Death by Marketing & The Emergence of Retro Service
21 February 2008
If you want to succeed, simply do the opposite of what unsuccessful people do! I’ve always liked this maxim; it makes perfect sense when you think about it. So to learn how to be successful in business we must first establish how to be unsuccessful.
To experience a fast but painful business death, there are many roads one can explore, however one of the quickest and surest routes is to engage Traditional Marketing and a Balance Sheet Business strategy. In business today Death by Marketing is all too frequent as business owners and marketing managers struggling to come to terms with the new economy, the shifting technological landscape, consumers changing media preferences, and society’s fast paced evolution. And what is a balance sheet business strategy? A balance sheet business or BS – Business [I say with a wink] is a business established solely for the purposes of making profits and extracting share holder returns. In a BS Business the end game is profit, and the customers are the means to the end, not the purpose of the business itself. The stakeholders or senior leaders lack passion for the business or industry they are in, and simply exist within the business in a semi detached and money driven state.
Let’s start with traditional marketing. How does the average business quantify their marketing activities when most campaigns are almost impossible to accurately track and measure? This coupled with consumers being distinctly more value conscious and savvy in terms of making buying decisions, having less available time to make decisions, and being given more choices to make those decisions, thanks to mediums such as the internet. These factors alone make your marketing message increasingly difficult for your prospects and indeed future customers to hear. And if they do hear you, albeit faintly, how do you then differentiate your company from the plethora of others in your market place? Do you lower your prices and discount to get the deal? You can try, but this is usually a proven path to frustration. If you lower your prices, you are then generally forced to reduce your costs to accommodate, in most cases, all else subsequently follows, such as; reduced quality and production, resources, and of course profit, etc and so forth.
Today most markets are saturated with competitors doing exactly the same thing. This gives consumers massive leverage. Today the power is without question in hands of the consumer. We’re in a consumer revolution. The customer is striking back! [I can hear Chewbacca’s piercing whine in the background] as companies literally fight each other for business. In Australia, just look at Tiger Airlines and Virgin offering 10 cent flights as examples. Is it any wonder many fiercely competitive businesses struggle to survive, let alone make a profit?
Ten to twenty years or so ago things were a lot easier… ah those were the days. You could simply find a great location, take a half page spread in the yellow pages and business would basically take care of itself. Times have indeed changed, and they will continue to do so. Social Evolution dictates and guarantees, the only thing we will experience in this life time as permanent, is in-fact, impermanence. Even as recently as a decade ago a business could thrive by taking out magazine and directory ads, running radio campaigns, or doing letter box drops and telemarketing. Those days are also sadly but not surprisingly gone. Today if you call me on the phone I will take approximately two seconds to hang up on you, if I even vaguely suspect you are selling me something. I rarely buy magazines, if I do, I certainly don’t read the ads, I can easily get on the internet and find whatever I want or need fast. And who listens to radio these days? It’s much easier to download my favorite music to iPod or the now ancient form of music storage CD. And TV who has time for TV, when I get home I have 20 emails to check in Facebook and 10 friend requests to approve on MySpace. Lets be honest TV is mostly commercials anyway, networks have no choice but to shamelessly advertise whatever they can to compete with the wave of new social entertainment.
As a consumer when was the last time you were stimulated to purchase a product or service by a TV or radio commercial or magazine ad?
I couldn’t tell you the last time any of these mediums made a dint in my buying psyche. Surely these mediums must work, otherwise no one would engage them, but the companies who do spend on these mediums - spend big, and unfortunately this luxury is not shared by the mass business population. Even so, large corporations and brands are struggling to get the returns required to sustain such astronomical main stream spending. Traditional marketing is getting tougher and tougher as more companies enter each market and customers increasingly have more choice. Customers today have prolific access to information. They can find information on just about anything, from movies- to widgets, recipes - to ex boyfriends – to making bombs. And with ease they can find out everything there is to know about your product or service, including how to get the best price and also whom to purchase it from. A click of a mouse and a quick search on Google can bring any business attempting to make false and misleading claims undone. Consumers today have the power and they most certainly know what’s going in your market place, in some cases, better than you do. Particularly Gen Y’s who have practically been born with belly button internet connectivity.
