Sometimes what your customers think and value might surprise you. I had a conversation with a contractor who learned by accident that his customers preferred slightly rusty service vans to pristine, freshly-painted ones. He had purchased a fleet of used vehicles, but unexpectedly needed to put them in the field before he could get them painted. Many of his customers (most of whom were selling their homes, so didn’t want to invest too much capital in the improvements) mentioned they preferred a less expensive contractor who didn’t spend thousands on the appearance of his vans. They believed “the savings were passed on to them,” so to speak. Now, the contractor doesn’t worry so much about keeping the paint jobs up-to-date.

A large part of marketing is learning what matters to your customer through research. How will you know what to say to them in marketing communications unless you know what they believe?

Getting started with research can be as simple as asking a few customers for their opinions, but to get the most value out of research, it’s best to engage a marketing firm. Customers are more likely to give their honest opinions to a third-party, and a marketing firm will have methodologies for getting customers to speak freely.

Oh, did I mention Zoo in a Jungle Marketing excels at qualitative market research? We do!

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

Listen or download below:

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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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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However, a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing guarantees marketers will spend more money for less effective results. When they don’t know their customers and their preferences, they must send a variety of messages using many different media.

Yet, many businesses don’t put much effort into learning about their customers.

Below are three examples of differences in customer behavior. You can see how different marketing strategies could be taken to meet their preferences and needs.

• If your customers are primarily women, you need to know they behave differently from men. Marketing to women expert Marti Barletta writes about consumer behavior frequently, but in one particular post, “Guaranteeing Sales Success with Women,” she emphasizes that women are risk-averse and value warranties and guarantees more than men do.
• If your customers are young, from 18-33, 80-89% of them can be found on social networking sites. But of those 74 or older who use the Internet, only 10-19% engage in social networking sites. This information is from Pew Internet.
• If your customers are older and affluent, they might be choosing an urban lifestyle rather than a retirement community. Boston Consulting Group’s Michael Silverstein reports on his firm’s research that these consumers enjoy cooking at home and increasingly have more time to learn new hobbies.

How well do you know your customers? How many of them are women? What age groups buy from you the most? What are their incomes? Being able to answer these questions will help you customize your marketing plan with strategies that will reach your customers without wasting time and money on people who won’t buy from you.

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“No one ever buys the frijoles negros in the international food aisle!” I exclaimed to my husband as we wheeled the cart around. Sure enough, we found ample quantities of beans for my Black Bean Mushroom Chili recipe – a grocery-shopping happy ending.

Same product. Different marketing. (For those without a smattering of Spanish lingo, frijoles negros means black beans). And a definite marketing lesson for small businesses.

Are your customers trying to buy beans while you sell them frijoles? If so, you are missing a huge opportunity.

It comes down to speaking the language of your customer. How many Kroger shoppers left that night without purchasing the beans they came for? Kroger could complain that customers just don’t understand, or that they don’t read the labels closely enough. They might talk about niche markets and modern grocery trends favoring ethnic foods. But that won’t sell any more beans, will it?

Many specialized businesses have difficulty speaking the imprecise language of their customers and become frustrated. But it’s not your customer’s job to understand you. It’s your job to sell to her in the language she wants to hear.

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If marketing is an expression of your company’s reputation (or brand), then every experience your customers have with your company is a marketing interaction. Your customers don’t stop evaluating your company and forming opinions just because they aren’t interacting with your traditional marketing. Here are five reasons why everything you do is marketing.

1. Receiving a rude call from your accounting department will override any positive experience a customer has had with a customer service representative.
2. Having a great experience with her waiter will do more to grow your customer’s relationship with your restaurant than receiving a coupon in the mail.
3. Getting cut off in traffic by your service technician will shape a potential customer’s opinion of your company more than receiving a sales call.
4. Not being able to find someone to answer his question is more influential to your customer than the most comprehensive FAQ on your website.
5. A compassionate employee on the phone can turn a billing error into a positive experience with your customer.

There is a common thread woven through all five examples. It is personal experience and human interaction. People are more important than marketing strategies. Personal experience is more powerful than brand promises. This conclusion shouldn’t be surprising. Your customers are individual people, and people value relationships.

Anytime you treat your customer as an individual instead of as part of a group, they will remember that instance more frequently and place more value on it. But, as you can see above, not every personal interaction with your business creates a good impression.

How well does your business handle personal interactions? Think broadly– anyone who sees a customer face-to-face, talks to a customer on the phone, writes email correspondence or interacts with customers using social media. Even more broadly, think of all the systems that enable these customer interactions such as your company policies, your website design, your phone system and the layout of your stores. Do these systems help facilitate great personal interactions?

