Be Different or be dead

May 9, 2011

Why customer intimacy is the best way to get repeat sales

Source: Unsplash

Why customer intimacy is the best way to get repeat sales.

Marketing and sales today are focused on pushing products and services.

The main problem with this approach is that no one appreciates getting something shoved down their throat.

So why do organizations continue to covet this flogging strategy?

It’s an easy route to follow. Focus on what you produce or supply. Be mesmerized with functionality.

Believe that if you advertise it far and wide people will come to their senses and buy.

Unfortunately the easy route is not very often the successful one that will make your organzation remarkable and indispensable because the herd is doing it in unison.

Let’s get back to Humanity 101.

People buy stuff because they feel they are getting value that somehow makes their life better.

Happier.

And the source of value delivery is an intimate relationship.

People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic —Seth Godin, marketing mastermind

Bonding with another human being takes time. Patience. Asking questions. Listening intently. It’s a tough job. But in the end it’s the ONLY process that will generate a long-term revenue stream.

If you really want to flog, flog intimacy.

Product pushing definitely has a limited existence.

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

• Posted 5.9.11 at 11:00 am by Roy Osing
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March 28, 2011

Why surprising customers is better than satisfying their needs

Source: Unsplash

Why surprising customers is better than satisfying their needs.

What’s the focus of your business plan? I expect that somewhere in your strategy it refers to satisfying customer needs.

The challenge, however, is that most people already have what they need, and to be a needs satisfier is a tough assignment.
The better mousetrap approach usually leads to offering a lower price. Follow this route and you’re CoMMON, FoRGETTABLE and InVISIBLE.

Should you meet customer expectations? Where’s the juice in that? I am not blown away when someone gives me what I am expecting.
Fall below my expectations and I am annoyed and I leave telling all and sundry how crumby you are.

Meet my expectations and I am satisfied but no more than that (how many of you are thrilled when the flight you are on actually arrives at the correct destination?)

Should you exceed customer expectations? This is at least notionally the right course of action. Go beyond what I expect. Give me more of what you led me to believe I was getting and I might talk you up you to others.

The real power has little to do with what people expect; rather it involves giving them what they don’t expect; to surprise them.

The surprise strategy is effective in dazzling someone, WOWING them, delighting them, and blowing them away and results in converting them to devoted fans who are prepared to spread your word far and wide.

Here are examples of what you can do to introduce the surprise factor in your organization.

▪️Know the customers secrets.
Secrets represent the fuel for the unexpected strategy. If you knew I loved Italian red wine, you might have the ability to present me with a gift should the opportunity arise.

▪️Opportunities flourish in any organization to deploy secrets.
Marketing — enhance one of your packages with a secret you discover about a particular group of customers.

▪️ Customer Service — when a service blunder occurs and you have screwed a customer around, build your recovery action plan around the secrets you know about them.

▪️ Product fulfillment — take a page out of Zappos’ book and send the product ahead of when it was promised.

But don’t use the same surprise element for every customer. Personalize the surprise and you will have the customer for life.

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

• Posted 3.28.11 at 11:00 am by Roy Osing
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January 10, 2011

3 proven ways to make marketing incredibly successful

Source: Unsplash

These strategic drivers should guide how you market in today’s world.

— Remarkability

— Indispensability

— Gaspworthiness

— Unforgettability

— Uniqueness

— Distinction

You won’t be successful if you continue to practice marketing in the traditional way.

Product push is offensive. A focus on what you produce makes you invisible. Catering to the mass market makes you irrelevant. Mass market media purchases defines you as being the same as every other organization.

Here are the three essentials to create the change you need in your marketing strategy if you really want to make a difference in people’s lives and stand-out.

#1. Create value — as opposed to continuing to push products and services down people’s throats. Its about defining the value that’s delivered to people rather than the fancy gadget with lots of cool capabilities.

It’s about the problems solved for people The experiences created. The happiness generated. The memories produced.

#2. Focus on your fans — the people who really care about what you do. Who are they? What are they all about? What do they need, want and desire?
Who are the Sneezers who have enough social power to spread your word around and expand your customer baset? How do they communicate among themselves? How can you be unique and distinctive in the value created for them?

Growth occurs when you provide more value to your fans and expand your fan base, not by trying to attract new customers through mass market advertising .

#3. Offer packages rather than products — memories, mind-blowing experiences and happiness usually happens when people experience a number of elements rather than a single one.

For example, a “Mountain Adventure” is more likely to delight someone with a combination of a hotel room, a daily breakfast, a spa and a guided horseback ride rather than if a horseback ride alone were provided.

Define the experience. Assemble the package components. Integrate them seamlessly into a value proposition that will resonate with your fans.

That’s the process. And it will make you different.

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

• Posted 1.10.11 at 11:10 am by Roy Osing
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December 23, 2010

Why the best product to sell the market is ‘happiness’

Source: Pexels

Why the best product to sell the market is ‘happiness’.

Happiness has significant implications for marketing to stand-out and be more successful.

The simple truth is that marketing happiness makes good business sense. But I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

I find marketing for the most part today predictable and for the most part lacking imagination.

As I’ve said elsewhere, probably greater than 80% of all marketing activity is spent flogging products and services to mass markets (although the internet technology available today allows a higher degree of personalization) based on persona composites of the ‘average’ person in the crowd.

Product myopia is the result of a supply-minded view. Marketers are infatuated with the capabilities of what they produce. The coolness of their technology. The functionality of their gadget.

The problem is, with virtually everyone following this marketing pedagogy none achieves the exalted position of DiSTINCTION, UnFORGETTABILITY, UnIQUENESS, GaSPWORTHINESS and ReMARKABILITY.

Consumers see a blur of offerings and capabilities with no one standing out from the herd. Value is a spoken word with no substance. It’s all about the ‘iron’ of production. The secret desires of the fan are lost in the flurry of product management activity to ship the product.

The course of marketing must change if it is to be relevant in today’s markets.

A person buys when they are happy and it’s the experience that triggers it.

Tangible goods at best deliver short term euphoria; they don’t produce long term happiness.

A new SUV initially delivers awesomeness to its owner for a period, but the euphoria soon fades as it becomes a used car. A new condo is amazing as the paint dries, but thereafter is an asset that has to be cleaned and maintained.

And if the new MacBook Air delivers all the functionality it promises, it’s rated ‘ok’; it’s acceptable but no long term adulation is created (in fact if the functionality of a tangible good is not delivered as promised, the purchase creates short term ‘pain’ for the producer as the consumer’s anger is spread to their friends and family).

Experiences on the other hand are a different matter. People remember experiences. They feel experiences. They talk to others about experiences. They buy repeatedly on experiences. They are happier when they are in a memorable experience. It’s not rocket science.

The trip to Maui leaves long lasting impressions and the family dinner leaves gratitude indelibly etched within us. And we want to experience those feelings again and again.

So why don’t marketers listen?

- They don’t understand the power of the happiness marketing strategy and why it should take priority over a product-push one;
- The product push approach has worked in the past and they trust that it will continue to work in the future;
- They like what they’re doing and don’t want to change;
- There is a great deal of effort required to engage niche customer groups and find out what experiences, specifically, would make them happy;
- They see happiness as a ‘fluffy’ value with little evidence that marketing it will produce economic benefits.

Yet credible opinion exists on the power of happiness and the benefits produced:

- University and other studies — at Cornell for example — show that experiences bring greater happiness and satisfaction than buying and owning possessions;
I attended a Deepak Chopra event in Vancouver where he argued that experiences deliver happiness in three ways: planning an experience creates anticipation and excitement, participating in the experience creates in-the-moment euphoria and remembering the experience creates lasting memories;
- Tony Hseih, CEO of Zappos in his book Delivering Happiness, discusses ‘how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion and purpose in both business and life’;
- And happiness has even taken on a political dimension. Tiny Bhutan has made ‘Gross National Happiness’ the central aim of its domestic policy to increase well-being and improve the quality of life for all their citizens.

The current attitude to marketing happiness must change if the craft is to become an even more relevant and vibrant profession.

What we need is a ‘happiness pandemic’ in the marketing community where the virus is encouraged to spread.

The new marketing order — happiness marketing — must focus on creating memorable experiences for people. Where feelings reign supreme. Where emotion rules. Where marketing success is measured by how many mind-blowing experiences are created for people rather than how many products are sold.

There is a simple, practical way to get started. Establish the position of ‘Experience Manager’ to marketing organization charts to complement the product or customer manager position.

Hold the experience manager accountable to:

- Learn about what types of experiences in various customer groups make people happy.
- Define the high emotion experiences with the strongest appeal.
- Use the ‘happiness secrets’ that are discovered as the vaccine to inject into company operations as well,as products and services;
- Measure and track the number of memorable experiences created in the organization every day.
- Set experience targets in the marketing plan.
- Work with product management to determine the products and services that produce the best experiences for customers and find ways to replicate the happiness impact with the broader product portfolio.
- Build an annual marketing ‘experience plan’ that influences what the product and customer managers do.

Happiness can be an amazing business builder for any organization and epic experiences are the way to trigger it in any person.

Establish the Experience Manager and use the position to give your organization a competitive advantage over the product-floggers.

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

• Posted 12.23.10 at 11:00 am by Roy Osing
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