This all makes what and how you sell to your customers critically important. Merely pointing traditional forms of marketing at customers segments, in the hope they will be attracted to buy, is analogous to heading out to the horizon in your six foot tinny, throwing over a yappy, crossing your fingers, and hoping to catch a marlin. Again please excuse my dramatic flare for the obscene, but the above scenario is clearly a waste of time, not to mention, utter madness.
Traditional marketing is a dead horse! Yes, a bold statement I know, but those that continue to flog it will do so at their own peril. Times have certainly changed! It was only a generation ago you would have known everyone who lived in your street by name, and you probably knew their birthdays also. However, today, most people are lucky to be on a first name basis with their next door neighbor, let alone know their birthday. To further demonstrate, we know Habib from MySpace, who lives in Istanbul, better than we know the people we share our neighborhood with who live only meters away from us. Today, one the surface, sadly, common social courtesies and niceties seem to have been replaced by our insatiable appetite for change, technology and progress. We have fast become a product of our environment, with the winds of change blowing in a storm of technological advancement and social evolution. As a consequence, to keep up, we are so consumed by being busy, there is little time for much else. We seldom take time to smell the roses. In fact there are no roses, old Mary from next door’s son, Bazza, subdivide her property and built three town houses on it, so there are no bloody roses left to smell anyway! And forget taking an interest in others who don’t genuinely have something to offer us, our time is extremely valuable and we simple don’t have much spare to worry about how we impact and make others feel. Please forgive me I am generalizing here, but sadly this is a reality for many.
All this social evolution over the past few decades has changed the way we live, experience, view and interact with the people and world around us, and subsequently how we engage and conduct business. Is it right or wrong? You be the judge. As for commerce, trading has largely become about the ‘bottom line’ and how we maximize shareholder return. Seemingly long forgotten is the notion of true customer experience and loyalty. “What the hell is a happy customer anyway?” Some business owners may say. “We don’t even talk to them, they just go online and pay us and our outsourced call center follows them up once a year to rolls over their contract.” Where is the intimacy and relationship connection in that?! Is it any wonder customers are so disloyal?
As a consequence of our fast paced society, most businesses would rather churn and burn in an attempt to fatten the top line and keep up with the joneses, [whoever they are?] than worry about exceeding their customer’s expectations. Modern business has without question lost its way and the staggering business failure rates are by no means coincidental. 80% percent of businesses fail in the first 3 years and 80% of the remaining businesses before 5 years. The reality is most businesses fail! Admittedly, some less graciously and others more spectacularly, but still, most fail.
More importantly, you can’t tell customers something you think they want to hear and expect them to believe it. Customers aren’t stupid, those days are long gone, along with smoking in restaurants and sub $1 petrol prices. In the new economy change must be embraced. The way you communicate to your market must change! The way you attract and engage customers must change! And critically, how you retain, nurture and develop customer relationships must also change. This brings us to the concept of Retro Service.
Retro Service is what I refer to as the kind of service our parents or grandparents experienced back in the day. The form of service they not only received, but expected. Like having your gas pumped at the local petrol station, or the manager at a restaurant knowing you by name and ushering you to your favorite seat, and even remembering the wine you ordered previously. Although times have changed, intrinsic human nature has not. People still want to be loved, remembered and appreciated. As customers they want to be given a unique and memorable experience they can take with them that makes them feel special. They want a unique experience that helps them define, or redefine, who they are, what they stand for and where they are going.
The world today has quickly lost touch with fundamentals such as common courtesy, politeness and intimacy. These have been replaced with social evolutionary changes such as; 24 hour service and convenience, high speed and prolific information access, The cocoon effect; meaning many people choosing to shack up in safe confines at home rather than get out and about and enjoy the real world, chat rooms, online dating, reality and interactive TV, and social portals such as MySpace, UTube and Facebook. And in case you’re wondering were your customers have gone, you may want to check out some of the aforementioned, as these are the places they most likely dwell. This is what your business is competing with, not all the time, but some of the time. So your message and the unique value you propose to create for you customer, not only needs to be relevant - it needs to be exceptional.
With all this confusion in the market how do you get your marketing message to the right people, let alone compete and do so successfully?
