customer engagement
847 posts
What’s Your Customer’s Narrative?
Why do thousands of people line up outside department stores waiting for the doors to open on Boxing Day? The stock is the same as it was two days before, after all— what’s changed is the story the buyer gets to tell himself. You are in the story selling business, as much as you are…
6 Brand Storytelling Lessons From Santa Claus
I will never forget the day that the illusion of Santa was destroyed for my children. We were at a local tourist attraction in the UK during school holidays, a visit to Santa was included in the ticket. We joined the queue just after 1pm to discover that Santa had gone to lunch and would…
Who Will This Matter To?
Conventional innovation and marketing wisdom reminds us not to come up with good ideas for products or services to sell, but to solve problems instead. People need to eat, but don’t have time to cook, so open a cafe or design a new food processor with an extra chopping function. The result is six ‘m
Wanted And Welcomed
We still have a landline phone at home to make it easy and more economical for elderly relatives overseas to get in touch. It rings at lunchtime and at around 6pm every day. We don’t pick up, because we know these particular calls are not ones we want or welcome. I often wonder what the…
Sorry: Easy To Say, Not So Easy To Do
The assistant serving at the counter apologised for the long wait, then for not having received the order and finally for having no change. The cycle continued with every customer she served. There was a sorry for the wrong order given and one for the fact that the croissants hadn’t arrived that mor
Satisfaction Vs. Sentiment
Have you ever filled in one of those, ‘we value your feedback’ customer satisfaction surveys at the end of a meal or a service call? Perhaps you have used them to ask customers to rate your service? The theory being that satisfied customers are the end game. Deliver on expectations and people will s
How To Find Tomorrow’s Customers
Most businesses, whatever their size are focused on growth. We want more leads, more fans, readers or subscribers, who will become more customers, resulting in more sales and more profits. We usually have a plan to get them, which involves cultivating the people we hope will be tomorrow’s customers.
Value Creation And Stories To Believe In
Just 574 To’ak chocolate bars were produced in 2014 using hand sorted, heirloom cacao beans harvested from rare Ecuadorian trees. Each bar is engraved with an individual number, packaged in a Spanish elm wooden box and comes with a specially designed tasting tool (touching the chocolate with your fi
Persuasion, Proof And The Place You Want To Be
As marketers we have historically relied on material advantages to differentiate our products and services, then used them to persuade customers to buy them. If your product is lighter or more energy efficient, the thinking goes, then you’re giving customers a logical reason to choose your brand ove
What’s The Best Way?
When I was a new mum thinking about ‘the best way’ to raise my son to do the things that babies of his age were supposed to do, occupied a fair amount of my time. I worried about the best way to settle him to sleep and the best way to wean him. I graduated…
Before You Create Marketing
Recognise that’s it is not your job to create marketing. It’s your job is to as Peter Drucker said, to create and keep a customer. Before Nespresso people paid for coffee by the jar or went to Starbucks. Before iTunes people waited for CDs to be released and shipped. Before Kindle we needed bookcase
The Relationship Between Curiosity And Business Growth
Whenever I visit the tiny local florist I am the only customer and the most bizarre thing happened when I stopped off there last Friday evening. The entire floor was filled with buckets and buckets of multi-coloured roses. It was so full there was barely room to navigate to the register to pay. I th
How Does Your Marketing Really Make People Feel?
Imagine it’s a busy Thursday morning and you’re replying to the emails that came in overnight from people you were eager to hear from, when out of nowhere an unsolicited sales email interrupts your flow. Of course it’s just one email, it only takes a second to delete it, so where’s the harm in a…
The Value Of Connection In A Low Touch World
What matters in a world where….we can tell a device to order the shopping, place our coffee order without speaking, have a conversation involving thumbs and zero eye contact and before we know it, get to our destination in a driverless car? What’s scarce today will be even more scarce tomorrow. And
The First Step To Building A Marketing Campaign
As marketers we tend to get lost in the tactics like designing flyers, scheduling tweets and growing a Facebook following—this makes us forget the more important stuff. A campaign by definition is “a systematic course of aggressive activities for some specific purpose”. The following is hard for you
Why Visibility Is Overrated
“TRY OUR TAPAS” screamed the sandwich board on the pavement outside the empty restaurant as the customers spilled out onto the pavement waiting for tables at the cafe next door. True story. One of my clients recently did a marketing audit and found that a third of his business came from repeat clien
Six Things Focus Groups Won’t Tell You
If you’re a fan, you may remember the scene in Mad Men where Peggy—fairly new to the job, joins the other girls from the typing pool in a lipstick testing experiment. All the while the ad executives are secretly looking on and taking notes from behind a two way mirror. The ad guys were smart…
The Characteristics Of Great Brand Stories
Great brand stories….. Are rooted in truth. Created with intention. Have a bigger purpose beyond a single bottom line. Add intangible value to something that was once a commodity. Take time. Make the customer the hero. Change how people feel about a product or service. Start with the customer’s stor
Who Is This Marketing For?
Before holding the meeting. Before working on the strategy. Before choosing the medium. Before building the website. Before writing a single word of copy. Ask yourself, “Who is this marketing for?” If the answer is, “It’s for our shareholders, the board, my boss, or so we can feel safe doing what we
How To Begin Developing A Product Story
While the guy shopping at the hardware store might think he’s comparing the features and benefits of the latest drills what he’s actually doing is imagining all of those shelves beautifully hung. We like to believe that our product story begins with the customer’s relationship to the product, when i
