There is growing evidence and data about a significant shift in preferences and priorities in the way people shop and buy goods. There is no doubt that we are in the midst of a long-term fundamental shift in consumer and business buying behavior. Research from The Hartman Group based in Bellevue WA adds further and interesting evidence on this trend and changes for consumers and businesses.

Based on studying people’s shopping habits over many years, the Hartman researchers have identified a growing shift in consumer loyalty from specific products and brands to retailers that provide a shopping experience rather than just a store with a collection of branded goods. Although the current recession has accelerated this shift, it is a long-term trend that is gaining momentum.

Part of the problem is the proliferation of brands and choices has diluted the value of brands. There is so little differentiation between so many brands in a particular product category that consumers don’t develop strong brand loyalty like they used to when there were fewer choices and more differentiation. There are obviously some outstanding and notable brands with strong customer loyalty such as Apple. However, most businesses don’t have the wherewithal to develop a brand like Apple.

There is lots of evidence that consumers appreciate a positive shopping experience over brands. Trader Joe’s, the grocery store chain is a good example. It is a different kind of grocery store with primarily its own brand of products delivered in a unique and pleasant shopping experience with great customer service. Trader Joe’s does no traditional advertising – their primary advertising is a quirky newsprint booklet mailed to target households in each store’s geographic area and word-of-mouth recommendations by customers. Not stocking major brands that carry a huge advertising premium and limiting their own advertising enables them to offer customers different choices of high quality products at much lower costs. Trader Joe’s quickly builds a loyal base of customers within a couple of months of opening a store.

Another example is Zappos, the online shoe retailer – they built a $1bn+ annual revenue business in 8 years by providing customers a great shopping experience with excellent customer service, easy exchanges and enthusiastic staff. And they did it with minimal advertising and marketing expense by using social media and word-of-mouth marketing. Zappos has developed a huge and loyal customer base that has enabled them to expand into other apparel categories. While Zappos does sell brand name products, it’s the Zappos service and shopping experience that attracts loyal customers. Amazon understands what’s going on and acquired Zappos in July 2009.

A CNNMoney.com article ‘Dumped! Brand names fight to stay in stores‘ shows that many major retailers led by Walmart, are removing many brand-name products from their shelves. They’re also limiting the number of brands on shelves and offering their own store brands either as alternatives or exclusively in some cases.

Think about your own shopping habits – do you recognize any part of this trend in changes to how you shop?

Now consider how this trend may apply to your business and how you could capitalize on it for your business:

• This watershed trend presents an unprecedented opportunity for businesses to develop a customer delivery, engagement and service model to substantially grow their business over the coming years.
• Take a look at what is happening in your market. Do you see this customer shift from brands to shopping experience?
• If so, what are you doing to provide a great customer shopping experience and develop loyal customers for your business?
• If not, you have an opportunity to get ahead of the competition by using this long-term trend to your advantage.
• Do some research on companies that have successfully transitioned or positioned their business to this trend and you’ll see 4 common key elements for success:
  1. New models of customer engagement that are conversational – it’s not about selling to customers; it’s about having a continuing conversation with customers.
  2. Employee models that foster enthusiasm and positive engagement with customers in a consistent manner.
  3. Streamlined business processes that make it easy for customers to do business with the company. It’s all about how customers want to do business with you, not how you want your business processes to operate.
  4. Use of Social Media for customer engagement and marketing to develop a participatory and loyal customer community.
• This is a major long-term shift and trend. It requires a serious review and strategic shift for many businesses to be successful long-term. Tinkering at the margins won’t be enough.

There is no doubt that we are experiencing this shift in the way people shop and buy goods. It is time to seriously consider this trend in your business and go-to-market strategy.
All data for this article acquired from public domain sources.
Copyright © 20010 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

A previous article – How to Measure Customer Loyalty for Generating More Sales – recommended asking customers a few additional supporting questions to help analyze where to focus attention for improving customer loyalty and Net Promoter Score (NPS).  I received several follow-up inquiries for suggestions on what type of additional supporting questions to ask.

I’ve completed many surveys with the intention of providing constructive feedback, but after answering the questions, feel that the questions and answer choices didn’t allow me to express my real opinion or provide the intended feedback.  You’ve probably had the same experience.  Most surveys are constructed to get formulaic answers from the perspective of the company, rather than letting customers express opinions from their perspective.

