Be Different or be dead

May 17, 2021

Why marketers should try to make people emotional rather than buy products

Source: Pexels

Why marketers should try to make people emotional rather than buy products.

Marketers should refocus their attention to building solutions for the heart; customer offers that stir their feelings and emotions.

We live in a product flogging world.

Products are pushed at us. Technology rains down on us through mass communications.

What businesses supply (as opposed to what we want) is jammed down our throats with the hope that we will bite-and-buy what they offer.

People buy what they want, desire and crave, not what they need

People buy on the basis of what they yearn, crave and ache for; to achieve happiness in a world with pressure and stress on their lives.

Product flogging is intrusive and completely out of sync with this reality, and is a recipe to fail.

Happiness is driven by what we experience rather than what we consume in material goods. Fond memories of a family vacation are long-lasting. The new car is fun for a while but soon feels no different than just the one we just traded in.

This is a game-changer for product floggers. Rather than push features, technology and price, the challenge is to create broad-based appeals to the full spectrum of feelings that an individual has.

The marketer’s goal is to illicit a warm feeling rather than to satisfy a need

The marketer’s objective in this sense is to elicit a positive emotional response from the customer, rather than satisfy a consumer need.

“When people were asked to recall their most significant material purchase and their most significant experiential purchase over the past five years, they reported the experiential purchase brought them more joy and enduring satisfaction, and it was clearly ‘money well spent’ compared with the material purchase,” wrote Thomas Gilovich, Professor of Psychology, Cornell University in Determinants of Happiness.

Furthermore, experiences create more happiness than material goods because they are a personal expression of what we desire. They belong to us alone and no one else.

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel — Maya Angelou

The payback is long-term customer loyalty; the better they feel, the longer they stay.

These 3 steps will get you started.

1. Establish the ‘Experience Creator’ position in marketing to augment in the standard product management role.
These are the experience packagers; the folks that integrate, brand and price the value elements necessary to deliver the complete experience that customers covet.

This position is a synthesizer who brings together the appropriate combination of the organization’s products and services to create an emotional response that bonds the customer’s loyalty.

2. Include feelings as a key element of marketing and customer research. What experience would make someone happy, special and fulfilled? What does the person crave?
Develop feelings objectives for the offer you bring to market. What feeling do you intend to cause by the offer: contentment, trust, joy,...? If you’re serious about stirring emotion then you need to have a target that embodies the marketing intent.

3. Measure the emotions evoked by the experience packages you create; “How did it make you feel?” not just “Did it do what we said it would and does it meet your needs?”

Memo to marketers: forsake your flogging ways and start creating personal experiences for your customers.

The world is full of floggers.

If you want to make a difference and stand-out from the flogging herd let experiences guide you that produce an emotional response that keeps a customer with you forever.

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

• Posted 5.17.21 at 05:08 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

May 3, 2021

Why great brands are not made by the organization’s leaders

Source: Pexels

Why great brands are not made by the organization’s leaders.

I’ve sat in board meetings as the EVP of marketing listening to board members pronounce their views on the company’s brand and how it should change to meet changing market conditions.
From the 21st floor, they declare what brand position best serves the organization in terms of the current business plan and the environment as they see it.

Yes, board members should have influence on brand positioning, as should people further down the line in marketing, advertising and public relations — not to mention a plethora of others in the organization who want to join the brand party because it’s fun to be involved.

But let’s be clear: the brand work done by these folks is at best aspirational and bears little resemblance to the impact felt by the brand when implemented and experienced by customers and other stakeholders.

The brand developed by marketing, for example, represents the value proposition that they want communicated in order to meet the marketing objectives involving competitive differentiation and customer value considerations. 

Whether it’s declared by the board or marketing, it’s a paper brand position at this stage — a brave brand only.

Because at the end of the day, if an organization can’t deliver on its brand promise, the promise is useless and and is seen as a lie by all who witness it.

The brand stays in the ‘dream’ stage until it’s edited, filtered and tested by all of the practical, operational factors that impact the brand’s efficacy.

In my experience, these are the factors that either reinforce the brand dream or kill it.

▪️The frontline of the organization who engage with demanding customers day-in and day-out with aggressive competitors must believe the brand promise.
They must feel that they can deliver on the promise 24X7, because if they don’t believe, the dream dies.

