bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

A gift to take home.

A token to show their friends.

A reminder of how much they enjoyed your product.

I enjoyed this wine on a recent flight, St Hallett – Poachers Blend.  It was really good, so I read the label.

On the back you can see is a little tab that you can pull of the label.  It has the name of the wine and more information on the back.

Very neat – now I know which wine to get!  I didn’t check but they could take it one step further and on the back have a coupon (so only those that have taken it off find it) – 10% off if you buy in Duty Free once you jump off the plane.  Just a thought but I think they are already doing enough.

So why not give your customers a gift?

Creating a repetitive behaviour is a surefire way to solidify your product.

Yet how can you establish a new behaviour? Or remind your customers of it?

Slide your product back into their routine with freebies.  Give away a sample of your product in the right place at the right time.

Sell chewing gum? Give a stick of gum with every bill at a restaurant.  Create the routine of paying the bill and getting some gum.

Sell hand sanitiser? Have a free dispenser outside public toilets.  Remind consumers that they need your product.

Sell shoe nugget? Give away free samples with every pair of leather shoes sold.

Sell body wash? Give away samples at the gym.

The list goes on…. apply it to your industry.  The point I am making here is consumers often forget about your product – so give them a kind reminder.  They will appreciate it.

If you have target market X surely you should talk directly to them?

In all likelihood – yes.

However there is ALWAYS room to target the second tier.

Who influences this market? Who else do they interact with? Whose opinion do they pay attention to?

The best example of this is the most effective campaign in getting women in for cancer screening. Conversations were held with hairdressers whom were to then relay they conversations with their clients. By targeting this second tier they were able to reach their target audience in an effective manner.

The key here is to miss the same boat that your competition are taking ON PURPOSE!

Great engagement model when you do not have the capability to do so directly.

Easy – remember the adage that 64 people hear about a bad experience.

If you can go to the exact opposite emotive state but through a positive experience.  You are going to cut through the clutter to the same amount of people.

An example would be the Burger King Flame, $3.99 for a Whopper smelling perfume.  Sold out instantly.  Remarkable enough to cut the clutter.

So remember this, you are looking to leverage word of mouth to get this spread.  Each and every person has the potential to spread it indirectly to 64 people.  Now that’s why word of mouth can spread like fire.

Ok stay with me for a minute.

Marketing traditionally has meant to you, putting some advertising out, get your message in front of enough people, you convert a few to sales.  The return used to be enough to justify it.

However in a market where people are counting their pennies, you just aren’t getting the same return you used to.

Now organisations are going hey time to try something new.

Word of Mouth is on the tip of everyones tongue.

How do you stimulate word of mouth? Through action.  Actions that are worth talking about.  

Right so we have gone from advertising to action in all of 30 seconds.

Now how can you stimulate action? Through entrepreneurship.

Stimulate entrepreneurial traits in your employees, to try something new, perhaps it will make you a few more dollars but also send a message to the market.

Innovation, sales & marketing? Entrepreneurship is marketing. (And always has been).

As a young boy McGregors Pies were famous (locally) for their mutton pies.

They were disgustingly unhealthy, you had to bite the side of it to drain out the fat, yuck.

But boy were they yummy.

Health aside, they still sold well, people would still stop in for a McGregors pie – even if it wasn’t the mutton pie.

You see that talking point was enough for them to stand out.

This is all about you, you are doing what you do, you know you can do better, but need some ideas that you can take the ball and run with.  

This is what I do all the time, it is second nature, it is automatic, so it’s my pleasure to share it with you.

(Note since this is possibly my longest post ever! I have got a pdf download so you can print it out)

