Be Different or be dead

September 23, 2019

Why caring is the best way to beat your competition

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Why caring is the best way to beat your competition.

Tom Peters in his book Little BIG Things talks about caring and how critical it is to any organization searching for excellence.

Its one of the things that Peters does so well: take an apparently small trait and argue successfully — with compelling evidence — that it is strategic, of the utmost importance to any business and is an essential element that any organization must have to succeed.

Caring is a critical factor that will set any organization apart from their competition. This is a sad fact, really and is unfortunate proof that many organizations these days lack this very basic element of presenting a humane look to the markets they serve.

Caring is a binary concept. Either you care or you don’t, and it shows every time you engage with a customer.

As an organization, you don’t get loyalty points for exhibiting the caring most of the time. If your caring face doesn’t show up every time out, everyone rightly concludes that you’re not genuine in your intent. The aspiration to care really has no weight if it isn’t consistently backed up with caring moments orchestrated by employees 100% of the time.

An organization can’t care if they don’t have these things in place:

Always on attitude — People always have a bad day, but caring must be active, notwithstanding. A bad day cannot be used as an excuse to not care for even one moment. “Oh well, they’re just having a bad day I guess” can never be used as an excuse for an employee’s non-caring behaviour.

Friendly rules — Rules, policies and procedures must accommodate a customer nor drive them wild. You can’t make the the caring claim and then put your customers through the policy pain mill time every they want to transact with you.

Knowledgeable people — If you choose caring as a strategy, your people must be competent and capable of answering a wide range of questions customers ask. Employees require a healthy balance of knowing their specialty as well as a general knowledge of the company and it’s strategy.
Regular refresher training for your frontline should be a priority.

A clean environment — Appearance and cleanliness of your premises (including your website). When customers observe your place of business do they see a clean and tidy environment or do they see worn-out, old and tired? Is your web presence clean and easy to use or is it built by techies for techies?

Community support — Are you active in the community? Do you take your care claim to the not-for-profit sector? You can’t care on the inside and turn your back on your community responsibility.

Problem solving — Are your people problem solvers? Listening, asking questions and finding solutions scream that you care about your customer and the realities they face. The absence of a problem solving attitude tells the story that the organization exists to serve itself and no one else.

Customer friendly language — How do you refer to your customers? For example do you refer to your customers by words like transaction or call? If you do, you’re not well positioned on the caring scale.

Serving leaders — A leadership team comprised of individuals who ask “How can I help?” shows caring for employees. If you don’t care about your own people you will never be able to show honest affection to your paying customers.

It’s quite ironic really.

Every organization is seeking a complicated solution to the challenge of how to separate themselves from their competition and it is staring them in the face.

All you need to do is give a damn about people.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 9.23.19 at 04:00 am by Roy Osing
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September 21, 2019

How to use colours to make your branding amazing

Psychology of colour in branding is more than just a sentence explanation of mere representation of each of the colours.

It is a fact the specific colours can create a powerful impact on the choices  made by the consumers.

As per a report published by WebpageFX, consumers make judgments subconsciously about a site within 90 seconds of its viewing. Between 62% to 90% of the judgment is made solely based on colours.

Colours transform the perception of the brands

So, there is always a reason why the topmost brands choose a colour scheme, publish certain guidelines related to brands and work hard for making sure that their designs remain consistent across all their channels of communication. As per Kissmetrics, colours increase the prospects of recognition of a brand by 80%. Well, that’s a huge figure!

The colour theory

All the shades of red, green and blue are considered as the primary colours and violet, yellow and orange are the secondary colours. The tertiary colours include all the mixed shades of these colours.

How do colours help in brand building?

The smallest change in colours impact the buying habits of the consumers and their desire to purchase a particular product.

Colours such as red denote energy, excitement, courage, passion and attention. It is used in industries like Food, Sports, Entertainment and children products whereas orange denotes independence, optimism, adventure, creativity and fun. It is used in industries like entertainment and transportation. According to various sources, as high as 85% of consumers say that colour is the main factor while selecting a product.

