Small Business Challenges for the Foreseeable Future

This article offers strategies for the future survival and growth of small businesses. It explores the evolving nature of small businesses and documents how many are creating successes that are richly creative and widely beneficial. This article summarizes major challenges for the foreseeable future impacting small businesses. While the trends that follow are not exhaustive, they are major drivers of business change. Small businesses should be aware of these broad trends, should think about how they may positively or negatively affect the future of their business, and should adjust their planning for the future accordingly.

Personalization

This important trend bodes well for small independents that can leverage their inherent advantages of flexibility and customer intimacy to create a more personalized experience for their customers. While technology permits sophisticated database marketing and promotions, small independents are still the best poised to get to know their customers individually as they are often a personal part of their lives. Knowledge of customers’ birthdays, favorite colors, time of day they like to shop, and other information is not just pleasantry anymore. It can be an essential driver of sales. While big companies employ slogans like “reach out and touch someone,” it is more likely the small business can actually shake their hand.

Value Proposition

American consumers are becoming more interested in getting more value for their money. Price is not the only factor in a value determination. Speed, convenience, service and knowledge all play an increasingly important role. Both large and small businesses continue to redefine their value propositions with better prices, selection, service, and products. A value proposition refers to the unique characteristics that distinguish your business from competition. It defines the intrinsic worth of your business’s offering to customers. A strong value proposition communicates a clear message to your marketplace about why potential customers should buy from you. It defines what your customers will get for their money.

Increased Competition

Competition continues to increase in number and intensity. We are over-stored with an explosion of products displayed in an ever-increasing amount of square feet per capita in the U.S. Big businesses continue to get bigger, employing market share growth strategies and communicating value propositions that are designed to either dominate a product category or customer segment. Increased size leads to increased efficiencies that in turn fuel additional growth. Small companies are left to scramble for the remaining market share. Further, the market has become global with the Internet blurring the lines of traditional market areas. Because of the Internet and the increasing clout of large national chains, small businesses must not compete on price. The real strengths of successful small businesses revolve around specialization, differentiation and finding profitable, defendable, and sustainable niches. Success for many derive from the decision to move beyond just the selling of product to creating customer experience, moving from a transaction orientation to establishing on-going relationships. This decision shifts focus from what moves product to what moves people.

Changing Demographics

Three powerful demographic trends will cause profound change

The Aging of America – It is predicted that the number of Americans ages 55 and older will almost double between now and 2030. This aging of America will present many opportunities for small independents that may choose to target this growing segment.

The growth of the Hispanic population – The U.S. Hispanic population became the largest minority in the United States in 2002 and will continue in this position through 2050. This growing market continues to be underserved by many small businesses.

Generation Y – Born between 1981 and 1995, this new generation numbered 57 million. It is the largest consumer group in the history of the U.S. and represents a dominant future market. Many of the most popular traditional brands are having a tough time appealing to this group who seem immune to traditional marketing messages.

Community Activism

There is a growing national trend of community resistance to unrestrained small business development in order to protect local community personality, feel, and values. This trend speaks to the perceived benefits of small independents. Nevertheless, the consumer will find his or her way to where they want to shop – big box, specialty store, or national chain. Trying to stop new development often becomes a major distraction when they should be spending time thinking about their own business and improving their downtown or neighborhood shopping areas.

Health Care Costs

The healthcare insurance crisis affects the small business especially hard due to the runaway costs of providing benefits to employees. It creates a real competitive disadvantage. The availability of health insurance is often a determining factor in choice of employment. Until this problem is fixed, small businesses need to explore every available alternative, from exploring the availability of state or trade association health plans to implementing new solutions like the recently available high deductible health savings accounts. If small retailers want to attract and retain the kind of employees that will give them competitive advantages, health care benefits must be considered.

Changing Consumer Attitudes and Behavior

The traditional customer definitions and delineations have been blurred by the sheer volume of marketing activity across the entire socioeconomic spectrum. People are more fluid in their shopping behavior. They move in and out and around and through value businesses, middle market stores and luxury goods purveyors on a weekly basis. Everybody is everybody’s customer now. It is up to the business to know their customers well enough to make the connection and offer that will entice them to buy. Time has become number one on the list of what Americans cherish most. The desire for convenience will continue to drive changes in store concepts, formats, retail mixes and locations. People are time-starved and small independents need to factor the need for speed and convenience in their individual value propositions. Given the explosion of choice, consumers are less loyal, less tolerant, and more willing to explore and experiment in search of satisfaction. Consumers are growing more cynical and skeptical. Small businesses need to develop trust through clear and consistent demonstrations of their differentiated value propositions. They need to make the shopping experience easy for the customer by eliminating confusing or inefficient elements that frustrate customers and complicate their choices.

Urban Sprawl and Real Estate Development

A recent trend in new development is to create community spaces of mixed-use that exhibit a strong sense of place. Many of these developments called “the new urbanism,” incorporate features more in keeping with feelings of towns and neighborhoods vs. traditional large retail centers. They are designed to promote social interaction and leisure time activities. These mixed-use, smaller scale, more friendly environments that hearken back to the tradition of Main Street, providing a social hub where people, live, shop, work, and play. Small business fits this model more logically and more naturally than many larger format competitors.

Target’s Marketing Strategy Uses Customer Experience as a Difference Maker

Be everywhere, do everything, and never fail to astonish the customer. Have you noticed how Target’s customer experience design has grown in the importance of brand marketing? More and more trying to astonish the customer. Certainly, a real discriminator, isn’t it? The customer focus at Target has led to the retail giant having a reputation for an absurdly great customer experience design. In fact, the marketing strategy uses customer experience design as a key difference maker. The company is perhaps as known as much for its experience design as it is for the merchandise it sells.

Target has managed to make customer service its strongest selling point, and it certainly seems to have been the smart choice.

Today we will examine 10 different ways the brand has chosen to use its customer experience to stand out above the noise and become a significant contributor to their marketing strategy.

The end-state quality of the product or service the customer receives is what counts. However, this includes the experience the customer remembered while he purchased the item. Often that is what is remembered the most.

So what constitutes a great customer experience?

The quality of your company’s customer experience is ultimately determined by the way customers feel after their last interaction. If the customer is unhappy, your company’s customer experience is bad. If the customer doesn’t have a feeling one way or the other, your company’s customer experience is mediocre (and some would argue badly). If the customer feels good, your company’s customer experience is satisfactory, but it does not stand out.

But if the customer feels delighted, your company’s customer experience is a substantial competitive advantage. That is the only one that really matters to success. It is the one everyone is attempting to find the magic for.

Consider the invention cycle:

Imagination is envisioning things that do not exist.

Creativity is applying imagination to address a challenge.

Innovation is applying creativity to generate unique solutions.

Entrepreneurship is applying innovation, to bring unique ideas to fruition, and inspiring others’ imagination.

This framework is relevant to start-ups and established firms, as well as innovators of all types where the realization of a new idea — whether a product, service, or work of art — results in a collective increase in imagination. An entrepreneurial spirit infects others, leading to wave upon wave of imagination, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Let’s examine 10 smashing examples that Target uses to delight customers:

Customer care

Feelings and emotions certainly have a significant role in the way customers are influenced in the marketing process. Some are saying that all customers are concerned about right now is price. I challenge that. It takes no special skill to follow the leader or be the (momentary) leader with the lowest price.

