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Category: Leadership

  • Thinking IS Doing . . . Build More Contemplative Time Into Your Marketing for Increased Effectiveness

    Thinking IS Doing . . . Build More Contemplative Time Into Your Marketing for Increased Effectiveness

    Lists – tick lists, To-Do lists, task lists, chores, check lists – successful people of all types and stripes are driven by lists, either as a way of measuring success, or of keeping your day, week, month, company, on track and focused on moving forward without forgetting anything. But what if we could spend less time focusing on knocking tasks off of a list and more time contemplating the more broad strokes of what marketing is about and what it’s supposed to accomplish. Would spending more time thinking and less time doing actually improve our results?

    In a word – yes!

    Studies coming out of Stanford, MIT, and University of Wisconsin indicate that deep meditation can actually change the physical structure and chemical behavior of the brain long term. Studies of gamma synchrony, the fast-firing of neurons in the brain that lead to a feeling of enlightenment or well-being, have shown that those who meditate or contemplate deeply and regularly can trigger this synchrony, which has also been associated with increased mental ability in in higher mathematics, enhanced creativity, at will through meditative techniques.

    That’s great, but what does that have to do with Marketing?

    Everything, if you think about it. A large portion of what the majority of people feel is marketing activity involves doing. Doing campaigns, researching and data gathering, hunting for lists, selecting images, writing and editing headlines, press releases and collateral, producing ads, commercials and websites – all doing. But those in the know have figured out that the big bucks really come in when you get paid for what you think, not what you do. Doing is the logical extension and the expression of thinking. They don’t call it doing leadership, it’s called thought-leadership, and for good reason. Taking time to think deeply about a subject or about a concept, idea, product, or technique leads to ways to express those ideas and thoughts in a way that influences others to see things your way – it’s the essence of marketing!

    How much more successful might you be if you took an hour, or even thirty minutes, to do nothing else but think through your next campaign strategy, or to contemplate possible uses for your product, or think deeply about the customer experience you’re creating for buyers? Most of us are so busy doing, we don’t take time to  think deeply about the actual purpose of what we’re trying to accomplish, of the consequences and ramifications of our actions, or how they affect others, or how they can be improved.

    Deep thought, contemplation, and the training to focus those energies on a single element of our work, to trigger those fast-firing neurons and reach an altered consciousness state that can deliver new insights could be the most powerful tool in the arsenal, but most don’t know it exists, let alone take the time to stop doing, and learn how to use it to their advantage. I know, it all sounds a little geeky and a little off base from the central tenets of marketing, which typically are all about the “do” – but if a half hour spent thinking can improve your insights, and therefore your success rate, by even 20%, I’d say that the most valuable 30 minutes you’ll spend all week!

    For a list of topics that should be contemplated at greater length, be sure to pick up a copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes“

  • 5 Things To Watch For In 2016

    5 Things To Watch For In 2016

    I don’t normally do predictions and prognostications about the future, because even the most informed and engaged “futurists” are at least half wrong on a terrific day. If you go back and review their predictions with 10 years of hindsight, usually they were either dead wrong – not good for career development as a futurist – or the predictions now, in hindsight, seem rather vague or are broad enough to be interpreted in a number of ways, one of which might be construed as having some to fruition. Either way, such prognostication is best left to carny acts at the State Fair rather than being used as a business decision-making tool. However, as the new year looms, I feel compelled to at least point out some observances that seem to be gaining positive momentum and seem fairly sensible in the broader context of marketing. So, here’s five things to keep an eye on:

     

    1. Data Gathering V.S. Privacy – Eventually privacy will win, but not next year. There is so much data out there available now on everyone, from a huge variety of sources, all self-proclaimed, that marketers can access it without having to invade anything more sophisticated than a social media page. That level of data availability will continue to increase, and the volume and type of data available will ramp up next year, as more software is launched, more apps are developed, and the digital sharing movement continues to grow in the new connected environment. Marketers will have to continue to run to try and reach the top of the curve and not get too far behind in the actual viable use of that data to produce results.

    2. The Clouds Gather – Storage on site at corporate buildings will continue to drop weight like Jenny Craig moved in next door, as storage needs are more easily accommodated in the Cloud. Data centers and other aggregating technologies will continue to supplant hard on-site storage for firms under a billion in annual sales. Now cyber security exercises will have to beef up accordingly to provide the security and trust the could requires to continue acceptance and growth.

    3. Old Will Become New Again – In a sense, marketing is like fashion, if something sticks around long enough it will circle back around and become popular again. Like hemlines or trouser cuffs, marketing tactics can be reborn as if it was discovered anew by the next generation of marketers. The speed of growth of content marketing will accelerate – at least until the end of this decade – but content marketing has been used since before the turn of the century – the last century! Ask John Deere, Betty Crocker, Jell-O and P&G, who used content marketing to sell products and stay top of mind, establish market dominance and cement their brands in the minds of buyers in a certain context, with great success. The biggest change is the speed of the distribution of that content. Modern digital marketers can get a “read” on the popularity and engagement level of their content before it converts to a sale, which allows for some adjustment and fine tuning that the old-school folks didn’t have available to them.

    4. The Message Becomes The Medium – FREE!  Big agencies will put in a greater level of effort on earned media and on visibility message marketing, as opposed to just paid advertising. The success of Donald Trumps nascent presidential campaign, driving him from neutral name recognition to leading the GOP field by a significant margin in under a year, after spending a paltry $1.8 million, shows how effective this approach can be. While agencies’ bread and butter will continue to be paid media, both traditional and digital, the earned and PR practices will take a larger role in the messaging scheme, will gain power and recognition for top brands that “get it” about how information travels in today’s connected world.

    5. Rollin’, Rollin’, Rollin’ – Going Mobile Becomes “Normal” – As the number of mobile searches continues to climb, and broadband becomes even more ubiquitous, and the number of smart devices proliferates, having a strong mobile component to your corporate web presence will become not just essential but standard. If your site doesn’t perform on a 5″ touch screen, you’ll be relegated to the digital dustbin quicker than your girlfriend’s MySpace account.

    2016 will be dubbed the year Content peaked, as the field gets crowded, the hackers learn to generate more targeted content in a mass contact way without human intervention. Computer as author is everyone’s fear, there’s enough published by humans already to circle the globe multiple times a day. We don’t need more, we need better – better engagement, better targeting, better relevance, better quality.

  • Content, Shmontent – Providing Valuable Insights To Prospects Will Convert Them To Customers, No Matter What Form It Takes . . .

    Content, Shmontent – Providing Valuable Insights To Prospects Will Convert Them To Customers, No Matter What Form It Takes . . .

    The top marketing buzzword for 2015 has got to be “Content,” surpassing “Big Data” from 2014. Everywhere you look online, in magazines or journals, webinars, conferences, you’ll run across tips, tricks, advice, approaches, models, templates, secrets and techniques on how to generate, improve, disseminate and offer content that will effectively convert inquiry to customer. It’s nearly ubiquitous, and clearly some content is better than others, and some is more appropriate than others, and some should never have been produced or disseminated at all.

    My feeling is that content marketing is not new, it’s one of those tools in the bag that solid progressive marketers have latched onto because the pathways to delivery have gotten broader and easier. Content is essentially in the same genre as sampling programs, advertorials, forced free trials, and other marketing tools where the creator can put their knowledge of their industry on display, demonstrate quality or level of service, demonstrate their understanding of issues that affect their industry, and provide possible solutions at a lower engagement risk to the recipient than actually purchasing a product or service. It allows the creator or the distributor to shape their brand perception, elevate themselves to expert status, show thought leadership, and hold themselves out there as someone who offers solutions, not just gripes about the challenges facing their industry or line of business. There’s nothing wrong with any of this, it’s a terrific way to accomplish the goal of building credibility and showing forward thought, but it’s not as shiny and new as the most recent generation of marketers would like to believe – the delivery system is new, but the model is not.

    Pioneers in content marketing include John Deere corporation, who created a magazine featuring uses for it’s farm equipment in 1898, The Michelin Guide promoting travel and offering insights to travelers in 1900, and Jell-O salesmen offering housewives a recipe book featuring Jell-O as a key ingredient in 1904, and Betty Crocker cookbooks touting uses for their cake mixes in 1912 or so, and so on to the point where recent statistics show that 96% of corporations are using some sort of content marketing in their mix in 2014. The telling statistic in that same report is that, among respondents, only 21% of those using content marketing felt they could accurately track its ROI. I thought marketing was about testing, measuring, data-driven action that creates more efficient and cost-effective drivers of awareness and sales conversion . . .

    Hopefully, content won’t be shown to be just the next big, shiny object marketers latch onto, use inappropriately until it loses it’s effectiveness or relevance, or until the next shiny object comes along.

