Archive for the ‘Customer Experience’ Category

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Use Your Product to Sell Your Product

Friday, January 6th, 2012

If you’ve got a great product or service, what’s the best way to market and sell it?

By letting customers try it out!

Lighthouse Carwash does this whenever they open a new car wash. For the first few days, all the washes are free. It helps them build a customer base by showing just how great the service is.

Busken Bakery in Cincinnati does the same with their business catering service. Their flyer promoting the service is pretty nice:

But it isn’t nearly as enticing as the free dozen donuts that accompanies it:

Who wouldn’t trust this bakery to cater their next business breakfast after tasting these delicious donuts? (My apologies to anyone dieting this January.)

Not only does giving samples allow customers to experience your product, it’s a much more cost-effective marketing effort than almost any other tactic. For instance, compare the cost of a free car wash or dozen donuts to the price of a radio commercial.

When you’ve got a great product you can sample, your customers get a delightful experience, and your business stays in the marketing budget. See why it’s the best?

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Posted in Advertising, Customer Experience, Marketing, Selling, word-of-mouth marketing | No Comments »

Be Good, Businesses

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

The plumber ruined my plaster ceiling.

A year later, the roofer broke my deck.

Does this look right to you?

Does this look "right" to you?

They both told me, “I want to make this right.” Then, they did everything in their power to avoid paying. (With limited success. I’m pretty tenacious.)

In the age of word-of-mouth marketing, with Angie’s List, Yelp and girlfriends getting together for coffee, how could any business person be so short-sighted to think shirking a responsibility today would result in profit tomorrow?

Honesty and virtue are key ingredients to long-term success. It sounds old-fashioned, because there’s nothing new about being a good business with good people.

Dishonesty can lead to short-term gains–remember Enron?–but ultimately ends in business disaster. For the plumber, I wrote a reasonable yet scathing review of his business and chose one of his dozen competitors to be my go-to plumber. As for the roofer, I related my story to friends and neighbors, so they can make informed decisions in the future. I’m just one home-owner, but my influence extends beyond my own purchasing needs.

And the same is true of your customers. Each day, your customers are evaluating your dependability and trustworthiness. They are sharing their opinions with friends and family. Their opinions carry more weight than the most perfectly-designed marketing campaign.

So, be good. Do the right thing.

Your business will profit from it, and so will your conscience.

P.S. Bonus: The effects of unethical business decisions extend further than word-of-mouth. If you have customers who won’t pay anything until the last jot and tittle of the contract are fulfilled, they’ve likely been treated badly in the past. They feel the need to protect themselves. And who can blame them? We’ve all heard the lie at sometime or other, “I want to make this right.”

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Posted in Customer Experience, Customers, Philosophy, Relationships, word-of-mouth marketing | 2 Comments »

Marketing Podcast: Facebook Marketing Tips

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

“Getting Down to Business” had a great guest host for my segment this month, Christopher Pobieglo, President of Business Insurance Associates, Inc. Chris and I talked about Facebook marketing– tips for how to get customers through Facebook and how to keep current customers interested in your business.

Listen to the podcast for examples of how Facebook marketing has worked for different companies– including the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Listen or download below:

Facebook Marketing Tips

Download the Facebook marketing tips MP3 file here. (7.4 MB)

This segment first aired during “Getting Down to Business” on Alaska’s Fox News Talk 1020.

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Posted in Customer Experience, Marketing Podcasts, Social Networking | No Comments »

Your employees want to be cross-trained

Friday, September 9th, 2011

How do I know your employees want to be cross-trained?

They’ve told me.

In my work with Yastrow & Company, we do extensive, in-depth employee research, and cross-training is the most universal request we hear. Practically every group of employees, in every industry and every job role tells us, ”I wish I knew what everyone else in the company did everyday. It would help me do my job better if I understood where my coworkers are coming from.”

Restaurants can schedule back-of-house staff to individually work the front of the house for a shift. Companies with IT departments can have IT staff rotate through the various departments they support– and show the other employees the demands of the IT department. A retail store can ask their purchasers to work a few hours on the floor.

