The Marketing Blender

It’s the Little Things…

The genuinely good attitude of the call centre rep when you call with a
routine question, that makes you feel that they actually care about their
job and their brand.   

Or the consistently good advice and treatment you get in a particular store,
that makes you feel that you really are a “valued customer”.

These are examples of the silent, unseen events that drive brand loyalty and
have the potential to turn clients into advocates for your brand.   

So why are many companies managing these activities out of their organizations?

Modern day brand management, especially on a mass scale, doesn’t do very well with these creative little variances. We like to put policies and procedures in place to keep the customer experience as consistent as possible. We want the phone answered with a specific phrase, or a standardized greeting used in our stores.   

But in driving this kind of “regulation” into the brand, we’re also stamping out some of those creative, silent, often unseen behaviours that make a huge difference in brand loyalty.

We time call centre employees to the point that they rush through calls to land on the top of some scoresheet somewhere that ranks employee performance by call times. Only, clients aren’t even aware of call times – they just want the phone answered, to be treated well, and not to be hurried.

We standardize service down to a scoresheet that asks whether the employee greeted you in a specific way or offered you a receipt. I’m sure some of the brands I deal with greet me in a standard way – but I haven’t noticed it and it sure hasn’t made a difference in my loyalty to the brand.

The next time you survey your customers, how about asking them one simple question -- The last time you called or visited us, did we meet your expectations and treat you like a real person?

Managing brands and brand image is not always about instituting rules and regulations. Its about establishing parameters for behaviour, and then giving your people some room to go the extra mile.

You’d be surprised how many of your employees will.

It’s an Incremental World

For all of the big thinking that goes on in some businesses, and for all of the books and experts that tell you to seize a great market opportunity when it comes along by betting big, you see surprisingly little of this kind of aggressive marketing in your day to day life.

In fact, much of the business world measures success in relatively small, incremental gains.

Some corporations delight when revenue moves up 5% vs 2% in the same quarter last year. Or, they throw a party when they drive market share up by 10 basis points.

When a company offers an employee a 6% increase, it’s considered a “big raise” because inflation is only running at 2%.

Measuring Everything

Since we measure absolutely everything we need to know (and many things we don’t) we get fixated on comparing numbers, making relatively small gains seems like real improvements.

Which begs the questions, just what is success anyway? Is it a relative measure, comparing today’s performance against the past?

Or is it a measure of what you could have done had you not set incremental targets – a measure of you vs the world, instead of you vs yourself 12 months ago.

Incremental Thinking Goes Out the Window when things get Bad…

It’s interesting that incremental thinking disappears when things get desperate. Apple was in lousy shape a few years ago, so any incremental measures they had were useless to them. As a brand and a company they were in a downward spiral.

Once the quarter over quarter incremental gains no longer mattered, they had nothing to lose -- so they made some big bets, and they changed the course of music with the iPod as well as reinventing themselves in the computer space.

Do you think when the iPod was launching, Apple was worrying about a 2% increase in revenues? Nope. they had their eyes on a much bigger prize.

The Moral of the Story…

I recognize that companies need to show incremental gains to demonstrate to shareholders that the company is heading in the right direction. But marketing departments (and companies in general) need to take their eyes off the percentages every now and again and think about what they could accomplish if they bet big on the right opportunity.

10 Questions to Ask (...to grow your business)

It's not about having the answers, it's about asking the right questions.

Too often, we don't learn as much as we can about an aspect of our business, because we assume we already know it inside out. Or, we subconciously decide that we don't want any new information on something we already presume to understand.

Good leaders and good marketers are constantly asking questions, not giving answers. In that spirit, here are some questions you should ask to help grow your local business:

• Ask one client what first led them to do business with you

• Ask one ex client what led them to do business elsewhere

• Ask your web team what your conversion rate is, and then ask them how it could be improved by .25% in the next 10 days

• Ask your marketing/advertising agency how much revenue their last campaign for you generated (just to see if they know)

• Ask a fellow business owner/marketer in a related industry what the single most successful tactic they used they in the last few months

• Ask a local journalist if there is anything you can do to help them write a story about a problem that your clients face (and preferably, one that your product or service solves)

• Ask an employee for an idea

• Ask a client for an idea

• Ask about local speaking opportunities

• Ask for a referral