3 Challenges Digital Marketing Firms Must Face in their First Year

The digital marketing firms industry is a great one to be in right now, if you can build a solid team around you. If you deliver quality service to your customers, then you should have no trouble making a space for yourself. With that being said, you can expect your first year to be rocky and demand a lot of adapting if you are coming from another field or working independently. You may also feel a lot of pressure to get your first clients. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest challenges you may have to face as a digital marketing firm in your first year.

Getting People to Opt-in

Selling digital marketing services will be easier if you’re in a market that’s receptive to them. Hopefully, you have done your research already and know that there is demand. If you haven’t, then you need to start looking at how many people in your area could use your services and see how many firms are already serving it.

Being in a small market is not necessarily a bad thing, but you may have to work harder and look at educating your prospective clients first before you start actively selling them. If you’re in a market with a lot of demand but a lot of competition, then you may have to offer your services for free to some of your first customers so you can use them as referrals and get testimonials.

Attracting and Keeping Top Talent

It’s very hard to retain top employees in this field and recruiting is not simple either. One of the reasons for this is that the pool of talent in digital marketing is not the deepest, and the few people who have the expertise needed to be good digital marketers get courted aggressively by the big players. So, you’ll need to be creative with things like benefits and work arrangements.

Be prepared to have to offer things like remote working and hot desking options to remain competitive. You should also try to focus on development opportunities and have a real health and wellness program.

One of the things you could do here would be to offer a healthy food benefit card. A healthy food benefit card that can be used on nutritious foods and different medications will be appreciated by health-conscious employees, and will also allow you to keep them healthier, and happier.

As far as recruitment goes, it could be a good idea to work with a third-party human resources team if you want to get everything right. This will also allow you to concentrate on what matters the most.

Managing Relationships with Clients

This part is one that many people overlook when they start this kind of business, but managing relationships with clients can get very complicated, especially if you offer a wide variety of services.

If you offer SEO, then you have to be able to monitor results for every one of your clients and be ready to answer their questions when they ask. If you have PPC clients, then you may have to handle multiple campaigns for each of them and have campaigns with widely different objectives, scopes, and budgets. This is why you will need to learn how to manage your clients’ expectations, not be outlandish in your claims, and start getting familiar with things like CRMs.

Running a digital marketing agency can be rough at the beginning, but once you get the hang of it and you’ve built a good client base, things will become much easier. Just make sure that you surround yourself with the right people and get familiar with the back-office part before you start.

Create Social Media Buzz with Empire Avenue

Empire Avenue has always been an excellent tool for monitoring your social media and online activity, social media buzz, and networking with more people. While the gamification of social media and influence scores will continue to be discussed and debated, services like Empire Avenue or Klout, if used correctly, can be extremely valuable to businesses.

Of even greater value though is a powerful tool within Empire Avenue called Missions.

Added last year, missions are activities that Empire Avenue users can set up where other users are asked to do something and receive in-game currency (eaves) as a reward. Using missions, you can jump-start your social media activity, and I’m going to tell you how.

Creating Empire Avenue Missions

For the purposes of this post, let’s assume that you already have an Empire Avenue account and some eaves to spend. I will also review some great options for missions in a moment, but let us also assume that you’ve decided to ask users to visit and share your latest blog post to their own social networks.

Log into EA (http://www.empireavenue.com) and click on the Missions tab. Your first view will be other missions that members have created. I do recommend checking these regularly as they are a source of more eaves for you, ideas for other missions, and an important part of the game. You can also click on Dashboard to see any previous missions you’ve created, but click on Create Mission for now.

The Create Mission form is comprised of Title, Mission Type, Detailed Description, Reward, Requirements and Promote.

As suggested in the field, your Title needs to be compelling. I recommend including what you want them to do along with what you’re going to give them. More on that in a moment.

For Mission Type, your choices are Visit a URL or YouTubeLikes / Subscriptions.

For most missions you will be sending members to another URL, but the YouTube options are nice. When you provide a link to your YouTube video or channel, Empire Avenue will display it within the site and require that they watch the video or subscribe to your channel before collecting the reward.

In the Description field, you can go into greater detail about your mission and what you want them to do for you.

The Requirements section is nice because you can limit who is eligible to do your mission. For most social media missions, you’re likely going to want Anybody to do them, but you can choose Shareholders or Not, Minimum shares owned, community membership or even Country.

Currently, the only Reward that you can offer is Eaves. You will determine how many eaves to pay out, and how many payouts you wish to give. This will determine your mission budget. Offering 10 rewards of 5000 eaves each will set a mission reward budget of 50,000. Empire Avenue will charge a fee equal to your reward budget so your total mission cost in this example would be 100,000.

Finally, there’s a Promotion section where you can decide whether or not you wish to send a message to your shareholders to let them know about the mission. Anyone can view available missions in the Missions area, but notifying shareholders is a great way to get eyes on your mission quickly. It does, however, come at a cost of additional eaves for each shareholder, and the rate goes up the more often you send such messages.

Once you have made your choices, click on Save & Preview and you will see what your mission looks like. You can make sure everything is spelled correctly, that you have the right reward values, and even test your link.

Empire Avenue Mission Best Practices

Before we get into some specific ideas for missions, there are few tips and recommendations I want to share with you.

Be clear and concise in your title what your mission task is and include the reward value.
Try to keep your description brief and to the point.
Include some information about where you’re sending them, what the link is about, particularly if it is a controversial subject.
Include the link within the description as well as the link field.
If you have other missions that haven’t been completed yet, include a link to those missions within the description.
Be specific with your mission task. Instead of simply asking someone to check out your latest blog post, ask them to make a comment or share it.
Make sure that your reward matches the request. The more time you want someone to invest, the more you’re going to have to offer. Also, the more you offer, the faster the mission will get completed, so if it’s something you need done quickly, be prepared to offer a premium.
Remind people to Like the mission. It is an in-game activity and such actions are counted by EA.
Use Shareholder Messages sparingly, since they can get so expensive. It’s actually cheaper to increase the value of your rewards a little bit and entice more people viewing the general missions thread.

Empire Avenue Mission Ideas

Now, what are some of the most effective missions? You will see a lot of ideas as you peruse everyone else’s missions. If your stock price is struggling you can pay others to invest in you, improving your share value and encouraging even more people to invest in you. That’s great for in-game success, but I like to use Empire Avenue to jump start social media buzz.

Each time I post a new blog entry or article, I share it to my social networks. But it sometimes takes time for my own followers to get online and notice something new from me, so I use Empire Avenue to spread the word.

If you’re posting to multiple networks, first pick the one you want to target. Generally, this should be the network where you expect to have the most impact with this specific post, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or Google+. Then, grab the URL for that specific post and use that as the mission URL. The mission task must be to share or ReTweet the post. If it’s a tweet, you will get a lot of Favorites as well as new followers if they haven’t followed you before. If it is a Facebook or Google+ post, I always mention that Likes/+1’s and Comments are welcome.

I do not recommend trying such a mission with LinkedIndue it’s poor viral nature. Individual status updates just aren’t seen by that many other people.

If you post frequently, you can do one of these missions for each post and switch networks occasionally to achieve a mix of audience. Or, if you post just once a week or so, you might run several missions for the same post.

You must try different missions with different blog posts to see what works best for you and your audience. Personally, I have found that Twitter works best for news-related stories.

Not every blog you write and mission you run will get the same results, which is why you need to test different missions, as well as utilize other blog traffic and promotion tools like Triberr. And if you’re not promoting a specific blog post, there are some other missions you can run to help your business:

1. Gain Followers

An easy mission to run is to simply ask people to follow you on a specific social network. The most commonly asked are Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram. These kinds of missions do not require much effort and therefore can use small rewards and a lot of payouts. This is a excellent way to quickly ramp up a new Twitter account, or get that new Facebook Page up past 25 likes.

2. Blog Comments and Shares

If you struggle to get people commenting on your blog, jump start the conversation by asking your Empire Avenue friends to comment. Many of the comments will likely be of the “nice post” variety, but some members do take the time to read and craft a thoughtful comment. Ether way it’s activity that will make your normal readers feel more comfortable posting their own thoughts.

You can also ask members to share your blog to their networks, using whatever social network buttons to offer or prefer. This is a nice way to get your blog shared to some of the other networks like Digg, StumbleUpon or Reddit, but it will cost you more and be less immediately gratifying. You can instantly see shares on Google+ from your original post, but if I go to your blog and digg it, you won’t likely know.

3. Blog Writing

A brilliant idea that I saw executed recently by Reg Saddlerwas asking members to write a blog post of their own on a specific topic. In this case, it was a review of a specific product and the issue it solves, “privacy while using a public WiFi network.” The mission paid a hefty amount (50,000), and provided background information and a reference post. The mission owner also provided additional promotions to myself (and presumably others) who wrote exceptional posts.

So, in short, this is an expensive way to go, but imagine the publicity you could get for your brand! In one week, you could have 50 different blog posts on 50 different sites all talking about and linking to your product or service. This not only the most expensive, but also the most complicated of mission options since you’re going to have to provide a blog topic that people would be comfortable writing about. If it is highly technical or too industry-specific, it will prove too challenging.

If you aren’t already an avid Empire Avenue user, I hope this has inspired you to give it a whirl. Running missions takes eaves, so it requires a certain degree of success within the game (you can buy eaves with real money, but that’s not necessary). If you need help formaulating a strategy for EA success, let me know. And please share some of your mission success stories!

15 Customer Service Skills that Every Employee Needs

There are certain customer service skills that every employee must master if they are forward-facing with customers.

Without them, you run the risk of finding your business in an embarrassing customer service train-wreck, or you’ll simply lose customers as your service continues to let people down.

Luckily, there are a few universal skills that every support member can master that will dramatically improve their conversations with customers.

Below I’ll cover the 15 most-needed skills to master this incredibly important position.

The Customer Service Skills that Matter

When most business publications talk about customer service skills, things like “being a people person” tend to take the spotlight.

It’s not that this trait is outright wrong, but it’s so vague and generic that it is hardly a help to those looking to get involved in support positions within a company, and certainly doesn’t help out entrepreneurs/founders who are looking for the right set of skills when hiring the all-important folks who will be taking care of their customers.

With that said, let’s get into some specific skills that every support employee can master to “WOW” the customers that they interact with on a daily basis…

Patience

If you don’t see this near the top of a customer service skills list, you should just stop reading.

Not only is patience important to customers, who often reach out to support when they are confused and frustrated, but it’s also important to the business at large: we’ve shown you before that great service beats fast service every single time.

Yet patience shouldn’t be used as an excuse for slothful service either!

Derek Sivers explained his view on “slower” service as being an interaction where the time spent with the customer was used to better understand their problems and needs from the company.

If you deal with customers on a daily basis, be sure to stay patient when they come to you stumped and frustrated, but also be sure to take the time to truly figure out what they want — they’d rather get competent service than be rushed out the door!

The ability to really listen to customers is so crucial for providing great service for a number of reasons.

Last week I went over a few customer feedback systems, and long before that I showed you the data on why listening to customer feedback is a must for manybusinesses who are looking to innovate.

Not only is it important to pay attention to individual customer interactions (watching the language/terms that they use to describe their problems), but it’s also important to be mindful and attentive to the feedback that you receive at large.

For instance, customers may not be saying it outright, but perhaps there is a pervasive feeling that your software’s dashboard isn’t laid out correctly. Customers aren’t likely to say, “Please improve your UX!”, but they may say things like, “I can never find the search feature,” or, “Where is the _____ function at again?”

What are your customers telling you without saying it?

Tenacity

Call it what you want, but a great work ethic and a willingness to do what needs to be done (and not take shorcuts) is a key skill when providing the kind of service that people talk about.

The many memorable customer service stories out there (many of which had a huge impact on the business) were created by a single employee who refused to just do the “status quo” when it came to helping someone out.

Remembering that your customers are people too, and knowing that putting in the extra effort will come back to you ten-fold should be your driving motivation to never “cheat” your customers with lazy service.

Clear Communication Skills

Make sure you’re getting to the problem at hand quickly; customers don’t need your life story or to hear about how your day is going.

More importantly, you need to be cautious about how some of your communication habits translate to customers, and it’s best to err on the side of caution whenever you find yourself questioning a situation.

An example: The last time I went to get work done on my car, I was told by an employee that if I wanted to get an oil change, it would be “included” in my final bill.

I thought that meant I’d be getting it for free, yet as it turns out, that wasn’t the case. The employee apologized and I truly believe it was an accident (they just worked there), but I haven’t been back to that shop since because of the miscommunication.

When it comes to important points that you need to relay clearly to customers, keep it simple and leave nothing to doubt.

Knowledge of the Product

The best forward-facing employees in your company will work on having a deepknowledge of how your product works.

It’s not that every single team member should be able to build your product from scratch, but rather they should know the ins and outs of how your product works, just like a customer who uses it everyday would.

Without knowing your product from front-to-back, you won’t know how to help customers when they run into problems.

Acting Skills

Sometimes you’re going to come across people that you’ll never be able to make happy.

Situations outside of your control (they had a terrible day, or they are just a natural-born complainer) will sometimes creep into your usual support routine, and you’ll be greeted with those “barnacle” customers that seem to want nothing else but to pull you down.

Every great customer service rep will have those basic acting skillsnecessary to maintain their usual cheery persona in spite of dealing with people who may be just plain grumpy.

Time Management Skills

Hey, despite my many research-backed rants on why you should spend more time with customers, the bottom line is that there is a limit, and you need to be concerned with getting customers what they want in an efficient manner.

The trick here is that this should also be applied when realizing when you simply cannot help a customer. If you don’t know the solution to a problem, the best kind of support member will get a customer over to someone who does.

Don’t waste time trying to go above and beyond for a customer in an area where you will just end up wasting both of your time!

Ability to “Read” Customers

You won’t always be able to see customers face-to-face, and in many instances (nowadays) you won’t even hear a customer’s voice!

That doesn’t exempt you from understanding some basic principles of behavioral psychology and being able to “read” the customer’s current emotional state.

This is an important part of the personalization process as well, because it takes knowing your customers to create a personal experience for them.

More importantly though, this skill is essential because you don’t want to mis-read a customer and end up losing them due to confusion and miscommunication.

Look and listen for subtle clues about their current mood, patience level, personality, etc., and you’ll go far in keeping your customer interactions positive.

Closing Ability

To be clear, this has nothing to do with “closing sales” or other related terms.

Being able to close with a customer means being able to end the conversation with confirmed satisfaction (or as close to it as you can achieve) and with the customer feeling that everything has been taken care of (or will be).

Getting booted after a customer service call or before all of their problems have been addressed is the last thing that customers want, so be sure to take the time to confirm with customers that each and every issue they had on deck has been entirely resolved.

A Social Media Marketers’ Successful Traits … A Difference Maker

The most important part of social media marketing? It is being social … hands down. A difference maker for future success, no doubt.

What skills, though, do successful social media marketers have that put these individuals above the average social media user, and better yet, above the traditional marketer? Authenticity? Personality? Market knowledge?

We don’t have an information shortage, we have an attention shortage.

Seth Godin

Our vote for the most important type of marketing? Word of mouth marketing, hands down. And the best channels to create word of mouth marketing? Social media, again hands down. A great way to get attention in a crowded marketplace. Seth knows.

To us, it’s clear that it takes a certain type of person to manage social channels. From managing attacks on your brand/company to interacting with people on a daily basis, being in social media requires some specific traits. Here are 14 traits and characteristics of highly effective social media marketers and some tips to help you rock like them:

Curious

From constantly reading about new trends and happenings in your industry to learning about your audience, curiosity is key for a successful social media marketer. In this type of position it’s important to know as much as you possibly can about your brand, your industry and the audience you’re catering to.

Build trust

Be honest in your communications at all cost. Trust is very hard to earn back once lost. It is basis of good relationship building.

Innovative

Innovation adds ‘flavor’ to your skills and makes them adaptable. Be innovative to stand out above the noise.

Sense of humor

Adding humor to marketing is a cool way of saying “we are a friendly business”. It makes your marketing memorable. Gives your brand a distinct personality and yields priceless results.

Patient

Never be pushy, and know the path to the social media community takes time. Be patient yet persistent with all your marketing goals.

Newsworthy

Demonstrate both the ability to make news as well as create effective curation; rarely be predictable yet always consistently adding value.

Writing skills

Create copy that is imaginative as well as provocative. Write with confidence and humility. Be humorous at times but be sure you are taken seriously.

Unpretentious

Don’t create a feeling of ego. Be genuine and humble at all times.

Nurturing style

Avoid a selling style. Always aim to be relentlessly helpful to customers.

Engaging

Practice continuous networking, both online and off. Use many channels to connect. Your goal is to optimize relationship building.

Listener and learner

People usually have something to say, so listen and show appreciation or let them know you are working on it. Never put down or ignore negative feedback. Listen, asks good questions, then listen intently some more. Continuously study and learn from customer insights.

Responsive

Recognize the consistency of engaging customers promptly. Right on it when customers ask questions or give comments.

Natural leader

Be someone who makes employees around them better. Empower people to act and builds a tribe of likeminded professionals among your peers.

Sharer

Stay open minded and always eager to recognize and share the work of others.

Most of these traits aren’t rocket science, are they? Create a checklist of these traits to keep in the forefront of your thinking. Practice often, and your will certainly see the dividends to your business.

Keep in mind that being social isn’t a new of marketing. It is a new way to run your entire business.

Please share an experience or story on your business’ social media marketing design with this community.

Read more from Digital Spark Marketing’s blog library:

8 Popular Social Media Initiatives for Customer Engagement

Social Commerce Business … What Ben and Jerry’s Knows That You Should Know

12 Ways to Build Social Commerce Business through Great Customer Service

How Bloggers Should Leverage Instagram

Instagram is one of the relatively new ‘visual’ platforms that, for those focusing on the written word, is a bit challenging to make headway on. We don’t have gorgeous products or interesting scenery… we have blog posts, that leverage Insragram, right?

But Instagram, like every other social network, does have potential for certain bloggers who want to make a little effort to leverage it. And I’m going to tell you exactly how.

And the good news is, while we’ll be reviewing quite a number of techniques and processes, the amount of time required to promote an individual post to Instagram is relatively minor… likely a few extra minutes. Is that worth it? Let’s discuss that.

Why Should Bloggers Include Instagram?

Now, bear in mind that how each individual uses and experiences Instagram depends in large part on who they’ve chosen to follow. That said, most of us probably have Instagram feeds filled with selfies and family photos and food porn. With its tight integration with Facebook and fun filters, it’s incredibly easy to snap a fun, candid photo, edit it a bit, and then share it with your friends.

But suppose for a moment that, instead of connecting with friends and family, you instead used Instagram to connect with peers and colleagues, influencers and readers.

And suppose that you regularly posted an image associated with your latest blog post, inviting your followers to read it?

Oh but wait, you can’t include working links within image descriptions. So this must all be a waste of time.

The Devoted Instagram Follower

Here’s where Instagram gets really interesting.

Yes, you cannot include links within individual image descriptions. That means that, in order for someone to get to your site or blog or post, they’re going to need to use the link within your Bio.

That’s right. Someone that sees an image you’ve shared and is interested in reading the corresponding blog post is going to have to read the description, tap on your Name to get to your Bio, tap on the link in your Bio, and then find your blog post and tap the title to open it up on their mobile device.

Who’s crazy or bored enough to do all that!

Quite a few people, it turns out.

While actual numbers will vary of course with the blogger and blog post, bloggers who have tried to leverage Instagram have been pleasantly surprised. While the referral traffic won’t rival other social networks, what’s interesting is how interested those readers really are.

I mean, think about it. If they were willing to jump through three hoops just to get to your content, they must really want to read it, right?

And the metrics back this up.

When one compares the traffic from Instagram to the traffic from other sources and campaigns, it’s clear that the Instagram users tend to read the entire article, spending more time on site than others. And they’re interested in clicking around to other content as well.

During a one-week test, I observed on my own blog that readers from Instagram spent twice as much time on site and were 40% less likely to bounce off the page. (Though to be fair, this low bounce rate is largely due to the fact that we’re sending followers to the Home page, and they need to tap another link to get the content they’re interested in.)

How To Share Blog Posts To Instagram

I think the number one reason most bloggers don’t think to share posts to Instagram is the simple lack of a share button, right there on the blog, staring us in the face and asking, “Why, Mike? Why haven’t you shared to me lately?”

Ok, maybe that’s just me.

But really, just as followers on Instagram have to jump through a few hoops to get to your post, likewise you need to jump through a few hoops to get that post on Instagram.

Step One: Get your blog image into your phone.

This in and of itself is probably not too challenging… just not easy to remember. You need to make this part of your Blog Promotion Checklist.

If your blog post already has a great image that’s suitable for sharing to Instagram, you can likely visit your blog on your phone once it’s published, tap and hold the image, and select Save Image to save it to your camera roll. (Specific steps may vary depending on your phone’s OS.)

Step Two: Share Your Image to Instagram

Now, simply open the Instagram app on your phone, tap the center button in the bottom row, and then tap the thumbnail image in the lower left. This will open up your camera roll and allow you to choose an image from your phone.

Tap Next and you’ll have an opportunity to apply filters and other image edits.

Tap Next and you can add a description, tag people, and even share to other social networks. The caption is where you must explain that this is a new blog post, and that followers can get to it through the link in your Bio. I also avoid sharing these posts to Facebook or Twitter, since I’ve already shared the blog post there in a more optimal way. However, I do share these images to Flickr.

Soft Skill Absences That Lead to Customer Service Failures

One might think that a small company like Angie’s List (~$100 million/year) would outperform e-commerce giant Amazon.com (~100 Billion/year) on customer service failures. Sadly, no.

After moving to San Diego, I was a happy Angie’s List customer, using the service to find local service providers for moving, cleaning, and more. All went well until I booked a house cleaning service advertised as “deep cleaning” when the actual service was anything but. When I contacted Angie’s List to complain — multiple times — the customer service rep (CSR) basically read me their terms and conditions which said no refunds after 30 days.

It didn’t matter that I couldn’t schedule the service provider inside that 30-day window. My only option was to book something else within another short time window, which I didn’t want to do. So, they kept my money.

Yes, that’s right. Angie’s List kept my money and provided nothing of value whatsoever. That “free” money cost them a lot. I’m now a “never Angie’s List” customer, and have relayed my story to hundreds of people in person or speeches. And now I’m writing about it on CustomerThink, a site that serves 100K visitors per month.

So for a short-term “win” that forced me to comply with nonsensical rules, Angie’s List lost my business forever, and this post will be added to growing pile (82K and counting) of Angie’s List Sucks posts easily found on Google. Stupid beyond belief.

Contrast that with Amazon, where I recently had a problem with a delivery. I contacted them and they promptly refunded my money. The rep (yes, I spoke with a real live person) was helpful, friendly, and clearly wanted to resolve the issue to my complete satisfaction.

Agent Training

I recently completed a study of customer service practices (disclosure: sponsored by Oracle) to determine the relative impact of 14 different practices on success. My online
survey (n=209) also asked service managers/execs to select their first-, second-, and third-largest customer service investments for the coming year.

Investment priorities generally correlated with the more critical customer service practices, including new customer service solutions, channels and other capabilities. However, one investment stood out as a bit of a surprise — “agent training/development” was ranked No. 1.

Source: CustomerThink Online Survey Nov. 2015 (n=209)

That raised a question for me — training in what, exactly? Here is what I learned after putting that question to a number of customer service experts.

Listen with Empathy

Nearly everyone mentioned how critical it was to truly listen what a customer is saying, and understand how they feel. As Jeff Toister points out, this skill shouldn’t be taken too literally and limited to just phone calls.

Listening skills including listening to and interpreting verbal messages, but I also include written messages (email, social media, text, etc.) in this category too. Employees are faced with countless distractions at work that make it difficult for them to understand what their customers really want and how their customers are feeling. One of the best things a customer service professional can do is try to understand the underlying emotion a customer is expressing when they’re sharing their issue.

My Angie’s List rep showed no evidence of actually listening, or caring about my situation — only in repeating their terms and condition. Fail #1.

Solve Problems

Why treat CSRs like robots and only allow them to do exactly what’s in a script? People have brains, put them to use! According to Steve Curtin, taking ownership is key:

… a process, policy or service model rarely contains the sentiment that a customer’s problem is your problem. When employees lack this mindset, their solutions to customers’ dilemmas are limited to what’s on the screen or page before them – and this may not completely solve the customer’s problem. But when employees take ownership by adopting the mentality that a customer’s problem is their problem, this enhances their ability to consistently resolve problems to the satisfaction, if not delight, of customers.

In my case with Angie’s List, the “problem” was a 30-day refund window which didn’t allow for fulfillment delays. But the CSR was clearly not interested in solving that problem, wasn’t empowered to give a refund, and refused to escalate the situation to management. Fail #2.

Build Human-to-Human Relationships

If everything went perfectly, you wouldn’t need customer service. But even in highly automated, quality-obsessed companies like Amazon, occasionally something goes wrong. At these moments of truth, Richard Shapiro advocates creating a human connection:

If a rep says, “I hear you are concerned, but I can help you,” it automatically provides a human connection, the first building block to building a relationship. In person, the rep can authentically compliment the customer about something he or she may be wearing or even make a comment about the weather. If the rep is on the phone with the customer, make mention of a noise in the background like a dog barking or baby crying. This shows the customer that the rep is actually a person, too.

I was unhappy when I contacted both Amazon and Angie’s List to deal with issues. Amazon handled it well, while the Angie’s List rep just poured fuel on the fire. Fail #3.

Turn Calls into Revenue

After my Amazon experience which required a refund, I was back online a few days later ordering more. Really outstanding CSRs can turn a customer call into new revenue, says Chip Bell:

Customers are smarter, Internet savvy and more demanding than ever. They expect CSRs to be smart and resourceful, not human robots with programmed scripts. Up selling takes specialized skills, not rote order taking procedures.

After my Angie’s List experience, I immediately stopped ordering and have tried my best to discourage friends and neighbors, too. Fail #4.

Combine High-Tech and High-Touch

With rare exceptions, most businesses will continue to offer customer service by phone, even as adoption of digital channels increases. In fact, a recent NewVoiceMedia study found that “68 percent of respondents claim they would prefer to interact with a live agent rather than automated self-help (FAQs/guided support, dial directories, chatbots, etc.) when dealing with customer service.” People are the key to delight customers, says Shep Hyken:

Obviously a good self-service portal on the company’s website is important, but there are many channels that customers interact on that are responded to by the CSRs of a company. A comment on a social channel, like Twitter or Facebook, will take a well-trained CSR to respond in way that is correct and personal. Until these online and social channels are take care of by computers and robots, in such a way that the customer is delighted with the interaction, it will be the people that will make the difference.

Angie’s List had good automated tools for finding contractors and booking orders. But when human judgement was required, they failed miserably. That’s Fail #5, which is enough for this article.

Improve, Empower, and Reward

There are other skills that need development, including decision making and time management, says Bill Moore of Customer Relationship Management Institute (CRMI). He also counsels managers to empower their reps and recognize them for improving customer satisfaction:

Be sure to compliment the training with internal procedures that provide the service representatives with the authority to resolve conflicts up to a certain dollar amount without approval. The Ritz Carlton and Nordstrom’s are two examples of where employees are authorized a certain level of remuneration to immediately resolve a customer issue.
And … ensure measurable improvements of customer satisfaction are tied to an ongoing employee recognition and reward program.

And finally, Ron Kaufman writes that a passion for “perpetual service improvement” is the key to growth:

Excellence in service is not taking a prescribed set of actions. Rather, service excellence is taking the next right action to create new value, better value, or more than expected value for someone else; an internal colleague or an external customer. Service excellence is the commitment – not merely to predictable standards – but to continuously stepping up.

Bottom line: People still matter. My sincere thanks to the customer service experts who helped me better understand the skills customer service reps need to avoid defections (Angie’s List) and build genuinely loyal relationships (Amazon).

What the Pinterest Social Media Platform Can Do for Marketing

Have you noticed the new social media platform Pinterest recently? If not, seek it out and give it a careful review.

Pinterest, an online bulletin board for your favorite images, launched in 2010 and is already experiencing wild growth. According to comScore, Pinterest usage in the US shot up from less than half a million unique visitors in May 2011 to nearly 12 million in January 2012.

The site signed up more than 7 million unique visitors last December, up from 1.6 million in September. And it’s driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined, according to a report from Cambridge, Mass.-based content-sharing site Shareaholic.

Pinterest allows you to organize images — maybe food or wines you’ve tasted, or great photography — into boards for specific categories. When you “pin” something new, your followers will see it. They can like, comment or re-pin it to their boards. Like Facebook content, your Pinterest pins can go viral.

I have started many boards … from favorite posters to inspirational quotes to creative marketing. The possibilities are unlimited.

Here’s a look at why some business owners — particularly retailers — might want to seriously consider creating a business presence on Pinterest.

Perhaps the most powerful business application is the ability to post images of your company’s products on your Pinterest board and link them back to your website. It works as a sort of virtual store catalog.

But remember that this is social media … you’ll want to be relevant to others interests and avoid selling at all costs. If you simply display images of your products without contributing other content or sharing other users’ pins, you’ll likely find that people will tune you out.

A wide range of major brands are using Pinterest to engage fans through social curation and as an online focus group to see what clicks with consumers, including:

Lands’ End – The Lands End sub-brand ran a contest last month called “Pin It to Win It,” inviting customers for pins of items on the site they liked, with the ten most creative awarded prizes of $250 gift cards.

Whole Foods Market – pins things related to their products such as recipes, delicious-looking food, food art, and images of recycled or reused products to inspire customers to be environmentally responsible.

Etsy – offers stationery, gift ideas, seasonal decorating advice and a “Smile Booth” for employees and consumers.

Travel Channel – a big fan, the U.S. cable TV network taps into interests such as animals, street food, behind-the-scenes personal photos, beaches, landmarks, and souvenirs.

Gap – repins “popular Gap images on Pinterest including its puffer jackets and celebs like Will Arnett and Amy Poehler sporting the brand’s products.

Pinterest already is driving buyers to some websites. In the last six months, the retail site ideeli.com has seen a 446 percent increase in web traffic from Pinterest and sales resulting from those visits have increased five-fold.

The site does have some drawbacks for businesses. If your product or service isn’t particularly visual, your images may not tie directly back to your brand. The platform also doesn’t offer business-oriented features, and its search function prioritizes pin and board subjects ahead of “people,” the category that brands would fall into.

The best way to determine if Pinterest could attract buyers is simply to experiment with it and don’t give up too quickly. If you run a landscaping business, for instance, pin pictures of landscaping you find online or snap in your community. If you’re a lighting store, pin shots of the interesting in home lighting designs. You also can search through the site’s categories and add some inspirational, funny or beautiful images you find.

Then, follow interesting boards and individuals who post images that inspire you. Once you’ve done some pinning of other people’s content for a week or so and attracted a few followers, create a new board of your products.

Add descriptions and perhaps the price to the images. Make sure they link back to your website and start tracking pinterest.com as a referral source in your website analytics.

Invite your followers from other social media sites and your customers to join and follow you … perhaps give them a small incentive to do so. Next, try creating an image of a special deal or coupon just for your followers. Upload it to a new board for Deals. Perhaps offer a prize to the person who gets the most likes or comments on a re-pin of the coupon, and then sees who shares it the most.

In a month or two, see if you’re getting referral traffic or sales. Depending on the results, you may need to tweak your boards with new images and words.

One thing is clear whether you’re on Pinterest for personal or business reasons: the best images — be they funny, beautiful or thought to provoke — attract the most attention.

The Bottom Line: Where there’s buzz, there’s opportunity.

How can you use this exciting image-driven channel to engage your customers better?

Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improve your marketing, branding, and advertising?

Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on T witter, and LinkedIn.

17 Tips to Make Every Marketing Campaign a Success

Understatement time: Marketing has changed a ton in the last five years. Social media’s power to drive campaign success into uncharted territory has resulted in a massive shift in content marketing. The best campaigns have capitalized on the elements that make almost every marketing campaign a success.

Stop interrupting what people are interested in, and be what people are interested in.

Below, we’ve taken five of the best marketing campaigns, and have broken down key elements that contributed to their explosive success. Although some of these marketing campaigns were created by the biggest companies and agencies in the world, they succeeded not because of how much they cost, but because they understood fundamental truths about social media users.

Play to people’s emotions.

When I saw my boss cry when watching the ad, I knew it was going to perform well. Emotional stimuli, happiness, sadness, inspiration, anger and beyond, have been proven to activate the human nervous system and boost social transmission. In other words, if you can cause an emotional reaction in people, they’re far more likely to share your content.

This notion is clear when you look at what gets shared online. Go to a website like Upworthy or any other content aggregator and see what gets the most attention. It’s stories about unlikely heros, or videos of soldiers coming back from war and surprising their families, or stories of people and their pets. These videos, to use an internet expression, catch us ‘right in the feels’ and that’s why they succeed. Brands should be striving to make that same impression, and WestJet is proof as to why.

The airline also made their service a secondary element of the ad, which might seem counterintuitive to many brands but can actually pay off big time on social media. Many people are inherently hesitant to share brand-heavy content on social networks.

Use many channels … with new ways to communicate

Ignore conventional marketing. Instead be unique and memorable.

Old Spice didn’t just bend conventional marketing practices, they avoided them entirely, creating something far more impressive in the process. You wanted to play the video again and again to try and see how it was accomplished. You wanted to show it to friends and talk about it. It was so interesting and shareable that brands have been chasing this model ever since it aired.

Then, they did something even smarter. They created the response campaign to bring their viewers into the experience. Everyone who loved the ad had the opportunity to be a part of it. Users flocked to submit questions in the hopes for a direct interaction with the Old Spice Man.

Know your audience and cater ads to their interests.

Consider competitiveness … talking about REAL differences with competing offers … the value proposition

Differentiate and include audience

People love to be a part of something popular or viral. It’s like being part of a studio audience or being mentioned by a celebrity on Twitter. Not only is the experience enjoyable for them, it’s also something they want to share with their friends and followers. By creating these personalized videos, Old Spice turned a successful brand video into a shareable social media campaign.

Utilize creativity … inventing new ways to talk about products and services

Use humor.

Provide useful content … with meaning and relevance, not just entertainment value

Take risks.

With social media, users are empowered to skip over any ad they don’t find interesting. This puts the onus on brands to somehow catch people off guardor otherwise keep their attention. Humor is one of the most effective ways to do that.

Much like with Old Spice, K-Mart used humor in a way that you might not have expected from their brand. While it’s easy to call it juvenile, the results speak for themselves. The humor made the video so shareable that more people shared it on Facebook than commented on it. That type of engagement is invaluable of the brand.

This marketing campaign was also special because it was a risk. It wasn’t just a risk for K-Mart, it was a risk for any brand. Swear words and childish jokes isn’t something most retail brands would strive to be associated with. But social media is about creating discussion. Safe bets don’t create discussion, risks do. K-Mart put themselves out there and social media users appreciated the humor and the risk. They took a chance and it paid off.

Support a meaningful cause and share it with your audience.

So what are the main lessons to draw from the Always marketing campaign? Put your company behind a cause. Try to start a movement.

Always is working to become synonymous with women’s empowerment. This is their cause, and the basis of their ad. Again their product was put to the side, but where WestJet did it to focus on their customers, Always focused on the ‘greater good.’

Find a cause or a message that your business believes in. This is important: don’t just support it for an easy marketing win. Actually throw your company behind the cause. Raise awareness, fundraise, co-market with existing organizations that have taken on the cause. Looking like you support a cause isn’t enough, and can actually be damaging to your brand. You need to follow through. Always, for example, partners with UNESCO to support education for women across the world.

And the #LikeAGirl ad wasn’t just an ad, it was a call to action. In the same way that Old Spice succeeded by involving fans in their YouTube campaign, Always succeeded by making people want to join their #LikeAGirl movement. Athletes and businesses jumped onto the hashtag and threw their weight behind the movement, spreading the campaign even further.

This works for the same reason people latched on to the Ice Bucket Challenge. These movements are inclusive; they make you feel like a part of something good. All humans have a desire to be included and make a difference. If your brand can start a movement like Always was able to do, the positive impact on your brand will be substantial.

Clarity beyond the marketing … focusing on the business behind the marketing

Of course there are marketing formulas that have been proven to work time and time again:

Call to action … the most important factor … leaving behind value when the marketing is done

Awesome consumer targeting

Dollar Shave Club isn’t just marketing to men of shaving age; they’re marketing to tech-savvy younger men, the audience most likely open to buying razors online. “Young men” is written all over the video. There are toys in the background. They swear and use humor. There’s a machete. They make fun of tennis. It ends with a party. This isn’t an energy drink ad. There aren’t explosions and extreme sports. But it nails the target demographic in a simple, straightforward way. People often talk about targeting on social media. You can target your content once it’s created, or you can target it from the outset. Doing the latter made this video into a hit.

What about distinguishing their brand? Did you notice, there isn’t a single image of anyone actually using the razor in the video. Why wouldn’t they show the razor in use? Maybe because they know (correctly) assumed that men wouldn’t be sold on how the razor looks while in use, especially since it will essentially look the same as every other razor. They narrowed in on the elements that distinguished their product from every other similar product: the price and delivery method.

What Is the Starlink System All About?

What is the Starlink System? Technically speaking, it’s a satellite internet system. If you live in a city or a big suburb, you probably enjoy fast internet speeds, maybe at 1Gbps or beyond. But imagine enduring internet speeds at 20Mbps, or even as low as 0.8Mbps, every day.

Unfortunately, people across the US and the globe, are stuck in this very situation. Installing fiber in a city, and bringing Gigabit broadband to millions of customers is potentially lucrative, but not so much in a rural area home to only a few hundred people.

Enter Starlink. The satellite internet system from SpaceX is capable of delivering 150Mbps internet speeds to theoretically any place on the planet. All the customer needs is a clear view of the sky. In fall 2020, the system began serving its first users, many of whom were based in remote or rural regions of America—and the response was enthusiastic to say the least.

I live in Melbourne Florida and have been watching Starlink launches for the last few years from about 35 miles. They have been amazing! I worked at Loral when they plunked their first launch of their equivalent system in the ocean and never recovered about 20 years ago. Let me tell you a synopsis of this system …

Satellite internet technology has been around for decades. It involves beaming internet data, not through cables, but via radio signals through the vacuum of space. Ground stations on the planet broadcast the signals to satellites in orbit, which can then relay the data back to users on Earth.

One of the main existing providers has been HughesNet, which relies on satellites 22,000 miles above the planet. SpaceX’s system improves on the technology in two notable ways: The company wants to use low-Earth orbiting satellites that circle the planet at only around 300 miles above the surface. The shortened distance drastically improves the internet speeds while also reducing latency. Second, SpaceX wants to launch as many as 40,000 satellites in the coming years to power the system, ensuring global coverage without service dropouts.

SpaceX has quietly said that some users are experiencing congestion issues. In certain cases, the congestion is so bad users report seeing download speeds under 10Mbps and higher latencies. The company is promising to alleviate the congestion problems by launching more Starlink satellites in orbit. But some users are skeptical SpaceX can pull this off, given Starlink’s growing popularity in the US and around the globe.

One great, non-official resource is the Reddit community for Starlink. Here, you can find actual users of Starlink, who often post about their experiences with the service, and answer questions. It also contains its own community-driven FAQ about Starlink, which is chock full of details.

This system is ideally suited for rural and geographically isolated areas where internet connectivity is unreliable or nonexistent.

A SpaceX initiative to create a global broadband network, Starlink uses a constellation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to provide high-speed internet services. SpaceX, more formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is a privately held rocket and spacecraft company that Elon Musk founded in 2002.

Instead of using cable technology, such as fiber optics to transmit internet data, a satellite system uses radio signals through the vacuum of space. Ground stations broadcast signals to satellites in orbits, which in turn relay the data back to the Starlink users on Earth. Each satellite in the Starlink constellation weighs 573 pounds and has a flat body. One SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket can fit up to 60 satellites.

The goal of Starlink is to create a low latency network in space that facilitates edge computing on Earth. The challenge of creating a global network in outer space isn’t a small one, especially because low latency is an important demand. SpaceX has proposed a constellation of almost 42,000 tablet-size satellites circling the globe in low orbit to meet this demand. The CubeSats — miniature satellites commonly used in LEO — create tight network coverage, and their low Earth orbit produces low latency.

However, Starlink isn’t the only contender in the space race and has a few competitors, including OneWeb, HughesNet, Viasat and Amazon. HughesNet has been providing signal coverage from 22,000 miles above the Earth since 1996, but Starlink follows a slightly different approach and presents the following improvements:

Instead of using a couple of large satellites, Starlink uses thousands of small satellites.
Starlink uses LEO satellites that circle the planet at only 300 miles above surface level. This shortened geostationary orbit improves internet speeds and reduces latency levels.
The newest Starlink satellites have laser communication elements to transmit signals between satellites, reducing dependency on multiple ground stations.
SpaceX aims to launch as many as 40,000 satellites in the near future, ensuring global and remote satellite coverage with reduced service outages.
Starlink has the advantage of being part of SpaceX, which in addition to launching Starlink satellites, also conducts regular partner launches. Other satellite internet providers may not be able to schedule regular satellite launches due to the high-cost factors involved.

Starlink offers unlimited high-speed data through an array of small satellites that deliver up to 150 Megabits per second (Mbps) of internet speed. SpaceX plans to double this rate in the coming months.

According to a Speedtest by Ookla, Starlink recorded its fastest median download speed in the first quarter of 2022 at 160 Mbps in Lithuania. Starlink also clocked in at 91 Mbps in the U.S., 97 Mbps in Canada and 124 Mbps in Australia. Starlink in Mexico was the fastest satellite internet in North America, with a median download speed of 105.91 Mbps. The Speedtest further revealed that upload speeds have seen a downward curve of at least 33% in the U.S. — from 16.29 Mbps in the first quarter of 2021 to 9.33 Mbps in the second quarter of 2022.

According to Starlink’s website, it offers high speeds and latency as low as 20 milliseconds in most locations.

Starlink offers the following three internet packages:

Starlink Internet. This package is geared toward residential use and costs $110 per month plus a one-time charge for the hardware of $599.
Starlink Business. The business package provides twice the antenna capability of the residential offering along with faster internet speeds. It costs $500 per month with a one-time equipment charge of $2,500.
Starlink RV. In June 2022, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission authorized SpaceX to use Starlink with moving vehicles, including recreation vehicles, airlines, ships and trucks. So, people on the road can now get access to the Starlink RV service for $135 per month plus $599 for the hardware.

The megaconstellation currently consists of more than 5,700 operational satellites, and that number will continue growing far into the future.