Sometimes management gives pushback to the idea of cross-training, and their reluctance is understandable. It’s a cost, and it takes valuable employees away from their work for a time. But the investment in cross-training helps build teams and breaks down barriers across departments. When employees understand what their coworkers do in the course of their jobs, they will be more helpful to requests. Asking back-of-house employees to work with customers for a day will make them realize the importance of the customer experience.

Offer some cross-training. I guarantee your employees will find it valuable, and it will help unify your business.

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Posted in Customer Experience, Employees | 1 Comment »

Customers See Through Marketing “Tactics”

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

Some marketing professionals seem to think marketing is all about “pulling one over” on customers with their clever tactics. The trouble with this philosophy (besides being ethically problematic, of course) is that it just doesn’t work. Marketers aren’t smarter than customers, and they can’t trick customers. And sometimes customers are actually smarter than the marketing experts.

My good friend Laura Poland (who is a photographer, not a marketer) recently showed some serious marketing smarts. She told me how she caught on to Covergirl’s marketing tactics. A TV commercial claimed their Outlast Lipstain is the #1 selling lipstain. She speculates, “What is a lipstain? They’ve created a new category! My thinking is they’re the only ‘lipstain.’” She’s not very far off with her analysis. They are number one because they are almost the only one, with few competitors. A quick check of the Covergirl website shows the product isn’t very well-received, either– it only receives 3 of 5 stars from reviewers.

This example of a photographer picking apart a marketing campaign isn’t isolated. Everyday, customers evaluate your marketing messages for trustworthiness and believability. If they catch a whiff of “tactics,” their skepticism will keep them from buying from you. The best approach is to be honest with your marketing and sell a product you are proud to promote.

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Posted in Advertising, Branding, Customer Experience, Philosophy | No Comments »

Facebook Marketing Tips

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Facebook marketing is becoming increasingly important for certain kinds of businesses. These include locally owned businesses, brands with exceptional personality and organizations that inspire great loyalty in their customers.  Sixty-one percent of Internet users visit social networking sites, like Facebook. Chances are, a percentage of your customers visit Facebook every single day (or multiple times a day!).

The basic building blocks of marketing on Facebook are to develop a page for your business, regularly update that page and advertise to get customers to ‘like’ your page. Once a customer ‘likes’ your page, your updates will display on their wall; their friends will be able to see that they ‘like’ you, and they will have a chance to interact with your business on Facebook.

If you do a great job marketing on Facebook, customers will engage with you, recommend you to their friends and stay interested in all of your updates. Your page will be a great marketing tool that your customers will enjoy. If you do a bad job with Facebook marketing, customers will ‘hide’ your posts, and your efforts will be useless. If you do a really bad job, customers will ‘unlike’ your page and tell their friends about their bad experiences.

To help you do a great job with Facebook marketing, I’ve put together some Facebook marketing tips. To illustrate my tips, I’m using posts from the Cincinnati Zoo’s Facebook page. With 60,000 ‘likes’ and 2,500 check-ins, this marketing effort is extraordinarily successful. A quick glance at the page shows why their Facebook marketing works– the Cincinnati Zoo has implemented marketing strategies that attract interest and interaction from its customer base.

1. Post interesting content on Facebook.

Content is king. Content keeps your customers interested and keeps your business top-of-mind. Like this video post from the Cincinnati Zoo:

Not every business can post a video of a baby bearcat, but you must develop content that will be interesting to your customers. Try to post many different types of media like pictures, videos and blog posts. Strike a balance between entertaining, informational and promotional content.

2. Motivate your customers to interact on your Facebook page.

One way Facebook marketing is different from email marketing is that the customers can talk back to you. Inspiring interaction is a great way to get customers more involved with your business. The Cincinnati Zoo has a contest every Friday, soliciting photo captions, like the one below:

This particular contest received 346 comments, 149 likes and many voters on the individual comments. That kind of participation is well worth the prize given away. Other ways to encourage participation would be to have a poll, ask for picture and video submissions or simply asking an intriguing question.

