Posts filed under 'Marketing'
The ASIS security convention in Las Vegas provided a wonderful marketing tutorial.
It was a carnival of booths desperately shouting for attention. All trying to differentiate themselves. Millions were spent on trinkets, collateral and hospitality.
You should go to a large trade show if you get the chance. You’ll learn two important lessons.
Lesson #1: Attention is Short-lived
Exhibitors spent lavishly for a molecule of a buyer’s attention.
Like casinos in Vegas, tradeshow booths had to be larger and more fantastic than their neighbor to just get a look in.
Once attention was gained, then what?
The best you can hope for is:
- Increased awareness - nice, but not a sale
- Relationships furthered - nice again, but still far from hitting your numbers
- Appointments back home - nothing is sold at our trade shows, it all happens back in reality
Lesson #2: Communicating Difference is Hard
We believe our sales pitch is different from the competition.
But it really isn’t, at least not as much as we believe.
It’ll only take one second on a large convention floor to see that.
At the end of the day, although we feel our pitch is unique, to most buyers we still look like a room full of penguins.
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: communication, messaging, selling
September 28th, 2007
I’ve recently come across “sponsored” eBooks, and they caught me off guard. They combine concepts I hadn’t thought were at odds with each other. But together they’re like a tarantula on angel food cake.
Sponsored eBooks are free PDFs, promoted online, written by a Subject Matter Expert (SME) and paid for by a company trying to sell to the SME’s audience. However, sponsored eBooks feel honest and dishonest at the same time.
The sponsor’s brand is on the cover so we know there’s a pitch to buy something somewhere. That’s the honest part.
The pitch is subtle. SMEs write about an audience’s problems, which the sponsors’ offerings solve. The SME doesn’t mention the sponsoring company in the book or call out the offering, but the buying logic is there. That’s the unsettling part.
When reading sponsored eBooks I found I was looking for the pitch. I was trying to figure out what the SMEs tie in to the sponsor was. What they were trying to sell. As a result I missed some of the SME’s content. I was distracted, and suspicious.
What’s my problem? It’s just a book.
Idealism about Books
I believe books are special. What many books are, can be, strive to be, is important.
They’re containers for authors’ ideas and stories, and we want their authentic voices, feelings, thoughts, experiences, research, and opinions. We want to feel it’s coming from them, speaking for themselves, not as spokespersons.
Sponsored eBooks smudge that line between a SME’s authentic voice and sponsors’ marketing messages.
The confusing part for me is the nature of eBooks.
Idealism about eBooks
I love eBooks. They’re portable and agile, easy to create and distribute. They take the idealism of books and democratize sharing.
For marketing purposes, eBooks are great tools to gain audience visibility and credibility. Seth Godin’s Unleashing the Ideavirus
reached at least two million readers and it’s the #1 most downloaded eBook in history. Seth wrote something worth reading and then gave it away as a free eBook. His unadulterated ideas, beliefs, and vision.
Seth gained massive exposure and spread his ideas as a virus through his free eBook. And that’s what his book was about. Brilliant!
Idealism about Content
If SMEs feel strongly about their content and would give it away free to market themselves - why not do that? Under their own name, for their own purposes, marketing or otherwise.
However, if the goal is to make money, why not write content for their sponsors in a straight-forward way? Write in formats that are unambiguous (white papers, case studies, ads, etc.) Brand and promote it unambiguously.
But not all SMEs approach eBooks in the same way.
Idealism about SMEs
There’s nothing evil about being a corporate spokesperson. The Tiger Woods - Nike pairing works. But many A-list actors, such as George Clooney, only do ads and commercials outside the U.S. Why? Possibly to keep there reputation in their primary market as undiminished and undiluted as possible.
It’s a tricky road, reputation and leveraging it for gain.
I now think differently about SMEs who’ve written sponsored eBooks. Before, I imbued them with objectivity regarding their subjects. They are the experts after all. In my mind I’d made them a bit altruistic.
But now the lustre is off, their motives are in question, which is unfair of me. They’ve always been working to earn a living, trying the most effective and efficient ways to do that. The same as you and I.
It’s only my opinion of them that’s suffered. Seeing a little more clearly. A personal lesson learned.
I understand the arguments for eBook as marketing messages. Reaching a sponsor’s target audience by association with a respected SME.
It’s that sponsored eBooks tripped me up. I was confused by not having seen many of them. As a result, I wasn’t sure how I felt about them.
