I Recognize the Value of Recognition

Yesterday, I wrote a blog titled The Fallacy of Awards. In it I questioned the value of awards like the ADDYs or the Academy Awards.  I questioned the value of awards that (often) stray from the primary mission of the activity (increasing sales or selling movie tickets.)  My comments should NOT, however, be taken as casting of aspersions on the value of recognition.

Recognition can be a powerful tool.  Most lists of top things employees are looking for from a good workplace will include "appreciation," "respect" and "recognition" near or at the top, well ahead of good pay.  Customers respond to recognition the same way.  I went to a certain dry cleaner for years because the woman who worked the counter always remembered my name and phone number and, if she was with me, that my daughter liked Tootsie Rolls.  After she retired, I became a number.  I had to give them all of my information every week.  Shortly after that, I found a new, cheaper dry cleaner.

But recognition only works when it is genuine and sincere and when it provides true value to the targeted person.  My kids could not have cared less about the participation trophies they got in Pee Wee soccer because the didn't do anything extraordinary to earn it.  On the other hand, I have stayed with Netflix, despite being upset by their pricing and listing fiascoes, because their recommendation tool already has thousands of my movie reviews loaded into it and does often make inspired recommendations.  They recognize my tastes in movies and create value out of that recognition.

Awards are great, if they recognize and encourage actions and behaviors that support the mission and purpose of the organization.  Often, however, the recognition of a simple "thank you" and "good job" delivered honestly, directly and in a timely manner can be just as effective or more so.

The Fallacy of Awards

If you produce a movie, your primary purpose is to sell tickets.
If you create or purchase an advertisement, your primary purpose is to get people to buy what you are selling.

Which makes me wonder, what is the value of industry awards like the Academy Awards and the ADDYs?  You should be able to track the winners and losers by box office numbers and by increase of business for the advertiser.  Everything else, it would seem, is meaningless.

Given that, are the Oscars are like those participation trophies my kids got when they were 7 and playing soccer?

The Marketing Value of Social Media?

I have to admit that while I see social media as a valuable communications tool, I have had a hard time figuring out how to make some social media make sense from a marketing perspective.  The Ad Contrarian blog has an interesting take on this in the blog Farcebook.  Your thoughts?

Some of my thoughts on social media: Social Media: Quality vs. quantity

An Inside Job: The Importance of Internal Marketing

A friend of mine recently spent a lot of time and money developing a very good marketing campaign. He was very excited about the project and had seemingly done everything by the numbers.  He even tested the campaign before launching it, scoring very well with the test audience.

A few weeks after the launch he was dismayed.  The beautiful (and expensive) campaign had not yielded the results he had hoped.  Sales hadn't really increased.  Testing showed that even his reputation and similar scores weren't changing.

It wasn't until a customer cornered him and told him about the negative things that she had heard an employee saying about the company that my friend realized that he HAD NOT done everything by the numbers.  He had forgotten to market to his internal customers.  While he was sending out positive, marketing-focused messages out the front door, his staff (or at least some of them) were sending out negative complaint-focused messages out the back.  Any marketing who has been working in this field for 30 minutes can tell you that negative word-of-mouth trumps positive word-of-mouth almost every time.

My friend tinkered with his campaign to make it appropriate for his internal audience and shared it with his staff.  Slowly but surely, as his staff understood and bought into his campaign, sales started to improve.

In my blog It's All About Relationships, I talk about the value of developing good relationships with your customers.  The same holds true with your employees.  You not only have to treat them well as a "boss," but you need to keep them informed and up-to-date as potential spokespeople.  An informed employee is an extension of your marketing efforts.  A misinformed or uninformed employee is the worst enemy to your marketing efforts, often unintentionally.

Readers, please share any stories or tips you have on marketing to the internal audience!  Thanks!

After Midnight

After Midnight.
Patsy Cline goes walking.  Eric Clapton lets it all hang out.  And retailers turn out the lights and lock the doors.  Or at least they used to.

In the new internet-based, global economy it makes sense to be open 24/7.  Your customers are getting used the the "always there" nature of the internet.  Who among us hasn't, at least once,browsed the virtual aisles of Amazon or Macy's at 2 am?

But it is not just on the internet.  More and more bricks and mortar establishments, including fast food restaurants and big box discount retailers are staying open 24/7.  They are realizing that we are no longer a 9 to 5 economy.

There are many reasons for this.  Fewer and fewer jobs are the types that you can "punch out" at a certain time and head home.  Work hours are getting longer (the average work day is 8.7 hours long according to some sources) and commutes to and from work are getting longer (26 miles each way is the average work commute in the US.)  More families have both parents working at least one job.  That means that people are looking for the convenience of a quick dinner or the ability to do their personal shopping when it is convenient to them.

Successful businesses are open when their customers are looking for them.  More often than not that is after midnight.

Could I have a few moments of your time?

The other evening, I got a call asking me to participate in a survey.  As I am a marketer and a communicator, I know the value survey feedback can provide and I am usually an easy mark when it comes to surveys.  I agreed after being told that the survey would only take "a few minutes."  15 minutes into the survey, with no signs of things slowing down, I was reminded of how a recent AP article reported that people are getting tired of being asked for feedback.  The article indicated that people in general are feeling fatigue when it comes to surveys.

Undoubtedly it is a good thing to ask your customers and other stakeholders for their input.  Without question, a company should consider customer feedback when evaluating new or changing product features.  And it is so easy these days!  Google the phrase "free survey tools" and you will get pages of options that let you send out quick little electronic surveys that look good and automatically tabulate the results for you.  You can generate charts and graphs of the results in seconds.  It is a beautiful thing!

Nevertheless, cheap and easy survey capabilities may actually be doing marketers a disservice.  When it costs thousands of dollars to even think about doing a survey, those hosting a survey have to carefully consider the questions they are asking and the value of the answers that they will get back.  Questions that yield answers that are not actionable are (usually) eliminated.  Redundant questions are culled.  Heck, some companies even pre-test their surveys!  Companies who pay to have their surveys done professionally have a financial incentive to make sure their surveys were tight and targeted and purposeful.

With the preponderance of cheap and easy to implement survey tools (Survey Monkey I'm talking about you!) it has been too easy to just dash off a quick survey without giving a lot of thought as to what the question is really asking, or what the results of the question will provide as far as usable and actionable data.  This means not only do we get approached to take more surveys on the computer or the phone, but the surveys themselves are more and more frequently confusing, inane, highly biased or just plain no fun to take!

So, if you are a marketer who is surveying your audience, my advice is to act as if you are paying thousands of dollars to have each question asked.  If you aren't going to get at least thousands of dollars of value from the answers, don't ask the question.

You might also like:Newspaper Survey

Good Cheap or Fast

There is an old saying that I first heard from a printer.  "You can have the project good, cheap or fast, pick two."

I wonder, with technology today making collaboration and delivery faster and cheaper, can we finally get all three?