info@safllc.com +1.203.255.0505
Are You an SMB? Use the Three T’s!

Are You an SMB? Use the Three T’s!

by | Jul 8, 2020 | Customer satisfaction, Marketing and strategy, Medium-sized business, Small-sized business

If you work for a small-to-medium-sized company (SMB) and are in a marketing role, you are no doubt strapped for resources in the form of people, money, or time. This is especially true when it comes to research for understanding customers, prospects, and how to best message and market your product or service. The day-to-day challenges of managing your business can easily get in the way of thinking and planning about ways to grow or expand.
 
A “plan” does not scream out for immediate attention. Plans assume that conditions are stable and predictable — but in the new era of COVID-19, conditions are far from ordinary. As a colleague of mine recently said, “If you see lots of umbrellas, you can conclude that it’s raining, but it doesn’t tell you when it will rain next.” Or if there is a hurricane coming. The obvious challenge we are ALL facing now is how to meet future customer needs given the restrictions imposed by COVID-19, and a future that is far from certain.
What kind of planning can you do right now? Certainly, long-term planning will be challenging, but let’s start with some simple rules — what I call the “three T’s” of SMB marketing.
Targeting: involves identifying your target audience, the best way to reach your target, and the best way to communicate your story (messaging).
Work hard to make sure your user target is right. Begin to dimensionalize it by using readily available data sources. A great place to start is the US Census (business and county data patterns), and companies that sell secondary research (e.g., “pre-packaged” reports on various categories, from companies like Statista or Packaged Facts).
Ask yourself: what problem are you solving? How is your solution better than the competition? Use custom research to better define your target and refine your USP. Common descriptors are “market studies”, “positioning research”, and “market segmentation ” to understand and size your market. In some cases you can link survey data with shopper data (which can be appended to your surveys) to understand who you should target. Some of this can be done subjectively based on your own knowledge, but back up your opinions with some hard facts.
If you are in a fast moving consumer goods category (FMCG), or any category where customers have multiple buying opportunities during the year, consider targeting loyal customers or loyal competitors. They are unlikely to be consuming all of their category volume solely from either you or the other guy. This is sometimes called a “share of requirements” strategy — i.e., the share your brand has of total category consumption.
As another close-in strategy, find non-buyers who fit the profile (demographically, attitudinally) of loyal customers, as this is likely to reap rewards. Initially, maximize your reach (i.e., the total number of people exposed to your message), but do not over-emphasize it. If launching a product, it is initially a numbers game. Not every consumer or prospect is equally valuable/profitable, but you have to start somewhere.
If you are lucky enough to have a marketing or media budget, now is the time to re-examine all of the possible ways to target customers… via social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn), advanced and addressable TV (read more from media expert Bill Harvey here), and linear (live) and local TV. But more importantly, is your messaging on-strategy?
Testing: test different messages, selling points, products, or features in each channel you advertise, to educate and communicate. Test, test, test!
Testing is an iterative, tactical process that also feeds your business strategy. The more you learn, the more your strategy will adapt. You must continuously test to find that winning message, product, or formulation for your target (or targets). Give special consideration to testing among loyal customers (if you have them) or best case prospects. As noted, loyal customers are an ideal research audience, and can provide significant insight, as they are already pre-disposed to you behaviorally and attitudinally.
 
Pay special attention to testing your creative. Experts in media attribution assign about 80% to the impact of creative (i.e., the combined impact of the raw information about your brand’s story, combined with words, images and sound) on conversion. Put another way, if your message resonates, the teacher will give you an automatic ‘B’! The rest depends on the delivery mechanism and overall customer journey. With so much fertile ground in the creative itself, focus your initial efforts here.
Many platforms allow you to A/B test different offers in real time (i.e., pricing, flavors, colors, products), messaging (different creative executions), and delivery schedules (i.e., continuous advertising, vs. flights). Testing resources here include Central Control or independent platforms like One Count. Don’t get distracted with the more sophisticated attribution modeling companies (e.g., C3 Metrics, Sequent Partners) – as an SMB, you’re just not ready for them yet.
Occasionally, when I talk about doing survey research, SMB clients think I have three heads, but do not discount the power of survey research to provide insight into what consumers are looking for, or to help narrow down options for your retail store or e-commerce site. Get a free SurveyMonkey account, or use forms-based tools like Constant Contact, Google Forms, or Office 365 Forms to gather feedback. Some of these tools are basic, and you may need to graduate to a more sophisticated platform as your testing needs grow, but their basic feature set is excellent.
Here’s another idea: leave your office, go out into the world (mask on, of course), and visit some real stores! Woo-hoo! Yes, lots of commerce is done via the web, but the vast majority is still brick and mortar, and the retail environment is closest to the end customer. If you already have distribution, go visit stores where your product is on-shelf. Note what is working, and what is not. While you are there, check out your competitors, or hire a mystery shopping firm to see if there are problems in finding your product. Are competitors better or worse than you? In what ways? How can you improve?
Tracking: once you have identified your target, and you have tested and identified messages for your target, monitor how well you are doing.
 
