by Scott JeffreyOct 20, 2010
People “get” what you’re feeling—consciously or not. If you don’t really care about your customers, they’ll be the first ones to know.
Great brands don’t just create meaningless slogans like “Customer Service Excellence”—they champion customer-centric values as a way of operating every aspect of their business.
These businesses excite us and make us happy to conduct business with them. It’s a symbiotic relationship between business and customer. The business provides products and services customers need and, in turn, the customers willingly patronize the business and support its existence.
Have many companies forgotten about the nature of business itself?
Outstanding businesses go above and beyond to better their customers’ lives:
- L.L. Bean wants you to be completely satisfied with your purchase. Don’t like the way a shirt holds up after a few years of use? Return it—L.L. Bean has no time limit on customer satisfaction.
- Online retailer Zappos offers free shipping both ways and a 365-day return policy.
- Along with one-click shopping, Amazon offers a Prime program that gives customers free 2-day shipping on most items and their Subscribe and Save feature offers both convenient and economical shopping.
- In addition to creating beautifully-designed products, Apple supports their Mac User Groups (MUGs) and Genius Bar to help educate their customers on how to better use their Apple products.
- Harley-Davidson sponsors HOG groups around the world and annual mega-rally events.
- Search and online advertising giant Google offers a robust offering of free services that help their customers in their daily lives from Google Reader, Google-411, Desktop Search, Google Earth, News Alerts, Google Calendar and Google Docs.
What does your business do to better serve its customers?
by Aaron ShieldsOct 07, 2010
“Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–base functions: marketing and innovation.”
– Peter Drucker
Pretty simple right? Yet how many companies truly “get it” and can execute with such clarity?
In the three and a half decades since Drucker summed up the goal of business and the tools necessary to achieve the goal in one sentence, business gurus have overcomplicated the purpose and processes of business and buried them so deep in heaps of tactical bullshit that’s its not surprising why so many businesses feel lost.
Marketing and innovation point to the same purpose: fulfilling the human biological and psychological needs of your customers in a way no one else can.
- Marketing helps you carve out a unique niche and constantly reinforce your unique offering and the emotional payout customers get from doing business with you (advertising, building brand communities, and social media are just touchpoints that should point to the same overall purpose).
- Innovation allows you to develop products that don’t just meet your but exceed the expectations of your customers, showing them that you both know what they want and care. Every time they purchase from you they fall in love with your brand again.
Being able to execute effective marketing and innovation requires a deep understanding of the customer that few businesses have.
Apple excels at surpassing customer needs. In a 1989 Inc. interview Steve Jobs said, “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new … If we’d given customers what they said they wanted, we’d have built a computer they have been happy with a year after we spoke to them—not something they want now.”
Only by having deep insights into your customers can you look into the future with a crystal ball and know what they want before they can tell you.
And, this is what Apple did with the iPhone. Despite hype that led to bloggers dubbing it the Jesus Phone, Apple was able to escape the pitfalls of disappointment by doing what it always does: excelling on the user interface and beautiful design. The beauty of the design inspired users own creativity and the ease of use enabled them to have an easy path towards achieving their goals. Unlike other multi-functional devices, Apple didn’t play to the business audiences, it played to their core group of customers who consume and create media.
Instead of other brands looking to the hearts of their businesses through the eyes of their best customers—their Brand Lovers—and predicting what their customers would want, they envied Apple, solidifying Apple’s reputation as the John Holmes of the technology industry (for a fun look from Fast Company at Apple envy check out The iWannabe Chronicles). Through their envy, they copied and mimicked what Apple did and attempted to intrude on Apple’s space, instead of carving out their own, leading to a barrage of copycats, the so-called “iPhone killers.” Nearly two years later, everyone is still trying to play catch up and the closest any killer came was to being a kamikaze with bad aim.
The most effective thing any of these phones have done is to create free advertising for Apple: as soon as you see one of the phones, what do you think? My guess is, “Apple iPhone.”
The latest entry into the foray and the one with the “best chance” (like we haven’t heard that before) is the Palm Pre. When the iPhone launched, Palm thought Apple would be hurt by returns. Since those mass returns never happened, Palm decided to hop on the bandwagon. The Palm Pre was released June 6th, 2009, two days before Apple made announcements at the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC).
The Palm Pre offered a multi-touch interface like Apple, but also using a sliding keyboard presumably because “that’s what people want” (like that’s really helped other “iPhone Killers) and cut and paste (which was released on the next update by Apple). The only unique offering has nothing to do with the phone itself: a charging device that works wireless, but that’s going to cost extra. And, to obviously compete with Apple on price, the phone will cost you $199, but only after a $100 mail-in rebate.
When the buzz of the Palm Pre died down, Apple was still, clearly, the industry leader because it continues to focus on its best customers’ needs with both is marketing and innovations, rather than imitating its competitors.
Next time you make a product or design a new marketing strategy, instead of trying to outdo the main competition look to what you do best and what your best customers love about you and innovate from there.
by Scott JeffreySep 15, 2010
At the 2009 Retailing Smarter symposium, CEO Tony Hsieh broke down the evolution of the Zappos brand:
1999: Selection (of shoes)
2003: Customer Service
2005: Culture and Core Values as their Platform
2007: Personal Emotional Connection
2009: Delivering Happiness
Several key take-aways for smart business people:
- A strong brand is constantly evolving, but not changing directions. This is critical. You probably don’t want or need to re-invent your brand, but you also can’t be stagnant. (It’s also interesting to see how a brand’s logo can evolve over time.)
- Strong brands tend to move up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. Zappos continues to move in a more humanistic direction. They’ve always been about people, but now they are moving upward to a more meaningful connection with their customers and employees. Delivering happiness is a tall order, but simply holding that intention will create new opportunities to wow their customers and employees and lead to greater loyalty.
For anyone interested in the power of brand loyalty and how to build a business for the long-term, Zappos is an ideal company to study. Zappos demonstrates that many of the intangible qualities of business like values, culture and willingness are more important than many transactional-oriented executives care to believe. Otherwise, why would anyone care about a shoe e-tailer? And how could they grow by approximately 7,800% annually for the last nine years?
by Scott JeffreySep 08, 2010
Here are five more reasons to focus on your Brand Lovers:
1. In The Loyalty Effect, Frederick Reichheld explains how a 5% increase in customer loyalty can increase a company’s profitability by 40 to 95%.
2. Think about what would happen if you turned just 10% of your occasional customers into Brand Lovers. For large enterprises, this shift represents billions in additional revenue and radically higher profit margins.
3. By focusing on your Brand Lovers, your cost of acquiring a new customer decreases.
4. Your marketing effectiveness soars as a result of building a stronger brand presence focused around the needs of your best customers.
5. By focusing on your Brand Lovers you can build a powerful brand that stands for something meaningful to your special customers. This gives you clear differentiation and helps you organically attract more of your most profitable customers.
The bottom line is that serving your best customers is the surest way to grow a profitable business—in any economic climate. To serve your best customers, you must understand them first. To identify and understand your best customers, you need an effective brand model.
by Aaron ShieldsSep 01, 2010
In the October 2009 issue of Fast Company, Dan and Chip Heath, authors of Made to Stick, highlight a tactic that is quickly becoming the go-to strategy in the business world: Selling products with emotion.
But, as the Heaths recognize, emotional tactics often fail to measure up to anything other than a sticker put on a bottle.
The companies that will really shine and last will be those that don’t just say it, but also mean it. Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty could have easily been just another marketing campaign aimed at selling soap. But, Dove chose to back up its claim by supporting self-esteem programs for girls and launch a Web site dedicated to helping parents instill self-worth in their daughters.
Emotional appeal isn’t something inherent in a product; every product can be clothed in a wide range of emotional fabrics—figuring out an emotional match to your brand is only the first step.
But, rather than making your brand the emperor without clothes shouting false claims to the public, mean what you say and show it with your actions.
by Jenny LeeAug 17, 2010
Jim Collins in Good to Great, clearly spelled out the attributes of great leaders. Level 5 leaders, as Collins calls them, exemplify a seemingly incongruous mix of personal humility and professional will.
Humility + Will = Level 5
“Level 5 Leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless,” Collins explains. They don’t allow their egos to interfere with their primary focus on the larger goal of building a great company. Collins clarifies that Level 5 leaders are usually highly ambitious, but their ambition is directed for the good of the institution, not themselves.
At Zappos, you won’t find any sacrosanct corner offices reserved for the higher ups. Zappos executives are fondly referred to as “Monkeys” and sit in what is aptly named “Monkey Row.” Here, CEO Tony Hsieh sits in an open cubicle among other executives, and encourages his employees to throw peanut shells on the floor of his workspace. Hsieh sends a subtle yet clear message that he’s not more important than anyone else in the company.
Collins further explains, “The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.” Aligned with this core principle, Hsieh openly advertises his email address and encourages people to drop him a message. You might be skeptical, thinking that your message would go unanswered, lost in a flood of emails. Hsieh, however, means what he says and stands by his word.
How can a CEO of a billion dollar company be so responsive? According to Collins, it’s because Level 5 leaders have a “ferocious resolve” to do whatever it takes to make the company great. And by his very nature, Hsieh embodies the perfect balance between personal humility and professional will, leading Zappos’s transformation into the great company it is today.
by Scott JeffreyAug 10, 2010
Your best customers are your Brand Lovers. Understanding the needs of your Brand Lovers and serving them better than anyone else is critical if you want to outmaneuver the competition and grow a long-term sustainable business.
Here are five reasons why your Brand Lovers are so important:
1. Your Brand Lovers choose you more often than your competitors. To most Mac users, there’s no alternative competitor to choose from.
2. Your Brand Lovers spread the word about your brand and create new customers for you. Basically, your best customers are the source of your word-of-mouth stream.
3. Your Brand Lovers are by nature loyal customers. Customer loyalty is a better determinant of profitability than mass appeal. (Again, just ask Apple.)
4. Focusing on your Brand Lovers and cultivating customer loyalty can help you double your return on assets (ROA).
5. Similarly, serving your best customers can lead to explosive return on investment (ROI). Example: When Apple opened their retail stores they expected to generate $1,000/square foot. They actually generated $4,000/square foot.
Ultimately, your Brand Lovers drive the profitability of your business. A Brand Model helps you attract more profitable customers.
by BJ BuenoAug 03, 2010
“Brand Jordan exists because of what Phil Knight created
before I ever came along.” – Michael Jordan
The year was 1984, and Michael hesitantly took a flight to Portland, Oregon. It was the day that he would meet Nike Founder Phil Knight for the first time. Neither of them could imagine what the next 20+ years would bring.
Realizing that nothing of value comes without hard work, the partnership between Jordan and Nike was born. The idea was so big that it created something no one could have envisioned. By committing to their shared values, Nike and Jordan created an amazing brand that has endured.
Starting Conditions:LOVE for the game. LOVE for Innovation. LOVE for the customer.
The end is determined by the starting conditions. The outcome of our plans follows its own design and patterns. What vision do you see emerging for your Brand?
by Scott JeffreyJul 27, 2010
What drives your business? Most executives and entrepreneurs would say sales or revenue.
But where do those sales come from? Customers, right?
Now, are all customers created equal? Of course not. Most customers will remain indifferent to your brand. They will buy from you on occasion—when it’s most convenient—and shop elsewhere when it’s not.
Amazingly, most businesses cater to these nomadic customers. Most executives think mass appeal and believe an untargeted marketing plan that casts the widest net will generate the most sales.
In the short run, they might be right. The fickle, nomadic customer might jump at a great promotion. But they will jump at your competitor’s great promotion just as quickly.
If you try to build your business around these fickle customers, the only way you can show increased profits on your balance sheet is to increase your growth curve. For retailers, this means continually opening more stores. Ultimately, this is not a sustainable model and profits erode over time as your market gets saturated.
The key to growing a profitable business is to build it around the needs and wants of your best customers. We call this special breed of customers Brand Lovers. Focus on serving your Brand Lovers and you’ll naturally attract more of them.
All great businesses—big and small—have Brand Lovers. All great brands learn to cater to and serve their Brand Lovers better than anyone else.
If your Brand Lovers represent your most profitable customers, why would you try to serve anyone else?
Focus on your Brand Lovers as the core of your business. Talk to them. Listen to them. Learn from them. Try to understand them. Co-create your business around their needs. The rewards for doing so will translate to the bottom line. Guaranteed.
by BJ BuenoJul 22, 2010
Today brands are faced with a new challenge, mainly that of clutter. In a cluttered marketplace of indistinguishable brands, developing a strong position in the heart of the customer is extremely challenging. Brands that don’t actively work to differentiate are generally defined and controlled by their competition.
In the world of Branding, you either grow or die—branding, category leadership, market share, relevance, there’s no in-between.
In most cases, the winner of this game for the customer’s heart takes all, leaving the rest of the competition struggling for minor market share. In order to develop a strong position in the marketplace, CMO’s have to understand three key ingredients for developing brand dominance:
- Relevance
- Growth Potential
- Category Leadership
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