Category: marketing

We know what to do

Fabrizio1 Comment

We know what to do in most situations.

We know that when we approach a potential customer, we should focus on their story, not on our.

We know that when we plan which channels to use for our marketing tactics, we should be selective and carefully craft our messages.

We know that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and that employees are attracted by purpose and leadership, and that losing a talented person is much worse than losing the manager that made them quit.

We know we should be nice with each other, do not fill our calendars with appointments, be respectful of other people’s agendas, avoid showing up late and being distracted by our phone when somebody is sharing something with us.

We know a great deal of things. And yet, most of us fail at the same very things.

There are different reasons why this is so. It’s certainly partly due to our laziness. Partly it’s the fact our focus is misplaced. Partly it’s because we get carried away and we lose control.

And the biggest part, is us feeling we are special. There’s certainly something we know and that all others before us have missed. Our situation is unique, and we will succeed where everybody else has failed. This time, this time only, it is going to be different, and the rest of the world is going to see what I am, where I am at, why it’s important and follow me blindly.

Open your eyes. That is (almost) never the case. If you just stick to doing it, you will still end up a whole lot better off. And people around you will as well.

Renewing trust

FabrizioLeave a comment

The automatic renewal feature, enabled by default in plans that seal an agreement between a service company and the final consumer, is not designed to improved the user experience.

Despite the bullshit about “continuity of service”, that particular feature is designed (and enabled by default) to leverage our tendency to forget, and therefore fictitiously increase the recurring revenue metric.

It feels like yet another instance in which companies that invest loads of money in second-guessing personalisation of marketing messages (ads, newsletters, offers, etc.), fail to design their services and operations in a personal way when it would actually be easy.

Hi there, we have noticed that your plan is expiring in 30 days.

We do not do automatic renewal, as we believe in how good our service is. And on this note, this is what we have done for you this past 11 months (*list of features that the user has used, articles the user has read, videos the user has watched, …).

We’d like to continue delivering this and more, and to renew we ask you to answer two questions on this online form (the questions being: Do you want to renew? Is your credit card still valid?).

On the other hand, if you decide not to continue with us, we respect your decision and hope to have you back soon. We would still like to know if it’s something we’ve done (link to online feedback for churn).

Thanks for being a valuable member of our community. For any question on renewals, just reply to this message or call us at xxx.xxxxxxx.

Have a wonderful day!

Marketing and social media

FabrizioLeave a comment

Gary Vaynerchuck often repeats that as a marketer, the only thing he cares about is where the attention of the people is.

This is something I very much respect. Marketers should not be in a personal relationship with any platform, tool, channel. They should care about finding ways to establish a connection with their audience. What Gary Vee says is particularly important in a World in which many marketers still think that they _NEED_ a Facebook page, an Instagram account or a Pinterest strategy.

But I am struggling more and more to distinguish my identity as a marketer and my identity as a (decent) human being.

So, what happens if the attention of the people is on a channel that is increasingly damaging shares of the population and of society?

It is not my intention to be paternalistic nor bigot in approaching such dilemma. I just want us to consider when we should start caring about the fact that our marketing money is feeding unhealthy behaviour, toxic and dangerous ecosystems or openly wrong actions.

I have no answers, unfortunately. Yet these are questions of growing importance for me.

Should we care? Probably yes.

Should our business targets make us blind towards this (or this)? Probably not.

Is there a way to be relevant marketing-wise if we remove the most popular tools a marketer has in this age and time? That deserves a lot more consideration, and I hope this blog will help me elaborate in that direction.

Customer disservice

Fabrizio1 Comment

We are all lazy as customers, and somehow we forget this basic fact when we change our dress and become business people.

Hi Generic User

Thank you for contacting Support.

We appreciate your time and effort invested in contacting us.

It is unfortunate that you are facing issue with your product. Need not to worry we will surely try our best to resolve this issue.

Please provide us with the below information so that we could help you more appropriately regarding your issue:

  1. Was there any liquid/physical damage to the product?
  2. Have you ever dropped your product?
  3. Are facing issue from the day 1 of purchasing the product?

We really apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused. Please perform a factory reset on your product, please see below on how to perform it.

Please provide us clear pictures of your product and the video of the issue.

Please feel free to reach out to us if still issue persists.

Best Regards,

I have three problems with this way of making a connection with a customer.

Number 1, you have my name, you can use it. I have purchased from you, I am getting in touch about a specific order, you have all the details about my life as a customer (and perhaps some more). It’s quite pointless that the next time I scroll through my Facebook timeline I will see an offer from you “JUST FOR ME!!!”, if you are not personal when you can be.

Number 2, can I ask how many people tell you they have spilled liquid on their product, damaged it, or dropped it? And if they are honest and they do, what is your answer? Are you telling them that it is their fault the product does not work (and fail their honesty, losing them for good), or are you going to pretend nothing happened and still replace the product (and then why the question in the first place)?

Number 3, please do not make it feel as if by having an issue with your product I am being hired for a second job. Be sure that the tasks you ask me to perform are related to my request (I am not sure how useful taking a video can be for sound not coming from earphones) and are few.

I got this answer after only 14 minutes from my request of assistance. I imagine first response time has been dealt with. What about the rest?

A couple of alternatives.

Hi Fabrizio, thanks for reaching out.

I am sorry you can’t hear music coming from your headphones, when did this start? Also, can I ask you to perform a factory reset on them? We found this is helpful in some cases. To do this, follow the instructions at the end of this message.

If this does not help, we’ll arrange a replacement, as I see it’s been just two months from your purchase. We are proud of the quality of our products, but sometimes things do not go as planned. I apologise for this.

Be in touch soon!

Or

Hi Fabrizio, thanks for being in touch.

I am sorry you can’t hear music coming from your headphones. You bought them two months ago, and this should not happen.

I am not in a position to offer a replacement, unfortunately. We are striving to keep the cost of our products the lowest on the market, and this is why we are able to offer only 40 days of guarantee on earphones. We have found that customers, sometimes, are not as careful as you shared you’ve been, and by increasing the guarantee period, we might actually end up losing money. I am genuinely sorry for that.

What I can do, if you agree, is transfer a €10 credit on your account to use with your next purchase. No strings attached, it is valid forever, use it when you want it, and on whichever product you might be interested into.

I understand this is not the solution you were seeking, and I will appreciate if you would get back to me with an answer, so that I can proceed with crediting the money on your account.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Ads wars

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you create something that has a controversial reception, you have two choices.

You can try to explain what your aim was, that you were coming from a good place, that actually what you meant is not what the public understood, that it’s not your fault and that your original idea was actually to support the feelings of the very same people that are now involved in the controversy.

Or you can apologise.

Take this Dove ad from last year.

It does not matter that Dove wanted to represent female beauty in all its shades, nor that the bit under scrutiny was only a short part of a longer ad in which (among other things) a westerner-looking woman was turning asian. It does not matter what the female Nigerian actress thought she was achieving while recording the ad, and honestly after the controversy sparked, the ad itself and its aesthetic stopped mattering as well.

Dove did not fall into the trap, it understood that all that matters in these circumstances is the public and its sensitivities. As marketers (and as creators), we need to be aware that what we do today can reach a much bigger audience than in the past, but at the same time it gets subjected to unprecedented scrutiny.

There are two things that can help stay clear from this kind of publicity.

First, make sure what you do is in line with a consistent brand that you are continuosly building. This gives credibility in the eyes of the audience, and it raises the odds that what you mean is what will be understood (take the recent Gillette ad as an example).

Then, surround yourself with people that are the most diverse possible, in every achievable way. And carefully weigh in every one of the concern they might raise on your job.