Category: Marketing

Brand

The Visible Experience

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Experience counts. I don’t mean work experience, or the kind of wisdom that gives you insight, but the experience your customer (or prospective customer) has interacting with your company. Your customer’s Experience is the heart of your brand, and the heart of your customer’s decision to stay your customer.

Last week, I had two experiences which stood in stark contrast, and reinforced this.

First the good news:

I was invited to join a (relatively) new business-focused social networking service called Visible Path. In order to vet members to some degree, the service requires that your e-mail be a valid, non-spammer, domain (maybe more than that, I don’t fully know their criteria). So when I went to sign up, the site challenged me. The way it was stated caused me to interpret the requirement as the site admin’s desire to make an arbitrary judgment about my worthiness to join. This did not go over well, and I chose to, rather than join, fire off a rather scalding e-mail to the first contact person I could find on their web site. Within 2-3 minutes, I had a response back from Kathleen Bruno, who asked me to call her directly.

I did. She asked me what had cause me to think this, and how they could improve the process. We talked about this for nearly 30 minutes, discussing everything from word usage to my ideas for how to make the sequence friendlier and more transparent (there’s that word again!). She even told me who else in the company would also hear about my feedback.

This conversation turned my experience of Visible Path from one of a company who is clueless about networking (as an exclusive club?) to one that wants to engage users and make a valuable place to connect with others.

The initial experience was not good (I don’t think it’s completely my privacy fanatacism, either). But the response was outstanding. Here’s a company that “gets it.” They seem to care about the experience. They seem to care about making my experience useful, friendly and productive.

I’ve since completed the sign-up process and will be testing this very interesting new social-networking-for-business service to see if all of the cool stuff they offer really helps me (I’ll keep you posted!) (and, I’m not yet a raving fan of the service, but I am a raving fan of Kathleen!)

And now the bad news:

I spent this past weekend in Deerfield, IL. I stayed at the Embassy Suites (it was the designated hotel for the function). For those of you who know the Embassy Suites, you know they offer a reasonable breakfast buffet. Fortunately, this buffet included some hot food, like eggs and pancakes. Unfortunately, it also included cooked-to-order omeletes. Why is that unfortunate? In order to get any hot food at all, you have to wait in the omelet line. And on the weekend, the hotel is not populated with speed-focused businesspeople, but rather throngs of tourists, all clamoring for as much free food as possible (and ordering 4, 5 or more items). The line when I arrived was 45 minutes long. I didn’t wait.

I did, however, run into the manager as I left the line. I suggested that maybe the scrambled eggs could be placed in a chafing dish outside the line – not as fresh, but far more efficient. I made one or two other suggestions as well in my desire to be helpful and point out the error of their ways.

His response? He told me why my suggestions were bad ideas. He told me that my ideas were not what other guests wanted. All of this is probably true (I’m no hotelier, after all). But it left me thinking: This hotel doesn’t care what I think. They offer a generic service, and don’t care if I take it or leave it. (For the record, I’ll be leaving it next time I’m in Deerfield).

My experience of this hotel was one which does not care about its guests, one that does not listen, and one that does not care to improve my experience.

Contrast that to my new friend Ms. Bruno at Visible Path, who cared enough to want my personal experience to be a good one. I’ll be spending time using that service.

As is my habit, I pose the question: How are your customers experiencing your company? Are you sure? And what are you doing to make sure?

After all, Experience isn’t everything. When it comes to customers, it’s the only thing.

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Management

I Am Your Customer!

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Last week, a friend who is new to technology marketing, commenting on key trends said: “SMB [small and mid-size business] is one of the biggest trends right now.” If you’ve been around the technology business for the last few years, you’ve seen it, also. Every company who has traditionally sold to the enterprise (the largest companies, the Fortune 500, Global 2000, etc.) wants to sell to the “SMB.”

An “SMB” is not a trend. A business – any business of any size – is a (prospective) customer. (did I really have to point that out?)

I’ve heard this play out in several companies with which I’ve been associated: Someone contacts the company asking for information. The response is “you’re an SMB – you need to talk to our new SMB department (group, team, whatever).” This is a bit like telling the prospect calling from Buenos Aires to call the Brussels office because “you’re international” (hint: no, they are not – they are domestic; just not in the same country as you).

So let me offer this challenge: Can we please stop calling SMB a trend. Segmenting your market by size is fine – if you can identify unique needs and buying patterns based on size. But the so-called SMB market has always been there. The fact that enterprise-focused companies have been unable to address it is not the problem of the (prospective) customers in that market – it’s the problem of the vendor!

So, please, remember: a small or mid-sized business is not a trend – it is your customer. Act like it.

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Establishment

Adoption Happens

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In his blog last week, Gartner analyst Jeffrey Mann responds to Cisco’s Parvesh Sethi touting the capabilities of Cisco’s IP phones:

I’ve seen quite a few IP phones on people’s desks, and I’m sure that some people are doing innovative things with them. However, I usually see them being used as, well, phones. The phones may have an IP address and lots of great possibilities, but I have yet to encounter anyone who uses even 20% of those possibilities. Most people just pick them up to dial, much as they have been doing for decades.

Am I missing something? I respect Mr. Mann greatly, but I think there’s a point missing from this argument.

Whenever a new – and disruptive – technology arrives, even when it’s widely deployed and the benefits are obvious, the adoption of the most advanced features takes some time (remember your technology adoption life cycle?).

I don’t mean to be cynical here, but let’s face it: If I had an IP phone on my desk, I’d use it to make calls (sorry, I’m with Steve Jobs on this one: the killer app for (cell) phones is still making calls). Given my penchant for playing with tech toys, I’d probably play with all of the advanced features, too. And I’d learn which ones are actually useful for me (not necessarily the same ones for everyone, either). But I’m an “early adopter” and not everyone is – in fact, very few people are.

But the fact that the technology is there, and it’s being marketed and made available means that – if it’s useful – it will eventually be used.

Bringing a disruptive technology to market happens in stages. In order for a majority of customers to understand the technology, it has to fit into the context of something they do today. It can be better and different, but in this case, a phone is still a phone and makes calls and does some other cools stuff.

The important lessons for disruptive marketers: Only when it’s accepted that the disruptive technology can fit into common activities does it get the chance to realize its disruptive potential and begin to change those activities, or obviate them and create new ones.

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Differentiation

A Step in the Right Direction

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On Friday, CNN reported that Saturn dealerships will now have Toyotas and Hondas (and, oddly, Chevys) on hand for customers to test-drive side-by-side with the Saturns they hope you will buy.

While not an uncommon tactic for technology companies (where nearly every vendor produces comparison charts that, while biased of course, compare their product to chosen competitor(s) ), this is new for car dealerships, whose sales tactics have often relied on getting you to make a deal before you ever had a chance to see a competitor’s model (also called pulling the wool over our collective eyes).

Saturn has finally admitted that its customers are going to check out the competition no matter what they do, so why not let them do it right in our shop where we can also engage them in the conversation about why our product is the best. It’s still a tactic to get us to buy before we go to the competitor’s shop, but all they are doing here is avoiding the conversation we might have with the competitor’s salesperson – who most assuredly won’t offer the same level of open comparison.

I might be biased by the fact that I love my Saturn, but I’d say after a few years of taking heavy criticism for some poor tactics and decisions, this one is a step in the right direction – and more importantly one from which all marketers can learn.

How confident are you that, when seen side-by-side with the competition, your customer will choose your product? (if you’re not, then you should think hard about changing your product!)

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Differentiation

Recursive Differentiation

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In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion. (Author Unknown)

The topic of competitive differentiation has been coming up in quite a few conversations lately. The context is usually a discussion on how to create “sustainable competitive advantage.” A variety of different frameworks are used to describe it, from Michael Porter’s classic to the currently in-vogue.

When I’m asked how to do this, I have only one answer: you can’t. You can (and must!) create both a process and a culture that continuously creates competitive advantage.

There are lots of ways to create competitive differentiation. A better product. More service. Something free. Customer service. Appealing to needs as yet unmet (even with the same product/service). Hire better people. Spend more on R&D. Create a “faster” organization. Lower your transaction costs. I can go on and on…and some of these things will work for a short period of time, and some for longer.

But can you create sustainable competitive advantage? Every single thing you can do can be copied by your competition. Most things can be done better (they can leapfrog you – and will).

There is really only one way to create “sustainable competitive advantage” and that is to sustain the effort of creating competitive advantage. Sound recursive? It is.

I’ll offer a recursive description of this process.

How to create competitive advantage:

  1. Do something disruptive. Create something that will not just frustrate your competition, but that will do the market equivalent of rendering them speechless.
  2. Assume that your competition (known or unknown) has matched you and outdone you.
  3. Based on the position you are in after that assumption, create competitive advantage.

