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Tag: Research

  • Insight Versus Data – Don’t Mistake The Two

    Insight Versus Data – Don’t Mistake The Two

    Contrary to popular belief, not only can’t “everyone do marketing”, but the myth that “the Marketing department dreams this stuff up every day . . .” still persists in modern corporate America. I’d like to dispel that last myth, and cover one other as well, that “We have lots of customer data, we can use that to guide our copy and creative platforms with greater success,” that has arisen again and again in discussions of big data with regard to marketing.

    Myth 1 – Marketing comes up with offers, images, copy, color palette, tag lines, slogans, ads and social media posts on their own, every day, just any old idea that surfaces can be put into play and used.

    Nothing could be further from the truth. This myth originated with and has been propagated by those who DON’T work regularly in marketing. Those who are on the outside looking in, so to speak, see a hive of analytical and creative activity going on, with seemingly little input from them or anyone else on the premises. This makes sense on it’s surface, because aside from the initial vetting of a campaign internally, people in the building have little to do with outreach marketing of the firm, unless by some chance they fit the target customer profile as well. We’re not marketing to staff, folks, we’re raising awareness among some very specific individuals outside of here, and their input is used heavily by our marketing pros to shape, craft and refine messages, offers, imagery, brand resonance, media choices and a host of other elements to make sure that those outreach efforts are as successful and cost p-effective as humanly possible. We work in a vacuum at our own peril, and avoid it like the plague as a result.

    Just because we create multi-page printed pieces, video and radio copy, social media posts and potentially entertaining memes and vines, doesn’t mean we’re all having “fun” in the marketing department, “making creative stuff up” all day.

    Myth 2 – “We have lots and lots of data points from our customers, we can use that in our marketing efforts, we don’t need customer insight research,” is the refrain we’ve heard.

    Not true. Customer insights are gleaned through a variety of methods, using all kinds of data. No single source is likely to yield enough information to form a truly overarching customer insight that will effectively cover the segment and guide creative and media elements accurately. Most customer data gathered today is transactionally-based data, either that they purchased something or attended something, (to become a customer), or relational data, (like logging into a website or social media outlet to view a product, referred or recommended our product to someone, or as part of a search). These are very tiny snapshots of singular incidents in the past, and we have no way of knowing what may have lead to or motivated those actions, or if they will ever take place again. Taken in aggregate, they can give you an inkling of preferences or trends, or show patterns with regard to seasonality, economic cycles, or changing needs, but they do not fully and accurately reflect any real human truth with regard to your product or company.

    In short, customer insights should be derived from an amalgam of different inputs, including former customers, potential prospects who fit the audience, staff, industry stakeholders and a host of others to provide a fully rounded, robust portrait of a single verifiable insight that can be extrapolated across the full sector, and applied to actionable efforts to drive emotional resonance and push to purchase. Short of that, true customer insight derived from a single set of data will likely be flawed and less than fully successful in driving marketing results forward.

    Gaining, analyzing and actualizing customer insights involves a specific process, involves a significant number of people, and still needs to have the resulting insight tested in the real world before being applied across the board in outreach marketing efforts. Anything less, and the insights you should be seeking are about your own marketing chops . . .

  • Attendee Acquisition Is A Long-Term Investment That Pays Off

    Attendee Acquisition Is A Long-Term Investment That Pays Off

    With the recent rise in attention among marketers to customer engagement, and customer experience, customer journey, call it what you like, event marketing has risen on the marketing totem pole to a higher priority than ever. But with that new status comes a new sense of accountability as well – “If we’re going to host all these people and feed them, educate them, allow them into our world to meet us and each other, I want to see that the expense associated with that activity pays off . . .”

     

    Finding out what that expense is would be a logical first step, and then bench-marking that expense against what competitors are paying might be another. We’re marketers, after all, competitive and curious, and we test and measure everything!