But when they become as common as other forms of corporate sponsorship, I’ll probably see them in the same light as:
- Product placement in movies & TV
- White papers, Case studies, Free webinars
- Infomercials
- Corporate sponsorships in sporting events
I wonder if the Louvre will be diminished by selling its name to the United Arab Emirates for $1.3 billion?
What do you think about sponsored eBooks?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: marketing, sponsored eBooks, subject matter experts
September 4th, 2007
Business cliches never die. We first published a contractors version of business cliches as “Quicksand Words & Phrases“.
Seth Godin points out they’re used primarily to talk and say nothing. Take a look at his Encyclopedia of Business Cliches , which he’s setup to capture an ever expanding list.
If we’re talking and saying nothing (business cliches) amongst ourselves, how harmful is that to customers?
In case you missed our contractors version, I’ve reposted our take on industry cliches below. Feel free to add yours in the comments section at the end of this post. (Marketing Tip: blogs have the advantage of two-way communication over traditional outbound messages). Enjoy.
“Exceeding expectations”
Defining expectations is tough enough - let alone meeting them. Remember they’re services; intangible, changeable, invisible.
So customers are to believe contractors define expectations explicitly? Then go beyond meeting them, but exceed them?
I seriously doubt it. So do most customers. They see this claim, and you’re lined up and shot. Alongside everyone else selling kitchen knives that never need sharpening.
“Our service is second to none”
What can I say? Sounds right out of the 1950s doesn’t it? No matter how you dress it up, it’s still a plaid-jacketed used car salesman. Deadly at all costs.
“Customer-focused”
“No, we’re not customer-focused! We work hard to upset anyone gullible enough to be our customer.”
Sarcastic obviously, but “customer-focused” is quicksand. Avoid it. Even though it may be true. Customers step into it and vanish from sight.
“High quality”
Who doesn’t say this? How many contractors say they provide mediocre or low quality? High quality is a great internal business strategy. But quicksand as a marketing term. Step around it.
“People are our most important asset”
Over use washes out meaning, along with past experiences that don’t live up to promises. Together, they make “people = important asset” quicksand.
And that’s unfortunate for contractors who live this credo with employees. Because it’s admirable. And it’s an excellent business strategy. Don’t say it - just do it. Customers will know.
“Solutions provider”
I’m guilty - I use this one. Too bad too. Real solutions are what customers buy. Again, over usage and failure to deliver has made “solutions provider” a message sink hole. “Mam, please step away from the solutions provider”.
It’s Not Just Us
Cliches aren’t just used by contractors. MBA freaks and technology geeks are infected too. Check out Dilbert’s Mission Statement Generator. Or, try playing Buzzword Bingo.
What Cliches are in your Marketing Messages?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: communication, messaging
August 15th, 2007
Customers. We don’t make them customers. They are that way themselves. We don’t make them buy. They do that on their own. They buy:
- Solutions to their problems
- Improvements to reach their goals
- Experiences they want to experience
We think we’re selling them. We’re not. The best we can do is help customers buy. Everything else is self-delusion.
Chrysalis
Before they’re customers, they are prospects.
They evolve from prospects into customers. They move from obliviousness to awareness to motivated buying.
They’re going to buy anyway, why not buy ours?
Volition
Prospects and customers are self-serving.
They buy ours for their reasons, to get what they want.
We can help them do that. Here’s how:
1) Give
Give to engage prospects and customers.
Give to help them move to the next step in buying. Moving from:
- Obliviousness: Do I have a problem? -to-
- Awareness: I have a problem. Do I want to fix it now? -to-
- Motivated: Now I’m going to solve my problem. Who can help?
Give to move them to the next step. They can’t leap frog. They can only go one step at a time. They buy when they’re motivated.
Give as often as needed to help them buy ours.
Give often means free. But not always.
2) Value
Customers want what they want. They must truly want what we’re giving. Or they won’t take it.
If they don’t take it, we’re not part of their process, and ours won’t be bought.
Give value that helps them move from “Do I have a problem? -to- Do I want to fix it now? -to- Who can help?”
3) First
To receive, first give. Before prospects and customers give us what we want, we must give first.
Counterintuitive and scary.
They may take and not give us what we want. True. Some prospects and customers will, but we weren’t going to be doing business with them anyway.
What if we give away the farm and have nothing left when they’re ready to buy?
Value given must be relative to value received. Not always one-to-one, but close. Give valued information of limited scope, and in return get an appointment, email permission, or whatever helps move customers closer to buying ours.
What do your customers want - that you can give - that moves them closer to buying?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: buying, marketing, selling
August 9th, 2007
The rate at which communication is exchanged has two edges.
It’s not that we’re speaking or typing faster, but microscopic delays between exchanges give little time for reflection.
