Archive for the ‘Relationships’ Category
Saturday Morning Reads: (Re)Organizing for the Customer
Without a doubt, this downturned economy has been a struggle for most organizations. Layoffs, reorganizations and new executives seem to be the crutch du jour (perhaps ‘du ans’ is more fitting) to fix downward spiraling revenues. Add to that a layer of new(ish) customer communications and feedback via social media channels and you have yet another complexity to deal with. In the past customer feedback was contained to customer service or a customer satisfaction survey designed to hedge qualitative and quantitative feedback to guarantee an internal pat on the back. With unfettered social feedback, the organization emperor’s kimono is being opened and the proverbial band-aid is being ripped off.
Structured in a top-down hierarchical manner, organizations have positioned their products and services to take center stage. This familiar “command and control” structure is typically the wellspring of alienation between customer and company and often the cause of reduced revenue generation. The challenge of reorganizing is avoid playing musical chairs so that the last person sitting is not the new person reinventing the standard and comfortable hierarchal structure.
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Tags: Customer Relationships, Customer-Centric, Jay Galbraith, Marketing, Organization Design, product marketing, Ranjay Gulati, Reorganization, Service Marketing, social business | 
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Get to Know Your Customers—It’s as Simple as a Digital Handshake
It’s 2011, do you know where your social media strategy is?
As a marketer who has been in the social media game for a while now, I understand why companies struggle with social media. There is much misunderstanding between the concept and the tools—and the benefits of either. There is confusion as to why social media tools can’t be used just like e-mail, direct mail and advertising. There are also power struggles internally for who should own social media and who has control over what is for public consumption.
What’s a Marketer To Do?
That’s the question author and social media expert Paul Chaney discusses in his latest book, “The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media.” (Paul’s first book is “Realty Blogging: Build Your Brand and Out-Smart Your Competition.”)
The answer? Start a conversation. However, the smart thing to do before diving into any conversation is to understand the new rules of communication, why they matter, and the five trends turning the business world upside down.
- Consumer Skepticism
- Fragmented Media
- Loss of Control
- Niche Marketing
- Customers are in Control
Trust me. Your customers will thank you for taking the time to understand these tectonic shifts.
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How Audience Research Can Help You with Your Traditional Marketing Efforts
As traditional marketers, we have years of experience understanding our markets, what products and services they need/want, how to communicate best with them, and how they regard our brands, right?
Well, maybe not…
We have often relied on marketing research (primary or secondary), sales team feedback, customer satisfaction surveys, etc. to provide insights into those areas. The issue with most of those forms of feedback is that they tend to provide the answers we want to hear or find necessary to meet our internal business goals (either as an organization or a professional).
Audience research, on the other hand, uncovers specifically how markets use products and services, speak about them, form communities, etc. It’s like watching a pride of lions in their natural habitat. Regardless if it’s a B2B or B2C market, when we take the time to watch people in their natural – or comfortable – habitat, we will see their true behavior and opinions surface. If you haven’t done audience research, it can be quite eye-opening. But more importantly, it can’t be fabricated. As an organization it’s your choice to ignore it (at your peril, potentially) or to embrace what’s really going on in the market.
So how can audience research help traditional marketing efforts?
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Tags: Analysis, Audience Research, Branding, communications, Customer-Centric, Data, Ethnography, Marketing, Product Development, Psychographics, Serengeti Communications, Service Development, Sociographics |
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Is Your Message Understood? Five Quick Steps to Make Sure
This weekend I was reading an article in the Fall Harvard Business Review OnPoint magazine (How to Get Your Message Across edition) called “Five Ways to Sharpen Your Communication Skills” by John Baldoni. The article was interesting, but what was more interesting was the comment they selected to share in the Reader Comment section after the article.
John shares these five tips:
- Know the fundamentals (Understand the written and spoken word.)
- Think clearly about what you will say (Don’t use PowerPoint as short-hand for thinking)
- Prepare for meetings (Take the time to think about what to say before you say it.)
- Engage in discussion (Debate. Hear all viewpoints. Don’t engage in group think.)
- Listen to others (Discussion is meaningless if no one is listening. “Measure what you treasure.”)
Sounds like everything we learned in kindergarten, right? Still many marketing, public relations and communications pros struggle with these basic elements when it comes to communicating with customers, stakeholders and other employees.
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Tags: communications, integrated marketing communications, Marketing, Measurement, Messaging, Public Relations |
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Give the Gift of Conversation; Give the Gift of Water
They often say that conversation is an art. The act of being charitable and asking for nothing in return is also an art.
Today, I am proud to join my Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time To Get Busy! co-authors in asking for your support to give the gift of conversation. And by doing so you’ll also be giving the gift of clean water to hundreds of thousands of people who need it so desperately.
Each time you buy a copy of AOC 3, 100% of the cost of the book will be donated to our selected charity, charity: water.
charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects!
Keep Reading, There’s More Goodness!
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Tags: Age of Conversation 3, Charity, charity: water, Clean Water, Conversation |
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The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.theharteofmarketing.com. [If you have a question about what you can use from this blog, click on the above Creative Commons link to learn more.]