     

    The finding out part is pretty simple. The 2016 Benchmark & Trends in Attendee Acquisition study was released by Lippman Connects, Exhibit Surveys, Inc. and Tradeshow Executive magazine as a joint study. That study shows that the average cost of attendee acquisition marketing is over $300,000 per event, and when you get more granular, the average show with flat or inflating growth spends roughly $32.66 for each attendee they attract. If you’re spending less than that, and your show is still growing year over year, then you have reached a level of marketing efficiency that bests roughly half the shows out there – congratulations. If you’re spending less than that, and your shows are declining, you have a decision to make: Invest more in your marketing efforts, across all channels, unless you have clear evidence of an inefficient or low-performing channel, or continue to contract until you level back out and your attendance flattens, and then re-examine the relevance of your event to the current audience.

     

    Now the value-tracking portion, which is a little tougher. Start with how many visitors you’re attracting for each paid exhibitor. This is a good number to know for marketing purposes, because exhibitors use this to calculate their expense of acquisition for new customers from your show, and use it as a benchmark when making the decision to exhibit in your show. According to the same study, shows studied had 22 attendees per exhibitor and scheduled the floor time for a total of 21 hours or more.

     

    But attendees don’t just sign up for the exhibitors. Some 50+% of show attendees are there as conference enrollees, and the show portion is just gravy. 42% indicated that they were interested in the exhibits. Smart show organizers recognize this, and are attempting to make this portion even larger by enlisting the help of the exhibitors themselves. Pre-show marketing by exhibitors is a staple of attendee attraction, and the more you encourage and enable your exhibitors to market their presence at your show, the more attendees you end up with, at no additional expense. That’s a win for everyone!

     

    One of the key challenges in event marketing is justifying that $32 per head acquisition cost, and more importantly, tying it back to a specific marketing activity. Given that most event marketers use a broad variety of channels to market events, including direct mail, traditional print advertising, where appropriate radio and TV advertising, social media promotions, outdoor, e-mail, and other channels, linking any single activity to an uptick or drop in attendance is difficult at best. Your post-show survey work should shed some light on what the most likely driving force behind registration might have been, but it’s really the integrated effort that drives the boat on this one – each channel supports the others to drive overall awareness and memorability for you events, and what you’re testing in your survey is simply the one channel that most closely came to triggering the registration process.

     

    If you do a lot of digital marketing, and have links sprinkles all over everything that drives traffic to your registration page or an online form, it is very likely that this will appear to be what is driving attendance – but is it? If you put up billboards surrounding the venue at a consumer show, and get a lot of walk-in traffic (non-pre-registered), is the billboard driving attendance, or is it just a reminder of the date? If you ask attendees point blank why they registered, chances are excellent the answer won’t be “I got an e-mail and filled out the registration form.” It will more likely take the form of “I saw that my colleagues were going and wanted to go with them,” or “we go every year to see the new technology, and to reconnect with colleagues in the industry.” Those results are harder to directly link to a single marketing activity, but go directly to awareness of your event, which is driven by all of your integrated efforts combined.

     

    Strong, consistent research can help pin down what efforts are working the hardest, and you can use the data to reallocate resources in your budget to take advantage of certain triggers, and drive incremental growth in the short term. But real, sustainable growth is a long-term commitment of time, effort, and resources to contain and drive momentum year over year, and requires constant testing and reinvestment to show results.

  • Big Data VS Privacy – Who Wins, Marketers or Consumers?

    Big Data VS Privacy – Who Wins, Marketers or Consumers?

    In daily practice, good marketing, at it’s heart, is an attempt to get inside the head of as many people of a certain type as possible, and suggest that they take an action – buy something, become aware of something, donate to something, tell a friend about something. Maybe not the cleanest definition, but its functionally accurate.

    To do the best job we can, we use primary research on behalf of our clients, to learn the thoughts, feelings, emotional triggers and preferences of their customers, so that we can showcase their products, services of ideas in the best possible light, at the best possible time, using the most effective media to deliver that message.

