I pay attention to how I feel about companies with which I do business.  I think about them – the experiences that were good, the experiences that weren’t, and what could have been done differently (occasionally the problem’s my own fault).  I really like giving an especially warm “Thank you”  when someone’s been particularly helpful or shown sensitivity when the mundane could easily have them dropping the warmth or pixie dust from their delivery (think nurse and routine shots).  Nor do I mind speaking up when I believe commitments weren’t kept.  As Seinfeld lamented, some companies “take the reservation, but they don’t keep the reservation.”  That amounts to a long-term loss for the company.

I don’t expect perfection from a business (they’re run by people), and I don’t believe in histrionics unless the attitude of the person I’m dealing with or the corporation’s draconian policy calls for it.  There are people that have earned their Righteous Indignation stripes, and to Jason’s point, the unreasonable expectations of those loud few can force some businesses to take sweeping, drastic measures that affect all customers.

I pay attention to companies for several reasons.  One, I’m handing over my money and I need more for it in exchange (a couple of years ago, the country was screwed over by some greedy financial types, creating a giant sucking sound for many of us).  I haven’t stopped buying quality products where I think it matters, but the quality has to be balanced with a side of aftercare.

Two, we’re talking about my time and effort.  I know life isn’t one long smooth ride (remember the giant sucking sound?), but I believe businesses that truly intend to serve their customers have the necessary components, processes, and personnel in place to ensure my attention and my loyalty.  Maybe it was that damn reverberating sound again, but some companies saw the personal touch as an opportunity to shine brighter, deliver the unexpected.  Even involve the customer in ways that shape outcomes and virtually cement emotional connections.  These savvy companies knew they had to change (or were born) because the rapids of consumer spending had slowed to a trickle and they wanted their share when the river beds shifted.

When people talk about brand experiences they’re sharing vital bits that should be incorporated into feedback loops at all cost. Product development, innovation, IT, marketing and customer care groups can all benefit from real-world input (anyone who’s ever been involved with software development will tell you, all the internal user testing in the world can’t match what a handful of real users can do for finding bugs).

Voice of the customer taken in context can deliver more value than clinical focus groups or (horrors!) some board member’s historical recall.  While in the form of status updates, check-ins and tweets, these messages are the modern equivalent of a handwritten letter to the president.

The methods may have changed, but the (customer) messages are more important now than ever before because they can be amplified and immortalized.  Is your brand focused on creating rewarding experiences for customers?  Are you afraid they’ll talk about you?  Will their words sell your product for you, or give buyers pause for thought?

Where does the brand experience begin?

Internal marketing departments (and/or their agency representatives) produce all kinds of information in the form of business communication to help direct the standard for what customers can expect from the brand. This outbound messaging may have little to do with real perceptions and experiences of the end user, instead projecting an image the brand wants the world to see.

Through the print ads and online banners, designer emails and magazine advertorials, website content and promotional literature, tweets and retail merchandising (and much more), brands own the microphone which allows them to loudly say “We’re good.  Trust us.  Hop on board and we’ll go places.” We’re bombarded with that tantalizing promise every which way we turn, and some of us get on the magic bus and ride.

It’s not until you’re strapped in that you ask yourself who’s driving the bus.

With the scenery flying past your window and the miles adding up behind you, that’s when your mind associates and re-associates all you’ve been told about the brand (remember the abundant communication from paragraph one?), reconciling with what you’re actually experiencing with the brand.  Some of your determinations will be rational, others less so.  The answer may lie within the contents of that placard in the seat pocket in front of you.  That “Our promise to you” section on the brand literature?  Are you feeling it?  Do you have reason to believe them?  Are they doing what they said they would right then, on that ride you’re on?

You’ve co-created your brand experience if the brand delivered on their promises, giving you rational and emotional reasons to believe.  If the top-down messages are embodied by the front line staff, then the promise made by the brand flows smoothly to the end user.

