Mar 4, 2014 | Customers, Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Innovation is a process, mostly it is managed for better or worse with some sort of stage-gate process.
Sensitive project management of innovation is vital, the context of the project, the culture, management engagement, business model, the source of resources used, funding, and all the rest are critically important, and blend into a system.
However, one vital consideration often under-considered, or missed, in development projects is the evolution of the Customer Value Proposition.
Concentrating on the product, its specifications, the technology, operational considerations, design and engineering, and all the rest are vital, but ultimately, it is the customer who puts their hand in their pocket, and allocates, or otherwise, their scarce resources to your products. They will only make that choice in your favour when it is in their interests to do so.
Why is it then that the foundations of the value proposition, the identification, characteristics, interaction, and measurement of the drivers that will deliver customer value and therefore sales are often ignored, or glossed over? In my experience, it is usually because the developers fall in love with their products and designs, not really considering them from the customer perspective.
The value proposition usually evolves during the design and pilot process, but only if it is allowed to.
Sensibly, there is a second stage gate process, one that is parallel to the product development, the value development process which critically translates the product features into customer value as they evolve.
A test of the success of the value development process is the depth of the debate about price. A successful VDP will preclude almost any debate, and certainly the most often used determinants of prices, being cost and competitor activity, will be relegated to the bottom of the pile of considerations.
Feb 18, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales
Jan Carlzons great 1987 book Moments of Truth reflected on the point at which a “front line” employee interacted with a customer, and how important that interaction was. The digitisation of our lives has profoundly changed the context in which interactions occur, the moment is no longer the point at which some personal interaction occurs, it is now far more likely that it will be a digital one, and in addition, “front line” now includes everybody.
The idea of Moments of truth needs to be expanded, and categorised so they can be managed independently if it is to be of much more than a cliche.
- Opening moments of truth. That may occur anywhere!! Anyhow on a range of platforms.
- Referral moment of truth, When someone refers someone else to a web site, blog post, social media platform etc.
- Conversion moments of truth. When a “lead” evolves into a “prospect”. Then there are more as the prospect moves through the system to the transaction
- Depart moments of truth. The point at which prospects drop out of the funnel, what do you do with them then? Do not lose them!!!! Figure out how to re-engage.
- Recidivism moments of truth. The point at which a departed prospect returns to the funnel. Sales funnels as a metaphor work, but the neat, orderly and logical progression seen on all the whiteboards and consultant presentations are far from the truth. The process of moving a contact through a set of steps towards a transaction, then hopefully, many subsequent transactions is messy, random, often illogical and emotional. Therefore, a key marketing task is to raise your recidivism rate
- Apostle moments of truth. When a user becomes an advocate, an apostle, for you.
- Complaint moments of truth. When customers complain, that is potentially full of information, and opportunity to serve them better, discover where and how you can improve, and convert them to advocates. Alternatively, give them to your competition to harass, as the customer is not always right, but the right customer is always right.
- Loyalist moments of truth. When loyal customers return, they do so because they have been satisfied in the past, convenience, the offer is compelling, and sometimes just because it is easy. A returning customer costs way less than it costs to find a new one, the loyalists are the financial backbone of every enterprise, thank them, and treat them like you are grateful for their custom, and pleased to see them again.
I tried some word games to make the list more memorable, hopefully you can do better than me, I’m just happy that the idea that the context of MOT’s reflects the way you should treat it.
Feb 17, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Small business
Digital and email marketing is just the C21st version of direct snail-mail. Why is it then that we despair when our email open rates are only 2%, when that is all most direct mail campaigns ever got?
I think we are looking at things from the wrong end of the telescope.
Direct mail, and email campaigns can be hugely successful, we have all seen and heard of those successes, and when you look at them, the reason for the success is nothing tricky, but plain common sense.
The offer was personalised and compelling
The audience was engaged and willing
The communication channel delivered the offer with a minimum of fuss
The offer was easy to access
The creative in the communication was, well, creative and appropriate to the intended audience.
Those unsuccessful campaigns we see seem to concentrate on the above list in reverse order, worrying about the layouts smart photos, intriguing puns, and all the rest of the creative artifices, relegating the value of the offer to a specific audience, and the way that offer is communicated to the bottom of the pile.
Want success with direct mail/e-mail, get the customer to the front of the queue, worry about the rest later.
Jan 17, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
Every day I get stuff by email that purports to make me some sort of compelling offer, something that some dill out there kids himself (herself?) that I need.
It often starts:
Dear Alan (wrong spelling)
I am the CEO of Buttstuffers & Co, we are experts at something that we know will add 50% to your bottom line. Hopefully you are the right person for us to talk to. (I do not care who is the CEO of Buttstuffers, I do not know who they are, what they do, all I care about is how in hell they got my name, and yes, I am the right person, because I can ignore you, or more satisfyingly, tell you to piss off)
I would like to offer you a free ???????????, guaranteed to work for you, just to demonstrate our goodwill. (too late, my quotient of goodwill disappeared when you misspelt my name, and since then you have just managed to annoy me)
Download our free whitepaper now for more information. (Why would I do that, all it does is confirm an email address, and give you more information to throw more crap at me that demonstrates you are simply full of it)
We are experts at:
Marketing automation
Marketing ROI
SEO
Creating client relationships
Etc,etc.etc.
