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Articles filed in: Marketing
Driving Sales, The Gates Effect And Flawed Marketing Vocabulary
Over the weekend a previously out of print business book, which was unknown to many and forgotten by most shot up the Amazon bestseller list. Why when we had previously ignored John Brooks’ Business Adventures were we suddenly snapping up enough copies to make it the #1 bestselling business book on Amazon and #3 amongst books in any category? What had driven these sales all at once?
It turns out that Business Adventures is Bill Gates’ favourite business book. He told the story of how Warren Buffet lent him a copy over two decades ago on his blog this weekend. It seems that this triggered a chain reaction of re-posting, enough to increase sales of the book. When the richest man in the world recommends his favourite business book, people pay attention.
The ‘Gates Effect’ reinforces the illusion of the quick win—the shortcut to mattering to customers. If only we could reproduce that kind of miracle in our businesses to drive sales and get results. This short term, tactical thinking is where we start to fall down as marketers. Not only is our thinking flawed but the old marketing vocabulary we have inherited to support it is too. In a world filled with infinite channels and so many choices the term ‘driving sales’ becomes less relevant with each passing day.
The dictionary defines ‘drive’ as causing to move by force or compulsion. While we may think a single event, promotion or offer has the power to drive a result, the truth is that results (especially sustainable ones), are not ‘driven’— they are fostered and nurtured. And we are free to choose both the actions and the language we use to support us in achieving those results.
Back to Bill…it’s easy to forget why the word of someone we admire and trust has such an impact. The sales triggered by Bill’s post are more than a tactic instigated over a weekend to make something happen—they are a direct result of a reputation built over decades. His recommendation is powerful not because of what was said, but because of who said it and why we believe him.
We each have the power to create our own version of the Gates Effect, to make something people want to talk about, to build trust and to in it for the long haul.
If we want people to listen to our marketing messages we have to stop looking for tactical shortcuts that we believe have the power to change what people think and do. Our best hope is to be good enough to change how they feel.
Image by Michael Holden.
What Gap Is Your Business Closing?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Business is all about closing gaps.
Closing the gap between aspirations and attainment, intention and achievement, between wants and experiences.
Products and services can also close gaps between needs and functionality, innovation and utility, feelings and facts.
But perhaps most importantly, what you do closes the gap between dreams and reality, loneliness and belonging and a myriad of other feelings besides.
And marketing is the story of how you close those gaps. So it pays to know which gaps you’re closing.
Image by Gino Carrier.
Are You Using Soft Data To Create Value?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
It seems like a no brainer to suppose that local businesses like a cafes, dry cleaners or dental surgeries—the kinds of businesses that serve the same customers week in week out, where the staff have the opportunity to look their customers in the eye, would take advantage of the fact that they look their customers in the eye.
Bricks and mortar businesses have the advantage of intimacy, unlike online businesses, that must collect a ton of (often valuable) hard data to learn more about their customers and how to give them what they want. Digital businesses need to use hard data in an attempt to replicate that intimacy. But the waiter sees the wrinkled nose, the barista remembers the regular, the dentist hears the stories that inputs from the keyboard can never fully communicate.
There is a lot of talk about how responsive organisations are winning in today’s new economy, a world where people expect levels of service, personalisation and relevance that were devalued and lost to them in a top down industrial economy. We hear about the winners who are positioned to take all, the AirBnbs, the Ubers, the Amazons, digital behemoths who are leveraging hard data to create platforms that connect us to our wants and to each other. And yet, the opportunity to create value from the soft data we collect every day in the form of feedback, stories and gestures from loyal customers remains largely untapped in a world that’s focused on taking advantage of hard data.
The job of every single business on the planet is to do just one thing—to make people happy. When you find ways to do that then you win.
Once our basic needs are taken care of the thing that we want most as humans is to be seen, as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs illustrates.
As the structure and social fabrics of our towns and cities changes there is a huge opportunity for local businesses to fill some of that void. Velo Cult a bicycle shop cum community hub in Portland, is one example of how it can be done.
Instead of simply trying to get the order processed or the sale over the line, we could be looking for opportunities to connect with how people feel and to understand what matters to them. Making sense of the information our customers give us—the data, then doing something that creates value with what we make of it, is where the potential is, not in the raw data itself. What could be more valuable to our businesses than taking what we know about people and using it to improve how we serve them?
