the most appropriate medium for it’s audience’s digestion. But that hasn’t kept them from being innovative in order to engage the customer. Over a century old, Harley’s target customer is also getting older, and that demographic is populated by notoriously slow adopters of new technology. Harley does much of it’s marketing through the dealer channel and through event and sponsorship presence. They host rallies, rides, and other gatherings of product users through an extensive network of dealers and repair facilities coast-to-coast, and know their customer well. They have a huge array of licensed products and aggressively protect their brand in each of these arrangements, selecting only the highest quality materials, workmanship and designs to put their name on. This is one of the most traditional marketing models out there, and it still works very well. You would not expect them to have a huge online presence or use internet resources extensively to reach a 50+ age audience. Yet they have taken advantage of the social media phenomenon to help spread their message via word of mouth among their vast network of customers, creating Twitter accounts, a strong presence on Facebook with nearly 2 million friends. Other efforts include each dealer’s own FB page and own website, all of which have access to the manufacturer’s site, news, product info, dealer locator and more, plus license holder sites. All of this is used to promote new products, showcase product innovation, and get customer feedback, monitoring the electronic conversation and reacting quickly to customer input, engendering even greater loyalty and trust. It’s the message, not the medium that counts.

    Engaging customers also has to do with relevance. Being relevant to your customers may seem like everyone’s goal, and indeed it might be, but these profitable companies seem to have it innately present in their corporate DNA. These companies constantly seek ways to enrich their customers’ lives, and find new ways to be part of them. Coach, Inc., might be a good example of this. The luxury brand has innovated a number of approaches to meeting the needs of its niche market’s need for upscale handbags and accessories, leveraging their brand strength over a series of related products. If you purchase a Coach bag, with its famous lifetime warrantee, and it’s likely you’ll be informed about other Coach accessories, and often buy them, with the assurance that each product, either direct manufacture or licensed, will be made with the same level of care and quality, and at the same price point in the market. If you are a Coach-level consumer, you make it your business to show it, by buying the branded products that prove it. This elite, exclusive approach works very well for them, as it ramps up the relevance in their customer’s lives.

    As marketers, we have a huge volume of information and research data available to us regarding consumer trends, preferences, and behavior. It is up to us to responsibly use this data on OUR customers, to craft innovative, trustworthy, relevant outreach messaging to engage our customers to create brand trust, and drive sales and profits to where they need to be. Most of that trust and relevancy comes from the correct and appropriate use of that data to craft messaging that resonates with the target consumer. Transparency, honesty, relevance and trustworthiness are key to achieving these goals, and you can see the results of such activity reflected in the marketplace and the bottom line.

    If you found this insightful (or frightful) be sure to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

    [1] List compiled by Seeking Alpha, copyright 2010
  • How Marketers Can Use Customer Advisory Boards to Engage Customers, Engender Brand Loyalty, and Much More

    How Marketers Can Use Customer Advisory Boards to Engage Customers, Engender Brand Loyalty, and Much More

    Guest Blogger Rob Jensen provides some great insights about how you can get reliable customer insights to improve your engagement and profitability.

    Marketers are giving a lot of attention of late to the topic of customer experience. Indeed, ensuring that companies optimize interactions with their top clients, obtain the highest level of value and maximize ROI from their precious customers seems to be a universal desire the significance of which is of little debate. The more challenging aspect of achieving these outcomes seems to be HOW marketers are supposed to do so. It is our experience that customer advisory boards (CABs) are the most effective and impactful way to engage with key customer executives and achieving these desired results.

    For those who are unaware, customer advisory boards (also known as a customer advisory councils) are forums to review industry trends, address mutual challenges or opportunities, and offer unvarnished insights and guidance. For vendors, these councils are ideal for validating corporate strategies, gathering input on product development, and deepening relationships with key customers. In turn, there is just as much to be gained by the participating customers.
    Indeed, while engaging customers, gathering their feedback and input to your strategic plans and product roadmap helps engender brand loyalty, the benefits of CABs go much deeper than that. Here then are the top 5 benefits your company can get from a well-run customer advisory board program.

