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Your Marketing has to be Memorable Remarkable and Relatable *

Your Marketing has to be Memorable Remarkable and Relatable *

by | Jan 13, 2021 | Marketing

Word of Mouth Marketing Defined

 

According to the Business Dictionary, Word of Mouth Marketing is:

 

“An oral or written recommendation made by a satisfied customer to the prospective customers of a good or service.  Considered to be the most effective form of promotion, it is also called word of mouth advertising which is incorrect because, by definition, advertising is a paid and non-personal communication.  “

 

The Better Business Alliance Defines Word of Mouth

 

Here at the Better Business Alliance, we define Word of Mouth Marketing a little differently:

 

“Turning your customers into your most effective sales and marketing asset by doing something they don’t expect, thus giving them a story to tell.”

 

As a practical matter, that’s not quite nuanced enough either.  Because even when you succeed in getting your customers to talk about your business, there are still two different types of word of mouth.  They are reactive word of mouth, and proactive word of mouth.

 

Word of Mouth Creates a Conversation

 

To achieve either type of Word of Mouth, you need to first understand that competency doesn’t create conversation.  When you do exactly what your customers expect and anticipate you will do, they do not mention that to anyone because there is no STORY there.  

You need to do something remarkable, unexpected, and memorable to kick off the Word of Mouth conversation that you are hoping to create.

 

Word of Mouth is About the Extraordinary

 

I have never said to anyone, “Hey, let me tell you about this perfectly adequate experience I had recently.”  That would be a terrible story.  Not interesting to tell, and not interesting to hear. Word of mouth requires story crafting.  

Word of Mouth is not something that can be brainstormed in a meeting.  WOM will rise out of the customer experience which you create in your business.  Word of Mouth is part of your customer experience, it’s something your business does which will make your customers excited and they will tell their friends about it.

 

What’s Your Story Catalyst?

 

Once you have a story catalyst, we call them Speech Triggers, you will prompt one or both of the two types of word of mouth.

To demonstrate the difference between reactive word of mouth and proactive word of mouth, let’s use one of our favorite examples, the chocolate chip cookie at DoubleTree Hotels.  Every day, for nearly 30 years, DoubleTree has given each guest a warm, chocolate chip cookie at check-in.

Those cookies are GREAT.  And people tell stories about those cookies constantly.  Research found that 34% of DoubleTree’s guest have told a story about the cookie.  That means that given that they give out 75,000 cookies each day, the story is told approximately 22,500 times every 24 hours.  That’s a LOT of word of mouth.

And that’s why you don’t see much advertising from DoubleTree.  The cookie is the ad, and the guests are the media.

 

Reactive Word of Mouth Definition

 

Reactive Word of Mouth is when your customer mentions your product or service when prompted, in the midst of an offline conversation, an online exchange, or similar situation.

For example, if I was with some friends at dinner and someone asked, “We’re going on a trip to Houston, any idea where we should stay?”  I might chime in with “Yes!  The DoubleTree at the Galleria is terrific, and the chocolate chip cookies at the front desk are the best.”

I am reacting to the situation and am making a recommendation in that context.  “Referrals” is what reactive word of mouth is called in some instances.

 

Proactive Word of Mouth Definition

 

Proactive Word of Mouth is when your customer introduces or inserts your product or service into a topically unrelated offline conversation, online exchange, or similar situation.

For example, if I was at the same dinner, with the same people and someone asked, “Anyone do anything interesting lately?”  I might answer  “Yes! I was in Houston last week.  I stayed at the DoubleTree, and you would not believe the amazing chocolate chip cookies they hand out at the front desk.”

In this scenario, I am not waiting for the topic to come around to hotels before mentioning DoubleTree and their famous cookies.  Instead, I am inserting the cookies into a broader conversation and turning the topic toward DoubleTree.

 

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Which Word of Mouth is Best?

 

Both types of word of mouth are important.  Because, word of mouth is the most persuasive and most common way that people are influenced to make buying decisions.

However, proactive word of mouth is the more desirable type because it requires your customer to be enthralled with your product or service.  They feel compelled to find a way to bring it up in conversation, even if it’s not on topic.

