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It is tempting for marketers to cast aside fundamentals and quickly get down into the weeds with tactical marketing efforts. The appeal of this feel  good approach quickly dissipates when marketing goals are not met.

If you hire a personal trainer, many of the best will tell you “focus on the core”. What they mean, simply, is if you ignore the core of your body, your fitness program will not reach its full potential.

What is “Core Marketing?

You will find thousands of different definitions of marketing when you search online. When it gets right down to it, there are two elements to marketing:

• Determine what the customer wants/needs
• Develop an efficient means of delivering it to the customers

That’s it – that is what Core Marketing is all about. Unfortunately many companies assume they know the customer needs, and focus on the development and delivery part. That is a huge mistake. Making assumptions about customers’ ever-changing needs is dangerous. Your product or service simply won’t sell, regardless of any marketing wizardry.

Where should you start?

With your customers of course! Without knowing the customer needs you’re pretty much shooting in the dark. How could you possibly deliver something of value without knowing what to satisfy?

In almost any marketing situation, focusing on the customers FIRST is a good path to take. Talk to your current customers. Talk to potential target customers. You will probably learn a lot by talking to former customers also! And while I say talk to customers, I really mean LISTEN to customers. Ask questions. Be humble – even the most astute marker is ignorant to customer needs without research. Remember, ignorant does not mean stupid, it means uninformed. Don’t be ignorant. Do your homework and the reward will be the ability to resonate with your customers.

Then What’s Next?

Armed with a clear understanding of the customers’ needs, you are poised to focus on product/service development. (For simplicity we will assume it is a product you are marketing.) The product itself is also “Core Marketing”. Bad products don’t sell. Period. Great products can actually evangelize customers, driving your marketing to new levels. Product development itself is not often considered “marketing” but it is second only to needs identification. Unless you are 100% satisfied you are marketing the best product to fulfill customer needs – stop. You’re wasting your time. Go back to the product and revisit the customer needs if necessary. Your marketing will fail miserably if your product does not truly satisfy the needs you have properly identified.

Resist the temptation to “just get things moving”. Instead focus on core marketing efforts and your odds of success will grow immensely.

When your product/service offering offers little differentiation vs. the competition, you need to be creative and strive for “Peripheral Differentiation”

Marketers are well aware that all successful marketing is rooted in differentiation.  If you want to convince a potential customer to choose your product or service, you have to “give them a why”.  This is all fine if your offering has unique characteristics that you can detail to prospective customers.  But what happens when you have to compete in a product category that has little or no differentiation?  How do you convince customers to choose your product vs that of the competition?  When

Trying to Differentiate on Price

Some companies choose to “be different” based on price.  Their answer to the “why” question is “because our product is less expensive”.  In this instance the “best case” scenario is you get the customer’s business, but it is at a compromised margin.  This could also lead to a downward spiral when your competitor decides to drop their price and a “race to the bottom” ensues.  The harsh reality is that you cannot effectively differentiate on price.  As the old saying goes, what business you gain on a nickel you can also lose on a nickel.

Focusing on Your Company – Not The Product

Another common and usually unsuccessful tactic is to downplay the product itself.  The goal is to try to focus the customer on the company itself.  Messaging may contain vague “reasons” to choose your company, such as:

• Choose us, because we care!
• Proudly Serving the XYZ Community
• We are Committed to Quality
• Our Selection is Second to None

Each of these statements is meant to provide some reason for customers to choose your company, but they usually fail.  Customers just don’t care about these things.

A Different Approach – Peripheral Differentiation.

Rather than insult customers with tired slogans that carry little tangible value, try a different approach.  Peripheral Differentiation is a way to deliver meaningful value to customers with often very little expense to your company.  Strive to deliver solutions to challenges customers face in the situations that relate to your product, i.e, peripherally.  A couple of examples are listed below:

• A photographer who faces stiff competition for wedding packages can offer “Let us help you plan your wedding with our guides/checklists”
• Facing extreme pricing pressure from online providers, a pool supply company can schedule weekend seminars for customers with tips on proper chemical use.
• An industrial paper supply company can build a strong network of contacts in the business community to share with local printers who consume their paper products.  The printers will appreciate the referrals and hopefully reward the paper supply company with orders.

These are just a few examples of thinking beyond the products themselves and asking the question “in what ways can I offer my customers help in using the product better, or helping them with challenges they face.

Using the  “Customer Centric Filter” Will Improve Your Marketing

Actions speak louder than words.  Psychologists tell us that how we perceive our actions (and the related consequences) are often quite different from reality.  They refer to this as “Egocentric Bias” People in general tend to “sugar coat” our actions and give ourselves more credit than we deserve.  “Yes, I  am a kind person.  generous, a good listener, and everyone LOVES my sense of humor”.  Unfortunately, people who know us well might not agree with this “perfect version” of ourselves.  This phenomenon crosses over into business as well.  Companies often perceive their businesses as “very customer-centric” when in reality that is not very accurate.  Consider perceptions like:

• “We are ALWAYS working in the best interests of our customers”
• “Our customers LOVE our product/service”
• “Are we Customer Centric?  ABSOLUTELY – 100%.  “Customer First” drives all of our efforts”

Let’s talk about that last one – “Are we Customer Centric”?  This phrase  is now very prevalent, and frankly overused.  Because companies are often “Egocentric” they think they “check the box”.  But reality is harsh.  It turns out, many companies miss the mark – big time.  