Companies mostly use surveys with multiple choice answers to questions because they are easy to score and analyze.  But a limited choice of predefined answers limits the opinions and feedback customers can provide when responding to a survey.  Questions with open-ended answers are more difficult to score, collate and analyze, but provide significantly better feedback, opinions and insights from the customers surveyed.

Given that background, I would recommend asking customers the following 5 questions:

1. How likely is it that you would recommend [company name] to a friend or colleague?
   This is the question to generate the NPS score as discussed in the previous article.
2. What is one thing you think we do well and should keep doing?
   This question will help you identify what customers really like about doing business with you.  While you may have your own opinions on this, you may be surprised by customers’ opinions on what they consider as your big differentiator and/or unique value proposition.  You obviously want to keep doing these things and ensure continued focus on doing them well.
3. What is one thing we do that you think needs improvement?
   This enables you to get real feedback on areas of your business that need improvement from a customer perspective.  Some of the customer responses may be unexpected, but this is truly valuable insight for improving your business relative to actual customer experiences and insights.
4. What is one thing we do that we should stop doing?
   Businesses hardly ever ask their customers this question.  The problem is that many businesses do things because they think that’s what customers want, or because they’ve always done it, or because someone told them to do it, or it was someone’s cockamamie idea.  This could be something that a company spends resources on but has no or negative value for customers.  Answers to this question provide great insights for improving how you should work with customers.
5. What is one thing we don’t do that we should do?
   There is no one better to ask than your customers – they’ve done business with many other related and unrelated companies and have seen good and bad business practices for how businesses deal with customers.  The feedback from this question can provide invaluable ideas for improving the experience for your customers and/or developing stronger competitive differentiation.

There are three very important points to bear in mind for using questions 2-5 in a survey:

• Only ask for “one thing” in each question.  That makes it easy for customers to respond in an open-ended manner and not ramble on about all sorts of issues without giving you a succinct actionable response.
• Don’t provide prompts or ideas on the type of things they should consider – you don’t want to lead them to any particular responses – keep it completely open-ended and spontaneous.
• You can customize the questions to your business context but keep them short and easy to understand within the four primary areas of feedback indicated by the above questions.  The generic question wording shown above works well for many businesses.

Please share your feedback on using this type of survey format by leaving a comment below.
Copyright © 2010 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

Every business understands the importance of customer loyalty and retention to generate a continuing stream of revenue from existing customers.  It’s always gratifying to see customers returning to buy again, but how do you know whether and how many of your customers are inclined to return?

A major benefit of customer loyalty is referrals from existing customers to other buyers.  Customers who are very satisfied with the product / service / solution from a company are more likely to recommend doing business with that company to colleagues, business associates, friends and family.  Referrals should be a powerful component of every marketing strategy.

Before starting or running any customer loyalty and referral programs, it’s important to measure customer loyalty.  But how does one measure customer loyalty?  Measuring customer loyalty should provide:

• An objective and consistent measurement
• A measurement that is easy to understand and provides a common goal across business areas
• A means to interpret results for improving customer loyalty
• A means to benchmark your performance with your industry and competitors.

Based on previous experience, the Net Promoter Score® (NPS) is a good approach for measuring customer loyalty.  NPS was originally introduced by Fred Reichheld in his 2003 Harvard Business Review article “The One Number You Need to Grow” and his book “The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth”.  It was subsequently developed by Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix who hold the registered trade marks for Net Promoter, NPS, and Net Promoter Score.

Determining your Net Promoter Score is relatively straightforward:

• Ask your customers one question – “How likely is it that you would recommend [company name] to a friend or colleague?”
• Customers respond with a 0-10 point rating with 10 being extremely likely to recommend
• You then create 3 categories of customer loyalty based on the scores:
  1. Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others
  2. Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic and will consider competitive offerings
  3. Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy and/or feel no loyalty to your company.
• The NPS is calculated as the % of Promoters minus the % Detractors.

The logic behind the NPS calculation is that Promoters will keep buying and referring others to fuel your growth while Detractors can damage your reputation and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

A NPS of 50% or higher is considered good.  Companies with great customer loyalty have a NPS in the 70-80% range.  However, research shows that most companies are floundering along with NPS in the 5-10% range.

When you do the customer survey, don’t just ask the one NPS question.  Formulate a few additional supporting questions that will help you analyze where to focus your attention for improving your customer loyalty and NPS.  Don’t go overboard and ask too many questions – we all dislike taking surveys with endless questions.

NPS is not perfect and has been subject to some criticism.  However, it is a popular approach favored by many business owners and operators because it provides a straightforward single measure that can be compared with other companies and industry averages.  Just as important – it is one metric in which all functional areas of your business can have a stake and influence.

More details on NPS are available on the Net Promoter website.
Copyright © 2010 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

The suggestion box has been around forever.  Many companies used to have a physical box with available comment cards placed in lobbies, employee lunchrooms, factory floors and other areas to encourage employees, customers and visitors to submit suggestions and ideas.  While the physical suggestion box is becoming extinct, there are many online options that make it easier and more effective to solicit, discuss and share suggestions.

Suggestions from employees, customers and prospective buyers are still a powerful way to get ideas for improving business processes and new or improved products/service/solutions.

Here are some examples of customer suggestion approaches other companies are using:

• Starbucks has the My Starbucks Idea to get suggestions from customers and employees.  There’s a link on the Starbucks home page to the suggestion site which is separate from the main website.
• Best Buy has IdeaX for customers to share, vote on, and discuss ideas.  There’s a link on the Best Buy home page to the IdeaX site which is separate from the main website.
• Dell has Ideastorm for submitting ideas, suggestions and feedback.  Although it is not intended to be a support forum, some of the posts deal with regular product issues.

Trying to find good examples of customer suggestion boxes was an interesting exercise.  The first thing that struck me was how many major companies had no suggestion box capabilities.  Most companies have online contact forms which may be okay for small companies with a small customer base, but it’s not an alternative for an online suggestion box.

Some companies use support forums for submitting suggestions, but the suggestions seem to get lost amongst the volume of support issues.  If you’re serious about listening to your customer suggestions, provide a specific and appropriate forum.

Some companies have an online suggestion submission process with usage legalize and other obstacles you have to accept and click through and accept before being able to submit your suggestion.  Seems these companies think they’re doing you a favor by allowing you to send them suggestions.  Why bother trying to help them.

Most companies require some type of registration before you can post suggestions – some more intrusive than others.  I think simply providing a name and email address as part of the suggestion submission process should be sufficient rather than discouraging input with a requirement to first register, create an account or join a community.

Some online suggestion boxes mix employee and customer suggestions.  Employees may have different issues about internal processes, non-public information, future projects and other internal information that you don’t want customers to know about.  Consider having a separate online suggestion box for employees that only employees can access, from the publicly accessible online suggestion box for customers and prospective buyers.

How to use this information to benefit your business

• An online suggestion box can be an excellent source of ideas for your business.  Only consider having one if you have the processes to do something with the input.
• It will require someone assigned to administer it – either part-time of full-time depending on the volume of activity.  Make sure you have the resources to make a commitment to doing it.
• Customers are doing you a favor by offering suggestions.  A courteous acknowledgment for the suggestion and any subsequent feedback should be provided.
• Consider offering a reward to encourage suggestions.  Maybe a monthly drawing for a gift or discount voucher.  Maybe a more substantial reward for really good suggestions that produce significant value for your business.
• There are many software and service solutions available to implement an online suggestion box – just search for “online suggestion box software” in your favorite search engine.  There are many options available to suit any budget including no cost solutions.

Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

According to the August 2009 Consumer Insight research from Nielsen, most US consumers are seeking value in what and how they buy, in response to the recession. The research from 47,000 consumers shows:

• 12% are recession indifferent and unlikely to change how they shop.
• 21% are recession insensitive and primarily cutting back on highly discretionary spending.
• 61% are value seekers who use various methods such as coupons, sales, bulk buying, private label goods, disregarding preferred brands and switching stores.
• 6% are panic stricken and doing “whatever it takes” to cut expenses and save.

Although advertisers have been flooding the airwaves with value-oriented messages and recession-themed advertising, these ads “did not breakthrough TV ad clutter at higher rates”. There are some notable successes and misses mentioned in the report that provide insights into what type of value messages do and don’t work.

Different groups of consumers are responding to the recession in different ways with two-thirds looking for ways to cut spending, and one-third of US consumers either indifferent or insensitive to the recession. An insight from this observation is to determine in which group(s) your customers fall.

Approximately one-third of the 61% who are value seekers, are using coupons and sales as their primary means to cut expenses. An insight from this observation is to determine which savings method is better suited for your customers and product/service/solution.