Companies that are thriving (yes, thriving) do more. They have made deliberate decisions about how they would run their business, and they live out those decisions every day. The most important of those decisions is the one that determines that taking great care of their customers is the highest priority.

Hire nurturers

Hiring nurturers to take care of customers is the best place to start the process. You can identify this natural ability in employees during the interview process.

As much as there is a tendency to move customers quickly in and out your doors in the name of efficiency, resist this approach. Today’s customer wants and expects to be cared for as an individual. For example; on “Black Friday,” as customers were standing in cold lines to get into stores in the middle of the night, one intern at a local store decided to pass out coffee, hot chocolate, and doughnuts to keep the crowds calm. A great small touch that had remarkable long-term results via word-of-mouth marketing because of that “nurturing” gesture.

At Target salespeople can offer to ring up your purchase without you ever having to stand in line. A great small touch that had remarkable long-term results via word-of-mouth marketing because of that “nurturing” gesture.

Product presentation

Have you ever been to a Target store? If you have you will remember the emphasis on the visual presentation of their products. Draws your eyes to many, even if you are not looking for them. Helping customers visualize and sometimes try on the products.

Personalization

Customers don’t want to be treated like a number. They want to feel valued and understood. Their belief? That the money they spend with your company entitles them to such treatment.

The differentiation of the experience your company delivers will therefore be at least in part contingent on your ability to personalize your interactions with customers across all channels. That means knowing their name, their previously expressed preferences, or the particulars of their current situation. Lots of small ways to create customer personalization. A Nordstrom salesperson rarely points. If you have a question about where something is located, they walk you there. The personal touch is remembered.

Care

Customers like knowing that you care. Great service is the top reason customers keep giving their business to companies and the top reason they recommend those companies to others. On the flip side, 80 percent of customers say that they have stopped doing business with a company because of a bad service experience.

More often than not, they will never do business with such a company ever again. For these reasons and others, it is critical to ensure that your company delivers great service care. Care that results in great experiences that are remembered and talked about.

Separate checkout bays by department, unlike many other retail department stores that have central checkout bays that can feel like a cattle call. You can’t over-prepare your customer experience if you want customers to select or stay with your company.

Empower employees

Be relentless about cutting out those rules that make your frontline folks have to bounce back and forth between themselves and a manager to take care of a customer or extend a special gesture they feel is warranted.

Take another page from Target that gets rid of the rule book for customers, or minimizes the rule book for employees, telling employees that the major rule they all live by is “No Customer Can Leave Unhappy.”

Differentiated value

This example, while being traditional, will surprise you with the best brand in this discrimination category. Ever shopped at Target? Our favorite retail store because of its great, unique discriminators. Consider its high-touch service, spacious look and feel, and top-quality products. One-to-one service. In most departments, if you indicate the desire to shop, there is a salesperson designated to help you find sizes, etc. They are number 1 in our minds.

Get away from the desk

Be where your customers and the folks who serve your customers are.

Be agile, be on the lookout for what people are asking for, and then be responsive. If you do something for one customer in need, spread the idea to your employees to extend the gesture, too. Being responsive and empathetic and adjusting how you do business for your customers now will pay off as the memory of your kindness stays with them.

Let your customers know

Let the marketplace know about who you are and what you value in your decisions and actions. Be authentic at all costs.

When you make a decision, it results in action. And the accumulation of those decisions and actions becomes how people describe you and think of you. It becomes your story. So decide what story you want to be told about your company and your people. Your “storefront” is the accumulation of your decisions and actions.

So what story is emerging about who you are and what you value? Having customers who love you tell your story will make your business grow. Make decisions that will earn you the kind of story you want to be told. No wonder the only rule at Nordstrom to this day is “Use good judgment in all situations.”

The bottom line

Here’s the thing, social and customer experience isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s really a new way of running a business. Many businesses certainly have figured this out and are using social marketing and improved customer experience to rapidly grow their business.

Remember, don’t talk about how great you are. Tell your customers a story about what you do well will make them feel awesome. Make customer experience the centerpiece of your marketing success strategy. Learn from these guys, one of the best.

Beginners Guide To SEO

What Exactly Is SEO?

SEO is an abbreviation for search engine marketing. SEO is the method of improving the ranking of a webpage or piece of information on Search. The primary distinction between SEO company Chicago and PPC marketing is that SEO entails “organic” placement, which implies you do not spend to appear in that spot.

To put it simply, search optimization refers to improving an item of internet content so that search engines such as google display it toward the top of the results page whenever anyone looks at something. Nowadays, most internet inquiries start with a search engine, with Google alone being the starting point for 74% of those queries.

The main purpose of this article is to help you grasp the intricacies of Search so that you may improve your material to rank better on Google and attract more readers. It should be mentioned that you can find SEO services in many cities like Miami, Austin, and Dallas.

Off-page SEO refers to improvement outside your website, such as acquiring hyperlinks. This portion of the equation is developing connections and producing content that individuals want to share. Though it requires significant effort, it is critical to a guide to SEO performance.

SEO Techniques: Black Hat vs. White Hat

Some folks would much rather accept the fast benefits and carry on.

Aiming for rapid advantages in SEO is generally thought of as “black cap SEO.” To rank rapidly, those who utilize black hat SEO strategies such as relevant keywords and backlink scraping.

It may be effective for a short time to drive visitors to your site, but after a period, Google penalizes and even blacklists your site, making it impossible that you can rank.

White hat SEO, on the contrary hand, is the only method to create a long-term internet brand. This kind of SEO focuses on your broad range of consumers. You’ll aim to provide them with the greatest material available while also making it widely available by following the search engine guidelines.

Let us delve further into the subject and see what the differentiating factors are:

Identical content: Whenever anyone seeks to promote a keyword phrase, they may replicate material on their website to get that term in their text many times. Websites that use this are penalized by Google.
Years back, a black hat method was to put a good amount of key phrases at the bottom of the posts but give them the same coloring as the backdrop. This method will eventually get you banned. The same is true for pushing keywords into places where they do not belong.
Disguising and rerouting: There are correct and incorrect ways to do redirection. The incorrect method is to purchase many keyphrase sites and drive all attention to a specific website.
Poor citing practices: Buying a Fiverr deal that promises you 3,000 backlinks daily is not the best approach to generating links. You must obtain backlinks from relevant material and websites.

Because Google discourages websites that engage in these practices, you’ll solely hear me discuss white-hat SEO.

However, there is a thing called gray hat SEO. That is, it isn’t as clean or harmless as the purest of white hats, but it’s not as blatantly exploitative as black hat approaches may be. You’re not attempting to deceive people or purposefully manipulate the systems with a gray hat. On the other hand, you are attempting to gain a definite edge.

SEO Marketing Fundamentals: A Comprehensive Overview

And it is now time to begin learning about Seo services. Knowing it is one issue, SEO takes significant activity and effort. This isn’t something that can be adopted today, and expect to see benefits the next day. SEO involves regular activities to achieve long-term effectiveness.