The “CC Filter” Worked for Steve Jobs

Perhaps the most “customer focused” businessperson of our time was the late Steve Jobs.  While some colleagues described him as “insane”, there was no doubting his unwavering commitment to customers and customer experience.  In fact, he wanted customer experience to be “Insanely Great” (a phrase he used frequently).  Every single action Steve took and decision he made was rooted in “how does this make things better for our customers”.  I  like to call this the “Customer Centric Filter” (CC Filter).  Steve Jobs used it constantly!

This approach means that every action you take should be made with the customers interest in mind.  Each time you make a decision or modify a business practice, apply the CC Filter as your guide.  Some examples are listed below:

• “How does this change to our product design make it better for the customer”
• “What changes can we make to our call center to improve the experience for our customers?
• “Can we make our packaging more user friendly?”
• “Returns are a bad experience for customers.  How can we make that as easy as possible for them?

Start by applying the Customer Centric Filter to your most critical customer interactions, and eventually you will have transformed your company into one that makes customers the “Center of the Universe”.

Early in my marketing career I  was a product manager.  At the time I  was responsible for a line of medical products, used principally in institutional settings.  For discussion here – let’s call them “widgets”.  My ambition was to be the “best widget product manager in the world”.  It wasn’t a high bar, there were probably a grand total of 10 worldwide, but that was my goal nonetheless.  One thing I did know was that the path to achieve my goal included extensive Marketing Research.

Get Comfortable With Asking Questions

My approach to being the best in the world was to develop a comprehensive list of questions, covering EVERYTHING there is to know about widgets.  A few examples are below:

• Who makes the decision to purchase widgets in a facility?
• How often do they buy them?
• What are the specs on the different types of material they use to manufacture widgets?
• Is the market price for widgets changing (up or down)
• How often are they replaced in a facility?
• How does the facility maintain them?
• Who are the main competitors for widgets?
• How can we make the widgets better?

My goal was to come up with 100 questions (I  think I  ended up with about 75 total).  To answer the questions took quite a bit of research.  Much of it I  had to conduct myself with help from my colleagues (Primary Research).  I  also took advantage of Secondary Research (valuable information done by some other party).  

When I  was done answering the 75 questions, I  felt confident that I  was the best widget product manager in the world!  A few years later my company went on to become the industry leader in widgets, and I  think a good portion of that success was rooted in the research we conducted.

Regardless of the industry you are in, it makes sense to become very informed on your product or service.  If you strive to be the “best in the world” you might just achieve that goal.  But even if you come up a bit short, the process of conducting the research will likely result in a stronger presence in your marketplace.

To give you a head start here are a few common research tactics and sources:

Primary Research Tactics:

• Customer meetings/interviews
• End user interviews
• Supplier/distributor meetings
• Raw material suppliers – for example – if you are in plastics business, you can ask resin suppliers. 
• Regular Google search with a framed question:  “Latest advancements in XYZ market”
• Create simple surveys on social media or via inexpensive services like Survey Monkey
• Follow competitors on social media
• Call your competition (or have a friend do it) and pretend to be a customer.  You can learn quite a bit.
• Become a student of your competitor’s Website, and look for features/functions you can incorporate into yours.

Secondary Research Sources:

• Market/Industry research:
• Trade publications
• Linkedin Industry groups
• Free whitepapers (usually have to fill out an online form)
• Local Small Business Association (SBA)

Marketing success can be achieved by a strong commitment to the customer’s needs.

Everyone agrees that to succeed you have to get out of your comfort zone.  Making new paths requires more effort and risk – so the default is to keep doing the familiar things.  Because many non-marketers consider Marketing as an elusive pursuit reserved for the select few “marketing geniuses” – it drives the narrative that proper marketing is “risky and hard” to do.  And in this exclusive “club”, only members blessed with this genius can unlock these mysteries and create an effective marketing campaign.  So, conveniently they stay in their comfort zone and perpetuate bad marketing.

There are plenty of examples of bad marketing out there.  However a lot of it originates from these so called “experts”.  I assure you that you dont have to be a “genius” to create and implement an effective marketing plan. You can do it if you are willing to scrap traditional efforts, and start focusing on your customers.

Marketing success it rooted in two basic steps.

1. Identify what the customer needs.  This is the tough one that many people conveniently skip.  It requires them to get out of their comfort zone.
2. Plan to efficiently get customers what they need.  Marketing efforts usually start and end here – with little to no effort doing the critical work of identifying customer needs.

In a nutshell – that’s it!  The secret recipe for marketing genius.  Simple – yes.  Easy – NO!!!!

Many executives (including marketers) get focused on the activity (the what) and they lose sight of who they are serving.  They are not serving a social media platform, an agency, or an email campaign.  These activities are just means to an end – and that end should be informing customers that you know what they need – and how what you offer helps them.

Get out of your comfort zone (just doing things) and focus on the life blood of your business – your customers.

Call to Action is the Anchor of Your Messaging

Whenever you are trying to change someone’s behavior, you are trying to persuade them.  Selling products, recruiting volunteers, direct marketing, advertisements, etc. are all examples of persuasive requests.  The classic persuasive request is divided into four main steps:

1. Get the target’s Attention
2. Develop their Interest
3. Create a Desire
4. Include a Call to Action

Keep this classic process in mind whenever you are trying to convince someone to do something.  It can be used universally.  Letters, e-mail marketing (especially important), literature, ads, conversations, etc.  Let’s walk through each step and explore the role each plays in the process.