As you ponder these questions, remember that your customers believe marketing is everything you do. Every minute they are evaluating you. Make those minutes count.

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Yesterday, an acquaintance asked me for advice on his startup company’s marketing. He just didn’t know how to get started with his first customer. He wanted to know what kinds of brochures, business card or website he needed to get people interested.

I told him, “Decide who you want your customers to be.”

He replied, “Oh, you mean middle class or upper class?”

“No, I mean decide which specific people in which neighborhoods should be your customers. Get to know them, how they talk and what their needs are. Then you can start selling. Then you will know what should be on your website.”

When people first start looking for customers, their instinct is to look for large groups of people and hope to convince a few of those people to hire them. The idea is, “If I aim for all middle class families, surely I’ll get a couple of customers.” But this instinct is wrong. The more people with whom you try to communicate, the less each one will pay attention to you. For example, I imagine you rarely pay attention to the loudspeaker at the grocery store. It’s just not that meaningful to you because the grocery store is trying to communicate a general message to the entire store. When you try to be meaningful to everyone, you end up being meaningful to no one. Generalization for the masses is the worst way to sell a new (or any) product.

To find its first customer, a startup needs to get specific. Instead of selling to groups differentiated by demographics, sell to individual people. Talk their language and address their needs.

On a related note, marketing expert Steve Yastrow wrote two very helpful newsletters on how to differentiate your customers as individuals instead of groups– Do Differentiation Differently and How to Do Differentiation Differently. Steve’s essential message is:

“Your customer doesn’t really care if you are different. But he will be blown away if he sees that you think he is different.”

Showing your customer you think he is different is more work than blanketing a city with flyers- but it will also yield more results. As counterintuitive as it may seem, startups (and all companies) will find more customers if they focus on fewer people.

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Why is personality a great small business marketing tool? By showing your personality, you give customers something to be loyal to. Loyalty can’t be bestowed on products or services, but people are loyal to other people and organizations. Loyal customers will buy more from you and rave more to their friends. You just need to show them some personality.

What have you done lately to infuse the best parts of your personality into your small business?

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Joseph DePinto, CEO of 7-Eleven, wanted to discover the secret of their most successful stores. He said of one location,

“It’s the epicenter of coffee for 7-Eleven. This store sells more than 2,500 cups of coffee every day. I need to figure out what makes their coffee business so great, so I can roll it out to our other stores.”

He finds out that in this store with the highest volume of coffee sales, it’s all about the relationship, not the product.  Watch the clip below:

After working with Delores, who greets most customers by name, Joseph DePinto realizes,

“That’s why we’re selling 2,500 cups of coffee. Not because we have great coffee but because we have Delores there.”

In a more unusual situation, Waste Management president Larry O’Donnell learns the local trash collector is the literal face of his company to customers. After watching trash collector Janice greet and hug customers, he began to see her job as building relationships with their customers, in addition to collecting the trash. He made plans to change Waste Management’s approach to productivity measurement.

The specific segment isn’t available, but the full episode is here: Undercover Boss – Waste Management (The segment starts at 30:00).

These corporate leaders got the opportunity to see what their customers and employees experience first-hand. They witnessed the value of customer relationships. But you don’t have to go undercover to build relationships with your customers- you just have to start doing it.

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Meaning of Love – Larger version

If you click through to the larger version, you can see that following synonyms of a word can lead to some surprising definitions. In business and marketing, it is especially important to know exactly what words mean to your audience. Using the perfect words can help us communicate more perfectly.

For example, I was purchasing a gift card last night and was disappointed to see that the gift cards came in specific dollar amounts. I asked the salesperson, “Do you offer gift cards in variable denominations?” I realized I had chosen the wrong words when my question was answered with a blank stare. Trying again, I asked, “Can I get a gift card with any amount I want on it?” “Oh sure,” he replied. There are many ways to say any one thing. The goal of good communication is to find the words best suited to the person hearing or reading them.

What are some ways you could improve communication with your customers? Here are some thought starters:

• Most businesses use jargon and acronyms. When you use them with your customers, do they understand what you mean?
• Email and text messaging are notoriously bad at conveying inflection and context. Do the messages you send carry a double meaning if read differently?
• The best way for your customers to understand you is if you talk like they do. Do you listen for their terms and phrases? Do you use them in communication?
• How often do you listen to your customers? Do you make an effort to understand them?

If you talk to your customers in ways that are meaningful to them, your message will be more successful. Get to know different types of customers, the ways they describe your business, what they expect from the relationship with you and what words that they use. Successful communication will lead to success with your business goals.

(In future articles, I’ll delve into how to develop business goals for your small business. Marketing starts with knowing what results you want.)

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