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Are We Allowed To Be Constructive Even If That Means Being Negative?

December 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

I am a pretty active user on Yelp! I like to rate places, write reviews, add information, check-in – the whole gamut. As a marketing professional I see the value someone like me provides (and Im not just tooting my own horn here). I provide honest opinions and feedback without the business owner soliciting it or giving me something in exchange. Now my reviews are not always the best. In fact, studies show that people are more inclined to talk about a bad experience than a good one. I guess it just makes a better story – right? We’ve all been there!

A Bad Hair Day – Literally

About 6 weeks ago I went to a salon in my town for the first time. I moved recently and am a little tired of driving over an hour to get a cut & color so wanted to see what was around here. The salon came highly recommended and had all 5 stars (3 reviews total but still).

So I did not have a 5 star experience. I wont share all the niddy-griddy details here but I did share them on Yelp which resulted in me getting a call from the owner of the salon. She said it was unfair that I wrote a negative review without talking to her first. She also told me this would destroy her business.

I felt bad. I really did.

Now I had to consider what I could do. I could take down the review altogether and leave this woman and her salon with their 3 ’5 star’ reviews. I could modify it so it wasn’t so harmful (it honestly wasn’t bad anyways). Or I could leave it as is.

Ramifications of Being Honest

While I did decide in this case to take it down, I starting to consider our ability to leave honest reviews and constructive criticism. Is this even allowed anymore? We will not always ask for the manager when we are dissatisfied (I couldn’t get out of there fast enough!) and we wont always take down our reviews. How will business owners react? Could my bad experience actually destroy her business? I really doubt it and if so, then she has way bigger problems than my bad hair color.

You cannot expect perfection. We all want it but it’s highly unachievable. Strive to get better each time instead.

You cannot berate honesty. Instead of crying about a bad review, thank the person for their honesty. You just learned something about your business that you didnt already know (not to mention the reason why someone wont be returning).

You cannot ignore criticism. I love criticism because it helps me get better. That’s all it does. I dont enable it to beat me up or make me feel bad. I simply allow it to make me better. Do the same for your business.

Businesses, restaurants, gas stations, whatever, look more real when they dont have a bunch of gold stars next to their name. We should be allowed and encouraged to be honest. We should be constructive in our response, but honest, open and complete transparent. Same goes for the business owners.

Transparency wins, not perfection.

{photo via Flickr Creative Commons contributor Michael Loudon}

 

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Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Consumer Marketing

Just Saying ‘No’ and Still Preserve the Relationship

September 10, 2012 by 7 Comments

I’m in a snag at the moment. A professional ‘link’ I have (I call her that because our primary connection is via LinkedIn) reached out to me to see if I would be interested in consulting her company on a go-to-market strategy. Now the primary reason you may think I have a snag is because I am presently employed and this may cause all types of non-compete trouble – not so. The company is consumer facing (B2C) and is in no way related to what I do in my ’9 to 5′ or the audience we target. My snag is because I don’t believe in the product they are developing.

Now this is interesting to me because I value my time at home in the evenings and on weekends and already have enough on my plate (look at my poor blog here so neglected) so one of the reasons I am hesitating is because I just don’t have the passion I feel is required to devote my precious personal time to her project and upcoming company.

Maybe she has something and I am completely off in my thoughts and opinions – that’s fine. My snag is not my decision, it’s what I am going to do with that decision. How am I going to communicate my thoughts in a way that preserves our relationship? I can’t exactly tell her that her idea has been thought of a million times before, that I saw a million and one flaws in a demo or that I don’t have the time (me? lie? no way!). So what do I do?

It’s Not Personal, It’s Business

Where the heck did this quote come from? Errr – too much time on that one. Moving on :) Think about it though; it’s not personal, it’s business. So true in so many ways and so relevant to my current snag. How do I say this and show this? Well I have a feeling I am not the only one that has been in this situation so I thought I would share some thoughts on how I’m going to approach this and let you help me – please!