Colours play an important role in how people interpret the brands. They have the power to influence the emotions of your consumers.

And most importantly, you can skyrocket your conversion rates by carefully integrating the colour psychology.

— Geet Bagrodia is the owner and founder of Vowels Advertising Agency which has offices in Jaipur, Dubai and Melbourne. A designer by profession, Geet has played a critical role in building over 200 brands in the city from scratch. He and his team are actively involved in redefining brands across the globe. Having been in the industry for over 6 years, he has gained deep insights within the entire branding spectrum.

• Posted 9.21.19 at 05:51 am by Roy Osing
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September 16, 2019

Kill your ‘dumb rules’ to amaze your customers

Source: Unsplash

One of the most effective ways to create memories for your customers and earn their loyalty is to break your own rules to favour them when it makes absolute sense to do so. This opportunity normally arises when your rules clash with what the customer wants; they simply don’t want to play by your rules.

Dumb rules

‘Dumb rules’, are given birth usually by some control freak in the organization with a nonsensical purist view that a customer should behave in a certain way that serves the organizations purpose with little regard for whether or not a customer will react favourably to getting treated in the prescribed manner.

One of my favorite dumb rule stories took place at The Mirage Hotel Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. There is a wonderful deli in the casino that serves the best rueben sandwiches ever but the customer friendliness of their policies sucks.

My wife and I show up late one night and asked the hostess for a booth and were told flatly that our request was not possible since it was their policy to offer booths only for parties of 6 or more.
I get that management wanted to maximize the check value from these specific seats, but in this case the store was empty save my wife and me! Maximizing revenue beyond the two of us was an impossibility!

In my experience the fathers and mothers of dumb rules can be found in staff type jobs whose role is to develop and implement operating procedures to govern, among other things, customer transactions. In these circumstances the objective is to meet internal requirements like efficiency and productivity rather than ensuring rules enhanced the customer experience.

And, unfortunately where customers are not considered the prime target for the rule or policy they become collateral damage in the rule’s application; they are mistreated and tell hundreds of other people how crummy the organization’s service is.

But there is a way to both have your cake and eat it to. You can both realize efficiency gains by applying the rule to the masses and bending or breaking the rule for those few customers who don’t accept it and push back on you.

The apply-the-rule scenario gets you the productivity gains you want from the majority of your customers who are ok with it; the bend-or-break scenario avoids the pain of an unpleasant customer encounter and impresses them and makes them more loyal to your organization.

When apply-the-rule is winning

You’re in loyalty do-do when apply-the-rule is winning. If your frontline employees spend a great deal of their time enforcing the rules, policies and procedures of your organization and, as a result, are constantly saying ‘no’ to your customers nothing good comes of it — loyalty is threatened — and employee engagement is in jeopardy because being a rule enforcer is not a rewarding role to play in any job.
Job frustration can eventually lead to employees finding another organization where day to day existence isn’t so painful.

Employees can’t create delightful moments for customers when they are constantly trying to get someone to tow the line on something they don’t agree with — empower your frontline to ‘say yes’

I’m not suggesting that a frontline person should break a rule that would violate the law, but they should have permission to bend-or-break an internal policy that has no significant negative long term consequences for the organization.

When you test your policies

Rules and policies impact people differently; each person will react to an enforce-the-rule encounter in a different way: some will be ok with having to comply with the rule while others will go postal.

One way to anticipate how your customers will likely respond to one of your rules is to ask them before it is implemented. Unfortunately I’ve never witnessed a process where detailed due diligence is done to brainstorm the negative reactions that customers may have to a particular rule or policy that is being considered, but there should be.

Given that customers are likely to respond to a rule in ways we never imagined, the only solution (if you want to protect and grow customer loyalty) is empower your frontline people to bend one of your standardized rules, policies or procedures when the customer needs a different treatment; when their needs are quite reasonable but out-of-bounds to what the policy manual says.