    1. Insight into Business Strategy: Your customers—the consumers of your products or services – are the best (and surprisingly most often overlooked) resource to provide input to your company’s overall direction and business strategies. Such customers should be able to advise you on the products and services they desire, what they would pay for them and how they want them delivered. After all, everything you do is designed to appeal to their needs, so there really is no one more qualified to counsel you on how to best target, approach and serve your client base. Your council can provide invaluable direction regarding which markets to pursue, how to capitalize on market trends, what customer pain points to address, which companies to partner with or acquire, how to best exploit competitors’ weak points, and how to position your company for optimal advantage.

    2. Feedback to the Product Roadmap: A customer advisory board is ideal for providing feedback and desired direction on the host company’s offerings. Your advisory council can offer an insider’s view of what your target buyer needs and wants from your products and/or services. A council also serves as a great platform for securing beta testers of your new offerings, helping you introduce your solutions and providing immediate validation before you go to market.

    3. Increased Revenue: The often unspoken (yet highly desired) benefit from your council is the positive impact you will see in incremental sales revenue. Your members’ organizations will likely increase their overall spend with your business over time. This is due in large part to the fact that they are privy to your growth strategy, are early testers of your solutions and feel closer and more faithful and dedicated to you and your offerings. In fact, Ignite’s experience shows that B2B companies that have active and successful customer advisory boards enjoy a 9% increase in new business among advisory members starting after year one of advisory programs above non-advisory council customers.

    4. Customer Approval and Brand Champions: An additional benefit to running an advisory council is that you are building a close-knit group of company advisors and brand champions. By bringing members into your company’s “inner circle” as trusted advisors, you are also transforming them into even bigger raving fans of your company. In our experience, this almost always happens with council members. As they take on the responsibility of helping to guide your business, they inherently become professionally and emotionally invested in your success, and their enthusiasm and passion tends to permeate their immediate team and sometimes beyond. The result is a group of highly loyal customers who have a vested interest in your success – and not defecting to your competition. Furthermore, your members will likely refer other prospects to you as they talk about you with peers at conferences, events, and throughout their day-to-day operations.

    5. Marketing Campaigns and Messaging: Another often less-recognized area of value a client advisory council delivers is feedback to how your company markets itself. You will gain the rich insight necessary to understand how to position (or re-position) the company against the competition. Your advisory board will advise you as to what makes your business unique and what differentiators you should highlight. Just as important, the council can guide you on which mediums are the most viable in terms of reaching your desired audience. Members can also serve as wonderful client references for testimonials and case studies. Likewise they may also be willing to develop and publish joint articles or white papers with you. This lends industry validation and credibility to your advisory board program, your own organization, and serves as a means of promoting the member and bolstering his/her own company and career.

    While engaging with customers and engendering brand loyalty may be all the rage with marketers these days, in our experience, customer advisory boards are the best method to deliver this – and much more. A well-run customer advisory council will undoubtedly provide your organization with significant input that will put your company on a better, more targeted and profitable course for years to come.

    Rob Jensen is VP of Marketing for Ignite Advisory Group (www.igniteag.com), a consultancy that helps B2B companies manage their customer and partner advisory board programs.  http://www.igniteag.com

     

    If you found this valuable or enlightening, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Google This: What It Means When A Brand Becomes A Verb

    Google This: What It Means When A Brand Becomes A Verb

    I thought readers would appreciate this – I’m as guilty as anyone of using these verbisms, especially being close to the inside at Xerox and a couple of the other larger brands in a couple of industries. Its interesting to see the differences in which one gets picked for this “honor” – we text and call people, and we phone people, we don’t iPhone them, no matter that they are the market leader. But when the telephone was not the only device that performed this function in the early days of communication technology, the telephone won the market and, became the generic term. Kleenex also experienced this as the dominant player in the disposable tissue market, but we still blow our noses or wipe up, we don’t “kleenex” our noses. No verbism, but still the market leader becomes the default term for the category.

    Good article, enjoy the read . . .

    By Mike Hoban

    TiVo. FedEx. Taser. Velcro. Superglue. Sometimes consumers latch onto a brand and make it a verb–the question is whether it helps or hurts a brand.