1. Be brutally honest

So the conversation may go something like “thanks so much for the opportunity. I’ve taken careful consideration of your idea and the product and I just don’t feel it’s a good fit. While I am not one to back away from any challenge, I feel like you have a steep hill to climb. Your product does have some interesting innovations but I can name a few successful companies that have not only done what you are doing, they have claimed the space. You would need to develop something really different to get any market share. So at this time, I cannot accept. If you are going to move forward perhaps I can connect you with some great people.”

2. Overprice

This would simply consist of me accepting the role on certain conditions. These conditions of course could not be met by the company. I could overprice the heck out of my consulting and simply take myself out of the running. Again, referring to someone great that maybe could help.

3. Suck it up and take the opportunity

Would you do this? I’m thinking this is the last choice I would make because as you read above, I pretty much made my decision. But still, this may be a pretty cool opportunity. I mean, what if the company does make it? What if I can help position ourselves competitively to be ‘different’? What if…what if…what if…

What do you think? What would you do?

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Filed Under: Blog, Consumer Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing

HauteLook Blocks New Site Visitors From Taking a Look

March 28, 2012 by 1 Comment

As some of you may know, I just moved into a new apartment so when I started to see commercials for a shopping site called HauteLook in which the woman is buying stuff for her home, I had to check it out.

As a new visitor to the site, I was immediately met with this roadblock:

I couldn’t even proceed without registering for the site. This was a huge disappointment to me when I can just as easily scoot on over to overstock.com or amazon.com and start browsing and shopping at will without providing them any information about myself until the time I wanted to make a purchase.

I could easily say that perhaps HauteLook is trying to convey exclusivity but yet, they let you right in after you register. Compared to a site like Pinterest which allows you to sign-up but then you have to wait for the access (I waited a week for mine), the exclusivity card is not working here.

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Subaru Using Memories to Share User Generated Content

March 22, 2012 by 93 Comments

I have been seeing a lot of commercials lately for Subaru’s My First Car Story which encourages everyone – Subaru owner or not – to go online and share the story of their first car.

Now my first car, a 1989 Mercury Tracer hatchback, just makes me smile to think of it and I honestly couldn’t wait to share my story.

First step was to choose the model, color and condition.

My car was a 4 door hatchback, not a station wagon but this was the closest thing to it. My car was also not pink (but how cool would that have been?!), it was red-orange. And it was in awesome condition until it met me that is. And yes, we called it the Space Mobile because the hatchback was in this funny bubble shape and it was the first thing that came to our minds when we looked at it.

The site asks you to connect with Facebook before sharing your story so that you can tag your friends – who may have been participants in the journey – and also so you can share it with your network.

After submitting my story (just 150 words allowed), I am taken to a page to pick the soundtrack. So fun!! For all the times we belted out Cyndi Lauper tracks (Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – anyone?), I had to go with Girl Party!

Then once you have done that, you can narrate the story in your own voice.

So the end result is a video you can share via Facebook, Twitter or email but since I had popups disabled, I ended up losing my custom story L So for fun, I will share it here for you all the read, reminisce and laugh about.

My First Car Story:

I was really lucky to get a car the same day I got my license. My dad and I looked for cars for weeks prior to the day so that I would have one ready for me. We found a 1989 Mercury Tracer hatchback. If you don’t know what that is, here is a picture:

Pretty frickin awesome huh? Mine was red-orange and I decorated it with tons of bumper stickers (is this my car???). I also had a fetish for Happy Meals at the time and filled my glove compartment and every other compartment with toys. My friends call my call the Alien Mobile because it looked kind of like a spaceship.

I loved to drive – I couldn’t drive enough. In fact, I would offer to go grocery shopping and pick up my brother and sister from wherever they were. About 3 days after my license, I was picking up my brother from soccer practice at the high school. He was waiting out front and being the cool chick that I was, I didn’t realize how fast I was going around the corner. Until I hit the front of the school. He was so embarrassed and I couldn’t stop laughing. Ended up just being a busted tire and my brother told me to just drive home on the flat (I am SO lucky I didn’t bend my rim doing that!).

I had so much fun in this car it was unbelievable. My friends and I would race down the highway passing people in the breakdown lane and pushing the speedometer so hard that it was going around again. The memories are amazing and I cherish them.

That car lasted about a year before my Dad decided it was unsafe for me to drive. I guess I had crashed it one too many times and it just didn’t run anymore. I was heartbroken and it was a sad day when it was towed away.

Evoking emotion to generate user content

Subaru is doing a lot of things right.

1. They have connected several forms of media (I saw this advertised on TV, then visited the microsite for this project and shared it to my social network).

2. They are playing into an emotional period of our lives that we were extremely excited about and want to share. Anyone ever ask you for your first car story before? Probably not, but you also probably couldn’t wait to share it.

3. With the exception of some subtle advertising while you wait for your custom story to load, there is no advertising. My first car was not even a Subaru nor have I ever owned one, but I was given the chance like everyone else to be a part of this.

4. Without doing anything beyond building the site and letting people know it’s there, the user (i.e. me in this case) is doing all the work. I al creating the graphics, I am writing the copy, I picked the music, I created the audio track. It’s 100% user generated content without making the user feel like they did anything.

5. I got nothing for participating but I felt like I got a lot. I didnt get a free test drive of the newest, shiniest Subaru or the chance to win a new iPad. But what I did get was a fun experience and I couldn’t wait to share it with you all so you can go have some fun too!

What’s your story? Go have some fun and visit the Subaru site http://www.firstcarstory.com/ and create yours.

 

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Are Mobile Ads Just a Smaller Scale of Online Ads?

February 22, 2012 by 64 Comments

I have been seeing a lot of buzz in the industry lately about the growth of mobile. Paying with mobile phones at the point of sale in brick & mortar stores, completing transactions from our phone as we sit on our couch and the uptick of mobile marketing & advertising. Recently I have started to see articles that point to the notion that consumers will eventually block out mobile advertising as we have observed them doing with online banner ads; that mobile ads are just a scaled down version on an online ad.

While I can reason with this statement for a number of reasons, I’m also not 100% convinced. I truly believe that mobile has provided marketers and brands with a huge opportunity and a capability to reach and connect with consumers like never before.

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Your Customer’s Perception and the Image You Intend to Present

February 20, 2012 by 147 Comments

Call me picky, finicky, whatever but the other day I was pumping gas and saw this sign:

Guess what I noticed right away?

I hadn’t even really read what the sign actually said and I couldn’t stop staring at this misspelling. I willed my gas to pump faster so I could go inside and alert the business owner or manager on duty of the error. An error that was posted in large, bold-face font on every single pump at this station!

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Are You Missing a Huge Opportunity to Upsell?

January 9, 2012 by 107 Comments

I will admit first and foremost that I go tanning. Yes, the indoor kind that will supposedly ruin my skin and leave me with wrinkles in years to come. Nonetheless, I do it and I enjoy it. But this post has nothing to do with tanning and everything to do with opportunities to upsell your customers and the people that walk through your door.

There are 2 tanning salons that I have visited frequently in the North Shore Boston area and I have noticed how strikingly different they are when it comes to a)upselling me and b)ensuring I return again.

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The Online Conversation That Is Still Not Happening

December 14, 2011 by 106 Comments

Have my expectations of brands changed because of social media? Perhaps. Why? Because I feel like there is an opportunity like never before for a brand to connect and engage fans and consumers on a whole other level. So it’s shocking to me that some are not monitoring these conversations about their brands, are not leveraging the conversations about competitor brands and are just not responding when someone is clearly yelling ‘help me’ in the social channels.

I’ve observed it with a few brands that seem to keep popping up and just cannot understand why the conversation is not happening when one side is clearly doing everything to make it happen.

Choosing the conversation you wish to participate in?

I recently tweeted that I was having a lot of problems with spam on this blog. While a few of my close online friends responded right away willing to help and give me suggestions for what worked for them, only one blog commenting company participated and that was Livefyre. Regardless of what I have said about commenting systems this time or in past conversations, Livefyre is always right there. Disqus – not in sight. Not even 3, 4, 5 days later. WordPress didn’t even comment to try and help. Needless to say, I installed the Livefyre plug-in and you can see it’s now active on my site here.