 

Word of Mouth is all About Telling a Story

 

Telling a story when asked is one thing.  Telling a story without being asked is something else entirely.  It requires more conviction and more passion.

To make sure the word of mouth about you is proactive as much as possible, you need to make certain that your Speech Trigger is truly unique, remarkable, and memorable.  You have to do something different, that your customers do not expect, and then find irresistible.

 

Is Your Business Customer Focused or Operations Focused *

Is Your Business Customer Focused or Operations Focused *

by | Jan 6, 2021 | Business

Is Your Business, Customer or Operations Focused?

 

 

Give Your Customer’s a Great Experience

 

Do you understand what it takes for your company to give customers a great customer service experience?  It takes a lot of effort to create the business culture which can give the best customer experience possible. 

To give your customer’s a great user experience you have to selectively hire great employees, you have to properly train your employees, and then you have to deliver a great and memorable experience. 

 

Be Memorable, and be Remembered

 

You have to understand, your customers are comparing you to the best and worst customer experience’s that they have ever received.  Today your customers level of expectations is high, and this is a comparison which you can’t allow yourself to fail.

Many companies claim to give great customer service, but do they deliver what they promise?  Many times they don’t, and they have set themselves up to fail.  Their company culture is built with an operations mentality with rigid rules, policies and procedures that just don’t allow for flexibility.

Frequently companies inflexibility prevents them from being more than just average or satisfactory.  Lets examine a few of the differences between customer-focused companies versus operations-focused companies.

 

5 Steps to a Great Customer Experience

 

 

Build Your Culture on Leadership

 

It’s impossible to build a customer-focused company culture without leaders who set the vision and mission of the company, and then lead by example.  Setting the example you want followed is key to establishing the culture you desire.  Then it’s a matter of encouraging employees to embrace the culture and follow in your footsteps.

Leading an operations-focused company takes a different approach.  Again the leadership sets the vision and mission of the culture, but often the vision is coupled to an attitude which stresses following a rigid set of rules and procedures.

 often stresses that employees need to follow a “Do as I say, not as I do” approach.  This behavioral approach can be at odds with what they want to achieve, often leaving employees confused and less motivated.

 

People Must Always Come First

 

The customer-focused company knows the importance of putting people first, especially employees.  They encourage a culture of happy, engaged and fulfilled employees who deliver a better customer experience.  Customers recognize this, embrace it and continue to come back.  Customers can feel when a business values them, and knows when it doesn’t.  

An operations-focused companies culture is focused on developing rules and procedures.  Instead of placing people first, the focus and measure of success is always and only the bottom line.  While a strong bottom line is crucial to any company’s success, not focusing on the people misses the culture part of the equation.

 

Hire Employees to Fit Your Culture

 

A customer-focused company hires people who enhance and will embrace the company culture, this simply means that any employee’s hired must have the personality and values that align with the companies vision and mission.   Certain jobs may require skill, but skill alone should not get an applicant hired who does not possess the necessary people skills. 

An operations-focused company will hire for skill, filling a position with technical strengths.  The applicant’s personality may or may not fit with the corporate culture.

 

Train Your Employees for Success

 

A customer-focused company spends time and money training for soft skills such as relationship building and customer service. The company recognizes that it takes both, technical and soft skills, to break away from being average. 

The operations-focused company spends most of their training dollars and time on technical skills and product knowledge.

 

Empower Your Employees

 

A customer-focused company empowers employees to make decisions that are for the benefit of the customer.  The company establishes guidelines rather than rigid rules.  It’s an approach that allows employees to deal with each customer in an open and flexible manner. 

The companies guidelines allow employees to take independent actions as long as it isn’t illegal, immoral, won’t cost the company money, and won’t harm the company’s reputation.  The company focus is on serving the customers needs, and doing whatever it to takes to satisfy the customer. 

The operations-focused company requires a manager’s approval for anything that is outside of their policies or typical way of doing business.  Employees are unable to provide customer care if it does not fit the companies rigid set of rules and procedures.