    We FaceTime and Skype but we generally don’t Facebook or YouTube. We Google but we don’t Bing (at least not yet). We Rollerblade but we don’t Slinky. In past years, we would Xerox but would never Polaroid. Why are some popular brands or products used as verbs in our everyday conversation and others not?

    It’s an interesting question and there are opposing sides in the business world about whether “verbifying” (which is a verbified word in itself) a brand or product is a good thing or not. On the one hand, the marketers tend to believe it’s the ultimate compliment and demonstrates a personal connection between consumer and brand. The intellectual property attorneys, on the other hand, usually contend that using a product or brand name this way risks what is termed “genericide,” (as Dave Barry used to say, “I’m not making this up…”) meaning losing the legal power of a trademark. Xerox, for example, for several years apparently ran a campaign with publishers asking them to not use the name “Xerox” as a verb when the generic term “photo copy” was the intended meaning. A much referenced 2009 New York Times article describes the opposing views.

    TiVo. FedEx. Taser. Velcro. Superglue. Sometimes we consumers just latch onto a dominant brand and verbify it with no mind or care about whether the company wants us to or not. But it’s not clear why this happens to some products but not to others, even if they have similar product characteristics. Why do many people use the verb “Photoshop” (a product by Adobe) to mean any type of digital image manipulation but we don’t use “Word” (a product by Microsoft) as a verb to mean any type of word processing?

    Technically, the etymologists refer to the practice of verbing as “anthimeria,” which means a functional shift or conversion of word use, and it’s not a new phenomenon. Shakespeare was a serial verber, for instance. It can be creative and clever but in the business world it is abused and can become buzzword-speak. We ballpark, we partner, we value-add, eyeball, fast track, leverage, and we green-light. And in meetings we flip chart. But the line must be drawn somewhere. People using “dialogue” as a verb, for instance, should be formally reprimanded and the use of “architect” as a verb should be grounds for termination.

    Oh, sorry about the little rant. We were talking about brands being verbified and perhaps the first brand to do that consciously as part of its marketing strategy is Simoniz, the car wax. Back in the 1920s or ’30s the company’s tagline was “Motorist wise, Simoniz” and posters and ads from that period would exhort car owners to “Simoniz Now!” Similarly, having grown up in Michigan in the 1960s and 1970s, we would routinely use the brand Ziebart as both a noun and a verb (“Did you Ziebart your new car yet?”) to refer to any car rustproofing process (there’s that genericide bugaboo again).

    Sometimes companies’ efforts to “verb up” their brands fail or fizzle. Back in the 1970s I recall a campaign by the grocery chain Kroger which featured a jingle that sang out “Let’s go Krogering, Krogering, Krogering…” Let’s just say that ad was soon retired. And Yahoo several years ago asked people “Do you Yahoo?” Yahoo no longer asks that question and seems to be content to remain a noun.

    Brand verbification. What do you think will be the next one to enter our everyday lexicon–and does it help or hurt a brand?

    –Mike Hoban is a management consultant in his day job and can be contacted at business-at-large@sbcglobal.net.

    For more insights like these, be sure to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

    [Image: Flickr user Isolino Ferreira]
  • Research Data Drives Effective Creative Strategy

    Research Data Drives Effective Creative Strategy

    It’s that time again . . . time to get the ball rolling on your new membership recruitment campaign, or your seasonal ad campaign, or your annual meeting promotion. You need an idea, a direction, an inspiration to guide your creative mind to a result that will be executable, will reach and resonate with the intended audience, and come in within budget. Where do you turn? Hopefully, you turn to the potential customer, in the form of primary research.

    The more you know about the audience for any marketing effort, the more effective that effort will likely be. You know the challenges they face, you know the mindset they use on a daily basis, you know what they need, and can make your concepts, copy and offers sing to the audience in a way that creates action, but only if you have the information you need. The way to get that information, in a reliable way that you can use to make decisions, is to be in regular contact with the audience. One of the most effective ways to do that is with periodic in-depth phone research.

