Where Do You Hide When There's No Place To Hide?

Perhaps the biggest change in the last decade is the growth of interconnectivity. New technology has empowered people.

Uh... let's re-word that: New technology has empowered customers.

Whether you call it word of mouth or professional reputation, this personal experience factor has always driven repeat business, referral business, and even first-time business. But with the speed and power of interconnectivity, personal experience is multiplied exponentially.

What happens when your ads brag about your customer service, and customer dreads going on hold with your automated call center?

What happens when your customer finally understands that your "money back guarantee" is actually pro-rated for the number of weeks that she owned your product?

What happens when your angry customer makes the evening news carrying a placard which declares you to be a crook?

Where do you hide when there's no place to hide?


Interconnectivity Example Number 1:

Blogs are cheap, easy, and nearly universally available. A blog allows anyone to post observations, opinions, or discoveries to the world and get the attention of any other person interested in the same topics.

And then for an investment under $200 anyone can be a "citizen journalist." A cheap digital recorder and a cell phone with built-in camera are all the tools necessary.

Catch a talking head as he leaves the major media interview, ask the question, shoot the pic, and have it posted to a blog before the big boys have even finished postproduction.

When the major networks have no interest in a story, it only takes one curious blogger to check and publish facts. Other bloggers pick up the story. Eventually the major networks are forced to pay attention, too.

"The president of a Louisiana parish tearfully told a national TV audience the heartbreaking story of a coworker whose mother was left to die in a flooded nursing home days after Hurricane Katrina immobilized New Orleans – but, as it turns out, the story isn't true.

MSNBC reported the man Broussard was talking about is Thomas Rodrigue, who told "Dateline" that his 92-year-old mother was one of 32 elderly people found dead at the St. Rita's nursing home. The New York Times reported the 32 residents, out of 60 total, died Aug. 29.

Reported WuzzaDem.com: "Broussard claims Rodrigue was talking to his mother for four days after she died, promising here some nebulous 'cavalry' was on the way. His story doesn't jibe with the reporting of CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, or even Thomas Rodrigue's own account."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1485307/posts

Interconnectivity Example Number 2:

Time was that a young man could go away to college, raise hell, cut classes, get stupid drunk way too often, and clean up his act in time for graduation.

But even if Mom and Dad never find out, it's getting way too easy for employers to completely check every job application. Suppose this young man applies for a job in which he's not truly qualified, thinking that he can exaggerate (ok, lie) "just a little" on his resume?

Or if he asks out a lady who uses the Internet to check potential dates? With not too much effort she can examine our young man's police record, check for judgments, and peruse public records for previous marriages and child support.

Privacy?

There is no such thing, despite the protestations of Google's C.E.O., Eric Schmidt.

Some found it poetic justice when Eleanor Mills, a staff writer at CNET used Google's search engine to find basic information about Schmidt. Schmidt responded by blacklisting CNET.

As more information becomes digitized it will become universally available. And make no mistake, once information about you, or perhaps more importantaly. once information about your businesss hits the World Wide Web, it's going to be there forever.

We all live in glass houses. There's no place left to hide.


Interconnectivity Example Number 3:

Think your advertising is the only thing that influences potential customers? Uh, no.

The web is becoming the great source for information exchange. A customer who feels abused enough starts his own web site: (YourBusiness)Sucks.com. Think the legal system will defend you? The courts have ruled that merely using your name in a derivative domain is not copyright infringement.

Will this immediately affect business?

Probably not.

But, as more and more people become dissatisfied with any business, and they post their dissatisfaction, the collective volume of negative will eventually become public knowledge.

Negative Example #1
Negative Example #2
Negative Example #3
Negative Example #4

I personally know a small town car dealer who's owned the place for eight years and is still feeling the resentment of the town toward the previous owner. Once negative word of mouth builds to critical mass, the business may never recover.


Conclusion:

People expect your ads to be complementary to your business. They know you're paying for them.

They also tend to believe total strangers willing to share experiences. (If you didn't believe that, you wouldn't ask for testimonials).