3. Respond to your customers’ questions.

Before a joint event with the Zoo and the Cincinnati Reds, I posted a question on the Zoo’s Facebook posting. Someone answered my question in under an hour. By responding to questions quickly, you teach your customers that your Facebook page is a resource they should keep returning to.

4. Be subtle with your sales.

Facebook users are on the site to get updates on their friends, share about themselves, be entertained and learn interesting facts. They aren’t on Facebook to see advertisements on their walls. Here’s a subtle way the Cincinnati Zoo promoted their summer camp:

The Facebook poster shared a child’s experience and asked others to share their children’s experiences. It started a nice dialogue, but the real goal was to educate customers about the existence of a summer camp. It’s fine to occasionally post informational updates about a new product or your annual sale, but do it in a way that will interest your customers. Just posting a picture and a price isn’t enough.

These are just four tips to help your Facebook marketing, and following them is crucial to building a successful presence. There’s lots more to learn to become a Facebook marketing expert, though. If you have specific questions about your business’s unique situation or offerings, feel free to email me: amanda@zooinajungle.com

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Posted in Advertising, Customer Experience, Marketing Theory, Social Networking, word-of-mouth marketing | 1 Comment »

Marketing Throughout the Lifecycle

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

Do you have different marketing strategies for interacting with customers at each phase of the customer lifecycle? Most businesses don’t, but they should. The cost of acquiring a new customer can be quite high– think of traditional metrics like CPM, CPC or less traditional ones like the time spent making unfruitful sales calls and writing proposals. However, the cost of keeping a customer is usually much less. (Additionally, the cost for getting referrals from your customers is often nothing.)

There are many different customer lifecycle models, but I like Steve Yastrow’s. In fact, he wrote a great article about the topic, “Most Companies Stop Marketing.” Here’s his model:

As illustrated, most businesses focus their marketing on helping customers learn about them, then slack off when it comes to purchasing and the ongoing customer relationship. Think of it like the cable TV, wireless phone provider or car insurance model: reel customers in with a great deal, then see how much hassle you can get them to put up with before a competitor entices them with a better deal. Most businesses aren’t quite as blatant as this, but the result is the same– customers get upset or bored with them and move to a competitor.

Your business will have an incredible competitive advantage if you develop and implement marketing strategies for keeping your customers. When competitors lose their customers, those customers will come to you. And these customers will stay with you, breaking the cycle of fickleness.

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Posted in Customer Experience, Marketing Theory, Relationships, word-of-mouth marketing | No Comments »

Email Marketing: How to do it right

Friday, June 24th, 2011

Email marketing should be alive and well in your marketing plan. You may ask, “What about Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn? All the marketing buzz is about social media!” It’s true that social media is growing in popularity and marketing potential, as 61% of all Internet users visit these sites. But the same 2010 Pew Internet Research Poll shows that 92% of all Internet users send or receive email. With a great email marketing campaign, you can reach practically the entire Internet population.

Some assert that younger consumers are eschewing email, but Pew Internet research shows that’s not the case. No matter which generation your customers are, 80-90% of the ones using the Internet are using email. Considering that Older Boomers spend more than their younger counterparts, this knowledge could be particularly profitable.

Since email marketing is such an important marketing tool, I want to give you some tips for doing it right. Businesses can’t just blast coupons to all their past customers and expect success. Let’s use this Pillar to Post marketing email I received as an example of how to run a successful email marketing campaign:

See the full size Pillar to Post email here.

Pillar to Post is a home inspection company. Home inspection not a service customers often need to purchase. The company’s email marketing strategy does a great job of keeping in touch with past customers and helping them remember who to call if they (or their friends and family) need a home inspection.

I’ve analyzed the Pillar to Post email to help you learn how they did it. Following are some email marketing tips you can start using today in your own marketing:

Send emails that fortify your brand and your customers will care about. Share information that will be useful, interesting or funny. Coupons or other promotions can be great, but they can’t be your sole strategy. For customers to be eager to open your emails, you need to give them something to be excited about.