It all starts with Attention.  This is your intro.   It can be your subject line in an e-mail, the headline of an ad, etc.  If you don’t have a good “attention getter” it is game over.  You need to quickly gain control of the target’s undivided attention.  You will commonly hear there are key buzzwords to include in the intro – words like “Now”, “Save” and “Free” .  This may be the case in general, but ideally you want something that “moves” the target.  Make it count – and make it enticing or the rest of your communication is irrelevant.

Next comes the Interest part.  Assuming you succeeded in getting the target’s attention, you have stay on your game with a good followup.  After the “wow” of getting their attention, you have to develop it with some specifics.  You want the target to think “I can do that”.  Give them a little flavor as to why this is a good thing for them.  Keep them moving through your communication.  If they are a “maybe” at this point, you are on track!

Here comes the crescendo – create their Desire.  Something compelling that makes them think, I WANT THAT, or even better I NEED THAT.  At this point the target has to picture themselves doing what you want them to do.  Think of:  “The Ultimate Driving Machine”, “Just Do It”, etc.  Another appeal:  A happy family enjoying themselves in a Disney World commercial really tugs at a parent’s heartstrings.

This is where it stops for many poorly-constructed communications.  Many good messages are left incomplete without the critical Call to Action.   Without the Call to Action, you have just done an FYI.  You did not CLOSE!  Your target will think to themselves “I’ll have to remember that”.  And then promptly forget it forever.  The Call to Action takes the fuel of desire you created and ignites it!  “Act Now! only three days left.”  “Save 50% on overstock – while supplies last”.

Crafting effective messages is definitely an art.  The more you do it, the better you will get at it.  This is a good starting point.  If you follow this classic formula, you are on your way to effective messaging.

Act Now!

Don’t Make the Customer Jump Through Hoops to Give You Essential Feedback!

Seeking to integrate customer feedback into your marketing efforts is an admirable pursuit.  Effective marketing is rooted in finding ways to satisfy customer needs.  Going directly to the source is one way to conduct this research.  There are of course many others including ethnography based methods, which are also an excellent means of getting input.  If you choose the route of surveying customers, you have to make it a simple activity for the customer – or you will lose them quickly.

As a marketer I like to comply with requests to help others market, and I recently had an opportunity to do so.  Recently I had a minor medical procedure and I believe the surgeon did an excellent job.  Shortly after the procedure I was sent an e-mail prompting me to fill our an online survey (on behalf of Dr. X).  Personalizing this with the physician’s name was a nice touch since I immediately associated with the doctor (who I like).  I was all in to help my “friend” – Doctor X.

Unfortunately the execution of the online survey was poor.  In order to fill out the survey (which I started doing) I had to submit a series of security questions and answers to proceed.  I realize this is likely related to patient confidentiality, but there must be a better way.  My desire to help Dr. X was quickly derailed by a giant pothole on the road to providing feedback.  Reluctantly I bailed at that point.

It goes without saying – your customers time is valuable and you must respect that.  When seeking feedback you MUST give them a simple, clear path to providing you the information.  KEEP IT SIMPLE.  My experience is most customers is that they will be very willing to provide you with their feedback.  Here are three keys to successfully gaining customer feedback:

1. Recency – the customer must clearly remember the experience on which you are seeking their opinion.
2. Short – if you are asking a series of questions, it cannot be longer than 5-7 questions.
3. Don’t ask what you already know – If you are sending a personalized e-mail to the recipient, dont ask for name, etc. you already know that and you are wasting one of your few available questions.

If you do it right, you can inform your marketing efforts with valuable customer feedback.  Most customers will be more than willing to help if you make it simple and painless for them.

Being Customer Centric is Essential to Effective Marketing

If you surveyed 100 marketers and asked “Are your efforts ‘Customer Centric’ you would get at least 97 to say “yes”.  The other 3 should have their marketing responsibilities removed immediately. 

So how do you accomplish this?   It is simple, but not easy.   Put your ego aside, and commit 100% to the needs of the customer (being customer centric).   If you can do this,  you’ve taken a very important first step.   If you can’t do this,  you are just like the other 3 “no” answers, except you are worse because you are not being honest with yourself. 

Ask yourself if you are “unconditional” in your commitment to customers?  Without that relentless dedication, you might as well save yourself the hassles and  abandon your marketing efforts.  Without customer centricity, you are wasting your time and money.

It’s a simple fact that given a choice, B2B buyers will choose the path of least resistance. Like all of us, buyers are very busy and will always seek efficiency and simplicity. I have heard this referred to as the “lazy buyer syndrome”. That may be a bit harsh, but there is no question that you need to make things as easy as possible for buyers. You can significantly enhance Buyer Empowerment by automating order placement.

“What technologies can we deploy to make the order placement process as easy (and accurate) as possible and advance Buyer Empowerment?”

For the Ecommerce executive, this “enabling technology” mandate presents both a challenge as well as an opportunity. The challenge is that your competitors are probably working right now to make things easier – and better for buyers. The opportunity arises when your Ecommerce experience is the best in class. If you can accomplish this, you are well-positioned to win most “jump ball” situations and maybe even some where you are at a slight competitive disadvantage.

How do you become best in class? You do it by being able to capitalize on the buyers’ technical capabilities and the ordering environment. In short, you want to minimize (and perhaps even eliminate) input from the actual buyer in the transaction.

Listed below are three levels of technology deployment to advance order management experiences for buyers. These are highly dependent on technology capabilities of both the seller and the buyer.