    Get a Reality Check

    In-depth phone research, when combined with some written survey work on a periodic basis, can help you get an accurate feel for your members or target audience on an ongoing basis, unfiltered by the “pick the middle choice” phenomenon of printed surveys. Done in a truly blind fashion, where the audience has no idea your organization is behind the questions, customers feel secure enough to answer honestly and directly. Even so, most respondents in a small, highly specific prospect pool, especially in a member-based organization, figure out that the word will filter back to your organization eventually, so they feel that this may be an opportunity to air their gripes and get something done on their behalf without complaining directly to you. You can also gather information on the positive side as well, as compliments are far more rare then complaints from customers or members of the organization.

    Customer service benefits aside, true primary research generates not only anecdotal information on your current customers or members, but if you include ex-customers or former members in your scheme, there is quantitative data generated that can be projected accurately over the entire audience or prospect pool. And in that data is where the creative inspiration hides.

    Draw Comparisons

    Inspirational data often comes from the most unexpected numerical comparisons. Most marketing data mirrors the expectations that were built into the questions in the phone survey. In the face of that effect, there is often one set of data that stands out as an unexpected result, either very positive, or extremely negative compared to your own “feel” for that issue.

    The other comparison that lends itself to driving a creative “hook” is the comparison between the data from your current constituents and your former constituents. Not only will this comparison show you what facets of your organization are working well and retaining customers, but it will also show some of the reasons why the ex-customers left. Those are the things you can address in your creative strategy to shore up those perceptions that could be discouraging potential customers from doing business with you.

     

    [pullquote align=”left or right”]The more you know about the audience for any marketing effort, the more effective that effort will likely be.[/pullquote]

     

     

    Often an issue you feel is of little consequence turns out to mean an awful lot to the constituent audience. If you find that unexpected “key to their heart”, that should inspire a creative approach that will yield considerable success. Both in the concept and in the copy, hitting that high note repeatedly based on solid research is usually a home run. Careful reading and interpretation of that collected data is key to going in the correct direction. Sometimes some additional follow-up research with a small but representative audience to drill down on that unexpected issue can generate some additional, more leading data. That clarification can mean the difference between a home run and a wiff.

    Occasionally, the opposite scenario plays out, and something you’ve been promoting as a benefit all along turns out to have little importance to the audience. That lack of “resonance” is a disconnect that you now know you can avoid in your copy. That frees up some room to play up the positive aspects you’ve verified with the research data.

    Use The Data You Gather

    Without the underpinnings of that research, there is little basis for decision-making in the creative process. The data can give you a more sturdy brand profile, it let’s you make a persuasive case to senior management, and gives you something to backstop your creative direction. The temptation is often to take the data and twist it to meet the “gut feel” that exists in the collective mind of the organization. Ignore the data at your own peril. If the study is conducted by professional researchers, and there are no clear flaws in the list of respondents and its reflection of the audience is accurate, then let the data drive your decisions.

    The data doesn’t lie. It’s very easy to discount research data when you compare it to your own perceptions, or the preferred perception of the organization, and it doesn’t match. It’s tougher to stick to your guns, believe the data and act upon it. Once you see it work predictably and successfully, you learn to trust the numbers.

    Prioritize the Issues

    Once you have the data collected, and the analysis done, how do you make the leap to a creative direction? The secret is in the numbers. The basic strategy is that you determine the type of approach based on the read of the top 5 factors in the survey in order of importance. If the top three involve emotional issues, rather than the rational, or intellectual, then the creative approach leans toward a more emotional appeal.

    For example, if the survey indicates that your organization is not producing results for customers in a particular area, maybe customer service or responsiveness – those are largely emotional issues, as no one likes to feel ignored or not served adequately, but they are not functional issues or operational issues within the organization’s functional mission. The creative approach in that case might involve imagery and copy that plays upon the warm, service-oriented nature of the organization, a one to one approach that is more welcoming and almost apologetic. Of course, you can also pass the info on to the customer service department and improve there operationally as well.

    If you uncover among your top five factors that numerically your satisfaction level among customers is 3 times higher than your ex-customer dissatisfaction ratio, there’s a set of numbers to crow about, and you can take a more rational, numerical approach to the concept and the copy – show you’re keeping customers happy and keeping them longer than ever before. The data still drives the point home, and works to provide you with a creative direction, a springboard toward a winning concept that resonates with the audience.