▪️Operating processes that impact the way customers engage with the organization must support the brand promise. If, for example, the brand promises a friendly future but the internal policies make it cumbersome and difficult for customers to transact with the organization, the promise and delivery collide and the brand lie is borne over and over again. And the dream dies.

▪️Internal rules and policies affecting the customer experience must be in harmony with the brand promise. If the brand promises amazing customer experiences but internal rules force the customer through hoops they don’t like, customers are pissed off, they tell their friends what horrific service is being delivered and the dream dies.

▪️Frontline people must have the personal attitude, life experience and competence to deliver the brand promise day-in and day-out. Rude and uncaring treatment of a customer renders an organization as self-serving and narcissistic with utter disregard for the needs and wants of the people they serve. And the dream dies.

▪️The organization must be cleansed if the grunge and CRAP that gets in the way of employees delivering the brand promise. If frontline people are constantly fighting unnecessary internal roadblocks that get in the way of delivering what customers crave, again, the customer experience suffers and once loyal customers leave for a more friendly environment. And the dream dies.

▪️Frontline emotion and proclivity to serve others must be a huge component in the engagement process if the organization is to maximize the value of the customer experience, and this requires that people with a high EQ - emotional quotient - are recruited into frontline positions. If frontliners don’t illicit goosebumps during the interview process then the wrong person is being hired. And the dream dies.

▪️There are many organizations that decide to rebrand themselves without addressing the alignment factors discussed in the previous points — and nothing changes. They create a new identity with a flashy new logo and tag line but the essence of the organization carries on the way it always has. For these organizations, leadership seems to believe that the new logo will miraculously change their performance, but it doesn’t.

They overhaul their web sites with a new look and feel. Advertising messages change stressing an aspect of the organization they feel is now important and nothing changes.

The same operations problems persist; the same employee morale issues remain and competitive vulnerabilities continue despite the fact that how the organization is visually presented to the market has been morphed into something different. And the dream dies.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

A brand begins as a dream, conjured up by people intent on finding the best solution to the market challenge they face in a crazy changing environment. And it stays as a dream until leadership creates the infrastructure — the support systems — that makes the brand real.

If they’re not up to the task, the dream dies.

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

• Posted 5.3.21 at 04:36 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

April 17, 2021

12 signs of digital hoarding + tips to quit

Source: Pexels

In today’s hyper-competitive business landscape having an online presence and — breakthrough technologies to maintain that presence — isn’t an option. Oftentimes, it’s mandatory to keep up.

Still, getting ahead of technologies meant to improve our decision-making and streamline our businesses can feel like an entirely new job. (Hence why many businesses have IT departments.)

After all, as this blog has written before, “In business, digital technology is the heart of products and services, internal control processes and customer contact systems.”

But how often do we really take a step back and evaluate all the technologies and data we’re buying into? How often do we consider the digital clutter we keep?

Crazy as it may sound, there’s a term for holding onto too much digital data, old programs, and even unused devices— digital hoarding.

And for businesses, digital hoarding can have many repercussions, including:

▪️Slower devices
▪️Increased employee stress
▪️Lowered productivity
▪️Heightened cybersecurity risks
▪️Negative impacts on the environment

All this to say, the time is now to take inventory of what technology and data your business can toss and keep. You may even want to make this a part of a business-wide spring cleaning routine.

To put your company on the right track, consider more ways in which we amass digital clutter, how to identify digital hoarding habits, and also how to break them in the infographic below, courtesy of Norton.

— Sarah Pfledderer has over a decade of writing and editing experience in magazine journalism and blogging. She specializes in lifestyle topics and occasionally dabbles in tech. By day, she is a content marketing specialist at Siege Media.

• Posted 4.17.21 at 04:35 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

April 12, 2021

5 easy ways to adapt to and survive cataclysmic events

Source: Pexels

We’re not talking about a ‘minor inconvenience’ to an organization such as having a bad month when costs outrun your plan or when you lose a significant client.
No, we’re referring to a major event that can and will kill your business unless you do something about it NOW.

COVID-19 is a good example where public health restrictions had a devastating impact on, among others, the hospitality and travel sectors of the economy. Restaurants shut down and planes stopped flying. Existing business models were destroyed in an instant.