Advanced: No Buyer Input to Order Placement

The “dream scenario” is to have the order placed with no human intervention. Examples include:

• IoT (Internet of Things) used to trigger automatic replenishment when buyer’s on hand inventory falls below a specific reorder level. For example, an injection molding manufacturer’s plastic resin is reordered when the IoT sensor in the resin silo triggers replenishment.
• Sellers can make necessary connections to the buyers’ ERP system to capture ordering information that has been generated on their end. When a production order is placed, systems generate all necessary raw materials and orders are placed automatically. Sometimes this integration is facilitated by EDI, Punchout, and of course API integration.

Intermediate: Minimal Buyer Input to Order Placement

There are many possible scenarios to shortcut the process for the buyer. Here are some examples:

• Use AI (Artificial Intelligence)to assess buyers needs, and recommend items and purchase quantities, which shortcuts the ordering process for the buyer. Buyer can approve/edit recommended line items.
• Leverage technology that can assist the buyer in order placement such as voice ordering, bar code scanning, etc.

Basic: Significant Buyer Input to Order Placement

For a variety of reasons, many situations will still require significant buyer input to initiate the transaction. There are still opportunities to streamline this process for the buyer, such as:

• Analyzing customer historical purchases to develop “shopping lists” of top items to shortcut ordering process
• Anticipating common reorder items and recommend replenishment based on timing of previous purchases. Examples include belts and filters for manufacturing equipment, seasonal fertilizer needs for golf courses, etc.

Action Steps:

• Assess the technology capabilities of your largest customers to ensure that you are accommodating their capabilities to streamline ordering. If you are unaware of their capacity, make this a high priority.
• Evaluate the order management processes enabled by your competitors. If competitors exceed your capabilities, this is a significant risk to your existing book of business.

To enhance Buyer Empowerment and also Customer Experience, Ecommerce executives must continually enhance their order management functions to leverage buyers’ growing capabilities. B2B Buyers will be frustrated when their expectations/capabilities are not leveraged by an ill-equipped seller. At a minimum, this will likely result in a poor customer experience. Far worse is the buyer switching suppliers as they seek a more sophisticated Ecommerce experience that provides convenient, efficient ordering.

Just like with their Ecommerce efforts, many senior managers are striving to improve their data governance.  Without a corporate-sponsored initiative in place, they strive for small victories as the volume and complexity of the data stresses the organization.    Instinctively, they know it is the right thing to do, but they need to convince executive management that the investment is justified.

A well-crafted Data Governance program helps firms in many ways; here is a list of 5 tangible benefits you can use to build your case for launching a comprehensive #DataGovernance initiative:

Improving Data Consistency/Accuracy

When it comes to how data is managed across the organization, in many cases it is still the “Wild West”.  Payroll data has historically had adequate controls in place, but elsewhere in the organization there may be varying levels of anarchy running rampant.  This leads to a host of challenges which can include:

• Conflicting financial metrics that require additional resources to resolve disparity
• Compromised managerial decisions resulting from inaccurate or unavailable data
• Poor customer experience resulting from obsolete product information or multiple prices originating from different platforms

Why Data Governance Helps:  One of the core elements of Data Governance is to require that data is centralized – originating from only one location from within the organization.  Centralizing data involves technology, process, and human resource components.  By centralizing data, you have the foundation in place that allows for proper data management and authentication.  With effective governance in place you can achieve a high level of data integrity which has myriad benefits across the organization.

Driving Efficiency

In recent years, the cost of data storage has become so inexpensive it is approaching zero.  A byproduct of very cheap storage is a principal motivator for proper data management has gone away.  The result is very rapid growth of corporate data, both necessary and unnecessary data.  The cost of proper management of this data is directly proportional to the volume.

Properly managed data delivers efficiencies that include:

• Lower overall cost associated in managing the necessary amount of corporate data.
• Ability to create relevant content once and use it in multiple applications throughout the organization.  An example of this would be marketing content related to a specific product.  Properly managed, stakeholders access the one approved version of the content, rather than creating new content from scratch and then re-starting the approval process.
• Adding additional technology functions or upgrading software is much easier when data is centralized and properly managed.
• Armed with better information and consistent paths to obtain it, customer service interactions become far more consultative and less of a scavenger hunt for answers.

Tightening Security

It is commonplace to read about security breaches that in some high-profile cases affect millions of users.  While large-scale threats are typically the result of hackers exploiting some firewall vulnerability, many just happen to be poorly governed storage or device protocols, i .e., ad hoc systems and storage practices.  Familiar examples include:

• Laptops left on a train, or stolen from a car with login credentials taped to the keyboard
• Lost flash drives with no encryption
• Cloud storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive etc.
• Openly emailing data both internal and external to the organization

Security breaches can be extremely costly to the firm, and can even involve regulatory judgements, lawsuits, etc.  In addition to breaches, improper governance can result in proprietary information ultimately being exposed to competitors or perhaps even your customer base.  Imagine if your competitors or customers had visibility to your trade secrets or perhaps your cost and profitability structure.  It could possibly take down your entire organization.

While there is no way to calculate potential liabilities of breaches or lax control of proprietary data, the cost to guard against it is readily available.  While certainly not insignificant, the cost pales in comparison to the potential cost of avoiding Data Governance.

Enhancing Customer Experience

Perhaps the most compelling reason to pursue data governance is to deliver a better experience for your valuable customers.  In addition to the benefits listed above, here are some additional ways Data Governance enhances customer experience:

• Improved response time:  With more efficient operations, customer facing staff can respond to customers in a timelier manner
• Better customer interaction:  With better information being delivered to customers on-demand (better data enables that)
• Higher Brand Loyalty:  Data Governance ultimately drives a higher level of trust and confidence in your organization, for both employees as well as customers.  Trust is a major component in brand loyalty.