You experience the brand first by viewing the stage set before you (all that outbound communication again) and hearing the thoughts whispered to you by the crowd.  You then experience the brand again by becoming involved, whether you join a conversation with an agent, enter the retail space for the first time, or buy their product instead of your usual. If everything synchs, then what the brand says and what the customer-facing roles are actually doing are working perfectly.  The talking heads and the folks in the field are actually singing the same song and you, the customer, hear it loud and clear. It sounds right.

On the other hand, if what you’ve read in the literature or heard during the sales call doesn’t jibe with what you get when you email your account representative with a question, well then that’s a disconnect.  There’s no co-creation, and the brand loses because the customer doesn’t feel heard, understood, or well-considered.  He/she feels the inequity in the relationship and the chance for growing an advocate may have been lost.

What brand do you have experience with where everything synched?  What brand failed you?

*  Image courtesy of Terbeck via Flickr.

Change can be tough for a lot of reasons.  Changing can mean we have to endure some tedious tasks or dedicate time and resources already stressed thin.  Change can also force us to acknowledge unchartered waters and force us to take those first wobbly steps before we can become more sure-footed and thus, more comfortable.  Change presents the risk of error, embarrassment, or worse, failure.

Fear of the unknown – the unproven, unmeasured, and unmastered – can inhibit the flow of good ideas.  It can waylay a company behind a pioneering competitor.  It can give you justification for funneling attention on a “sure thing” project.

But no change nets you more of the same.

The same diet gets boring and unappealing after two days.  Many people can’t bring themselves to read the same book or watch the same movie twice.  The same fall wardrobe leaves you wanting a few pieces to bring it current and spice things up.

A little change now and again keeps everyone on their toes.  Competitors become programmed to expect the unexpected.  Employees appreciate the versatility that planned, intentional change brings.  Customers come to expect new, more, and different.

US Army General and ex-Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki once said:

“If you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevance even less.”

His words are among my favorite quotes, and make me think about the shift of power and control from brands with their mass communication methods toward consumers with the rights and tools of self-selection.  When I apply them to managing a brand in an age of self-publication and instant gratification, steps like these emerge:

1. Understand your customers’ needs.  Research and listening fueled by a desire for the real deal make this more than a perfunctory effort.
2. Define your business priorities.  Everything’s important, and important to someone.  Strip away the superfluous and the tangenteal and focus on the important core.
3. Map customer needs to business priorities to pinpoint focal areas of critical proportions.  This is a straight line, folks.  No question if these activities will create value.
4. Communicate your intentions and methods.  Don’t wait for customers to circle back to you on their will.  Inspire them with your commitment.  Let everyone ackowledge your progress.  Bumps may happen; its lost ground that’s often too difficult to make up.
5. Check your report card.  Find out what worked well and what didn’t.  You want to know the ‘why’ behind both.  You’ll get a chance to re-engineer some things and get insight into opportunities for enhancement.
6. Keep on keeping on.  Fold everything in, remedy what you need to, and forge ahead.  Take no prisoners and be mindful of those who set off land minds before you.

I’m not advocating radical shifts in direction at every turn.  Certainly, that’s no way to build equity in any brand or be a steward of the financials.  What I’m suggesting is more of a continuous loop; while steadily shaping a cogent brand traversing multiple channels, take care to implement a team  (or allocate some time) focused on innovation and evolution where work not only backfills key initiatives but can also be plugged in at cross sections when new data and insight can do the most good.

How do you think most companies feel about change?  Is it someone’s job to think about what’s next or what should be?  Are they comfortable exposing their weaknesses to their customers?

I’ve been diving into a Forrester blog post made by Augie Ray in July, and I’ve found some fascinating stuff. In his post “The ROI of Social Media: More than Dollars and Cents,” Mr. Ray sets forth a balanced scorecard method for evaluating social media programs. The method incorporates four perspectives critical to determining the value of social media for business. As we all scramble to answer the ubiquitous question “How can we validate social media?” the post solidifies some of my own opinions, namely– SM can be evaluated for its effectiveness as a marketing tactic and a cultural business philosophy when we consider the full spectrum of areas it may impact. Without the full view, it’s a partial evaluation leading to a potentially false conclusion, as it would be to evaluate the success of a direct mail campaign by factoring in sales (only) while ignoring the feeder channels and outcomes.

Brand and customer – the shortest distance between P&L

Like so many marketers today, I’m eager to soak up every salient example and bit of information I can find from brands both large and small trying to tie marketing objectives with social media goals. And there are a lot of different flavors, so to speak, ranging from brand promotion to long tail participation chains, customer care and more. I can’t say I’m comfortable seeking profiles or examples of good social media strategy per se for several reasons, including my belief that the term Strategy is too frequently misused and my firm position that social media shouldn’t be parsed separately from other marketing tactics. Social media should be benchmarked and measured for the impact it delivers enterprise-wide, some of which is a financial metric.

But drawing a linear path between social activities as a whole and financial results discounts too much of other contributory benefits of social media integration. For the small to mid-sized business in the early stages of a social implementation (and internal adoption), the results can be underwhelming. Does a marginal number of Twitter followers or double-digit sales from a Facebook referral address mean the social thing just isn’t panning out? Does the answer differ if it’s month 6 or month 12?

Calling foul

One of the things I enjoyed so much about Mr. Ray’s post is the great dialogue it started and the manner in which he kept it evolving through insightful replies and a receptiveness to consider (and connect) additional information and queries provided by his readers. I particularly enjoyed the comments offered by Carri Bugbee, especially points 2 (How do you get granular with a vertically integrated tactic? It permeates here, there and everywhere.) and 4 (Allowing for the occasional grassroots underdog feature story, aggregated multi-channel advertising, marketing and promotion effects will clearly tip the scale of social media traction in favor of established household brands and those with big spend. We won’t end up comparing the same variety of fruit.).

Other questions I’d like to resolve without the hyperbole and self-inflated egos I’ve run into from folks who use impressive-sounding terms and speak with utmost conviction, as if we were as smart as they, the answers would be obvious to us too:

Why are we compelled to put a dollar value on social media?

Does the answer lie partially in our vanity to be “that guy” who figures it out, the one who can claim the Internet fame? Is it so we can gain approval to invest in expensive monitoring systems, or to attend the big geek seminar?  Get some social currency?  All the projected outcomes and models in the world don’t actually mean people and programs are going to perform as we imagine.  Research and analysis is important for sure – but are we letting this big question paralyse us?  Was ROI documentation on Frank’s mind when he started this train?

How much can SMB learn – and extrapolate – from the Big Brands seeing success?

As noted by Carrie and others, SMBs and other lesser-known brands don’t share the same array of resources,exposure  history, reach, or experiences.  How can we make the learnings relevant and tangible for everyone else?

Will knowing the answer (to the ROI question) really affect our choices?

Or are some things explored as a conscious concession to risk v. reward with anecdotal evaluation points?  I’d argue that it served traditional media well for awhile (yes, yes, there independent audience assessments and so forth but be real).  I’m not suggesting a medium-sized company can, in good financial stewardship, run full-bore into big monitoring software subscriptions, expensive sweepstakes, develop separate web community platforms, etc.  But aren’t we good enough marketers to try some outreach, attempts at growing user-generated content, and opportunistic blog commenting (as done with my site by Pixorial during the recent uproar caused by Snapfish’s acquisition of Motionbox) without getting the CFO in an uproar?  Can we continue with it because the random bits of evidence (the customer shout-out on Twitter, the customer comment via email that led to a update on Facebook which two fans ‘liked’) confirm our instincts that there’s gold in them thar hills, if we’ll only let time take its course?

Numbers are important.  I’m just not sure they’re everything.  At least not until the percentage of my daily work skews more than 20% to social media. We’re just not sure yet what all it can mean, and some results aren’t immediately apparent.

I’d love to know where you sit on this, both your opinion and your progress on distilling out SM value specifically.

Each March Austin, Texas draws a ton of people – I mean massive numbers – for its annual South by Southwest event comprised of three tracks:  film, music and interactive.  The event serves as both incubator and launch pad for aspiring creative talent, tech companies and new media-type people looking to learn and network.  

SXSW2011 is scheduled for March 11 to March 20.  Preliminary evidence suggests interest from interwebs geeks, mobile delivery,gaming and social media community is on the rise.  There are over 2,345 panel submissions for the Interactive track alone.

