Customer World

From product conversation to passion conversation

It's always interesting to see how marketers struggle to gain the attention of customers. Even after spending big bucks on marketing/promotions, some products catch the attention and some don't . This led me to think what makes customers lap-up certain product concepts even if they don't buy it the first time but how does one create a buzz that goes around it which enables others to make their decision faster. Here's an interesting perspective on the same topic:

If you want people to talk about your product or service, you need to ratchet up one of these three traits. Consider a 360-year-old Finnish company named Fiskars, which makes orange-handled scissors. If ever there was a viral-marketing challenge, it's scissors -- a product with all the sizzle of a RAM upgrade. Brains on Fire, a brand-identity firm based in South Carolina, helped Fiskars find the emotion. "We knew we had to move from a product conversation to a passion conversation," said Spike Jones, the firm's "firestarter." Jones and his colleagues realized there was one community that was indeed passionate about scissors: arts and crafters. They found four arts-and-crafts zealots and christened them "Fiskateers." Then Brains on Fire asked the Fiskateers to select additional compadres who would support other people in their crafting hobby. (Notice the added public-service element.) Since the project launched, there has been a 600% increase in online mentions of the Fiskars brand. (I had covered this in my previous blog post)

Start thinking about emotion, public service, and triggers.

Step # 1: People are emotional. If you can get them to either agree/disagree, love/hate, join/oppose your messages they tend to get involved. Your marketing efforts need to appeal to them to do that. Also, you need a method to know your believers and disbelievers by name and contact - a database. Then, build a one-to-one dialog with them.

Step # 2: People want to contribute Remember, people always want to give back something to the community. When you let them know you are the catalyst for the same, they tend to align with your products or brands. Include that in your marketing efforts, they tend to feel good and talk about their contribution to others and hence about your product or brand.

Step # 3 People want the right triggers  Not always, everybody wants to do the talking. But they definitely do so when there is a trigger. For example, green and energy efficiency, acts as triggers to get people to talk to each other about their contribution to this environment by buying products that are energy efficient. Or getting somebody to use or try your product before others( a preview) or a test your product before the launch encourages chatter as a trigger.

If you don't treat customers as " transactional" elements of your marketing efforts but as "emotional" absorbers of your messages, it can work a long way in gaining a passionate dialog about your products/brands leading to higher conversion and market share.

Great marketing is great storytelling

Tom Asacker writes about the fact that great marketing is all about brilliant story telling. In my view, it is extremely true. Just go back and think about the companies, products or brands that you remember. You will have a great story to tell. It could be an interaction, a product experience or even some small incident that caught your attention. Take a look at what Tom has to say and the key question that you should ask yourself, when you are marketing your brand is -"Do I have a great story to tell?"

Great marketing is great storytelling. All great religions are sold via storytelling, or parables as they are often called in Christianity. This is a good strategy; people are inherently interested in stories, whether in films or novels or, even, brands. The problem is that the stories often go untold. If you're still a skeptic, let me tell you some amazing stories you've never heard about some very well-known companies and brands. Let's start with the world's largest company.

Wal-Mart: Founded by Sam Walton in 1945, this company now has 1.3 million employees and is the largest retailer in the world. While everyone knows about its low prices, very few know the story behind them. To deliver these prices, the company uses some amazing technology and computer systems. It encourages suppliers to shrink package size to reduce shipping weight to save money; it buys local produce to avoid transportation costs. Sam's Club buys coffee directly from growers to avoid costly middlemen. The company works hard to save people money, but it's a story never told.

Southwest Airlines: Herb Kelleher set out to launch a different kind of airline. He flew out of secondary airports as a way to avoid costly hubs. He flew point to point so his customers didn't have to change planes. He flew only one kind of airplane to reduce training and maintenance costs. He decided not to have expensive, lousy food. This saved money so customers could go to a better restaurant when they arrive at their destination. He replaced costly reservations systems with re-usable boarding passes. Herb turned the airline industry upside down, but it's a story never told.

SKF: This is a 100-year-old Swedish company that has quietly made an enormous difference in the way the world runs. Year after year, it has come up with new innovations in its family of bearings, large and small. Its basic technology can be summed up in a simple motto: "Making things run better." Efficient machines use less energy than inefficient machines, and SKF's innovation has made it the world's leader in bearings. It's a story never told.

