Power Marketing

Facts might not matter as much as presentation.

You probably suspected that.
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Presenting item quantity information before price (70 songs for 29 dollars) may make the deal appear much more appealing than if the price were presented first (29 dollars for 70 songs ).

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That's a curious result form this marketing study.

Learn more here
http://truthdive.com/2012/01/18/Why-consumers-prefer-70-items-for-29-and-not-29-for-70-items.html

Maybe your business would improve if you heard more complaints from your customers.

Re-read that last statement and instead of focusing on “more complaints” focus on “heard more”.

It might not be about needing more complaints. There could easily be enough available. It might be that you need to listen better to the complaints. Those customer complaints could be an amazing free marketing research resource for you – if you listen.

I overheard a mother protest that she was tired of the school calling her about her son. Wow. Why would she not want to receive feedback from the school about her son? Good or bad news – wouldn’t a caring mother want to know how to help her son? The school was calling her because they cared and thought that she did too. Apparently she didn’t want to be bothered with bad news.

Good or bad news – you’d think that a concerned business owner or company president would want to know how to improve the experience for his customers. Listen without judging to customers and they will tell you what you need to know.

Customer complaints mostly come from customers who care about the relationship and want to improve it. Why would any business ignore this valuable constructive feedback?

Customers who don’t care about you or your relationship don’t complain. They quietly leave and buy somewhere else. They will most likely tell their friends about their negative experience.

You might not like to hear what they are saying. It might hurt. You might even take it personally.

The simplest way to reduce the complaints from customers is to tell your customers that you don’t care about them or their opinions. You can to that by making the complaint process onerous. You can dissuade customer complaints by instructing your staff to quote company policy. You can reduce customer complaints by refusing to talk to customers and instructing your staff to screen all calls.

I agree that not all complaints are valid. But you can learn from all complaints. If you are the CEO don’t be surprised if you don’t like the tone of the customer complaint by the time it gets to you. Just imagine the layers of frustration that your customer might have encountered on the uphill climb to reach you.

If you are the CEO and you are shielding yourself from customer complaints – then don’t be surprised when you get fired – by the customer or by your board.


George Torok

Marketing Speaker

This Starwood Sheraton Hotel Survey Sucks

Customer surveys are a good idea - but good ideas can be messed up by poor implementation. Here is an example of a customer survey that only served to annoy me as the customer of Sheraton Starwood Hotels.

The first rule of surveys is to be clear on your purpose. For example: are you conducting your customer survey to fix problems, discover opportunities, gather performance stats for marketing - or justify a manager's bonus?

The second rule of surveys is to see it from the customer's point of view.

After my stay at a Sheraton Hotel in Montreal I received the following request by email to complete a customer survey.

When you ask your customers to complete a survey - remember that they are doing it for you. So it would help your cause if you were warm, friendly, respectful and offered a reward for their time and perspective.

When I received the survey request from Sheraton Starwood Hotels - I deleted the first email because it seemed cold, demanding and all about them. And they offered me nothing as a reward for my time and opinion.

Then I received the second email as below. It was no warmer nor convincing to me. But this time I clicked and completed the survey - not because they did a better job of inviting me - but because I wanted to discover if it got any better. It did not. In my opinion, the Starwood Sheraton Hotel customer survey sucks.


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Dear GEORGE TOROK,

We recently sent you an e-mail inviting you to participate in an on-line survey about your stay at at Le Centre Sheraton ending on May 5, 2009. If you have not yet completed the survey, I want to let you know it is not too late to participate. We would like to again take this opportunity to personally thank you for your continued patronage. As you may already know, Sheraton Hotels And Resorts is part of the Starwood Hotels & Resorts family of brands (Sheraton, Westin, Four Points by Sheraton, W Hotels, S t. Regis, The Luxury Collection, Le Meridien, Aloft and Element). As a Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) Preferred member, you are a highly valued guest and we appreciate your loyalty and feedback enormously.

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Notice the tone of how this first paragraph starts, "We did something and you haven't completed your part." The thank you gets lost after they chastised me for "not yet completing". And then there are several lines about them - they list their hotel brands. Why? Would that convince me to complete their survey?
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We would greatly appreciate it if you could take the time to complete a brief survey regarding your most recent stay. This is important to our company, hotels and our brands that use this information worldwide to continuously improve our guest's experience and, most importantly, how to meet and exceed your expectations in the future. TNS has been retained to conduct this survey on behalf of Starwood.

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This paragraph is all about them. Why would I care? They still have placed no value on my time. They simply demand it.
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At your convenience, please take some time to complete the survey. To complete the survey online, simply click on this link:xxxx or copy and paste the link into the address line of your browser. If you have any difficulty accessing the survey, please send an email message to starwood@tns-global.com.

