In order to help you establish a successful brand name, consider some of these tips.

Really Think About What The Name Needs To Capture

There’s a fine balance between being unique, and going too far in the sense that consumers don’t grasp the context of the name. So, take the time to think where you want to be and what you want the name of the brand to represent. More importantly, you want people to get it right away – this is why you need a catchy brand name.

Keep It Exciting

Thanks to the onslaught of products, brands, ads, and services that get thrown at people every day, it is logical that when you do get an opportunity to impress, it will only be a few seconds long. So, within this short time frame, you have to make an impression. That means settling with a brand name that is anything less than exciting won’t cut it.

Choose a name that will motivate and inspire consumers to voluntarily dig deeper. In other words, don’t be scared to be expressive and unique. Because coming up with a name that easily gets lost in the crowd will not help your cause.

Less Is More

Being unique and expressive doesn’t necessarily mean complicated and difficult to pronounce. If you want people to remember your brand name, it needs to pop, the pronunciation should be clear, and it should be kept basic. You also want people to easily recognize your brand name when they see it again.

So, avoid misspelling words for traction, which doesn’t just create confusion, but it can make it harder for people to find your brand through an online search.  

Sometimes Help Is Good

If you are struggling to come up with a good name, surround yourself with creative people. Then you start brainstorming. These people could be friends, family, or even co-workers. As long as you have interested individuals to bounce ideas off and share honest opinions, you should find the perfect name in no time.

The post A Guide On Choosing A Name For Your Brand appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Publish twice daily on your assigned topic! Tweet four times an hour with these two hashtags! Know the best time of day to update the Facebook page wall! Oh my.

That’s a lot of rabbits to chase. So I wonder, in the quest to stimulate more traffic per post or incite greater social engagement, have companies ended up neglecting their online home base, the mechanism that enables self-discovery and facilitates customers need to get things done, a brand experience heavyweight? I’m talking about the website.

Information Superhighway

Once upon a time, website content was a near-to-exact copy of a company’s brochure. Pages were editorially, navigationally, and visually flat (well, except for the mind-numbing animated GIFs). Usability was limited to nerds in R&D departments building real shippable products and Dewey Decimal still reigned over library science. The site wasn’t there to solve or sell. It just occupied space (kind of like your last trade show booth) in a perfunctory move to not be out-presenced by the competition.

No one worried about what it might take for a website to satisfy the information needs of a prospective customer. Customers used the phone. The salesperson on rotation (or appropriate to the geographic territory) would take the call, deliver his spiel. He’d arrange a meeting and get an address for the file. Business was completed over dinner and drinks, where hard criteria got discussed and soft character evaluations took place.

Our “personal” computers were used to produce sales letters, proposals, and fax cover sheets. And we had the Internet for … well, we were still figuring out what for. Someone in IT bought a domain for the company then skipped out on a few days of work to take a coding class at the local junior college.

Up the brochure copy went, dotted with photos of the suit-wearing executive team. Voila! The corporate website wasborn.

Look Away From The Squirrels

Flash forward about 20 years. Yeah, that stings, I know. It’s okay, you’re in good company. Many of us with tricked-out smartphones still remember the feel of thermal paper and its maddening tendency to curl. We all know the worlds of work, business communication, and marketing communications have dramatically changed. But it isn’t nostalgia you hear from me. It’s a call for folks in Sales and Marketing roles to take a breath – step away from the Wildfire and HootSuite interfaces – and let a couple decades of cultural and economic change teach a valuable lesson.

Greater options, sagging buyer trust, and stiffled buying power comingle with target customer’s needs for increasing amounts of information. Information needed in the discovery, evaluation, and closing phases of the decision-making process. The very reasons that social media is a force multiplier in marketing demonstrate why your website remains your best online asset. People have real questions about what it’s like to do business with your company, why your products should be considered, and how their choice reflects their own values and priorities. Websites are expected to be deeply comprehensive, rich with descriptors and
specifications, offer reassurances, serve as a conduit for initial introduction, and so much more. (The Aberdeen Group goes deeply into web experience management and the role content plays in converting customers in this report).

The website is a brand’s official dossier. The social and blog stuff are witness interviews and psychology tests.

Long Live The Website

The website evolved from an electronic brocure (all that “me” marketing we’ve talked about) – a virtual branded paperweight, really – to a critical stop along the often indirect path buyers take from needs identification to purchase. Fact is, we seldom buy anything from a brand we haven’t previously experienced without first seeing what we can uncover in search (or glean from our trusted friends and colleagues), even if we ultimately buy in a store. The stratospheric jump in website importance (as a lead development and conversion asset) has been compounded by social signals performance pressure, popularity indicators, and other electronic medals and ribbons. Prospective buyers are checking out Tumbl.er accounts to get a feel for “the company behind the coompany,” Get Satisfaction accounts to suss out customer service attitudes, and Facebook brand pages to tune into the conversational flow. But the website remains the touchstone.