Would responses be more successful if we took slightly longer before responding?
Email
Email is a potential pothole because emotion is always part of communication, and research shows we misunderstand the emotional tone of emails.
As recipients, we only get the intended tone of the message right 56% of the time, and yet we think we understood the sender’s tone 90% of the time. Add to the confusion, 78% us thought our recipients would get the tone of our message correctly.
So if we have a hard time understanding email’s tone, why would we want to respond immediately to angry email?
Of course there are true flame emails. They’re soul depleting traps from the chronically upset. If we take the bait and respond in kind - they’ve won. But if we respond with flame to the “understandably upset” by mistaking them as those who “will never be pleased” - we’ve lost.
A little more time before responding can help us make that distinction. And work on the email’s tone.
Voicemail
Responding quickly to insulting voicemails from customers can have us make the best speech we’ll ever regret.
But if we’re competing for the customer service gold medal, we’ll return that call instantly, even if it has the potential for a firefight.
Of course if they catch you live on the phone or in-person, better practice those stress reduction techniques.
Chat, IM, Blogs
Online chat, IM and blogs can feel like real time conversation, but they’re not. Just ask John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods. His unethical posts to Yahoo Finance have been digitally etched for posterity.
On the other hand, lurking online for self-protection marginalizes us. It doesn’t give us a voice, or an exchange of specific and useful information.
The Upside
Immediate communication and Web 2.0 bring a ton of upside to business and life in general.
* Social networking and online sharing tell us we are not alone.
* Blogs enable 2-way communication. Chris Garrett on New Media, explains the difference between:
…“article†and “blog post†it would be that a blog post is intended to be part of a conversation whereas an article is written not expecting an “answerâ€.
* Speed of communication in chat rooms, IM, and blogs is intoxicating - you read it, you write it, it’s there.
* Internet connectivity enables living locally and working globally.
Online self-expression has a short turnaround and a long memory. But that doesn’t mean becoming paranoid. We just have to recognize the potholes in the road and slow down enough to steer clear of them.
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: communication, email, blogs
July 13th, 2007
There’s always been a struggle between selling and marketing. It’s the pushmi-pullyu , rock-paper-scissors, chicken or the egg thing.
Now, with email spam, ads over saturating our senses, and the Web 2.0, it seems selling and marketing are in a World Wrestling Federation death match.
- Which one is more important, sales or marketing?
- Which one will produce more qualified prospects, favorable bids, and secured contracts?
- Which one should you bet the farm on?
There’s not one answer, but a combination. The same was true before YOU were named Time magazine’s Person of the Year .
But instead of trying to sort out how sales and marketing were supposed to work back in the day, I thought it’d be interesting to list a few positives (+) and negatives (-) about their use today.
SELLING
Selling as a push-strategy:
(+) The only way 1-to-1 personal relationships can be developed
(+) Enables unique info to be collected specific to a single customer
(+) Emotionally influences customers who later justify decisions with logic
(+) The only way to finalize the sale of a facility service contract
(+) Can be the fastest path to secure a contract
(-) Cold calls are an imposition to customers who have no need
(-) Cold calling is inefficient, lot’s of wasted time, effort & money
(-) Sales tactics of poorly trained salespeople damage a contractor’s reputation
(-) Managing salespeople can be as frustrating as herding cats
(-) Can’t easily, quickly, or cost-effectively do all the (+)s of Marketing
MARKETING
Marketing as a pull-strategy:
(+) Can easily reach many customers in a market
(+) Can establish a contractor’s brand and raise customers’ awareness
(+) Can efficiently move customers through buying stages
(+) Can deliver customers who are ready to buy & have a preference for a contractor
(+) Can break through customers’ info overload through permission marketing
(-) Can’t do all the (+)s of Selling
(-) Can be expensive: ads, direct mail, tradeshows, promotions, PR
(-) Can be difficult to tell if it worked
(-) Can take time to motivate customers into action
(-) Brand messages & positioning are often “me-too”, lack uniqueness
This is, of course, not an all-inclusive list. What would you add?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: branding, marketing, selling
June 28th, 2007
Facility contractors try to differentiate themselves to customers by presenting new programs in proposals. It doesn’t end there. Contractors also try to change their own companies for better, faster, cheaper.
Proposing something new for customers or employees to adopt is called, surprisingly, the Adoption Curve.
That’s not its formal name. It’s really called the Technology Adoption Life Cycle . Which first began by tracking how farmers bought hybrid seed corn. Not very high-tech. But six years later the model was flushed out by Everett Rogers in his book, Diffusions of Innovation.
Wikipedia sums it all up with:
“Rogers stated that adopters of any new innovation or idea could be categorized as innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%), based on a bell curve. Each adopter’s willingness and ability to adopt an innovation would depend on their awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption.
Some of the characteristics of each category of adopter include:
- Innovators - venturesome, educated, multiple info sources, greater propensity to take risk
- Early adopters - social leaders, popular, educated
- Early majority - deliberate, many informal social contacts
- Late majority - skeptical, traditional, lower socio-economic status
- Laggards -neighbours and friends are main info sources, fear of debt
Rogers also proposed a five stage model for the diffusion of innovation:
- Knowledge - learning about the existence and function of the innovation
- Persuasion - becoming convinced of the value of the innovation
- Decision - committing to the adoption of the innovation
- Implementation - putting it to use
- Confirmation- the ultimate acceptance (or rejection) of the innovation”
The Adoption Curve looks like this:
Adoption for Customers & Employees
Swap “service program” with “innovation” and we’re talking about facility contractors. Whether to get customers to adopt (select) contractors, or get employees to do something differently.
It’s the Adoption Curve, and it can be used as a guide for selling and marketing change - both inside and out.
It also shows us the relative population of any group, whether it’s customers’ decision-making teams, or our own employees. Those percentages provide a rough ballpark.
How To Increase Adoption (Incomplete Version)
Of course this is a short list. It’s a little more complicated and you’ll have to flesh out your own specifics. Read Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore, although its for technology products, it can help.
Here’s a short take for facility services:
1) Identify your key customers (for a proposal it’s the decision making team, for employees it’s your key leaders)
2) Decide (guess) if they are innovator, early adopter, early majority, etc.
3) Identify where they get their info from. For example, innovators get info from blogs, white papers, and articles - the early majority rely heavily on references.
4) Create your messaging to appeal to their type:
- Innovator: “there are no proof points yet, speak to first-on-the-block, industry-changing, visionary aspects”
- Early Adopters: “point to innovators who have adopted, bring up risk-reward, & inevitability of coming change”
- Early Majority: “seek beachheads by pointing to reputable early adopters, speak to dangers of non-action”
- Late Majority: “point to proven track record, provide guarantees against failure”
- Laggards: “do you really want these?”
5) Get your adopter-specific message to your adopters in the manner they like (steps 3 & 4 above).
What are you doing to help your customers & employees adopt your changes?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: change, proposals, buying
June 14th, 2007
Ever hear of customers’ customers? Sure you have. Once they were called “employees”, or “tenants”, or “students”. Now everyone’s a “customer”.
The customers’ customer model provides facility contractors an opportunity to increase their value to existing customers. It also makes it less likely customers will switch to another contractor. But first…
Who’s the Customer?
Typically, the facility service customer, our contact, is a manager of a function or structure (security director, plant manager, campus administrator, etc.)
They include contracted services as part of a safe, secure, clean and productive workplace.
They serve the facility needs of their customers, i.e. employees, tenants, etc. - these are our customers’ customers.
Customers’ Customers Choose to Participate -or- Not
There are facility programs where our customers’ customers choose to participate, or not.
Obviously this isn’t true all the time. Some policies and procedures are not optional. Either the benefits or penalties are too big to ignore, and so they’re followed.
But for some facility programs,there are areas where customers determine their participation.
2 Examples: Recycling Programs & Security Practices
Recycling program success is directly dependent on enlisting customers’ participation. They have to change their behavior, do things differently, for programs to work.
Contract security services can’t be everywhere all the time. Protecting the workplace is largely dependent on customers following security practices. Think about confidential information on laptops. Or, after-hours in a parking garage.
Our Customers Seek Their Customers Buy-In
Forcing customers to do things they don’t want to do just doesn’t work. A Stalag 17 mentality creates more escape tunnels than Swiss cheese.
When you no longer can demand, you must enlist. Our customers are now faced with gaining their customers’ participation in doing things the “right way”. And this requires our customers to market their programs.
Contractors’ Opportunities
Contractors can help with the burden of marketing to our customers’ customers.
Who knows more than service providers about the value of recycling? Or importance of security? Or whatever? That’d be you - the contractor!
By working closely with customers, contractors can first understand, then design, and potentially implement efforts to increase participation in facility programs.
Here’s how contractors might help:
1) Provide information such as case studies & success stories highlighting benefits of participation
2) Develop communication plans with creative ways of raising customers’ customers awareness
3) Produce awareness-raising promotional items -costs may be shared, or picked up by contractors or customers
4) Promote participation - contractors personnel doing the marketing work, i.e. “meet & greets”, group emails, seminars, etc.
