A Novel Approach to Marketing

Why would anyone expect to learn anything useful from reading classic literature?  

No one in their right mind would expect to have to navigate the traditions of the royal court in 18^th century Russia or have to survive the trials and tribulations of the debtors’ prisons in Dickensian London.  

Knowing how a whaling boat operates or what it was like to take a road trip with hipsters in the 50's or how it felt to be a slave in the American South will not help you prepare your presentation on social media for tomorrow’s webinar.

The truth is great literature is, by and large, about people.  It is about how people think and how they talk and interact with each other.  Great literature deals with human relationships, motivations, fears and ambitions.  

And great marketing is about developing and nurturing relationships.  I have learned more about relationships from novels than from how to books.  I have read more truth about the human condition in biographies and memoirs than in any journal article.

Pick up a novel sometime.  You might learn something!

5 Things That Have Not Changed in Marketing

With the explosion of mobile marketing, the popularity of social media, the apparent decline of traditional media, and the growing cynicism of the public toward overt marketing messages, it seems as if marketing has totally changed.  Today, I want to remind you of a few things that haven't.

• Relationships Rule.  While you may have different tools to work with, the value of building a relationship with your customers remains highly important.  In many ways, building relationships with your customers is all that matters.

• Quality wins.  A high quality product still beats out an inferior product, all other things being equal.  Quality copy has more impact.  Quality products and services generate positive word of mouth.  Quality is sometimes the best marketing. 

• Content Matters.  Period.  And Exclamation Point!

• We are Still Talking About Value.  In marketing we are still promoting the intersection of price and product or service features.   We are still promoting the Value Proposition.

• Only One Measure Matters.  It doesn't really matter how many likes, tweets, views or readers you have, just like it doesn't really matter what your Neilson or Arbitron rating is.  What matters is how many sales you have.  It is the only number that counts.

The Final Say

"Don't let it end like this.  Tell them I said something."
Pancho Villa, last words 1877 - 1923

Endings are important.  When it comes to customer service, endings are perhaps the most important time in the customer interaction, primarily because it is your last chance to leave the customer with a good impression, the last chance to correct any mistakes or missteps and the last chance to make things exceptional.

I was once eating lunch with a colleague at a restaurant that was part of a national chain.  During the course of lunch, a cockroach crawled across our table.  Neither of us at the table were happy about that, but neither of us freaked out either.  It did put a certain pallor on our lunch, which ended sooner than we had expected because of the unexpected visitor.  When I mentioned what had happened to our server, she expressed appropriate dismay and asked us to wait to talk with the manager.

My first response was that this was good.  They were taking our experience seriously and wanted restaurant management to know and have a chance to apologize.  But as my colleague and I waited for more than 15 minutes to talk with the manager (we kept being told he would be right there) our anger at the situation grew.
By making us wait for so long (this was a business day and we both had to get back to work), the manager took what would have been a minor situation and escalated it.  Instead of giving us the impression that they took the cleanliness of the restaurant and the quality of our experience seriously, the absent manager highlighted the fact that we just weren't that important.

We had more than 15 minutes to think about the little creature that crawled across our table and what that probably meant about how many of his siblings were crawling around other parts of the restaurant.  As we had more than 15 minutes to wait, we thought about the meals that we didn't finish due to this incident, the time this was costing us waiting for the manager and the poor attitude of the staff (actually only the manager, but anger has a way of painting with a broad brush.)

When the manager finally decided to attend to us, he immediately went into a rather lengthy and detailed description of all the pest control measures that the restaurant engaged in, which is now and forevermore the first thing I think of when I think of this chain.  I am sure their advertising agency will be pleased to know that.  It also seemed as if the manager was saying that we couldn't possibly have seen a cockroach because they invest a small fortune on chemicals and exterminators to keep them at bay.  In the end, the manager spent another 10 or 15 minutes blathering on about restaurant pest management as if he were preparing for the test on that chapter of the manager's manual.

When I finally interrupted him and told him that we needed to be going he asked us to wait just a minute more and scurried off (somewhat like a cockroach I was thinking at this point.)  When he returned he proudly handed us each certificates for a free dessert, next time we returned and purchased a meal.  He then charged us for the full meal we were unable to finish.  We shook our heads, paid our bill and left.  It took me and my family more than 10 years to go back to any store in that chain.

The manager missed an opportunity by a mile.  By ignoring us and our situation, he ended the situation poorly.  A little sympathy would have made us go away satisfied and we probably would have forgotten it after a few retellings around the office.  A discount of our bill or waiving the bill altogether would have made a bold statement and probably would have had us leaving the restaurant feeling pretty good about the place.  A bold action like that would have said to us that they cared about our experience and since our experience wasn't great, they wanted to do something about it.  I suspect it also would have helped us feel that it didn't happen very often because they couldn't afford to waive everyone's lunch receipt.

YOU have the final say on what type of experience your customers have.  YOU have control over the last impression you and your organization makes before your customer walks out or logs off.  Especially when a customer has a poor or less than excellent experience, YOU have the chance to turn it around into something positive.

YOU have the final say!  Make it count!

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Everything is Marketing will not be published this Friday as I will be out of state attending a memorial service for my father-in-law.  Please take the time you would normally spend reading my blog to call or write to a loved one and tell them what they mean to you.  See you again on Monday.
Bill

The Local Newspaper

There is nothing quite like a local newspaper.  It is a unique information source.  It is a unique community resource.

It is the local newspaper that lets you know about the high school soccer team or the city council debate on zoning law changes.  It is the local newspaper that highlights the local almost-celebrity, tells you about the opening of a new business, and provides you a review of a local theater production.

It is a local reporter who works for a local newspaper that often uncovers a local politician who bends the truth, or the law.  It is that reporter who writes the Freedom of Information Act requests and sits through the city council meetings to ensure that someone is paying attention to the actions of those in power.

It is the local reporter and the local newspaper who hold up the small town heroes, philanthropists, business owners and politicians when they do something extraordinary.  It is that same reporter and newspaper who tell you, sometimes with barely contained disappointment, or rage, when those same people puts their own interests in front of the interest of the public.

Because of these things, I subscribe to several local newspapers.

Because I want to make sure there is someone to sit through the municipal meetings, I subscribe to a local newspaper.

Because I think the fourth estate is a vitally important part of the United States governance structure, I subscribe to a local newspaper.

Virtually every major news story started with a local reporter, somewhere, noticing something and following up on his instincts.  Because I want a strong and active news media and because I feel that local newspapers are more independent and more likely to follow a lead regardless of the implications, I subscribe to local newspapers.

I understand that my subscription fee actually does very little to cover the expenses of publishing the newspapers I read.  BUT, those newspapers sell advertising based on the numbers of readers and subscribers they have.  By subscribing and reading my local newspapers, I am helping them sell advertising and stay alive.

By subscribing and reading local newspapers I am supporting grassroots journalism and community development, community focused media and editorial engagement.  I am supporting an open and informed society.

Not bad for a little bit of newsprint and ink!

Related articles

• Local, local, local - study: why people still subscribe to newspapers
• Time to start a newspaper

Happy New Month!

"Happy New Month!"

In my family, we have a ritual in which we try to be the first to wish each other Happy New Month.  The tradition is so strong that those who dare to marry into the family are quickly usurped into the ritual.  The funny thing is that there is no prize, no keeping of a tally, no punishment or hazing is brought onto the losers.  It is simply a monthly inter-family burst of friendly competitiveness that is forgotten on the 2nd of every month.  The joy is in the execution of the tradition, win or lose.

There is a value in tradition and ritual in families and in organizations.  Participating in traditions and rituals are one of the ways we feel a part of the group.  They are also ways to pass on organizational values and beliefs and to make the group, whether its a family or a company, a unique and special group.

But traditions and rituals can have a dark side.  From an organizational standpoint, traditions can stand in the way of change and progress.  Any one who has tried to enact significant change in an organization quickly learns about the traditions or sacred cows that can't be touched.

"We've always done it that way!" or "We've NEVER done that before!" are telltale signs that your organization has tradition-itis.  The same qualities that make for a charming and endearing tradition when they are a simple ritual like providing employees a cupcake on their birthday or trying to wish your sister "Happy New Month" before she wishes you the same, can be maddening if you are trying to go against the grain of a tradition and enact some change.

Organizations, it turns out, crave structure and organizations.  Structure and organization are perfect breeding grounds for traditions and rituals.

The best way to break through traditions that have become roadblocks is by getting buy-in for the change by the same people who are practicing the traditions.  Through information and conversation, it is possible to get past people's strongly held beliefs and traditions.  While that is much easier to type than it is to do, it is possible to enact change and who knows, maybe even create some new traditions!

In the meantime, Happy New Month!  And if any of my family are reading this, I got you this month!