Developing a sound Data Governance program is like any other well-planned initiative.  You have to invest resources at the outset, but when well executed the investment will deliver benefits that far outweigh the initial investment.

Ask any successful businessperson, and they will explain the virtues of planning.  It also goes way beyond business, as planning is prevalent in life success, sports, politics, and of course in war.  There is an interesting quote from General Dwight D. Eisenhower that relates to planning:

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

It sounds conflicting – so planning is useless but simultaneously indispensable?  Eisenhower’s point was that the plans you develop will never actually be implemented as you originally intended.   Planning itself however is key because it will force you consider alternatives and devise contingency plans.  It will also make you set up a system for testing; which we have mentioned numerous times as being extremely important.

While it is 100% certain your plans will change, planning is essential because you have to start somewhere.

So how do you get started in the planning process – building a marketing calendar?  Here is a checklist to get you started.

•  Determine your overall goal.  This will have a large impact on your calendar since some initiatives can have a quick turnaround (like a holiday sale). Others have a longer horizon, like launching a new product or service.
• Identify the various steps/milestones in the process.  Let’s assume you are launching a new product.  Major steps probably will include:
• Determine which steps are “trigger/dependent activities”  These activities send other activities automatically into action when they are completed.  An example of a trigger would be “Initial inventory arrives into stock” would then trigger activities like “Samples sent to existing customers” and “Product made available for purchase on web site”.
• Input all of these activities into a planning system.  There are various project planning systems out there, or you can simply set up an Excel spreadsheet.  Key to the planning system is having activities linked to one another.  In the example above, if the inventory coming into stock is delayed, the system needs to push back the trigger/dependent activities automatically.  Without this being in a system it makes the updating of activities cumbersome.
• Plan on things getting derailed.  It is inevitable, things happen to disrupt the “best laid plans”.  You can build contingencies right into the plan, or just realize that you will have to adjust frequently along the way.
• Set up a recurring project review.  Absolute key to the planning process.  Review sessions will need to become more frequent as the goal date draws nearer.  Ask questions like:  How are we doing?  What needs to be adjusted.  Can we speed anything up?  Do we absolutely have to do this step?  Can we bring on additional resources?

Depending on the scope of your responsibilities, you can have several or perhaps dozens of individual marketing calendars.  You can have detailed calendars for each individual activity, all rolling up into a “master marketing calendar”.  This is your roadmap to marketing success!

Be flexible and realize that ultimate success will require you to vary from the plan.  Your ability to adjust and handle adversity will be a major factor.

While having an extensive statistical background is not a pre-requisite to being a good marketer, it is essential that all marketers have a firm grasp on the importance of the “Bell Curve” in virtually all marketing efforts.  Also known as the Normal Distribution, in a nutshell the bell curve is what it looks like when you graph a group of data points for a “normal” sample of data.  Whether it is weight, income, IQ, fitness level, etc. data unavailingly falls into a “normal” distribution when it is plotted.  It has a lot of datapoints around the middle (the average) and outliers at both the high and low extremes.  Please see the image at the right.

The implication for marketers is understanding the segments of the bell curve, and using these segments to your advantage as you orchestrate your marketing efforts.  The quick message is that you can’t market to everyone – as you move across the curve from one end to the other needs change dramatically.  It is always better to market to as specific of a segment of the group, as opposed to the group as a whole.  It is just like target marketing.  You must select who comprises your market segment (portion of the bell curve).

An example will help illustrate this.  Let’s explore the implications of the bell curve for a characteristic mentioned above; fitness level.  On the far left side of the curve, these are the “least fit” people around.  They would have to improve their fitness level significantly in order to even be considered “average”.  On the far right, are the “extreme fitness enthusiasts”.  Everyone else is somewhere closer to the middle – the “mean” or average.  Knowing this, let’s assume we are challenged with marketing a specific service – fitness club membership.  Let’s also assume we have access to proper demographics, and we can target individuals in various fitness level buckets with targeted campaigns.

Marketing to the very far left end  of the bell curve (the most unfit segment) will of course require different messaging than other segments.  For this group, appeals are probably centered on “strive for change” and “you can fit in – members are not all hard bodies”, “Free personal training to get you started” etc.  At the other extreme – the messaging is quite different.  These people have discipline established, and according to our data are already fit.  These are the hard bodies that intimi

date their counterparts at the other end of the curve.  Successful appeals to this segment will likely be in messaging such as “Are your abs beach-worthy?  We can help.”  “Your competition is already training for race season.  Will you be ready?”.  This is of course if you decide to market to this group at all.  Perhaps your research shows that they are not viable candidates to join, maybe they are already doing their own thing.  There is no substitute for good research.

Defining how you market to the extremes will help guide you with your messaging across the entirety of your segments.  This of course will only give you some initial targeting ideas.  Critical of course is to do your due testing due diligence.  Ideate, test, measure, refine, re-ideate (not even sure ideate is a real word – so likely re-ideate is not, but you get the idea.)

Quick Takeaway:  Messaging is for market segments, not entire markets.

Follow These Simple Steps to Facilitate Change Management

Virtually all organizations are striving for some level of Digital Transformation. As with anything, a small minority are true leaders, some are pitiful laggards, and most are somewhere in the middle.

