Getting reliable answers from your customer research is important – but getting short cuts by asking the right quesions is more than half the battle.
We got a great set of four questions in the mail today.
4 Questions for customer insight
- Why did you (sign up to our mailing list)?
- What made you nearly not (sign up)?
- What would make you spend more with us?
- What’s your biggest question about (our product or service)?
What an awesome list.
Why these questions are golden
Why did you sign up? – give you real understanding about what the customer thinks drove them to click that button. Remember, you can cross check this against your stats to see if this aligns. And you might learn a lot from what the customer thinks drove them…
What made you nearly not (sign up)? – again, understand the principal thing that nearly stopped your desired action happening. Can you affect that or influence it in future? You betcha – this could be the insight that leads to the biggest improvement in your CTR.
What would make you spend more with us? rather a forward question – but you never know. Some people may just need a tiny nudge. Or they may perceive your pricing versus features incorrectly. It may not be a matter of switching budgets or reducing your price. Listen hard to these answers.
What’s your biggest question about (our product or service)? Great insights come here from your user because this shows where mis-understanding or mis-communication has occurred. Could also give you ideas for new features or products for the future.
Do this for your brand
Don’t use a check box or pick list for this. Free text answers will give you the best insights.
Adapt the questions to suit your situation. The words I’ve put in brackets can be adjusted to suit your situation.
And figure out the best place to do the work… on the blog, in a newsletter, when someone unsubscribes or subscribes…. Let us know how you get on.
I love a strong branding message and so was instantly enamoured by Popp Communications.
POPP employs specialists who are good communicators, technology talented, process disciplined and thankful for the opportunity to serve you.
Doesn’t that just make you want to sign up and pay them money to serve you?
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Image by glennharper via Flickr
Do relationships matter more than marketing or advertising for B2B?
There is some truth in this but it is often over-stated.
Many web experts talk about the glorious ‘free’ things that come to them just because of their relationship and web presence – but we believe that without a proven track record in the area of expertise – this is all wishful thinking.
Srini Rao wrote a nicely titled post about how relationship marketing helped him to land a dream client – read it because it sounds awesome. The plot line goes something like this – you hang out in a surf bar and drink a beer / shoot the breeze and at the end of the night the owner hires you to promote his surf travel brand.
Wow – the good life just arrived.
How did he make it happen?
I have no doubt that this really happened. Sometimes serendipity is just there for you and good things happen.
But there were several pre-conditions needed for this beautifully desirable outcome:
- Track record expertise in marketing brands
- A clear understanding of the surf marketplace (and involvement as a consumer)
- The client was ready to buy
- Give away some free advice over a couple of beers to demonstrate expertise / build the relationship
- Right place, right time, friendly fellow, made friends and KAPOW – new client.
Except for the last, every other one of these is a deal enabler.
Missing any one of them, it would have been virtually impossible for Srini to close this deal. Take our expertise in the rowing marketplace. We now have three clients who sell into the space and proposals out to two more. The last proposal happened because we were at a regatta and got chatting… in fact, read steps 1 through 5 above – that’s EXACTLY what happened. Now we’re waiting for the client to decide to hire us.
Why did this new client relationship happen?
Because of the four points listed above.
So take your business development plan and check out the steps in our biz dev methodology
1 – state your business
4 – profile raising
5 – relationship development
Each will help you position yourself appropriately to be in the right place for those relationships to blossom and hopefully you’ll also land your ‘dream’ client! Well done Srini, we applaud you.
There are a lot of places online where your personal and company profile is visible. This is the modern-day equivalent to directory listings that used to be a very important part of B2B marketing in the past.
I was reminded of this by a recent follow request from StrewIt. I have no idea what the service is but if you “visit them and start Strewing!!!” apparently all will become clear. Not.
Twitter biography
So much for them.
Well to take our own medicine, we created the Creative Agency Secrets Linked In company page.
Other places where your personal and company information could be kept up to date:
- Facebook page
- Skype
- Delicious [topical right now]
- Website about page
- Industry specialist directories
- Techcrunch directory
- Industry magazine website listings
Why not add in a new calendar item for yourself every few months – to update your online profiles? Set a reminder as a task or a diary date so you don’t forget. Include in the task the list of sites to check and add in any new ones that have become important in the intervening period.
Following on from yesterday’s post about delays publishing a new company website – take a look at this one:
What I like about it is
- it sets a deadline (the counter is clocking down all the time)
- it still says what the company does – USP – so the holding page continues to sell the brand
- contact details are still there
- there’s an invitation to subscribe to notifications about the re-launch
Does your brand demand a launch date that can’t be changed?
