Geoff Dillon - Marketing, PR, Strategy Blog

Treat Referrals Like Word of Mouth Marketing...

..because that's what they are.

I'm often amazed when I get a card or small gift from a salesperson I've done business with asking me to make referrals to friends and family.

When you look at referrals as word of mouth marketing, you start to see the things you can and can't do with them. 

You can't ask for referrals and expect to get any just by asking. 

Nobody passes along a mediocre idea or a forgettable product through word of mouth. So why would you ever expect them to do that with your product or service...because you asked?

It doesn't - and has never - worked that way. 

A good idea gets passed along. Great service, products that meet the needs a specific niche, a remarkable brand - these things generate referrals naturally. 

Asking doesn't.

 

What's Hurting Marketing...

...is someone’s always trying to shorten the cycle. To hurry the result. To break through the clutter immediately. To get people to “buy now”.

Marketing by it’s nature is not always that good at the short term. Sure there’s a place for direct response, “buy now” marketing that gives you immediate results, but that only works in the context of some form of broader marketing program that slowly, methodically, deliberately gets your name associated with the position you want in the market. You can't just run an ad an expect immediate results.

Case in point - on the surface things that appear to be short cycle results from marketing really aren’t.

Ron Popeil of the famed direct marketing company Ronco sold millions and millions of dollars worth of merchandise in 30 minute infomercials – think chicken rotisseries, bald spot spray for men, etc.

But at least part of the customer decision to “buy now” within that short 30 minute window was the much longer term brand building that Ronco had done.

While impressed by the sight of a moist juicy chicken spinning around in a Ronco rotisserie, the viewer was thinking “I know that guy, he’s familiar, he’s established, he’s been around. I trust him.” It was those underlying thoughts that allowed the viewer to react to the short term impulse to “buy now”.

As marketing and client interaction increasingly become two way dialogues instead of one way broadcasts, the need to nurse potential customers along the spectrum of a relationship is more important than ever.

The irony here is that the rate of change in the market is faster today than ever before. For some, that translates to the need for marketing to work faster, to deliver results sooner, and make an immediate impact. 

It may feel counterintuitive, but rushing to the “buy now” decision with your marketing can hurt your credibility, and that’s costly in a noisy market where your brand name and identity need to have meaning for people. The world may be going faster, but your marketing may ultimately need to be a bit slower and more methodical to be effective. 

 

 

Throwback Marketing

I admit it - I'm a fan of Pepsi Throwback. It just arrived in Canada and I snapped up a case as soon as I could. In fact I've dropped my usual Coca-Cola on the weekend in favour of Pepsi's retro cola.

But marketing Pepsi throwback is an interesting challenge, isn't it? It's almost like admitting there's something about your current product that isn't as good as it used to be, hence the need to reintroduce an old formula as a "throwback".

In the 80s and I guess part of the 90s, pop was made with real sugar. To save money, major drink manufacturers slowly moved to high-fructose corn syrup. As a teen I didn't really care, but as a responsible grown up I preferred not to drink high fructose corn syrup. That, and the cola just didn't taste as good. 

But now Pepsi from the 80s is back. So what's the message here?

Does it undermine the current Pepsi branding by suggesting that the formula from 20 odd years ago is better than their flagship brand? 

Or is it a harmless line extension that will help sell some cola?

I think it's a bit of both.

Bringing a cola product to market that pushes the "made with real sugar" angle certainly suggests that there's a reason you'd want to have sugar rather than corn syrup. It would be like launching a KitKat bar made with "real chocolate" (slight exageration but chocolate substititues have increasingly shown up in chocolate bars over the years to keep costs down so you're getting a lot less chocolate than you used to.)

And once you switch a cola drinker to the retro product, you'd better be prepared to keep it on the market since you may not get them back if you pull it. They may seek out sugar-based alternatives (the premium "Jones Soda" brand would be one option).

However, Coke currently doesn't offer a sugar-based option so its possible Pepsi will sway some cola drinkers who keep hearing bad things about high fructose corn syrup. 

And, if you assume most current Pepsi drinkers skew younger because of the brand's relentless pursuit of the younger end of the market, a "throwback" product doesn't seem terribly likely to cannibilze sales (teens and 20-somethings don't think much of retro products). 

Should be interesting. In the meantime, I'll keep enjoying a small slice of younger days. 

 

 

The Tourist Trap Paradox

The only way to succeed as a merchant in a tourist destination is to have more and more people wanting to visit the destination. More foot traffic = more opportunities to make sales.