And you know that if you don’t do this, your competition will.

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Buzz

Second Stage Boosters…Ready

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Let me state this as a hypothesis:

new product <> disruption

Or in words, having a new product is neither necessary nor sufficient to create market disruption.

I recently had an interesting exchange with Judi Sohn at Web Worker Daily (a new favorite of mine) about GrandCentral, which gives you a single number that can reach you anywhere you want. GrandCentral is getting quite a bit of attention and generating lots of buzz.

I had to ask: Why? Everything GrandCentral offers, I’ve had from VoicePulse (my VoIP provider) for years. Other than the obvious price (GrandCentral is free, VoicePulse is not), I can’t find anything that GrandCentral can do that VoicePulse can’t. So why is GrandCentral holding the position of “it’s YOUR number – it’s attached to you, not your phone/device/location” which in today’s highly mobile multi-device world is important?

Pretty simple, actually. When VoIP started (VoicePulse, Vonage, 8×8, etc.) the selling point (key message in marketing-speak) was “this works just like your phone”. You got a little box and connected it to your home network. It had a standard phone jack and you connected your phone to that just like plugging it into the wall. You picked up the phone a dialed just like a regular land-line POTS phone.

Sure, you could do all this other cool stuff that got me and my geeky friends all excited, but the mass-market sell was “it’s simple – it’s just like what you do today, only cheaper and cooler”

This is a classic way to sell new technology: First, make it fit the existing model; second, show how it changes the model. GrandCentral is making the move to the second stage of technology adoption.

GrandCentral has taken advantage of the general awareness of VoIP capabilities and the fact that people in the market (mostly early adopters) no longer need to make it work just like their old POTS phone, they want all the capabilities that a network-based service can offer. So GrandCentral has gone to market with the selling point that “you own your own number.” It’s a powerful message, and it appeals to the people who were eager to move to internet telephony and wanted the capabilities to move forward.

Their service isn’t really new or innovative (OK, their exact brand is, but I bought the same exact service 4 years ago), but GrandCentral has turned on the second stage ‘boosters’ and is now moving the market forward – I expect pretty far forward. While for now it’s only the early adopters who will sign up, someone will figure out how to move this to the broader market pretty quickly.

And it is changing that market. Completely.

My question is: will the traditional VoIP providers take advantage of the opportunity to re-take their lead? Or will they, as so many technology companies before them, stand there complaining “but we’ve had those features for years!” – and go nowhere fast while their market escapes them?

What would your company do?

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Marketing

Blocking and Tackling

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There’s just no excuse for fumbling the message.

I’m going to go slightly off-topic today with a little rant about what I think is an absolutely embarrassing ad campaign – one that makes me think the creators have simply forgotten some of the basic principles of marketing, and holds a reminder for me (and I think all of us) that whatever your are doing to be different and innovative – disruptive – you simply can’t forget the basics.

Creating edgy, unusual and attention grabbing TV ads is almost a requirement for many brands. So it came as no surprise to me that when I saw the Comcast ads (there are several series advertising different services) that they played on a slightly warped and unusual sense of humor to attract attention.

But one of these series stood out. The ads are for Comcast digital phone service. One shows a young man who has recently been told by his ex-girlfirend never to call her again. He calls her, trying to convince her that things are different now because he’s calling on his Comcast digital phone service. Of course, she’s not convinced. Another ad shows a man calling tattoo parlor insisting that the tattoo artist can now say “yes” to removing his tattoo because he’s now calling on his Comcast digital phone service. And there are a few others in the series.

Are these funny? Probably (I don’t really find them funny, but I can see how someone in their target demographic might). Are the edgy? Maybe.

But here’s what gets me: The main message of these ads is:

Your horrible, crappy, miserable life will not get any better if you buy our service.

There’s no positive association with the service. There’s no message in that ad about how the service helps or what it does for you. After the vignette, there is a low-price promotion, which makes me think that what Comcast is selling is price, which is fine, but they’ve just told us that we can get to keep our miserable lives by paying less for a service (not really true if you compare phone services).

Is that really the message thy want me to remember? That nothing in my life gets better if I buy from them? Will I really buy a service based solely on the fact that it’s cheap and the ad entertained me for 15-20 seconds? Maybe someone will, but I’m guessing (given the competition in that market) not many. I suppose Comcast thinks enough people will.

