Marketing

Pandemic Changed Business and Marketing Forever

Posted on by Laurie Storey-Manseau
Wearing masks has become more than a necessity for businesses during the pandemic, and marketing has taken on new methods as a result.

Businesses are back to work after an uncertain year that changed how we work, buy and interact. The implications for marketing have been profound.

The pandemic has been one of those times in history where momentous change happens. Businesses aren’t immune to the seismic shift. In many cases, what we were thinking about and planning for down the road, has exponentially sped up in an effort to survive in an unprecedented market.

If your business survived the shutdown the pandemic brought about, it’s probably because you swiftly pivoted your business model. The decisions for business owners today are:

  • Go back to the way things used to be;
  • Stay with what got them through the shutdown, or;
  • Create a hybrid of both.

Truth is, despite our expectations that once COVID retreated, we would be back to the way things were, that’s not happening. Normal has changed, because COVID changed us.

Yet, the good thing about change is that it prompts innovation. Case in point: we didn’t realize we need services that will shop for and deliver goods to us until going outside of our homes meant exposure to a deadly virus. With that reality, the personal-shopper industry emerged, thrived, and is going strong, even as we emerge from our homes, now vaccinated.

Evolution Results from Pandemic

Businesses that evolved during the shutdown can’t rest on the laurels of success. Customers need information to show how these evolutions make things better for them going forward. One key component in promoting the advantages of the changes made is how businesses and customers now utilize technology.

A good example is health-care delivery. When providers were forced to shift care delivery to telemedicine in 2020, they realized their ability to analyze patients’ needs weren’t diminished. Diagnoses are just as effective and patients like the convenience, comfort, and privacy of being at home, while receiving care.

While the health-care industry was moving in the direction of using telemedicine, the shutdown from business-as-usual pushed providers to immediate adoption. Telemedicine is now an entrenched reality that has changed care-delivery systems. The window of opportunity to increase business with telemedicine exists now. Providers are seizing the opportunity to market the benefits telemedicine provides.

New Marketing Tools

Marketing to existing and potential customers requires tools not used prior to COVID. Apple’s highly stylized product reveal events, with hundreds of people packed in an auditorium, may have changed forever because of COVID, but didn’t stop the company from releasing new products just before the holiday season. Unable to bring high-profile celebrities, business executives and reporters into an auditorium, Apple pivoted to a virtual unveiling, streamed across social media channels. Some presentations were pre-recorded, ensuring flawless performances. Rather than the hands-on events of the past, Apple sent review devices to reporters and social influencers for further news coverage.

The necessity of providing online shopping, take out, curbside delivery and home delivery brought about innovation and massive growth for companies like DoorDash, Instacart, Carvana, Uber Eats, Vroom, Grub Hub and others. The good news? Customers appreciate these innovations, are opening their wallets, and responding with enthusiasm.

When the pandemic took hold, people learned new ways to fulfill their needs. Nowadays, we’re marketing services we never imagined. But the innovations created in a new world of business require modernizations in how we market them.

One marketing tool hasn’t changed, though. Understanding what customers think today is the first step in knowing and evolving how we speak to them.

The One-Off

Posted on by Laurie Storey-Manseau

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

You’ve written a press release, you’ve run an ad in the newspaper, you’ve put a post on your company’s Facebook page, and you’ve sent out a flyer to your customers. All good efforts, but nothing happened!

Marketing takes patience and time.

One-off marketing is a waste of effort and money. Marketing takes patience and time.

That’s a pretty typical response to what I call one-off marketing. Yes, you did all of those things and you were doing great, until you stopped.

Successful marketing demands a commitment of time, money and patience. When I hear a business owner ask why their marketing isn’t working, my first question is whether or not they’ve made that commitment.

For many businesses, it is difficult to have the time to run the day-to-day of the business, while committing more time to put together a meaningful marketing strategy. And, allocating money for marketing is always a challenge.

But, in my experience, the most overlooked part of marketing is patience. Marketing takes time.

Successes don’t happen overnight

Rarely are there overnight successes, and even when you feel like you’ve seen your promotion far too many times, your customers probably haven’t seen it yet. Remember, you’re looking for your promotions; they aren’t.

Think about it in terms of your own behaviors.

  • How often do you read all of the ads in a newspaper?
  • Do you put off reading your mail for a day or two?
  • Are you constantly on Facebook?
  • As you’re driving down the road, do you pay attention to what’s on the radio all of the time?

Timing plays a very important role in marketing. Believe it or not, experts estimate that it takes 10 media impressions before someone recognizes that they have heard or seen a company’s message. And, you haven’t even gotten them to act on the message yet!

Demographics are key

That’s why it’s important to research the demographics of your targeted audience and to know when they’re paying attention. Don’t waste your money on newspaper ads when you’re trying to get the attention of Millennials. Demographics show that Millennials don’t read newspapers. They get news on their phones, and I can assure you they don’t even know what the Yellow Pages are!

If you invest time to know how to reach your audience, allocate the appropriate budget to do what you need to do, and resist the impulse to change things up after a couple of weeks, you’ll not only be doing the right things, but you’ll get the right results.

What Do They Think?

Posted on by Laurie Storey-Manseau

“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.” ~ Thomas Berger

Ask and Learn

As human beings, we tend to see things, well, as we see things. But, what your potential customers, existing customers and employees think of your company will open your eyes.

That eye-opening knowledge can make you proud, or can make you cringe. No matter the feelings this insight evokes, it’s what you do with the information that makes all the difference between moving forward, marching in place, or even losing ground.

Make Research a Component of Your Marketing Plan

Every company can benefit from market research. Quantitative and qualitative research should be a regular part of your marketing plan, and making sure your budget has money for research is essential.

Why is market research important? Simply put, you’re not a mind reader. You can’t tell what people think until you ask. Remember one thing; ask no matter how painful you fear the answers will be.

Until you inquire, you don’t know how you can respond to your employees’ and customers’ needs, how to improve their experience with your company and how to develop your products and services going forward. As important, until you ask, you won’t know what you’re doing right so that you can keep doing it!

There are many ways companies conduct market research. Most often, it is a combination of surveys and face-to-face feedback that allows for a complete view of what people are thinking.

Surveys and Focus Groups

Surveys conducted in person, over the phone and online are all options to gather quantitative data. The information you hope to extrapolate from a survey will dictate which tool is best. Investing in a professional to create your questions will ensure objective results.

There are a number of free online survey tools available (Survey Monkey, Google Forms, Zoho Survey, Typeform, Survey Planet) and they are easy to use. The key to getting good results from surveys, however, is making sure they are designed to give you valuable data and feedback.

Qualitative research – focus groups – gives you the opportunity to dig deeper than responses to a survey. You have the opportunity to ask more than the question and to understand why respondents answer the way they do and what they mean by their answers. This research offers the most insight into the thoughts of your customers. This research is more costly than surveying, but some argue it gives the best data. Again, a professional leading this research is essential to getting the best information.

Bottom line, guessing at what people are thinking is not a good business strategy. If you want your business to succeed, be open to the feedback your customers, your employees and your potential customers have to offer and then act on that feedback.

Sign It!

Posted on by Laurie Storey-Manseau

“I have finally perfected my signature. It took hours of practicing… I decided early on just to write Pippa, not Middleton.” ~ Pippa Middleton

 

There is a free and effective marketing tool that requires almost no effort, and you use it every day. In fact, it’s right there at your fingertips.

Imagine this:

email signature

Include contact information on all emails.

You’ve sent out an important follow-up email to a potential customer who you’ve been courting for months. The recipient is on vacation, but has been awaiting the email from you, so she assured you she would regularly check her smartphone. When she gets your message, she wants to talk with you directly to approve moving ahead.

She scrolls to the bottom of the message, and there’s no contact information. None! It’s likely she’s not going to go to the trouble of tracking your phone number down while sitting on the beach watching her kids play in the water. So, now she will wait, and probably get caught up in her vacation plans, and the green light you’ve been waiting for is stuck on red.

Easy Tool

Never underestimate the importance of an email signature. It’s essential for contact purposes, and it’s one of the easiest tools you have to market your company and yourself.

Email signatures are easily set up and can to be automatically added to every email you create. A signature should contain your name, phone numbers (office and cell), and website at a minimum. But, they also can include things like your logo, social media channels (personal and business), certifications, and your blog. Whatever online tools you have to market yourself are options for inclusion, too.

If you’re going to include social media, and professional accreditations, don’t forget to utilize the badges and icons they make available for your use. They’re easily added to signatures and can link directly to your pages.

Make It Memorable

Personalize your signature! Don’t be afraid to include something that makes your email signature memorable.

Every email you send, even your replies, is an opportunity to market your company. Not only does the intended recipient read your emails, but some are forwarded to others, who also have exposure to your thoughts, ideas, and – you’ve got it – your email signature!

You never know what will prompt someone to have a sudden interest in learning more about you and your company. Why not make it effortless for them?

Common Sense and Customer Service

Posted on by Laurie Storey-Manseau

Good and bad experiences determine where you do business

Do you ever look around and wonder what happened to common sense? Take, for example, the United Airlines debacle of having a paying passenger dragged off of an airplane to make room for their own employees. Then there’s the couple that received an extra charge on their credit card from a hotel where they stayed after writing a bad review on TripAdvisor.

Craziness! How could those companies’ leaders let such stupidity happen? It’s just common sense that you wouldn’t do that to customers. Customers are the best source of marketing any company has!

There is an old saying; Don’t throw stones when you live in a glass house.

The pace at which our businesses operate today often leaves the door open for those cringe-worthy moments to stumble right in. In our haste to get things done, in our efforts to be competitive and efficient, we forget to BE the customer.

You are a customer, no matter who you are. Every day, the experiences you have – good and bad – determine where you do business. It makes sense then to take the same satisfaction measures you set for others and use them for your own business.

Empower Your Employees to be Customers

Walk in your customers’ shoes, and empower every one of your employees to do the same. If you don’t understand (or appreciate) an experience as a customer, you can be pretty certain your own customers won’t either.

The popular television series Undercover Boss exposes executives to the customer experience when they are disguised and take on an employee’s role. Their goal is to learn about what their employees and customers think. The experiences are eye-openers and these executives come away knowing a great deal more about how their companies need to operate.

But, you don’t need to go on television in order to improve your customers’ experiences. Take a long, hard look at your operation and make sure your practices pass the common-sense test. If you wouldn’t like something, change it.

A company’s operations shouldn’t start with the company’s needs; it begins with the customers’ needs. How does a change in pricing, a new phone system, a new website, new products, etc…, appear to your customers?

Step into their shoes, BE your customer. And then see just how well they’ll market your company!

 

“We take most of the money that we could have spent on paid advertising and instead put it back into the customer experience. Then we let the customers be our marketing.” ~ Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

 

Where We Fall Short

Posted on by Laurie Storey-Manseau
As business owners and managers, we want to ensure that our customer service is excellent. We have systems and procedures, computer programs and even talking points to make sure our employees are making our customers happy.

customers need personal service

Rule #1: Don’t frustrate your customers

We have all sorts of access points – face-to-face, email, telephone, social media, online chat – to let our customers get in touch with us. We can pat ourselves on the back because we are providing “excellent” customer service.

Whoa! Slow down a second. Before we get all self-congratulatory, ask yourself one thing. Despite all of the best practices you’ve put in place, did you solve your customers’ problems?

The answer might well be no.

When it is no, your customer walks away frustrated and unhappy. Trust me, they don’t keep that frustration to themselves, either. The words of an existing customer can make or break any business. It is, by far, the most trusted form of promotion a company will have.

So, how do you fix the unsolved problem issue? Ask your customers about their experiences with your company. If they say their issues are unsolved, find a way to fix the issues and don’t put the responsibility for fixing the issue in your customer’s lap.

I recently had an issue with a company that did not fulfill my online order. When I tried to get the pending charge for the item removed from my card, I was told by both the company and the bank that neither one could remove it. I literally felt like a ping-pong ball, bouncing between two customer-service reps. Now, I’m dissatisfied with two companies!

Where we often fall short is in living our customer’s experience and implementing changes that prevent failures in our systems. With today’s technology, either company could have solved my problem with a simple three-way call between both reps and myself.

The best advice any business owner and manager can accept is to walk in your customer’s shoes.

The first step is to realize that you are already customers with other companies, so identify the things that you don’t like and make sure they don’t happen to your customers. Then, go a step further and find ways to see your business through their eyes.

Your customers don’t know the inner workings of your company and they shouldn’t need to, so don’t make excuses or offer apologies for your systems. All they need from you is an experience that fulfills their needs and is pleasant.

A satisfied and appreciated customer equals many new customers!

Simply Words

Posted on by Laurie Storey-Manseau

Thank you. Thanks. Appreciate it…

We say the words so casually these days. It seems like it’s nothing more than the end to a sentence – the period – when actually, it should be the exclamation point.

Thank you is really important, when you think about it. The words are intended to express gratitude, but somehow have become so diluted, so matter-of-fact, that they fall short.

Two simple words, meant to convey so much. But, to really mean some

thing, it’s not the saying of the words, but the action of gratitude that we must express. When was the last time you showed your customers, your staff and colleagues, your friends and your family gratitude? I’m not talking about just saying words. I mean showed your gratitude.

So often, in the busyness of the day/week/month/year, we forget that gratitude is the foundation of our relationships. It’s so easy to take for granted these relationships, only to find that over time they are lost for the lack of showing gratitude.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Words are important, but actions speak more than words ever can. I had an editor years ago who hammered into me a mantra: “Show, don’t tell.” I learned that the words I wrote needed to show my readers how the story unfolds, not just tell them about it.

The same can be said about relationships, particularly those we have with customers and employees. Showing gratitude doesn’t have to happen every day, but it needs to occur often enough that they clearly understand just how much their relationship is valued, how much we rely on them and appreciate them.

It doesn’t need to be a grand gesture. It can be simple, yet meaningful. Reaching out a hand and offering it as a sign of appreciation. A handwritten thank-you note instead of an email or text. Birthday wishes sent on their special day.

Next week, we will sit down over a turkey dinner and celebrate Thanksgiving. In the days leading up to the holiday, it seems like the perfect time to express our thanks beyond the words.

So, in the spirit of gratitude, I am reaching out to you, my readers, with great appreciation for your interest and support. May your Thanksgiving fill you with gratitude and give you the peace of knowing you are greatly appreciated.

Marketing ADHD

Posted on by Laurie Storey-Manseau

Probably one of the most talked about and self-diagnosed disabilities today is Attention Deficit. It seems to be everyone’s reason for not getting things done, not remembering deadlines and not being able to focus.

Don't lose attention

Do you have Marketing ADHD?

It’s a problem!

But, you know what? It’s a problem with an awful lot of marketing, too.

Concentrating on your company’s goals over the long haul is difficult. It’s tedious. It requires a lot of work. And, well, it requires…focus!

It’s so easy to get distracted by that shiny, new thing. The newest marketing thingy to come along must be the answer…until the next new thingy comes along.

Focus and patience are essential to successful marketing. So, here are some steps to help keep the focus:

  1. Think of your marketing plan as a road map. Begin by writing a plan with marketing goals that support your company’s strategic plan. The goals likely won’t change, but the tactics toward accomplishing the goals may. Formally revisit and revise your marketing plan annually.
  2. Set deadlines for each of your marketing efforts and tasks. There should be start and end dates, along with ways to measure if the efforts are working.
  3. Create accountability. Assign efforts and tasks to people and set deadlines for accomplishing them.
  4. Check in monthly. Pull out the plan, sit down around the table with everyone who has a role in the plan, and talk through where things are going and what has been accomplished.

While it’s important to stay aware of what’s out there, add new marketing efforts ONLY when they will directly impact your goals