Success Requirements
Obviously, contractors can’t try to enlist participation on their own. Here are several needs:
1) Customers must allow contractors to help - obvious, yes
2) Customers will allow greater participation if trust & integrity are present with their contractors
3) Contractors must invest the time & effort to understand customers’ programs, culture, goals & limitations
4) All contractors’ promotion efforts must be authorized - again, obvious
Contractors’ Benefit Loop
This is a great self-perpetuating loop to get into with customers. By marketing to your customers’ customers, contractors gain:
1) Greater integration with customers -> increases your value to them, less likely to switch
2) Increased understanding of customers - leverage to create new, customized service offerings
3) Offer new customized services -> increased revenue & profit -> leads back to #1
What Programs Do You Market to Customers’ Customers?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: marketing, janitorial, security
June 1st, 2007
Business improvement (aka change) is a hostage to subtext.
Change doesn’t occur until subtext becomes text.
You know what subtext is. It’s when we say “No”, but mean “Yes”. It’s the elephant in the room no one talks about. It’s any Harold Pinter play. Subtext is what’s really going on.
And many (most?) times in business we aren’t talking about what’s really going on. To our employees, our customers, our business, or our markets.
Why are we in the dark?
Maybe we’re not aware of what’s going on. We’re too close, it’s too familar.
Or, maybe we are aware. But through habit, laziness, or both we decide not to be. Groupthink is comfortable. It has lower stress levels, better career path, higher compensation. And best of all - we don’t have to do anything.
Either way, subtext is the first, and often major, obstacle to change.
Until we acknowledge the truth of the current moment, warts and all, we can’t find our will or strength to change anything. Much less expect others to join in.
In the filled, silenced conference room, why don’t we answer the CEO’s question when asked “what’s broken?”
Subtext-to-Text
Non-fiction writers bring subtext to text.
That’s what they do. They see what’s going on through intuition, experience or research, and they put it into text. They do it because literally (pun apology) no one else is talking about it the way they see it.
Good non-fiction writers move a large piece of subtext to text.
Subtext Seth - An Example
Seth Godin , author of seven bestselling business books, identifies what’s going on in business behavior and places it on the table. He puts it in conversation. Then challenges readers towards action.
Of course, we don’t always take action. But before we can consider which action to take, we have to become aware.
Which makes subtext-to-text the required first step for any change to occur.
Here’s an example: ads, junk mail and spam. Those unasked for, repetitive, interruptions.
Seth’s book, Permission Marketing said what we all feel about ads. He brought our attention to the irritation and annoyance. He reminded us about advertising’s ineffectiveness. He said what we all were thinking.
Why hadn’t anyone done this before?
Because it was subtext. All of us had accepted it. We grumbled, but decided to stay unaware.
Inside, we knew interruption marketing hurts our customers and our business. We knew it was true. Because we couldn’t stand getting it at home, on TV, in our physical and digital mailboxes.
Seth brought the subtext of interruption marketing into the text of awareness. It had to happen in that order. Someone had to do it - thank you Seth.
Now we can figure out how to market with permission. To boldly go…
True Change - Big & Little
Change begins with seeing things the way they are.
And there are many things we really don’t want to see; about ourselves, our business, or the world.
However, when we decide to make a change, bringing subtext up to text is the literal first step.
What was the last subtext you freed from captivity?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: change, permission marketing, Seth Godin
May 1st, 2007
Anybody can gain brand awareness. It’s easy. Ever hear about streaking - the short-lived fad in the 70’s? That was someone’s 15-minute brand awareness, or longer if jail time was involved.
Brand awareness is like a paper wall. You can’t see through to the other side - until you break through it. Then you realize “Whoa, I’m here and everyone’s looking at me. Now what do I do?”
Seth Godin’s post about the brand formula describes brand as “..the product of two things: [Prediction of what to expect] times [emotional power of that expectation].
His advice is to “..keep awareness close to zero among the people you’re not ready for yet, and build the most predictable, emotional experience you can among those that care about you.”
For service contractors that means first revealing your business bedrock, your customer-experience promise.
Then creating tools that employees use to keep that promise.
There’s always pressure to raise brand awareness. However, this thinking doesn’t include the follow-on question of “Why should I (customer) care about you (contractor)?”
It’s more important and difficult to know who you are, what you stand for, and why customers should care about you. That’s why this work is rarely done.
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: brand awareness, customer experience, service contracts
April 24th, 2007
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