 

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What’s Your Customer Experience Choice?

 

 

How do You See Your Customer Service

 

Are you a customer-focused company that sees customer service as a philosophyto be embraced by every employee of the company, recognizing that there are both external and internal customers. 

Or, are you a operations-focused company that sees customer service as a department.

The differences are huge and are focused squarely on the type of business culture that you would choose to follow.

 

How Emotional Ads Work Best to Engage Your Customers *

How Emotional Ads Work Best to Engage Your Customers *

by | Nov 27, 2020 | Customer engagement

Emotional Ads Work Best to Engage Customers

 

Most of us understand that the ads which engage us emotionally work better than those that don’t.  I could hear many marketers utter a simultaneous “duhhhh!” when they read that.

You might find it surprising that many business owners still don’t believe that they are swayed by messages that speak to their emotions when making purchase decisions.  These individuals continue to believe that buying is driven by facts.

For these super-rational decision makers lets look at some hard data….

 

How Brands Survive and Grow

 

I was discussing the book Brand Immortality by Pringle and Field with some colleagues earlier this month.  An interesting finding from that book that I’ll share with you is an analysis of data from the IPA.  This is the UK-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

Included in the IPA dataBANK are over 1400 case studies of successful advertising campaigns submitted for the IPA Effectiveness Award competition over the last three decades.  This analysis of the IPA data gauged the increased profitability of ad campaigns using emotional ads compared to using rational ads and using information to increase profits.  The chart below compares the campaign results.

 

Advertising campaign profit gains chart showing emotional 31%, combined 26% and rational 16% increse in profitability

Analyzing the existing data, it was discovered that campaigns with purely emotional content outperformed those with purely rational content by nearly 2 to 1.  They found the gap of to be 31% vs. 16% in favor of emotion based ad campaigns.

They took it a step further and compared emotion based campaigns to those that mixed emotional and rational content.  Purely emotional campaigns still out performed these by 31% vs 26%.

 

Our Minds Process Emotions Unconciously

 

Why do ad campaigns based on emotions work better?  Pringle and Field attribute these results to how our brain’s process emotional input.  Our mind’s do this without conscience processing by us.

The authors do note that using an emotional marketing campaign may be more effective.  The downside is that it’s not easy to create ads that effectively engage consumer emotions.  However it’s is pretty simple to base a campaign on an “actual killer advantage”.

If you conduct an emotional campaign that is not based in reality, your brand can suffer actual damage to it’s reputation.  Pringle and Field suggest that an emotional branding approach be “hard-wired into the fabric of the brand.”

This requires a major commitment as well as a good understanding of consumer motivation.  They cite Nike’s overall theme of “success in sport” as an example of a brand that focuses on a key emotional driver and builds advertising, sponsorships, etc. around it.

 

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Market Leaders Dominate Emotional Branding

 

Pringle and Field note, smaller brands can’t successfully follow the same emotional branding approach as the market leaders.  However you may be able to segment your marketing and find a group of consumers that will respond to their unique appeal.

Ben & Jerry’s and Jones Soda, for example, aren’t the biggest players in their fields, but they have achieved success by appealing to smaller consumer segments.

 

Small Businesses Face Unique Challenges

 

Smaller brands do face additional challenges.  Their brand name recognition is likely lower.  An emotion-based campaign may confuse consumers who don’t connect the brand and product category.

Budweiser can run amusing and engaging commercials about Clydesdales and Dalmatians because 100% of the audience knows their products.  A small business might have to take a “combined” rational and emotional approach even if it is slightly less effective.  Or their emotion-based ads must clearly identify their product.

Emotion-based ads may be more difficult to create, but statistics tell us that it’s worth the effort.

 

Why Your Business Needs a Proactive User Experience *

Why Your Business Needs a Proactive User Experience *

by | Nov 15, 2020 | Customer engagement

Your Customer Service Can’t Just be Reactive

 

Now that more interactions between customers and companies are taking place in public forums, being proactive has become increasingly important.  Today business has to contend with customer reviews coming via social media, online review sites, and beyond.