Content Elements

There are over a million factors that contribute to producing high-quality material; here are some of the favorites:

Qualities

It used to be the norm to upload a piece of information with several key phrases. If you were producing high-quality material that genuinely answered someone’s issue, you were a leader, making it simple to rank.

Content is considerably better nowadays, and many internet companies have websites that they utilize to add worth to their website and position higher in Google searches.

Creating amazing content is difficult, but the best part is that you don’t necessarily have to start from the start. You may build on the work of others but add additional worth and offer your piece of material more in-depth.

The bottom line is that your material must solve an issue or provide an answer to whatever drew the visitor to your article in the first place. When it doesn’t, they’ll rapidly leave your website, alerting Google that your piece of information isn’t helping anybody.

Freshness

HubSpot established a standard demonstrating that regular blogging improves Google results. However, providing new information is merely one way for Google to convey its freshness. You may do several things with previously published information to bring it up to date.

Going over and upgrading your material for correctness, repairing any redirects, and renewing old data with newer, more relevant information are all strategies to demonstrate to Google that your marketing is still worthy of a place on page one.

Wrapping Up

A great deal of search engine optimization (SEO) is about making small adjustments and modifications to parts of your website and overall digital campaign to optimize its reach and performance.

While your platform may be smaller than many of your competitors out there, it can still have the same market penetration and outreach as the rest of the platforms out there, if not more. It comes down to how well-tuned your website is and its ability to be picked up by the algorithms that search engines operate on.

There aren’t any shortcuts or magical steps that you can take to cut through the competition. But using some of the best practices listed here and making incremental changes to your digital campaign by incorporating better SEO, you can definitely take your business on an upward trajectory.

Doctor Customer Experience: Techiques Staff Should Employ

Peter Drucker certainly understood the real meaning of a great customer experience design, didn’t he? The end state quality of what the customer received was what counted. And that is true for Doctor customer experience. Including the experience the customer while he purchased the service. Often that is what was remembered the most.

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.

–Peter Drucker

When it comes to service you purchase from your physician, most people are more tolerant and more accepting than with most other businesses. But should it be that way, though?

It shouldn’t and here is why I conclude this.

What constitutes a great customer experience?

The quality of a business’s customer experience is ultimately determined by the way customers feel after their last interaction. If the customer is unhappy, the customer experience is bad. If the customer doesn’t have a feeling one way or the other, your business’s customer experience is mediocre. If the customer feels good, your business’s customer experience is satisfactory.

But if the customer feels delighted, your business’s customer experience is a substantial competitive advantage. (See our article on the laws of customer experience) That is the only one that matters to success to most companies. Why shouldn’t it be the same for your physician’s office?

In my most recent past, I had to make a change with my general physician when my physician retired. I was very satisfied with his service and customer experience offered. I have been with my new physician for seven months and four visits to date. Here are ten customer experience comparisons between the two physicians and their office staff.

Personalization

Patients don’t want to be treated like a number. They want to feel valued, understood, and most importantly, listened to. Their belief? That the money they spend with your practice entitles them to such treatment. The differentiation of the experience your doctor delivers will, therefore, be at least in part contingent on your ability to personalize his interactions with patients.

That means knowing their name, their previously expressed health issues, or listening to the particulars of their current situation. Lots of small ways to create customer personalization.

Lots of help and directions

The entire physician’s staff should be encouraged to be ‘assertively friendly.’ They should seek out those who need help before they come looking for help. And most importantly close quickly on open actions. The new doctor’s staff are extremely slow in closing actions (up to 4-5 days) and get things wrong too many times. Not a good situation … in fact is unacceptable in my mind.

Examples of poor customer service in health care

Customers like knowing that the doctor and his staff care. Great service is the top reason customers keep giving their business to doctors and the top reason they recommend them to others. It is critical to ensure that your practice delivers great service care.

The care that results in good results and great experiences that are remembered and talked about. So far based on action item response time and errors, the new doctor, and staff indicates they care much more about the business revenue than their care and service.

**Medical office customer service tips**

Poor listeners

Two-way conversations begin with doctors and staff listening carefully before responding. They should also take care patients understand the ‘whys’ for the doctors’ decisions.

Being stuck on transmit mode in a two-way conversation won’t go anywhere fast. The new physician’s office indicates that they can’t take the time to do much explaining to patients.

Follow through lacking

If a patient is told X will be done, they should feel that it will happen. Hopefully faster and better than promised. If something unexpected happens, a good experience demands the customer be notified and kept informed. The staff is not good at putting closure dates on commitments … which is not a good sign.

Don’t meet expectations

If promises are not kept, expectations by the patient not achieved, negative experiences result. Too negative and your practice will lose the patient forever. The absolute last thing that either the practice or the new patient desire. But that is what is happening.

No interest in patient feedback

Many patients are itching to tell you how to improve. If they are not given an opportunity, it degrades the experience. Likewise, patients always feel good when they see positive improvements. Few practices that I have ever been associated with seek feedback, or notice much when it is given unsolicited.

Doctor customer experience … no personalized engagement

Doctors and staff who rarely smile and engage socially at one on one engagement are at a very serious disadvantage in being able to create a delightful customer experience. In the longer term, a practice needs to build relationships with all patients. Hard to do with no personalized engagement as with the new practice.

Time

Most people today suffer from too little time, and it is an increasingly important factor. Time is the one thing that even the richest patients doesn’t have enough of. So patients’ perceptions about your practice’s customer experience are largely influenced by time. Often the meaning correlates with convenience. This means you have to reduce the time it takes for them to:

Find you

Engage with you

Communicate their problem

For you to resolve that problem.

Both practices were about the same on this criteria.

Doctor customer experience … staff expertise

Patients need to believe that your practice’s staff are good at what they do. They must perceive that your staff is well-informed about products, services, policies, issues, and any other relevant subject matter.

So, to project their best knowledge to your patients, you have to make sure that they are fully empowered with information that’s accurate, complete, and up-to-date. And the ability and time to provide sound advice. In the new practice, it appears to me that they have too many patients leaving them with not enough time to provide good service.

You can’t neglect your patients’ experience if you want them to stay with or recommend your practice.

The bottom line

Remember, customers create the most value for you … when you create the most value for them.

Here’s the thing, social isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s a new way of running a business or a physician’s practice (which is a business isn’t it?). Many businesses certainly have figured this out and are using social marketing and improved customer experience to rapidly grow their business.

Practices that are proactively managing all elements of their patient experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty.

BUILD INNOVATIVE CHANGE — **Build successful innovative change.**

Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?

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

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

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 improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

Client Satisfaction …10 Secrets to Improve Customer Experience

Customer Orientation … the Worst Customer Experience Mistakes

Random Acts of Kindness for Customer Experience Improvements

10 Ways to Employ Customer Experience for Influence

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Mental Errors: 10 That Lead to Your Bad Decisions

As we go about our daily routines, our internal monologue narrates our experience. Our self-talk guides our behavior and influences the way we interact with others. It also plays a major role in mental errors and how you feel about yourself, other people, and the world in general.

Keep learning: How to Create Honest Employee Trust and Empowerment

Quite often, however, our conscious thoughts aren’t realistic; they’re irrational and inaccurate.

Believing our irrational thoughts can lead to problems including communication issues, relationship problems, and unhealthy decisions.

For a long time, researchers and economists believed that humans made logical, well-considered decisions. In recent decades, however, researchers have uncovered a wide range of mental errors that derail our thinking. A bad thing, yes?

Sometimes we make logical decisions, but there are many times when we make emotional, irrational, and confusing choices.

Whether you’re striving to reach personal or professional goals, the key to success often starts with recognizing and replacing inaccurate thoughts and avoiding mental mistakes.

The most common thinking errors can be divided into these ten categories, some of which are adapted from David Burns’s book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.

Loss aversion

Loss aversion refers to our tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains. Research has shown that if someone gives you $10, you will experience a small boost in satisfaction, but if you lose $10, you will experience a dramatically higher loss in satisfaction.

Yes, the responses are opposite, but they are not equal in magnitude. Definitely not.

Our tendency to avoid losses causes us to make silly decisions and change our behavior simply to keep the things that we already own. We are wired to feel protective of the things we own, and that can lead us to overvalue these items in comparison with the options.

For example, if you buy a new pair of shoes it may provide a small boost in pleasure. However, even if you never wear the shoes, giving them away a few months later might be incredibly painful.

You never use them, but for some reason, you just can’t stand parting with them. Loss aversion can get you, yes?

Similarly, you might feel a small bit of joy when you breeze through green lights on your way to work, but you will get downright angry when the car in front of you sits at a green light, and you miss the opportunity to make it through the intersection.

Losing out on the chance to make the light is far more painful than the pleasure of hitting the green light from the beginning. Happens often to me.

Mental errors … going for it all

Sometimes we see things as being black or white: Perhaps you have two categories of coworkers in your mind—the good ones and the bad ones. Or maybe you look at each project as either a success or a failure.

Recognize the shades of gray, rather than putting things regarding all good or all bad. There are many to see.

Not being specific

It’s easy to take one particular event and generalize it to the rest of our life. If you failed to close one deal, you might decide, “I’m bad at closing deals.” Or if you are treated poorly by one family member, you might think, “Everyone in my family is rude.”

Take notice of times when an incident may apply to only one specific situation, instead of all other areas of life.

Mental errors … anchoring

There is a burger joint close to my hometown that is known for gourmet burgers and cheeses. On the menu, they very boldly state, “LIMIT 6 TYPES OF CHEESE PER BURGER.”

My first thought: This is absurd. Who gets six types of cheese on a burger?

My second thought: Which six am I going to get?

I didn’t realize how brilliant the restaurant owners were until I learned about anchoring. You see, normally I would just pick one type of cheese on my burger, but when I read “LIMIT 6 TYPES OF CHEESE” on the menu, my mind was anchored at a much higher number than usual.

Most people won’t order six types of cheese, but that anchor is enough to move the average up from one slice to two or three pieces of cheese and add a couple of extra bucks to each burger.

You walk in planning to get a normal meal. You walk out wondering how you paid $14 for a burger and if your date will let you roll the windows down on the way home.

This effect has been replicated in a wide range of research studies and commercial environments. For example, business owners have found that if you say “Limit 12 per customer” then people will buy twice as much product compared to saying, “No limit.”

Perceptive thinking

We can never be sure what someone else is thinking. Everyone occasionally assumes they know what’s going on in someone else’s mind.

Thinking things like, “He must have thought I was stupid at the meeting,” makes inferences that aren’t necessarily based on reality. Remind yourself that you may not be making accurate guesses about other people’s perceptions.

Doom and gloom

Sometimes we think things are much worse than they are. If you fall short of meeting your financial goals one month, you may think, “I’m going to end up bankrupt,” or “I’ll never have enough money to retire,” even though there’s no evidence that the situation is nearly that dire.

It can be easy to get swept up in catastrophizing a situation once your thoughts become negative.

When you begin predicting doom and gloom, remind yourself that there are many other potential outcomes.

Riding the emotional reasoning

Our emotions aren’t always based on reality, but we often assume those feelings are rational. If you’re worried about making a career change, you might assume, “If I’m this scared about it, I just shouldn’t change jobs.” Or, you may be tempted to assume, “If I feel like a loser, I must be a loser.” It’s essential to recognize that emotions, just like our thoughts, aren’t always based on facts.

Personalization

As much as we’d like to say we don’t think the world revolves around us, it’s easy to personalize everything. If a friend doesn’t call back, you may assume, “She must be mad at me,” or if a co-worker is grumpy, you might conclude, “He doesn’t like me.”

When you catch yourself personalizing situations, take time to point out other possible factors that may be influencing the circumstances. You can find many without looking too hard.

The perfect world

Making unfair comparisons between ourselves and other people can ruin our motivation. Looking at someone who has achieved much success and thinking, “I should have been able to do that,” isn’t helpful, especially if that person had some lucky breaks or competitive advantages along the way.

Rather than measuring your life against someone else’s, commit to focusing on your path to success.

Correcting as you go

Once you recognize your thinking errors, you can begin trying to challenge those thoughts. Look for exceptions to the rule and gather evidence that your thoughts aren’t 100% true. Then, you can begin replacing them with more realistic thoughts.

The goal doesn’t need to be to replace negative thoughts with overly idealistic or positive ones. Instead, replace them with realistic thoughts.

Changing the way you think takes a lot of effort initially, but with practice, you’ll notice big changes—not just in the way you think, but also in the way you feel and behave. You can make peace with the past, look at the present differently, and think about the future in a way that will support your chances of reaching your goals.

Mental errors … fooling ourselves

An illusory correlation happens when we mistakenly over-emphasize one outcome and ignore the others. For example, let’s say you visit New York City, and someone cuts you off as you’re boarding the subway train. Then, you go to a restaurant, and the waiter is rude to you. Finally, you ask someone on the street for directions, and they blow you off.

When you think back on your trip to New York, it is easy to remember these experiences and conclude that “people from New York are rude” or “people in big cities are rude.”

Keep thinking: 10 Positive Thinking Ideas from Peers and Mentors

However, you forget about all of the meals you ate when the waiter acted perfectly normal or the hundreds of people you passed on the Subway platform who didn’t cut you off.

These were non-events because nothing notable happened. As a result, it is easier to remember the times someone acted rudely toward you than the times when you dined happily or took the subway in peace.

The bottom line

Once you understand some of these common mental errors, your first response might be something along the lines of, “I want to stop this from happening! How can I prevent my brain from doing these things?”

It’s a fair question, but it’s not quite that simple. Rather than thinking of these miscalculations as a signal of a broken brain, it’s better to consider them as evidence that the shortcuts your brain uses aren’t useful in all cases.

There are many areas of everyday life where the mental processes mentioned above are incredibly useful. You don’t want to eliminate these thinking mechanisms.

The problem is that our brains are so good at performing these functions — they slip into these patterns so quickly and effortlessly — that we end up using them in situations where they don’t serve us.

Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?

Looking to create a smashing brand image?

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.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy continually improve your continuous learning?

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

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

Remarkable Lessons in Motivation Steve Jobs Taught Me

The Story and Zen of Getting Things Done

10 Positive Thinking Ideas from Peers and Mentors

Mike Schoultz likes to write about the topics that lead to small business success. He also likes to share his many business experiences. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

8 Secrets of Customer Insights You Should Utilize In Your Business

A tricky meaning to Drucker’s quotation? Not really. But understanding why customers buy your products and services is certainly not straightforward. You need to put these secrets of customer insights to work to fully appreciate why customers make the decisions they do.

The customer never buys what you think you sell.

–Peter Drucker

How much time do you and your business dedicate to gathering customer insights? Not enough is the answer we hear most often. One way you can find useful insights is to examine research in social psychology. Here are 8 insights we found that should provide useful for defining tactics with your customers.

Good Service Trumps Fast Service

Recent studies show customers cite rude, incompetent, and rushed service as their top reasons to switch brands. Almost 20% more often than slow service.

Recent customers who receive competent, knowledgeable, and all-encompassing services are most likely to remember their experiences and tell friends about them.

Companies must maintain a clear and constant focus on the factors that represent the true health and sustainable growth of the company: the bond between the company and the customer.

Faster operations should only be pursued when they will result in stronger customer bonds. Anything else is a mistake, and one with lasting consequences.

In short, companies must bear in mind that “speed of service” contains two critical elements: speed and service.

http://businessjournal.gallup.com/content/727/When-Speed-Kills.aspx#2

Money discussion makes customers more self-focused

When you prime people with money, they approach their social interactions in a fundamentally different way than they normally would,” said Nathan DeWall, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, who has conducted similar research on the psychology of money.

“Whereas when most people are presented with the possibility of having an interaction with another person, with anticipated rewards that accompany that, when you prime people with money, they just approach it in a socially disengaged and less rewarding manner. And this has profound consequences for their behavior.”

Research by psychologist Kathleen Vohs has shown that when people are primed with money issues, they become more self-focused. And less willing to assist others.

This fact can be used by businesses in selling luxury items. The subject of money should be avoided however with promotions associated with doing things for others (i.e. Mother’s Day for example)

http://www.livescience.com/34764-money-psychology-social-relationships.html

http://moz.com/ugc/10-psychological-research-studies-to-help-you-tap-into-human-behavior-and-increase-conversions

Customers favor personalization

In a study from the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, researchers were able to increase the average tips that waiters received by over 23%, without significantly changing their service.

This was accomplished by having the waiter follow up with a second set of mints after they brought customers their checks.

Waiters that brought mints but didn’t follow up received an average of 7% less in their tips.

And from a different perspective, it pays to remember customers’ names and important information. It turns out that people are more attentive and interested when they hear their names. When working on building relationships, use names when appropriate.

Few sounds are as pleasant as hearing our own names. And likewise, for example, nothing makes us feel less loved quite like a post-purchase email from ‘DO NOT REPLY’.

Time more valuable than money in brand value

Most people see time spent as a better indicator of who they are versus how much money they spent.

New research from Stanford reveals that customers have more favorable feelings toward brands they associate “time well spent” with. Memories of a good time were more powerful than memories of great savings.

So, there is a reason that the lowest price companies promote having a good time (such as “It’s Miller Time) rather than their lowest prices.

Forget Suze Orman. Time, Not Money, Is Your Most Precious Resource. Spend It Wisely.

Innovate through customer collaboration

MIT’s Eric Von Hippel conducted a study with the Institute of Management Sciences on the relationship between superstar customers and company innovation.

The result? Through a study of 1193 commercially successful innovations across 9 industries, Hippel discovered that 60% came from customers. (See our article: Crash Course on Turning Customer Insights into Winning Ideas)

Surprise with acts of kindness

One of the most memorable and talked about customer experiences is a surprise act of kindness.

Zappos uses this experience with great success. Without so much as a mention on their website, Zappos regularly upgrades customers to overnight shipping free of charge. A great way to brighten customers’ days.

Loyalty programs can still be very effective

Consumer psychologists Dreze and Nunes were able to reveal just what makes a ‘sticky’ loyalty program, across all industries.

The researchers were able to show that customers are twice as likely to stay with loyalty programs if the programs appear to already have started. Tasks that seem to be underway are more likely to be completed. (See our article: How to Use Reward Card Programs Better for Enduring Customer Loyalty)

Customers prefer stories

Storytelling is most persuading so shows the research by Greer and Brock. Their research reveals that a well-told story is one of the most persuasive forms of community. They concluded that stories have the ability to take us to another place, permitting the story to be a marketing message without the marketing.

Remember, this is your time to create remarkable experiences in order to create lasting customer relationships. Lead with initiative … own the moment.

It’s up to you to keep improving your customer engagement and relationship-building performance and creativity.

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

When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.

Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to continually improving your customer service?

Do you have a lesson about making your customer relationships 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 G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

Customer Feedback: 14 Tips on How to Gather Quality Insights

Henry Ford once said: If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse. A tricky meaning to Henry Ford’s quotation? Not really. But understanding the secrets of why customers buy your products and services is certainly not straightforward, but important nonetheless. You need to put these secrets of quality customer feedback to work to fully appreciate why customers make the decisions they do.

Check out our thoughts on customer focus.

Putting a priority on customer insight analysis? The information derived from customers is vital to continually improve your business.

Yet many businesses either don’t put a priority on collecting inputs from their customers or don’t know how.

The objective of this blog is to give you some tips to more effectively perform insight analysis.

How much time do you and your business dedicate to gathering customer insights? Not enough is the answer we hear most often. One way you can find useful insights is to examine research in social psychology.

Here are some useful thoughts from customer insight analysis we have found and use with our clients. They should provide a useful stimulus for defining tactics with your customers.

Customer feedback … good service trumps fast service

Recent studies show customers cite rude, incompetent, and rushed service as their top reasons to switch brands.

Customers who receive competent, knowledgeable, and all-encompassing services are most likely to remember their experiences and tell friends about them.

Companies must maintain a clear and constant focus on the factors that represent the true health and sustainable growth of the company: the bond between the company and the customer.

Faster operations should only be pursued when they will result in stronger customer bonds. Anything else is a mistake, and one with lasting consequences.

In short, companies must bear in mind that the “speed of service” contains two critical elements: speed and service. Create both and then listen for feedback.

Quality customer feedback … time more valuable than money

Most people see time spent as a better indicator of who they are versus how much money they spent.

New research from Stanford reveals that customers have more favorable feelings of brands they associate “time well spent” with.

Memories of good time were more powerful than memories of great savings.

So, there is a reason that lowest price companies promote having a good time (such as “It’s Miller Time) rather than their lowest prices.

Forget Suze Orman. Time, Not Money, Is Your Most Precious Resource. Spend It Wisely. Ask what your customers think.

Never overlook details

Details are never ‘unimportant’. Until you put all the pieces of the puzzle together, it is difficult to know the importance of details.

Observe what customers are doing for great insights.

Consider an example of Internet Privacy

Running a business today almost certainly means having a digital presence, and being connected to the Internet.

While the benefits of this transformation are many, the security issues are still a daily challenge, with many solutions in the marketplace to address them.

Now internet service providers can sell the browsing habits of their customers to advertisers. The move, which critics charge will fundamentally undermine consumer privacy in the US.

Yes, internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T are free to track all your browsing behavior and sell it to advertisers without consent.

ISPs have access to literally all of your browsing behavior – they act as a gateway for all of your web visits, clicks, searches, app downloads and video streams.

This represents a huge treasure trove of personal data, including health concerns, shopping habits, and porn preferences. ISPs want to use this data to deliver personalized advertising.

Check out this excellent VPN solution.

Money discussion makes customers more self-focused

When you prime people with money, they approach their social interactions in a fundamentally different way than they normally would,” said Nathan DeWall, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, who has conducted similar research on the psychology of money.

“Whereas when most people are presented with the possibility of having an interaction with another person, with anticipated rewards that accompany that, when you prime people with money, they just approach it in a socially disengaged and less rewarding manner. And this has profound consequences for their behavior.”

Research by psychologist Kathleen Vohs has shown that when people are primed with money issues, they become more self-focused. And less willing to assist others.

This fact can be used by businesses in selling luxury items. The subject of money should be avoided however with promotions associated with doing things for others (i.e. like Mother’s Day for example)

Customer feedback methods … look for insight connections

Find connections between seemingly unrelated observations. Keep iterating and building the puzzle of facts and their relationships.

Customer feedback examples … customers favor personalization

In a study from the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, researchers were able to increase the average tips that waiters received by over 23%, without significantly changing their service.

This was accomplished by having waiter’s follow-up with a second set of mints after they brought customers their check.

Waiters that brought mints but didn’t follow-up received an average of 7% less in their tips.

And from a different perspective, it pays to remember customers’ names and important information.

It turns out that people are more attentive and interested when they hear their names. When working on building relationships, use names when appropriate.

Few sounds are as pleasant as hearing our own names. And likewise, for example, nothing makes us feel less loved quite like a post-purchase email from ‘DO NOT REPLY’.

Connect

And then move closer. You learn most when you build close relationships with your customers.

And seek meaningful conversations with them.

Always dig deeper

Keep looking for ‘just one more question’. Each new fact that you discover often generates new information needs.

Think ahead and anticipate while you listen well.

Innovate through customer collaboration

MIT’s Eric Von Hippel conducted a study with the Institute of Management Sciences on the relationship of superstar customers and company innovation.

The result? Through a study of 1193 commercially successful innovations across 9 industries, Hippel discovered that 60% came from customers. Wow, that is something to think about.

When was the last time a customer helped you like that?

Immerse your perspective

Take multiple viewpoints using alternative roles. Try and eliminate the single role perspective at all costs and view things from as many angles as possible.

It will amaze you how much this helps.

Surprise with acts of kindness

One of the most memorable and talked about customer experiences is a surprise act of kindness.

When you use this, not only helps customers talk about you but also ‘to’ you with meaningful feedback.

Use your personal experience

Don’t be biased by this experience, however. Don’t let your values and views take charge of getting the true picture.

Loyalty programs can still be very effective

Consumer psychologists Dreze and Nunes were able to reveal just what makes a ‘sticky’ loyalty program, across all industries.

The researchers were able to show that customers are twice as likely to stay with loyalty programs if the programs if the programs appear to already have started.

Tasks that seem to be underway are more likely to be completed.

Customers prefer stories

Storytelling is most persuading so shows the research by Greer and Brock. Their research reveals that a well told story is one of the most persuasive forms of community.

They concluded that stories have the ability to take us to another place, permitting the story to be a marketing message without the marketing.

They are most helpful in creating conversation and feedback.

Validate and continually refine

The insights you have gained are never done.

Summary

Remember, this is your time to create remarkable experiences and valuable customer insights in order to create lasting customer relationships.

Lead with initiative … own the moment.

It’s up to you to keep improving your customer engagement and relationship-building performance and creativity.

Does your business put a priority on collecting customer insights and then putting them to use?

Do have any experiences to share with this community?

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

Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?

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.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

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 G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

Bold Secrets of Effective Brand Marketing Examples

Is your marketing strategy focused on brand marketing? It definitely should be. It is one of the best marketing techniques in my mind, hands down. The key to its success is the way to get people to talk about you and start the buzz. These are called marketing triggers and brand marketing examples will be the focus of this article. The best ones we can all learn from.

Brand marketing examples

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

– Seth Godin

The first thing you need to know about brand marketing is this: generating consumers to talk about your business isn’t as random as you think. There’s a science to creating brand marketing buzz, and it’s something you can learn to do.

Related: 12 Lessons from Ben and Jerry’s Marketing Strategies

Remember, the main goal of your business is not just to create customers. It is to create customers who then will also create customers (that is, customer advocates). This is the perfect marketing solution for 99 % of all businesses and is why we believe brand marketing is one of your most important marketing campaign tools.

By being a little more clever and unpredictable, you challenge consumers who appreciate a little fun in their products and services.

Let’s examine some excellent ways others have created brand marketing interest. Many of these can be easily copied by your company.

The U.S. Department of the Interior has been using social media to show the world what they do. But instead of sharing content about policies and press releases, they share breathtaking landscape photos and videos of cute animals in the national parks they manage.

The department’s Senior Digital Strategist, Rebecca Matulka, says people often use their social posts to plan vacations or reminisce about past family trips to the parks. Their videos of bears alone get hundreds of retweets on Twitter.

If a governmental department can create content with cute animals and beautiful landscapes, you can connect to something people like to share, too.

Weird experiences

At Catbird Creamery in Maine, when you order a conventional flavor, they’ll insist that you sample something a little more adventurous. And even if you’re going to order vanilla anyway, they want you to at least try the strawberry balsamic or green tea ginger. Catbird knows that anyone can make good vanilla, but what makes them stand out is helping their customers see all of the other fantastic flavors the brand also make.

They’re giving their customers an experience to talk about. Even if the customer doesn’t order the hot pepper flavor they just sampled, they will likely tell others they tried it.

Delight customers

Headsets.com sells headsets and phone accessories, but they are most likely remembered for adding Tootsie Rolls to every order they ship. It’s a great word of mouth tactic and they like feedback. They use it to do something even more special. When customers thank their operator for the Tootsie Rolls received in order and mentioned their favorite flavor, you can guess that information is noted for the next time.

Little actions to surprise and delight your customers can easily be created all the time. Follow Headsets.com example and treat feedback like a well-oiled machine, carefully gathering the information and doing something about it every time.

Mobile Apps and Charmin

Think you can’t come up with a fun, creative, and practical way to sell toilet paper? Charmin did. Although it’s not exactly social media, their app does make that-thing-that-shall-not-be-named a little easier, with mapped out directions to all the restrooms in a given area. Not surprisingly, you can rate the public restrooms through the app as to whether they’re “Sit” (like) or “Squat” (dislike).

You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on an iPhone programmer to create an app. Online template-based services like Seattle Clouds make it easy for anyone to point and click their way to a custom app using a variety of layouts and setups. The resulting app can be used on Amazon Kindle, Apple iPhone, and iPad, and Android devices, so you’ve covered no matter which device your target audience uses.

Mystery

Are you mysterious? Do you think you can be? We looked at how people delight in the puzzle-solving aspect of pattern recognition. Now, let’s go a bit deeper and explore what drives this pattern-seeking behavior: curiosity.

Great storytellers know how to turn an ordinary event—say, a trip to the grocer—into a suspenseful one by withholding information. In new relationships, flirtation often involves some element of playful teasing, whether through conversation or more sensual revelations.

And newsrooms have made a science out of crafting irresistible headlines: “Your PC might be infected!” or “Are you prepared for the tax law changes?”

We are captivated by unanswered questions. So try and put this mystery to good use

Target’s view

Target does a great job creating a Life and Entertainment-style online magazine with great tips on recipes, fashion, and tips on managing major life events like back-to-school and the holidays. They bring their bold brand and fashion on a budget approach to life with the stories they tell. With tips like 9 Ramen Hacks For Your College Dorm, how could they go wrong?

Be like Target and focus on serving your audience and bringing your brand to life in an authentic and engaging way.

Make people feel special

Comodo restaurant in New York encourages customers to snap pictures of their meals and contribute them to an “Instagram Menu” by adding #ComodoMenu to their posts. It’s a great way to collect all of their recommendations and photos in one place, but more importantly, it makes those contributors feel like a part of the restaurant.

Customers are often going to take Instagram photos of their fancy dinners. Why not make the most of that brand marketing by making those customers feel special? Meathead Movers is a Los Angeles moving company, and in addition to their standard moving business, they also help people in domestic abuse situations move out safely, quickly, and for no charge. Every time they open up a new location, they contact the nearest women’s shelter to tell them about the service they offer.

In fact, it’s a point of pride for their employees and has become a part of their mission statement. Now, they’ve also encouraged other businesses in their communities to help victims of domestic violence start over with services like rental locating, oil changes, security systems, haircuts, and counseling.

Charitable giving goes much further when you also create awareness for the cause. Instead of just writing a check, Meathead Movers makes their cause much more visible and community-oriented.

Make people smile

Fleur, a florist shop in Chicago, puts a bucket full of bright balloons by the door of their shop both inside and out, with a handwritten sign that says: “Take a balloon.” That’s all. No logos, no catch. It is just a small action to make people smile. Inside the store, it makes a pretty display, and outside the store, people are likely to ask where you got the balloon.

That’s a simple, fun way to get a conversation started without a marketing message, isn’t it? A bucket full of balloons is a bucket full of word of mouth memories waiting to happen. It doesn’t have to be branded or a part of a larger campaign — in fact, the simpler you make it, the better.

Personalization

Have you ever tried to create conversation starters? Consider this technique by Krochel Kids Intl. Every product they make has a tag that is signed by the person who made it. They are not the standard garment tag. They are large and prominently displayed on the outside of the clothing. It makes each product one of a kind that makes the clothing stand out.

Personalization

With this kind of visual message, your customers don’t have to bring up the subject because their friends usually ask about it.

Demonstrate synergy

Synergy is a quality that often gets overlooked, isn’t it? But it can be a very valuable tool in many ways. You don’t have to be a genius to know that student housing is frequently in demand. Likewise, you’d guess that seniors in nursing homes like to have companionship.

So to solve both problems, one nursing home in the Netherlands provides a place to stay for college students, rent-free, in exchange for visiting with the elderly for 30 hours per month.

Not much in common, you say? At least they have similar needs. Perhaps your customers who seem very different may have more in common than you think.

Create surprise

Surely you have seen the tear-jerker commercials for abused or abandoned puppies or kittens. Not something you’ll often share with friends, is it? North Carolina’s Wake County SPCA tried a very different approach to this problem. They made a lip-synching music video to ABBA’s song “Take a Chance on Me”, with the entire shelter staff and most of the adoptable animals.

A success? It was watched on YouTube over 3.4 million times the last time we looked. Just because others do the standard tear-jerking videos doesn’t mean they are popular. Surprise your audience with original things that are fun and approachable like this SPCA did. It may even surprise you.

Unique value propositions

The typical thrift store or vintage shop isn’t all that glamorous. But they do have one thing on their side when it comes to fashion: lots of rare and one-of-a-kind clothes. Goodwill by revamping some of their stores to look like upscale boutiques instead of the place you drop off your oldest clothes.

Value proposition

Their new Rare by Goodwill stores are smaller, and they collect some of the more trendy vintage or antique stuff their regular stores have to offer.

Perhaps your business has more in common with your upscale competitors than you think, yes? What can you learn from them about attracting new customers?

Tell awesome stories

When several guys had to give up the 1957 Land Rover they bought together in college, they were disappointed. So when Land Rover saw the boys’ ad for the sale, they bought the car and restored it down to the smallest of details.

But before surprising the guys with the return as a gift, they created a video commercial. Each place in the commercial reflected a memory of a car adventure from the group.

Your customers will often surprise you with many more great memories than you can build yourself. Look for them and put them to good use.

The bottom line

The examples of brand marketing are all around us. All we have to do is be open-minded in how we look and how we apply the best lessons learned.

Now it’s your turn. What are the brand marketing ideas you have seen lately?

Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help with word of mouth marketing campaigns?

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.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving 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 G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

19 Top Marketing Initiatives for the Best Persuasion

It is simple. Marketing is a form of communicating with people to sell them a product or service. However, it’s often a complicated dance of finding new and exciting ways to persuade them. The top marketing initiatives will add to this discussion.

In this social-media-dominated world, the conversation is increasingly detail-oriented and high-tech. It’s for this very reason that the most powerful messages remain human-centric.

Think about this: Innovation in Marketing … the Birchbox Subscription Model

Technology will help marketers engage consumers more directly by circumventing distractions and increasing their marketing reach. These tactics appeal to fundamental aspects of human nature.

As such, they can help marketers create carefully coordinated campaigns and conversations. Brands and consumers seek to coalesce into a shared experience, don’t they?

Are you one that believes that creativity can be learned? We are among that group. We also believe in suggestions for innovative thinking can boost team creativity through effective collaboration.

Through a series of sparks and not a single flash of insight. Certainly our way of thinking.

Here are 19 primary marketing initiatives that deserve your time and attention. If you capture their essence, they will help you address the challenges, opportunities, and complexities you’ll undoubtedly face as you move forward.

Interactive Content

There’s content you can read, and then there’s content with which you can interact. The second variety is certainly increasing in popularity.

For example, BuzzFeed’s “Which City Should You Live In?” quiz has been one of their home-run pieces. Think of ways to get readers to actively participate instead of passively consume.

Interactive content can include assessments (such as the classic Cosmo Quiz setup), polls, surveys, infographics, brackets, and contests.

Mobile video

Have you studied your Facebook feed recently? The chances are that 95% of it is video. And here’s a fun stat: mobile video views grew six times faster than desktop views in 2015.

In fact, in Q4 of 2015, mobile video views exceeded desktop views for the first time. We now live in an age of mobile video, and it’s time we embraced it.

Influencer marketing

Influence marketing isn’t new, but it is certainly maturing. Warren Whitlock, a noted influence marketing pro, says, “Everyone has influence.

Influence marketing is the practice of finding people who are already influencing your market. They will welcome your help to serve their audience better and reward you with reputation and trusted leads.”

What’s more effective than an ad in selling your product? A lovable social media personality is speaking highly about your product to his or her fans and followers. Influencer marketing is on the rise because people tend to trust recommendations from people they see as thought leaders.

