Promise Marketing Blog

Archive for the ‘customer experience’ Category

Know Your Audience (Especially if You Accuse Them of Having Rosacea)

Thursday, March 24, 2011 —

I was recently mall-walking with a friend when we were approached by someone working at one of the center kiosks. Normally we would have walked right by, but we were just there to walk and he was offering us hand lotion. Hard to turn down, right?

After a successful hand scrub, hand lotion, and single fingernail shine, he looked at my face and asked, “So, what do you do for the Rosacea on your face?” It was blunt. It was a question. It was supposed to be engaging. But I was taken aback.

“Ummm I don’t have Rosacea.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, your face is red. That’s Rosacea.”

Um, this is winter in Wisconsin. It was cold. The wind was blowing quite briskly. I hadn’t worn a jacket while walking from the car to the mall. I also hadn’t put foundation on that morning. So, yeah my face was reddish. But do you really need to point that out? We stopped to try your HAND products. Don’t point out things that you think need to be improved on the rest of me. And, in my opinion, he should have worked his way there differently if I DID have Rosacea. If he had asked questions like, “oh, do you do anything to calm the redness in your face?” I may have been more interested in what he was trying to sell me.

Would this back and forth have insulted you? I mean, I was (albeit amusedly) insulted enough to ignore everything he said after that point. As soon as he jumped from our hands to my face without us broaching the topic, I was done and tuned out while he went over pricing for all the products we tried, some of which were actually pretty awesome.

My friend, while being just as taken aback as I was, thought his ploy might work on some women. She said that a lot of women purchase a product after being insulted to a point of realizing they need to improve something about themselves in order to look better.

But if you are selling to people who are not like that, you can’t backtrack after an insult.

With all that being said, please take the time to know your audience. And if you are in a place where you are trying to sell a product face to red-face, please use care in how you ask questions that will eventually lead to a comment about your product.

Think I’m wrong? (Not about knowing your audience, that’s a given.) If you think an insult works, I’d love to hear about it. Or if you have your own story about a time when you were insulted enough to be turned off of a product, please share that also!

Erica Gordon is a Marketing Associate at Clear Verve and also works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. She recently received her Communication MA from Marquette University. Follow Erica on Twitter @erica_g.

Tags: Communication, customer experience, marketing, Target Audience

Thank you

Friday, March 18, 2011 —

Sometimes in our marketing efforts we can forget the simple things – like the simple act of saying thank you to customers or clients. When was the last time you sent a quick thank you out to your clients for their business or referral? It doesn’t have to be a long drawn out “process” to do this. It can be through simple ways like:

Including a thank you in your email newsletter
When you meet with clients, simply stating thank you sincerely after your discussion and mentioning how much you appreciate the opportunity to work with them
Thank clients on anniversaries of working together, your business anniversary, for referrals, or advice from others in your field
Start a random acts of thank you effort and each week send out a special hand written thank you note (this is a great post from Girvin Branding on the power of a hand written note) or something out of the ordinary to thank clients
Instead of holiday gifts during Christmas – consider a Thanksgiving “giving thanks” message to all clients

Our blog has been up and running now for over a year and we appreciate everyone that reads it. We want to keep our Promise Marketing idea fuel going so if you ever have comments/suggestions, please respond.

Susan Schoultz is Client Service Director at Clear Verve Marketing and works with clients to plan, create and execute marketing campaigns. Follow her on Twitter as @clearverve2.

Tags: customer experience, simple marketing, thank you

The Commercial that Stuck

Thursday, October 14, 2010 —

Most of us can remember really funny commercials. Or really annoying ones. But what about commercials that take a different route? I got very attached to one of those commercials back in 2005. Sony launched 250,000 bouncy balls into the streets of San Francisco and filmed it from all different angles for a Bravia commercial:

I’ve been watching it over and over (and over) again lately. It’s so great! My consistent desire to watch it made me wonder why it’s so great. Here’s what I came up with: the colors are vibrant, the lively movement is pleasing to the eye and the music adds to the overall idea that you stumbled upon something you don’t see everyday. And it finds a way to connect to the viewer without demanding the purchase of a television. It says “your TV-watching experience can be this clear and beautiful” using color, movement and sound, not words. The commercial is also timeless – taking advantage of gravity will never go out of style. In my opinion, commercials that manage to do all of this are unique because so many commercials (while still wonderful) take a more direct route.

Sony truly let consumers see what their Bravia brings to the television-watching experience table. I haven’t been in the market for a flat screen TV since watching the ad back in 2005, but when I do reach that point, I will definitely remember the commercial that has become a permanent fixture in my mind and look into purchasing a Sony Bravia before making any final decisions.

On a side note, after delving into my wonderful five-year Sony commercial experience, I discovered that Nissan recently took Sony’s bouncing ball idea and made it their own. With bowling balls. Somebody was definitely paying attention to that Sony experience:

Are there any commercials that have stuck with you for years? What about them makes you love them so much?

Erica Gordon is a Marketing Associate at Clear Verve and works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. She recently received her Communication MA from Marquette University. Follow Erica on Twitter @erica_g.

Tags: Blog, branding, customer experience, marketing

Waving Buh-Bye to the Wave: One POV Regarding the End of Google Wave

Monday, August 9, 2010 —

People have options aplenty when connecting with people online. Email, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (yes, it still exists), Skype, blogs, photo galleries, instant message applications and Google Wave, the impetus of this post. People who happen to use all of these tools tend to use each one for something different – besides the overall reason of communication.

In my experience, people like and need to have their worlds divided into multiple categories: work, family and social life. Within each of these divisions, there are more separations: book clubs, sports teams, children’s play dates, longtime friends, new friends, guy friends, girl friends, online acquaintances, mentors etc. The list is endless. But the point of the list is that it shows people are inherently dividing up parts of life. Google Wave was trying to bring everything together and, in my opinion, that might have made people uncomfortable.

As convenient as it might be to have multiple ways of communicating in one place, we already have that idea with computers or handheld smart phones. While it is a great idea for Google to recycle parts of Google Wave as they figure out how to redevelop their ideas, it was time for the official Google Wave to go. People have already personalized ways to pull their different worlds together without meshing them together. And, in most cases I’m guessing it’s without the use or creation of a high tech program. It might just consist of having a system or order of communication amongst the different groups.

Overall, I completely understand what Google Wave was trying to do and I am impressed by what it looked like. I just think that what they developed can work better in separate communities as an intranet of sorts for the time being. Pulling everyone’s online communities together might be a little too much too soon. Your thoughts?

More on the end of Google Wave:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html

Erica Gordon is currently interning at Clear Verve and works part-time at a Milwaukee area nonprofit. She recently received her Communication MA from Marquette University. Follow Erica on Twitter @erica_g.

Tags: Google, marketing, Social Media

Details Matter in Customer Experience

Monday, March 8, 2010 —

Experts say we are not supposed to sweat the small stuff in life, but lately I have been surprised by my experiences with several businesses and their lack of attention to detail.

A Restaurant

Most of the time when I visit a restaurant, the service is satisfactory. I was baffled by a recent visit to a local restaurant that offered a new smaller portion menu (side note: I’m very happy for the small portion menus as I could use the portion control help!).

I placed my order, and after about 10 minutes the waitress came back and said that the item I wanted couldn’t be served because they did not have the special martini glasses they were supposed to serve it in. My response to this was, “Can’t you serve it on a regular plate?” This seemed like a logical thing to me. The waitress then told me that the restaurant’s General Manager said they had to stick to exactly how the item was listed on the menu. No exceptions. Huh? To me, this made no sense. Especially since there was not a picture of the item I ordered in the menu. I didn’t even know it was supposed to be served in a martini glass and honestly, would have found it easier to eat off a plate. Seems to me this restaurant has focused on the wrong detail here – what about making the customer happy?

A Hotel

During a recent trip to Northern Wisconsin, we stayed at a hotel & resort that was very nice for the area. We were interested in seeing what was going on that weekend, so we looked at the hotel information “binder” in our room expecting to find that information in there. We did find what was “happening” in the area – last June! Luckily, the front desk was able to help us. Hmm, seems like an important detail was overlooked here as well.

Another Restaurant

When I ordered take-out at a new, local restaurant a few weeks ago, I had to search in several places before I found the phone number for this new restaurant because it was not on their web site. When we picked up our order, I brought it to the attention of the waitress as a helpful note. I recently checked their web site and there still is no phone number listed. Guess my tip didn’t reach the right person.

Don’t Overlook Key Details!

Sure details can get missed from time to time. We are all human. However, we have to make sure we take a step back and look at our organizations through our customers’ point of view. Small details can annoy your customers and turn into negative word of mouth. It used to be said that unsatisfied customers tell five other people about negative experiences. With the use of social media today, one person can easily tell thousands. Bruce Temkin from Forrester shared some new research in his customer experience blog on a study that was conducted with 4,500 individuals and how they share experiences with others. It is something that is definitely worth checking out.

When people are vocal about bad experiences with your company or organization, it is great opportunity to learn, make things right, and engage with your customers. To learn about these experiences in social media or the Web, have you set up tools to track mentions of your business/organization? If not, you can learn more about this in an upcoming blog post.