    That research involves asking a lot of direct, probing, emotionally-driven questions of hundreds of people per client, and if you include surveys, that number soars into the hundreds of thousands over the years. Most people enjoy taking our surveys or talking to our staff on the phone, for a couple of reasons. We explain that their individual responses will not be used to sell them anything, ever. We explain that, together with hundreds of other people’s opinion, their opinion will help shape new products and services, and tailor them to their needs and preferences, making them better suited for them. We explain that they have a right to privacy, and that their individual responses will not be connected with their name directly, that their name or other information will not be sold to anyone, ever. With those assurances in place, people feel secure enough to share good, solid accurate insights with us and they help us do a better job. Everybody wins!

    Big Data gathering apparatus, on the other hand, offer no such assurances. Has the clerk at the grocery store register ever asked if you’re OK with them collecting your shopping data? Has the clerk at Target ever asked if you’re comfortable with them collecting data on what you buy, how often and when? Even though it might be buried in their user agreement, the folks at facebook or Snapchat have never made a point to call and ask you if they can share your data with Macy’s, nor has a representative from Google ever called you to ask if they can shadow your search patterns with that ad for that great bag or cool phone cover you found while shopping, and that seems to mysteriously follow you around the Internet for the next few days. You gave them the information freely, but you didn’t think it would affect you directly and immediately.

    There’s nothing inherently wrong with using data that is given voluntarily. The difference between gaining insight from research and using data to help capture the consumer directly is that feeling of invasion of privacy. Its hard to quantify a feeling of invasion, its even hard to describe accurately and reliably, as it differs from person to person. Its sort of like the supreme court’s definition of pornography – you just know it when you see it.

    So where does it cross the line between legitimate research to gain insight, and data manipulation to gain data on an individual basis? In our practice it starts with respondent awareness – we make sure our intentions are well known and easily understood by each respondent, and we record the conversations as a reference, asking them on tape if its OK to ask them questions, understanding that their responses will be used only in aggregate, will be anonymized, and won’t be sold to anyone. That assurance provides them some transparency to the process, and the recording helps us validate that we’ll keep our word.

    Data privacy is a growing issue, and as the data gathering apparatus represented by social media, retailers, payment processors, and marketers grows in size and sophistication, it will be an even larger issue going forward. Add increased use of mobile devices, increased web mobility and app utility, the growing capabilities of nefarious hackers and data thieves, and its easy to see these two elements, privacy and data research, colliding in a cataclysmic revolt every bit as transformative as the French Revolution.

    As marketers, we’re often accused of leading the data parade, and our Orwellian need to keep tabs on what people buy, what they register for, what they watch and what they say to each other is what drives all this privacy invasion and leads to breaches and leaks of personal ID information. This is largely an emotional reaction, unfocused and poorly reasoned. I need only point to the conundrum that when purchasers were asked to fill out an order form and include a credit card number, drop it in an envelope and mail it off to an unknown person, they have no trouble, but when asked to provide that same information over the telephone, have great trepidation about revealing those same 16 digits, and an even higher level of distrust about completing a form with that same information online. Much easier to snag that envelope out of your mailbox than it is to set up the apparatus to capture that info, decode it and decrypt it from a phone call or online.

    Marketers are facing a crisis if faith, of trust, because a few of us have abused consumer trust in the legitimate use of their information to gain market insight. Good marketing is based on research, and good research is based on trust. That pyramid is likely to collapse if data ethics and security are not rigidly observed, safeguards put in place, rules and guidelines observed religiously, and procedures followed closely in our handling of consumer data, no matter how it is obtained – if not, it won’t be much good anymore.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • To Provide a Positive Customer Experience, You Have To Know What They Want

    To Provide a Positive Customer Experience, You Have To Know What They Want

    In some ways the modern brand ambassador marketer’s job has changed focus in recent years. Recently, its not so much about informing or enticing the buyer, it’s about delivering on a promise and providing an “experience” to go with the transaction. In our experience, we’ve found it difficult to create and provide an enticing customer experience if you don’t have a rock-solid grip on what the customer really wants and will respond to from your brand and your product.