In the information economy, content is the currency and relevancy is the exchange rate for determining the value of the experience a prospective customer may have with your brand. It’s probably reasonable to assume the company you work for has advanced it’s web strategy from brochure copy and static pages with no relationship architecture to something a little more representative of the times.

But I urge you to take a long moment and ask the difficult questions:

• Can your primary target buyer accomplish their highest-priority tasks upon visiting our site?
• Is there a distinct progression path and right-sized information available for each stage in the decision journey?
• Is it written for humans to read (and bots to love)?
• Do the forms actually work, and does someone prioritize follow-up?
• Do your prospects search for ergonomic chair cushions while your content talks about “pressure-relieving spine alignment devices”?

A miss or two here may mean you lose business to competitor, one who deeply understands how to woo prospect attention and virtually assist them down the aisle. A company who knows how to construct an integrated, distinctive brand experience.

There’s No Single Platform Strategy

“Thanks for nothing. Now on top of all this social stuff, you’re telling me we probably need to do a deep dive on the website, too.” Imagine that, a multi-platform strategy. Well, the idea here wasn’t to suggest there’s one singular strategic direction to follow. Social proof matters, just as blog content baits and reinforces perceptions. They both assist with search performance. Just take care not to let your website moulder in important functional areas. Nor should it leave visitors at loose ends, longing for a more contextual brand picture or whether your company’s product or service really is the solution to their problem. Answers should be obvious and resolutions swift.

The post The Curious and The Needy: Does Your Website Deliver? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

What do those words mean in your world, when you think about the product manager job you’ve held for five years or the idea that’s been rattling around your creative, entrepreneurial brain? As an employee or small business owner, what’s holding you back from flying, chest stretched out, through the red ribbon and across the finish line?

Careful, They’ll Talk You Down From The Ledge

Even smart people sometimes ignore the yearning desire to innovate or squelch a strong instinct in deference to the well-meaning advice freely given by others. Friends, bankers, old bosses, partners, advisory committees and sister/brothers-in-law have all been known to share cautionary business tales of moderation. They coach about generating maximum return by targeting mainstream buyers, and extol the many merits of phased roll-outs to gradually soften the market. They pointedly remind you of the many reasons why you just can’t do it – how your kid needs braces, the uncertain economy, or the employees that count on you to keep them safe.

Doing something different with your business or that project you’ve been working on – something new, something other people might not be comfortable with yet – is scary. It’s risky. And it’s probably not easily tackled.

But the warm embrace of “business as usual” could be more of a threat, could bring more discomfort, than some companies ever bargained for. Ask Blockbuster, JC Penney, Borders and that-other-company-whose-name-I-can’t-remember…

The Trouble With Vanilla

Ever stand in the freezer section at the grocery store on a Friday night, crippled with indecision? I’ve yet to make a move on Red Velvet Royale or Smashing Sundae – though the flavor descriptions sound appealing. Instead, I play it safe with Double Chocolate – a known quantity. Basically content (hey, it *is* ice cream) with my choice but vaguely dissatisfied somehow. Is it a mistake to stick with what’s safe? Double Chocolate is fine, but what if Red Velvet Royale is truly excellent? Am I missing out?

No Safe Place

Tory Johnson’s book, Spark & Hustle: Launch and Grow Your Small Business Now, cracks open the nut of uncertainty and fear of change that lies in all of us – aspiring business owners and the career-minded Joes/Jills that make the daily magic happen. Our fear of repercussions – to our finances, to our stations, to all things familiar and known – hold us back. The desire to conform, to gather even tacit approval (as with a purchase of our perfectly fine albeit unimaginative product/service) can override the signals from our inner lizard brain telling us to go and do something more.

Quite simply, we’re afraid to make mistakes. One, because others might see. Two, because we’d have to do something to right the mistake – and that might require taking on more risk. Three, because someone might say we should never try again.

“Mistakes are the tuition you pay for success,” said Michael Alter, president of SurePayroll, as quoted in Johnson’s book. Alter’s company gives out a “Best New Mistake”award to an employee annually because “…fear of making a mistake is the same as fear of success. No risk, no reward.” Fear chokes vision and impedes progress, Alter says. “The longer you wait to try something new, the longer you’ll wait to learn something your competitors might already know.”

Trying Can Be Its Own Reward

Fellow SME blogger and author Mark Smiciklas (The Power Of Infographics, Que, June 2012) once left a comment on one of my pieces here. The gist of his sentiment was this: Mark couldn’t work at a company where the threat of repercussions for perceived failure outweighed the support network offered to anyone with the vision, drive, and creativity to pursue a promising thesis. I remember Mark’s comment because it gave me the courage to rise from a few of my own stumbles in business. His message – that we’re all obligated to cultivate environments that encourage curiosity and view attempts as progress in the making – should be heard and felt by more leaders and executives.

Without the risk-takers, there would be no innovation. And mediocrity is a bland, uninspiring place to linger.

