Why Marketing Is Not What You Say But What You Do

By 1 Comment

Marketing has always been about what you say. The marketer has sat down and come up with the big idea, created the communication campaign and let rip with a big budget. And then sat and prayed.

The marketing hope has always been that awareness turns to sales and profits sky rocket.

Not so today. The customer does not care about your ad, your big idea or even about what you have to say. They now go to a credible source of information. They ask their friends, colleagues, and even strangers.

They go online and look at other people’s reviews; they track conversations about risky products and see where the biggest problems are.

Today’s customers are informed, opinionated people that talk. You can no longer see them as some dumb target profile that listens blindly to what you have to say. This is why word of mouth marketing is so powerful.

How Do You Stimulate Conversation

Word of Mouth Marketing comes down to what you do. It’s about the feelings that you create in a person’s life and how happy, special, loved, excited, or stimulated you made them feel.

[Read more...]

Introducing The BuzzVine Network. Try and Tell for Word of Mouth Marketing.

By 4 Comments

Most marketers’ job is to control the communication, influence customers and drive sales. Well, at least it used to be. And unless you have had your head under a rock for the last 7 odd years you will know that marketing has changed.

I know; it is starting to sound like an old drumbeat that is getting quite tired. Truthfully though, many marketers are adapting to this process and getting the importance of word of mouth marketing. Of course that is if you can call it a process.

One of the big changes is that you cannot control what your customer thinks about you. For many marketers this idea really is quite a scary thought and raises questions like:

  • How do we quickly boost sales?
  • What and how do I tell the board / my boss / exco that things have changed?
  • If I tell them, how do I get evaluated for my year-end bonus?
  • If this medium is no longer as effective, what do I use?
  • Surely this social stuff is the same as TV. It should work, shouldn’t it?
  • How do I know that I am getting a return on my money?
  • How do I make sure some dumb customer will not screw up my message?
  • How do I develop a word of mouth marketing strategy?

Getting Into the BuzzVine

[Read more...]

A Case Study On How Bad Profits Can Destroy Your Business

By 6 Comments

Business is about profits. Yes, we all agree on this. Yet what we won’t all agree on is that some profits are really bad. To see the truth of this you just have to look at how some companies go about their business — and the way they treat their customers, how they make them feel and the negative word of mouth generated.

To put this into context I have put together a mini case study. I was inspired by the pain, frustration and anger I saw my wife go through with ADT Security and my absolute pleasure in dealing with Amazon.

[Read more...]

Customer Experience: The Psychological Shortcut

By 4 Comments

Everyday we face hundreds of choices. It gets complicated. And this is why we create habitual behaviour — whether it is to take the same route to work, whether we put on our underwear before our sock everyday, or simply the same breakfast. It makes our life easier and we can go onto autopilot.

Consumer Decision Making Shortcuts

When there is no autopilot system, these choice get a bit to hectic. We look for the mental shortcuts that will make our decision making process easier. Its why we use the peer review system so often. For example,

  • If a hundred people say its good, we will try it.
  • If a blogger has a 100 000 RSS readers we follow them.
  • If some one we respect loves that product or service, we will give it a try. [Read more...]

Why your customer strategy must focus on social thinking and not social techno

By 4 Comments

This is not a go do post. It’s a go and think about it post. Here are three Ted Talks I originally saw on Mashable and convey an important message for your customer strategy and how you create earned media:

It is how we socialise and not technology that we need to focus on.

What makes us human is the ability to reason, to think. Information and knowledge is the raw material of this process.

The internet makes this available in abundance. It has empowered individuals like never before. We have moved from passive consumers of information to become active producers of knowledge. Just think Wikipedia and Google’s quest to bring you the most relevant, high quality information it can and how you go about your customer strategy.

  • Clay Shirkey argues that information is now created on mass, is ubiquitous, cheap and global. Citizens are real time journalists that have social power and the real connections are between individuals rather than companies and brands.
  • Stefana Broadben argues that the internet has made us more personal and that we can now become more connected.
  • Seth Godin argues in his presentation below that one person with an idea and enough passion can change the world, can create a movement. It’s the tribe that matters now.

And given that the internet is becoming more mobile, more device agnostic and more accessible, this will have greater implications for how we live – and how you set up your customer strategy in the future. Something to think about :) .

You can find the original article on Mashable.

How To Avoid Building A Better, But Useless, Mousetrap.

By Leave a Comment

If there is perceived value, a customer will buy. And pricing is a question a question of perceived value, where it should be based on value created. This is about getting your customer strategy right.

This can be defined in many different ways. This is best highlighted in the pricing / value pyramid, which is reflected in how well you have created you brand positioning through your brand strategy.

Pricing is about balancing value created and value perceived

You can create value till the cows come home but if you are building a bigger mouse trap that over specs, you have wasted your time. This is about your customer strategy and managing value and managing your bottom line. So many businesses’ have the potential to go out of business or have to high a cost because they have:

  • Started off trying to be different and over generating value that is not relevant. In other words, a nice to have, but not a critical defining customer-driven value factor.
  • Or historically created value that was relevant at the time but is no longer relevant and is no effectively over producing value at a cost with no return.

This point is a critical principle in the strategic book: “Blue Ocean Strategies”.

The value / price pyramid

As a principle to guide your pricing strategy you need to look at the value / price pyramid and determine where you want to sit.

[Read more...]