Customer Says No.

It's been a while since I linked to Seth Godin (and let's face it he needs the traffic) so let me commend his recent post in which he reminds us that if your potential customer hears you saying yes rather than no, they are far more likely to keep coming back to you. It's such a simple thought, but so often systems, the removal of initiative and lack of incentives mean that it doesn't happen.

But saying yes isn't enough. You also have to minimise the reasons for your customer to say no. Not hearing yes from you would be one reason they might say no, but there are many more. They include the prolonged telephone tree that gives you numerous filters before you get to a human being, the unwanted upselling of unrelated financial products and the confusing user interface. Eliminating anything that puts an obstacle between your customer and the sale is far more worthy of your time than dreaming up ways of getting attention or increasing awareness.

Get people's attention when you're sure that there's a direct route from that attention to their becoming a customer. Not before.

You Have A Website?

So Skittles has done what digital agencies Modernista and Zeus Jones did some time ago and turned its website into a series of social media links. But where Zeus Jones and Modernista were demonstrating that they undestood the arena in which they were operating, Skittles have really just changed their website.

There's no branded utility here - if I didn't want to visit their website, I surely won't change my mind because there are more options now. If I'm web savvy, I'll have all those links on my desktop anyway. And inevitably, there are software conflicts - I was asked to upgrade my browser before gaining access. Is it only me who wonders how large a proportion of internet users have a set-up that works for them but falls some way short of that felt to be the norm by early-adopting website designers?

Yes, it's generating a lot of noise in the social media village, but where's the interaction that is at the heart of the tools to which they're linking? Why do I want a widget sending me what will inevitably be corporate-influenced RSS feeds on my computer? Where's the permissive engagement? To me, it's too close to an old-school awareness exercise.

Now people will say that Skittles (or anyone else) will be able to "leverage" that awareness for the good of their product, but there's no such deal here. Getting a widget onto people's computers is like the worst kind of sponsorship that just plasters its logo all over an event with no reference to the context - it's all about presence and very little about purpose. When you view it in those terms, leverage becomes a synonym for exploit and people don't like to be exploited.

Bottom line for me - people don't visit websites to be promoted to and they certainly don't return to them, so trying to update one beyond providing constant accurate infomation seems like an expensive exercise in futility. What you mean to your customers is no longer - if it ever was - determined by your website.

Trusting Me, Trusting You.

So yesterday a buffoon sends out a mass email cc'ing rather than bcc'ing everyone in his mailing list. There were understandable complaints in some quarters, but quickly the tone changed as in-boxes filled with emails from various social media experts offering parodic investment opportunities in Nigeria, deals on pharmaceuticals and announcements that the email list had been sold to spammers.

Perhaps the context of a lazy Friday or the overlapping of the recipients' networks contributed to this interesting example of community forming around a shared sense of implicit (albeit most definitely not explicit or universal) permission. But, the sixty-odd contributions so far have crucially not expanded the distribution beyond the original list and there is a sense of trust that they are all sufficiently web-savvy to limit any damage that has already been done.

If you can engender that trust amongst your potential customers, it seems that people's human-ness shines through even when you screw up.

Measure For Measure.

Measurable results are all the rage as cost-cutting management regimes seek thorough justifications for expenditures.

The subject came up twice yesterday in very different contexts. First I heard James Lovelock of GAIA fame extolling the need for more measurement of climate change but declare that "All things that really matter are intuitive." It's a great point. Projected numbers, in business especially, can usefully be as much about trends and tendencies as about pinpoint accuracy and we know that the great mathematicians all speak of seeing patterns and shapes in numbers rather than calculate them like mere mortals and finance directors do.

Then, in a meeting with an agency, the subject of convincing clients of the ROI on digital initiatives when they were quite happy to pay large sums for traditional advertising. It reminded me of a post that I wrote years ago in which I remarked upon the dubious calculations of financiers and suggested that imputed justifications of marketing expenditures were no less valid. Quite prescient really.

If you measure where you can and combine that with a rigorous inspection of your internal logic, any marketer should be able to generate a solid ROI justification, particularly now that the bean-counters have been shown not to be the master mathemeticians they thought they were.

Passion Is No Ordinary Word.

Last week, at the Free Agents screening, I heard a producer eulogising about how the show had been a great "job" with which to be involved. This week I heard someone praising an advertising campaign as great "work".

My reaction to both is the same as to those people who spoke of shifting "units" and marketing "product" when I worked in the entertainment industry. If you want customers to care about what you're selling, then think and speak about it in terms of something you care about.

If your language commoditises it, you're half the way to actually commoditising it.

Pattern Recognition.

Changed behaviour gets noticed. It disrupts the status quo. It can be a positive diffentiator. A lot of marketing is based upon claims that we do things differently and this is better for you.

But changed behaviour can also occur for defensive reasons and that also gets noticed (as Facebook have been reminded this week).

It is noticed when a credit card company starts sending monthly bills about two weeks later than before. It is then noticed that this wasn't due to the holiday season postal glut but was apparently a policy change.

The changed behaviour has certainly got the customer's attention, but that customer is now wondering if they're trying to increase the chance of his making a late payment. Customers don't like sneakiness - peceived or actual. They notice it. Don't do it.

Keep Your Copy Clear.

Snappy way of saying "our showrooms are offering good deals" isn't it? I had to drive past this billboard (yes, a billboard designed for instant impact) quite a few times to work it out.


Add in the looming storm clouds and a racing driver who, for sure, won the world championship but was also beaten in many of the races and you have to wonder what the thinking was. If you haven't got much time to say something, make it simply comprehensible and make it undebateable.