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Develop forms of continuous reporting, i.e., sales x channel x region x segment; or customer reviews; or other forms of objective feedback. Build monitoring systems using dashboards and visualizations to know whether refinements or adjustments are needed. Consider an ongoing advisory panel comprised of customers or clients, or a heavy user panel, to give you regular feedback on your product or service. Gather ideas from distributors/resellers to learn about issues that you might be unaware of. Talk to competitors if you can. Smartly designed research can yield significant insights.
Most of all, just listen. Keep your ear close to the ground and gather feedback like a sponge. Review each customer rating through an objective lens and see how it can enhance or improve your business. Don’t have a thin skin when it comes to feedback of any kind. Customers can be especially sharp: the internet lets people hide and in turn ‘permission’ to be nasty. Take the high road.
 
Last, this doesn’t have to be expensive. Well-designed research and good judgment can go a long way to help your business thrive and grow. As your business becomes more successful and more sophisticated, the need for feedback on individual aspects of your business will increase (i.e., individual products, or new customer targets).
 
As your needs grow, consider working with an expert to help identify problem areas and to refine your overall marketing plan. After all, if your marketing problems were that easy to solve, you would’ve figured them out by now. It will be money well spent.
Five Simple Questions to Assess Customer Satisfaction

Five Simple Questions to Assess Customer Satisfaction

by | Apr 9, 2020 | Analytics, Customer satisfaction

Determining whether your customers are happy or not shouldn’t be a complicated, mind-numbing exercise. Too many companies believe that they cannot afford to conduct customer satisfaction programs because it will be either too complex, too expensive, or feel that they don’t possess the skills to analyze the data when it comes in. I’d like to put this misconception to rest.

In my many conversations with small- to medium-sized business owners this seems especially true. SMBs often have smaller marketing departments or lack a reasonably well-developed research and analytics function. It shouldn’t be that complicated, but the huge global management and research consultancies make it that way. They offer various customer satisfaction benchmarking or scoring systems that are complex or based on simulation and modeling. But customer satisfaction research should be a basic function.
 
I have conducted many customer satisfaction studies for some of the nation’s biggest companies. I’ve concluded that most companies (or, for that matter, business units or divisions) only need a core set of key measures to help them understand what customers think and feel about their business.
The nice thing about this “core set” is that each question is clear, obvious, and generally self-leveling. This means that you needn’t rely on external benchmarks, nor hire a marquee-name company to feel good about the data you are collecting. It’s unfortunate that many customer satisfaction consultancies try to make prospective clients feel that they have inside knowledge (i.e., without their brilliant insight, experience, or benchmarks, other customer satisfaction data is invalid). It’s just not true.

Below are five simple questions that will help you understand what your customers think and feel about your business. They provide solid diagnostics to help you focus in on areas that need improvement. Optionally, you can start with this core set and modify it to suit your particular business needs – but the incremental value is likely to be marginal. You might add ratings on brand features, or separate product performance from service and support, but with common sense and good judgment, these five questions will likely answer 90%+ of what you need to know about how your business is performing. These questions are:

  1. How satisfied were you with the product or service we provided you today? Satisfaction has been proven to be the best overall measure to assess whether customers are pleased with your product or service. Keep in mind that satisfaction does not predict loyalty: it is a temporal assessment – i.e., a general barometer of product or service performance. Loyalty is best measured by purchase behavior. Alternatively, you can replace the word “satisfied” with “happy” and get the same result. Note that satisfaction is also an excellent dependent measure when correlating with other metrics used by your organization.

  2. If we could change one thing about how we specifically did business with you today, what would it be? We have used this question in multiple studies and have found that it is especially effective at identifying pain points and in informing the customer journey (and informing the analysis of “moments of truth”). The benefit of this question is that it produces a hierarchy, similar to a ranking, by focusing the respondent on one thing. Note that this question is also focused on the most recent transaction. Answers about specific issues typically require a solution closer to the front line, such as a manager, director, business unit head, or head of operations.