Many value-oriented messages and recession-themed advertising are not connecting with consumers. An insight from this observation is that you need a better understanding of your prospective buyer personas to develop appropriate offers that better connect with how they are responding to cut expenses and save.

How to use this information to benefit your business

• While there is good motivation to consider ways of providing value to your buyers during these recessionary times, it is not a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Knowing how different groups of your buyers and customers are responding to the recession is important for developing appropriate marketing programs.
• Observe and monitor your programs in addition to learning from others to determine what does and doesn’t work to make adjustments to your offers.
• Connect with your customers and prospective buyers to determine how they’re changing their spending habits and how you can develop the right value-oriented offers.

The ‘Are Value-Themed Ads Making an Impact?’ section of the report is only 3 pages and worth reading to gain some insights that may be relevant for your marketing plans.
Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

Most businesses and marketers want to improve their marketing response and conversion rates – i.e. the number of responses to a marketing campaign and subsequent conversions to a sale. There are many ways to improve response and conversion rates with research, analysis and targeting including the use of demographic and psychographic segmentation, value propositions, irresistible offers, emotional appeal, etc.

But many marketing campaigns don’t reach prospective buyers when they’re most receptive to buying. That’s where occasion-based marketing comes into play to boost response rates. The most common use of occasion-based marketing is holidays – we’ve all seen the special offers for Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, etc. People are more receptive to buy something related to a particular holiday in the weeks leading up to the holiday than any other time of the year.

There’s much more to occasion-based marketing than just doing promotions around holidays. Think about the definition of occasion in broader terms:

• A particular time when something happens.
• A chance or opportunity to do something.
• A cause or reason for something.
• The need for something.
• The need to do something.
• An important or special event.

Using these broader definitions, think about what occasions would make your prospective buyers more receptive to buy and/or respond to your marketing campaigns:

• News – look at current news topics and who is paying attention. Is there any relevance for your offer and the audience that you can leverage? For example, if a group of businesses or people are paying attention to carbon tax legislation, do you have relevant products or services to position and offer to take advantage of this news and attention?
• Events – there are all sorts of events happening all the time – which of these events may make buyers more receptive to buy or consider your product/service/solution?
• Holidays – as previously mentioned, the most frequently used occasions for marketing promotions. Are any relevant for your business that would make buyers more motivated or receptive? Avoid just jumping on the bandwagon unless it’s relevant and motivates buyers.
• Associative – we drink orange juice with breakfast, wine with dinner at restaurants and sports drinks when we exercise or play sports. Why? Because marketing has made us associate these products with these occasions. A marketing opportunity is to create an association to an occasion for your product/service/solution. Another is to expand an established association – e.g. don’t just drink wine with restaurant dinners, drink this affordable wine with dinner at home.
• Life Cycle – if life cycle occasions such as Birthdays and Anniversaries are relevant to your business, then doing a targeted promotion to those prospects and customers on their special occasion can yield good results. Just acknowledging a customer’s life cycle occasion is good for building customer relationships and awareness for your business.
• Business Cycle – businesses have cyclical occasions that present occasion-based opportunities if you market and sell to other businesses. For example, when they do budgeting is a good occasion to get an allocation for your product/service/solution in their budget for the following year.
• B2C Customer Occasions – for individuals, occasions such as buying a house or car, moving to another city, etc. put them in the market to buy specific things like window treatments or car care products that may be relevant for your business.
• B2B Customer Occasions – if you sell to other businesses look out for occasions such as management changes, mergers, acquisitions, new product introductions, business expansion, etc. for which you can position and offer relevant products/services/solutions.

This is not an exhaustive list of all occasion-based marketing opportunities. The key to successful occasion-based marketing is to find targeted and relevant occasions when prospective buyers are more receptive to buy your product/service/solution and respond to your marketing campaign or promotion.

How to use this information to benefit your business

• Consider how you can use occasion-based marketing to improve your marketing and sales performance.
• Not all occasions are relevant to every business – identify and only use relevant occasions.
• Identify cyclical versus ad-hoc or unplanned occasions. It’s straightforward to schedule Marketing campaigns and promotions for cyclical occasions. Do you have the means to respond quickly and appropriately to relevant ad-hoc or unplanned occasions?
• Do a test to compare response rates between a regular schedule-based approach versus occasion-based for the same marketing campaign or promotion.
• Occasion-based marketing is an overlay to your previously established market and customer segments – it adds a timing and positioning dimension for executing campaigns and promotions to when buyers are more motivated and receptive to buy.

Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

Marketers use demographics to segment customer groups by various physical or tangible characteristics. In B2C companies marketers would typically use demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income, geography, home ownership, marital status, etc. to define market segments or demographic profiles of target buyers – e.g. single males, 18-35 years old who live in urban areas and don’t own a home.

B2B companies would typically use demographic characteristics of industry classification, revenue, employee count, etc. to similarly define market segments or demographic profiles of businesses who would be target buyers.

Marketers have depended on and used demographic market segmentation forever. There are demographic data available from many sources to slice markets into infinite possibilities of demographic segmentation relative to target markets for various products and services.

But, does demographic data really provide the most relevant analysis to find and target specific groups of buyers? Probably not as well as many businesses and marketers would like.

That’s where Psychographics comes into play to better analyze and classify target buyers by psychological attitudes such as aspirations, interests, attitudes, opinions, lifestyle, behavior, etc. Demographics provides information on who typically buys or will buy a particular product or service based on tangible characteristics.  Psychographics provides more insight into who is most likely motivated to buy. Using the previous demographic target example of single males, 18-35 years old who live in urban areas and don’t own a home, psychographics may indicate that people who read business books and attend skills development courses are more likely to buy that product or service. Combining the demographic and psychographic views can provide much improved targeting and effectiveness for marketing and sales.

From a marketing perspective, demographics define what buyers commonly need whereas psychographics define what buyers want. Psychographics identifies aspirational behaviors that are much more powerful drivers than physical demographics. Although someone is a store clerk earning $30,000 which classifies them in a particular demographic, their aspiration to be a store manager earning $100,000 will play a more significant role in their purchase decisions. Just marketing and selling to the clerk’s current situation would be a weak demographic. But marketing to their aspiration to be a store manager relative to their current situation would be much stronger.

Similarly a small company in the electronics industry may have aspirations to be a market leader for a particular type of high power capacitor. Again marketing and selling to the aspiration within their current context would be more effective than treating them like just another small electronics company.

You can’t readily buy psychographic data from public sources like you can for demographic data. You will need to do some research to obtain psychographics relevant to your business and market circumstances. This research doesn’t have to be a major undertaking or expense – a well constructed survey of your customers and recent buyers can provide good psychographic data. Social media participation with your customers is another excellent source for gathering psychographic insights about your customers and prospective buyers. Doing some research yourself provides valuable data and analysis to differentiate you from competitors and connect more specifically with customers and buyers in target markets, rather than just using the same demographic data everyone else does.

How to use this information to benefit your business

• How does your business segment customers and buyers for marketing and sales? How do you use this data and how effective has it been?
• Adding psychographics to typical demographic data will significantly improve the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts.
• Doing your own research to gather psychographics relevant to your business/products/services can yield valuable insights to improve you marketing, sales and competitive effectiveness.
• Whenever you meet with customers or buyers always think about their psychographics:
  • What are the psychographic influences that made them buy or will make them buy?
  • What psychographic data or insights can you take away to use for better marketing and sales targeting?
• Whenever you’re reviewing demographic data about your customers or buyers, always consider the psychographics as a potentially more powerful driver of buyer motivation and behavior.

Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

There are interesting insights for businesses in the August 2009 edition of the twice-yearly CMO survey sponsored by the American Marketing Association (AMA) and Duke University Fuqua School of Business. The survey sample included 3,363 top marketers at Fortune 1000, Forbes Top 200, CMO Club Companies, and marketers who are AMA members or Duke University Alumni and Friends.

Asked to rank their customers’ top 3 priorities over the next 12 months; most (34.1%) of the survey respondents ranked Low Price as the #1 priority. 62% ranked low price in the top 3 priorities. 70.6% of respondents ranked Excellent Service in the top 3 priorities but only 15.3% ranked it as their #1 priority. The emphasis on Low Price as the #1 priority increased from 30% to 34.1% since the February survey. Innovation lost ground from 11% to 7% as the #1 priority in the past 6 months. Branding scored the lowest of all priorities.

Some good news are the expectations of increased customer purchase volume (48%), increased customer purchases of related products/services (44%) and increase of new customers entering the market (35%). All these numbers are appreciable higher than 6 months ago. Similarly expectations for the purchase volume and purchase of related products/services by channel partners show substantial improvement.

Marketing spending continues to shift from traditional advertising to Internet marketing with a 9.5% year-to-year increase for Internet marketing spending. New product introduction is second with a 9.3% increase in marketing spending. A curious anomaly is the expected 4.5% increase in marketing spending for brand building even though branding scored the lowest customer priority as mentioned earlier.

Some downbeat but unsurprising news is that companies in the survey consistently underperformed on all key marketing and financial metrics over the past 12 months. The goals for these same metrics are more optimistic for the next 12 months with the biggest increases expected in customer acquisition (5.6%) and profitability (5.3%).

Companies continue to focus more marketing resources on social media with an expected spending increase of 300% in the next 5 years. The top social media activities in descending sequence are Brand awareness and brand-building (81.1%), Acquiring new customers (55.8%), Introducing new products and services (51.9%), Retaining current customers (47.6%), Market research (46.1%), and Promotions such as contests or coupons (42.2%). The significant focus on brand building is incongruent with branding scoring lowest of all customer priorities.

How to use this information to benefit your business

• These survey results are from marketers at larger companies. While there are good insights and relevance for all businesses, be circumspective for relating to your specific business circumstances.
• Customers are price conscious in the current economic conditions as evidence by Low Price being the #1 customer priority. How important is low price in your market and how does your business meet customer expectations on price?
• Excellent Service ranked highest in aggregate across all 3 priorities. Internet technologies and social media create new opportunities for providing great customer service. But there are risks – see the Putting the ‘Service’ Back In ‘Customer Service’ article for guidance on improving customer service.
• Internet marketing continues to supplant traditional marketing. Continue to reevaluate your marketing programs take advantage of this trend and the power of Internet marketing for your business.
• We’re seeing some optimism in this survey for the next 12 months – these expectations often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Consider how your marketing activities align with these expectations.
• Use prudent judgment for spending on branding. See the article Focus on Positioning before Branding for thoughts on why branding should not be a high priority for most businesses.
• Social media marketing continues to grow and produce tangible results for businesses. You should consider social media marketing as an integral part of your business marketing strategy. See the What is Social Media Marketing? article for more information.

Apple and P&G were the winners for the Marketing Excellence Award in the survey. No surprise here, Apple and P&G are perennially outstanding marketing companies.
All data for this article acquired from public domain sources.
Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

An updated version of this article is posted at: How the Shopping Experience is Superseding Brands

The future of customer service is here. Technology has made seeking out support faster and easier than ever. But, has your digital age company sacrificed true service in the name of automation?

Today, finding customer support is as simple as writing an e-mail or picking up the phone. But, even though you’re not face-to-face with your customers, you still leave a lasting impression. Do you come across as caring and competent, or menacing and mechanical?

Offering stand-out service on the Internet isn’t as hard as it is rare. Take these simple steps towards old-style service in the digital age:

• Give Each Customer a Personal Response. When a customer sits down to e-mail your company, it’s because they need help. They choose e-mail because it’s quick, but the request still warrants a satisfying and personal response! Companies eager to save time and money often take automation too far in their customer support. Each customer has a unique question, and deserves a unique answer. Even if you save time by copying and pasting stock replies, change the opening and closing to make the message sound less robotic.
• Be Clear, But Sincere. When responding to customers’ e-mail, be sincere and to the point. Before sending a message, try turning the tables. Ask yourself, “Would this answer satisfy me if I were the customer?” Take that extra moment to give your customer the help he deserves. It might mean the difference between a satisfied customer and a credit card chargeback!
• Offer Live Customer Support. E-mail has become an acceptable form of communication. But, live customer support is still necessary. The plethora of information available online can be overwhelming to customers, especially those new to the Internet! Single your company out from the crowd by providing customers with a real person to talk to. Live phone support is an invaluable way to foster trust. When your customer has reached the end of his Internet rope, and just needs help, your toll free number is the answer he’s looking for.
• Make Sure Your Support Reps Have All The Answers. The presence of phone support will do no good if your staff doesn’t know your product! Customer support reps should be warm and friendly, and willing to help with any aspect of your product. What a good feeling it is to talk to someone who feels confident in his product. It’s even better if they are knowledgeable enough to solve your problem without transferring you all around the company!
• Provide Stand-Out Service; Gain Lifelong Customers. Too many e-businesses skimp on customer service, hiding behind web sites and message boards. Customer support is an integral part of every company, even those operating solely online. Be one of the few to offer stellar service, and gain customers for life!