(If you were expert in any of this, which I seriously doubt, you would not have sent me this. In former times, you would be selling snake oil)
It gets really tiresome, marketing flatulence like this just gives those of us who genuinely care about what you think, and how your business can improve, and how our expertise and experience may assist, a bad name.
I tell my clients it is part of the price we pay for the tools that the web delivers, but nevertheless, flatulence smells bad irrespective of the cause.
Jan 15, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing
Low interest and confronting categories present problems for marketers.
It is relatively easy to generate interest in a new beer, a car, fashion item, but what about insurance, toilet cleaner, and petrol?
Typically we frame communications in the context of a problem to be solved, a tried and true method, but it means always coming at the product from a negative perspective, “you have a problem, here is the solution”. The marketing focus is on the happy smiling person who has solved their cleaning problem, the financially saved flood survivor, and the cleaner injectors in your car from “Factor X” in their petrol. The approach works well, but it often seems that the ad we end up with is a compromise, the best of a modest lot.
The marketing challenge is that the fake happy consumer depicted in the advertising always comes at the product from the point of view of the problem, and whilst it is nice to solve the problem, the context is still one of a problem, and the smile is still fake.
The better way is to concentrate on the person, rather than the problem, make the owner of the problem feel better, even happy. Change the context from the problem to the person who owns the problem, and be human in the way the problem is discussed. This great post by Barry Feldman, one of the great contemporary copywriters, demonstrates how with a collection of poop campaigns, a confronting topic we all face. Make sure you watch the video.
It takes some magic to make a boring or confronting product sufficiently fun, engaging, informative and interesting to enable a piece of communication to work, but it can be done with imagination and some marketing courage. The age of social media offers a new array of tools, but there is no substitute for being brave, and stepping beyond the boundaries of the norm.
Dec 30, 2013 | Customers, Governance, Leadership, Strategy
Just before Christmas, in an unusually hot and humid period, I was attacked by “mossies” while sleeping. The blighters feasted on my left shoulder, leaving a very itchy area.
So what you ask, and fair enough to wonder at the relevance.
It occurred to me that it was a nice metaphor for the “strategic itch” that seems to occur in many enterprises around this time of year. Someone, usually the CEO, gets a mossie in his ear about strategy, which results in everyone putting in an effort to redo the stuff that was probably done last year, a few updated numbers, some new graphs, and a reaffirmation of some vision and mission statements. All this of course culminating in an off-site 2 day meeting that involves a bad head-ache on the second morning.
The itch is scratched for another year, there are some “decisions” that are incorporated into the budget process, but little of real value has been achieved.
Just as scratching the mossie bites on my shoulder offered short term relief, but had little impact on the time it took for the itch to go away, and indeed ran the risk of causing some longer term problems if infection set in, so does the yearly strategic meeting do little, but potentially causes problems.So, here are a few “do’s and don’ts” that may remove the causes of the itch.
Do:
• Identify and consider the drivers of performance and change in your industry
• Consider how your current capabilities are lined up against these drivers, identify gaps, and agree how to address them.
• Review and consider your responses to the value propositions of your competitors, and consider what you would do to you, if you were them.
• Re-acquaint yourself with your customers, ensure you know why they buy from you and not others, and consider the manner in which you build relationships with them.
• Spend time identifying the “cause and effect” chains in your business, and how you can make them more visible, efficient, manageable, and accountable.
• Do a bit of “what if” scenario planning, the more out of the box the better
• Have some different people, from both inside and outside the enterprise in the process and at the meeting to avoid just continuing status quo thinking.
• Remember that innovation capability is about the only sustainable competitive advantage left to us, so consider how best to build the capability to innovate, without worrying too much about that new product in the pipeline.
• Agree a small set of KPI’s that reflect the most important things you considered, and ensure the processes are in place, or at least agreed to measure and communicate performance against them.
• Make sure everyone in the enterprise understands the priorities, and the underlying logic of the priorities, in other words, achieve alignment throughout the business.
Do not:
• Concentrate on the numbers, these days they are too easily generated and tend to remove the motivation to think.
• Allow status to be a determining factor in the importance given to every individuals contribution to the conversation
• Shy away from difficult, or confronting people or conversations.
• Think that all the answers to tough questions can be arrived at in the meeting.
• Think the job is done when the conversation ends. You get 1/10 for talking, the other 9 for doing.
• Think that this is a one-off, annual event. Strategy planning and review processes should be at the heart of enterprise governance, and are an ongoing challenge, particularly for boards.
Have a good strategy meeting.