This is why most tourist destinations have tourism boards – to attract foot traffic.

Curious then, that individual merchants often treat tourists as targets to be gouged for maximum short term profit at the expense of longer term benefit.

Case in point - I visited Niagara Falls recently, and was struck by the very overpriced attractions that seemed intent on grabbing whatever money they can from the tourist crowd.

Although I pride myself on being immune to such things, I’ll admit to falling victim to a 15 minute “Spongebob 4-D movie” that cost me almost $60 for two adults and one child. My soon to be brother-in-law had the line of the night when he said "the 4^th D is for disappointment." It didn’t help that the lady selling tickets was dishonest about the quality and length of the show.

And that’s how it is in that town. Each attraction seems hell bent on emptying your wallet.

• - Most of the chain restaurants post menus without prices, knowing that once you’re seated and you see the higher-than-usual prices, it’s less likely you’ll get up and walk out.

- When you ride up the Skylon tower at a cost of about $10 a person, the first question they ask you before you get on the elevator is “how many for lunch” – the assumptive close here refers to making a reservation for you at the top of the tower for lunch, whether you wanted it or not.

The paradox: as a merchant, you spend money to be part of a tourism board to help draw people to town, and then treat them in a manner that encourages them to avoid repeat visits, and tell others about their negative experience, which of course reflects on the town.

You then spend more for your tourism board dues because tourism is down and your revenues are hurting. You charge more to recoup the higher tourism board fees. And so on.

How do you think this cycle ends? What if you and your fellow merchants realized that the person in front you could be a lifetime revenue stream if you all played your cards right?

Tourism a zero sum game. People will spend their money with you, or elsewhere, but they generally have a budget for the year. I’m not arguing for lower prices here. I’m suggesting that treating tourists as clients instead of disposable sources of short term profit would ultimately bring in higher and more sustainable revenues … (and lower tourism board fees).

Repackaging Common Sense for Fun and Profit

There’s money to be made in repackaging common sense and reselling it to the market as wisdom. 

This happens all the time, everyday. For example, a training course is often a repackaging of some common sense information about a topic, which is fed back to participants in the form of a “model” or “approach” to help the topic make sense. But within the model, there’s no single component that is anything but common sense. 

I should be clear that I am not being negative here. Packaging information up so that it can be delivered to people in a format that they will welcome, understand, and even seek out is hugely valuable.

Example - one of the most influential business books of our time could be viewed through this lens. Stephen Covey’s 7 habits series focuses on key areas for self improvement. As a reminder, the 7 habits are:

-    Be Proactive

-    Begin with the End in Mind

-    Put First Things First

-    Think Win-Win

-    Seek First to Understand, then to be understood

-    Synergize

-    Sharpening the Saw

When you look at the concepts presented above in isolation, don’t you think you could have come up with some of these over a coffee? Being proactive, and beginning with a defined goal in mind certainly seem like very common sense tips for making yourself a more effective person. Yet, millions upon millions of people bought the book, making Covey a recognized expert in his field. 

It’s the packaging that makes it work. It’s the relationship between the 7 habits, and Covey’s way of delivering them that create the package that people buy into. When it’s packaged this way, it makes sense to people and gives them a framework to work within, even if there are really no components within the framework that are lightning bolts of insight. 

This has implications for how you approach communicating. It’s not always about inventing a new message. Many times, it’s about making sense of the world around you and giving people a new way to look at what they already know. 

Need a New Product? Simple...

 

Looking for new product ideas is really an exercise in simplification, not complication.

Take OxiClean for example. Brought to fame by the late Billy Mays, OxiClean is billed as a breakthrough cleaner that can get out any stain through the "power of oxygen”.

So how complicated is the formula for OxiClean? Well, it contains sodium percarbonate, soda ash, and a few other common ingredients. That’s it. Nothing was invented to create this breakthrough cleaner. Sodium Percarbonate has been used for cleaning for many, many years, so it’s not like they even discovered a new use for something in creating this product. It was just a simple formula, well marketed, and marked up quite heavily I’m sure, that drove the phenomenon. Simple.

3M is still making a fortune on Post-It notes, created when a 3M employee needed a glue that was “less sticky” to use on the pages of his church hymn book. A piece of paper and a less sticky glue. Simple.

It’s tempting in the age of gadgets to look to complexities to drive product innovation, but there’s a huge opportunity for people who can think simple thoughts and make connections that aren’t obvious to others.