The survey itself will take only about 10 minutes of your time. If you are being prompted for a validation code after clicking on the link, please copy and paste the following into the field:

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Ten minutes of my time - that's all they want. Don't they realize that if I can afford to stay at a Sheraton or Starwood Hotel that I place a high value on my time?
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By providing this information you authorize Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., and its affiliated and subsidiary companies, (the "Starwood Group"): to collect, process and use the data provided for any lawful, Starwood Group business related purpose; to store the data at and transmit the data to various location(s), either directly or through its third party vendor(s), as the Starwood Group deems appropriate, throughout the world, whether within your country of residence, the United States, or elsewhere. To learn about our data collection and usage practices, please see our Privacy Statement:

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The lawyers got to have their say to earn their pay.
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We appreciate your business and thank you for staying at a Starwood hotel. We hope that you will visit other Starwood hotels and resorts in the near future.

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About time that they thanked me. Where's my prize? If they really appreciated me and my business they could demonstrate that with a gift.
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Sincerely,
Denise Coll
President,
North America Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide


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So how do I get my 10 minutes of the president's time? She implied that ten minutes of my time was worth nothing.

It;s been at least a week since I "completed" the Starwood Hotel Survey and I have not received a thank you, acknowledgement or offer of a reward.

The service at the Sheraton was pretty good with a couple exceptions and the Starwood customer service survey sucks.

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George Torok

Flick off!

How do you create a powerful viral marketing campaign?

Clearly identify and know your target market.
Really know them – what they do, where they go, how they think, what motivates them, how to grab their attention and how to speak their language. (How much of that do you know about your target market?)

That’s a lot of research and most marketers can’t be bothered and most business owners don’t want to invest the money to do that. But when you do the success of your marketing efforts is almost guaranteed. (Sun Tse, the ancient Chinese philosopher said “All battles are won before they are fought.)

So if your market was teens and 20-somethings, how would you approach them?


Be clear on your message.
You want them to reduce energy usage. You want them to start by turning off lights. Long term you want them to become more environmentally aware and responsible.

Simple message but tough sell.


Be clear on the motivation.
We have ten years before global warming becomes disastrous.

Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before: how can I make a difference?


Create a memorable slogan.
Flick off. Wait a minute. Doesn’t that look and sound a lot like f…. off?

Yes, it does and that is the brilliance in the slogan. Flick off is a harmless yet suggestive phrase that could become a new catch phrase – the secret of viral marketing. Flick off speaks the language of this target group. It is memorable. It is provocative – the best way to be both viral and memorable.

Flick off is powerful branding because it is controversial, and a good brand fans the flames of controversy. Read earlier posts about branding principles and the example of Death Cigarettes.


Pick strategic partners.
So if your market is teens and 20-somethings, who do you think would make great business partners? How about Virgin Mobile, (Sir Richard Branson), Roots and Much Music?

Richard Branson becomes the celebrity spokesperson, Roots sells T shirts emblazoned with the edgy slogan and Much Music TV personalities trumpet the message.

Flick off you say?

Yeah, hard to imagine. But that would be a powerful marketing campaign. Well, it is real and it was launched this week in Canada. Imagine that - a bold new marketing campaign to help our dear planet earth started here in Canada. Only in Canada you say - pity!

Flick off. It’s official. The marketing campaign to save us from Global Warming is alive and well in Canada.

The partners in this program are Virgin Mobile, MuchMusic, Roots, Environmental Defence and the province of Ontario. (My kudos to the provincial government for their willingness to invest in such a bold and controversial program.)


Flick Off Summary
For teens and 20-somethings, Flick off, be more energy-responsible.
For older folks bothered by the language – get real and think about the big picture.
For business owners and marketers - a practical marketing lesson.


Sounds like a win all around. Please flick off.


George Torok
Power Marketing

Do you ask for feedback from your customers?

What do you do when you receive feedback that you don’t like?

Do you defend?

Do you discount?

Or do you say, ‘Thank you for your feedback’?

You don’t need to change your business every time you receive negative feedback. However, you should consider what you hear. And you must thank your customers for their input. And thanking is not the same as agreeing.

Ask for and acknowledge customer feedback.


George Torok
Power Marketing

According to a study by Marketing Sherpa the $16.9 Billion Promo Products Industry is quietly raking in nearly three times more ad dollars than internet advertising.

Why is that? Their research shows that 76.1% of the consumers studied said they could remember the brand name of a company that gave them a promotional item in the past year -- versus 53% who could remember a TV or print ad from the past month, and even fewer recalled an online ad from the past week.
Promotional products are an old standby in our hungry-for-attention marketing world. Your name and logo on a golf shirt, coffee cup, or portfolio might get you more sales then spending the same money on Internet ads.

A friend of mine, Rick Maude, who owns a promotional products business, assures me that his business keeps growing. It seems that the race is on – to offer something new and different to put your logo on and get your message out there.

If it has been a while since you looked at putting your name on promotional products – view the online catalogue at http://adplus.promocan.com/

Marketing Sherpa, Inc. is a research firm publishing Case Studies, benchmark data, and how-to information for marketing, advertising, and public relations professionals.

You can visit their library of articles, reports and case studies at
http://library.marketingsherpa.com/search.cfm

You can view the summaries and some of the full articles free. They are, after all, a research firm. I do enjoy many of their case studies.

George Torok

I invite you to visit my recently revised site http://www.powermarketing.ca/