Image by David Wright.
3 Simple Ways To Tell A Better Brand Story
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Brand storytelling is complex. A brand story evolves over time and is a result of doing many things well. But there are still opportunities to start telling a better story in the short term.
Here are three things you can do today to improve your brand story.
1. Create an ideal customer profile
When was the last time you sat down and really thought about your customer’s wants and needs, the challenges they face day to day and the things they care about? We often get so caught up in our solutions that we forget to think about who we are creating them for.
You can’t tell a great story unless you know who you are telling it to.
2. Invest time in writing your about page
Your about page is one of the most visited (and often most neglected) pages on your website. It might the first chance you get to build trust with that prospective customer, so it’s important not to think of it as just another menu tab on your website. If you haven’t edited your about page for while it might be worth updating it with fresh testimonials, news, information and calls to action. Think about how you might improve your social media and professional profiles too.
Here are ten tips to get you started.
3. Let your customers do the talking
There’s nothing more powerful than a recommendation from someone else. The stories about how you’ve served or helped other people matter to the people who are coming to you for help. We want proof that you are who you say you are. The reason traveller reviews are now more valuable than official star ratings is because we trust people like us to help reinforce our decisions.
Add testimonials, case studies and product reviews to your website and your marketing materials. Don’t just tell people how you make a difference, show them.
Image by Amsterdamized.
Are You Ready To Tell People About You?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Have you ever come away from being asked the, ‘so, tell me about you’ question in a professional setting and felt like you nailed it—even just a little bit? How do you sum up the essence of who you are, what you stand for and what you’re capable of without sounding like an over-rehearsed egotist, or alternatively like someone just stuffed your mouth full of cotton wool? The first step is to know who you are and what you stand for and to be comfortable with that. This understanding of your personal story informs your work and it’s something most of us don’t take half enough time to explore. So, tell me about you….
Here’s a one-page about you PDF of these questions for you to scribble on so your answers are top of mind next time you need them.
There’s one more thing to consider when you are asked this question though. It turns out that part of the answer lies in understanding why the person is asking the question in the first place. Usually when someone asks ‘about you’ in a business or sales situation, what they really want is a reason to feel safe about the judgement call they are about to make next. Perhaps they are a human resources manager, someone who is accountable to a boss, or maybe a prospective client with a limited budget wondering if you can deliver what they need? What they believe about you and that subsequent decision may impact their future and not just yours.
There are two ways to approach the answer then—the first is to give them the answer they want. The second is to be true to who you are as you gain their trust. It’s tempting to try give the right answer, but it’s far better in the long run to show up as yourself and be hired, invited or validated for the real you, than to sell people on an illusion only to disappoint them later.
Image by Tom Ellefsen.
All Of The People, All Of The Time
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
All around us big vanilla businesses and corporations are struggling to understand how to connect with customers and give people what they want. Businesses like McDonalds are ‘resetting’ and trying to find new ways to improve speed and affordability of their core offerings. Their strategy is to become even faster and cheaper. Meanwhile Mexican food chain Chipotle’s revenue jumped by 24%, it turns out that some people (not everyone, but enough to matter), are willing to pay more for sustainable food that’s produced with integrity.
Just thirty years ago operating in a niche was risky—far better to make a product or design a service that appealed to most people. But the problem with the strategy of making something for all of the people is that you end up not being able to really matter to any of them. If you don’t become part of your customer’s story then you are just another replaceable, transactional brand.
Today niche businesses thrive by making values their compass, knowing the customers they want to be loved by and adopting a strategy of enough.
And they understand that you don’t need to matter to everyone to succeed.
Image by Bon Adrien.
Intention Is A Competitive Advantage
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Having a competitive advantage is not just about being better in ways that can be measured, it’s about understanding your difference and about knowing how that difference will impact the lives of your customers. Great business leaders know what they want to do well and also importantly what they won’t do.
While other banks were competing on interest rates and bank charges Umpqua Bank aspired to become ‘The World’s Greatest Bank’—not the world’s most profitable, or biggest, or most competitive bank, just the greatest bank to the communities they served. And they did it by making a promise with intention that translated into what they call ‘a state of mind’.