To sail the winds of change and compete and differentiate in the new economy, and do so successfully, your business must be ‘unique’ and largely, not partially, be about serving and adding value to your customers in new and exciting ways. If it’s not, your prospects and customers will switch off, in doing so seek a product or service more aligned with who they are, what they stand for and where they are going in life. In the new economy a business idea must be based on the integrity and relevance of your brand to the customer and the people who deliver it – and the unique and positive experiences they create for your customers. This is the essence of Retro Service. This is one of the most effective ways to compete in this new age of social change. After all people are designed to interact and engage with other people, not magazine ads, radio campaigns or iPods, simply people. Billions of years of evolution has brought our race to this moment. Fads and gimmicks and social distractions come and go and are replaced by the next, but one thing remains constant; that being, people. You and I and everyone you know and are yet to know.
People buy off friends - not sales people. Now, we’ve all heard this maxim a thousand times, but it simplicity is profound. Can you remember the last time you purchased of a sales person you just didn’t like? How challenging was the experience? How did this person impact you and make you feel? Were you motivated to go back for seconds and buy again? Hmmm… probably not. So have you built loyalty to that brand or the business they were representing? Highly unlikely. You can invest significantly in various marketing forms and have outstanding products or services, but if the people that sell your products or services to your customers, do so poorly, you will struggle as a business. Restaurants are a great example. How many times have you heard someone say? “I won’t be going back, the food was great but the service was lowsy!”
It’s challenging buying from a sales person you just do not like or connect with. And as complex as humans like to think we are - we can be awkwardly primitive creatures at times. Our egos are fragile at best, and we all deep down want to be loved, appreciated and respected. Whether or not we’re conscious of it or not, our self esteems demand it.
There are so many competitors in the market place selling and doing exactly the same thing as you, why should a customer buy from your company over the next?
Your sales people should be encouraged not to ‘Tell - Sell’ your products or services; they should be inspired to create a unique and memorable experience for your customer in line with what your brand represents and how it connects to your customers values. Selling is essentially about nurturing and developing relationships, not slick marketing messages that are so far removed from your culture and capacity to genuinely deliver they do more harm than good. Please, with all do respect, if I hear ‘we are the number 1’ or ‘The Leader’ or the ‘The Largest’ one more time, I think I will politely go and puke out the window.
Business is more than making ambitious claims and bold statements that hold little if no intrinsic value to your customer. Business is quintessentially and fundamentally the process of initiating, nurturing and developing nutritious relationships that foster a win-win outcome.
There is no other way to genuinely deliver long term business success. That doesn’t necessarily suggest selling the best product for cheapest price. It means, your customer will happily pay your price in terms of fair value for your products and services, and they will do so happily and gratefully for the experience, to the point of coming back for seconds and thirds, and in process referring you more business as a consequence of being so satisfied with their experience. This is called Compounding Loyalty. This is created when loyalty for your products or services compounds as more and more people advocate and refer your value to others, as a consequence of not only meeting, but exceeding, their expectations. This is not as challenging to achieve as some may first think, but it takes a different approach than most are probably accustomed.
In a Retro Service business the monetary exchange for products or services is merely a formality as part of the relationship development process, but it’s not the basis of the relationship. The relationship is rooted in foundations of commonality that transcend merely buying or selling. A business relationship or better Business Friendship, is no different to a social or personal friendship, the same rules apply, such as, adding value, listening, emotional intelligence, understanding, trust and integrity, and let’s not forget good old fashioned manners.
With so much change and social evolution taking place business owners, sales and marketing managers face unprecedented levels of competition and challenge, in not only finding and attracting, but more importantly retaining, nurturing and developing the right customers. This being so, you would think it makes perfect sense to service your customers appropriately, if not - exceed their expectations. This is what works, the rest is all bollix. And believe me I have tried every sales strategy and marketing approach in the book over the years, and I have come to the conclusion, nothing works better than the right people, creating genuine service, and adding value for customers, in new and exciting ways. If you get that right, your balance sheet will take care of itself.
Forget the hype, forget the bells and whistles, just give your customers what they really want most, which is love, respect and appreciation and you will have them for life. That’s what inspires emotion and that’s what builds connections with customers that stand the tests of time.
Inspire,
Trent Leyshan
Founder