The post Is Business As Usual Risky Business? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

OK, I support this idea. It’s a foundational tenant of CRM. But I think real customer intimacy is created from a more closely balanced relationship between customer and brand. Not one where the data-mining company pushes consumers’ figurative buttons to sell product. But one where the consumer is predisposed to consider a brand because of favorable prior experience and the sense that their choice matters. That there is a concerned someone inside the brand who wants them to walk away happy.

To my way of thinking, customer intimacy more closely mirrors person-to-person relationships where the mature stage of true intimacy is achieved through shared knowledge, understanding, commonly held beliefs and mutualcompassion. Yes, this can happen in business but only when a company moves from a transaction-based mindset to  one with more  long-term goals. Relationships where one party connects deeply with the other but the reciprocal emotional tie is weak, well those are shallow and short-lived relationships. When it happens in our personal lives we experience heartbreak. When it happens in statistically relevant number in business, the broken and bloody pieces left behind are loyalty, referrals, satisfaction, and reputation.

So how does a company go about nurturing an intimate environment with customers? Here are a few broad-stroke ideas to think about:

1. Conduct a brand gut-check. Figure out if your company’s image is fractured by varietal logo marks, type treatments, inconsistent experiences between real-life and brand claims, or positioning that’s aspirational, fuzzy, or off-target. This is actually a lot of work because it’s a challenge to look at existing processes and assets through a neutral lens. Denise Lee Yohn does a great job at getting brands to really examine what they say and what they do. When there’s a disparity, it’s felt pretty deeply by customers.
2. Strip off your branded logo wear and pull on your civvies. Take a look at all external communications like segmented emails, web pages and online forms, direct mail and blogs. If your model is a little hard to explain to new trainees, chances are the nuances of your offerings and reasons to be (RTB) are confusing (or muddled) to outsiders, too. Sure, it’s probably useful to categorize projects according to certain internal work groups and cull certain records for targeted mailings. But data mining is an ongoing process of working with fluid information. Some customers are surely victims of crossed communications streams. When that happens, they probably receive varying offers and discounts. It might confuse or worse, frustrate, causing them to take a mental step backward from your brand.
3. Keep stoking the emotional fires.  Thanks to the personas your team researched and maintains, you have some insight into hot buttons and interests. Find ways to align your business objectives with the practical needs and philosophical and moral issues important to your buyers.
4. Give them the stage. Consumers trust others who have had cause to observe or interact with a brand. By giving your customers a platform for reaching (and helping) prospects, your marketing efforts become more objective and inclusive in ways that demonstrate a competitive difference instead of just simply claiming one.
5. Surprise and delight. Many folks have become accustomed to sub-par service and products that underwhelm. Are there ways your company can economically scale and operationalize the kind of personal touches that get remembered?

These are some general ideas. Thinking about the nature of your business and the reasons why your customers choose you, what innovative new ideas can you come up with? Instead of assuming the cost to implement would be prohibitive or the process too complicated, push yourself to think of the potential long-term gain. Are there economical ways to take some first steps to forging intimacy with your customers (or at least removing barriers to intimacy)?

The post 5 Ways To Improve Customer Intimacy appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

The more industrious of the educated and peppy (or overly caffeinated) job-seekers write blogs, produce photography galleries, build demo websites, host Twitter chats, publish useful tools to GitHub, and lead meetups and barcamps. Their goals are to use these channels and venues to showcase skills ranging from design and research/writing to programming, leadership to community-building. In many ways, these activities are the digital equivalent of the unwieldy leather portfolio schlepped around by previous generations. Those who have spent any time on either side of the interview desk know how valuable those portfolios are to distinguishing candidates from one another and exposing a sliver of the depths and potential within.

The blogs and galleries, sites and code bits are tangible evidence of what my grandmother would have termed “grit and spit;” ambitious people carving out a competitive advantage in a challenging job market. Their work products, constructed in part with technology, mark them as capable, qualified, and clever. Initiative and curiosity has created many opportunities for those willing to devote time and energy to their quest, all without guarantee of immediate reward. Still they keep creating and building.

Indeed, social and digital media can be a means to achieve a career objective, one with broad societal benefits (reducing unemployment) and personal rewards (generating income, launching a career path).  But social and digital media can also be a time-siphon, and in the hands of the unmotivated or self-absorbed, a distraction rather than a channel for productivity.

On the one hand, there’s awesomeness with social and digital. On the other, possibly where self-discipline and initiative are week, there’s less awesomeness. And sure, there’s gray in between.

The deal: when student loans mature and the rent is due, some hunker down and push hard to make stuff happen. Social and digital are two tools in a toolbox of resources accumulated over a young lifetime. And some wait for it to materialize. Social media – along with many other things – may be a factor in the career equation. It’s a factor that a parent of a teen, I want to be mindful of.

I’m not suggesting social media in itself creates sloth or discourages ambition among youth. Some are born with intellect, drive, and an inner fire to make the most of their lives. Others choose a path with less resistance. Those inclined to skate by and ask for a boost will do so, that’s the wheat and chaffe of human nature.

What I’m suggesting is that our general preoccupation with staying connected, sharing the mundane, and compulsion to own the latest equipment sometimes clouds our vision of the real world. One where bosses want to have conversations with junior employees who have the poise, self-possession, and communication skills necessary to stay engaged in a business conversation and think in complex patterns.

Technology alone is an inert ingredient. When combined with some know-how, a bit of hustle, and creativity, a new potential emerges from all that effort. It’s the heavy leather portfolio, now supercharged. It’s happening every day, leading people to build things we never imagined.

But as with most good things, too much (to the exclusion of other stimuli and real-world experiences) is debilitating rather than productive.  My concern is that there’s a growing subset of young adults for whom a mobile data plan, high-speed access, and a Facebook timeline are part of their DNA. A 24-hour-per-day “given,” rather than an earned privilege used as a springboard to leap ahead. And a means of unregulated, personal escape that narrows their perception of or experience with the real world.

Parents, it’s time to make sure our kids understand the cost of our technologically advanced lives, and inspire our kids to combine their smarts with their social to get ahead. To find balance between their virtual world and their mechanical one.

It’s graduation day. Are our kids ready for what’s next? Technology is only part of their educational coursework.

Image courtesy of The Art Institute of Portland on Flickr.

The post Social Media: Career Boost or Time Suck? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

These brand values – brought to life as deeds and messages – begets culture. When values flex and bow, culture is weakened. And the brand becomes fuzzy, internally and externally. Toss on some social media and you’ve got a heck of an operational and communications failure.

Cultural Failure In Social Media

I found some old documents while cleaning out files over the holiday. Mixed among the notes and “atta girl!” slips was a reprimand for ostensibly “disclosing company information” via Twitter way back in 2007 or ’08.

Security key codes? Hires or departures? Grumblings about coworkers? Nope, wasn’t me.

The information disclosed (term I’m using loosely) was along the lines of “Just met with a client to talk about plans for a new SEO project. Woot!” And it was narrowcast to all of my 12 Twitter friends. Not exactly on the same level as the Chrysler faux pas of earlier this year, eh?

Clearly the suits at that company believed employees should be buttoned up, polished. Discrete. Work should be done and not discussed, least of all in public venues.

Was there a disconnect between our two value systems? Not necessarily. The suits and I both believed in doing great web things for clients of the company.

Was there a disconnect in how those values should manifest into employee code of conduct? So it seemed. I thought I was showing my support for the company and team. They thought I was sharing proprietary stuff.

To say the culture shifted after that fracas depends on your point of view. To the corporate communications and executives, the “forward-thinking innovator” brand attributes remained part of the company’s standard language library. To the rank-and-file, that stuff started feeling more like just stuff the company said, but didn’t know how to actually live. A web tech company that cut employees off from social media? Huh?

Deeds and messages weren’t lined up.

It wasn’t until later that I realized the real issue wasn’t my rah-rah tweet. It didn’t lead to a client beat-down. The real issue stemmed from others’ fear of unchartered waters, questions of ownership, priorities that didn’t include transparency, and much more. Social media gave those everyday issues a spotlight and a stage.

Cause And Effect In Social Media

Looking at cause-and-effect in social media shouldn’t end with deciding whether Twitter is an appropriate, scalable venue for customer service. It shouldn’t end with a protocol for Facebook page administration or even a crisis communication plan (all important things, mind you).

I’m not sure where it ends. Or, in light of the speed with which tech geeks dream up new stuff and Google consumes the planet, if it even ends.

But I do know when we stop to think about social media adoption by business, we need to think about the values and culture aspects as much as the functional, strategic, and execution aspects. We need to ask not only how might customers or prospects process our status updates or blog posts, but also how employees perceive the activity (does it jibe with their experience? Is it infused throughout?) as well as how those perceptions shape their behavior.

Related articles

• What Zappos Insights Can Teach Us About Social Media Values (socialmediaexp.wpengine.com)

The post Where Does Social Media Fit With Brand Culture? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Ah, the fabled silver bullet. Heralded for its ability to banish evil threats and transform the despairing neighborhood once more into an idyllic place of joyous recreation and swift commerce. Surely those will make the hairy problems go away, right?

In folklore, the concept of silver bullets represents the ability to render a problem vulnerable. To destroy an obvious threat through strength of heroic will in combination with precious tools, effectively neutralizing the problem to allow better, happier times to return. Makes for good movies, but I’ve yet to see this kind of scene unfold in real life. Yet I think a lot of business resources are wasted waiting for silver bullet solutions.

You’ve probably experienced the anticipatory wait, too: bolting on the new enhancement needed to kick your product over the top; finagling enough inbound links of the right quality to nudge your listing from no. 5 to no. 3; landing the big new fish of a client to boost Q4 reports. This one [insert silver bullet here] will make [insert bad business thing here] go away.
Whether your werewolf, metaphorically speaking, is an awareness problem, parity product, or a conversion problem, it’s still unlikely to be solved with a single change in tactic, no matter how shiny and gleaming. Business success isn’t achieved by pulling a single trigger releasing a single shot. There’s very little linear about it, really.