  3. If we could change one thing about how we generally do business with you, or our products or services, what would it be? In contrast to #2 above, this question focuses on broader business processes, service issues, and interactions. Use this question in contrast to what customers experience transactionally. General business issues that are out of alignment require senior management involvement.

  4. What one positive thing stood out to you that that we should do more of, or tell other customers about? Once you have cleared out the constructive criticism (above), look for areas where your business is performing well. Use this feedback to improve overall product or service performance, and communicate it back up through the organization as motivational feedback. Leverage and communicate these strengths so that prospects are aware of what you offer and the great value you add.

  5. Aside from the product or service we provided, what was the personal benefit to you? This an optional question that we often include, because it is helpful at identifying “end benefits” – i.e., the key human benefit derived from your product or service. Note that we are not seeking product or service features, but rather downstream benefits that the customer receives from you. For example, your product or service may let a mom regain control over her day, such as freeing up her morning or spending time with her spouse or kids. The answers to this question are especially helpful in messaging, communication, and brand tonality (i.e., the character or feeling of what your business or brand is all about).
Again, the five questions above form a “core set”: there is nothing preventing you from asking other questions, such as brand awareness, usage, behavior, or attribute ratings on the product or service you provide. But companies often fall into a trap of asking exhaustive questions that produce flat results with little variability over time. Our advice here is simple: less is more. If the questions that you want to add are not actionable, trust your instincts and exclude them.
 
Asking fewer, simpler questions engages the customer in a conversation with you, rather than subjecting them to a relentless barrage of questions.
 
This core set of questions is especially useful because it forces business owners and managers to review and listen to the comments that customers provide – and offers huge opportunities to gain real insight and make continuous mid-flight improvements. And there are many software platforms that can let you ask your questions for little, if any, cost.
The challenge for you is to read their responses: it is in the nuance of their answers that real improvements in customer satisfaction often hide.
Simple Guidelines for Advertisers in the Age of Coronavirus

Simple Guidelines for Advertisers in the Age of Coronavirus

by | Mar 31, 2020 | Communications, Customer experience, Emotion

The stream of COVID-19 email communications continues to spill over the transom with messaging that is marginally helpful in many cases, and often unnecessarily complicated, confusing, and unhelpful.
 
Below are five simple areas to focus on in your messaging to consumers during this most difficult time of social distancing and self-isolation. Keep them in mind and test your communications and messaging against them. They will hold you in good stead with your end consumer, whether they are a business buyer, industrial buyer, or everyday consumer.
 
Do your best not to stray from these simple principles, and consumers will remember you for being thoughtful and direct with them during one of the most confusing times of their lives.
 
Brevity — be brief. In times of crisis, people seek clarity and precision in the messages they receive. Buyers are in a state of some fear, uncertainty, and anxiety. Fortunately, most people have kept their cool: we have not seen widespread panic. However, the stress level is only going to grow as we move through April-May 2020. What people need most is clear and relevant messaging from you. They have neither the time nor interest in reading voluminous messages from companies with whom they may only have a glancing relationship. If you are sharing information about your hours, accessibility, call centers, ordering information, shipping times, or things that may interrupt the consumer’s experience with your company, these are relevant. In all other cases, be pithy; a few key sentences will do.
 
Empathy — this period of quarantine and self-isolation is extraordinary. Most “non-essential” work has ceased. Convey genuine concern for your customers, because they are being held prisoners in their own homes. People are able to venture out for food and medicine, but they are not permitted to visit loved ones, attend events, or be present for life’s special moments. Fathers can’t be with their wives during childbirth; visiting elderly relatives in nursing homes is prohibited; scheduling or attending a funeral is restricted. Personally, a family member cannot be admitted to the nation’s leading cancer center because it is not is not accepting new patients. These are real life and death disruptions. Your product or service is simply not at the top of your consumer’s priority list.
 
Selflessness — set aside the need to make a sale. Sales will return (eventually) but right now your customer is in distress. Demonstrate compassion by extending your brand, product, or service in a way that puts the customer first. Sponsorships and branded efforts are fine, but don’t let them get in the way of the greater goal. Perhaps you won’t make a profit, or may even lose money. Think instead of the total cost vs. overall impact: it may not be measurable. If you have extended yourself selflessly to your customer, with no expectation of a reward, that still builds value. Ask yourself what is it that you are doing to help your fellow citizen. Are you part of the larger need to step outside of your business to help others in distress?
 
Consistency — Be consistent in the message you deliver in your communications to the customer across all assets (web site, email, addressable media, or broadcast). Do not vary the core elements of your messaging from day to day, and get it right the first time. Be on point with not only what you are saying, but also doing, as well as the tonality of your communications. For now, set aside brand, product, or performance messaging; this will eventually return. Traditional messaging is secondary to the more important aspect of shared sacrifice and being supportive of your consumer in a time of stress and uncertainty.
 
Reassurance — We look to government leaders for guidance and reassurance that things will get better, and that the shared sacrifice will be worth it. Consumers also need leadership from the companies that they do business with. This includes the brands they use and trust. A reassuring message from one brand may not (alone) be able to penetrate the swirl of confusing messages that consumers are receiving. However, brands collectively can break through and make the consuming public less anxious and agitated. We are, in every respect other than bullets, in a wartime footing against an invisible enemy. Stop thinking in the traditional way, and focus on the greater good, and on what matters to all citizens during a time of national (and global) crisis.

These five simple rules will hold you in good stead with your consumer. As David Ogilvy once quipped (and I take liberal license): the consumer is not an idiot — the consumer is your wife, husband, brother, sister, son, daughter, uncle, aunt, neighbor, and friend. Your job as a marketer is to use your vast skills and resources to make your end buyer understand that you are doing whatever you can to make their lives easier during this difficult time.

They won’t forget it.

Thoughtful Communication in a Time of Crisis

Thoughtful Communication in a Time of Crisis

by | Mar 18, 2020 | Communications, Customer experience, Emotion

Every day I receive a deluge of email from companies with whom I have a glancing relationship, yet seem compelled to assure me about their healthy operational status during our shared Coronavirus pandemic.

They breathlessly promote their products and services and go out of their way to reassure me that their services are available for purchase. Perhaps they are getting it all wrong: I’m not alone in this perception.

 
In the stampede to reassure me that their businesses remain uninterrupted, what are they really saying? They are telling me that they are mostly concerned about the impact on their business, and the disruption to their revenue and operations. Unintentionally, they have delivered a pandering, grasping, and self-serving message that conveys how little they care about the customers they serve.
 
On the one hand, it is understandable: Coronavirus has the world and virtually all marketplaces turned completely upside down. This massive disruption to our life and economic well-being is extremely upsetting. On the other, companies have an obligation to communicate to their customers in a way that focuses on them, and not on the operation of the company, its products, or its services. We assume that companies are already doing what they can to remain operational. We do not need to receive dozens upon dozens of emails to point out the obvious. What we do need from marketers and advertisers is a complete shift in strategy – from an “all about me focus” to a “fellow citizen focus”. What might this look like?
 
I listen to (and highly recommend) the Research Business Daily Report (RBDR) on the marketing research and analytics industry, and most recently listened to media researcher Bill Harvey about his ideas on thoughtful messaging adjustments during this worldwide pandemic. Bill founded Research Measurement Technologies (RMT), a pioneer in media measurement. He points out that advertisers need to pivot to quality of life advertising – and away from the advertising of features and benefits.
 
More than ever, advertising and messaging need to convey shared ideals and motivations. What are the areas of overlap between a brand and its customers? How can we as marketers build relationships with customers based on motivations that are positive and uplifting?
 
Over the years Harvey identified 15 motivational drivers, similar (in principle) to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs developed in the 1940s. These motivational drivers exist, more or less, in all of us. They are:
 
• Achievement
• Aspiration
• Belonging
• Competency
• Creativity
• Experience of life (including sex)
• Fitness
• Heroism & leadership
• Love
• Power
• Security
• Self-knowledge
• Self-transcendence (or altruism)
• Status
• Success
 
Advertisers would be well-advised to investigate how they can incorporate some of these fundamental human motivators in their messaging and advertising right now. If you are solely focused on features, benefits, usage situations, or problem-solution messaging, chances are that those messages will be ignored because your consumer is primarily focused on health, sustenance, shelter, and survival.
 
Are you simply marketing your product or service as usual? Are you using your messaging during this pandemic to pat yourself on the back, or check the box with IR or HR? Or are you really, really in the trenches with consumers, psychologically lifting them up, and making them feel like you care about how they are doing? Ask yourself: are you being genuine?
 
If your answer to the last question was no, then you need to rethink your entire communications strategy for the foreseeable future. In a world of pandemics and unpredictable externalities, no one cares if Product A removes stains better that Product B.
 
Consumers already assume that your product works. What they really care about is whether you believe what they believe.
 
So, what is it again that you believe?
Fail Forward

Fail Forward

by | Mar 1, 2020 | Business strategy, Marketing research

There have been some recent news articles about the role of marketing insights and research, most notably Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who in his 2018 letter to shareholders said: “No customer was asking for Echo. This was definitely us wandering. Market research doesn’t help. If you had gone to a customer in 2013 and said “Would you like a black, always-on cylinder in your kitchen about the size of a Pringles can that you can talk to and ask questions, that also turns on your lights and plays music?” I guarantee you they’d have looked at you strangely and said “No, thank you.” Really? Give me a break.
 
Over the years, we have heard similar things from other executives. In a blog post covered by Bob Lederer, he relayed the reaction of Robert Granader who blogged about the reaction of several analysts at his firm, which included this gem: “Amazon surely had market research indicating that customers wanted hands-free music, home connectivity, multi-functional devices, and faster/easier searching for information. It was then Amazon’s job to develop a product to serve all of those needs. Market research tells you what you need to know, but the company has to decide how to act on it. Without market research, you’re flying blind. If Amazon didn’t know that customers wanted all of these things, there’s no way the development of the Echo would have been as successful as it was.”
 
He goes on to say “Most companies don’t have the time to “wander” through their next market, acquisition, or fundraising, so they rely on market research — because sometimes you need to get it right the first time.” [my emphasis]
 
I find the hubris of charismatic types like Bezos annoying and amusing at the same time, if that’s possible. The problem that comments like these pose is that they are being made by people with the power to persuade, which morphs into denigration. So, unfortunately, these individuals are uninformed and lack understanding about what research is and how it can be used.
 
If research is not adding value, then you’re not doing the right type of research, or you’re not asking the right kinds of questions. It’s really that simple.
 
We tend to think of research as a series of steps that must be conducted in sequence before an insight or an “aha” moment occurs. Wrong – insights can come in any sequence or order, and from any source, but objective research results are the agent of one or more controlled experiments. There is also a false belief that, simply by virtue of conducting research, it will always lead to some magical “aha” moment that is immediately actionable. This is also absurd. No one should go into any experiment with the thought of exiting the experiment with all of the tools in hand needed to build or innovate, or create, or market.
 
The whole point of research is experimentation. To test, and to often sequentially fail. We conduct experiments to prove or disprove an hypothesis, an assumption, a hunch. My old marketing research professor Russell Haley used to quip, “In business, all you have to be is right”. But what if you’re not? Do you want to shoulder that risk?
 
If in testing an hypothesis we conclude that something doesn’t appeal to consumers, or isn’t a success, or fails to meet an action standard, that doesn’t mean that research was a useless exercise. That’s entirely the point of research!
 
We should be failing forward, failing repeatedly, and hopefully failing faster to get us to the next opportunity awaiting us!
 
If we are failing forward, then we are in a continuous future-seeking mode to identify opportunities to innovate. This could be a new product or service; new opportunities for distribution; new markets, segments, or usage occasions; or other activity focused on delivering products and services to the marketplace.
 
Peter Drucker famously said that all companies have two functions: innovation and marketing. Innovation implies experimentation, and experimentation will certainly produce some results that are undesirable or unexpected – and they will be classified as “failures” – which is, again, missing the point entirely.
 
If we do not stay objective about what it is we are trying to do (in testing, experimenting, and conducting research), then research is always burdened with an emotional weight it does not deserve. In the same way, if research is improperly designed or executed, or if the research function is improperly staffed, research itself will fail much of the time. Our goal is to immunize the research function from the results it delivers.
 
The outcome that we desire is for research to simply be the playing field by which a marketing variable can be objectively evaluated, devoid of emotion or prejudice. This is much harder than it seems. Research can be conducted to confirm a decision that has already been made, or to attempt to settle an argument. Under these constraints, research has no possible chance of succeeding. When this happens, neither side really believes in research.
 
Innovation and marketing, and by extension insights and research, are critical interpreters in all well-run organizations. So don’t be afraid to fail. Fail forward – and keep going.
Surveys & Forecasts, LLC