There are still a few seats left at Wizard Academy in Austin for Selling Customers Their Way on April 5-6. If you manage a sales staff, this is a great course...
There are still a few seats left at Wizard Academy in Austin for Selling Customers Their Way on April 5-6. If you manage a sales staff, this is a great course...
It doesn't really matter what Budweiser says in their ads. They have a Path Dominant business model that allows their ad copy to coast along entertaining us with frogs or whatever. As long as it does no harm, they'll continue to dominate their category because they have purchased shelf space at eye-level in every supermarket and made sure that their products are available on tap at your favorite restaurant.
Likewise, WalMart wasn't built on the power of their advertising. They became a juggernaut through superior inventory management. End of story.
In the healthcare category, the business is called a "practice" because it usually offers custom, customer-intimate solutions to problems. They like to think that it is their surgeons, specialists and training that make all the difference. Most of the time, and stacked up against most of their competitors, they are correct.
But, there are two situations that will change the game, and if they aren't prepared to respond with the right message, they'll quickly find themselves marginalized and irrelevant.
Let's take a look at the field of LASIK. Laser vision correction has been around for awhile now. In the early days, it was a pretty scary idea.
There are chains of LASIK shops which are bombarding us with spam and other ads offering vision correction for $299 per eye. These are the discount merchants of vision correction and most consumers won't bother to investigate much further than price. They'll be drawn in by the marketing only to find out that the price includes technology that the best ophthalmologists have relegated to museums. That's right, if you want to get bargain-basement LASIK, your corneal flap will be cut with a steel blade instead of state-of-the-art computer-guided lasers. Guess what? Most patients opt for a higher-priced procedure using more modern equipment…but still not always state-of-the-art.
Most of the independant doctors are afraid to call the chain shops out on this bait-and-switch routine. They wring their hands and moan just like their old retail friends who were shut down years ago when WalMart moved to town. That's the first situation.
Many of them have an ace in their sleeve that they also fail to play. If they've invested in the latest and greatest technology, they really can offer a better outcome for their patients. But, they think that patients just won't be able to understand why their prices are so much higher than the chains. And, that's just as bad as not responding to the bait message.
The simple truth is that the procedure is more expensive BECAUSE of the newer technology and the business model of the manufacturer. Using the old methods, the only incremental cost to the chain store is buying new blades and paying the surgeons. The state-of-the-art LASIK systems incur a royalty fee to the manufacturer each and every time the laser is used on a patient. This adds MORE than the cost of the cheap LASIK to the procedure BEFORE the doctor's office has made a dime.
So, they'll tell you that it's safer. They'll tell you that their doctors are smarter. They might be brave enough to tell you that the chain stores are some kind of assembly line. But, I haven't found one yet that will tell you why it costs more. In fact, most of them avoid any mention of price on their sites.
Nobody does a very good of explaining what's in it for the clinic…by way of outlining what's in it for the developer of the laser equipment.
I've talked to insiders. I understand the procedures and the equipment. I'd never opt for anything but the newest technology, because it makes a difference.
So, these clinics have a Proprietary Product and yet they fail to take advantage of it. It's like a BMW dealer refusing to mention the manufacturer of the luxury cars for sale at his business. It would be sheer folly for him to expect me to pay a premium price just because he's a highly trained car dealer.
I'm not suggesting that you give up talking about the skills of your surgeons, but if you have a Proprietary Product, you should turn it into the big deal that it really is.
Guest post by Chester Hull
The human mind is hyper-tuned to detect irregularities in our environment. There are entire websites dedicated to pointing out the irregularities in films and TV shows! This is exactly the reason companies develop "Brand Books", or brand guideline manuals. Every customer interaction with that particular brand is specified to deliver the same experience (or at least one that is congruent with other touch-points).
The same thing applies to how customers interact with your business. Is the Caller Experience they receive congruent with the In-Store Experience? You need to design your Caller Experience so that a customer calling in to check a price, ask a question, or even find out what your hours are for the day, has a similar experience to walking in your front door.
So how do you do that? Here are 3 ways to make that Caller Experience coordinate with your retail environment:
1. Match the banners.
Have your Auto-Attendant message read the same posters, slogans,and sale signs that are hanging throughout your store. Rack Room Shoes is famous for there BOGO sales. But when callers are on the phone, do they know when a BOGO Sale is happening? Let them know the moment the phone is answered. You can also accomplish a similar thing by having these messages play to customers while On-Hold.
2. Match the theme, style, and atmosphere.
We worked with a client who played this for callers On-Hold:
...while when you walked in to one of their retail locations, you were greeted with this from the strategically placed speakers:
(Verve Remixed, Quantic Soul Orchestra and other "Euro-pop" sounds)
When someone walks into your business, are they greeted by your staff in fashion-forward suits? Is the lighting progressive and modern? Is the overhead music unique, cultured, and hip? Make sure your On-Hold message uses those same elements to reinforce the in-store experience, even to a caller on the phone!
3. Match the upcoming events.
More and more stores are becoming Experience Destinations, with much more than shopping. Special events, members-only activities, after-hours community functions, and even film screenings are becoming more and more normal at brand retailers. Your walk-in clientle may see annoucements and information about these events.
But what about the customers that call in over the phone? You have a prime opportunity to reach them with information they would otherwise not know. Inform your callers through your Auto-Attendant or On-Hold message, and you will be automatically reaching the people that are already interested in your business! The ways your customer interacts with your company or brand are very important touch-points. Make them incongruent, and you will upset your customer's sense of connectedness to your company. Keep them consistent across the phone, website, and in-store experience, and you will draw your customer closer to your business.
Chester Hull owns ProsoundUSA, a company dedicated to improving the experience of being on hold by providing great on hold messages. He's a client of mine.
I've been working on a soft launch for a project that has been in the works for almost 2 years. The idea is to teach business owners some of the very same techniques that we use when helping our clients with their marketing strategy. I got some very talented colleagues to help out and now I'd like to invite you to have a look. We're giving some free samples and we have it priced extremely low because we're just testing things out right now. You're welcome to sign up for the free stuff and jump in with both feet if you like. It's called On Your Market.
If you can get people involved in an experience with your product during the buying process, you'll go a long ways to cementing good feelings toward you. You'll also give your customer a reason to blab.
Chevrolet is now offering Corvette customers the opportunity to assist in the assembly of the very engine that will be put into their new ZR1 or Z06. The engine will get a custom plaque before it's shipped to final assembly in Bowling Green, KY.
Imagine if you will, how intolerable these Corvette owners will be in their insistence on telling you how they built their own engine. They'll want to show you the pictures. They'll offer to raise the hood to show you the plaque.
QUESTION: How can you offer a similar experience to your own customers? How can you involve them?
How stupid would it be to buy or build a giant strip mall and put different departments of your business into each storefront? How stupid would it be to not put the department names on the doors, or not tell the customer service employees inside the store where the other departments were located, instead requiring shoppers to come back to the main (home) storefront to get directions to each department? Can we agree that would be the dumbest way to build a business?
I had someone tell me the story of their web site the other day and they had done a lot of things right. They have a great design, built on a solid platform with all of the proper technical features. They got a domain that perfectly matched their biggest target keyword phrase. They have good traffic from the keyword. They have a ridiculously low bounce rate at around 1%. Unfortunately, they're not converting traffic to leads at more than 1%.
When I looked at the site, they had no contextual links in their copy. Other than the nav bar, there was no way for a visitor to get to any other page on the site once she had read to the bottom of a page. I'm not a huge fan of those big SEO footers, but at least that would have given a visitor another way to click through to different pages. How is this different than my doomed strip mall?
What's a contextual link? Just link on natural phrases in your copy that move people to different pages in your site. When they are skimming and scanning, they'll find the words that interest them and click. Outsiders (web "experts") who look at sites that I've put together often say they have too many links in the copy. Customers who use the same sites to solve a problem praise us for how easy it was to reach their goal. I'm siding with the customer on this one. You can build your strip mall on your own.
NOTE: There are no contextual links in this story. Don't you wish I'd included some as an example? Isn't it boring compared to other posts you've read where the writer linked all over the place? Wouldn't it make sense for me to link to examples of sites I've built? What if I've impressed you with my strip mall metaphor and you want to hire me? I guess you're on your own. You're smart. You'll figure it out, IF YOU HAVE TIME AND PATIENCE.
photo credit: DannyBen
Half the time, I hide the fact that I still live in the town I grew up in. Mostly, to save conversation time for more important things. (Yes, it takes me almost 3 hours to get to the airport...no, we have no Starbucks...yes, Cabela's is headquartered here...that's why you've heard of Sidney - with an "i" - not the one in Australia.)
Sometimes when someone asks where I live, I'll simply respond, "Sidney" and leave off the Nebraska part. It makes me instantly more interesting. ;-)
What about Cement Burn?" you ask. I'm getting to it.
Last week, while working on what my dad used to call an "over-do-it-yourself" project, I made the amateur mistake of applying a showerful of grout with the assistance of my bare hands. Doh!
Portland cement (the active ingredient in grout) burns you with a strong alkaline pH level. You won't notice the burn until it's too late. By supper time, my hands were red. By bed time, I had about 5 sores that were burning like a soldering iron was resting gently on the surface of my skin. (20 years in radio taught me what that feels like too.) I didn't sleep much that night. In fact I spent the night Googling for remedies for this particular brand of stupidity.
Next morning, I decided to cash in all my life-lines in an effort to find relief for my hands. I texted my sister, the doctor. Waited a few minutes. No response back. I went over to my neighborhood Safeway in search of some kind of "emulsifying" lotion that was recommended on a web site. I asked the pharmacist there about it. He recommended finding some Johnson and Johnson First Aid Cream, which Safeway no longer carried. He suggested that one of the local pharmacies might have some.
I drove over to my pharmacy, Western Drug. I didn't go there first because Safeway was more convenient, at 4 blocks away. You see, Western Drug is clean across town from here...almost 15 blocks, with 2 stop signs and 2 traffic lights between here and there. You city-dwellers laugh, go ahead.