So why, as marketers, do we wait – or search for – silver bullets? Can’t we draw inferences from data, scrabble together secondary findings to support our thesis, or give a test project a super-alpha go without our full wish-for budget?

If you’re doing those things, then good. There are far too many others mired in the thick bog of red tape, fear of failure, and debilitating leadership.

Stop looking for climactic resolutions

Just like the unwitting character who dies in scene 2, we victimize ourselves when we look for one thing to make massive, disruptive change in the direction our brand or business is headed. We wound ourselves and our potential when we take what should be an agile process and make it complicated. When we wait for the big rescue (that silver bullet), we’re transferring power to one thing. But what if we miss the mark?

Here are a few of reasons why a silver bullet mentality will get your business axed:

1. Waiting for change to occur creates its own set of problems. It encourages a “not my job” mentality and creates apathy. Apathetic workers shirk accountability and waste resources finger-pointing.
2. When drastic change is needed, pinning the outcome of objectives onto a single tactic is foolish. Too many elements beyond your direct control will impact the ensuing result.
3. Waiting, by its nature, means you’re not proactive. At best you’re responsive, but probably more like reactive. Little wonder your business trails in share.

If you’re going to fight the competition, the distribution complications, the supply chain changes caused by the cost of XX in YY, the depressed demand for your widgets, you shouldn’t hedge your 401(k) and medical benefits on a single campaign. You don’t pour your entire budget into a Super Bowl ad or glom onto QR codes like the second coming. And you don’t wait for a bucket load of tweets bashing your company’s lackluster customer service before you realize you have a service delivery problem (and potentially a product problem). There’s no silver bullet success here.

Relief won’t come if you somehow manage to fell today’s scary beast. Oh, you might get a couple of quick breaths in, but that’s all. Surprise! The beast had a partner.

Success is incremental; its small gains made through ongoing intelligence-gathering leading to informed decisions. It’s calculated risk and passion, a framework that supports smart failure, and a curious culture.

Success looks different for every company. And it comes to no company that waits for a silver bullet.

The post Tarnished Silver Bullets and Other Reasons Your Business Fails appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

While the touch points serve marketing’s self-interests, the smart marketer knows the touch points must place a kernel of “happy” in the customer’s minds and hearts, too. Otherwise, it’s a waste of resources, both time and budget.

Use the right touch, or don’t do it at all

Done well, touch points can keep customers feeling good about their decision to go with your brand or company. And everyone wants to feel as though they made the best decision, the right choice. Executed poorly, however, touch points can insult customers and weaken the ties linking them to your brand. No one wants to feel duped, misunderstood, or like a numeric record in your CRM database.

You’re not kidding anybody with faux customization

The jig is up. The Average Joe knows all 45 people in your office didn’t hand sign that last holiday card. It was likely modern technology (say it with me: variable printing) at its finest. Personally, I’d rather have the one or two persons I deal with most frequently actually sign the card. Or, better yet, I’d rather receive one of a bazillion inexpensively made postcards (or email) that inform me the company donated $5,000 to a local charity for Christmas and saved 25 trees by eschewing envelopes.

Fact is, consumers (and business customers) seen and heard just about everything marketers can conceivably whip up in an effort to keep our policies, subscriptions, retail trade, dining out dollars, and auto maintenance investments.

The tried and trite

Very few tactics surprise me anymore. So when I saw the envelope from our insurance agent sitting on the counter along with Wednesday’s mail, I knew what it was.

Wednesday was my husband’s 40th birthday. And – you guessed it! – the envelope contained a special birthday card from our agent.

Only the card, well, wasn’t so special. Actually it was decidedly not special. It was a touch point gone wrong.

You see, my husband’s name isn’t Rob. It’s Scott. Legally, it’s Robert, but he’s been known as Scott (his middle name) since he was a toddler. And the agent knows this. I’ve told him on at least 3 separate occasions.

Our agent called my husband Bob during one of our first meetings together. As if being called by the wrong name wasn’t weird enough, we hadn’t invited the agent to use a nickname – any nickname. And I’m sure I introduced Scott as Scott (because, well, that’s his name). So the agent went from calling him Bob in person to addressing him as Rob on paper. Whaaa?

Adding a sneer to this eyeroll-worthy situation is the fact that upon choosing this agent six months ago, I was very clear that we were leaving our 12-year relationship with a big national brand because our last agent sold his firm with two weeks’ notice, without a personal heads’ up call, and to a new owner who, a year later, still had not contacted us to thank us for remaining with the firm and trusting him with our insurance needs.

See, we wanted to do business with someone who cared about us as a customer. You can’t just take money from me each month and never give me a meaningful boo about it. So you can bet that this Bob/Rob thing kinda rubs the wrong way, made more irritating because our new agent knew we didn’t want to be mass marketed to or overlooked as customer number 427.

Customer touch points done right

It’s really not that hard to take a cheesy, totally expected “Happy Birthday” customer card a couple of steps better:

• Call your customer by their preferred name (make a note in the file – I know you have one)
• Recognize a milestone so they know you’re paying attention (again, DOB is in the file)
• Use the card as an opportunity to spur the customer into action by including gentle, appropriate life stage/life style messaging (surely 40 is a good time to increase our life insurance coverage while we’re still relatively young and healthy)
• Include a certificate for a complimentary assessment at a local health facility (the theme is in line with a 40 milestone and the strategic partnership is an easy deal to work out between companies)
• Send a clipping of current events from 1971 (always fun to gaze into the way-back-when ball and hey, useful for a whole years’ worth of client birthdays)

With this story in mind, think about your company’s seemingly “customized” touch points. What kind of improvements can you make so that they’re more accurate, meaningful, and effective? Are you really listening to what customers say they want from you in terms of service and communication? Because if you’re not doing it right, you could be doing the relationship much more harm than you know.

After all, I certainly can’t recommend our agent to a friend who wants someone who’s detail-oriented, can I?

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The post Customer Touch Points: Do It Right Or Keep Your Hands To Yourself appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

• Quick
• Easy
• Inexpensive

Walk down the aisle of any electronics or grocery store. You’re greeted with a sea of bright boxes, eye-catching imagery, and alluring claims. Starbursts, even.

Does any of that actually work? Does the most intuitively designed, highly functional, best-made product make the sale? Does the celebrity endorsement tip the scale? As marketers, we’d like to think so (otherwise, what’ve we got to work with?). But is it remotely realistic to think this way?

What really motivates people to buy?

Product strategy: fade to black

In addition to quick, easy, and inexpensive, we often sift purchase decisions through form and function filters too, of course. But even when a feature or design element is part of our heart’s desire, we’ve demonstrated our willingness to sacrifice some functionality or aesthetic when an easy-peasy “plug and play” version is up for grabs. Move over custom install, automated recommended overdrive is in your ‘hood.

Those clever boxes with their professionally-shot images seem less like a good idea right about now?

Communications planning – gone the way of the dodo?

Chalk it up to our species’ inherent laziness or (if you’re more charitable) our situational flexibility and adaptive nature; the reality is consumers continually scan their options and make selections based on current circumstance and active environment. Then they quickly move on. It’s always Go Time. There are flag football practices to make, spreadsheets due at the office and social networks to catch up on. Who’s yelling the loudest? What fire can we let smolder while extinguishing today’s inferno? Busy, overworked us.

What are the marketing implications of a real-time world?

Part marketer, part consumer: between Scylla and Charybdis

On one hand, there’s our “day” job as insight-driven marketers (Assuming you are. Go, team.). On the other, there’s our general evolution into a people that often place cursory thought behind our selections before we forge ahead.

Where our ancestors would have considered provenance, durability, and craftsmanship in trade goods and home life, today we cull based on how quickly people and products can come up to speed, how much time and energy we’ll most likely have to dedicate in order to reach deadline, how easy it integrates, and whether the price hits our current-as-of-the-last-update mark. Brand loyalty and advocacy are often forgone with the next 25%-discount-for-new-customers-only offer (revealed only with a Facebook “like”).

It’s gotta matter to them, those you hope will buy your stuff

What does this behavior bode for marketers? Is it past time we shut off the lights and leave the animals with the keys to the zoo? Can the legs of differentiation your product/service stands on bear the brunt of a semi-attentive consumer audience?

If no one has any time to pay attention to our marketing, and consumers aren’t basing their decisions on our carefully crafted benefits lists, what is there left for us to do?

Wake up and smell the opportunity

All hope isn’t lost. I do think there’s hope for marketing in today’s socio-economic climate. We can breathe new life into our work and affect greater numbers of potential buyers.

I just think we have to be smarter about it. We have to choke down the reality that in a real-time world, there are scant moments to solidify brand image and positioning and to establish a reliable, trustworthy product history to serve as a framework for building stepped plans. The buyer’s journey has changed to reflect multi-point entry into the consideration cycle, and we have to move past the assumption that consumers are waiting patiently to receive our every missive and proceed down our carefully staged, organized paths.

If quick, easy and inexpensive matter most to your customer segments, then I recommend you pay close attention and plot any gaps between what they want and how you communicate your offering.

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Variations like “What’s the damage?” or “What’s something like that run?” get lobbed over the discussion table like the bully grenades they are (subtext: “This is me, intimidating you into rethinking your worth so I don’t have to reallocate my budget or request new funding. ‘Cuz that would require some legwork, and like, a report or something.”). And while yeah, I got the telegram alerting me to the fact that we’re in a down economy and there are people that need to be aggressive or wiley over price lest they feel they haven’t “won,” I’d like to assert that this question, in any of its forms ranging from short-sighted to downright rude, is really not the question that should be asked. Not at this time, and not in that way.

What is it worth, and why is it important to my business? That’s the question, folks. That’s the question to ask whether you’re considering integrating social media into your operations and marketing communications, thinking about a logo refresh, or breaking off a product to stand on its own steam under a new endorsed brand.

What’s this endeavor [potentially] worth? Now, six months, a year from now?

Why is it [potentially] important to my business? The straight-line opportunities, the risks, the downstream advantages?

This advice might seem obvious. But too often a preoccupation with price will inhibit real problem-solving. If real problems can’t get solved, price is of little import.

Sometimes the important questions can’t be answered in absolutes. There are no guarantees. Only research, focus groups, customer surveys, internal evidence-gathering, peer advice, education, return rates, instinct and intuition. Your gut’s as good a baromotor as any when it’s backed up with every resource you can reasonably amass.

Once I was in discussion with a large commercial printing company. This company had an outdated compensation arrangement with its old-school salespeople, ones who still held fast to annual contracts with a few large corporations. Print the scale the company had historically known was starting to fall by the wayside and the owners knew they needed to make print relevant again in addition to finding ways to create value for graphic designers, corporate purchasing specialists, and other targets.

The company started experimenting with QR codes and PURLs to build cases for print as an effective, measurable direct response vehicle still appreciated in the marketplace. They were curious about how social media might help them connect more strongly with a customer base of current and new targets. Whether if by sharing some of their specialized knowledge online would bring them more, rather than cost them. Could digital marketing and social media help them?

Unfortunately, the old-school salespeople didn’t want to actively prospect the new services within their assigned client bases. It was too much to learn, they didn’t know how to sell it, and hey, my personal accounts are still meeting quota so why bother?

This company’s problems went beyond product to seep down into culture. But the highlight of my story is this: even knowing there were performance and attitude issues with the staff, even knowing that month after month revenues were declining, even knowing products like QR codes and PURLs were critical to avoid a commodity path and offered great margin, even knowing that digital marketing and social media held the potential to shine a light on their core competencies, the president of the company still discontinued our exploratory discussions. Why?

Because the company didn’t like the price tag on my proposal. Rather than coordinate with me to arrive at a less aggressive, less expensive initial plan of action (which, incidentally, I offered because I saw some other strategic benefits), they stopped discussion. “Mr. Smith thinks you’re the perfect candidate skills-wise. But we can’t afford your plan at this time (last month missed goal again), and he thinks he can find a junior employee at reduced cost and get them at full-time capacity.”

Yes, indeed. That’s the way to turn the Titanic around.

Price is important. Budgets need minding. But I think cost is a factor that’s best evaluated as part of a whole set of criterion and objectives. Lateral thinking, creative bargaining, or any number of alternative arrangements can sometimes bridge the gap between cost and worth.

Because when your focus is on price, any old hunk of cheap meat will do.

Heather likes to mix metaphors. It’s part of her charm.

Heather Rast

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The decision to hire someone on the outside doesn’t come easy to many organizations (sometimes they even toss out RFPs, blech!). There may be concerns about sharing proprietary information or expense. There could also be skepticism about achieving results or a general reluctance to work through the time-consuming screening and ramp-up phases. Real or imagined, you might think that the company that overcomes these issues to move ahead with outside counsel would really put resources into making their outsourced project rock, right?

Wrong. Some of the organizations engaging a contractor or consultant sabotage their project before it even leaves the ground. Put in direct contact with a skilled, reputable consultant, some companies will fail to value research and preparation. They’ll try to phone it in.

Phoning a project in doesn’t work. Committing to your project does.

Scenario: We’re just not that committed

Imagine receiving an email like this: “Sharon Walker from AdFed referred me to you. She said you were great at [insert consultant specialty here]. Might you be able to help us? We need a [insert final work product here] and we’re anxious to get started. Thanks, John Durham, Executive Director of Company X”

In this scenario, the contractor phoned John Durham after receiving the email. He explained that his standard process included an introductory meeting to define needs and dependencies, discuss roles and responsibilities, commit to binding agreements, and receive a deposit. He explained that following the administrative meeting, they should schedule a project kick-off meeting to identify goals and explain standard operating procedures (“We’ll give you a logon to Redmine so you can view progress.”) and work style (“Please funnel final group comments to me via Basecamp.”). A project brief, completed by the project owner, will ensure the exchange of expectations and critical data by both parties.

Now imagine the social media consultant’s surprise when, after outlining his thorough and professional process, he was met with, “Yes, well what I have here should do you fine. I’ll forward some emails to you from a similar project handled by our sister organization. That should give you enough to go on. When can you get started?” Huh? (**mock scenario**)

When we give ourselves a “pass” from unsexy due diligence no one in the board room will ever come to fully appreciate, much less see – well, then, we’re just not that committed. We can’t Slim*Quik our way to a rawking project.

Great ideas are born from meaty conversations. These conversations also reveal valuable cues about each party – the kind of stuff we draw on when it’s time for instinctive decisions and tactical choices. We need rapport-building dialogue (which, not incidentally, helps build mutual trust and empathy). Skipping vital pieces pushes the burden of discovery off to the consultant (even the best consultants won’t know the minutia or backstory possibly critical to the project). This scenario leaves the responsibility of success squarely in the consultant’s lap. The company had no skin in the game. The consultant hasn’t been set up for success. In the end, there’ll be finger-pointing instead of a beautiful solution that saves time/improves performance/helps customers.