In the old days (before interconnectivity), a dissatisfied customer was likely to be lost in the advertising noise. Now customers are ignoring ads in ever increasing numbers and paying much more attention to each other.

I'm not suggesting that you should always give in whenever there's a conflict with a customer. I am suggesting that you can't get lost in the numbers anymore.

When there's no place left to hide, the promises you make in your ads had best be delivered on your sales floor.

Share This Article With A Friend.

Read more!

Advertising And The Renaissance Man

I turned over some copy to a client. The client’s wife went to work improving it. She systematically removed all of the specific points I’d made and replaced them with clichés. She insisted that the phone number be included several times. Finally, she was emphatic that we use the business street address rather than the “next to” directions, because she “didn’t want to give them any free advertising.”

I argued. I explained. I implored them to let me do what I do well. They informed me that they were the clients.

They’re right. It’s their checkbook and their final decision.

I resigned the account.

Oh, I do understand the urge to do it yourself. In high school I taught myself to play guitar, then built my own 12-string. After recording in commercial studios, I designed and built my own mixer, my own compressor, my own microphones. They worked. Perhaps one could say surprisingly well. I don’t use any of them any more.

As I became more descriminating I became less enchanted with doing it myself. The commercially available equipment worked better, was less expensive, and could be depended on for more satisfactory results.

Eventually I completely changed my mind about doing everything myself. It seems that I purchased a pair of radio stations, and in the process of being totally responsible I learned that not to use a specialist is a false economy. (Or incredible arrogance).

Oh, it’s a great concept: be so versatile that you can do every job at your company.

However, when you’re busy producing an ad you can’t be simultaneously responding to a customer complaint. When you’re making a sales call you can’t be simultaneously covering for a sick disc jockey. When you’re repairing a broken transmitter you can’t be simultaneously developing a new listener promotion.

I finally figured out that when I tackled a piece of broken equipment it could take me as long as ten hours to finish the repair. Some of that is lack of practice. Some is me second-guessing my own diagnostic skills. Either way, when it comes to electronic repairs I'm slow.

On the other hand, when I hired a local electronic technician he finished in two hours instead of my customary ten. I paid him $15 per hour. (Hey - it's an old story).

Hummm. I spent ten hours saving my company $30.

I effectively “earned” $3 per hour.

Surely I could do something worth more to the company than $3 per hour.

I could have made another sales call and earned more than the technician’s $30. I could have spent a couple of hours creating a new sales promotion that would have generated several hundred dollars in new revenue. I could have made any number of more productive choices.

But, there I was holding a soldering iron and feeling proud that I didn’t need to spend $30 of my company’s money.

There may be satisfaction in being a “renaissance man,” but there isn’t much money in it.

So let me try to make this point one more time. We can file it away for use with some future client:

"Dear Mr. Client:

"You understand the technical work of your business, floral arranging. It's obvious that you also understand the business of selling flowers.

"You don’t, however, understand the marketing of that business. That’s why you called me.

"Good copywriters write, and re-write, and then re-write some more. Then they begin to polish. They agonize over every syllable. They explain precisely why the words they chose to carry your message were not just good, but were in fact the best choices available.

"Good copywriters only make it look easy.

"A good copywriter can explain why one verb will resonate with your potential customer, and another will pass by unnoticed. A good copywriter will know when to use industry terms and when to use everyday language.

"With the exception of those businesses built on a core of marketing, (catalog companies come to mind) most businesses don’t understand why those word choices are so critical to their success.

"An advertiser who re-writes a professional copywriter’s work is the equivalent of a $3 per hour electronic technician. Worse, actually, ‘cause it’s obvious when the tech plugs the broken equipment back in whether or not it’s been fixed.

"Mr. Advertiser, when you “improve” your own ads, you’ll never know whether you’ve really fixed them, will you?

"Sincerely,
Your Copywriter"

Share This Article With A Friend.

Read more!

Politics, Religion, and Advertising

Two years ago I got a different cell phone, with a new number. I had trouble remembering it until my wife pointed out that it's composed of the month and year that I turned twelve, the year I graduated high school, and the year I was born. Since then, I've never forgotten it.