My conclusion, the ad is certainly Comcastic! (full disclosure: as a result of a series of horrible experiences with Comcast, what Comcastic! means in my house is rather different from what their marketing department would like it to mean – and here’s some fun reading on Comcast nightmares other than my own).

To my point, stupid marketing tricks like this remind us that as we try to be different, to distinguish ourselves in the marketplace, to use new an innovative techniques to gain attention we simply cannot ignore the basics of marketing. You still have to give your audience a good, positive reason to pay attention, and a good, positive reason to buy from you.

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Engagement

Staring at your navel

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David Armano, author of Logic+Emotion, gives some highlights of a Bain & Co. study.

Executive anxieties about losing touch with their customers is driving higher and higher usage of customer tools such as CRM and segmentation. These tools have moved from below average use to second and third place, respectively, in the 10 years since Bain has included them in the survey:

  • 84% of executives are now using CRM
  • 82% are using segmentation to tailor their marketing programs and offerings to groups of customers who exhibit common patterns of behavior
  • New tools are emerging. Use of loyalty management is at 51%, and the use of ethnographic methods to observe customers in the real world is becoming more mainstream, at 35%. But in 2006, each of those tools rank below average in terms of executive satisfaction.

There’s more on his post.

Don’t mis-read my commentary: I’m not discounting or dismissing the value of CRM or loyalty programs. In fact, I use those and simliar tools to get to know my customers better also. They are valuable, and they are also very consistent with the approach that businesses have long taken to marketing.

But the concern that these executives expressed is that their companies – meaning the people in their companies – are out of touch with their customers.

Which made me think: Are they talking to their customers? or, more importantly, are they listening? and are they listening where their customers are talking? (you can listen to your market research, but does the blog-commentary of your customers tell a different story?)

People who’ve worked with me will know that I am the first to jump into the data. Mine the CRM system. Find new segments and new demographics. Make the data tell stories it never has before.

But there’s a very large element of this data focus that makes me feel like I’m staring at my own navel and drawing conclusions about the world around me. Data can say alot. But data can’t speak for a person. Or a market. Or a community.

I’ve had the privelege to work with some companies where everyone in marketing talks to customers regularly. And so do all of the executives. We still mined the data, but every conclusion we drew, we validated. We asked actual people. We read what actual customers and prospective customers were saying about us in unsolicited ways. We had that very elusive sense of the market.

I’ve also worked with companies where talking to customers is, at best, discouraged and generally never happened. The inevitable result was that there was a lot of talk about how out-of-touch we were, and a lot of hand-wringing about how to get closer to the customer. System were put in place. Data analyzed. But still no one talked to an actual person. In one recent case, the conversation in the blogosphere was discounted as irrelevant.

You can guess which companies were more successful.

Being in touch with your audience matters. Data matters. Research matters. But unless you have something interesting to say, and can engage your market community in conversation, all the data in the world will just leave you staring at your collective navel.

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Engagement

Engaging Conversation

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From the Business Week article It’s the Conversation Economy, Stupid

Marketers are finding themselves in an increasingly frantic race to get people talking about their brands. The desire to produce something “viral” is nearly ubiquitous in the marketing world. But it’s unclear who exactly “consumers” are these days. We don’t even know what that word means any more. Can consumers be producers? Yes. Can they be users? Yes. Can they be active participants, members of niche communities, or even critics capable of effectively mobilizing others? Yes, yes, and yes.

The article goes on to talk about the “2.0” technologies that are changing the nature of the conversation (and yes, includes Twitter – their marketing folks must be proud!).

Really? I thought the “2.0” tools are making the conversation possible. Looking at this from the perspective of a marketer, the “2.0” tools are making it possible for consumers to become producers (of content at the least) and participants. They allow us to “hear” from our market not only in new ways, but to hear things that just 10 years ago we could not hear at all. Reading blogs about your product (and hoping it’s not on the yourproductsucks.com blog) gives you a perspective you could not have had just 10 years ago.

Yes, markets are conversations. It’s the buzz phrase of the week, but it’s been true before this week, and will be true after next week.

The fact remains, when I meet a new friend, I hope the conversation is engaging. As when I meet a new member of my market community, I hope that what I have to say is interesting enough to be engaging.

The point being that the conversation is important, but the conversation has to be engaging. You still must engage your community, your market, your potential customer.

The difference is that now we have to do it by actually being interesting. Being bright and shiny just isn’t enough. Are you saying something interesting?

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