What is the appropriate response when a business is hit by a catastrophic event? It’s one thing to say they need to adapt, but the decoration is hollow unless it is followed up with how to do it.

Intent, without action to transform it into results, is not helpful at all.

But let’s recognize that there’s no prescription that will fit every type of business exactly; each one is unique in its own way, be it in the type of leader they have or in its risk profile. So a universal solution is not just impractical, it’s downright dangerous to suggest.

That said, however, there are a number of ‘possibilities’ that should be considered by leadership because there’s no such thing as a bad idea, it’s just that some are better than others.

So in no particular order, here is a list of possibilities that you may wish to consider if your world gets rocked.

1. Define your special sauce

Everyone’s an entrepreneur, you just need to find the spirit in you and unleash it. Your success up to this point hasn’t been serendipitous; it’s resulted because you have something special going on.

It’s possible that you’ve never thought about it up to now because your business has been doing ok and you’ve never met surprises of the cataclysmic variety.
Well, now the time to really think about what’s worked for you in the past and what your ‘special sauce’ is that customers love about you and that your competitors don’t have.

It’s critical that your special sauce forms the platform of how you adapt to the body blow you’re absorbing. Without understanding it, you don’t have any context to determine the possible entrepreneurial actions you can take.

2. Chunk your business

Rather than look at your business holistically, break it down into its component parts and explore each piece for nuggets that can be exploited in these devastating times.

A helpful method to do this might be to construct a process flow chart that isolates in detail how you deliver your product or service to a customer. This simple process defines everything from what the customer engagement moment(s) look like to how their request is satisfied.

Look for ‘chunks’ that you believe contain your special sauce and that could be leveraged as new sources of income. You may discover, for example, that how you fulfill customer orders is effective because of the unique way you do it, and that other businesses might be interested in it as a solution.

You might decide that your marketing or manufacturing capabilities are special and can be deployed into new markets. Or, you might decide to go into the order delivery business until the storm passes.

The point is to look at every element of your business as a stand alone opportunity to generate sales.

3. Make the call

Now is the time to ‘rub shoulders’ with the people who have shown you loyalty and have contributed to your success (I trust you know who they are and that you have been connecting with them regularly).

It could be a ‘digital Zoom rub’ required in a pandemic or a physical face-to-face rub in normal times, it really doesn’t matter the method used.
The important thing is that you reach out and ask your loyalists how you can help them and whether they have any suggestions for you to improve your business, and use the input you receive as fodder for your response.

Adaptation in a crisis needs a healthy dose of reality which customers can candidly provide.

Also involve your current suppliers or other business partners in your ‘rub’ deliberations. Ideas for your possibilities funnel lie everywhere so spread your web and spread it fast.

4. Put everyone on the frontline

When you think about your new business form, think about it as a frontline organization where the role of every employee is to deliver services to customers.

You don’t have the luxury of support or supervisory staff; you need everyone, everyday out taking care of customers and earning new sales.
As the leader, you need to assume the entire back end of your organization; a one-person show who does nothing but keep the lights on and support your customer facing team.

Source: Pexels

5. Think @home

The good news (always look for the pony that created the CRAP) is that there is much that can be done with technology to enable organizations to function in different ways.

We’ve witnessed ‘virtual everything’ during the pandemic and it foreshadows well the type of pivots that will work going forward.
In fact the predominant view seems to be that we will never return to the pre-pandemic office model; working from home will be the new normal.

And the @home model will extend more deeply in other life activities such as entertainment, shopping and where necessary family engagement.

To the budding entrepreneur this is extremely promising: changing customer behaviour around @home enabled by technology that will only get better.

So think about what you can do in the @home environment in cataclysmic times. Explore how you can exploit one of your ‘chunk’ opportunities by assuming your customer will want to do it from their home. “How can I deliver my service flawlessly if my customer wants to get from @home?” should be the relevant question you pose yourself.
And brush up on your technology expertise because you are going to need it.

Final word

As leaders, I believe we need to be vigilant in the face of random events that impose their will upon us.
We need to take the position that the unexpected force will be catastrophic and take the desired response rather than assume the unwanted intruder will inflict only minor pain on us and react therefore incrementally.

You’re much better off to plan for the worst and have a more modest plan as your backup if the assumed disaster doesn’t occur. Assuming the best is a risky and deadly position to take.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 4.12.21 at 05:02 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink