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Why better stripes build better branding

Pesky details are what separate branding monsters from the also-rans. It’s not one big thing, but a bazillion little things. Mike Dandridge, author of The One-Year Business Turnaround. , says it’s actually about 100 things.

Through his research, Mike has established the 100 specific touch-points affecting your business’ Customer Experience Factor. Through his objective measurement, Mike isolates areas in your business where a little adjustment can make a big difference.

Last week, Mike explained the basic principles of the Customer Experience Factor. This week, he shares specific examples of where something as simple as the striping in your parking lot can have a big impact on your branding and customer experience.  (click the white arrow twice to play)

[audio:https://charliemoger.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Dandridge2_web.mp3|titles=Mike Dandridge: applying the Customer Experience Factor]

Next week, Mike shares how the Customer Experience Factor also applies to service businesses where the experience occurs in the customer’s home. Mike will be in Houston speaking at a breakfast being hosted by Wizard of Ads Gulf Coast. Space is limited. So, contact me now if you’d like to attend.

How much is customer experience costing you?

How your customer experiences your business is the acid-test of your advertising and marketing. Whether it happens in your store, or in their home, in an instant your branding pays off or goes up in flames. The Customer Experience Factor may hold the key to optimizing what happens when your customers have a tangible experience of with your company.

Mike Dandridge is author of The One-Year Business Turnaround. It’s the story of his experience leveraging the Customer Experience Factor to take a business he ran from $3 million in total annual revenue to a million dollars a month. And, he did that in one year.

Now, Mike has created The Customer Experience Factor, a tool that provides an objective measurement of how well businesses manage the critical moment of customer contact. Mike shares some insights into optimizing your customers’ experience in a conversation with had recently.

How did he do it?

Listen to part one of my three-part conversation with Mike. In this segment, Mike lays out the basics of CEF. The remaining two segments will appear next week. (Double-click the arrow to play the interview)

[audio:https://charliemoger.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/MikeDandridge_1of3.mp3|titles=MikeDandridge_1of3]
Partial transcript:

What is the Customer Experience Factor?

“The Customer Experience is almost self-explanatory.  It’s really defined by how the customer feels and thinks and feels in response during and after a business transaction. Now, the Customer Experience FACTOR is simply the measurement of that experience.

We all have a kind of mental scale as customers; a measurement we use when we go into a business. Whether it’s a restaurant, or we’re buying something. We grade the performance of that business. So, that’s what the Customer Experience Factor is.

If a customer comes into your store, and they have the same exact experience they expected and leaves, it’s just a neutral experience. But, if they go in and they’re blown away, then that raises the needle on The Customer Experience Factor.

On the other end, if they come in and they have a really disappointing experience, that’s going to tip it the other way. And, those are the ones that usually cause people to talk and tell their friends about their bad experiences”

I imagine a negative score has a lot more carry power than a positive one.

“Certainly is. Unfortunately, that’s how we are.”

Most people probably take it for granted when they walk into, say, a Starbucks. You know exactly what you’re going to experience when you walk in, that same arrogant disregard behind the counter.

(chuckles) “Well, the expression was, “we have the best service in town.” And, everyone says that. If your competitor is saying the same thing as you are, someone’s lying. Not everyone has the best service.

So, it’s really broadened into not so much the words you speak as the actions you take. You used the Starbucks example, a good way to give an illustration of the way we measure an experience.

I was out of town and needed a toothbrush. So, I went to Target. And, when I went in, I had preconceived expectations of what I was going to experience based on all the other times I’d gone into Target. And, it was exactly the same. I walked in. There’s a guy at the door to greet me. He hands me a basket. There was someone walking the aisles to show me where the toothbrushes are. Checked out, paid the price I expected and left.

It was just an ordinary experience. Now, in Target’s defense, it was, of course, a wonderful experience. But, you see, they’ve raised the bar on their service to such an extent that you expect that. So, you’re not surprised.  You’re not overwhelmed. You’re not going to tell your friends about it.

The challenge for businesses is, how do you keep exceeding your own setting of the bar. But, most people don’t have the problem Target has. Most people have the problem of just delivering a compelling customer experience to begin with.”

I was checking out at Wal-Mart one time. The woman at the register said, “did you find everything you were looking for?” I told her, “No. I was actually looking for that WalMart that I see on TV with the people who are ready to help me.

“Yeah. I think we’re all looking for that.”

NEXT TIME: Learn some of the 100 elements used in the Customer Experience Factor.

Rock your marketing and advertising like Warren Buffett

Differentiating your brand could be tricky work if your marketing and advertising involves one of the world’s richest men—unless that man is Warren Buffett.

“We thought, What’s the most ridiculous getup we could think up for Warren — and thought, Nah, we can’t do that,” says Phil Ovuka, director of creative media services at Geico.

Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett has become a staple of the Geico employee-created videos used to kick off their annual team meeting. Over the past four years, Buffett has appeared as a hobo and a DJ. This year, his tattooed Axl Rose send-up stole the show and netted thousands of viral impressions.

What can Warren Buffett teach your brand?

Suppose an employee brought you a marketing and advertising idea so off-the-charts outlandish you couldn’t contain your laughter. What would you do?  Dismiss that idea and you lose three ways: employees lose trust in sharing ideas, your brand loses fresh thinking, and you lose an edge that can differentiate you from competitors.

“Differentiate until you want to cry,” says Jon Spoelstra, author of Marketing Outrageously: How to Increase Your Revenue by Staggering Amounts! Otherwise, you’re just like everyone else.

Spoelstra’s track record of creating marketing and advertising success stories in basketball and arena football are legendary. The way to start, Spoelstra teaches, is “by making new a way of life.”

Step into each day looking at things from new and unexpected perspectives. Slaughter the sacred cows and bring in fresh thinking.  Doing so will make your people happy, your brand strong, and you rich. Ask Warren Buffett about that.

The bigger the response, the better the idea

Ideas everyone agrees on are safe, bland, vanilla. They’re dreck. It’s the thinking that produces ad-speak-laden messages: “family owned with a commitment for quality and your satisfaction.” Gag me.

Marketing and advertising ideas worth exploring are the ones that double over half the room in laughter, while revolting others. Strong reactions tell you that idea carries a charge that will light up a brand. Nurture such thinking in people and you’ll create an unexpected employee benefit: opportunity.

By stepping into his Guns N Roses persona, Warren Buffett tells everyone, Geico is alive with opportunity. The boss is on the team, not in the watchtower. His appearances in those videos is a clarion call to every Geico employee: your ideas are welcome at the top. It’s a marketing and advertising message that resonates with customers too, earning Buffett and company over 327,00 plays on YouTube as of the moment this was written.

Employees created the video, wrote the lyrics, delivered the message. It works because it’s an authentic sentiment delivered by people who believe. This kind of thing only happens when you create a safe space for outrageous ideas.

How welcome are outrageous ideas at the top of your company?

Jon Spoelstra is our brand of crazy. That’s why you’ll find him teaching a class called How To Make Big Things Happen Fast at Wizard Academy. I spent two days attending his first workshop and highly recommend it–especially if you want to find the way to your envelope’s edge. Click here to learn more.

Online advertising in a magazine?

A magazine that updates scores. Ads showing a car driving down the road and, at a touch, reveals specs and customized pricing. News stories that link to background information. Meet the coming face of interactive magazine publishing . Are your online advertising best practices ready for this new technology?

Check out examples interactive advertising in a magazine being developed now. Look past the corpo-speak and see the future of how your customers will be consuming information in the near future. Near as in when the iPad comes out.

Don’t think this advance is way off or reserved just for the big boys. The ability to create this kind of interactive advertising will come to the local level quickly. How can you prepare? Here are three things you can do now:

Give your banners muscle

Consider how you currently execute banner advertising. If your ad simply transports a reader to your home page, you’re missing out. The shortest path to conversion is relevant results; a click is my question, where you take me is the answer.

Instead of just bringing visitors to your home page, choose specific points of your banner ad to bring visitors relevant points on your site. Click on the product, you’re taken to that specific product’s page. Click on copy in your ad and it brings you to an expanded version with more information. The company logo in an ad on the sports page takes visitors to a landing page written for sports-minded customers.

Whether you’re paying by click or impressions, the more efficiently you resolve each click, the more likely you’ll convert visitors into customers. It starts by answering the questions customers are really asking (not the ones you want them to ask) quickly and efficiently.

Show don’t tell with video

Video brings visitors into your business in a way words alone can’t. It’s a form of interactive advertising that communicates differently than cable or TV video; don’t consider using your TV spot on your site as having video. In fact, TV spots on websites can create a conversational disconnect.

Web video works best when it’s person-to-person conversational. Grab a Flip Video camera and welcome a customer as you would when they come into the store. Interview some of your customers. Don’t worry about making it pretty; the more authentic is looks, the more believable the message.

Engage visitors in conversation

Creating polls or surveys is an easy way to solicit customer input and generate better engagement. Survey Monkey gives you the ability to conduct live polls of your web visitors and display ongoing results live. Your online advertising immediately appears more connected and customers gain a greater sense of involvement.

You may get some poll results you don’t like. If you have a product or service customers aren’t happy with, they’ll tell you. That’s a good thing. If they’re already unhappy, at least now you have a way of addressing it with them and in front of everyone else. You’ll just have to walk your customer service talk.

Advantage goes to the prepared

Not only will making these adjustments enhance the effectiveness of your online advertising now, but when time comes for interactive media in dynamic publications, you’ll already have the necessary best practices in place.

Grooveyard of posts past