Some of my colleagues have said that these big guys don’t ‘need’ to respond. Feedburner is a great example. I can only assume what portion of Google’s overall business comes from Feedburner users only (I would guess not a whole lot) so I guess they don’t ‘need’ to respond to someone like me – right? Am I missing something? Feedblitz on the other hand is constantly monitoring everything in the social channels. If you mention a problem you are having with Feedburner, I guarantee someone from Feedblitz will try and help. Go test it out now and let me know. Same thing with Livefyre.

What is the point in initiating a conversation or enabling one if you are going to sit dormant on the other side? 

Since yesterday I have been tweeting up a storm about the latest Tweetdeck ‘upgrade’ and it hasn’t been positive. I’ve exchanged tweets with others to tell them what I didn’t like about the latest version and watched a ripple effect of people using me as the ‘cautionary take’ not to implement the update on their own systems. When I said I wanted to find something else and even tagged my tweet with @Tweetdeck, I was shocked to not see one response from a rep at their company.

Some brands have Twitter handles just to have them and are not really engaged (Feedburner’s last tweet was in June and Tweetdeck’s was last week) but Tweetdeck is asking people to follow them on their homepage and over 1 million people are. Why would a brand do that just to ignore anyone that tries to talk to them?

We have these tools at our fingertips and the conversation still is not happening. Does it take a lot to simply monitor what is being said? Sure. Do you really not care about me as a customer because you don’t ‘need’ to? Perhaps. Or are brands ignoring some conversations and jumping in on others? Definitely think so.

I understand that it takes a lot of effort to monitor and respond to each and every mention. I understand that with over one million followers, you may get tons of mentions and messages. But I also understand that when a customer is crying out ‘help’, that something needs to be done. Why is this conversation still not happening when the tools we have make it easier than ever before to do?

This is a gigantic missed opportunity for brands. We need to start paying attention to the conversations that are being had and initiated with us better. And we need to do it now before our competitors do.

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Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Consumer Marketing, Social Media

Making the Transition from B2C to B2B

November 21, 2011 by 71 Comments

Our careers don’t often follow a consistent path. While we may still be marketing, what we market and who we market to will change. Having worked at 4 different companies to date, including a company that changed their target market 3 times over a period of just one year, I have learned how to adapt. One of the biggest challenges I have found is the transition from B2C to B2B.

As a B2C marketer, you are tasked with connecting your brand with consumers. While we tend to place B2C in a bucket all on its own, I find very little different in the actual connection piece. I do, however, see many differences in how you connect with the audience.

Take social media channels for example.

As a B2C marketer, Facebook seems to make more sense. People tend to become fans of brands they use in their everyday lives. As an example, you may use Salesforce as your CRM tool in your office and frequent Starbucks. Are you as likely to become a fan of both brands on Facebook or one over the other? Why?

On the flip side, LinkedIn has proven to be the ‘professional’ social network. I myself have generated hundreds of leads as a result of my participation in groups as a B2B marketer. But if I am Starbucks, how would I connect with users in this setting?

See the difference?

Now let’s consider content. With a B2C audience, I find the most effective methods of using content are to be helpful to the consumer. This is not unlike satisfying a B2B audience with the exception of what the content does to help the consumer.

A marketer at Starbuck’s may use content to share great recipes for snacks that go great with their beverages or share the secret on how to brew the perfect pot at home. Whereas a marketer for Salesforce may educate their audience on the proper uses of CRM tools and how to better align sales with marketing.

Both can serve their audience with great content. But the way we go about thinking about what that content actually is are different.

Like every transition I have endured, education has always proven to be the most helpful. How do I go about it?

1. I talk to my ‘new’ audience

You will never know the answer unless you ask. Reach out to people that fit your audience persona. What social networks do they participate in? Where can you expect them to interact with a brand like yours? Are they connecting and engaging with competitor brands? Who do they read? What keeps them up at night? How can you help? The answers to these questions should set you in the right direction.

2. I become my ‘new’ audience

So after you have talked to your new audience, you need to embrace them fully. Subscribe to the publications they read. Start participating in the
networks they participate in. Truly immerse yourself in their world and start to see how your brand fits in. What do you look like to them?

3. I reach out to people who already know the space

I’ve said it a bunch of times but I love my network! So when I join a new company or the company I am currently with changes direction, I will often look at who I am connected with and reach out for advice. How do they do what they do so well? Try to give them an idea of where your head is headed and see if they agree. I find that people are very open to helping if you do a bit of work yourself rather than just asking for all the answers.

4. I research the competitors

No brainer. What are your competitors doing? Are they producing content? Are they hosting webinars? What does their website look like? How are they talking to prospects and customers? Get a very good sense of the competitive landscape. This always seems to spark ideas for me especially when it comes to what they are not doing. I mean, that could be your differentiator in the space – right?

From the types of content (both in form and in structure) to the social networks you participate in to whether you advertise on a billboard or via
Adwords, the transition is not always as easy as it looks but you can do it. Dive in and spend time learning as much as you can. Then make educated decisions that are very high level and work your way down from there to refine your strategy.

Have you made the transition from B2C to B2B or from one target to another? Any tips?

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Filed Under: Blog, Consumer Marketing, Content Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Do I Matter to the Big Guys?

November 16, 2011 by 19 Comments

I have found myself switching brands a lot lately. I really don’t like or want to switch brands because I understand the value of being a loyal consumer (plus I like things that are familiar and reliable) but there seems to be a lot of reason to as of late.

My Stop & Shop made a decision to interrupt my experience by re-arranging the entire store a couple months back. But nevertheless, I stuck through the transition and continued to do all my grocery shopping there. Then, about a week ago I was in line behind a woman who was talking about how great the store was and how she could find everything so much more easily now. I wondered in my head how long she had been frequenting the store because I was not having the same experience at all when the girl bagging the groceries remarked, ‘we love the new store and I cannot believe how some people are bitching about things being moved around.’

Whoa! I could not believe what I just heard from an employee and here I was thinking about how I hated that things were being moved around. This girl didn’t care about me as a customer. She didn’t know who I was, how I felt about the store and she sure didn’t care to stop and think about it.

So last week, I went to Shaws. Although the store is completely new to me and yes I did have to learn where each and every item was, I enjoyed my time in the store. Even with the new re-model at Stop & Shop, Shaws seemed much more organized and clean.

Upon leaving, I signed up for Shaws card and vowed to use up my remaining gas points and officially make the switch and sever my ties with my former grocery store.

Does Stop & Shop care that I left? Do I matter to them at all?

We talk a lot about generating leads (customers) and retaining them. We know that it costs more to get a new customer than it is to keep an existing one happy. We spend huge portions of our budgets on marketing and advertising, yet what percentage do we spend on ensuring that once we have the customers, they stay customers?

I spoke with a business owner of a local restaurant here in Beverly last week who said he ‘didn’t need any more business’. Wow! That’s great and definitely something I had not heard from a local restaurateur before. This person was actually saying that if I never went back, it didn’t matter. He didn’t need me and I did not matter.

Stop & Shop’s parking lot is always packed. Does it matter that my car is not there and I am not inside filling up a carriage of groceries to purchase? I’m not so sure.

In another example, a recent glitch with my iPhone erased all my data. Verizon couldn’t do a thing to help me. I pleaded with them to help me get an Android and their response was that I needed to wait until Nov 2012 (I didn’t expect a free phone but I just paid $300 for my iPhone so was hoping to catch a break). I asked if I could instead cancel my contract altogether due to their unwillingness to support me or keep me as a customer and their response was something like ‘no you cannot and if you do, then you will be charged.’

Do brands get so big that their egos escalate at the same time? What happened to taking care of the customer regardless of what percentage of revenue you received from them?

Do I matter to the brands I am loyal to? How are they showing their support to me or to you? Am I the only one feeling this way?

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