Lesson: Think of working with a consultant, contractor or freelancer as a temporary joint venture. When you each stake currencies – reputations, revenue, potential for future earnings – and collaboratively work toward outcomes (a road sure to be wrought with a pothole or two; see rapport-building dialogue referenced above) you’ll find that the professional you hired really wants to exceed your expectations. That can happen when you share knowledge, communicate openly, and proceed with brutal self-awareness.

Other ways to sabotage your project before it ever leaves the ground:

• Demonstrating excessive control in an attempt to establish dominance or reach outcomes. Instead, take advantage of the fresh perspective you hired, and see what new path they recommend you consider. Serf-to-master mentality doesn’t end up well for anyone.

• Marginalizing the efforts of consultants through thoughts or actions. If you find yourself making sweeping statements like “We could do that in a half hour” ask yourself, “Why haven’t we?”

• Committee-think. Nothing is gained when a solution is compromised by excessive group feedback. Appealing to everyone is the kiss of death. Revisit your objectives and goals, evaluate them with a small cross-functional group. Leave the subjective and immaterial out of the decision-making.

Commit to your project – and your own success – the next time you hire a contractor.

Related articles

• Get Your Money’s Worth from Consultants (blogs.hbr.org)
• Do You Need a Full-Time, Contractor or Outsourced Help? (entrepreneur.com)

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Three words. Huge implications for online business communication. Insight from a smart woman with pink hair.

Erin is the author of a “brief book for people who make websites” published just a few months ago.  She’s the former editor of A List Apart magazine and knows a thing about information architecture, user experience, content strategy, editing, usability, and a whole bunch of other geeky web stuff that as interwebs users, we take for granted until we find ourselves staring a site that sucks.

When web things work, we don’t notice them. We focus on our intent, the task we’re on the site to perform. That thing we’re there to do.  Every page, every word, every link simply, beautifully, enables.

Conversely, when things don’t work – when a site is visually distracting or chock-full of salesy stuff before even a tenuous thread of trust has been stitched – we focus on the clutter in our path, the stuff in our way.

Not only are we detained or derailed from doing what we’re on the site to do, but now we’re irritated. Our irritation at the site has a way of glomming on to the brand by association. Hey, if such-and-such’s website makes my life difficult, then I kind of jump to the conclusion that their product/service won’t fare any better. Negative perception born, just like that.

Clickty-click, I’m headed to another site. Probably the competition.

Giant sucking sounds

When we land on a site that sucks, we mutter broad-stroke things like ” Why can’t I find what I’m looking for?” or “I just want to know ____.”  To these black thoughts I toss in a little mouse-against-table banging along with a squinty-eyed laser stare and throaty “Grrrrr” or two. For blog owners, this type of user frustration usually results in few page views, low time on site, and high bounce rates.  <shrugs shoulders> Little matter if the blog’s just a hobby.

But for a company in business to sell stuff, a sucky website can be a serious problem.

Cart abandonment. Few eNewsletter subscriptions. Nascent contact form submissions. Low numbers of recommendations. Infrequent white paper downloads. Low conversions.

Are you squirming uncomfortably in your chair yet?

Now that’s irritating

Stop leaving your website visitors with the impression that:

A)  No one from the company has looked at the website page-by-page in the last 27 months. (“set it and forget it” yeah, that’s a good strategy)

B)  The company is completely out of touch, clueless or uninterested, even, with what matters to prospective buyers. (try doing something with the mouldering files of customer feedback, ‘kay?)

C)  Your web team consists of the super sophisticated, MacBook-toting college-age kid of one of the vice presidents. (as if a Dreamweaver course covered usability standards)

D) Your CEO or president is a boorish blowhard who thinks we buy stuff because of his huge “trust me” smile and personal welcome message. (did you see that suit? I’m not interested in helping him buy another Armani)

E) Marketing upchukked every pamphlet, data sheet, approved message, statistic, testimonial, and standard language it could scrape together and plaster on the site (yeah, there’s this concept called a user persona? you’re supposed to strategically plan content according to a research-based assumed progression through the site?)

I could go on, but you get the point. Right now your site sucks, and it’s irritating visitors. You know it, and I know it. All the well-timed tweets in the world won’t make people happy when they land on your site. Take some tips from Erin (her powerful book is only 70ish pages and a very digestible read). Stop allowing bullshit zombie copy any presence on your company website.

1. Your site uses internal language and writes from internal hot buttons to communicate with external audiences.  Think mission statements, vision statements, core values.
2. Your About Us or News Room pages read like the stack of required retirement portfolio crap chucked in your mailbox each quarter.
3. Your legal team ran amok with disclaimers and legalese, causing pages to be more than a couple of short paragraphs in length.
4. There are pages full of feature lists with no context that don’t aid decision-making.
5. Your CEO (or worse,  your CEO and his prize schnauzer) is front-and-central on a video set to auto play.
6. Awards and certifications abound. From 2008.

Go forth and edit.

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