To those who think that empowering frontline folks will result in them giving away the shop, stop worrying. They won’t.

In my experience, empowering them to use their judgment and determine when and how a rule should be bent-or-broken actually produces a greater degree of rule enforcement as they typically reserve flexible treatment for those customers who truly need it.

Once given the latitude to apply flexibility to policy enforcement, they actually take a more active role in advocating the company’s position behind the policy.

When frontline people are allowed to control the bend-or-break process, the organization is rewarded by a customer who is blown away by how they are being treated and how humane the organization is. And they tell others how truly great you are.

The solution: the Dumb Rule Committee

How do you go about identifying and killing these ugly loyalty threateners?

Go ask your frontline what dumb rules they are constantly having to deal with. They know them but do you have the courage to listen and do something about them?

I created dumb rules committees in the operations areas of my organization and appointed a dumb rules leader for each committee whose responsibility it was to seek out and destroy (or otherwise modify) rules that made no sense to customers and drove them crazy.

Fun was had by all over this concept. Everyone, particularly the frontline, welcomed this initiative; they all were passionate about the purpose; we made real progress.

We had contests among the committees to see who could come up with the most dumb rules to kill, and we celebrated the winners. The committees were expected to not only identify rules, policies and procedures that annoyed customers, they were also charged with the responsibility of eradicating them by taking whatever action was necessary to get it done.

My role and that of my senior leaders was to remove any roadblocks preventing the committees from getting a rule dealt with.

Customer-friendly dumb rules

Certain rules are required by law or regulatory governance.
First of all do your due diligence to make sure that the claim is real and not the posturing of a champion who doesn’t want their rule or policy removed. If the rule is necessary, however, then at least look for ways to make it customer friendly.

And reconsider how the rule is enforced with a customer; what communications strategy is used. Is it friendly and helpful or is it demanding and intimidating?
Take the time to design the customer communications content to minimize an adverse reaction; it’s not always possible but it is worth considered doing nevertheless.

If you are able to expunge even 20% of the dumb rules you have in your organization, your customers will reward you with their loyalty and your reputation will soon attract new customers as well.

Cheers
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 9.16.19 at 04:20 am by Roy Osing
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September 7, 2019

10 effective strategies to promote your new podcast guest post

Source: Pexels

Podcast, a modern version of radio, has provided access to everyone the opportunity to host own show. Those who are familiar with podcasts and the usual content that is on these audio shows realize that they have quite a similar theme to blog posts. Therefore, many podcast channels that are covering a wide range of topics and issues, from sports and politics to history and entertainment.

You can find anything on the podcasts these days. In recent years, a lot of podcast channels have come upon the scene. Just like all the other content on the internet, podcasts also need to be promoted in the right way to reach their target audience.

If you wish to be heard, known and recognized, then you need to put in some work to promote your new podcast. Let’s explore how you can go about improving your podcast.

1. Get on iTunes

iTunes is now recognized as the single most effective medium in promoting the podcast. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to get on iTunes to be known and heard. It has been claimed by a journalist club that out of all the listened podcasts, 70 percent of them are reached via iTunes.

Make sure that when you are launching your podcast channel, it gets there on iTunes as well. You need to have a greater outreach when it comes to audience and being on this platform will help you be heard, literally and figuratively!

2. Create show notes

Whenever you start recording for your podcast episode, you don’t start recording out of the blue. You should have a plan or an idea like designrr.io that you take along when you are recording. In many cases, you may even make notes on what to cover and how to go about it. When it comes to promoting your podcast, these notes can come in pretty handy.

Spend a little time and effort in creating show notes for your podcast. When you are developing the content of your podcast on different media, these notes can adequately describe what the episode contains in the form of a concise and neat summary. It will turn up your podcast in Google searches, especially if you have put to include SEO specific keywords in your notes.