Umpqua behaves and operates less like a bank and more like a trusted neighbour (in fact the bank was originally set up by a group of ‘neighbourhood folks’ 60 years ago to help support each others’ financial needs and aspirations). People who work for a bank that says it’s about “understanding customer’s financial needs and at the same time realising that there’s more to life than money”, which becomes not just a place to bank, but a community hub where knitting groups and yoga classes are held, understand their intention. When you answer the phone with “Umpqua, the world’s greatest bank”, (they do) you know what you’re shooting for in every interaction.
The truth is that the brands we love don’t just create products and services, they find ways to have a role in our lives. That truth applies as much to a phone that people fall in love with, or a thermostat that makes them feel both comfortable and smart as it does to a bank.
Image by Rick Obst.
What Are Your Customer’s Triggers?
We mostly think of buying as an isolated act, something our customers do in the moment. But it’s probably more useful to think of buying as a behaviour. A behaviour is an action or reaction which is triggered and conditioned. We look in the fridge at 8pm and notice that we’re running low on milk, that’s our trigger to jump in the car before the supermarket closes. The light turns green and that’s our trigger to go.
Digital entrepreneurs build products and services with apps, games and platforms for behaviours. Our use of the digital products and platforms we can’t live without is behaviour driven. How long is it before a bored commuter whips out his iPhone while he stands waiting for a bus?
BJ Fogg, who runs the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, created a simple formula for behaviour change. The Fogg Behaviour Model suggests that three things need to be in place for a behaviour to occur.
TRIGGER—Do this now.
ABILITY—Can do it.
MOTIVATION—Want to do it.
Marketers of physical products have been slower to recognise buying as a behaviour. As marketers we often think of buying as an exchange that customers can be persuaded into with discounts and special offers. Savvy marketers see buying as a behaviour that they have the power to influence with triggers and not just persuasion. Starbucks built a billion dollar business by creating and leveraging triggers for able and motivated customers. Warby Parker changed the buying trigger for people who needed prescription glasses who only bought a new pair once every two years when their prescription ran out. Black Milk Clothing releases limited edition, time limited ranges. Apple’s product launches are triggers of legend.
Triggers lead to actions that can become behaviours. As marketers we spend a lot of time focusing on our customer’s motivation and ability, but as Fogg mentions we need all three things to be in place to create behaviours and it’s those behaviours that build sustainable businesses. Perhaps we need to start thinking more like great user experience designers?
Don’t just focus on the moment your customer pulls out her credit card. Think about how, why and how often she got to that point and how you might influence that in the future.
Image by Amanda Tipton.
The Marketing Shortcut
The fare on sale at the coffee window of our local cafe changes each morning.
On Monday homemade protein power balls and muesli bars are strategically laid out to fend off the regret of the weekend’s indulgences. On Tuesday it’s fruit filled muffins and by Friday we’re splashing out with a chocolate covered something. All hell breaks loose on Saturday and Sunday when almond croissants, jam filled doughnuts and bacon and egg rolls are piled high to fuel that weekend feeling, post run treats and long coastal walks.
They sell out every single day.
If you care enough to figure out what people are hungry for and why, (it’s usually not another doughnut or more stuff) then you’ll find you do a lot less marketing.
Image by Spektograf.
The Business Case For Creating Great Customer Experiences
Saren Indah is a tiny fifteen room hotel in Ubud. It’s hard to stand out from the crowd in a market where amazing seven star resorts line up alongside cheaper than cheap backpacker accommodation. How do you differentiate when you are not the biggest, flashest or cheapest? Saren Indah should be lost in the mediocre middle, and yet year upon year this family run hotel is booked out months in advance and tops Trip Advisor rankings by excelling at customer service and giving visitors a story to tell.
The cost of poor customer service in the U.S. alone is $83 billion per year.
70% of our customers leave never to return because they were not made to feel like they mattered. Of course they don’t just vanish into the ether, they go to the competition. So poor service not only damages our bottom line, it also widens the gap between us and our competitors.
We spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year trying to get people to notice us and once we get them through the door we don’t take care of them. In a world with so many choices it’s no longer good enough to show up and open the door. Smart marketers understand that it’s how the door is opened that matters.
Image by Seagers.