Betty Crocker: This is a lady you'll still find in spirit out at General Mills, working in her kitchens. Years and years of recipes, cake mixes and prepared food of all kinds have emerged from these kitchens. (You can even have a kitchen tour if you want.) Betty has forgotten more than Martha Stewart ever knew about cooking. It's a story never told.

Papa John's: Not that many years ago John Schnatter was making pizza in his uncle's store. He was buying his pizza sauce from Dino Cortopassi, the gentleman that supplied sauce to most of America's small, independent pizza restaurants. Since many were Italian, they appreciated Dino's real Italian fresh-packed sauce. Since there was a limit to how much sauce he could pack, he didn't sell to the big chains. But John decided to become a big chain and Dino kept selling him his sauce. Meanwhile, the big chains continued to re-manufacture sauce from concentrate. That sauce is the cornerstone to John's motto: "Better ingredients. Better pizza." It's a story never told.

Marketing is content - Part II

Continuing with my thinking on this topic, NY Times has interesting article that further reinforces this thought:

Behind the shift is a fundamental change in Nike’s view of the role of advertising. No longer are ads primarily meant to grab a person’s attention while they’re trying to do something else — like reading an article. Nike executives say that much of the company’s future advertising spending will take the form of services for consumers, like workout advice, online communities and local sports competitions.

“We want to find a way to enhance the experience and services, rather than looking for a way to interrupt people from getting to where they want to go,” said Stefan Olander, global director for brand connections at Nike. “How can we provide a service that the consumer goes, ‘Wow, you really made this easier for me’?”

Traditionally, the “service” provided by advertising was cheaper media content for consumers. But the services of the future may be virtual workout coaches, map applications for cellphones, health advice and matchmaking services.

I think this kind of content fused with enriched data( on what customers use as a service, which will arise out this content) will drive the future of marketing. 

Marketing is content

I just love this thought by John Jantsch on how marketing today is all about content.  I can't agree with him more. Marketing is no more about messages, no more about offers, no more pushy about sales messages. It's transforming into a world of content. That's really what consumers want to read, enjoy and absorb.

While he has focussed on small business and their needs, I think there is a bigger thought for even large companies.

If you have a product, find out what content can you create around it?

He talks about the concept of creating mixed media content and how businesses need to adapt to provide such content to their prospects. He writes" Now when a surfer goes to a search engine looking for content they may find local directory results, images and video mixed into the organic results. If you aren't producing these types of content you may find it tougher to compete."

To me again, this is just not restricted to the web. It's applicable to every form of media - TV, Radio, DM, E-mail, telemarketing etc.

Next time , if you don't have content around your product, don't start marketing!!

Google Widgetvertising

Google today is launching a new effort to turn widgets into ads. A select group of brand advertisers are working with Google on special Google gadgets (widgets) that iGoogle users can place on their Google homepage.

What are Gadget Ads?

Gadget ads can incorporate real-time data feeds, images, video and much more in a single creative unit and can be developed using Flash, HTML or a combination of both. Designed to act more like content than a typical ad, they run on the Google™ content network, competing alongside text, image and video ads for placement.

See some examples here.

Is it customer or consumer?

The word customer and consumer is used interchangeably today.What's right? Should we, as marketing folks, understand where to use customer or consumer? Susan has some interesting take on this:

My real problem was that I'd crossed over from a world where the buyers of your services have individual names (financial services), to a world where the buyers of your goods are largely a nameless mass (most consumer products).

What's the difference between a product and a service, really?

Here's a nice definition for a service:

"Any act or performance offered that is essentially intangible and does not result in ownership of any thing"    - Prof. Brian Engelland, MSU

You are dealing with a service when...

[1] Production and consumption are hard to separate. Examples: travel, investments

[2] Intangibles form a large part of what is being purchased. Examples: insurance, consulting

[3] There is no change of ownership. Customers typically rent a service, rather than owning it. Examples: credit card or loan, hotel room

[4] A sale that does not happen today cannot be recovered in the future. Examples: empty seats in a theatre, lost interest on a mortgage

[5] Customers must evaluate the purchase decision with few tangibles to go on. Examples: health care

[6] Output quality is variable, and depends on the performance of individuals. Examples: Hair styling, interior decorating, surgery

[7] Manner of dress, body language, and expressed language form part of the brand experience.  Examples: air travel, retail banking

[8] Cycle of purchase is repeated through 'rental payments'. There is no smooth movement through a consumption cycle, and there are frequent 'moments of truth'.  Examples: health club membership, anti-virus software rental, weight-loss groups

[9] Employees behavior and knowledge is central to delivery and quality. Examples: financial planning

[10] The memories of the experience may be as important as the experience itself. Examples: vacation travel, theme parks

[11] There are high degrees of customer contact during production. Examples: health care, spa services

[12] Competing offerings may differ in how much of the work of production is shifted to the buyer.  Examples: online brokerage vs. full service, self-serve vs. full service gas station

[13] Suppliers assume real economic risks (exceeding the revenue potential) by choosing a given customer. Some interested customers must be rejected. Examples: credit cards, insurance, auditing

[14] Customers assume real economic risks (exceeding the fee paid for the service) by choosing a given supplier. Examples: mutual funds, home insurance

[15] Everyone calls them clients, users or customers, rather than consumers

So now you know. There you have it. Try to keep your customers and your consumers straight now, okay?

Learning customer loyalty from Apple

Inside CRM has a very nice and insightful post on how Apple creates loyal customers. No points, no cards - just pure, enriching experiences and great products. Here are a few that I liked the most:

A store just for Apple:Apple has historically been troubled by big-box sales staffers that are "tragically ill-informed" about its products, a problem that made it difficult for Apple to set its very different products apart from the rest of the computing crowd. By creating a store strictly devoted to Apple products, the company has not only eliminated this problem but has made an excellent customer-loyalty move.

Complete solutions: Apple's products complement and complete each other. Buy an iPod, and you can download music via iTunes.

Media fodder:Apple gift wraps news stories that are just begging for speculation and hype. By perpetuating this cycle of media frenzy, Apple reminds its customers that they're excited about buying new Apple products now and in the future.

New innovations:By giving customers an opportunity to employ Apple in their living rooms, pockets and offices, Apple makes it easy to stay loyal to a brand they already like.

Future of Marketing

Here's a nice quote from Todd Watson of IBM:

"Trackable, slicable, diceable, inferenceable, correlative, targeted digital advertising and communication based on explicit consumer expressions (search queries, online viewing, online shopping behaviors, etc.)  is the future of marketing. It's not just about the eyeballs anymore.  And increasingly, it's going to be all about the data"

TiVo of the Online World

NY Times has an article on whiting out of ads in the online world thro' a software called Adblock Plus, very much akin to TiVo in the offline world. Adblock is an open source software and has already over 2.5 million users!! Here's an example of how a whole business model of advertising will get hiccups with applications such as this in an online world.

The key point however to me is that in an online world the traditional model of advertising based on interruption, will not work. Else, consumers will take control and reject them with applications like Adblock plus. Hence, the old world form of communication - banners, emailers belong to the Advertising 1.0 world. SEM, SEO are at least a lot more contextual but even these will have to evolve as they will become blindspots in some time.

However communication in the online world will have to change from "Informing" to " Entertaining". Hence, we will need a lot more "Content thinkers" rather than "creative Copywriters/Art directors" who are trained to "sell" products or develop "messages". Consumers will consume content that's interesting, involving and participative.It's got to have some gossip value, surprise value, upgradable value to consumers so that they can pass it along with their comments or inputs. To me the more I think, the online model of communication has to have a mix of  TV programming, TV commercials, event marketing, promotions, traditional DM rolled into one.

It's got be as "unadvertising" as possible. I guess only that format will lead to a lot more believability, credibility, have some retention value in consumers' minds and will not be blocked!

In the online world, we need to forget the word " Advertising" and think "Contentization" .

Which promotions do consumers trust?

There's an emarketer report on what US adults find worthwhile and trust when it comes to promotions. To me, it's a benchmark of how consumers may see them across different geographies too. Take a look: