CharlieMoger.com

Marketing and advertising advice for owner-operated businesses

You are here: Home / Archives for customers

How effective are your ads at chasing off customers?

Good advertising chases off customers. How much do you care if penny-pinching, nit-picking, deal-shoppers are offended by your message? Inflict them on your competitors. Your core customers, the ones who stick with you, will love you sending the weasels packing.

“This is Alabama. We speak English,” says the tv ad for gubernatorial candidate Tim James. “If you want to live here, learn it.”


Predictable shock waves rolled across the national consciousness when his ad first ran. How dare he say that? How narrow-minded. How exclusionary! How brilliant.

Discrimination is the mark of good advertising

Shock and awe is political advertising’s stock and trade. A deeper look reveals a profitable lesson for you: political advertising is to marketing what poetry is to literature: it evokes a response, inspires action, and does so with the greatest possible economy. It has to.

Tim James

Mr. James is talking about more than language. He’s evoking an attitude of “them” and “us,” of “in” and “out.” He’s hoisting a banner to rally voters who prize Alabama’s culture. Isn’t he being discriminatory? You bet. That’s the point. If you don’t like what he’s selling, you’re not his voter. You probably wouldn’t be anyway.

Good advertising disqualify the unqualified. The slight downside: most people don’t like being disqualified. But, those who do qualify will find greater affinity with you. Congratulations. You’ve created an in-group.

Taking a stand demands nerve and backbone

I’m not saying Tim James is right or wrong. Voters will make that determination. Advertising isn’t a forum for debate any more than it’s a tool for education. It’s a mix of carrot and stick created for one purpose: move you into action.

James has nothing to lose. The June 1st runoff is coming fast. Bradley Byrne, a former State Senator, is the front runner among all candidates–on both sides. It’s put up or shut up time in the race. And, James has gone all-in on a message that’s generated over a million YouTube views its first week. Want to see it?

Profit from these political ad principles

Before you watch his ad at the bottom of this story, consider how these five principles of political advertising would impact your marketing:

  1. It’s not what they’re selling, it’s how they’re doing it

    Political ads take a stand, build a case, call for choice. What part of that is bad? If you can’t describe in five words or less why you’re running an ad, don’t. Case in point: Martha Coakley’s  horrible everything-for-everyone ad. Running ads without a clear purpose is like taking a road trip without a map. Burn gas. Get nowhere.

  2. Speak in plain language your answer to questions asked

    Politicians speak to what voters care about. James Carville’s “it’s the economy, stupid” credo echoed in every Clinton ad, making Bush’s bland message of consistency and experience look flaccid by comparison. Forget what’s important to you. Advertise what matters to customers.

  3. Express what you oppose in balance with what you support

    Polite doesn’t sell. Don’t be rude. Be direct. Draw the line. “We’re not the cheapest. Neither are our customers,” draws a line. “Our customers appreciate our work. They know how expensive cheap service can be.” Say it with swagger and be noticed. It worked for Scott Brown. Even more so for LBJ. His Daisy spot crushed Goldwater in one minute.

  4. Keep it fresh, but keep on message: be one thing

    What is the one thing that draws customers to you? Promote that. Put it in every ad. The family occupying The White House rode there on one word. A campaign uses many messages, but it revolves around one idea. What’s yours?

  5. When an ad breaks from the pack, ride it hard and far

    Create multiple ads, variations on your theme. Rotate them. But, when one really rings the bell, ring it loudly. Reagan’s Morning in America still resonates today. When you land on something that moves people, stay with it.

Political advertising has to move the needle quickly. Shouldn’t yours? You can’t charge half a magnet any more than you can create ads that please everyone. Magnets can only attract to the extent they repel. Same goes for your ads. Say who you are. Say it shamelessly. You’ll offend countless people who wouldn’t have done business with you anyway. But, the ones who do will love you for it.

You can’t win big without first taking risks

Will you offend someone? Hope so. Will you get calls complaining about your ads? Only if you do it right. Will you win the hearts, minds (and wallets) of those who connect with your message? As a noteworthy politician often says, “You betcha.”

Because you scrolled this far down, I’m going to share a rare jewel with you. It defies description, but demosntrates how far we’ve come as a culture. What you’re about to see actually generated lift in polls. What response do you suppose this ad would generate today:

 

[Originally published 1 May 2010]

UPDATE: James lost in the Republican Primary of seven candidates. He missed making the runoff by one-tenth of a point.

What customer experience does your brand deliver?

The marketing of your company shifts into high gear when customers walk in. Advertising attracts, but whether your branding wins or loses is measured by a customer’s tangible experience. Optimizing that moment of truth is is a matter of understanding the variables and managing them.

In retail, customer experience happens at the store. Service businesses, on the other hand, bring it to the customer. In the final installment of our conversation, Mike Dandridge, author of The One-Year Business Turnaround, shares how his Customer Experience Factor applies to service businesses.

[audio:https://charliemoger.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Mike-D-3-REV.mp3|titles=Mike D #3 REV]

Click here for part one of our conversation covering the basics of customer experience. Click here for part two of our conversation including specific examples.

As with retail, seeing the experience through the service customer’s eyes first points you in the right direction.

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.

Grooveyard of posts past