Category: marketing

A little brand test

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you are having any doubt that your brand is not working, try this little test.

  1. Open Word.
  2. Write down the key claim or message from your website.
  3. Pick 5 competitors.
  4. Go to their websites and write their key claim or message on the same document.
  5. Show the document to a colleague, a friend, your partner. Ideally, a customer.
  6. Ask them to identify your claim or message.

It does not matter if your competitors are lying, if you are the only one who could truthfully claim what everyone is claiming, if your technology is better, if you have a more accurate vision for the future, if your founder has an incredible track record.

The customer does not care.

You are not trying to make an argument in the court room. You are competing on the market.

Note: if you pass the test, it does not mean your brand is working. A message is easy enough to imitate and brand is a combination of multiple items that should reflect the way you see the world. But if you don’t pass the test, then your brand is definitely not working.

Patagonia

FabrizioLeave a comment

Imagine approaching your team with the suggestion that this year, for Black Friday, you could dedicate your site’s home page to a message of social responsibility.

Imagine suggesting that the headline could stick to the version your team crafted after months of customer research, rather than make space for the latest look-at-me PR sensation.

Imagine recommending to continue with something that has been planned for months, rather than replacing it all with some shiny hack that will boost one of the vanity metrics.

They would look at you and think you are crazy.

Unless you work at Patagonia.

Cause and effect

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Not every cause leads to an effect. Not every effect can be immediately linked to a cause.

The fact is, we are not rational beings and we merely use reason to find an explanation to things that have already happened, to decisions that have already been made.

That’s why brands and stories have so much power. They don’t engage with reason and they leverage the most tribal and innate of our insticts.

Belonging.

If your company wants to measure brands and stories, if they want to find the thread that links brands and stories to material results, they are probably missing the whole point. And the opportunity to establish relationships with employees, customers, stakeholders that can determine long-term competitive advantage.

You got to have faith not to miss this opportunity.

Post-sale nuisance

Fabrizio1 Comment

One thing many customer service professionals fail to understand about customer service is that their work is not fixing issues.

It might be that a customer reaching out for a late delivery, an unexpected charge, a faulty product actually wants that rectified. But that’s only on the surface. What matters infinitely more is for them to find somebody to connect with. Somebody who can chat with them through a bad customer experience – and sometimes something more that goes on in their lives. Customers want to be heard and respected. And that’s why sharing ten possible solutions to their superficial problem is often ineffective, even when one of the ten might actually help them.

For companies to not look at customers as post-sale nuisances, they need to invest in a customer service that starts with empathy and does not immediately falls prey to problem solving. A customer service that says I am sorry, that explains what is going on, that asks smart questions, that forgets about the script, that takes the customer by hand and guides them towards what’s next – which, by the way, might be a non-resolution.

Of course, that will mean some of the metrics will be off.

And in that case, just make sure you are measuring the right ones.

Negative impressions

FabrizioLeave a comment

Reporting on tens of different metrics give one of two impressions.

Impression #1 – You are shooting in the dark. Since you can’t agree on what success means, you are just tracking and reporting everything in the hope that some of the numbers will look good on your deck to the board.

Impression #2 – You are going to cheat. Many metrics mean infinite interpretations, and something tells me that the one you are going to deliver today is not a story of failure.

Next time you are preparing a report, make an effort to avoid both.