We all like good surprises: things like when Zappos decides to upgrade your shipping to Next Day delivery without saying anything, or getting a 20% discount just because the cashier at Sports Basement recognizes your face.
Those are the little things that make your brand grow. Online or off, brands that offer constant nice gestures to their customers out of the blue — regardless of how small or big the gestures are — are often the ones with the most loyal fans/followers/customers.
Beware of bad surprises.
Bad surprises are things that could slowly offset your marketing effort. They are the by-product of a brand’s selfish thinking, and they are almost always supported and justified within the confines of the company.
Little things like sending out one extra email message every week to announce your weekly specials when your customers only signed up for your newsletter. Sure, it doesn’t break any rules, and there may or may not be any immediate impact. But remember, it only takes one bad day from your customer to add your name to his SPAM filter, and once you are in, you are not coming out, ever.
Warren Buffet once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently.”
I am guessing not many of us could afford losing 20 years in today’s (business) world.
Take a look at the chart below. It should not be surprising to find tech companies such as IBM, HP or Cisco in debt. You could never have too much cash on hand, for future acquisitions or whatever. Or perhaps money is too cheap nowadays not to be borrowing.
Notice the two names missing on the list: Apple and Google. Both of them are in fact debt free. Perhaps you could also use this chart to separate the “new” from the “old” in the tech world.
As far as marketing goes, some lazy marketers would simply go where all the people are. Especially when it’s so easily accessible, and FREE (or a lot cheaper than any other mass media). Today, that place is Social Media.
Email was the same way, but not anymore. As Gmail gets better and better with its SPAM filter, I now only get messages which I choose to receive. The rest of them no longer have a chance to interrupt me.
Eventually, Social Networks are going to have its own SPAM filters that works as well as Gmail’s. When that day comes, the businesses that works hard on publishing anticipated, interesting and meaningful content to their audiences will receive all the attention, and ultimately win.
Interesting phrase, isn’t it? Think back before the “Internet age”, how did we used to go find it? We look for clothes in malls. We look for cars in dealerships. We look for jobs in classifieds. Movies in theaters, books in libraries, and music on radio.
The differences, though, are: 1) we might or might not find exactly what we are looking for, 2) we might or might not have all the information necessarily available for us to make the best possible decision/choice, and 3) we might or might not be able to find it on time.
Today, the phrase “Let me go find it” simply means typing some words into that box on Google. BAM! Everything you ever needed to know on the topic you are searching is all there, for free, and most of the time, displayed within fractions of a second.
Success will follow, if you also manage to turn your customers’ “might or might not” into “solved, in less than one second”.
I don’t care what people say about TV ads. Call it whatever you want: an ad, a presentation, a sales pitch. A good piece of advertisement is something that touches your heart and sticks with you (for a little while at least), regardless of its format, length or source. Like the video above.
Don’t offend anyone, if you are not ready to be great.
Should you have any doubts about who the next king of communication is, check out the chart below. Social media surpassed email in both the number of users and minutes spent.
I think we all knew it was inevitable, but most of us didn’t expect it to be so soon.
The so-called “communication experts” are a dime a dozen.
The Web makes the communication process a breeze. You can talk to your customers, and they can tell you exactly what they want. As more and more people get involved in all the social networks, simply being able to operate these vehicles in the social network space won’t be nearly enough anymore.
However, your value will increase exponentially if you have a) the ability digest the information that you receive, and b) the courage to make the difficult choices.
Heretics who can decide for/against the crowd are priceless.
Businesses sometimes get pushed toward the middle, and that’s exactly where you don’t want to be.
Firefox used to be the browser of my choice, but then Google Chrome came along. Chrome wasn’t a better browser than Firefox, and it still isn’t now. But it is so much faster than Firefox that I simply couldn’t ignore it.
From my perspective, Firefox now is the browser in the middle: I use Chrome for my everyday browsing need because I enjoy how fast it is. And if something doesn’t work correctly on Chrome, I use IE because even though it’s bulky and slower, it still is the most popular browser in the world. So chances are, most developers won’t forget to test their applications on IE. Therefore, most applications will run correctly on IE.