3. Increase your audience through your guest’s audience

One of the best ways to promote your podcast is to feature a popular guest in any of your episodes. If your guest already has a huge following, there are high chances that you will be able to retain some of them when they come to your channel.

One thing you must ensure is that the guests you feature on your podcast make a mention of their appearance either on their podcast or in any place where they are known and heard. It could be their social media channels or through their email campaigns. A popular guest on your nascent podcast will help you gain traction in the podcast industry.

4. Promote on social media

It goes without saying that you need to promote your channel on social media. In this age of increased reliance on social media by every industry, the podcast is no different. A podcast does stand apart because of its audio-only feature, so it may not be for everyone. People who rely on or prefer visuals while learning something new will not prefer podcasts and social media will help you tremendously in filtering out that audience.

You only have to analyze the audience that is engaging with your content on some social media and then reach out to them. This audience can be your target and loyal audience. Be out there on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. If you release a new episode, make it a pinned post on your account. The audience on all the platforms is varied, and you will be finding your target audience everywhere, so, make sure you are all around.

5. Submit episodes to podcatchers and aggregators

Podcatchers and aggregators, as the name implies, aggregates similar content in a specific place. So if you are in the podcast business, you should make an effort to get your content to a podcatcher. iTunes is the most prominent podcatcher, and as mentioned earlier, if you are on iTunes, you highly increase your chances of being heard. MediaGo and Banshee are other examples of podcatchers.

6. Transcribe the audio into text

Another thing you can do to promote your new podcast is to transcribe its audio into text and publish on various platforms that can further increase the outreach of your channel. Sometimes it is far more comfortable or convenient to read than to listen.

If some of the content of your podcast is available in text format, it can pique the interest of a reader, and there are chances that the reader will be directed towards your podcast to learn more about the content of the podcast.

7. Convert the podcast into video format

Converting podcast into a video may seem like an odd promotional strategy. However, if a few of your exceptional podcast episodes are available in a video format on a platform such as YouTube, it dramatically enhances the chances of increasing your audience. A podcast in video format has the possibility of being shared more than if it had been in an audio format.

You can put up famous and focal quotes from the podcast into a visual form and use that as the slideshow images in the podcast video. It is observed that videos get far more reception than any other kind. If it is a podcast of sports, like football podcast, you can add visuals from a previous match or just stills of various famous players.

8. Enhance ranking with reviews

If your podcast channel is high-ranked, it will reach far more people. Apart from having a considerable following, another way to be highly ranked is to get a lot of positive reviews from your audience. You can request your listeners to leave a comment at the end of every episode.

Another way to urge the listeners to leave a review is by organizing a giveaway. If you are low on a budget it could be some coupon code or invitation on the podcast as a guest speaker. Only those will enter for the giveaway who will leave a review. Giveaways have proven to be highly effective in promoting your content.

9. Be a guest on popular podcasts

It is the opposite of inviting a popular guest on your channel. You can team up with someone who already has a considerable following. In a lot of cases, this is better for your promotion that the previous situation. A podcast already being heard far and wide will have more listeners.

You will not have to promote your appearance extensively, and neither will you have to request your host to publicize your presence repeatedly. The higher audience on the popular channel will get you the promotion you needed.

10. Release multiple episodes on same day

If you are covering the same issue/topic in multiple episodes, then work towards releasing all the events on the same day. It will hook your audience, and they will know the content is there, and they can come back at any time. Some want to listen to all in one go.

It is an effective strategy in retaining and making an audience for your podcast.

— Sohail Rupani is a senior SEO strategist at PNC Digital, a digital marketing agency based in Orlando. He specializes in SEO and SEM techniques. He is passionate about technology and loves to analyze the tech industry in his spare time and stay in touch with the latest happenings. He also writes technical articles about SEO and digital marketing. Follow @sohailrupani for more updates. 

• Posted 9.7.19 at 06:36 am by Roy Osing
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