This article written by Sean Cohen at AWeber Communications.

During heady boom periods companies focus a lot of marketing activity on traditional transactional marketing processes to find and close individual deals (transactions). Demand is good, buyers have budgets, businesses are busy and deals abound. Transactional marketing as the name implies is about each party maximizing the return on individual transactions. It’s about immediate value delivery and short-term revenue generation. For many B2B companies, transactional marketing typically focuses on acquiring new customers and gaining market share.

But as we all painfully know, economic cycles go up and down with boom periods giving way to slow periods. Transactional marketing doesn’t work well during slow periods because demand decreases significantly, spending is restrained and there are fewer new transactions to be had. Some companies continue pursuing a transactional marketing approach during slow times by using special promotions, discounting, and other tactics to keep new transactions flowing. Besides being ineffective, these short-term tactics create longer-term detrimental consequences.

Relationship marketing on the other hand focuses on long-term customer loyalty, retention and satisfaction to generate a continuing revenue stream from existing customers. The “relationship” is not about some cozy, kumbaya intimate friendship with a customer. Relationship Marketing is about a continuing mutually beneficial business relationship process that encompasses the entire life-cycle of a customer.

Relationship marketing continues whether or not a customer intends to buy right now or maybe some time in the future. Relationship marketing is ultimately about generating additional revenue from existing customers using appropriate retention and loyalty methods. The key to successful relationship marketing is to tune your retention, loyalty and marketing activities to relevant and prevailing circumstances.

How to use this information to benefit your business

• Stay engaged with customers – find some appropriate vehicle such as a newsletter, podcast, blog, Twitter, etc. to communicate with customers between transactions.
• Listen to your customers long enough and they’ll tell you whether, what and when they want buy.
• Know your customers – understand their circumstances and tune your marketing and offerings accordingly.
• Watch for events that affect your customers – how can you leverage these events to engage with your customers for marketing?
• If relevant to your business, monitor customer service / support activities for trends in issues and complaints. Avoid defections and seize opportunities.
• Even though your focus is on retention and loyalty, always provide meaningful value that customers appreciate during the relationship marketing process.

The basic premise of relationship marketing is to stay engaged with customers and keep them long enough to buy more stuff from you.
Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com

Two interesting observations I’ve found over the years during discussions with companies about Branding and Positioning:

1. There always seems to be some confusion about what constitutes Branding versus Positioning
2. Too many seem to want to start with Branding or do a Branding exercise.

A Brand is a visual, emotional or cultural identity in the minds of your buyers. Branding is the promotion of this identity in the market to place the visual, emotional or cultural association of your brand in your target buyers’ minds. However, Branding actually comes from Positioning, which must be developed before you even consider doing Branding.

According to Al Ries and Jack Trout in their seminal book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, “Positioning starts with a product. A piece of merchandise, a service, a company, an institution, or even a person. Perhaps yourself. But positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind [and context] of the prospect.”

Both deal with placing something in your buyers’ minds. The key distinction is that Branding is an identity whereas Positioning is the promise of the value you create for your customers.

Here’s an often cited example to illustrate the difference – Volvo set out many years ago to build the safest vehicles on the road – that was an intentional position they wanted to claim in the automobile market. Volvo did not set out to brand the name, they focused on delivering on their positioning promise and proved it was real, not just some marketing eyewash. Today when someone mentions “safe vehicle” they think “Volvo”, or vice versa. The positioning, and delivering on the promise of value created the brand – not the other way round. That’s where the confusion arises, people look at companies like Volvo today and see a brand, but don’t realize how the brand identity actually evolved from the original positioning.

How to use this information to benefit your business

• Branding takes many years, lots of money and consistent delivery on your positioning. Think about what it took to build great brands like Coke, Nike, Starbucks, etc.
• Don’t confuse brute-force name recognition with branding.
• Don’t try to differentiate with pseudo-branding by shouting with nothing special to say.
• Most businesses and marketers don’t have the resources, time or wherewithal to do a thorough job of branding.
• Focus your efforts on great positioning and delivering on the promise of that positioning.
• Positioning is where you should start and spend your time for successful marketing.
• Branding will come from good positioning and delivering on your promise.

Copyright © 2009 Ingistics LLC and Marketance™ www.marketance.com