The digital leaders have woven digital elements into virtually every aspect of their organizations, not merely in their Web presence. Elements such as integrated call centers, connected sales reps, and seamless customer experiences are all indications of digital savviness.

If your firm is on the wrong end of the bell curve when it comes to digital integration, you are probably experiencing some form of “digital envy”.   While serious, this condition is treatable given a firm commitment to widespread change.

Action Steps to Lead Digital Transformation at Your Firm:

1. Point to the competition:  Do a competitive site analysis that shows your competition is beating you.
2. Obtain customer feedback:  Nothing speaks louder to c-suite management than the views of top customers.  Some pointed comments from key customers can be very impactful.  This can be very powerful.
3. Point out some glaring problems.  Should not be too hard to do.  If you are feeling bold, as some key executives if they are proud of various functions.  Don’t just point out the problems.  Have a solution in place.  (See #4)
4. Create a high-level plan: Explain of how the digital-transformation could work including theoretical timelines, expenses, resource allocations, etc.
5. Recruit some influential change agents:  These key individuals will help you “fight the fight”.  You can’t fly solo on this.  Think CMO, key sales team executives, CIO etc.  Feel free to share the customer feedback as you are recruiting support.

If you take these few steps (simple, not easy) you probably have a “ticket to admission” to have an initial conversation with executive management.  Don’t expect rapid success.  Change is hard, and requires that your key leadership get out of their comfort zone.  Your job is to raise their collective consciousness.  Be aware, they are likely to resist at first.  Remember – it is a digital transformation.  Not a digital “overnight makeover”.

Be patient and keep chipping away.  You will get there!

There is a tremendous difference between raw data and actionable insights. Data is a collection of metrics, in raw form or just poorly organized. Actionable insights start with the same raw metrics, but are presented in a format that is easily utilized by decision makers. The insights are GOLD – the data is the gold mine. Your business will be more successful if you have someone on staff who can provide you with concise, “executive-worthy” information. Information that will give you insight into the key business drivers. Without it, you have to sift through the voluminous data on your own. You end up being an analyst instead of being focused on growing your business.

Key Questions – The Path to Insights:

Obtaining actionable information starts with asking the right questions. Of course, these questions vary based on your role and the nature of your business. The key is to get started asking the questions. Here are a few that may prompt you to think of others that relate specifically to your marketing situation:

• Who are my top customers over the last six months? How have their purchases changed over the past year, or two years?
• Are there certain “gateway” products or services, that tend to move customers from medium-sized to large?
• How has my product mix shifted? Is it different among the large customers than the overall mix?
• Is my business growing faster than the market in general?
• What are my most profitable products? Least profitable?
• Do any products have a higher return rate than standard?

When you start asking these kinds of questions, you will find that the answers will prompt you to ask even more questions. Congratulations! You are then on your way to actionable information! Each time you ask and answer questions, you are gaining insight to the nuts and bolts of your business.

Using Informed Analysts

Be aware that it is critical to have someone on staff who can mine the data and help you answers these questions. This is an analyst who not only understands the data itself, but what it means to your organization. In my view it is one of the most important roles in any business. This role has to be more business-oriented than data-oriented. Ideally it is someone who has a good understanding of your products, and enough customer interaction to identify needs and drivers.

I was at a Starbucks recently with a friend, enjoying coffee and good conversation. The ambiance was nice, soft music, fine decor, just as you have come to expect at Starbucks. Suddenly, an employee proceeded to drag a garbage can across the entire restaurant, making a very loud screeching sound. Needless to say, the relaxing ambiance was obliterated – in an instant.

That’s how it is with customer experience, EVERYTHING has to be done right. Mostly right doesn’t work. All of your efforts to wow the customer can be negated by even a minor thing. It’s hard to get it right – that’s why most companies fail at it.

In a blog post for 2020 predictions, Forrester* states:

“However,  . . .data strategy success requires much more than the right technology. In the past, this has led to data program scope creep that creates bloated budgets, unmet expectations, and program stagnation . . . In 2020, we think the bubble will burst, finally . . .. Leading firms will make the investments, while the rest will waffle”.

Data is a strategic asset that needs to be treated accordingly, not relegated to some back-burner IT responsibility.  Companies that continue to “store data” and say to themselves “we will have to get around to managing that data later” are setting themselves up for failure.  Firms that choose to continue “kicking the can” down the street in terms of data will discover that they are getting kicked in the can themselves.

*Predictions 2020: Uncertainty Equals Opportunity For The CIO (10-28-19)

In the classic business novel “The Goal”, Eliyahu Goldratt explores business bottlenecks and how to minimize them.  This sometimes involves removing constraints by means of solutions that are not particularly “elegant”.  In the novel, a major constraint is removed from a production process by using an outdated machine to augment production.  While not as efficient as the latest technology, using the old technology removed the bottleneck and production increased.

Keep this approach in mind when designing your Ecommerce solutions.  Sometimes “off the grid” back-end process, while not elegant, are the most practical means to advance your project.  Remember, “The Goal” of your Ecommerce initiatives is to achieve overall efficiency (remove bottlenecks). It is not to try to impress anyone with the elegance of your technology.  What is ultimately most impressive is that which is most efficient!

In the classic book “Good to Great” author Jim Collins analyzes highly successful companies in a variety of industries to discover what makes them transform from “Good to Great”.  Paraphrasing Collins’ findings – there are virtually no overnight successes, just companies that strive to do every task, however small, to the absolute best of their capabilities.  This approach can serve as excellent guidance for those firms trying to achieve greatness in customer experiences.