Website holding page for BrandGlue
hands up the number of times your company has delayed the launch of its newly designed website?
It’s virtually impossible to find a client who has actually delivered a new site on time, when expected.
So why is this?
What makes a corporate website so hard to deliver? Why can’t redesigns be launched on time? What holds back large projects?
I have two answers – which may not account for every situation – but in my experience covers the majority 80% reasons why corporate website launches are delayed.
- Perfectionism
- Lack of urgency
Perfectionism is a personal standard, attitude or philosophy that demands perfection and rejects anything less.
Urgency is the quality or condition of being urgent; pressing importance
Perfectionism is not a reason for delay
Everyone wants a project delivered to a high design standard and on-time-within-budget. But in today’s 24/7 world, when many new products and services are described as “always in beta” I believe there are two things that allow you to relax your standards
- If the fundamental part of your site (service description, shop, product information, payment system etc) is present, correct and working then customers will forgive small design flaws.
- You will certainly be revising the site ongoing after launch (this should be a normal part of your business marketing) and so some of the higher functions and features can be delivered after the launch date.
Now to anticipate critics – yes these can be seen as excuses for late delivery. But your business has to continue working and a non-functioning website or a holding page is a serious detriment to anyone’s online profile today.
Better to deliver and then improve than delay.
Lack of urgency is not a reason to delay
If you know that your website relaunch date is looming and likely to be missed, answer this question.
How important is your company website?
How important is your company website to these departments/teams: sales, marketing, customer service, procurement, new product development
Just answer in points out of 10.
Now ask the same questions again and add
“How important is your company website compared to the other high priority jobs you are working on?”
Anything that out-scores the website work will cause staff to choose to work on that instead of delivering the website.
This gives you an insight into their sense of prioritisation.
Use what you learn from the answers to these questions to work with the team and either create the urgency or find another way round the problem. Usually to speed up a job you need either to add more manpower, more money or more time.
If the website redesign isn’t important enough to warrant additional manpower/cash/time – why are you working so hard on it?
Too many agencies chasing too little work. Is a common theme when new business is hard to find.
How can you make your offering as a creative agency stand out from the crowd? Many firms have flashy websites, wierd logos and creative directors who stand out as being, frankly, wierd.
We can’t all do these things – although many businesses continue to do them very well indeed. This represents the outward, slim and frankly flimsy part of any business. The external gift-wrap.
What makes a point of difference, different?
The answer has to be a strategic positioning whereby your offering is clearly stated, aligned with the real people you do business with and delivers a clear message to other businesses who may choose in future to work with you.
Take a read of the list of 243 marketing agency points of difference that Michael Gass has just published.
Two things stand out. 1. Most of the points of difference are not actually different or unique. 2. A few are.
This is a typical example of a not-real point of difference.
We are a full service promotional agency that has a dedicated research/planning group to capture consumer insights – many traditional agencies have this function – but its rare for a promo shop – also rare for promo shop to have media/buying and planning, full digital suite (web dev, social media, SEO), creative, research, public relations, and shopper marketing int house, but we do. Naturally many promo agencies will claim they have all the above internally, but few do…
This statement is entirely the point of view of the respondent and has no clear facts to back it up. And, as time passes, this POD will fade away because it’ll soon be less “rare” for other firms to ogger this range of services.
Other non-differences
- Genuine integration across disciplines(walking the talk)
- “Brand People Who Get What’s Next”
- We help mid size businesses own the leadership position by working with the C level
- we’re repositioning ourselves as quick, smart and affordable
- We approach integration differently than others
- We are uniquely structured to provide multiple services
Can you see that none of these are REAL differences? here’s why
- too easy to copy
- opinion
- not unique
- catch phrases
But we really are different from other agencies
If you are able to say what is genuinely different about your business let it be
- a unique offering [unique means nobody else does it - it's probably trade marked or patented]
- a particular service
- a particular process
- a particular client industry
- a particular geographic location
That’s it.
Either it’s unique or it isn’t.
Determining a particular service, industry or location is probably the easiest way to differentiate your agency – apart from the people, this can be individual and special to you. A combination of a service plus an industry or a industry plus a location, or a service, process and industry has the possibility of being a point of difference.
All the rest is able to be copied, offered by competitors or just isn’t sufficiently different.
So what if I am not different?
If your agency is not different you have a couple of choices
- invent a point of difference (a particular branding applied to your creative process)
- compete on price
- compete on volume
- compete on your personnel (but if they go, so does the point of difference)
- accept that you’re part of the broad industry offering and can easily be subsituted or replaced by clients
And that’s fine – as long as you know where your business positioning lies.
