Geoff Dillon - Marketing, PR, Strategy Blog

What's Hurting Marketing...

...is someone’s always trying to shorten the cycle. To hurry the result. To break through the clutter immediately. To get people to “buy now”.

Marketing by it’s nature is not always that good at the short term. Sure there’s a place for direct response, “buy now” marketing that gives you immediate results, but that only works in the context of some form of broader marketing program that slowly, methodically, deliberately gets your name associated with the position you want in the market. You can't just run an ad an expect immediate results.

Case in point - on the surface things that appear to be short cycle results from marketing really aren’t.

Ron Popeil of the famed direct marketing company Ronco sold millions and millions of dollars worth of merchandise in 30 minute infomercials – think chicken rotisseries, bald spot spray for men, etc.

But at least part of the customer decision to “buy now” within that short 30 minute window was the much longer term brand building that Ronco had done.

While impressed by the sight of a moist juicy chicken spinning around in a Ronco rotisserie, the viewer was thinking “I know that guy, he’s familiar, he’s established, he’s been around. I trust him.” It was those underlying thoughts that allowed the viewer to react to the short term impulse to “buy now”.

As marketing and client interaction increasingly become two way dialogues instead of one way broadcasts, the need to nurse potential customers along the spectrum of a relationship is more important than ever.

The irony here is that the rate of change in the market is faster today than ever before. For some, that translates to the need for marketing to work faster, to deliver results sooner, and make an immediate impact. 

It may feel counterintuitive, but rushing to the “buy now” decision with your marketing can hurt your credibility, and that’s costly in a noisy market where your brand name and identity need to have meaning for people. The world may be going faster, but your marketing may ultimately need to be a bit slower and more methodical to be effective. 

 

 

Paying Someone to Hurt your Brand

You can advertise all you want and send the craftiest press releases to help further your brand in the market, but the customer experience is where the rubber meets the road.

 

Recently my wife and I visited a local Lexus dealership to look at a pre owned Lexus SUV. Having not been to a Lexus dealer before, I expected a somewhat higher level of service – after all, even the pre-owned Lexus SUVs aren’t exactly cheap.

 

What I got was the stereotypical used car experience - a salesperson who pulled out all of the tricks from the 80s to try to sell me a car (think “Larry” from Three’s Company):

 

- he told us that we could have $1000 off the price of the car, but only if we bought by 5pm that day

- during the test drive, he invested considerable energy in putting down other cars and dealers

- when we arrived back from the test drive, he checked his pocket and conveniently found he was out of business cards, so we had to walk to his desk inside to get one

- once there, he naturally gets us to sit down and starts writing up an offer sheet (unsolicited, of course)

- on our way out, he diligently pursued us to get our name and phone number so he could call us later that day

 

 

I could go on, but you get the idea.

 

In about 15 minutes, this salesperson had managed to change my perception of Lexus from a favourable one to “just like everyone else” or maybe worse. And nobody pays a premium for that.

 

The irony here is that this guy is on the payroll. This Lexus dealer is paying him a small salary plus commission for delivering a customer experience that clearly doesn’t jive with their marketing message. He’s getting paid to hurt the brand.

 

So here’s the question:

 

If you’re the owner of the Lexus dealership, are you paying him to sell cars his way, or your way?

 

If you’re the head of Lexus corporate, same question.

 

If the answers are different, I’d say you’re wasting a LOT of marketing dollars.

 

Breaking the Chocolate Almond Cycle

Why is it that almost every community organization trying to raise money resorts to going to door to door selling overpriced chocolate covered almonds?

 

It’s an epidemic in my neighbourhood.

 

Sure, I guess you’ll hit a certain number of homes where the person at the door just happens to have a craving, and so they’ll pay the $5 to get a box knowing that the gross overpayment is going (in part) to a helpful organization in the community. Others will buy out of the goodness of their hearts.

 

But really - there’s got to be a better way to do this for all parties.

 

How about selling services where 100% of the money goes to charity, as opposed to only a portion of the price when you are selling a product?

 

How about $15 to cut my lawn this week, or $10 to Windex all of my ground floor windows (takes 10 minutes…but how often do most homeowners do this?)

 

How about raking the leaves, or shoveling the snow?

 

I’d pay for it. Many homeowners would, because it gives them some of their time back and the money goes to a good cause. You can probably come up with 5 other odd jobs that people just don’t have time for, but need to get done. (weeding the lawn, for example)

 

I bet you’d net more funds for your charity in the end, and people might actually look forward to your next visit. 

You want a new engine with that oil change?

Measuring the wrong thing can be deadly for your business.

Everytime I drive into my local drive through oil change retailer, I feel like I’ve walked into a low budget electronics store where everyone is on 100% commission.

For those of you who haven’t had the experience, while the technician is changing your oil, the other employees come to your window two or three times to offer you additional services like a fuel injector cleaning, radiator flush, and so on. These services are typically overpriced and your car may or may not actually need them.

Now I’m all for having employees offer multiple services to clients to drive incremental revenue -- but their dogged, relentless pursuit of that one extra sale in the in oil change bay is probably pushing some customers not to come back. 

It makes me wonder if some businesses are measuring/teaching/rewarding the wrong things.

In this case, the local oil change franchise seems to be measuring:

Incremental sales revenue per car, achieved by aggressive sales tactics

Perhaps they should be measuring:

Incremental sales revenue per car, achieved by aggressive sales tactics

MINUS

Lost oil change revenue from clients who made one visit in the last 12 months, refused extra services, and did not return.

I wonder if there’s a profitable niche out there for car owners who actually want just an oil change when they go to get their oil changed?

The lesson I took away from my experience is that businesses need to watch more than just one metric to gauge overall success.

That, and customers have long memories.

Measuring the wrong thing can be deadly for your business.

Everytime I drive into my local drive through oil change retailer, I feel like I’ve walked into a low budget electronics store where everyone is on 100% commission.

For those of you who haven’t had the experience, while the technician is changing your oil, the other employees come to your window two or three times to offer you additional services like a fuel injector cleaning, radiator flush, and so on. These services are typically overpriced and your car may or may not actually need them.

Now I’m all for having employees offer multiple services to clients to drive incremental revenue -- but their dogged, relentless pursuit of that one extra sale in the in oil change bay is probably pushing some customers not to come back. 

It makes me wonder if some businesses are measuring/teaching/rewarding the wrong things.

In this case, the local oil change franchise seems to be measuring:

Incremental sales revenue per car, achieved by aggressive sales tactics

Perhaps they should be measuring:

Incremental sales revenue per car, achieved by aggressive sales tactics

MINUS

Lost oil change revenue from clients who made one visit in the last 12 months, refused extra services, and did not return.

I wonder if there’s a profitable niche out there for car owners who actually want just an oil change when they go to get their oil changed?

The lesson I took away from my experience is that businesses need to watch more than just one metric to gauge overall success.

That, and customers have long memories.

Selling More to your Existing Customers

One of the golden rules of marketing is that increasing sales among existing customers is more profitable and more likely to be successful than pitching to the mass market.

But you have to know your customer first, and know how much they might be willing to buy. Otherwise you risk making them a lousy offer.

Case in point - last April I went online and bought two tickets to a Jays game.

About a week after the game, I received a call from a friendly Blue Jays telephone sales rep, who left me a voice mail about a special offer. Evidently they had my name from the original credit card purchase and were prospecting their list, like any good marketer would.

I was intrigued. I wondered if I would be able to get a discount on a future game, or possibly better seats for the same price. It was early in the season after all, and there were still plenty of unsold tickets for those April and May games.

Here's the offer I got when I called back – buy tickets for 10 additional games and get a small discount on the face value of the tickets.

Were they serious?

There was so much wrong with this offer:

• As a one time customer, was I really going to commit to 10 additional games at two tickets per game? They were asking me to go from spending $100 to spending $1,000. That's a massive jump.

• The discount was very modest and the offer was available on their website – I'd hardly call it an “offer”, and it certainly wasn't exclusive.

• There was no alternative offer available. Once the rep knew I wasn't going to commit to 10 games, there should have been an alternate 2 or 3 game offer available. Instead they went with an all or nothing offer – either the guy buys 10 times what he originally bought, or he buys nothing.

Your existing customers are your best prospects for buying from you again. But getting them to buy more is like climbing a ladder. It is next to impossible to do unless you take one step at a time.

When making offers to your existing customers (especially new ones), consider what the next logical step would be in their relationships with you, and make them a good offer to take that step.

I would have gladly taken the next step and committed to one more Jays game, maybe 2 in response to a good offer.

Not 10.

One of the golden rules of marketing is that increasing sales among existing customers is more profitable and more likely to be successful than pitching to the mass market.

But you have to know your customer first, and know how much they might be willing to buy. Otherwise you risk making them a lousy offer.

Case in point - last April I went online and bought two tickets to a Jays game.

About a week after the game, I received a call from a friendly Blue Jays telephone sales rep, who left me a voice mail about a special offer. Evidently they had my name from the original credit card purchase and were prospecting their list, like any good marketer would.

I was intrigued. I wondered if I would be able to get a discount on a future game, or possibly better seats for the same price. It was early in the season after all, and there were still plenty of unsold tickets for those April and May games.

Here's the offer I got when I called back – buy tickets for 10 additional games and get a small discount on the face value of the tickets.

Were they serious?

There was so much wrong with this offer:

• As a one time customer, was I really going to commit to 10 additional games at two tickets per game? They were asking me to go from spending $100 to spending $1,000. That's a massive jump.

• The discount was very modest and the offer was available on their website – I'd hardly call it an “offer”, and it certainly wasn't exclusive.

• There was no alternative offer available. Once the rep knew I wasn't going to commit to 10 games, there should have been an alternate 2 or 3 game offer available. Instead they went with an all or nothing offer – either the guy buys 10 times what he originally bought, or he buys nothing.

Your existing customers are your best prospects for buying from you again. But getting them to buy more is like climbing a ladder. It is next to impossible to do unless you take one step at a time.

When making offers to your existing customers (especially new ones), consider what the next logical step would be in their relationships with you, and make them a good offer to take that step.

I would have gladly taken the next step and committed to one more Jays game, maybe 2 in response to a good offer.

Not 10.