The first day of summer was June 21, and most homeowners perform their home maintenance on a seasonal schedule. Knowing this, Pillar to Post shared a fairly thorough Summer Maintenance Checklist with their customers. This information is not only helpful to homeowners, but it establishes Pillar to Post as an expert in the field of home maintenance as well.

Mind your timing. Communicate with customers too often, and they will unsubscribe from your list or mark your emails as spam. Pillar to Post sends quarterly emails, each with season-specific advice. They recognized their customers’ natural home maintenance patterns and customized their approach for them.

Keep your content fresh. Avoid sending duplicate emails, even if they are months apart. Customers have a knack for remembering when they’ve read something before and will unsubscribe if they believe a company is putting forth a lackluster effort to engage them.

Design a clean, easy-to-use template. The Pillar to Post example email isn’t the most beautiful or effective design the company could have developed, but it is simple and easy to read. It has the added benefit of using as few images as necessary- images don’t always load in your customers’ email inboxes, so avoid placing text in an image.

Depending on your type of business, your email marketing strategy could be markedly different from Pillar to Post’s. Pillar to Post has a long sales cycle- a customer likely will go years before needing a home inspection. A retailer, on the other hand, might expect customers to make purchases seasonally, monthly or even every single day. Your sales cycle determines your messages and frequency.

Take inspiration from this great email marketing example to refresh and revitalize your email marketing (or to start email marketing, if you haven’t already!).

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Posted in Advertising, Customer Experience, Design Theory, Graphic Design, Internet, Marketing, Marketing Theory, Technical Tips | 3 Comments »

Marketing Podcast: Marketing for First Impressions

Friday, June 17th, 2011

In this marketing podcast, I give marketing tips for making great first impressions. Your customer’s first impression could be your storefront or even your website, and what customers think determines if they will buy from you.

And I also reveal a pretty shocking first impression I’ve encountered with a local business- listen to find out!

Listen or download below:

Marketing for First Impressions

Download the Marketing for First Impressions MP3 file here. (7.9 MB)

This segment first aired during “Getting Down to Business” on Alaska’s Fox News Talk 1020.

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Posted in Branding, Customer Experience, Design Theory, Marketing Podcasts, Web Design Tips | No Comments »

Sign of the Times

Friday, June 10th, 2011

Today’s blog post is not about Prince- sorry to disappoint. Instead, it features of some of the best signs I’ve encountered around the world.

In my travels, I’ve always taken an interest in the signs that businesses use to promote themselves. A sign can be a powerful motivator for a potential customer- either to buy from you or to pass on by. Or, a sign can blend into the landscape, escaping a potential customer’s attention altogether.

These nine great signs demonstrate what make a sign effective. First up, we have the St. Louis Science Center.

This sign mirrors the shape of the Science Center. It shows that design can incorporate both creativity and functionality- it’s beautiful and easy to read. Also in St. Louis is this dramatic and interesting zoo sign.

Everyone knows what a zoo is, so the designer had a little fun with the shape and presentation of this sign. However, most businesses should follow the Shrimp Factory’s example below.

This sign shows you exactly what you will get: a seafood dinner in a classy atmosphere. Another take on the restaurant sign is this Art Deco sign for the Signature Room at the Ninety-Fifth in Chicago.

Don’t you want to eat at such a cool place?

Next up, we have a little Hebrew for you.

I may not be able to read Hebrew, but I certainly know what a giant coffee cup and arrow mean. This 3-D sign perfectly describes what you can get at this business. When it really counts, though, signs should be multilingual.

Danger. Mines.

The clever building below is a carwash, which isn’t readily apparent at first glance, so the sign is essential. I really like this company, so you might want to learn more about their business model at their website, Lighthouse Carwash Solutions.

This British tube sign makes so much more sense than the American “Exit.” What could be clearer than “Way Out?”

And I’ll leave you with this interesting sign. I can’t decide if it’s good or bad, although it’s quirky. What do you think?

“We sharpen anything but your wits,” and “We fix anything but a broken heart” are certainly interesting ways to talk about the service commodities of sharpening, repairs and key-making. Does it make you want to be their customer?

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Posted in Advertising, Branding, Customer Experience, Design Theory | 1 Comment »

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