Convincing or Conversing?

Look at your marketing and PR efforts and ask yourself - do you spend most of your time trying to convince people that they need what you are selling, or do you spend your time conversing with people who already know they need the type of product/service you offer and positioning yours as the best choice. 

The former is a lot harder and much more expensive to pull off. 

Of the many things I like about Seth Godin's views on marketing, one of the most relevant for marketers and PR folks is the concept of a "worldview". Everyone has a view of the world. It's really, really hard to change it through marketing and PR (not impossible - just hard). You are far better off trying to market your product to these people whose view of the world is favourable to your offer in the market.  

Some people believe having a smartphone is a time saver that makes your day better through it's variety of apps and functions. Others believe the cost of these types of phones is way too high and that anyone foolish enough to buy one is just falling prey to the latest fad in gadgetry. 

The most fertile ground is in the first group. Sure, some of the doubters in the second group will come around eventually, but only after they get sick of hearing from people in the first group about how cool their latest app is. 

This is fairly intuitive, and yet everyday you see ads that have that "did you know" flavour to them, where the advertiser tries to educate and convince the prospect that:

1 - a problem/need exists

2 - the prospect might have that problem/need

3 - the advertiser has a solution to that problem/need

Wouldn't your marketing be much more effective if you could just skip the first two steps and talk to people who "get it"? And if there aren't very many people who "get it", what are you selling, and why?

 

Opt-in, eh?

Overstock.com is a great site -- with some mediocre email marketing – if you happen to be Canadian.

Having found a great suit on the site a few months ago at a steep discount (even with duty and taxes at the border), I decided to keep checking back regularly to see what else might become available.

I signed up for the “O-mail” service to keep on top of the latest sales and discounts through the site. Almost immediately I was besieged with daily emails from overstock offering further discounts on purchases. Great...but there's a catch.

Read the fine print and you get a let down – “Not applicable to international orders."

And yes, like our marginalized friends in Alaska and Hawaii, Canada isn’t part of the continental US, so the offers are not valid.

Why am I getting these emails? I had already made a purchase and clearly established that I live in Canada. I then signed up for the email service. So why bombard me with offers that you know from the start I can’t take advantage of?

It’s a small thing, but it’s an example of bad email marketing. Pay attention to the details. When someone opts-in, take a look at their preferences and target your content. The days of email blasting and one-size-fits-all communication are over.  

Lessons from Local Businesses

Larger companies spend an incredible amount of time and money on training for their frontline employees, in an attempt to standardize the customer service experience and maintain a consistent level of quality when it comes to customer interactions.

But sometimes the simplest, unexpected gesture seals the deal.

I went to a new dry cleaner the other day - it's owned by a family who's been running the business for quite a few years. The owner did the usual dry cleaner stuff - took down my name and number, told me when the stuff would be ready, etc. When he realized I wasn't in his computer system (since I'd never been there before) he did something suprising.

He shook my hand and introduced himself by name, and thanked me for coming in. He was sincere.

Now you tell me - how am I supposed to take my drycleaning anywhere else? That single, memorable, unexpected gesture gave him a chance to get all of my drycleaning business.

Don't you wish you could teach your customer facing employees how to do the unexpected? 

Wrestling and Branding?

You wouldn't think there was a real connection here between the world of pro wrestling and branding, but you'd be suprised.

I stumbled across a quote from a pro wrestler describing how you survive in the business. His simple message was this:

- if they love you, you're ok

- If they hate you, you're ok

- If they are indifferent to you, your career is over

When you reflect on that, it makes some sense.

Fans come out and pay money to see the "good guys" beat up on the "bad guys". But they don't pay to see two wrestlers they are indifferent to fight it out.

So even if they hate you when you walk through the curtain on the way to ring, it's good news for a wrestler. It means you've connected with the audience and hold a clear position in the mind - albeit a negative one in this example - but at least you matter to the audience. They know who you are and they know why they don't like you.

It's similar with branding.

If they love you, great. If they don't love you, well at least they know enough about you to make that decision. It means that your brand message is getting out, and while this crowd may not like you, you can bet there will be pockets that do.And with a clear position in the market - even one that doesn't please the massess - you have a shot.

But like the wrestler who walks through the curtain to a muted reaction, a brand that has staked out a middle of the road position in the market and generates neither love nor hate might well be on the slow road to oblivion.