Every single customer interaction, however small and seemingly trivial is going to improve or diminish the customer’s impression of your company/brand.  EVERYTHING. This includes very simple things like messaging on hold (if my call is truly important to you then why am I on hold listening to a message telling me I  am important), to of course how you handle more high-profile interactions.

Everything matters and is therefore important as you strive to advance your Customer Experience initiatives.  Don’t take anything for granted.

Technology implementations often present significant challenges, and this typically leads to cost overruns and extended timelines.  While cost overruns cause C suite executives significant distress, the delay to launch is often considered much worse.

In an attempt to save time and get things started quickly, Ecommerce executives sometimes choose a technology platform as a first step.  This can be a recipe for disaster. The right technology platform for your firm is predicated on a multitude of factors. These include customer needs identification, technology ecosystem assessment, and a complete review of organizational readiness of backend systems.  Skipping these important vetting steps and rushing to choose a platform prematurely might make you feel like you are “making quick progress”, but there is a good chance you will be putting the round peg into a square hole.  

Resist the temptation to skip the due diligence, do your homework and choose your technology last.  You will save time and money in the long run.

Resist the temptation to “impress the customer” with what you can do.  Don’t force solutions, the key to effective selling is understanding real customer challenges.

Part of effective selling is being enthusiastic. To grow your sales, you need to be genuinely excited to share what you have to offer. Your enthusiasm needs to be kept in check, however. Don’t let your excitement (look what we can do) dominate your customer meetings.   Get back to the basics.  Asking questions, being a good listener, and discovering true customer needs.

I just heard a story in which a rep was in a customer meeting, along with her manager and a corporate representative. The rep told the story of how the executives just could not wait to “impress” the customer with all of the things they could do for him. Basically “look what we can do!”  Ignoring the customer’s true needs, these executives laid out a plan of how they would deploy various tactics to make things better for him. The only problem: The customer did not perceive these as challenges! The sales team skipped the key element of listening (i.e. empathizing) and jumped right to a conclusion. These sales executives were effectively designing a solution for a problem that did not exist. This can be a terrible mistake.  Sometimes these things in your customer’s world are in fact developed and implemented by the customer themselves.  They may in fact be proud of their own solution.  Framing that same situation as a “problem” is along the lines of calling their kids ugly!  The customer ultimately described this situation as “The Circus Coming to Town”.

It is absolutely true that your role in sales sometimes requires you to “peel the onion”.  You may need to reveal challenges that are not readily apparent. There will be times when the customer needs some help uncovering their challenges (and perhaps admitting them!). But keep a lookout for signals to identify where you are treading on thin ice.  You will get cues as to whether you are entering a “protected” realm.  In these cases, trying to “solve” this “problem” will only lead to resistance, and push the customer further away.

Keep asking questions, try to reveal the pain points but don’t get hung up with too much “look what we can do“.  You are working to gain your customer’s trust as a solutions provider, not becoming their “knight in shining armor”.

Guide the customer, do not “push” them.  It is a subtle but important distinction that will impact your results (and income!).

If you study the classic sell cycle you often see the process end with “the close”.  In other words, once the sale is made, companies typically move on to the next prospect.  They fail to capitalize on a most valuable resource – current customers.  When it gets right down to it, few things impress a prospect more than an existing, satisfied customer.  The key is to transform existing satisfied customers into customer advocates.  Customer advocates can be your absolute best salespeople.

Customer Advocates Arise When You Move From Transactions to Relationships

It is human nature for prospects to often assume that a salesperson  detailing product/service information is “selling” them.  On the contrary, a current customer providing the exact same information is “helping them out”.  “Sharing a good thing”.  When advocates speak to prospects, the prospects guards are down.  Prospects generally listen more intently to a peer.  They are on the same team!  Customer advocates carry a lot of credibility.

So how do you make your happy customers turn into advocates?  You plan it of course!  Planning is always key to good marketing.  Here are a few things you can plan do to generate customer advocates.

1. Communicate – as much as possible. Develop reasons to reach out to existing customers.  Conduct customer satisfaction surveys.  Encourage owner’s clubs (that you sponsor).  Sponsor customer appreciation events, etc.  Frequent positive contact develops relationships.  Relationships mean growth!  
2. Create incentives for relationship building.  This applies to whoever has customer contact.   Customer service team, sales reps, etc. The goal is to develop high-involvement relationships with customers.  I am familiar with a direct to consumer business who has bonus incentives to keep customers on the phone as long as possible.  Your business will really start humming when you graduate from transactions to relationships.
3. Capitalize on tough situations.  If you ever have customers who have a challenging experience such as quality or delivery problems, think of it as a great opportunity to build a relationship.  In this situation, a customer is vulnerable.  Vulnerable means volatile.  You have a chance to forge a strong relationship.  Make it a strong positive one!

Developing customer advocates is not difficult, you just have to be dedicated to achieving it.  Just continually come up with ways to delight your customers.  Your business will flourish!

Several years ago Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book Blink, which is an excellent discussion of the importance of gut instinct in business decisions.  Blink suggests that over years of experience gathering, the human mind is far more informed than we generally acknowledge.   It is very effective when it comes to making quick decisions.   The book provides numerous examples of how the mind succeeds at fast, informed, and eerily reliable decisions.  This “Blink” concept can be used to build personas for your market segments.

For those who are not familiar with personas, here is the definition from Wikipedia.

Personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic.