1. Fundamentally you need to realise (and always focus) it’s all about people.  People like you and me. Telling others and ourselves stories.  
2. A good story enhances status, creates enjoyment, and benefits both the storyteller and the receiver.  It is not zero sum, a good story everyone benefits.
3. Word of mouth is the best referral a consumer can get.  No really, the BEST!
4. You are a storyteller, whether you want to be or not, in what you wear, how you speak, how you walk.  You are communicating to someone at some stage something.  (Stop and reread this).
5. Forget about parasite marketing, sustainable businesses are built on building products that help the purchaser.  If you can help your clients enough to create a worthy story you have an endless chain of word of mouth.
6. We have all heard, a bad experience results in 64 people hearing about it, a good experience leads to 8 hearing about it.  Sounds out of whack right? Wrong.  If I have a good experience with you I will repeat my purchase, if you keep looking after me, i will keep telling 8 people forever…. and everytime I make a purchase.  Marketing & Business is all about the long term.  If you can get a customer and keep them forever they will sell your products for you.  Easy.   Never forget this.  A good customer experience compounds over time.
7. Expecting a sale on the first interaction is short sighted.  Consumers like to wooed, taken for a dance, candlelight dinner.  If you can expose them to your brand several times in different avenues you are more likely to build a satisfied customer.  Remember every exposure is an opportunity to help explain your value proposition.  (Now reread #6).
8. Put yourself in your customers shoes, what am i gaining from this? what is the story i am telling myself? why am i motived to talk to others about your story? 
9. If it doesn’t feel right it often isn’t.  If you are too ashamed to tell those around you what you do, or people you admire, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
10. People like you, people like the team behind your products, your loyal customers actually want to be their friends (although they realise they can’t) but utilise that.  Get your people to talk with customers, over the phone, twitter, blogs.  Expose the people behind the scenes.  The cross pollination between customers and staff is only going to benefit both parties.  Hint: it also creates a new ‘exclusive’ story for each of those loyal customers.
11. You are always wrong, you just need to be less wrong than your competitors.
12. Forget magic answers, they don’t exist, you know what you need to do.  So do it.  Obsess about customers, drive insane value, your marketing is sorted, now collect the cheques.
13. Cut back, you don’t need 20 channels, cut back to what you do exceedingly well, then get better at it, being the absolute bleeding edge best is far more important than scrapping a few extra dollars.  You will doubt yourself, but hang in there.
14. Bring the whole team together, encourage diversity, open discussions, new ideas, get them to take listening courses, involve them in strategic visions, they define your company to the outside world, so make sure they know what they are defining.
15. Mass advertising builds subconscious brand recognition, but word of mouth demands a purchasing decision.
16. Chase things that scare your organisation, chances are they scare your competitors too, that is signal enough that you at least need to explore it.

And the magic answer is:

Turning up.

And then….

Blowing everyone away.

Pretend your Schwarzenegger.  Leave everyone in awe.  Believe me they’ll talk.

(Note: I fib there is never a magic answer but this is one)

Aristotle said the goal of all human activity should be happiness (including business).

Smile at someone and they smile back.

Same with yawning.

You spread the word, fast, easy and simple.

This is like joy, bring your customers joy, happiness, excitement.

The best forms of word of mouth.

If you bring someone happiness they will spread it and/or others will notice.

iPods are sold on enjoyment, videos go viral because they make you laugh or cry, business referrals come from those that are happy with your service.

Does your product genuinely make your customers happy?

If not, it should. Spread a smile 🙂

(you know you want to)

Content is king is the oldage saying of Internet Marketing

It still is (we’re still telling stories right)

However is your content scalable?

Have you maximised the opportunity for it to spread?

If not.  Your wasting time.  Build some systems now for all content.

Make the infinity assumption.  My content will be out there for infinity.  Surely i should put some systems in now to leverage the time component.

Some ideas:

• Share via a blog
• Share on scribd.com
• Integrate social bookmarking (make it easy for friends to share)
• Destroy any barriers to accessing your content
• Get it syndicated

Marketing after the fact should be consistent.

Case in point.

I recently canceled my storage unit at a local storage firm.

As we held a bond and prepaid a month my account was in debit.

Awesome.  At this point in time I was happy with the service, helpfulness of the company.  On my recommend list.

6 weeks later my account has still not been settled even after numerous emails.  They then post a cheque to my old address (even though i explicitly stated when i finished up my address has been changed).

Now they offer to deposit it into my account.  That’s fine.

But

From my perspective.  You have wrecked what was otherwise a positive customer experience.  Do you think I would recommend them again? Doubt it.

Marketing continues after the exchange, it is in the sizzle consumers receive, do not burn a customer because they have switched brands or ended the relationship.  That way they never come back.  Or recommend you.