    Use A Metaphor

    One of the simplest ways to make the leap from data to concept is to use a metaphor that explains what the data reveals. If you’re trying to illustrate that your company grew its customer base by 200% in the last quarter, or that your customer satisfaction rating improved by 3x over the last year based on some changes you’ve put in place, showing images of outrageous growth – beanstalks, elephants, Cyclops giants, etc.; or show images of size disparity – big bones with little dogs, big sandwiches with little kids, an Oreo cookie so large it won’t go in the glass of milk. The metaphor gives you a way to explain the concept that the data revealed in a way the audience can relate to easily.

    Now, on to those meeting ads, or those membership recruitment ads. Let the data be your guide in these cases as well. If your data shows that 80% of your members don’t go to your annual meeting because it’s too expensive, takes too much time away from the office and the same people go every year and it’s turned into a good ole’ boys club, its time to break out the big guns. They are not finding the value in your meetings. Time to fight the perceptions with your own reality and show the members in your ad or brochure that there are benefits to spending the money, taking time away and meeting those good ole’ boys face to face. Imagery in this case should be very rational, practical, businesslike, and copy should be extremely benefit-laden, addressing those concerns head on in a way the audience can relate to. In many cases, if you get one good lead, one good tip, meet one solid useful connection at a meeting, you’ve made the trip a worthwhile endeavor. Now multiply that by the “possibilities” of the number of typical attendees (some latitude allowed here, no accountants in the wings), and show how the value multiplies with the number of participants – sort of a “you have to show up to win type of approach”.

     

    [pullquote align=”left or right”] It’s tougher to stick to your guns, believe the data and act upon it.[/pullquote]

     

    Destination “X”

    Ads focused on the destination are destined to fail for at least a portion of the audience, yet they persist and even proliferate in the member organization landscape. Everyone knows it’s great to go to a meeting in “X” city, if you like that city, and if it has something inherently beneficial or relevant to the meeting’s purpose. If not, you’ll lose the folks who are farthest away and those that are the most cost conscious, almost automatically. No matter what city you pick, those two audiences are lost if the content isn’t up to snuff. You can’t have a meeting good enough to get them to go there. For those who are having trouble finding value in the content, the city is irrelevant. If the content is good and the results beneficial, you can have the meeting in a train station and people will attend.

    Use Testimonials

    For those organizations hunting for new members, there are many approaches where the data can give you some insights to follow. Testimonial approaches are a very strong framework from which to build value for prospective members. They humanize the organization, provide benefits the audience can relate to easily, and put a face to the issue of keeping members involved and active. Your research data sets showing the biggest challenges members or customers face are the key to crafting solid testimonials that answer these challenges. You can use the top 3-5 problem areas the data reveals and create a series of ads or brochure pages featuring members explaining how their involvement in the organization helped them solve the problem or meet the challenge. They would be highly credible, they would show the organization at work, and they would outline very relevant benefits that would resonate with the audience to a high degree – all driven by a few questions in your phone research survey.

    Use Everything Available

    There are many creative approaches buried within your primary research, and there are many sources of data that can be used to augment, support and reinforce your primary data and the subsequent analysis. Member application data, tradeshow or annual meeting attendee data, industry atlases or SIC code studies published by the U.S. Department of Labor, can all shed light on your target population. There are other kinds of research as well that will generate data, including focus groups, written or e-mail surveys, web surveys, live interviews at meetings or tradeshows, and live long-form personal interviews at a research facility equipped with one way mirrors and camera equipment. All these are viable forms of information gathering, and each has their place in providing you data you can use to form a creative approach to your outreach marketing.

    The key is to believe the numbers and use them in conjunction with your internal organizational knowledge to drive an effective creative strategy.

    If you found this valuable, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

  • Don’t Assume You Know Your Customers

    Don’t Assume You Know Your Customers

    Adam Richardson provides exquisite validation to Granite Partners’ research based marketing approach, in this well thought out blog post from Harvard Business Review. I couldn’t have said it better, so I bring it to you in it’s original form. Enjoy!

    Don’t Assume You Know Your Customers

    by Adam Richardson  |

    If the recent U.S. election taught us anything, it’s that you have to be careful assuming that others see the world the way you do. It’s very easy for any organization — political, commercial, not-for-profit — to get caught up in its own echo chamber of like-minded believers. After certain blogs, social media outlets, pundits, and talk shows whipped themselves into a self-reinforcing frenzy, many people were stunned by the election outcome. How could so many “experts” have gotten it so wrong?

    Shared enthusiasm and beliefs are valuable assets when pushing for a goal. In a business context, it’s vital that your employees are emotionally invested in your company’s vision. But there need to be checks and balances to make sure that the vision matches external reality, or you could be enthusiastically charging toward a similar shock. As the science fiction author Philip K. Dick once remarked, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

    Getting an objective view of who you, as an organization, are trying to serve is critical, but it’s easier said than done.

    Most companies are the centers of their own universes. It’s a natural enough impression; after all, the products and services they offer are on their minds 24/7. The trap is in those companies deluding themselves into thinking that they are as important to their customers as they are to themselves. This is almost never the case. This delusion interferes with understanding customers and their needs, and frequently leads companies to talk to customers in ways that seem foreign or confusing.

    Financial services, the area that I work in now, is an example. It is rampant with confusing jargon and terminology, such as compound interest, ETFs, or the now infamous CDO, or collateralized debt obligation. A 2008 AARP study found that 79% of Americans think prescription drug instructions are easier to understand than materials from financial firms.

    But the financial services industry is not alone. Health care, wireless communications, real estate, information technology, and airlines are all major industries that consistently confuse and turn off their customers, leading to mistrust and disloyalty.

    Jargon in communication is just the surface of the problem. People who work in these industries day-to-day become infused with insider knowledge, techniques, and perspectives. After a while they forget their former lack of expertise and start to assume that everyone must also possess their knowledge — customers included.

    Employees are like hostages suffering from Stockholm syndrome — they take on the worldview of their employer and industry, and forget what it’s like to be a “regular” person without this specialized knowledge. Over time, employees start to talk mostly about tangible product features and become distanced from customer needs and benefits. Value propositions become more abstract and lose the naïve freshness of seeing of who customers really are and how they think, behave, and feel. It becomes increasingly difficult to see your company and industry as nonexpert outsiders do.

    How do we fix this? There are many research methods for better understanding customers, and you may be using them already: ethnographic research, focus groups, surveys, in-store intercepts, and so on. It’s also important to encourage employees to use competitors’ products, so they don’t develop tunnel vision. These are good and necessary, but you can have lots of data and still not see what it’s saying.

    There are two things that can stand in the way getting real insight:

    1. Admitting you may be wrong. If the organization isn’t willing to recognize that it’s not connecting with customers, dismisses indications that customers are confused or uninterested as “irrelevant outliers,” or avoids the message by shooting the messenger, then all the research in the world won’t help. Yes, there are times when an organization needs to be visionary and do things that at first most customers don’t get. Salesforce.com’s pioneering role in the nascent area of cloud computing services is an example of a company that was willing to lose some customers early on in pursuit of the bigger market later. But you have to be very confident in the size of the potential opportunity — and have the organizational fortitude — to pull of that big of a bet. Silicon Valley is littered with companies that made similar bets and failed because ultimately their proposed view of reality never came to align with that of their target customers’.

    2. Garbage in, garbage out. If you’re talking to too narrow of a sample (as was the case with many of the conservative pollsters) or framing research questions in ways that subtly pre-bias the answers, you could be inadvertently creating ever-better products for a shrinking audience. Don’t just meet with your best and current customers; get outside the echo chamber by meeting with ex-customers or people who have never been your customers but love your competitors and the upstart disruptors. (Yes, this often stresses out the sales team.) Years ago, when I was at Sun Microsystems, many at the company initially dismissed the cheap servers then being introduced by Dell and Compaq. Our loyal customers at large companies with massive IT budgets weren’t interested in these low quality machines. Not then, anyway. Sun couldn’t bring itself to lower its standards, and as a result, it ceded a huge part of the market to competitors moving up from the PC space.

    Don’t wait for a catastrophe to show you when you’ve become too caught up in your own hype. Make sure you are continuously seeking a more thorough and objective understanding of your customers, harness the fresh perspectives of new employees, and have the humility to recognize that your customers may have needs and lives beyond your company.

    For more on research and customerinsights, pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Guide”