This has made the Customer Service stakes for your business higher than ever.  The attention given to your user experience is an investment in your businesses future.  Even with renewed focus, the vast majority of customer service resources are still reactive.

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Everyone wants to know, “How can we best interact with customers who are seeking help, or who have complained?”  This is the approach of most businesses, waiting then reacting to feedback they receive.

It’s an outdated idea and approach which fails to make your customer service part of a better user experience.  Today, customer service has become a spectator sport with so much of it playing out in the public digital world of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media venues.

Your ability to handle customer questions and complaints better and faster will have a material impact on your business.  The best way to build your business and improve your customer experience isn’t to get better at reactive service.  Instead embrace providing a more PROACTIVE customer service.

 

Providing Information Creates Proactive Customer Service

 

The best complaint is the one that never has to be delivered?  You and your team already know what your customers are likely to complain about.  Despite a few outliers, most of your complaints over time fall into a few specific types that happen over and over.

Even though you know what your customers struggle with, you need to put your energy into getting out in front of these issues.  Often what creates these complaints can be fixed, sometimes simply by providing more information.

 

Proactive Customer Service on My Sink

Proactive customer service is critical for the continued success of tour company.  Nearly every business has similar and recurring customer satisfaction issues.  You must more effectively communicate with your customers to remove any knowledge gaps.  Doing this may solve many problems before your customer has the opportunity to complain.

Recently while on vacation in Palm Springs I something caught my attention.  As I was getting dressed to go to dinner with my wife, I found an outstanding example of proactive customer service.  Right there in my hotel room.  On the bath vanity was this sign, helpfully placed by the Renaissance Hotel.

 

On the bath vanity was a sign which explained that their cloudy water was a result of the natural minerals in their water

What a brilliant and proactive way to inform their guests.  Because the water out of my bathroom faucet was cloudy.  At first I found this a little disconcerting.  However after reading the sign I felt informed and educated.  I learned that the water was a natural, regional occurrence and the water was pure and full of “minerals required for healthy growth and development.”

One, simple sign turned my faucet water from a shortcoming to an elixir.  I’m not sure how long the signs have been in place.  But I can imagine how many calls were being placed to the front desk before the signs appeared.

The Renaissance is a large hotel, if only 20 percent of guests inquired about the water, you’d have dozens of calls every day.  Because of their proactive approach to customer service, I’m sure they’ve reduced their calls to just a few, if any.  This is a great example that showcases an innovative and proactive message turning a negative into a positive.

 

Proactive Customer Service Matters

 

Wade Lombard owns a moving company in Texas called Square Cow Movers. It’s a good business, competitive and more customer oriented than most moving companies.

 

There's a moving company in Texas called Square Cow Movers, it’s a good business, better than most moving companies

Wade discovered that his customers were leaving a lot of negative feedback.  They were either complaining to him and his team members, or they were writing bad company reviews on Yelp.  This confused Wade, he felt that his company was a solid operation with a strong commitment to giving customers a great experience.

He decided that he needed to dig deeper into the data.  After compiling and studying the data he realized that there were almost zero complaints about moving.  The complaints were mostly about related issues like show up times, parking, packing, and so forth.

This puzzled Wade because he felt that Square Cow worked hard to give their customers a great proactive customer service experience.  After Square Cow customers paid their deposit and booked a moving date, they are sent a welcome kit explaining the moving process.  Wade’s team also sends a reminder email seven days in advance of the move, including more helpful tips for their customers.  Finally, the night before, a voicemail was sent to confirm the job details.

Even after doing all of this, his customers were complaining that they just DIDN’T KNOW what to expect. The company thought customers were adequately informed, but the customers thought they were under-informed.  Their feelings created complaints.

And then Wade realized something.  All of his customers are in the process of moving.  When people move, they become a crazy people because it’s stressful to move.  Noone handles moving without stress.

Wade recognized that even though the company was sending information, it wasn’t sinking in with their customers.  Do you know how Square Cow reacted?  They doubled everything, sending two welcome kits.  They send two “here’s what to expect” emails.  Two reminders in the last days.  And guess what happened? All the complaints faded away.

Wade decided that no customer has ever said, “Please stop informing me so much.”

 

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Your Customer Can Never Have Too Much Information

 

The message is that there’s no such thing as giving your customer too much information.  It’s true if you run a moving company.  Or just have cloudy water.

If you want to invest more time and money into your customer service, I agree with you 110 percent.  But don’t neglect engaging in proactive customer service.  You need to give your customers an experience that they will want to talk about.  The results will transform your business.

 

Learn How to Avoid These 11 Website Design Mistakes *

Learn How to Avoid These 11 Website Design Mistakes *

by | Nov 11, 2020 | Web Design

11 Common Web Design Blunders to Avoid

 

You have to wonder, with all the websites on the Internet, and hundreds if not thousands more created every day.  What does it take to create a good website?

Building a website can be difficult itself, but the bigger challenge is making it usable.  Too may web designers forget, they created their website to solve the users’ needs.  Often, their creativity has priority over web practicality and usability.

Here we will highlight 11 web design blunders that web developers and designers make.  We also will make some suggestions on how these mistakes can be easily avoided.

 

Include a Search Box

 

The web is a huge archive of information.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a corporate website or a mere blog, a search box is essential to every website.  Your visitor might be looking for something that is hidden within your website.  If you have a search box, visitors will be able to find what they are looking for.

Google Custom Search is a neat, simple and effective way to get started.  Google Custom Search enables your visitors to search your site efficiently.  All you need to do is simply copy the HTML code from the control panel and paste it on your website and voila, you’ve got a search function right on your website.

 

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For More Information Visit:

Designing The Holy Search Box: Examples And Best Practices – This article has detailed guidelines to help you design your custom search box.

 

Make it Readable and Legible.

 

This is a crucially important element of web design.  A good design grab’s your visitors’ attention.  However, your users have to read text to be able grasp the information they desire.  Don’t choose bizarre font styles and sizes that make reading your content almost impossible.

 

There are simple things that you can do to improve the users’ reading experience on your website.

  • Compare color schemes of most major sites and notice how the colors improve readability.  A good place to try out different color schemes is Adobe Kuler.
  • Use a font like Sans serif typeface which allows for easy reading on the web.

 

Readability Suggestion:

This is a great article which gives you more tips on improving your website readability – Readability – Making Web Pages Easy To Read.

 

Organize Your Content.

 

A website’s content is what drives traffic to it.  How your content is structured, ensures it’s success or failure.  Users do not read unless it is absolutely necessary.  Your visitors like to scan through information and pick out points of interest on a web page.

Don’t just put a block of text on your web page and neglect headings, sub-headings, bullets, keywords, paragraphs, etc.  Use appropriate page titles for each web page so users know exactly where they are. Some designers even neglect naming their web pages.

The worst blunder would be putting inaccurate, inaccessible, insignificant or out-of-date content on your website.  Your content must sync with the overall theme of the website and be useful.  If a page is under construction, why bother putting it up?  If a designer really must, then it is only temporary and 3 weeks will no longer be deemed temporary.

 

Content Organization Suggestions:

Organize the content on your website using HTML and CSS when creating the design of your pages.

  • Create enough whitespace between your text and images by using margins.
  • Update and be consistent.  The purpose of updating is not just to add new content but to spot and correct past mistakes.

 

Site Navigation Matters.

 

Navigation within your website needs to be seamless.  Your visitors should be able to easily find their way around your content.  There is no standard for navigation within a website.  However, as new web development technologies emerge, it’s important to make your site navigation intuitive and consistent.

If you use text as navigation, it must be concise.  Visual metaphors should not be re-invented.  If hyperlinks are used, they should stand out from the rest of your text.  Dead links need to be avoided.  Dead links increase user confusion and wastes their time.

 

Navigation Suggestions:

  • Make your navigation smooth by using textual descriptions for all links.  Provide alt text for images. Use alternative text description techniques for Flash or Javascript links.
  • Organize and structure your navigation in tandem with the theme of the website.  Personal websites can afford to be more creative yet accessible but a business website requires more efficiency and clarity.

 

Remember, if users can’t find what they want in less than 3 clicks, most will leave your site immediately.

For More Information About Site Navigation:  Implementing Effective Website Navigation – This article gives more insight on implementing an effective navigation for your website.

 

Embrace Consistent Design.

 

Don’t use excessive creativity in your website design.  Be consistent with your design choices on every web page in your website.  Users’ find this both comforting and easier to understand.

No matter how outstanding and attractive a website is, if the overall look and feel is not consistent, users can’t relate to it and feel less comfortable.

 

Design Suggestions:

  • Use a consistent template for every page with links to the main sections of the site.
  • Create aesthetically simple designs and users will never get confused on your website.

 

 

Choose Screen Resolution Carefully.

 

I’m sure you’ve visited websites where you have to scroll horizontally.  This is an absolute no-no in modern web design.  A good designer will develop websites that fit on most screen sizes.  The current optimized layout for websites currently is 1024 x 768 pixels.

 

Screen Resolution Suggestions:  

It’s almost impossible for your design to fit every resolution.  Especially when visitors are now surfing from mobile phones and netbooks.  However, but we can get a good idea what are the generally used screen resolutions using the following methods:

  • Check your stats – Analyic services like Google Analytics provides you information about what monitor resolution they are using. These are useful information you should know before initiating your next revamp.
  • W3 Schools Browser Stats – W3 Schools gives clear lists of the most popular browser used by netizens and sort them according to popularity. There are other interesting and important statistics too.

 

Simplify Registration Forms.

 

Registration forms shouldn’t be tricky.  How much information do you require from your user?  Users shouldn’t need to enter a lot of details to register on your website.

Websites which choose to make many registration fields mandatory often frustrate users very quickly.  Always remember, users visit a website to acquire information.  Not the other way round.

 

simple registration form

 

Someecard‘s simple form makes registration painless.

Registration Form Suggestions:  

Compare registration forms across communities on the web and understand what basic information is required of the user during the registration process.

 

More Design Usability Information: 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design – This post on Smashing Magazine takes an in-depth look at registration forms and other usability mistakes.

 

Overuse of Images/Animations.

 

Too much images on a web page is a huge turn off.   Images can be used to capture users’ attention but it can also be a distraction or just aggravating.  Images should be used to illustrate and guide the user where appropriate.

Animations are awesome and a powerful medium.  Especially when used appropriately.  When it’s a cycle or just too much on a web page, it gets on the users’ nerves.  Users don’t have the patience, time or resources so designers must offer alternatives or better yet, the skip button, if it’s a full page animation.

 

More Image Information:  Flash: 99% Bad – Use Flash appropriately.  It’s been almost 10 years since Jakob Nielsen published this article but it’s still relevant in terms of Flash usability especially the Breaks Web Fundamentals piece.

 

Include More Whitespace.

 

Too many designers forget about whitespace on webpages and how important it is.  Too often designers become so invested in their design creativity that they forget that it’s not about them.  They make the mistake of cramming too much information onto a single page.  This results in a cluttered and unreadable page.

 

Here are some articles showing the importance of whitespace in web design:

 

No Background Music.

 

Users don’t want cool, they seek efficiency.  99 percent of your visitors don’t care about the music on your website.  Some designers make it worse by putting different background music on every web page.

 

Background Music Suggestion:  

Don’t use background music, but if you must, create a frame for the code and user controls. That way, the music loops continuously, instead of changing each time a new page is loaded within the website. And the user can stop or pause whenever.

 

Test, and Test Some More.

 

How many times have we been to web pages that can only be viewed on a certain browser?  Web developers have to have a checklist of sorts when testing websites.

  • Can the website be viewed in different environments?
  • Is the design layout consistent in all browsers?
  • Can the website be viewed in different settings such as Images turned off, JavaScript turned off, etc?

 

Browser Suggestions:  

W3C offers tools to test for quality assurance. Check out W3C Quality Assurance Toolbox and Web Page Validation.

 

Accessibility Toolbar