Strategy

Sarah Worsham / Mar 26, 2009

What Type of Experiences Are You Providing For Your Customers?

friendshipbbjee Traditional marketing focuses on product features and benefits. But your customers are more interested in the experiences they can have with your products. Usually when a customer decides to purchase a product it’s not because of the features it offers, it’s because of what they can do with the product. For example, we purchased a flat screen HDTV not because of the number of pixels or brightness or refresh rate, but because it looks awesome when you’re watching a movie or sporting event. The experience we’re interested in is how the picture looks when we’re watching TV… the features of the TV just help fulfill that particular experience.

What about online? It can sometimes be difficult to figure out what types of experiences customers are looking for on your website. It helps to think in terms of tasks instead of products or features or benefits. What are your customers trying to accomplish when they come to your website? There probably are many different types of tasks – browsing, searching, contacting, support, purchasing, etc. The trick is to try to make all these tasks as easy as possible on your one website.

Now, instead of thinking of these actions as tasks, think of them as a chance to interact with your customer. What would you do if you were in-person? What types of interactions would you want with a company? Think of each of these interactions as an opportunity to build a relationship with your customer – or add to a relationship. Try to think of website visitors as individual people with their own stories and emotions and opinions.

Now, how would you design your website differently to interact with your customers and build relationships? What do your customers say about your website? They may have some great insight – if you just ask.

(photo by bbjee @ FlickrCC)

Technorati tags: usability, design, customer experience, customer-centric, experience centric, business, strategy, marketing

Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our weekly newsletter.

Sarah Worsham / Mar 25, 2009

Advantages & Disadvantages of Different Branding Strategies

On Monday, we talked a bit about various branding strategies and why you should consider picking one to help your business and marketing strategies. With each branding strategy comes both advantages and disadvantages that you should be aware of.

Corporate Brand – For companies that only offer one benefit to a customer, they usually use a corporate brand (unless they have an overall holding company).
- Advantages: Everything the company does is attributed to its brand.
- Disadvantages: Everything the company does is attributed to its brand.
Distinct Brand – Some companies choose to release each product or service as its own brand (ex. Proctor & Gamble).
- Advantages: Each product stands alone so failures do not affect the entire company or other products. Distinct benefits for each product can be directly attributed to a specific brand.
- Disadvantages: Each product will require its own marketing strategy and budget, with no synergy possible between products. Successes will not be directly attributed to the company’s brand.
Hybrid Brand – When a product extends the benefit of an overall brand or company, some companies use a hybrid branding strategy.
- Advantages: Marketing and branding can take advantage of the overall brand for budgets and reputation.
- Disadvantages: Any problems or negative press for either the product or the overall brand will affect both brands.
Umbrella Brand – If a company offers different products with different benefits, but they all extend the same value to the customer, sometimes they are all offered under an overall brand (ex. Nike – athletic gear).
- Advantages: Each product contributes to the shared value offered to the customer. Marketing and branding strategies can be at the shared value level, touting all the specific benefits.
- Disadvantages: Any product can negatively affect the overall brand and specific benefits may be muddled in the overall shared value.

Whichever branding strategy you choose, once you are aware of the advantages and disadvantages of each, you can take those into account when preparing your marketing strategies.

If you found this post helpful, please consider signing up for our free newsletter or subscribing to Sazbean.com through our RSS feed or email.

(photo by Sarah Jane @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: brand, branding, branding strategy, business, marketing strategy, marketing

Sarah Worsham / Mar 3, 2009

Empower Your Employees to Help Your Customers

Yesterday Jason Falls over at Social Media Explorer wrote a post about whether brands were playing favorites on social media. The problem is that many customers have problems, but often it seems that people who are influencers – who have a popular blog or twitter feed – will get responses from companies that normal people can’t seem to get through normal customer support channels. I commented that right now many of the people monitoring social media at companies are higher up and actually have the power to fix problems.

Why is this exactly? Why do people have to complain on Twitter or their blog or to their influencer friends to get their problems solved? Most of us have had an experience with a customer support system where the employee had to follow a script and wasn’t allowed to make any kind of decision. You usually have to try to get up to a manager or another department and even then there’s no guarantee that you’ll get any kind of decision.

What would happen if you allowed your customer support employees to make decisions? You’d have to provide them with some guidelines, obviously, but what if they could actually help your customers? Many years ago I used to work a few hours a week at Bed, Bath & Beyond (ok, mostly for the discount). They allowed their employees to give up to a 5% discount to any customer for any reason (usually having to do with a flaw in the merchandise). Do you know how happy it makes a customer when they come up to you to show you a flaw in a product, ready for a fight, and you just give them a 5% discount without arguing? How many of those customers were repeat customers? I’d imagine quite a few. I’m sure BBB made up the 5% discount with increased sales from happy customers.

All the employees at your company will influence your brand and reputation. If you give them the power to make decisions that help customers, it will only help your company in the long run.

(photo by dan taylor @ FlickrCC)

Technorati tags: brand, brand reputation, brand strategy, business, customer service, customer-centric, customer support, marketing, strategy

« Previous Page