This is an excellent example of how memory works. In order for any new information to stick when it hits our minds, we associate the new with something we already know. All successful memorization is associative.

So is all decision making, which is an important point for advertisers. Each person's opinion is built upon what she's already accepted as fact, and can retrieve from memory.

Sometimes she will accept new information and come to a new conclusion, which appears to contradict the earlier opinion. It doesn't. The old opinion was based on the old information. The new opinion is based on additional information that complements the old.

And when she is presented with new information that contradicts the old? She refuses to accept it. This does not compute. It must be a lie. As marketing guru Al Ries said in his recent Advertising Age article, The Sad And Unnecessary Decline Of Saturn:

"When you believe in something, what you generally do when faced with facts that seem to contradict your beliefs is to fault the execution, not the strategy.

Conventional wisdom dies hard. You can defend any strategy by pointing out flaws in its execution."

In other words, I choose not to believe what you're telling me.

This is the primary reason it becomes pointless to argue politics, religion, or new advertising campaigns.

As advertising practitioners, the key point is: people refuse to accept any new information that contradicts their existing beliefs. Those beliefs become a big filter for new ideas.

We call this big filter the Personal Experience Factor. When the new advertising campaign didn't work, did the ad fail because people don't know about Mr. Advertiser? Or because they do?

Every contact Miss Customer has with Mr. Advertiser builds her Personal Experience Factor. Every new bit of information is filtered through that Personal Experience Factor. A lot of new information never makes it thorough the filter.

Mr. Advertiser makes claim of great customer service. Miss Customer hears claim, remembers her last visit to Mr. Advertiser's business, and thinks bull stuff.

From that point on, not only will Mr. Advertiser's claims fall on the deaf ears of Miss Customer, but she may well start sharing with her friends her personal experiences at the hands of Mr. Advertiser.

When I worked at a News/Talk radio station in Columbia, South Carolina, we had a staff of about 30, pretty much evenly divided between the genders. In the space of a few short months through three major news stories I saw first-hand how perception of the news was affected by people's previous experiences.

• The Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings had opinions divided according to gender. Without exception men believed him, women believed her.
  
  
• Lorena Bobbit's trial, and her subsequent acquittal, had all of the women in our office standing and cheering. Our female news director shouted "There IS justice."
  
  
• The O.J. Simpson verdict split the bias along racial lines. Whites believed him guilty. Blacks believed him to have been set up.

We all saw the same evidence. We came to different conclusions. Why? We all drew from different Personal Experiences as we weighed the evidence and made our conclusions.

When new evidence contradicts your Personal Experience, then the evidence must be a lie. When it reinforces your Personal Experience, it's likely true.

Most women have had experiences with unwanted sexual advances. It's easier for women to draw upon those experiences and say "That's happened to me, just the way she described it. Most men have had, shall we say, more limited experiences in these areas. It's harder for them to say "Could be true, because they've never shared that particular experience.

A great many black Americans have had the experience of being stopped for "driving while black," or know someone who has. It's not out of their realm of experience to imagine someone being profiled.

Most whites have never experienced the police automatically assuming them to be suspects. It's harder for them to imagine the police pulling anyone over to ask what they're doing in this neighborhood.

What experiences has your customer had in dealing with you? Should it surprise you that her perceptions are not yours?

Does she listen to you brag about your incredible selection while finding you don't have anything in her size?

Does she drive all the way across town for your advertised special to find that limited to quantity in stock means you only had three at this price?

Does she hear all about your commitment to customer service while listing to the recorded on hold message as she waits 22 minutes for someone to help solve her problem?

Is your advertising failing because Miss Customer doesn't know about you, Mr. Advertiser, or because she does?

One thing for sure, she won't change her opinions about you until she starts having different personal experiences.

---

People not only won't accept that which contradicts what they already believe, but they will also find reinforcement all around them for things they do choose to believe.

Here's a quick non-scientific poll you can conduct among your friends.