A while back I discussed the importance of understanding the Bell Curve and marketing planning.  In a basic sense, think of personas as building a fictional character for each of these segments.  Each persona will have a different bell curve for each personal characteristic.  For example, let’s say your pertinent characteristics that define your persona’s are:  Age, Income Level, and Family Status.  You then use these characteristics to define your personas.  For example:

Andy:  Age 26, earns $65,000 annually, single.

Susan:  Age 37, earns $125,000 annually, married with three children.

Phillip:  Age 69, retired (income comes from investments), adult children self-sufficient.

The messaging you deploy to each of these personas is quite different.  Let’s assume you are a financial advisor.  Your approach to messaging differs significantly for each persona.  You have to market to each persona’s needs and desires.  To over-simplify things, your basic approach will resemble:

Andy:  Many years of your career ahead, get started saving now.  Take more risks now since you have less responsibilities.

Susan:  Focus on children, appropriate insurance level, college planning for each child, long-term wealth planning.

Phillip:  Stability is top priority.  Safety, income, and estate planning will be hot buttons.

Personas are a great starting point for building your messaging.  It gives you the 30,000 foot view.  You then have to refine the messaging of course.  As you tweak the messaging, you have to remember the “genius” formula that I frequently refer to.  Test, measure, refine, retest, retest.

Personas are a great way to start the planning process.  Consider making personas a starting point for your overall marketing strategy.  If you use them enough you will start thinking of them as real people.  If this happens, you are on your way to improving your marketing!

There is another longtime business adage, “if you are not moving forward, you are going backward”.  Competition is a fact of life, and rest assured the competition is working every day, not just to maintain but diligently trying to improve on their offering.  Those who excel at this will succeed, those who do not will suffer the consequences.

To remain ahead of the competition, you have to outwork them AND outsmart them.  You get smarter by reading, and learning new things.  The importance of this concept is well detailed in one of the best business books of all time – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.  Dr. Covey makes a compelling argument for making the time to anvance your knowledge, even if you think you “don’t have time for it”.  Don’t kid yourself, everyone is busy, and it is very hard to outwork the competition if you are not working “smartly”.

Good marketing requires good knowledge.  Make time every day for exploring new ideas and concepts.  You will not be alone, your competition is already doing the same.

I probably first heard this phrase in a marketing textbook many years ago, but of all of the marketing concepts to adhere to, this would be number one.  If you ask people what the key to marketing they product or service, they will all not their head in agreement that differentiation is key.  But differentiation needs to be one of the pillars to your business, just like you have a sales strategy, customer retention strategy, social media strategy, you also need to have a differentiation strategy.

Try to pretend you are not a marketing expert, or a business owner, etc. Make a concerted effort to detach yourself from your business, and try to channel the thoughts and motivations of your customer.  What do i see when i look at the packaging of the product.  What kind of experience do I have when I call in to our call center?  Why would I buy (your company’s product or service) versus that of the competition?  The answer to each of these questions provides you with a “point of differentiation”.  If you do a good job of exploiting these points of differentiation, the aggregate result of these efforts is a product or service that is differentiated in many ways.

Differentiation is the engine for growth.  Don’t blend in.  Be FABULOUS!

Of course you are familiar with how bad news travels faster and is remembered longer than good news.  This means that you have to do about 4-5 good things for every not so good thing you do.  That is how you keep a balance.

Similarly, customer experiences will have a recency effect also.  The last portion of their experience will carry the most weight in their overall rating of their experience.  For this reason, you have to be very sure  you do a very nice job with all the finer details even when the transaction is over.    There is a grocery store near me that has not mastered this concept.  They have great fresh food, excellent selection and other things that contribute to a top notch user experience.

Unfortunately, the paper bags they provide have an issue with the handles.  On more than one occasion, the handles have failed resulting in a scramble to keep the groceries from spilling all over the place.

In this instance, these were an “afterthought” for the store.  If they had a good handle on the recency effect, they would understand that this is a CRUCIAL aspect to the shopping experience, trumping most other shopping experiences.

In your business, dont skimp on the bags (or whatever they customers takes home from you).  It could leave a lasting negative impression, even if you do everything else right!

To deliver a fabulous customer experience, you have to end in a fabuloous way!

I recommend you read Jim Collins’ classic business book “Good to Great”.  Great read – and applies to all aspect of business, Marketing of course included as well.

While you should still read the whole book, one of the central themes is that to become a great business, you have to do every little thing great.  The collective result is that it all adds up to being a great entity.

This point obviously holds true with your Marketing – you can’t do some of it “great” and then let other parts go.  You have to be “consistently great”.  The old cliche is that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link – that is the point exactly.

Can’t just be great in some areas – it must transcend all aspects of your business.  All customer touches, communications, packaging, staff apparel and messaging (another future post), every single element.

If you can dot every I and cross every T – VOILA – you will have FABULOUS marketing.

Yesterday we mentioned the importance of following the first key step in marketing – finding out what the customer wants.

For some reason even thought his is EXTREMELY important, it often goes ignored.  We often kid ourselves into thinking we are so smart we can “figure out” what the customers need.  After all, we are “experts”.

The true leaders in this field do not even bother wasting their time to “figure it out”.  In fact, the best of the best don’t even worry about asking people their opinions and desires (they could get some bias – more on that another time).  They realize that actions speak louder than words, and devote their energies to observing behavior.

So the goal is to figure out what customers want – spend most of your time on this.  If you can’t practically observe customer actions and tendencies, then go ahead and ask them.  Once you have this, finding a way to get it to them becomes much easier.