THINKing

Stop Listening To Your Customers

According to Mark Cuban, you should never listen to your customers. Does he really mean this?

No,  what he is saying is that marketers must take matters into their own hands when it comes to creating a new product or improving an old one. Says Cuban,

I’m working with a company that at one point had a product that was not only best in class, but also technically far ahead of its competition.  It created a better way of offering its service and customers loved it and paid for it. Then it made a fatal  mistake.  It asked its customers what features they wanted to see in the product and they delivered on those features. Unfortunately for this company, its competitors didn’t ask customers what they wanted. Instead, they had a vision of ways that business could be done differently and as a result better.  Customers didn’t really see the value or need, until they saw the product.  When they tried it , they loved it.

He is right, as we have explained here before,

Here’s the truth: Your customers don’t know what they want. And to assume otherwise is folly. When you begin relying totally on customers to be your product development department, you are asking for serious trouble.

I’m not advocating that you stop listening to customer concerns. Au contraire.  Like Cuban, I’m saying that you must ask the right questions of your customers and then figure out what it is that they are really saying. Your customers are smart and can provide some excellent input.  It’s our job as marketers to ferret out the true meaning of that input.

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Put Away The Diamond Ring

It seems to me that many marketers are like the guy overeager to get married. That guy walks up to the first pretty girl he sees and immediately whips out the diamond ring, asking for the order, so to speak.

Marketers who ask for too much information from prospects the first time they meet is guilty of this, too.

I am always cautioning my clients about asking for too much information too soon.

If someone wants to sign up for your enewsletter, it’s OK if you initially just get an email address and a first name. That’s what I recommend. You can give the prospect the option to provide more but I only require those two elements.

As the prospect gets to know you and appreciates the content you are providing, then you can ask for a little more information.Or, if you want to provide them with some increasingly valuable content, then its appropriate to require a little deeper contact information.

FutureNow addressed this topic recently and I loved this line for their post,

Remember, it’s not about you or your sales process. Your visitors are volunteers in the process and are coming to your site with motivations and intent.

That’s dead-on. Those visitors are volunteers, there of their own accord. If you don’t provide them the information they need without asking them to marry you right away, your competition will. So, let’s put away the diamond ring until we are really sure about this whole marriage thing, OK?

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Smart Customers

Your customers are smart, but as marketers, we often misconstrue what they are telling us. We’ve written about this before but thought about it again today when I read a piece by Valeria Maltoni entitled “Your Customers Don’t Know What They Want.” Maltoni says,

Whenever you design a survey, a feedback form, write a phone script – throw away everything you know about your product and service. Your customers and prospective customers are not in your head – they don’t have your same history and assumptions about what you ask. Instead, look to capture the outcome they’re seeking. What job are they trying to do?

 It’s not that customers don’t know what they want, it is that they don’t know the possibilities.

Krispy Kreme gives us a prime example of asking the right questions and actually listening to their smart customers. They didn’t ask the customers what they wanted in a donut. They asked questions that got to the heart of the Krispy Kreme brand experience. Consumer input brought about the “Hot, Now” signs and the drive-through window.

Maltoni suggests that marketers ask questions and listen to customers for,

• indications as to how they’re solving a problem now or thinking through it
• hints that the second answer is where you should focus
• clues as to what gets their hearts racing in addition to their minds going

Listening to your customers is always good, particularly in a reccessionary period.

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Face Time

Some social media proponents would have you believe that the digital world is the new Nirvana. Guess what? Humans – the users of social media – haven’t really changed their behavior in 75,000 years. Although, we do dress better now, and we’re not all cavorting naked on the plains of the Serengeti.

Humans – being human – love social interaction, particularly of the face-to-face variety. Always have, always will. In fact, a recent survey by Forbes indicates that executives favor face-to-face meetings over the virtual kind.

A majority of executives say the recession has cut back their travel and face-to-face meetings, and they don’t like that very much. A full 84% of those surveyed say they prefer real-life interaction over digital.

Although you can’t meet with every one of your online shoppers, you can provide them some human interaction, too  They are craving this. According to an August 2009 survey conducted by Harris Interactive for human-assisted shopping site IMshopping,

77% of US Internet users who made an online purchase in the past six months would be interested in help from a real person before buying certain things on the Web. Though a majority of online shoppers reported a desire for help at least some of the time, 82% of respondents said they had not been able to get that assistance in the past. And more than one-half of that group said it had affected their purchase decision negatively—at least some of the time.

I’m not saying there isn’t a place for virtual meetings and online interaction. I’m just saying that you need to understand the genetic need humans have for the tangible. It’s harder to read people during digital interactions, and you can’t build deep, meaningful relationships solely using ones and zeroes.

The same holds true for tangible marketing material. There is a time and place for everything, and now is the time for you to stand out by being more tangible to your customers and allies.

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Top 5 Tips For Media Selection

Marketers have a wide variety of media at their disposal. Even in this digital age, many think first of the advertising troika of newspapers, magazines and TV. But there are a number of other options depending upon what you are trying to accomplish.

1. Create a sense of urgency. Direct marketing offers that contain a deadline for consumer action can create that sense of urgency that motivates your customer to buy now.

2. Fill in the blanks. Brochures are a great vehicle for providing the detailed information about your product’s many benefits.

3. Be impulsive. Signage speaks to people when they are in buying mode at the point of sale. Besides spurring impulse buying, signs also act as a reminder, connecting the dots to your other marketing efforts.

4. Get interactive. Your web-related marketing efforts can capture a consumer’s attention, direct the prospect to additional information to help educate and answer questions, ask for the business and make the sale.

5. Establish intimacy. Radio is a one-to-one medium that allows the marketer to build a close connection with the prospect.

So, before you select your media, think about what customer action you want to spur.

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Check Please

Let me know if I’m off base here, OK? I got a check from my mother-in-law for my birthday. She has written it on her Wachovia checking account. The good news, I initially think, is that there is a Wachovia branch very close by.  So, I head over and pull into the drive-through.

I drop the endorsed check and my NC driver’s license into the canister and shoot it through the pneumatic tube. Teller comes on and says “Mr. Hoover do you have a Wachovia account?” I tell her that I do not. She says that I will have to come inside the bank and present two forms of identification. “Are you kidding me?” I ask.

“No. We require non-customers to come inside since the drive-through is primarily a service for our customers.”

“Well, I’m guessing your customers wouldn’t want you hassling people they have written checks to. And I’m guessing you don’t want to convert me into a customer if you have that kind of last century policy.”

I left in a cloud of burning rubber, vowing never, ever to utilize a Wachovia – now Wells Fargo – service. I also vowed to tell everyone what I think of Wachovia and their failed policies.

Now, am I off the reservation here? Do you think this is a good policy? Come on, tell me what you think.

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The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same

As the marketing world morphs daily under the influence of new technology, we elders in the business sit back and marvel at how things have changed. Just last night I was talking with Dave Ruggerio and Randy Seeds of Synergy Studios about the pace of technological advance.  We all reminisced about how we used to do things in our first jobs.

For me, the oldest in the group, I remembered using a Royal manual typewriter in my first job as a reporter. Cut and paste was a true manual affair then. You took a straight edge, tore a paragraph out of your story and taped the new paragraph in. Then, you took the story to the typesetter.  In those days, Randy says corporate logos were hand drawn with India ink.

But here’s the point of all this. Technology may have changed, bringing us blogs and social media, but people haven’t changed since we came out of the trees and onto the African plains.

Marketers need to remember that no matter what vehicle you are using to deliver your message, you should set strategy first, then tightly define your audience. It is, after all, the people that matter most in the marketing equation. Once you clearly understand your target audience, the message almost crafts itself. That hasn’t changed and never will. End of sermon.

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Communicating In Tough Times

I didn’t need a new Nielsen study to tell me that a financial institution can improve customer confidence through advertising. It only makes sense. If the bank has the money to advertise, the perception will be, that it has the money to pull through hard times. Could be a totally false perception, but there it is.

The study shows that,

When asked about their own banks, insurance companies and investment firms, 55% of respondents who said they had seen more advertising for their financial institution reported having “complete confidence” in the financial health and soundness of their financial company and only 18% said they had “little or no confidence” in their company. However, among those who said they had seen less advertising, only 18% had “complete confidence” in their financial company and 45% said they had “little or no confidence” in their company. Overall, a minority of respondents said they had “Complete Confidence” in their financial institutions.

So, you see, not advertising leads to the reverse perception that you are on the way out of business. Again, it may not be true, but perception becomes reality.

For a PR guy like me, the best news is that editorial coverage is more important than advertising in communicating the health of a financial institution. Here’s what the study found about factors that would increase confidence in the safety and soundness of their financial institution:

• Reading positive stories in the press about that institution (44%)
• Seeing regular advertising for that institution (25%)
• Receiving regular mail or email offers from that institution (25%)
• Regularly seeing internet offers/advertising from that institution (21%)

This holds true for any business, not just financials. Agree? Let me know.

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Social Nets vs. Email

A new Nielsen study shows that social networks have overtaken email as the most popular online activity. Says a story in Adweek,

Active reach in what Nielsen defines as “member communities” now exceeds e-mail participation by 67 percent to 65 percent. What’s more, the reach of social networking and blogging venues is growing at twice the rate of other large drivers of Internet use such as portals, e-mail and search.

No real surprise there. Email is maturing. It has settled into its niche as an excellent longer-form instantaneous communication tool.

How mature? Friend Mark Harrison and I were discussing this recently. Email has become so mature that spam has decreased in our inboxes. Now, we’re starting to see spam infiltrate social media. When spam arrives, so has your medium. You can learn a lot from spammers. But that is a topic for another day.

Eventually, every medium finds its place. Radio didn’t kill newspaper and magazines. TV didn’t kill radio. The web didn’t kill everything else. I’m still a believer in the power of email, as I’ve said on numerous occasions.

Email is a superb customer retention tool. I think its effectiveness in acquiring new customers is suspect. Smart businesses use email to keep customers informed, reinforce their brand and to drive traffic to stores or their online presence. In 2008, the average return on investment for email was $45 for every $1 spent for an ROI of 4,400%. Sounds like email is working to me.

The best marketers have figured out how to integrate all the communication vehicles. Remember, there is a time and season for all things. Do it right and you win.

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How Touching

Test drive a car, put on some cologne, sample a grande mocha choka double soy half sugar non-fat latte. Seems like someone is always trying to place you in touch with their product. Did you ever wonder why?

Well, now we know. Science Daily reports that if you touch an item – even just for a few seconds – the likelihood of you buying it increases. According to the lead author of the study reported on in Science Daily,

“The amazing part of this study is that people can become almost immediately attached to something as insignificant as a mug,” said lead author of the study James Wolf, who started the work while he was a doctoral student at Ohio State. “By simply touching the mug and feeling it in their hands, many people begin to feel like the mug is, in fact, their mug.  Once they begin to feel it is theirs, they are willing to go to greater lengths to keep it.”

Looks like those car dealers have been way ahead of us. A little test drive and that car starts to feel like your own. Have you thought about ways to get your product or service into the hands of prospects? Tell us about it.

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