First question: Who's responsible for the mess in New Orleans?

Second question: How did you feel about this President before the hurricane?

Here's my prediction: People who were fans of Mr. Bush prior to the advent of Hurricane Katrina will blame local authorities. They will be angry that New Orleans' Mayor and Louisiana's Governor have both criticized the President.

Those who were not fans of Mr. Bush before the disaster will use the apparent disorganization on a lack of planning at the Federal Level, and on the general ineptness of the Bush Administration. None of them will change their minds as more facts become available.

Share This Article With A Friend.

Read more!

What Do Consumers Call It?

The Internet is a wonderful marketing laboratory. You can come up with an idea at lunch, implement it this afternoon, and look over the results tomorrow morning. But this is not an article about web-based marketing.

It's an article about using information.

The great thing about collecting customer preferences from the Internet is how quickly you can apply them to your off-line marketing.

Search words, for example.

Your customers, or potential customers, already have a name for what you do. Its up to you to find out the names they've given to your stuff, your services, your procedures.

Use those names. Making people change their vocabluary only frustrates them.

When customers have to try to remember your name for what you do, instead of just calling it by the name that comes to mind, they won't order it. Which terms do they use when they want what you're selling?

Hardees restaurants used to have a pretty good ham and cheese sandwich. Customers called it a ham and cheese. Hardees insisted that it be called a "Yumbo." Had Hardees called it a ham and cheese you'd likely still be seeing it on the menu. (There was also the added embarrasment of having to publicly proclaim "I'd like fries with my Yumbo," but I digress).

Sometime back a radio program director explained that her format, Adult Album Alternative, was going to be the next big ratings winner. I told her she didn't have a prayer. Somewhat taken aback, she said "Well, our numbers are small now, but our listeners LOVE us. Our time spent listening is already the best in the market."

It doesn't matter. Country radio listeners will tell you they listen to country music. Jazz listeners will proclaim they listen to jazz. Reggae listeners know they're listening to reggae.

"Then there are your listeners," I said. "What do they call the music on your radio station? You can safely bet that whatever they call their music, they don't call it Adult Album Alternative."

When they can't name it, they won't recommend it. People can't rave about your radio station, or your store, or your service, if they don't know what to call it while they're raving.

You've been describing your business in your own terms. Your ads are producing a return on your advertising investment. You're doing OK, so far.

Humm. Is just "OK" enough?

Imagine how customers would respond if you spoke to them in their own terms. How much more could you sell if your ads managed to resonate in the minds and hearts of your customers?

It doesn't matter if you have a web site or not. The words customers use to describe what they're looking for on the web are the very words they use when they're looking in real life. They're the words you should use in your radio scripts, in your newspaper layouts, in your Yellow Pages listings.

What do customers call what you do? Why aren't you using those descriptions in your off-line advertising?

Perhaps a coffee break spent Googling keywords would be time well invested.

Do you know what your customers call what you do?

Do you dare to not find out?

Share This Article With A Friend.

Read more!

One Easily Remembered Point

One of the things that too many small businesses do when they advertise is to try to pack the ad with everything that could possibly be of interest to any potential customer. After all, advertising is too expensive to waste any opportunity to sell everything to anyone.

That's logical, isn't it?

None the less, it's guaranteed to be bad advertising.

Take a minute, please, and look at this Yellow Pages ad. It could easily be a radio ad, or television ad. The style isn't at all different, merely the details of the execution.

And as a Yellow Pages ad, listed with all competitors under "Dentists," Dr. Whacksem is likely to get a few calls from this ad. He will, however, always suspect that his ad isn't very efficient. It doesn't draw enough business for what he's paying. He'll blame the medium. "My radio rep told me that Yellow Pages don't work. She was right."

She's wrong. So's the doctor.

The medium isn't the problem, the message is the problem.

What's the message? Ah. There's our problem.

What is his message? That he works on kids, and their parents, and older people, too? That he will accept insurance payments or make a payment plan? That he does fillings, and teeth whitening, and root canals, and extractions? That he does crowns and bridges and bonded porcelain? That he uses x-rays? That his staff is professionally trained? That he's "mercury-free," (whatever that means)?

