Archives for category: Marketing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The Internet and Inferiority

December 1, 2014 //
0

Years ago, we used to read about the people whose exploits in a certain field brought them fame and fortune. They inspired us and encouraged us to get to their heady heights.

If we were lucky, we got to see them do what they were the best at, and if we were really lucky, maybe we got to actually meet them once.

Then we got to listen to them or watch them on electronic devices as they made the ridiculously difficult look easy. We were more regularly exposed to the greatness of modern day gladiators, the greatness that we admired but didn’t yet have.

Nowadays, the Internet assails us with a 24/7 bombardment of greatness, or people claiming greatness. It’s especially true in business, where you hear success stories in sales, marketing, technology and social media – and they’re simply the ones I tend to see – on a more or less constant basis. Of course, the people getting all the lion’s share of the attention are the leaders in their field, or they’re doing a very good job of moving in that direction. They are today’s business heroes.

It’s easy to get an inferiority complex when you’re swamped by information from people who seem to be better than you at what you do. They must be better, right, because it’s here for all to see?

I try to stay focused on what I’m doing, learning from the great ideas out there, and trying things that are proven to have worked, but mostly staying true to my own instinct and my own path.

The Internet is an amazing, inspiring mechanism, but it can also be a hugely distracting and detracting one.

Tags , ,
Categories Communication, General, Marketing, Sales

Still Looking, Still Striving

November 28, 2014 //
0

There is a terribly famous song by U2 called ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.’ Those of you – and I count myself among you – who don’t live to work, as opposed to work to live, may well identify with the lyric in the song.

I know people who go through an entire life without finding what they’re looking for career-wise.  Are their lives the lesser for it, do they feel unfulfilled as a result? No and no, at least they shouldn’t.

Searching for perfection in life, in work, in every single project or activity you turn your hand to, is an important means in itself, not a means to an end.

It’s unlikely we can achieve true perfection in anything, nor is it healthy or productive to try beyond a certain point, but it’s the looking for perfection, the striving for what we think the end goal is, that keeps us improving, keeps us working, keeps us alive even. Hunger for the new, the next big thing, stops us standing still and sustains the quality in the work we do.

Tags , ,
Categories Communication, General, Marketing, Sales

It’s All in the Prep

November 26, 2014 //
0

When I’m preparing to write anything significant, I spend a disproportionately large amount of time deciding on the outline for it. Often I will then write the introduction, and then the conclusion, before turning to the body of the document. I find that if I don’t spend a good amount of time on the planning, and I cut corners, then it takes me correspondingly longer to finish the document. This is because I haven’t thought it through properly and it doesn’t have the right structure or flow. It doesn’t hang together nor is it convincing.

It’s all in the preparation. Cooking, doing an important presentation or speech, tackling an essay at school, there’s a feeling of release – or is it relief – when you’ve done the prep, or built the outline. It feels like half the battle and you know you’re on solid ground from hereon in. The rest follows more easily, hanging comfortably on the framework of a solid beginning, middle and end.

Does this mean I’m denigrating the benefits or merits of spontaneity? Not really. There’s so much to be said for going with the flow and sometimes the best of times come from spur-of-the-moment behaviour. It all depends on the situation :-).

Tags ,
Categories Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy

The Power of Reviews

November 24, 2014 //
0

Whenever we didn’t know how to do something, or we had to make a significant purchase, or we were going somewhere new, or in fact we were about to do anything for the first time, our first recourse was to ask somebody else. We’ve always respected the opinion of others, because we valued their perspective on things more than the perspective of someone we didn’t know, especially when that someone we didn’t know was selling us something. This is natural, they haven’t earned our trust yet. ‘I don’t know you, which means I don’t trust you – yet.’

In these days of web 2.0, social media – in short the ever more connected world – reviews are everything, because now it’s really easy to see our peers’ opinions, and the opinions of a thousand other peers we don’t even know. Yes, we don’t know them, but we tend to trust them because they appear to have a genuine, unvested desire to feed back for their community. Nowadays, thanks to sites like Tripadvisor and Trustpilot, you can’t really game the system.  They have sophisticated algorithms for weeding out the fake reviews, or the self-reviews. It then becomes a numbers game, since anyone with the most basic knowledge of statistics will tell you that the more reviews you have, the more they represent a fair and ‘true’ reflection of the product or service you’re interested in.

With good products or services, with lots of good reviews, a funny psychological thing happens. The reviews enhance our experience before we buy and after the purchase when we’re using it. ‘Gee, I see why this restaurant is number 1 on Tripadvisor, the food’s unbelievable isn’t it?’ It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, the good stuff gets the ‘big mo’ as the electioneering Americans would say and the products appear to get better and better. The converse happens, of course, with the bad stuff.

I bought a book the other day on Amazon. It seemed to fit the bill and it was relatively cheap. I didn’t do much more on it and bought it. When the package arrived I thought there was nothing in it. The book was only 44 pages of large, self-published type. I had been ripped off. Worse still, the preface promised me two free tools to help using the book. When I went online to follow the claim process for my free resources, it was nothing more than a double opt-in email subscription process and I’ve received nothing.

I went back to Amazon and checked the listing for the book. It didn’t detail the page numbers, which is normally the case and which I would usually pick up on as it’s a crude indicator of value for money. I missed it, my bad. Then I went further down the listing and saw that there were no reviews, perhaps because it was relatively new. Caveat emptor, and all that. I realised I had been duped but that it was totally my fault. I had been a fool in a hurry.

When I finish this book, which will take about 40 minutes from cover to cover, I can’t wait to do my review on Amazon.

 

Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

The Comms Rule of One

November 19, 2014 //
0

When you’re communicating with people, it’s tempting to cram in as many messages as possible, because they’re all pretty important. It’s really hard to fit in everything that you want to say about your brand, your logo, your advert and so on.

One thing I’ve learnt over the years is just that, namely one thing. Your audience has nowhere near as much interest in your stuff as you do, and perhaps none at all. So you really only have one chance to get a simple message across.

Try to distil everything you’re trying to do into the single most important thing you want your audience to take away. If you’ve rank ordered the benefits of your product or service, and you still feel you want to talk about the second and third benefits, you need to work harder on the first benefit, until it’s the standout benefit, the thing that makes you genuinely different.

‘What’t the one thing we want them to be aware of, to think, to do?’ You want bank for your buck, not a whimper from your 3 bucks.

Tags ,
Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

Avoiding Complexity

November 17, 2014 //
0

Avoiding complexity is good. No matter how complex your business is, or your life, it pays to strive to avoid complexity. We humans don’t deal well with complexity, which is why a winning approach is to simplify, to reduce, to unify, to distil.

I was reminded of this the other day when travelling. Ireland is a small country, with a few million people. Its infrastructure is correspondingly small, and it’s pretty simple.

I took the train from one side of the country to the other every week for five years. I think it was more than 10 minutes late once or twice in all that time. The coach service is the same. The small number of airports too. The Dublin-based bus service is less reliable, but there are hundreds of buses and tens of services. The complexity thing again.

Then there’s the UK, much bigger, much more populated, and with its hugely complicated rail service and airports. Unreliability is somehow innate. I was flying into Bristol. Did you know that Bristol is the highest airport in the UK? It was built in the second world war for pilots to practice flying and landing in the fog. Well, guess what, it was foggy yesterday, so we tried to land twice and got diverted to Cardiff, in another country.

We then had to take a specially laid on coach to Bristol airport, except that it took us 15 minutes and 3 goes to exit the airport barriers. We drove through the city of Bristol where 75% of the passengers were heading, but didn’t stop as the service was point to point, out-of-the-way airport to out-of-the-way airport. We finally got to our destination 4 hours later than advertised.

Complexity is the problem. When you make things too hard, stuff goes wrong. And who suffers? Your end customer, which means that eventually so will you.

Tags ,
Categories General, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

Customer – The Clue is in the Word

November 14, 2014 //
2

Your business-to-business customer is not someone you can stereotype, commoditise, or shoehorn.

One approach does not fit all. These days it often doesn’t fit more than one.

Within the word ‘customer’ is the word ‘custom’ – as in personalised, made-to-measure. It’s linked to the French word costume, as in made-to-fit.

Think of your prospects and customers as a series of people, each of whom is looking for and expecting a solution from you which is uniquely able to meet their requirements, solve their problems and meet their goals.

 

Categories Customers, Marketing, Sales

More On the Voice of the Customer

October 31, 2014 //
0

I wrote recently, dear reader, on the voice of the customer and its importance for case studies.

I’d like to add to that post here, and improve on it somewhat, I think. When we talk about case studies in the wider context of customer advocacy, we distinguish between the shorter testimonials and larger format case studies. They have slightly different objectives and slightly different audiences – both organisationally and individually – and for that reason they are subject to slightly different best practices.

The testimonial is shorter, punchier, a bit more ‘gushing’ and works best in the voice of the customer – the first person singular or plural – as much as possible. It’s intended for earlier in the buying cycle where evaluators are researching alternative solutions – and solution providers – to their problem.

The ‘proper’ case study is longer, requires more narrative delineating the measured results or outcomes, and works better with a combination of third person accounts and amplifying quotes from the featured customer. You need more reason, more argument and more explanation in it. This kind of document is for further along in the buying cycle where influencers and buyers are getting into the nitty gritty and are seriously judging what you can do for them in their situation.

I should have made that important distinction in my previous post. Silly not to. Perhaps this post, then, should be entitled Moron on the Voice of the Customer instead :-).

 

 

Tags , ,
Categories Customers, Marketing

Voice of the Customer

October 20, 2014 //
2

People you sell to have long since grown tired of your marketing stuff. The adage ‘self-praise is no praise’ comes to mind. Maybe that’s why we’re told as kids not to blow our own trumpet. Graciousness in defeat, humility in victory.

When faced with a problem, the first thing people will do is ask their peers. Have you faced this before? How did you deal with it? Who should we be talking to? Have you used these guys before? Were they worth it? In the networked economy, review portals and social media make this very easy.

When people can’t get they want from their peers, then they seek out the views of other customers. There are various degrees of customer advocacy, from the verbal mentioning of a client, through the use of their logo, a quote, a success story, to a detailed case study and finally the reference site, the customer who will take calls and site visits on your behalf. The greater the degree of advocacy, the harder you have to work to get them. The bigger the company, the more drawn out the process. It’s hard work getting the blue chip reference client, but it’s also worth the hard work.

When you’re preparing a press release about a customer win, or drafting a customer success story of some degree, I advise you to interview the client if at all possible. Sure, you know your key messaging, but it sounds so much better framed in the words of the people who use and benefit from your solution.

Furthermore, do as much of the write-up in the first person, using the voice of the customer to tell the story. It’s more powerful, credible and respectful that way. And, your customer can use it for their own marketing too. You’d be surprised how many see the personal and corporate benefits of being a happy customer.

Oh, and make sure you get the customer to sign off on the words too. Then as long as you don’t change the words you can recycle them at will. They are the gift that keeps on giving.

Tags , ,
Categories Customers, Marketing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »