To Social media or not, that is the question.

To Social media or not, that is the question.

May 25, 2016 | Communication, Customers, Social Media

Many of the small and medium sized businesses I interact with still struggle with the notion that they should be investing in social media as a marketing strategy. Creating and sharing content of value to their customers, potential customers, and competitors runs against their grain .

In addition, the operational challenges are technically confronting to many, and the notion of having to write and produce the content necessary is normally a hill too far.

B2B, B2C,  it makes little difference.

The immediate reaction of my B2B clients is that this social media stuff is for consumers, not serious businesses. However, it is the reality that those in businesses who make the purchase decisions  are usually engaging, anonymously at first with potential suppliers during the early phases of the purchase cycle, and coming to the supplier only for the transaction. Not being in on the ‘conversation’ early is clearly a mistake.

vanity metricsIt is becoming pretty clear that social media well used is a remarkably potent marketing tool, but challenging for those with modest resources, as this stuff is time consuming, technically challenging to measure properly as distinct from just measuring what is becoming known as ‘vanity measures’ just thinking they are measuring something useful.

 

 

There are a small number of very sensible strategies you can use.

Use it as a tool.

Social media is a marketing tool,  and like any tool, the effectiveness is best measured by the outcomes rather than the use, so set out to measure the effectiveness by identifying the cause and effect links between the SM and your corporate objectives.

Understand the tool.

When you have a nail to be driven, a screwdriver is of little use. Same with social media, they are tools that can be used very effectively in the right circumstances, but are useless in the wrong place. Understanding how the tool works, and where it’s characteristics are best deployed is a fundamental part of the game.

Identify your key customers, and what they want out of it.

You simply have to  be able to put yourself in the customers shoes, understand the value you can deliver from their perspective, and be prepared to be patient. My favourite  metaphor for social media is to humanise it in a way everyone understands. You walk into a bar, and spot someone who just overwhelms you. If you just walk up and ask them to marry you, your chances are pretty slim. By contrast, introduce yourself, find shared interests, spend some time together, and you never know where it can lead. Social media is no different. To have a chance of the desired outcome, you need to do the spadework up front.

Measure, test & improve.

Be creative but deeply interrogative about the measures. (is interrogative even a word?) continuously test options, so you can continuously improve. Social media and digital generally have absolutely changed the practise of marketing. It has made it measurable and accountable, but there are limits.  ‘Vanity measures’ such as number of friends, and likes  are very poor measures. They are superficial and misleading offering no clue as to which activity is likely to generate a commercial outcome, they just look good on a piece of paper to a boss who does not understand. Understanding the difference between cause and effect and correlation is critical, observing correlation is terrific, but do not make the mistake of thinking it is always cause and effect and therefore measurable. A metaphor used by Gary Vaynerchuk is particularly potent here. He observes that everyone understand the value of good parenting, over time it has great outcomes for both, but trying to measure it in a month  by month basis is stupid, it is a cumulative effect of many small things over a long period. There are some aspects of measuring digitally the return on SM that can really stuff us up.

 

Success with digital marketing, including the leveraging of the potential of social media is not easy, despite all the nonsense and get rich quick promises to the contrary.

Hopefully now you are at least a part way to answering the question.

Are supermarket customers a means to an end, or the end?

Are supermarket customers a means to an end, or the end?

May 18, 2016 | Customers, Marketing, retail

Woolworths has delivered in spades to shareholders in the last 20 years, but the rot had set in a decade ago.  The seeds of the rot were assisted in my view by a lack of credible competition, and management losing touch with the subtle changes happening in consumer attitudes and behaviour that added together began making a noticeable performance difference 5 or 6 of years ago.

Can it be reversed, we will know in another 3-5 years.

New CEO Brad Banducci appears to be making sweeping changes at Woolies, ditching his fancy CEO office for a workstation sends a string messages, stronger yet is the message to his troops that it is not just desired that they get into the stores, it is mandatory.

Getting the executive decision makers close to the retail action……..what a novel idea!

Former Executive chairman Paul Simons who pulled Woolies out of the gutter in the late 80’s after returning from a gig as MD of trail-blazer discounter Franklins, was famous for turning  up unannounced in stores, checking the minor details of the way the store was operating and presented to consumers, talking to floor staff, and espousing frugality as a great virtue. He must have been dismayed at the way Woolies followed Coles into an extravagant head office, seeing it as a sign of executives isolating themselves from the interaction with  customers in stores, where retail success is won or lost.

In the 80’s the Morrisons chain, then  concentrated in the North of England before they expanded south, was a leader in produce merchandise. Their stores were the best I had seen to that point anywhere in the world. In a store one  day near Leeds during a visit to the UK, complementing the manager on the display during a conversation where I was sucking his brains, he pointed to an elderly gent in a brown cargdigan carefully stacking apples on a shelf, ‘that is the reason’ he said, “Mr Morrison turns up in a different store every day, so everyone is on their best game‘. I introduced myself, complementing him on his stores, I recall he said ‘did  not matter what happened elsewhere, it was the little things in the stores that made the difference’.

I never forgot that conversation, it reminded me at the time of the words of Paul Simons, and of Reg Clairs the real architect of “Fresh Food people” who I came to know very well after he retired from Woolworths.

It seems Brad Banducci heard it also.

You would think Woolies would have learnt from their experiences, plenty of opportunity to so.

They took over Dick Smith, and stuffed it up by ‘corporatising’ and in the process removing the things that made it successful. They watched the challenges and mistakes of BBC hardware in the early days of big box hardware, as Bunnings set the pace, then a decade later deciding to take on Bunnings with an inferior customer offer from a position of significant financial, branding and logistical weakness. Meanwhile, they had made a great start with Thomas Dux modelling Harris Farm, but again throwing out the things that delivered the early success in favour of more of the same from Woolies head office, arriving at the current place where Dux is being closed down.

Mass market retailing is a schizophrenic occupation.

On one hand, it is the advantages of scale that that deliver profitability, but at the retail selling face it remains a highly personal business. Get the balance wrong in either direction, and the financial results will follow. Allowing the financials to drive decision making  inevitably results on the focus being taken off the customers, and they will react accordingly.

The absolute best way to overcome objections to a sale

The absolute best way to overcome objections to a sale

May 16, 2016 | Customers, Sales

Over many years and considerable experience in developing sales programs, one of the regular stumbling blocks is how to respond to objections.

The single best way I have ever seen to overcome a sales objection is to articulate the objection before the sales target gets the chance to do so. That usually shoots it down in flames as a serious objection if the conversation continues past that point.

For example, a while ago doing an assessment of a client’s sales efforts I sat with one of their sales people as they made the initial contact over the phone after the lead had been qualified by a reasonably robust process. My clients product is a quality offering in  a crowded market that has a number of cheaper offerings without the value added capabilities and guaranteed longevity. The qualification process filters out many of those for whom the feature additions will add no or little value, so those with whom we were trying to have a sales conversation had been judged to be genuine leads with a need we could fill. However, in the early parts of the conversation almost always  price was raised as a problem, and often it ended the sales process before it really got started.

When we turned the scripts around so that the sales personal brought up the premium pricing, acknowledging it was not for everyone, as not everyone values the assurance that comes with the quality built in to the design and fabrication of the product, price was removed as a barrier to the sale.

It worked almost every time multiplying the ‘conversion rate’ which was in this case gaining  the face to face opportunity to demonstrate the product in an operational context. From there, the sales conversation rate was already pretty high.

Following is a list of the common other barriers to completing a sale I have seen. Being creative about the manner in which they are handled has a great impact on the conversion rates.

Lack of perceived value in the product

Lack of urgency in purchasing the product

Perception that an alternative is superior

Internal politics in your customers business

Lack of funds to purchase

Personal issues with decision makers

Conflicting corporate initiatives

A no decision no risk attitude

Lack of trust in your company

Lack of personal rapport with you

Your inability to communicate effectively with them

Now you have a list of the possible objections, workshopping the responses is extremely useful

In short, make a feature of the things that you think they will object to, and remove it as an objection before a potential customer has the time and opportunity to bring it up themselves.

How to get lucky!

How to get lucky!

May 2, 2016 | Customers, Innovation, Management

‘Getting lucky’ has some pretty specific connotations in Australian vernacular,  but has much wider implications in business.

My old dad used to say “the harder I work, the luckier I get”. He would usually be saying it as he reached for his last bob while playing a round of golf, or chasing the bream off the beach in the morning.

‘Lucky’ has many faces.

Dad also had things to say about the nature of luck in business, things that have stuck with me over the years and informed the way I advise those I work with.

Luck comes with hard work……

Luck does come with hard work, but working hard to dig a hole will just get you a deeper hole, and sometimes that is not the answer. You have to be able to be selective at what you work at, and swap horses when you need to.

Luck come to the prepared mind.

This old saying is also true, and recognises that preparing your mind to recognise and act on the so called ‘luck’ when it happens is hard work. This work usually happens over a long period, and is usually the result of some level of collaboration. Alexander Fleming  ‘discovered’ penicillin in 1928, his lucky observation informed by previous work by others over a long period. It was not until 10 years after later that is was turned into a product by Howard Florey, driven by the demands of war, and funding from the Rockefeller foundation.

Luck comes from learning.

Thomas EdisonIt seems to me that ‘luck’ also favours  those who treat ‘bad luck’ not as a setback, or indication that they should cease and desist, but as an opportunity to learn and build something better that sometimes, magically overnight after 20 years, comes together in a new way. Thomas Edison’s famous words telling us that the discovery of the light bulb was the result of 9,900 failed experiments says it all.

 

Luck come from seeing what others miss. 

See what others missThen, there is also those who see opportunities as they emerge by, and have the sight to recognise them, and balls to act on them. Steve Jobs was a master at this. He saw a whole new world in combining the existing functionality of the telephone and MP3 player with the then unused touch screen technology that had emerged from NYU labs and demonstrated publicly for the first time in 2006.

 

‘Luck’ rarely just arrives, although it does happen. As a kid I knew a bloke who bought a single Opera House lottery ticket (when 200k was a lot of money) for himself on special occasions, and then won it. That seems like luck to me, but luck is usually a function of several of the above working together.

Where will the retail gorillas make profits tomorrow?

Where will the retail gorillas make profits tomorrow?

Apr 20, 2016 | Customers, Marketing, Operations, retail, Strategy

Coles and Woolies are locked in a battle for share of the customers wallets and throats that becomes more complicated every day.

The competitive landscape has changed. The old model of them against each other and independent wholesaler supplied groups, has been spiced up by Aldi, Cosco, and the tide of competitive business models evolving both in store formats such as the convenience small stores around commuter points, farmers markets, and digitally enabled sales.

Those sales I call ‘Beyond Checkout’ cover everything from online ordering with home delivery to the evolution of old fashioned drive thorough pickup.

In my view the battle is a losing one for the gorillas without significant change to their operational culture. Their current business models are based on mass merchandising, not easily made compatible with the personalised service delivery and the  lower volume specialised products now being sought. You need go no further than the disappearance of Thomas Dux for evidence.

Having said that, I see 5 general areas for operational innovation of both the gorillas that would deliver ongoing profits, and sensitise them to the changes happening beyond the walls of their stores.

  1. In store technology deployment.

Deploying some level of the data driven category management control to store level would greatly enhance assortment optimisation, out of stock reduction, and margin maximisation. The assumption of course is that there is staff in the stores with the nous to leverage the information  they are being given.

There is also the juicy thought that stores will be able to connect to consumers in close proximity to stores via their mobile devices geo location capability and make them offers based on their purchase patterns. Then there is the option of instore kiosks harnessing the value of instore video and personalised advertising and promotion, again catalysed by your mobile device.

  1. Leveraging existing asset

Reduction of maintenance and running costs with innovations like rooftop solar power, preventative maintenance programs, improved store security, and stores as the logistic base for home delivery. Home delivery will become more and more important to time constrained consumers, so developing a compelling offer should be high on their agendas. To date the penetration has been poor because the logistics, particularly for fresh and frozen product is really challenging.

  1. Employee productivity improvements.

With better staff training, particularly in produce, customer sensitive opening and closing times, cash register  speeds (the Aldi insistence on prominent bar codes by observation speeds up throughput significantly), much can be achieved. Self-serve checkouts currently rolling out with store renovation programs have clearly been a success with consumers, and offer significant productivity improvements.

  1. Value chain optimisation

The use of collaborative technology  that goes back into supplier production planning and collaborative volume management from the production line to the checkout has been around for years. However, there remains huge opportunities to extract benefits from inventory management for all in the value chain. The barrier is cultural, as the gorillas want all the benefit to come their way, removing the incentive for suppliers to take risks and innovate, except when under the whip.  Collaboration through the value chain can deliver great benefits when done well.

  1. The customer experience,

What is retail about, if not customer experience?

It is here that retailers can differentiate themselves in all sorts of ways.  What they cannot do is demand from head office that customers like them, and prefer their stores over the others. Store choice is a personal thing for consumers, made up of many elements, but creating a store environment where the employees are pleased and proud to be of service is a great start.

Long way to go there.

What the senior management can do is provide the infrastructure that enables that level of personalisation and service to be delivered in stores, and the leadership to create and encourage the customer centric culture that front line employees then deliver.

And a final thought: Is that the light at the end, or a headlight?

E-tailing is a huge threat to the gorillas, and while it involves capital to develop and deploy the technology, it is essentially an individual engagement and transaction. Online gets all the publicity, but still only accounts for around 6% (depending on whose numbers, and which categories you look at) of sales. The gorillas should see E-tailing as their next opportunity area, to be embraced rather than feared.

Remember what happened to the Blockbuster video business? They had the game by the throat, Netflix was just an irritation in the corner, so they ignored them.

Bamm! Blockbuster is gone.

While it is still pretty hard to stream a family roast dinner, the lesson of Blockbuster should not go unheeded by Coles and Woolies.

 

How to find your keywords, for Free!

How to find your keywords, for Free!

Apr 11, 2016 | Customers, Marketing, Strategy

Pretty much everyone engaged in the ‘content wars’ have some level of focus on keywords.

It makes logical sense to include them in your headlines, and body copy where appropriate, and while ‘keyword stuffing’ now brings the wrath of Google down on you, being sensible still carries weight.

There are a number of paid keyword tools that do a great job, but a pretty good job can be done for free just by applying some thought and a bit of common sense.

Some of the ideas I have used in preparation of this blog are:

Google auto complete. Start typing a query into Google and it gives auto options. These are nothing more than Google scanning the similar terms put into search and returning their most common responses. Ie, a keyword or phrase.

Wikipedia. Thousands of experts collect and curate information on many topics. Any page that deals  with your niche will have links and words that can be used as keywords, curated by experts.

Google related searches. Every first page of the search results give you a number of related searches at the bottom of the page. Often some good ideas are hidden in there.

Amazon. This may not be an obvious choice, but if you have a look inside a book in your niche, you will see the chapter headings. Somebody who presumably has a bit of knowledge in your niche has taken the trouble to write a book, and set out the important stuff in the chapter headings, might be an idea there?

Quora.com. Quora is a Q&A platform, for the uninitiated, so there are discussions on many topics, probably yours, so there are a range of words and phrases used that could give some ideas.

Forums. Type your topic + Forum into the search box and up will come the forums related to your search term. Again, these are discussions on the topic for which you are looking for keywords, so there are likely to be some good ideas floating around.

Google keyword planner. This is a great tool, suffering from success. It gives only specific variations on a word or phrase you type in, there are  no similes or suggestions in there, no variations beyond the specific word or phrase you typed, no imagination or inference is applied. The obvious advantage is that you also get some data which can be very useful. On the flip side, everyone uses it, so finding a word that is different, but still relevant will not happen in this tool.

The paid tools are very good, but for a medium or small business, an expense that they often choose to avoid, as they can be expensive. No amount of keyword magic however can replace a creative and relevant strategy and Value Proposition executed with precision.