I walked in and started looking for "First Aid Cream." Tom Birner (the pharmacist who owns the place) asked me what I needed and then told me that Johnson and Johnson had discontinued the stuff years ago. He asked what the problem is and I told him. "Wait right here," he said as he disappeared into the back.
He returned carrying this medicine bottle with a hand-written label that simply said, "Western Lotion."
"We've got a lot of construction workers that swear by this stuff. We've been making it in batches for as long as I can remember. It's got a lot of ingredients...antiseptic plus witch-hazel plus (a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember) and it's in a glycerin base. Just keep it on your hands and you'll be fine."
He didn't charge me because he only had half a bottle on hand and someone in the office had used a bit. I'd have gladly paid anything for relief.
Sounds like snake oil, eh? Well, it worked! My hands were still raw, but feeling much better. I applied that stuff 6 or 8 times that day, a few times overnight and I was on the road to recovery.
Western Drug has been in Sidney for about 120 years. In the early part of the 20th century they even operated out of a tent in the middle of the street while a new building was built. Joel Birner, Tom's dad, bought the place in the mid-1960s. He was our pharmacist when I was a kid and he was a good friend and client of my dad's radio stations. I don't know if the Western Lotion recipe pre-dates Joel or not.
Bottom line is you'll never find this stuff or anything like it at your Walgreens, Wal-Mart, or other corpo-box store. But, in my little town, the local pharmacy still cares, still has the recipe and is carrying on in the shadow of the giants...even though they are way across town.
P.S. My sister finally called. When I told her about the lotion, she wanted to get the recipe because she's had patients who could use it. She practices in an even smaller town, way up north in the Sandhills.
P.P.S. Right now, Western Drug doesn't have a web site. If you want some of this stuff, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do.
Google is going to start helping you spread the word about your awesome retail experience. They've launched a new service where they'll be essentially tying your Google Local results with photos from inside your store...and they are supplying the photographers!
I've been writing for a long time about the importance of your Personal Experience Factor. Your reward for getting it right is that you may qualify for being one of the first to be featured in this new service from Google.
According to this story from ReadWriteWeb, "The company says the photographs will be taken by professionals trained in low lighting, will be as unobtrusive as possible, will initially be traditional in format and will be stitched together to form panoramas in the future."
So, if your jewelry store promises the largest selection of engagement rings in Winnipeg on your radio ads, perhaps Google will step in and help you offer the proof via Business Photos.
My question: What about service businesses like HVAC, or plumbing or roofing? If you're busy roofing Portland, you probably don't have much of a retail presence. Wouldn't it be great if Google would jump in your service van with you and take some job site photos? Not very likely until after they've been inside every retailer. So, you'd better be doing it yourself. Just saying.
Here's the link to find out more about Google Business Photos.
BEWARE: Sports Metaphor usage by a non-sports guy follows...
It's that time of year when even the non-sports people are following tournament brackets just to fit in around the office. Not me. Nobody here gives a rip. Really. HOWEVER, I thought it would be a good opportunity to make a point, and include a pointer. (let the sports talk begin)
Let me spell it out. It's basketball. Your business is one team. You're playing against your cross-town rival. The customer is the ball. The net is a sale. Don't make me draw a diagram.
What if nobody scrambled for a loose ball? What if your competitor drops the ball and you just stand there slack-jawed and let it roll through your legs while another member of your competitor's team picks it up and scores? What if the rules allowed a third competitor to run onto the court and grab the loose ball with his own portable net?
Reminder: You're in business, not watching basketball on TV. If you see a loose ball, pick it up. If your opponent dropped it, grab tightly and don't give it back. In basketball, the ball goes to the team who DIDN'T score (I guess to give them a chance). In business, after you score, the ball stays with you. Don't drop it. Pick it back up and guard it. Protect it.
Business isn't basketball. You have permission to run onto the court with your own net and grab a loose ball.
Do I need to draw a diagram?
photo credit: stuseeger
It was the same guy, over and over.
We should have expected it when he announced during introductions that he didn’t want to be at the seminar but was attending as a favor to his radio rep. He all but told us that he fully intended to make someone pay for his inconvenience. As the 2 days unfolded, he showed us his cards.
His preference is to be a heavy-handed marketer...one of those in-your-face type of advertisers. As I encouraged people to put their web visitors in control of playing video and audio, he argued with me that he believes it’s more “engaging” to have audio and video set to auto-play when a visitor arrives.
As Tom Wanek illustrated one of his Currencies that Buy Credibility with a case study on Yvon Chouinard and Patagonia, Mr. Heckler argued that only someone who is “already rich” could possibly have the guts to draw a line in the sand and stand up for a principle.
A good debate can be stimulating. I’m all for arguing the fine points, or even the not-so-fine points over a glass of red or a couple of beers.
Why am I even bringing this up?
Because it illustrates the point of being clear on the defining characteristics of your business. This guy was clearly at the wrong type of seminar for his tastes. In fact, his tastes are about 15 years out of date for the times.
Today, it is more important to say something powerful in your ads instead of saying something powerfully. You do see the difference don’t you? A powerful message reflects key benefits of your product or service, your policies and philosophies. Delivering a message powerfully, just means using some annoying, intrusive means of delivering it in the hope that people will notice.
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