    To see how to do Content “right,” pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes“

  • In a World . . . Where There Is No Post Office . . . Direct Mail Professionals Aren’t Doomed

    In a World . . . Where There Is No Post Office . . . Direct Mail Professionals Aren’t Doomed

    Based on experience, on articles in a huge number of media outlets, on TV and radio, much has been said about the challenges facing the US Post Office. Fiscal reform efforts don’t seem to have stemmed the bleeding, a rate case is in the making that will likely make most mailers sit back and reconsider their mail schedule and creative costs with respect to mailability, machinability and postage costs, and even with offices consolidating and more rural locations closing, deliverability and schedules will have to be accounted for under the current scenario. But picture a world where the Federal Government, Congress, and the American People all agree for a change, and come to an agreement on closing the post office altogether. What might that world look like?

    From a business standpoint, a huge bulk of business correspondence has already shifted to e-mail from printed postal mail, as have bill and invoice presentment, financial reporting statements, even annual reports are delivered digitally as PDF files. The remainder of the mail stream includes direct marketing pieces, catalogs, parcels, fulfillments of various types that cannot be delivered digitally, legal documents that must be delivered on paper or signed for by the recipient, and some other odds and ends. In aggregate that still represents a huge swath of companies, and jobs, that will have to shift their thinking, and their marketing efforts and communications strategy, to account for the loss of postal delivery.

    Strategically, one of the other common carriers, or possibly both UPS and FedEx, will likely have to ramp up to fill the void, but that would certainly suggest that some changes would have to made in how they operate logistically. Air hubs would have to be expanded, fleet maintenance established and expanded from the current to service fuel and maintain the huge fleet of trucks, cars, planes and other specialty apparatus the USPS currently fields. The care and upkeep of the buildings, street boxes, already a rarity, would likely be curtailed, shifted and more centralized. Delivery would likely be curtailed, made only on select days, much like in EU nations, and only to select stations – residential delivery, especially in rural areas where efficiency is low, would likely cease. Individuals would be forced to visit a substation several days a week to pick up their mail after showing ID. Businesses would receive delivery to their internal mail handling sections, but maybe not daily.

    Businesses directly related exclusively to supporting the USPS would certainly be challenged, but what about those who use the mail extensively to market their goods and services, and the businesses who serve them (printers, designers, processing houses, list brokers and aggregators, equipment manufacturers who make printing, folding, inkjet and addressing equipment, inserters, sorters, cutters, stampers, high speed duplication and personalization printing machinery), and a wide swath of other businesses world-wide.

    Fortunately, most of those businesses will have the time to adjust to the new circumstances, and if they are nimble and diversified in their customer base and product offering, they will survive in the new post-post office world. Direct marketing professionals need not necessarily fear for their jobs, as nearly all of their skills can be ported over to the digital realm. Copy that sells still works digitally, with some minor adjustments; good design still enhances results, online or off; a good list is still the key to response success, and if my inbox is any indication, there are a good-sized chunk of list purveyors specializing in selects from business e-mail addresses to help companies and non-profits reach out to their target audience.

    The toughest cut will be the army of postal employees nationwide, for some of their skills will be made obsolete, marginalized, or undervalued. With no residential delivery, carriers, sorters, and other related jobs will be sidelined out of existence. Hopefully a retraining program of immense proportions will be built into the wind-down plan, and those hardworking individuals will be placed elsewhere as they desire.

    As an exercise, close your eyes and imagine that post-post office world and how it will affect you. Let me know if you like the new world . . .

    If you liked this and want to read more, subscribe to this blog above. And don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Let Customer’s Imagination Flow for Effective Research

    Let Customer’s Imagination Flow for Effective Research

    If you want to boost sales, increase membership, enhance volunteer participation, increase market share or find new profit niches, the best methods start with knowing your target audience. One of the most effective ways to do that is to listen to them. How you listen, and how you organize and collate the results of that listening is the determining factor in the usefulness of the data, and the accuracy and actionability of your analysis. Clearly, much depends on the goal, but the type of research you select will drive the type of information you receive, and dictate how reliable it is.

    For sales-, membership-, and interest-based organizations, a method termed “Right-Brain” research could hold the key to cost effective, actionable information you can use quickly and effectively to increase your knowledge of prospective customers.

    The human brain consists of two “hemispheres” left and right. Based on Nobel award-winning research by Roger Sperry in the late 1960s, it was determined that each has different functions and characteristics associated with it. Sperry’s research showed that the Left side of the brain is responsible for the more linear functions and thoughts – math, computation, organization, languages (not speech directly), rational analysis, value prioritization and decision-making. The Right side is responsible for the more interpretive and sensory aspects, like art, music, philosophy, creativity, visualization, and imagination. Left is rational, Right is more intuitive and emotional, while neither is exclusively that way. In fact, the aspect of “handedness” is reversed; with the right side controlling motor and other functions on the left side of our bodies and vice versa. Recent studies have proven this to less than completely accurate, but it seems to work in practical applications.

    Often in decision-making, especially regarding purchasing behavior, the Left side is informed by the Right. The Left rationalizes the emotional inputs from the Right to drive a purchasing decision. To drive sales, it is fundamental to appeal to that tricky Right side. When divining the needs of the customer or prospect pool you’d like to reach, it is important to gather and record output directly from the Right side. One way to accomplish that is through verbal communication. A long-form, personal, one-on-one discussion with customers, but on a large, organized scale, will elicit results you can put to use in crafting a strategy to approach the entire pool of prospects. In short, the resulting data from such small group research is projectable.

    Right-brain research has been used to test new products in the prototype stage, test new concepts for advertising, movies, even gauge the effectiveness of customer service or test brand attributes for entire companies. It can be very effective, but it requires a high level of organization, some time and patience in listening and interpreting the results, and some resources to create the components and arrange for the interviews.

    The components of this method are fairly straightforward:

    • A set of goals for the research should be established and communicated to all involved – what do you hope to find out or accomplish when you are done?
    • Describe the target audience for this goal. Discover what attributes they have in common, what characteristics can be used to select them from the general population, and how they differ from the rest of the audience.
    • A profile of the ideal participant is developed. That profile is used to select a representative sample of respondents to participate in the interviews. This profile can include age, gender, marital status, purchasing behavior, geographic proximity, socio-economic status, professional standing or experience, education, membership in organizations and many other properties.
    • A Discussion Guide or Study Guide is created. This is the blueprint for the interviews, the guide for the interviewer to weave into their questions and discussions with the participants. It starts with the goals from the first step, to be sure that the questions drive responses that allow the researcher to answer the goals. It sounds simple, but if the goals are not realistic or the scope of the study is too broad, it will show up at this stage. This study guide is the key to effective implementation of this type of research. The questions have to be formulated in such a way as to elicit a response that is accurate, honest, direct, and emotionally unguarded. Often questions are asked multiple times in different ways to check for consistency of the answers.
    • Create the list of possible participants. In some cases, especially for consumer research of this type, the facility can offer some assistance in this area, as they often have pools of potential respondents and a good database of names and demographic data from which to select a pool of candidates. Selections are made based on how closely they fit the selected set of attributes from the profile.
    • Candidates are recruited by phone, either by your staff or by the facility, and the offer is made. Most participants are compensated for their time, either with cash or an incentive gift of some sort that will appeal to the intended audience. Professionals like doctors and attorneys are usually compensated at a higher level as their time already has a given “value” in monetary terms, an hourly rate.
    • Respondents are scheduled for their interviews, which are usually 60-90 minutes in length. More than 10 interview sets per day per interviewer are not recommended as fatigue for the interviewers tends to taint the results. More than one interview can be conducted at one time, depending upon the availability of interviewers and the size of the facility. Over book initially on each day to account for no-shows when you confirm the schedule the day before the interviews by phone.
    • The interviews are conducted by skilled interviewers, professionals who are personable, knowledgeable, aware of the goals to be achieved, perceptive and skilled in interpreting human emotions and the associated verbal and physical cues that telegraph them. They are terrific listeners, and skillful at guiding the conversation to keep it on track and on time. The facilities can often recommend or have interviewers on staff.
    • Each interview is recorded to capture both audio and video, and tapes are labeled and packaged with the release form for each subject for later reference.

    Once the interviews are conducted, the tapes are reviewed, and transcripts are made, to remove any “image bias” generated by the subject’s appearance. Those tapes and those transcripts are used to analyze and codify the results, to distill them into some sort of organized format that can be used to make recommendations for action.

    How do you make the jump from transcripts to action?

    Analyzing the results of such research is a skill unto itself, as the interviews generate a huge amount of data, buried deep in the responses. It takes time and patience,(and a very left-brain-oriented person) to organize, sift, and distill all those conversations, picking out commonalities and similarities among them, and highlighting stark differences and inconsistencies that can signal false results, or emotionally guarded responses. Once that glut of data is distilled and interpreted, those interpretations are put together in an organized fashion, ranked, rated and codified, much as you would survey data or focus group data. Those ratings and rankings are put into a report, along with recommendations for action.

    Uses for the final analysis vary widely. Some distill the video recordings, editing them down to some representative responses for each major question, some pro and some con, and present them in video form along with the written analysis. Sometimes, just the transcript is enough to get a sense of the trend of the responses, and can show glaring problems or highlight positive areas simply and quickly. Sometimes the two are combined in a multi-media presentation for added impact.

    This type of research can highlight any number of aspects of the prospect pool, depending on how the research guide is structured. The more aspects of the prospective audience that are included in the study, the less depth you get in any one area. For a accurate study that is statistically projectable, and has a high degree of confidence, 30-40 interviews will usually suffice. Depending on how small the area of interest or niche you want to study, the toughest part might be finding enough respondents to interview.

    How does The Right Brain Approach complement other research methods?

    The Right Brain Approach measures emotions, not people.  Quantitative data is valuable, but the information it provides can be even more valuable when used in conjunction with Right Brain Research.  For example, if you conduct Right Brain Research before a quantitative survey, you will know what the key issues are and will be able to ask the right questions and ask them in the right way based on the actual language that consumers use.  Once Right Brain Research results are known, future surveys can target the factors that affect buying decisions with more accuracy.

    How can we use what we learn from Right Brain Research in conjunction with the results of our quantitative research?

    What you gain in understanding from Right Brain Research will illuminate the information garnered in quantitative assessments.  Now you have a chance to know the rest of the story!  Actually, the Paul Harvey analogy is an excellent one.  He tells you all the facts with no interpretive framework.  Your mind goes off in all different directions trying to make sense of what he is saying.  Then he hits you with a surprising ending or twist and all the facts make sense in a startling way.  This is what Right Brain Research can do for your company/brand/packaging.*

    No matter how you approach it, speaking directly with a population closely representative of your target audience is extremely empowering in it ability to accurately inform your creative, sales, membership recruitment or product development activities. You can’t know too much about customers, and this method allows you to gain insights that can’t be accessed any other way quickly, efficiently and cost effectively.

  • Innovation: Bravery + Curiosity + Support = Advancement

    Innovation: Bravery + Curiosity + Support = Advancement

    As we effect change at various client organizations, mostly through redirecting the current marketing efforts, we often encounter some underlying resistance from some of the down-line managers. Most of this has very little to do with our efforts specifically, and has much to do with aversion or resistance to change in general. We are change agents by nature, indeed that’s the reason we are engaged is to effect change. If change wasn’t needed, we wouldn’t be there . . .

    The question often arises, “How do we mitigate this resistance and achieve full consensus throughout the company to drive the program forward successfully?”

    The answer often lies in two areas:

    1) We realize that you can’t please all the people all the time (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln), and there will always be dissenters and those who don’t completely buy in to the new programs or processes. The way we’ve found success in handling those is to isolate, educate, reformulate, and redirect those individuals. This keeps them from spreading negative messaging throughout the firm, poisoning the well.

    2) We understand that much of the atmosphere of innovation we are trying to create comes from the roots of corporate culture, and so that’s where you start to effect the necessary changes.

    That all sounds good on paper, but what does it really mean to client companies?

    Like many such changes in corporate behavior, it all starts at the top. We work closely with CEOs so that they understand the impact of their downstream messages, and help them position the new elements in the proper light, so they can lead by example, both in action and words. Once the messaging of innovation is firmly established, it should be supported by new programs run by Human Resources, so that innovation carries an incentive and is rewarded. This clearly establishes the goals and guidelines for those individuals responsible for activating those new elements.

    Once that infrastructure is in place, mid- and lower-level managers can be directed both by specific goal and by example, to help create the atmosphere that supports innovation, building competitive teams, setting an agenda that drives innovation and rewards initiative, and stresses accountability.

    This trickle down effect needs to be championed all the way through the rank and file and out to customers, suppliers, vendors and support groups, so that it rings true no matter what angle the company is viewed from.

    More on this issue in a later entry, but for now, effect change, champion the positive effects, and guide the culture and the results will follow!

    If you like this article, and would like to read more like this, subscribe to this blog above and more will delivered to your inbox for free! Also, be sure and pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Build Customer Brand Loyalty by Letting Them Depend On You

    Build Customer Brand Loyalty by Letting Them Depend On You

    Consumer’s purchasing behaviors have changed over the last 20 years, yet many companies are still marketing like it was 1954, pushing down advertising messages, focusing on media buys and eye-ball numbers, knowing little about how customers decide to purchase their products, how often, and most importantly, why.

    Itamar Simonson, a marketing professor and researcher at Stanford University, posits that consumers have essentially three categories of input when making a purchasing decision: Preferences, prior personal experience, brand impression (P), point of purchase messaging, advertising from outside sources, packaging, shelf positioning, coupons, price point, (M), and the input of peers and others they know or have seen, like online reviews by customers, friends and family, co-workers, etc, (O). There is a balance between these three that needs to be satisfied, and he contends that it’s a zero-sum game, since the more you rely on one factor to make purchasing decisions, the less you rely on the other two.

    Your job as a marketer is to make marketing, (M), the most influential it can be, since it’s the only factor you have direct control over. But this can back-fire if the other factors are too far out of balance one way or another. If all your marketing messaging, packaging, color selection, product size, convenience, media placements, shelf placements are all perfectly aligned, but the product itself is too far down-scale for the audience, or the quality is low, or the need for the product disappears or is usurped by an innovation, you still lose the race with the consumer. Too many negative reviews, bad word-of-mouth buzz, poor peer referral, and even if the marketing is perfect, the product will tank.

    This effect is tied to several factors inherent in the product itself. The higher the complexity, the broader the range of choices, the more important peer review becomes. The risk of making an ill-advised purchase rise with the level of price and complexity of the product. A carton of milk isn’t too complex, and the price point is relatively low risk, as purchases go. Under those circumstances, even though there is a seemingly ever-widening range of choices of types of milk, (P) plays the largest part of the purchase decision. It would take a tremendous amount of marketing dollars to shift that and make people’s perceptions and purchasing habits change. On the other hand, items like cars, computers, and personal consumption, (like restaurants), rely increasingly on peer reviews to drive purchasing behavior.

    As marketers, it’s our job to make our efforts so direct, so appealing, so transparent and dependable, to make our brand so reliable and stable, that our brand burnishes consumer’s choices of ANYTHING carrying that brand. That makes (M) the biggest factor, and develops a level of trust with the consumer that really moves the needle in the long term. This serves several purposes, including strangling competitors and locking them out, expanding the brand’s circle of influence, broadening the potential audience for the brand, and keeps the brand evolving and contemporary with the target consumer as their behavior grows and shifts throughout their lives, keeping the brand relevant.

    Review sites and their reviewers change constantly. If you want to win the battle for consumer mindshare, continually strive for quality, keep your brand consistent with that quality, and go the extra mile for customers – that way no matter what the platform or source of the review, they will be overwhelmingly positive and you’ll get the purchasing nod.

    Did you find this interesting? If you’d like more information like this, subscribe tot his blog and they will land in your inbox weekly, FREE. Also, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Can You Spare 111 Minutes for Better Direct Marketing Results?

    Can You Spare 111 Minutes for Better Direct Marketing Results?

    When we get near the Holidays, we often get requests to do special mailings, Holidays card mailings, special e-mail templates and the like, usually these projects consist of smaller batches and less-organized data, and often for the printed material, not particularly machinable materials. If there is one area that could save mailers money, and make the process run more smoothly and quickly, it’s data hygiene.

    A clean list is a thing of beauty. Each piece of data has it’s place, it’s all in the right format, it’s been put through NCOA, it’s been postal standardized, CASS Certified, in zip order, and will personalize and mail completely and reliably. A responsive list is a clean list – there’s nothing worse than getting mail at your address with someone else’s name on it, or with your name spelled incorrectly, or genderized incorrectly. I had a male friend named Tracy, and if I had a nickel for every piece of mail he got addressed to Mrs. or Ms. Tracy Smith, I could have retired long ago. He learned early on that if mailers didn’t know him well enough from his purchase history or habits to properly genderize his name, they didn’t know him well enough for him to spend his money with them. Good lesson there, mailers.

    For the smaller projects, data organization and software platform choice can also save you money. Make sure that your fields in your database are labeled clearly and intuitively. First Name, yes! Name 1, no! If you’re using Excel, for smaller projects, under 1000 records, this will still be quite adequate if the spreadsheet is set up correctly. Even a table in Word, for really small projects, say under 200 records, can work if the table is set up correctly, so that the fields can be edited in aggregate, sizes and type fonts adjusted to fit the label template being used, etc.

    For anything over 1000 records, a real database, Access, or Act!, or a straight ASCII file, can work well. Please include a record layout with these, so I can see how your fields array, and make sure you’ve included all the right fields to make it mail properly.

    For e-mail drops, especially holiday lists, its worth taking an hour and reviewing each address, one by one, to see if

    1) It conforms to the standard of an e-mail address: xxx@xxxxx.xxx

    2) You can weed out the ones that are sent to a general mailbox, info@xxxxx.com. When you run them through the mailer program and it personalizes each greeting, “Dear info” won’t really work.

    3) You can confirm that these recipients are still at that domain and if the domain is legitimate or live

    All three of those steps, for a modest-sized e-mail list, should take you roughly an hour and a half or less – our list took 111 minutes to standardize and vet, including a random sample being looked up on their website to check the domains and to ask around the office to see if that contact was still at that address. In that time, we spotted and removed roughly 20% of the list, saving us the cost of not only sending that mailing, but others subsequent to it, and cut way down on time spent sorting and handling the bouncebacks, and boosted our response percentage accordingly on future mailings using that list. Its a win-win if there ever was one.

    Spend a little time now to clean and vet your list, and it will save time and money later, likely for the balance of the year.

    If you found these tips valuable and would like more information to make your marketing program more effective, pick up a copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • 5 Ways To Waste Your Firm’s Marketing Budget On Research

    5 Ways To Waste Your Firm’s Marketing Budget On Research

    Alexandra’s hit it on the head with this one. Precisely what we’ve been telling our clients for years.

    Top 5 Ways to Waste Your Professional Services Firm’s Money on Research

    By Alexandra Marigodova

    More and more firms are discovering the extraordinary power of strategic marketing research. In fact, Hinge’s own research shows the firms that conduct systematic research on their current and potential clients grow from 3 to 10 times faster and are up to 2X more profitable.

     

    Faster growth and more profits – that’s the power of research. But in order to work, it needs to be done right!  This blog post lists some of the most common, budget-murdering mistakes that are easy to avoid.

    1. Use Research Designed for Consumer Products

    The truth is, marketing research started in the consumer sector in the 1920s. Client research built on consumer product research is truly the “mullet” of professional services research. It’s out of style, it doesn’t quite fit, and it makes us cringe here at Hinge.

    Think about it. Trying to figure out how to sell accounting services using methods designed to market baby formula just isn’t the best strategy. Purchasing a product at the supermarket involves less risk and different decision makers. This is one sure way to waste your firm’s hard-earned money.

    Instead: Use research designed for professional services. One thing for sure, professional services buyers don’t purchase on impulse. To design the right research, you first need to “pilot test.” Ask open-ended questions, then turn them into categories. First explore, and only then narrow down.

    1. Ask Little Questions

    By nature, people are greedy. Many try to pack very granular, nitpicky questions to get the most bang for the buck. Our mind tells us to add, when we should be subtracting. Asking little questions is one of the easiest ways to introduce bias and get meaningless results.

    Instead: Focusing on the big questions will yield the most results. Think of it as removing layers rather than adding more to get to the real truth – what’s most important for your firm. Think more along the lines of how your clients would describe the real value that your firm delivers, rather than how they feel about a specific service.

    1. Use Quantitative OR Qualitative Questions

    More often than not, we come across research studies that ask “what” without asking “why.” This is especially common for times when quantitative data tells us what we want to hear. Imagine you got this finding: “80% of our clients are very loyal to the firm.” And… full stop. We don’t need to know more, right? Wrong. You just missed an opportunity to find out what makes you so unique that the clients want to stay with you.

    Instead: Use BOTH quantitative and qualitative questions. “What” should always be followed by “why.” Understand the reasons behind the numbers and listen to what your respondents are trying to tell you.

    1. Poison the Pot with Judgment Words and Phrases

    What’s wrong with the question below?

    “On a scale of 0 to 10, how important are the awesome services that firm X provides to you?”

    I spoiled the question on purpose, so it’s an extreme example. As you can tell, it explicitly tells the respondent that the services are, in fact, awesome. We can’t both ask for an opinion and give our own. Freedom of expression to all of our respondents!

    In all seriousness, surveys often use descriptive adjectives and add unnecessary leading information. Dictate the results of your research and lose money.