    This getting-to-know-you activity can take a number of forms, but the bottom line is that not only is your customer base a dynamic entity, ever changing, growing in need and sophistication, shifting in it’s preferences and requirements, but is composed of an ever-transient population, because most data, especially transactional data, is static, it’s a snapshot of the group at that particular moment. In order to avoid this, smart companies with the long-term view have devised and implemented a system for driving ongoing customer feedback, interaction and input that lets the company keep a finger on the pulse of it’s customers. Once that pulse has been taken, an environment, an experience can be crafted and replicated for each customer that resonates in a positive, energetic fashion.

    In the retail world, customer experience is often focused on the physical environment – rack height, sight lines, lighting, merchandise selection and placement, shelf space allocation, aisle configuration to drive traffic down high-profit aisles, signage digital and otherwise, music, even scent, are all priority considerations. The digital realm of retailing doesn’t offer those aspects, at least not yet, but they have their own “experience” concerns. Eye-tracking, navigation and dwell-times, abandonment of the cart, payment processing glitches, as well as things like color selection, use of white space, imagery, user-interaction studies and the like take the place of lighting and shelf space concerns. But the experience in both cases goes beyond the physical environment in which the shopping occurs.

    Customer experience has to do with the initial engagement (how you already feel about the company and the purchase before you even get there), to the initial contact (are you greeted sincerely at the door, are you made to feel welcome, do they even HAVE what you want), and continues to the shopping and selection phase (do they stock what you want, in your size or color, is it really the item you thought it was, and did the onsite staff assist you in making the selection or a decision between two similar items), through the payment, the upsell, and the return and aftercare phases.

    If somehow all of that goes well, the experience can still be less than perfect – did you FEEL that it was a good experience, did you feel guilty for making the purchase or did you get good justification for the quality/price/value equation of the purchase, among other elements.

    For marketers, especially online marketers, that means you have to have a stranglehold on what your customers value, what parts of that transactional chain they value most highly, how they prefer to be approached and what their ultimate goal is in making the purchase – a tall order for a couple of images and a screen or two of product description. But good research can answer those questions and save the day.

    Know the customer, show your interest through offering an accurate engagement and a welcoming, familiar presence, and carry through on the promise, and the customer experience will be a positive one.

    For more thoughts on how important research and customer engagement are to successful marketing, a FREE white paper on customer engagement is available at www.Granite-part.com just for the asking.

  • 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 . . .

  • So, I’ve Got All This Data . . . Now What?

    So, I’ve Got All This Data . . . Now What?

    Marketing industry media, and more recently mainstream media have latched on to the term “Big Data” as the next big thing due to the huge impact all the computer communications and digital signal data can have via tracking internet traffic. It has reached the point that you can’t open a blog, a magazine or newspaper without seeing it mentioned in a headline, often in conjunction with subject only thinly related to marketing. Some are related to privacy and identity data, which is a legitimate concern when all your personal information is digital and flying around through the air every time you take a phone call or text your friends. But the use of transactional and biographical and search data to custom craft messages and actively serve digital ads online has been around for the last five years, or more depending on how you qualify the description, (remember AOL, and their MyAOL product that showed you ads from places you’d visited in the last week? 1998!)

    But unfortunately, big data is here to stay, not just the next big, shiny thing on the marketers tactical menu. Our personal, transactional, and biographical data, (medical, too, if you dig nefariously) is available for the taking, asking, renting, or hacking, and can and will be used against you in a court of law . . . Everything you text, tweet, post, share, like, friend, check-in and play is held on a server somewhere, virtually forever, and if mankind invented a way to store and secure it, man can find a way to get at it for other purposes. Certainly adds food for thought as you’re browsing those facebook posts that lead who-knows-where, killing time on the phone waiting to pick up your kids or in the doctor’s waiting room.

    Used properly, ethically, and strategically, the use of big data to mine and prospect for customers should be nearly invisible, and indeed will create welcome and well-timed information that is relevant to you and that you will actually use and enjoy. It’s when corporate marketers use these sophisticated tools with less-than-complete understanding, and don’t want to put the safeguards in place, to put in the effort and human intelligence to remove the obvious mismatches any such algorithm will inevitably create. That’s when the problems start and people get in trouble.

    If your company has a a sizable database, a well-trafficked website, and a social media and web presence of any size, you have or can gather a vast treasure trove of data on your visitors, casual and otherwise. The question then becomes not “How do I get this data,” but “Now what do I do with it.” The real task here is to use groups, sets, trends and responses in that data to build an outreach or nurturing program that will provide your customers and prospects with a positive, relevant, valued experience. Such a program will allow you to engage them in a positive way that puts your brand in the best light and make them feel comfortable and engendered to your products and services, to the point where they buy them over and over again.

    Call it trust, call it security, call it safe harbor, to whatever degree your customers feel they need to feel comfortable buying from you, you need to show them that you will provide it, including how you use their data – mistrust of data use leads to mistrust of transactional security, which leads to avoidance, in a strange death-spiral of aversion that makes it hard to retrieve a customer who’s been caught in this web of misappropriation of your personal information. You play that card 100,000 times a month, and see how many customers you have left . . .

    One of the best safeguards against this, for the marketer, is to start slowly, put the relevant safeguards in place, play them up, in fact, compared to your competitors – you want to own it, especially in the beginning of your big data journey. You want to highlight your security in a way that shows you care about and for your customers. People will endure unimaginable, tedious routines and log-in scripts to avoid having their data end up somewhere unintended – anyone who’s flown on an airplane in the last decade instinctively knows this.

    Build up your data use slowly, carefully, cautiously, so that it makes sense to achieve the outcome you want – happy, engaged customers in growing numbers, recommending your products and services to their “friends” and families, because they are secure in the knowledge that buying from you won’t lead to any surprises later. Trust is a fragile thing, handle it with care . . .

    If you like this train of thought and want to jump on board, or if you think I’m full of it, let me know, I’d like to hear from you in the comment box below.

  • Free Product Development Assistance – Just Ask Your Customers

    Free Product Development Assistance – Just Ask Your Customers

    We’ve long been a proponent of the use of primary customer research to guide and inform marketing activity, because it makes so much sense to simply ask your customers or members how they would like to receive communications from you, in what form that communication should be, and what the focus of those communications should be. “Give the people what they want” is something of a mantra around here, and it has been very effective for our clients, driving solid member growth, higher retention rates for non-profits, and smarter customer interaction, higher engagement levels and higher customer loyalty levels for commercial businesses.

    Taking that a step further should yield even better results – don’t just ask customers how to market to them, ask them how they want the product or service to look, feel, be delivered and how it should function! Bringing your customer input into the business stream at the product development level can offer stellar results, and not doing it can deliver disastrous consequences.

    Imagine pouring your blood, sweat, and tears, not to mention scads of time and money, into developing a product based solely on secondary market research – other products on the market, SWOT analysis, competitive scan, staff intelligence gathering and R&D imagination, then getting all the way to the sales pipeline and discovering that no one really likes or wants the product as it is. Heartbreaking, sure, but also damaging to the brand, the company, the bottom line, and the credibility of the company for potentially years to come.

    But, ask some key questions ahead of time, toss in a focus group or two, build some inexpensive prototypes (for products of a certain size and price point) by 3D printing or other inexpensive method, and see how actual users react, how they interact, how they approach using the product, and you can build a fully-viable product, well-suited to it’s intended target market. You get it right the first time, spend less on marketing costs, and can scale up with confidence, knowing that the product has a viable, receptive market.

    Yes, we know this doesn’t work for every product or service. We can’t very well have experimental pharmaceuticals out there floating around in a focus group and having the participants dropping like flies because they determined their own dose, and having the astronauts test the rocket on their own prior to building it can be expensive, and a little dangerous. But for many products, and a significant number of service businesses, a little primary research and customer input before the launch will save a huge number of missteps and headaches, and make the launch a bolder, more confident, less anxiety-racked event.

    Based on some of the products I’ve seen out in the marketplace recently, the phrase “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over” seems to resonate with inventors and product originators more often than ever, and in the rush to market, many seem to have ignored the mistakes of others in the past regarding assessing the needs, wants and preferences of the marketplace. With broad-spectrum consumer research an inexpensive option due to newly developed technology, there’s no excuse not to do it right the first time, and have nailed down your customer’s needs before the product ever hits the shelves.

    Do you agree? Let me know in a comment if you’ve discovered any new products or services you’ve seen where you thought “Who were they thinking would buy this?”

  • NEW STUDY RELEASED: SHOWS NON-PROFIT BRANDS HAVE MORE POWER THAN THEY THINK

    NEW STUDY RELEASED: SHOWS NON-PROFIT BRANDS HAVE MORE POWER THAN THEY THINK

    Granite Partners’ Study Shows Brand Power Underestimated, Suggests that Relevance Key to Engagement

    Sparks, MD – Non-profit member-driven organizations may have more brand power than they are aware of, and can potentially use that power to leverage the launch of new products and benefits to members, according to a new study released today in a white paper by Granite Partners, LLC, a Maryland-based marketing consulting firm.

    In a small study conducted among over 60 non-profit membership organizations, professional trade associations and professional societies, brand awareness, brand value and power among their constituencies was studied with respect to member engagement, with some surprising results. Such organizations have been struggling in recent years on the whole with finding and keeping members, and having a difficult time opening new member sectors or keeping them alive.

    This study, while too small to paint the industry with a broad brush, suggests that when these organizations fully engage their members, their brand has the viability and trust needed to successfully offer new products or benefits to their current members, and enough relevance to recruit and keep new members as well.

    “Based on our work with these groups over thirty years, we found that we had consistently asked them the same questions over time, and in looking at the answers, we noticed some significant differences between how these non-profits gauged their own brand awareness and power, and how their constituents and members gauged that same power. These organizations have been underestimating their own importance to members, and the level of trust they’ve built up over the years in their brand. Many of them can be leveraging that difference to recruit and retain new members, open new segments, “ notes David Poulos, principal of the firm and author of the study.

    The White Paper outlining the study results, “Customer Engagement: The Science of Getting From “I See it” to “I Want It”” was released today, and is available digitally upon request. To receive a copy of this informative paper, send a request to:  dpoulos@granite-part.com .

    David Poulos, has over thirty years of marketing experience, ranging from private enterprise, state and federal government, non-profit and charitable organizations. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing Communications from Northeastern University, Boston, MA, and has effectively served as Director of Membership Marketing for the National Grain and Feed Association, as Director of Marketing Communication for the National Printing Equipment Manufacturers Association (NPES), Director of Marketing for the National Court Reporters Association, and as a consultant to a host of other non-profit clients including: American Institute of Aeronautics and Aviation, Community Associations Institute, Electronic Retailing Association, Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association, National Assn. Retail Pharmacists, National Association of Wholesale Druggists, National Geographic Society, National Grain and Feed Association, National Information Corp., and the National Society of Professional Engineers.

    Mr. Poulos has published over 20 articles on a variety of marketing topics in nationally published magazines and websites, is the author of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes,” has published over four year’s worth of weekly blog articles on non-profit and commercial marketing, management and customer service best practice, has been quoted as an expert in articles appearing on Fox News Small Business and MSN Main Street Business websites, was featured in the Global Edition of Who’s Who of Marketing Executives, and is a former board member and President of the Sales and Marketing Executives international, and is a member of ASAE, DMAW.

    For more information on Granite Partners, visit www.granite-part.com , or