Are you in Engineering or Marketing?

How well do you know your product? Can you describe in perfect technical detail the full operation of your product, and can you provide the complete history of both your company and your product? Could you write the definitive book regarding every small change that has occurred over the lifespan of your company or product? If I wanted to find the absolute expert regarding your product, would your name come up first in a Google search, with your picture, and you smiling and waving?

Congratulations, you are an engineer. If your name tag or business card says, “Marketing”, you may be in trouble.

There’s nothing wrong with solid product knowledge. The last thing any company needs is poorly informed sales professionals, that cannot answer some level of technical questions that may arise, without picking up the phone and calling the home office... However, there’s only one person that is so deeply interested in your product that they can tell you every single small detail regarding it, and that’s usually the engineer that designed it. Salespeople, and marketing campaigns, occasionally fail because they forget that the ability to describe every detail of the product does not make a successful sales pitch.

When we become experts in the field, we sometimes forget that our target audience isn’t an expert. The customer is looking to the business to help them solve a problem or fill a need. Chances are, they seriously don’t care about every small detail, seeing as these minor details probably have very little to do with solving the customer’s problem or filling the customer’s needs.

It is the role of a sales person, and a marketing campaign, to inform the customer that your product can best solve their problems or fill their needs, without getting bogged down in the minor details. In one on one sales, this approach is easy; you simply say, “How can I help you?”, listen to the problem, and provide answers that can solve that customer’s needs. The more questions that the sales professional asks, the better they can answer to the customer’s individual needs. When you are working on an advertising campaign, you don’t have the one person that you can turn to and say, “How can I help you?” You have to assume you know the question. The trick is answering the right question, without it being asked of you.

Successful marketing provides brand identity, showcases the product or company as the best solution to the unasked question, and does so in a way that is memorable to the target audience. If your message is simply about brand identity and being memorable, you have only partially completed the overall goal. Spend some time finding out what the unasked questions are. Mine your social media to learn these questions. Ask your customers in one on one situations for their answers.

Treat your engineers well, since they provide your product. Just remember, don’t send them out into the field to do all of your sales work, too.

True Mobile Site Versus a Mobile Face-lift

I read a lot of marketing blogs, and recently, I’ve noticed a huge increase in something we’ve been talking about for awhile: Mobile Websites. All the stats point to people accessing websites on mobile more often than on desktops by 2013, and so the race is on to get your site redone. The research I’ve either done or read shows that around 25% of websites are optimized for mobile.

The question that I hear most often is, “Do I need a completely different website, or can I just put in new code that changes my page so it looks better on a mobile?” Is a mobile website simply a carbon copy of your traditional website, that simply loads faster by stripping out the glitz and glamor? Does it need to cut out certain features, and limit your website to a few pages? If that’s your goal, then chances are, you can create a mobile page for short dollars. If your goal is to simply change the look of your site so that it can load on a mobile phone without having to wait forever, and to avoid the pinch/drag/zoom nightmare that is trying to fit 17 inch displays onto a 4 inch screen, then sure, just reformat your CSS and you’re well on your way.

In my opinion, I would assume that the reason a customer goes to a mobile website versus going to a desktop version is not simply because the only device handy is said mobile. I think a mobile user is looking for something a little different. A mobile user’s goal is to get off of your website as quickly as possible, and still accomplish the reason for visiting in the first place. They aren’t typically there to browse.

For example, let’s look at a pizza place. If I’m sitting at my desktop, there’s a good chance I want to look at a menu, figure out what I want, and then pick up the phone and call. Ordering online is neat, but I don’t want to have to fill out 12 different pages of forms, especially if I’m planning on paying cash. However, if I’m on my mobile, and I’m looking at the menu, then there’s a good chance I’d find it convenient if I could simply check off some boxes, and be told it’ll be ready in 15 minutes. I’m already on the phone, since most data packages don’t allow for web surfing and phone use at the same time. Also, I don’t like having to figure out the perfect angle that I can hold the phone, talk into it, and read the screen, all while listening to you read back the order, etc. My arm only bends in so many different places, and unless you have eyes like a gecko, you’re not reading the webpage, holding the phone to your ear and mouth, and carrying on a conversation where details matter.

If your website’s main purpose is to sell products online, you need to make sure that it is easy to sell on your mobile device. Many times, the store software that works great on a desktop platform does not translate well to mobile. Avoiding extra steps is critical for mobile users. Setting up stores that can tap into other existing data, such as tying into the Facebook API, enables you to capture a lot of the user information, without forcing the customer to fill out a long login form.

A mobile website should be high on your list of things to get working for marketing purposes. Before deciding how you want to create your page, spend some quality time figuring out what type of mobile site would benefit your customer the best.

Can you really fix my problem at a lower cost?

Our answer is yes. Over the course of the past 50 years, the advertising industry has transformed to encompass all new media that fall under the advertising umbrella. If you recently haven’t reviewed your marketing strategies and costs when working with an agency, you should. You might be losing a fortune.

I read an article today by a former head of creative at a major ad agency that read how he had witnessed a large amount of frustration by Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) caused by how their agencies charge for creative and account services. The author says he had an epiphany and that maybe charging by the FTE (full time employee) should be a thing of the past. He states, “the fact that agencies charge more money when they put more people (or say they do) onto a project,” is wrong. No kidding.

I have always felt that the standard advertising agency model he wrote about is broken. In this model, ultimately agencies are compensated greater when deadlines are not met or only sub-par work is delivered. I’ll explain.

Let’s say that your agency presents you concepts for a new campaign. Its employees have been working on storyboards, scripts and ads for weeks while billing you for the time. You take a look and see nothing you like and say to the agency, “I need to see more concepts.”

If the agency uses this standard model, ultimately, it just hit the lottery. Now it can go back and create additional campaigns and of course bill you more money. If the agency presented you great campaigns in the first presentation they lose potential income. The agency is being rewarded for delivering inferior work.

I’ve always wondered why CMOs put up with type of agency model.

Now you’re probably saying, “This isn’t the relationship I have with my agency. I would never agree to this type of arrangement.”

The truth is you might have a similar type of relationship but don’t realize you do. Are your invoices always much higher than the initial quote? Are hidden fees popping up each month? If you answered yes, let me tell you how Davis Advertising can help.

At Davis we can operate using a fixed pricing model to help businesses of any size. This model has our clients pay a locked-in price or a pre-determined monthly fee (not retainer) that covers all required services for the completion of a project or campaign. This fixed pricing model would penalize us for creating campaigns that were not accepted by our clients at the first presentation. At Davis Advertising, if our first presentation is not great we will not be compensated for future concepts. Clients are invoiced only once we get it right. Not only does this method make us work more efficiently, this method is fairer to our clients and saves them time. So when you ask your agency if it can fix your problems and save you money be sure to also ask which model is used.

By Andy Davis

Defining Customer Expectations

There are certain phrases that are overused all of the time. I remember sitting in a meeting, getting ready to hear about innovative, out-of-the-box ways to exceed customer expectations, and I waited to see what it is, with almost baited breath. The answer? A coupon. OH MY! Yup, you blew away the customer with that!

“Exceeding Customer Expectations” is a great idea. It’s a phrase often times mentioned in staff meetings, to rally a sales force before a big event, or in board meetings prior to a new campaign launch. Unfortunately, it is most often used as a euphemism for giving good service. This more common usage has turned the phrase into a cliche, and it’s time for us to take this phrase back. In order turn this motto into a functional call to action, we need to re-examine how and why we use it.

Before you can exceed customer expectations, you should probably try to figure out what the customer expects. Of course, you can go with the old generic standbys, like “The customer expects great service!” or “The customer expects a friendly atmosphere!” The problem with these general, all encompassing “Expectations” is that they are idealistic. It’s hard to fix real shortcomings with idealistic, sweeping statements.

Realistically speaking, a customer may expect to be able to walk into a store, pick up an item, and pay for it in cash, without having to provide the customer’s email address, zip code, and or telephone number to complete the transaction. Perhaps a customer’s expectation is to schedule an appointment at 2:30 and the services starts at 2:30. I think it is a reasonable expectation for a customer to be able to complete a sentence before the sales associate interrupts with a question.

So, before you can exceed expectations, you need to be able to meet them. The only way to meet them is to drill down, ask the right questions, and think like a customer. When I was training sales associates, I always made the new employees go mystery shop elsewhere, to see the purchase experience from our competition, and see what it felt like to be a customer. It is impossible to meet a customer’s experience without knowing the possible frustration firsthand that they may feel.

Once you’ve met the customer expectations, then, and only then, can you try to exceed them.

For market research into what your customer expects, and for an analytic approach to creating better marketing and advertising, contact us today.