Category: Risky marketing
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How to inspire loyalty from service professionals
Very little is written about how customers can improve their own experience and inspire loyalty. In research handled by Jing Zhou, a professor at Rice University's graduate business school, evidence showed that customers should not only encourage service professionals to make recommendations, but to take those recommendations seriously, and complement the service person for their…
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Antivirus in social media
The positive connotation of virus in the marketing arena did NOT begin in social media. This Fast Company article describes the birth of "viral marketing" with Hotmail. (Like many stories it may not be entirely true, but it was written in 1999, pretty close to the actual events.) However, I think the social media platforms…
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Retail trends toward non-retail experiences
Retail experiences have been a trend for quite awhile. Stores from Hershey, Apple, and Anthropologie all broke new ground, but they always filled the store with things to buy. Now, the latest retail experience is to have less merchandise, more something else… NY Times: For Brands Like Toms, It’s All About the Experience, 2015-Nov-13 by Steven…
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Why we will always lose customers unless we have a strategy to retain them.
Two of my Facebook friends are deceased now, but they are still in my Friends Count. Of course, I appreciate seeing their names although I don't visit their profiles. I do remember them fondly when I see their names in the list. Deceased customer names in a marketing database? Not such a good idea. Unfortunately…
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Make your resume a customer experience
We usually write a resume that makes us feel good. Unfortunately we are not the target audience. Asking our business associates for feedback may make us uncomfortable, but it is vital. The more like our targeted hiring managers they are, the better. Career Marketing Coach: A Little Resume Tough Love, 2015-Mar-25 by Debra Rosenfeld …because…
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In building a relationship with email, go to your customers’ space in your head
Maintaining an email-based relationship with a prospect can be very grueling. "Checking-in" emails just don't work. News from our own companies are usually too self-serving. To engage someone by email, we should first sit and think ourselves into their office… even if we've never been there. What's going on in their world? It used to…
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Defining a value proposition with meaningful differentiation
After earning an MBA, after spending 30 years reading about business strategy, after dozens of seminars and webinars and coaching sessions, business educators find it hard to stump me. In my struggle to market Steady CRM, my value proposition is an approximation, nothing that's providing any traction yet. Potential customers nod, but they do not…
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The essence of a fine relationship
Quinn Norton has written an amazing article about navigating social relationships for people who lack social awareness or empathy. For those of us who have been more successful in our relationships, it opens an amazing view into what we could be missing… how the world might look if we were blind to expressions and social…
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When we listen to our customers, we have to consider why and how
Listening to one's customers is not a simple thing. The questions, the context, the objectives we have color the entire process. The article below by Steve Blank does a great job differentiating the Lean Startup approach from Design Thinking. Both approaches can lead to strong and productive customer ties, if we are aware of our…
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In all email communications: give the gift of a great subject line
When I started work for Ogilvy in 1984, we didn't have email—we had memos. And memos lived and died based on their titles, or subject lines. All news account executives were schooled in producing informative, engaging subject lines for our memos. Or they wouldn't be read. Now that I spend so much time communicating by…
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