    Instead: Use neutral language and phrases to let the respondent make the call. The questions themselves can impact the objectivity with which people respond to them. Be mindful of word choices and put extreme care into the wording of your questions.

    1. Talk to the Wrong People

    Another way to pour money down the drain is to ask a whole bunch of wrong people. Even with the right set of questions, the wrong set of people will not give you meaningful results.

    There are really two predominant ways to mess up your sample – trying to ask each and every person or only talking to clients you have the best relationships with.

    Instead: Use smaller, highly targeted sample groups. Ask yourself, “What does the client I want to do business with look like?” and “Who are my most desired prospects?” Interview them.  Ask your internals, too. It’s important to see how well your employees know their clients.

    The growing investment into research in professional services also exponentially increases the amount of blunders. But don’t worry! Now you know how to avoid the common mistakes. No need to risk your money. It’s time to get actionable results from research to grow your firm and become more profitable. For a more comprehensive overview of best practices, download our free Professional Services Guide to Research.

  • Is facebook Your New Customer Service Department?

    Is facebook Your New Customer Service Department?

    I was speaking with some colleagues at a networking function the other day, and the presenter asserted that some companies have scaled back their customer service phone centers, and some have virtually done away with theirs altogether. The natural extension of this is the assertion that eventually all customer service would be performed through, and customer interaction take place on, social media platforms. Initially, I was astounded at the audacity of such a possible future, but upon further reflection, this might not be such a bad thing . . .

         

    There are some advantages to this strategy, including:

    1) All interactions can be collected, cataloged into a database, and searched for trends later to guide not only marketing, but new product development.

    2) Both parties to the interaction would have a record, held on an independent server, so that the practice of CS takes a more friendly footing, rather that degenerating into a “He said, She said” proposition for long-term issues.

    3) Since CS is often outsourced, and off-shored, having all customer communication be transacted in writing eliminates problems with misunderstandings due to accents and local dialectic usage – spell check and autocorrect should take care of 80% of that problem, anyway.

    4) Having to write down your problem forces the customer to think through the problem from beginning and end, and to actually ask for the action they would like the company to take. So many customer call and say things like “I bought this and it’s not what I wanted” or something else equally vague, and expect the company to not only know what the problem is, but to try and solve it in satisfactory fashion without actually being asked to do so.

    5) Having to write down your issues brings down the tempo of the conversation, makes the customer think about how that problem might sound to others, and gives the customer some time to calm down and remove some of the emotion from the issue before assaulting the CS rep on the phone.

    Those are mostly advantages to the company, but the consumer gains a few benefits too.

    • It’s hard to be given the run-around being transferred to different departments as the company tries to figure out how to deal with you, or tries to avoid it at all
    • No more waiting on hold endlessly to ask a simple question not listed as a choice on the phone tree.
    • Now you have some time to gather your documents, account numbers, invoices and the like and organize your thoughts into something coherent someone can actually act upon.
    • Now there’s a public record of your complaint, available to all your friends! They can steer clear of the company if the problem is severe enough or not handles promptly and effectively – it’s like everyone’s a walking copy of Consumer Reports!
    • Digital interaction is here, the technology is so advanced that “chatting” has taken on an entirely new connotation, all encompassing a digital conversation online with a rep on the other end in real time.

    Now, that’s not to say there’s no downside to all this digital back and forth. Companies gain some great insights from their interpersonal contacts with customer, or at least they should if they are listening. Nothing telegraphs a problem better than watching the phone banks light up and hearing the noise level rise in the Call Center ten minutes after the release of a new version of a piece of software or the launch of a new product, or a new issue of a newsletter or magazine hits the mail stream. That cumulative noise tells you in a collective, aggregate fashion that something is amiss, and it had better be dealt with quickly and effectively to stem the tied of customer defection and mitigate damage to the brand.

    The big loss is the interpersonal connection customers feel with the brands they know and love. Sometimes you just want to talk to a “human being,” not be dealt with in turn by a machine or work through a series of choices on a phone tree. All the kitten pictures and blather about meals on social media will never replace that human connection, and the reassurance that there is “someone” responsible for taking care of your problem. Digital pixels aren’t accountable, and it leads to a distancing and disconnection between customers  and the company, which is what your marketing efforts are designed to avoid.

    What do you think? Will social media replace customer service in the near future? Comment below, or contact me through LinkedIn, facebook, Twitter, or through my automated customer service website . . .