I attended the 2009 festival and had a great time. I attended some great sessions and had some stimulating hallway conversations with leaders I’d previously only talked with in 140 characters.  I came away inspired to do more with my fledgling business because I wanted to be part of this massive overturn of traditional thinking.  I wanted to be part of the wave exploring new territory in communications and marketing.

When the time came to submit panel ideas for consideration for the 2011 festival, I was both excited and overwhelmed.  I really want to participate at a higher level and help shape some of the areas being openly discussed.  So I submitted a proposal centered around an idea germ that’s been growing in my head about content, the channels we consume and distribute content through, and the role that brand plays in the equation.  Luckily, my proposal was accepted and advanced to the voting round.

I invite you to check out my proposal on the SXSW Panel Picker, titled “Content for multi-channel consumers:  earn affinity, reap rewards.”  Your vote weighs 30%, so network support is crucial to my potential success.  I hope you’re intrigued by my idea and support the panel (of which I’d be one of several participants) and help shed more light on the growing need to evaluate content in context with channel.

As always, thanks for your readership and your support!  Heather

The Marketing Hit List

I’m headed off on a short vacation with the fam in Northeastern Iowa. Yeah, I know, it’s not quite like my annual quest back home to Destin, FL but we’re expecting some fun times anyway.  Anything to avoid thinking about school setting back in (my kids and I are not quite in agreement on this).  We’ll check out some natural cave formations (and ride through them on a boat!), go tubing, catch a few fish, and hike up a place called Pike’s Peak.  There will be no making of the beds, I assure you. But there will be s’mores for certain.

I hope to keep you guys interested in my marketing smarts by visiting some oldie (but goodie) posts.  If you have a yen for helping me out next vacation with a guest post of your own, shoot me a message through the contact form, I’d appreciate it.

• Customer relationships gotta have trust.
• Customer service is everyone’s job.
• Find your inner guru.
• Cookie-cutter social media services (with big claims).

A recent ClickZ article written by optimization and conversion expert Tim Ash encouraged me to think about how traditional brand stewardship mentalities haven’t really adapted to accommodate an increasingly online world.  Not in terms of interface, social sharing patterns, or channel potential for sales.

Ash’s piece focused on how those persons in roles  formally charged with maintaining the integrity of the brand across communication channels and touch points may potentially hinder an organization’s on-page conversion efforts if the commandments commonly laid forth in the Brand Bible are rigidly interpreted.

The logo shalt not …

You know about Brand Bibles, right?  They’re also referred to as Corporate Identity Guidelines (here’s one from Dow, for example) or sometimes simply as Style Guides (although often style guides focus on written text or spoken words, as in presentations).  These resources  take the guesswork out of content development, signage production and all other creative development processes required to represent a brand, internally and externally.  That’s a good thing, until it’s not.

These types of reference materials can be necessary to ensure consistent representation of a brand, a necessary function of building equity.  If a department or team were to deviate from the norm, the result may be fun, interesting or even compelling but could come at the cost of a fragmented image.  This can be particularly harmful in highly competitive markets or if the rogue decisions were made without knowledge of critical backstory; sometimes business nuances dictate certain messages, even if it means coming out a little less strong.  So structure is good, except when it confines.

Pay attention

I agree with Tim’s sentiment – rarely can a predefined set of rules adequately cover all scenarios and circumstances, particularly in today’s technologically-driven-social economy.  But I think there are broader implications for his central idea about brand regulations below:

“…brand guardians are often insistent that the key messaging point and look and feel must be repeated across all media outlets and marketing channels without variation…Although consistency is generally a worthwhile aspiration, remember that the goal of landing page optimization is to find a landing page design that your audience responds to best.”

“…brand guardians’ insistence on messaging orthodoxy can often shut down the testing of revolutionary new sales copy or headlines that represent outside-the-box thinking. If one of your alternative messages draws a better response, it means that it resonated better with your target audience. The winning element can in fact become part of your new and improved product messaging.”