Corporate greeting cards can be used in many ways to promote your business and to show appreciation to supportive clients; some traditional and some a bit more creative. However, there are some rules and tips you should keep in mind to get the best return on your investment of sending out a Business Christmas card:
1. Procedure/mailing list
Make sure you keep your company contact information up-to-date on a regular basis and take your time to add new contacts you gain throughout the year.
A good way to control if your contact details are up to date is by including your return address so that the post office will return the card if the address is no longer valid. It will also serve a dual purpose by providing your contact information to your recipients.
2. Timing is everything
Don’t send your cards late, set yourself a deadline. December 15th is a convenient cut-off date for having your cards in the mail. If you’re sending business Christmas cards internationally, they’ll have to be in the mail much sooner. Here are some helpful links for recommended Christmas mailing deadlines: NZ Post, AUS Post, Royal Mail, USPS, Canada Post. If your Christmas card arrives after the holidays, you have just sent the wrong message to your customers.
3. Chose the right design with the right content for the right business
Start with a good quality business greeting card to show that you value your clients and colleagues. Skimping on your selection can be interpreted in a number of ways. Your recipients might take it as a sign that business has not been good or that they aren’t worth a little investment.
In order to bring the appropriate message across chose a card that best portrays your company. If e.g. ‘sustainability’ is one of your core values by using business e cards you are sending your clients a very clear message that you take your environmental responsibilities seriously. Always be sure that you select your card with care, keeping in mind both quality and your recipients’ cultural or religious beliefs. To avoid offending the reader of the card, be more general, use something like ‘Seasons Greetings’ instead of wishing ‘Merry Christmas’. Also, if you are sending out greetings to a very traditional business, make sure to use the appropriate card – red and green are the most classic colours you could use.
4. Personal approach
Don’t just write something such as ‘Happy Holidays’ or ‘Merry Christmas’ above your signature. Take the time to write a hand written, personal message to let the recipients know you took that extra time to think about them.
5. Who signs it?
There is no universal rule for who should sign the Business Christmas card. However, one thing is for sure: there should be at least one signature on the card. If you are a small business and your whole team is communicating with the client, everyone might sign the card. On the other hand, the larger the business, fewer people should place their signature on the card.
For most people, email is the primary form of communication. The question if it is acceptable to send email Christmas cards instead of physical ones really depends on your business relationship. If you mainly communicate through email, then an email Christmas card might be expected. However, keep in mind that it is usually preferred that you take the time and effort to send physical cards.
Here are some useful links for the different types of Corporate Christmas Cards:
Printed Christmas Cards
Traditional, contemporary, eco friendly:
Business appropriate, customer appreciation, from all of us:
http://www.cardsdirect.com
Traditional:
http://www.fineart-international.com/search.asp?ids=91&mode=sub
Modern:
http://www.fineart-international.com/search.asp?ids=28&mode=sub
E-Cards
http://www.123greetings.com
Eco friendly:
http://www.eco2greetings.com/
Viral Christmas Cards
Humour:
]]>The internet makes it easy to get in touch with people and organisations – right?
WRONG.
Day after day working for my business and my clients’ I find examples of organisations that make it really difficult for people to get in touch.
Here’s the latest crop of examples.
- Author gets article into Harvard Business Reivew (like WOW) and states at the bottom that he’s a Senior Adviser at Oaktree Capital. Can I find him mentioned on their website? Does their site have a news page with a link on it? Has it been updated since the 2009 copyright statement in the footer?
- I write to Claremont GI, an interior fit-out company, enquiring about their products for a client. They only offer one enquiries@ email address and it returns an undeliverable bounce message from the server. How much new business are they losing?
- Working for a self-published author, we try to contact the buyers for large book retailers. Their websites give no contact information for the corporation – just online store customer service. Whitcoulls,PaperPlus – this is YOU.
- A national bookstore chain, Borders, that doesn’t list a single email address on their contacts page.
- Groups of companies that list the PR company as the main contact point. Dot Digital Group lists their PR agency above the corporate HQ on their website – and that’s for a supposedly digital organisation. Fails the basic “do what you preach” test.
I would love the result of this blog post to be a comment from each of the organizations named telling me why they choose their contacts page design as they do and advising how we should get in touch with their people.
Dot Digital Group contacts FAIL
Service companies can use Facebook to widen awareness of their services. Here’s a good example from Sergio Giannasso Hair and Beauty in London’s St Martin’s Lane. Sergio’s website.
The page has the right amount of information and includes a great touch – the photo of Sergio with David Hasselhof.
Sergio Giannasso with David Hasselhof