As for Firefox, it isn’t as fast as Chrome because with the Add-ons I have, and it isn’t as reliable when it comes to running web applications as IE. The value of the product is reduced dramatically.
So next time you evaluate your competition, don’t always rate them on every competitive edge you see as important — they don’t have to beat you on everything. Be alarmed if one of the features they offer beats you by a landslide, because that alone is capable of redefining all the standards for your customers.
…or retweet or compliment or recommend a brand that impresses you. And you should do that more often than you ignore the bad ones.
Why?
A bad brand is a bad brand for one simple reason: they don’t care. So even if you complain about them, loudly, since they don’t care, they will probably continue to do whatever it is that they do. And your voice won’t make much of a difference.
On the other hand, because the nature of the Internet amplifies greatness, if we can increase the popularity of those brands who truly care about us, and help them set new standards and rewrite the rules of their industry, it could possibly change the entire industry. At the very least, it will force the “copycat companies” to raise their bars and innovate to some degree.
Look at it this way: wouldn’t it be much better for us, the consumers, if every company can invent products like the iPhone and provide customer services like Zappos?
Facebook may have surpassed Google as the most popular website (in terms of unique visitors), but the number that really matters is: Revenue Per Unique Visitor.
That is where Google really separates itself from everyone else online — Not only do they have the traffic, they are also really good at turning the traffic into money.
For websites that are looking to turn a profit, it is obviously vital to figure out a way to turn attention into revenue. In other words, how will you make money? It is important (and much more cost effective) to add possible answers to your platform during the early stages of your designing process, rather than wait until your website is finished.
15+ years? I am not sure if anyone has that. Maybe some people do, but the more important question would be: Is it truly useful?
Back in March 2008, Facebook wasn’t the most popular social network in the world yet; MySpace was. Today, after 2 years, it’s crushing every single one of its competitors in terms of unique visitors per month.
The founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was 11 years old 15 years ago. I think it’s safe to assume that he had zero experience with online marketing.
So perhaps the length of your work history isn’t really that important. Maybe most recruiters are simply being lazy to use it as a measurement of talent because it’s easier to make a decision that way.
“Hey, this guy has 15 years of working experience, so he must be better than the guy with 5 years of experience.”
15 years of experience or 1 year of experience repeated 15 times? Hard to say.
Work, to leave a legacy. I have said it before, and I am sticking to it.
Luxury is basically another way of describing paying extra for something (probably) unnecessary in order to stand out.
Exchanging money for attention, envy, stature, whatever.
If you happen to be in the luxury market, the problem usually isn’t how much you can charge for your product or service. Instead, it’s a matter of how special you can make your customers feel.
When cutting cost is no longer an option for you, maybe stepping into the luxury market isn’t such a bad idea after all.
Netflix has the following written on the sleeves of their DVD’s:
Problem playing your DVD?
Try gently washing with liquid soap or window cleaner.
Still can’t play this DVD? Get an immediate replacement at www.netflix.com/replacement
We’re sorry for the inconvenience.
Lost an envelope?
Return two movies in one envelope.
Lost a sleeve?
Return two DVDs in one sleeve.
Two things I think you can take away from this for your customer service:
#1) Apologize, even if it’s not your fault. It just makes your customers feel better.
#2) Offer quick, painless solutions if you can. They work way better than perfectly constructed arguments in a press release of why it isn’t your responsibility to fix the problems.
Permission is a funny thing. Most businesses think that they have it when their customers don’t say “no”. But real permission actually needs your customers to say “yes”.
Example:
You have permission when someone signs up to get your RSS feed.
You don’t have permission when you trick someone to give you their email addresses, then use them to send out SPAM messages. Yes, the opposite of permission is in fact, SPAM.
The real question you should ask yourself is this: “once we stop sending out [whatever], will it be missed by our audience?”
If not all, at least some of your marketing resources and effort should be spending on publishing.
Every website should be a publisher today, with all the blog posts, Youtube videos, Flickr pictures, Facebook fan pages, Twitter tweets, whatever.
The key thing to remember though, is that you are not publishing to introduce your new product or announce some promotion.
Instead, you are publishing relevant content to your audiences with their permission so that you can turn their attention into interest, interset into trust, and eventually, trust into fandom.