A goal of any marketing endeavor, through digital or traditional means, should be to better relate to a target audience through content which resonates.  What’re you doing here, if not to listen, serve, subsist and respond?

A brand is really missing out if its still rigidly adhering to a set of guidelines produced (likely a few years ago, before Facebook) without applying situational context or consideration for the opportunities afforded via a dynamic online presence.  It means you’re still producing stuff as you always have, without thought to how information is sought, used, or dispersed.

You know who you are, you still have your ‘facsimile’ number listed on your website. You haven’t yet noticed that we’ve moved on.

It’s called adaptation, and Darwin said the best did it

No, that’s not an “origin of life” comment.  It’s just an observation that to stay ahead, you have to be aware of your surroundings and modify behaviors.  To compete, to be relevant, a brand has to be humble enough to admit their communications strategies can’t be one-size-fits-all, that they have to ask what’s needed of them and then build accordingly.

Image courtesy of Dave-F.

Today’s consumers lead very dimensional,  multi-channel lives.  The increasingly “always on” culture presents brands with previously unconsidered opportunities to reach prime audiences through  branded information made available at opportune times.  We’re talking “shifts in consumer information discovery, consumption and sharing,” more of which I can self-select, seek, or share nowadays.

Critical success factors in leveraging these opportunities include timing, format, message, tone, convenience and value.  Example:

• Timing ~ Did I find/get the information in advance, just-in-time, or after I needed it?
• Format ~ Was the information easily digestible and available in multiple formats? (SMS, email, direct mail, RSS, video, website, Facebook page update)
• User-centric ~ Was I (use cases) considered?  It’s one thing to be available, another to be useful.
• Message ~ Was it clear, easy to understand, and easily identifiable as a relevant interest to me?
• Tone ~ Did it sound real, purposeful not canned?  (conversational, uplifting, informative)
• Convenience ~ Was it easy to discover, experience, redeem, or try?  Did rigid stipulations block my way?
• Value ~ Was it worth my time?  Did the brand intuit my needs? Moreover, is it “share-worthy” in this Friendship Economy?

Each of these attributes play a role in building my overall brand perception (an aggregation of brand identity points, tallied in this consumer’s mind) which may lead to brand acceptance (heightened from awareness) if found consistently favorable.  Said another way:

Sow it and show it:  A brand has to lay down the groundwork for nurturing a consumer following.  Then it has to genuinely demonstrate a concerted effort to move toward a mutually satisfying relationship.  Posers will be noted and go unrewarded.

And again, this time with feeling:

1. The “old” ways of marketing no longer work.  You know it, I know it.  Now go sell up a radical cultural change, willya?  The same ‘ol, same ol will net an instant turn off, tune out, or delete. This is Not a desirable kind of Twitter shout-out.
2. Brands can’t just superficially claim plugged-in status in terms of format.  A toe dip in one outpost or medium is fine–do it honestly and with self-deprecating humor.  We’re all figuring things out here. But to shallowly claim a handle or a space and then let it languish (or project one-sided sales junk), well that’s just all-kinds-of-wrong layered on top of a poor experience.

There’s a little emotion wrapped up in this post, I’ll admit.  But I believe brand acceptance–which should be part of a conversion funnel–can’t happen without a positive emotional reaction(s).  No emotion, no connection.  I forget or minimalize things that don’t click (my “clearinghouse” theory).

But there’s good news!  Assuming rational product/service benefits are evident along with relevance factors, a brand has a real chance to break through.  Can you name a brand that’s succeeding?

Recently I reflected on  the myriad ways I personally consume and disseminate information. I wrote about how I think brands should be adapting their channels, content, and even formats to better correspond with their consumer’s lifestyles so that the brand may resonate more strongly and potentially surpass the competition, if only on an awareness level (it’s a start).  I think of it as having a multi-channel life because I’m many things to many people, offline and off.  This includes my interactions or touchpoints with brands.

The last 5 years have seen a tectonic shift in the pervasiveness of technology, the proliferation of tools and cultural shifts. Together, these elements bind to affect the dynamic between consumers and brands as much as they directly affect personal relationships.

An FCC survey finds that 78% of adults are internet users and 65% of adults have home broadband connections.

More of us have adopted a lifestyle which includes the Internet, whether in the form of email, photo sharing, news consumption, online shopping, recipe research or other task-oriented convenience.  By virtue of our growing comfort with the Internet (one of those “used” but not “seen” or “fully understood” mysteries of life), we now want it to perform better and we’re evidently willing to pay for it.

On a granular level, tools like blogs, retail sites, Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, Ning (and sooo many others) all impact–and in turn are impacted by–the following:

• The spread of information (reach)
  • Driven by 4G networks, WiFi, broadband connections in the home, restaurant, and dentist office
• Public expectations of response (speed)
  • Smartphone adoption, use of email over snail mail, contact forms instead of phone message slips
• Assumptions of accessibility (boundaries)
  • Change in social norms, expected behaviors, and level/amount of personally identifiable information
• Availability of information (depth, thoroughness)
  • Tree-saving PDF forms, 360 degree product views, flight configurators, and up-to-the-minute academic status.
• Distribution methods (convenience and exclusivity)
  • QSR codes, MMS, SMS, OnStar, Groupon

My thanks to Connie Reece for sharing her news and Kellye Crane for retweeting the interesting fact.  They’ve conveniently framed up my point nicely  If you consider Connie’s church a brand (in an academic sort of way), its management recognizes audience members could benefit from “slices” of inspiration in digestible, convenient formats they’re already using.  Traditional?  No.  Remarkable?  Definitely.  The opt-in service is there for those who wish to adopt it, but isn’t disruptive to those who don’t.

In what other ways has the very fabric of our lives changed through Internet-driven or social technology?  What are some drawbacks?

http://postrank.com/graphics/blog_claim.png?s=yryyr6y

While reading a book of fiction recently, I came across what struck me as an intriguing phrase.  The main character was referencing the sheer joy he experienced while out on a boat in the ocean.  The wind on his face, the scent of salt brine in his nose, the feel of cool water splashing on his arms and the warm feeling brought on by good company and a day without demands.  The character said that in giving him this afternoon charter, in essence his wife gave him the gift of glee.

As an adult with responsibilities and demands, I can relate the sheer perfection offered by that fleeting moment in time.  There’s too much to do, too many places to run, too many things to coordinate or check off a pressing list only to watch two brand-new things take its place before the flicker of satisfaction can travel to my mouth to trigger a smile.  Reality can well and truly bite.

Build a joyful brand

But maybe this is where some brands have the unique opportunity to capitalize on the realities of life and work.  Where relevance and differentiation deliver some emotional fulfillment.  This could be where simple, clever time-savers could help frazzled over-achievers get a little bump.

Case in point:  Just last week I ready someone’s tweet (sorry! giant hat tip to someone!) about Appsumo.  Wow, was I interested by their bundled deal of MailChimp, FreshBooks, Moo, BatchBook and Formstack.  For $55, new subscribers get a year of good stuff from these guys.  Plus, 50% of all proceeds go to the National Wildlife Federation which plans to direct the funds to the clean-up efforts in the Gulf (my home turf). I am so there.

AppSumo has pulled together services I need plus introduced me to a couple I’d like to check out, all for one low price.  And I get the added win of helping a cause near to my heart.  Grabbing the deal is uncomplicated, and I’m tickled to have stumbled over the opportunity to do some of the back-end things I need to do for the business without a lot of financial commitment.  While not exactly a free, all-expenses-paid  trip to Greece, overall I’d call this a win.

AppSumo gets that people need help.  That they need help with their small business and with their blog.  The tech geeks like poking around in new stuff and everybody likes keeping some jing in their pocket.  Appsumo gets that easy=good.

Okay, at $55 that’s not exactly a gift.  I’m oversimplifying a bit to serve my point.  But this is a greatly-reduced, bundled-up deal that made me pretty happy.  You can bet I’m signing up for their newsletter and following them around the webs.  AppSumo is a brand that’s doing something different, giving me stuff that’s useful and making me feel good about it at the same time.

What brand has recently given you the gift of glee?