What is Dr. Whacksem's message? I've counted at least fifteen, and that doesn't even count him telling you how to get in touch.

Without scrolling back up, how many can you remember? Humm. And that was only two paragraphs ago, after I drew your attention to it.

Nobody will remember a list. Listing your services, or your products, is bad advertising.

Instead of getting more information to more people, you'll accomplish exactly the opposite. The message becomes part of a blur in the minds of the people who are already being clobbered by hundreds of other ads every day.

This ad doesn't say anything "salient," anything a potential customer can relate to. Without that salience, it doesn't stand out. It doesn't get remembered. To maximize your impact, you need to give this ad salience.

You need to make one simple, easily remembered point to one particular group of people.

Some small business people get it right away. Many do not. Frankly, most do not.

"You're telling me NOT to tell people that my dental office works on children, and adults, and old people. You want me not to tell people we do root canals, and teeth whitening, and x-rays, and takes most insurances? That's crazy. What if someone needs a crown, and they don't see that in my ad?"

What if someone needs a crown, and you didn't manage to get their attention in the first place? How many people do you believe actually read your list of services?

Whatever the size of your business, your advertising will have a bigger impact if you limit your ads to one simple easy to remember message.

Consider this ad from one of our first dentist's competitors:

First, notice the headline - "good news for high fear dental patients." How many people are afraid to even be examined by a dentist? And even those who aren't afraid will appreciate the promise of "Soft Touch." Everyone will appreciate that their comfort is this dentist's first concern.

Notice, too, that the ad doesn't list all of basic services. Truthfully, though, doesn't every dentist do fillings? Root canals? Cleaning? Doesn't every dentist use x-rays?

Do we even notice that these things are missing? Do we care?

No, we don't.

Instead, we remember that Soft Touch Dentistry doesn't want us to hurt, or to be afraid.

The second ad makes much more impact, doesn't it?

OK, but what happens when someone who's not afraid of the dentist hits the Yellow Pages? Which ad is she drawn to?

Care to speculate?

Of course it's the second one. Whether she needs a cleaning, a root canal, or a crown, our dental prospect is still not likely to even notice the first ad, and will react positively to the second. The second ad, the highly-focused single message ad, is the one our dental prospect will read. She's also more likely to phone for an appointment.

So, by narrowing the focus to a single point, we actually broaden the appeal of the ad. Wow.

And there's something odd happening here. With all of its additional impact, the second ad takes only about 60% of the space that it's competitor does. Soft Touch Dentistry makes a much bigger impact with a substantially smaller ad. Double wow. How much money will this save Soft Touch over the year? Better yet, how many more impressions can Soft Touch Dentistry purchase with the same budget?

OK, one last thought: the Advertising Performance Equation (APE) represents the relationship between your message, the frequency of that message delivery to an audience, the customers' experience with you, your market potential, and resultant sales.

All other factors being equal, and without going into the math, making your ad twice as memorable will double the percentage of your advertising driven sales.

Double.

Share This Article With A Friend.

---

My friends Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg, authors of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today best-selling book Call To Action, are conducting a one-time-only, two day seminar at Tuscan Hall on the 21-acre campus of Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas.

In Call To Action: Secret Formulas To Improve Online Results Bryan and Jeff will teach you how to break through the invisible web-blocks that are keeping your web site from performing. They'll give you a global overview of the revolutionary principles and tactics that made them famous around the world.

There will be at least one "ah ha" moment in which a light bulb appears over your head. They guarantee it.

No matter how much or how little you know about web development, you will receive huge benefit from this class. Since the company’s inception in 1998, the Eisenberg’s have focused exclusively on helping clients, large and small, persuade and convert their web traffic into leads, customers, and cash based on their proprietary Persuasion Architecture and conversion rate optimization techniques.

Prepare to be amazed.

If you have a web site whose performance could use improvement, you need this class. It will not be repeated and registration is strictly limited to the first 120 participants.

Read more!