The right influencers establish credibility through each social media post or advertisement. When they work with brands, it’s because they genuinely believe in them, and that trust is passed on to consumers.

Virtual and augmented reality

One of the recent biggest highlights was watching a screen-afflicted population carry their mobile devices out into the world to catch, yes, Pokemon.

The biggest takeaway from this phenomenon was augmented reality’s ability to drive real business results. This has become a very viable option for marketers looking to bring online into the real world.

Mobile-first strategy

A huge understatement is that the future is mobile. Internet traffic is now coming more from mobile devices more than desktops. If you’re not catering to your content, ads and online experience to a mobile user, then you are missing a massive opportunity.

And remember: It’s not just about “optimizing” for mobile; it’s also about making sure that piece of content gets integrated with a user’s lifestyle on the go.

Back in mid-2014, we reached the official tipping point when mobile devices officially overtook desktops as the preferred method of viewing and downloading content on the web.

By the 4th quarter of 2016, 50% of all B2B companies had implemented a responsive design for their websites, according to Gorilla Group. (Responsive design allows a website to be more easily viewed on smartphones, tablets, and notebooks.)

That was almost double the percentage of sites with responsive design in 2015 (26%). That trend will undoubtedly continue in 2017, as more and more B2B marketers realize the necessity of deploying mobile-friendly sites.

Mobile was in the top 3 three years ago, but as more companies have adopted mobile responsive web design and email templates they have seen less need to focus on it, or at least there are fewer opportunities for growth.

However, research shows that retail conversion rates are significantly lower on a smartphone, so there is work to be done for many businesses to optimize conversion on mobile, although they will likely always stay lower than desktop.

Chatbots

Do you think of chatbots as an annoying popup on a website that looks like it was built in the mid-’90s? Not me. I believe chatbot technology has become much more sophisticated.

A great example is the behemoth Facebook, which invests a significant amount of resources into bot programs that provide users with news updates, personalized responses and more.

Are you talking to a human or a bot? If you can’t tell, then the bot is working as intended.

Native Advertising

Viewers, followers, and consumers are getting wise to the tricks of advertisers, and it’s becoming harder and harder to earn and maintain their trust.

Native advertising means integrating your advertising efforts into content that already provides value to readers and viewers.

For this reason, it tends to be more effective. Look for ways to weave your products and offerings into a larger narrative, instead of just blasting with ads.

It’s much less intrusive, can provide educational benefits for the reader, is more likely to be shared, and can be very cost-effective for the advertiser.

This type of content usually is useful, interesting and targeted to a specific audience — all of which makes it one of the best platforms to launch any marketing campaign.

Data-driven marketing

There are two types of marketers: those who want to use what’s popular and those who use what works, regardless of whether it’s popular or not. Data tells you what’s moving the needle, and the truth is that every marketer needs to be conscious of it.

Data-driven marketing applications include market and customer insight and predictive analytics.

Social media “buy” buttons

We are moving into an age where purchasing doesn’t need to happen on a third-party site. Users are on a social platform, so why should they have to leave to buy something? “Buy” buttons are quickly turning social media sites such as Facebook and Pinterest into social shopping experiences.

Internet of things (IoT)

IoT is one of the most important marketing technology applications of the last 2-3 years, but it is of most relevance to device makers and retailers. This makes it relatively high-up in this ranking of priorities.

There are expected to be 75 billion connected devices by 2020, meaning there will be ten times as many devices able to talk to one another as there will be people on the planet!

The implications are huge and far-ranging. All this sharing of data will transform the way we live our lives.

Personalization

Personalization means segmenting your content to reach different types of audience members based on their preferences, habits, etc.

The most common form of this strategy is through lists, where certain content gets sent to certain types of users based on which lists they’ve opted into. In a world of too much content and not enough time, personalization is a huge win for brands looking to earn the attention of their consumers.

But daily information overload has made people more resistant to advertising. Today’s consumers can spot obvious sales pitches or marketing come-ons, and they’ll be turned off by it.

Targeting consumers on a personal level allow marketers to cut through the torrent of stimuli.

To capture an overwhelmed customer’s attention, marketers must reach him or her with personalized, relevant content. It’s all about creating marketing tactics that home in on exactly what consumers are looking for or thinking about.

Tracking consumers’ habits, interests and browsing histories is essential to creating strategies that get them to execute a purchase.

Above and beyond viewability

Currently, most companies use viewability to measure their success. Instead of solely focusing on views or clicks, companies should measure their ROI on things such as sign-ups, downloads, and purchases.

This requires going beyond CPMs and looking at the performance-based metrics instead.

Customer experience balance

Probably the most impactful marketing trend will be a tighter focus on improving the customer experience. Strive to use a balanced approach to building customer loyalty.

Instead of focusing solely on “customer-centric” methods based on your customers’ lifetime value, offset it with “customer-focused” techniques that enable you to provide relevant experiences across all touchpoints. Concentrate on what your customers value most.

Artificial intelligence/machine learning

The integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning into marketing techniques will continue to increase. Recently, Forrester Research predicted that “AI will provide business users with access to powerful insights before they are available to them.”

How?

Through the use of cognitive interfaces in complex systems, advanced analytics, and machine learning technology. Many vendors are already embedding components of cognitive computing capabilities into their solutions.

Visual content marketing

According to HubSpot, marketers still place increasing emphasis on the importance of visual content in their marketing portfolios. The primary driver is the desire to make content more engaging, compelling, and shareable than just the written word.

The most common forms of visual content that are being used are the video (including 360-degree video), infographics, and images in blogs and social media posts.

Lots to learn: What Marketers Need to Know about Personalization Strategies

Top marketing initiatives … experiential marketing

Instead of just sending a marketing message to a prospect, experiential marketing creates an opportunity for your customers and prospects to truly experience your brand, whether in a virtual setting or in person.

Spend some time educating yourself about the latest experiential marketing strategies and techniques, and give some thought as to how you could integrate them into the interactions with your customers and prospects.

You might also want to consider how experiential marketing could be used within your organization for engaging, educating, and energizing your employees.

Social media

In 2016, 39% of marketers reported significant ROI generated from social media marketing, contrasted with only 9% in 2015.

While this data implies that challenges still exist, year-over-year increases show that marketers are becoming more successful at converting social media activities into sales leads, and ultimately, revenue.

Next-gen automation

Some studies conducted by Aberdeen Group, Ovum, Marketing Sherpa, and others have revealed that the adoption of marketing automation technologies continues to be one of the fastest-growing marketing trends today.

The next generation of marketing automation tools is now being used by all sizes and types of organizations to accomplish a variety of objectives. These objectives include driving e-commerce revenue, generating and nurturing leads, accumulating customer intelligence, managing cross-channel campaigns, among many others.

According to Forrester Research, 58% of the top-performing companies where marketing contributes more than half of the sales pipeline have adopted marketing automation.

Marketing automation is growing at an impressive rate, with 71 percent of companies currently using this tech. Marketing automation does exactly what the name suggests, using software platforms designed to put repetitive tasks on autopilot.

Collaboration

Although the need seems obvious, most B2B organizations still aren’t willing—or don’t know how—to align their marketing and sales efforts. You can argue that customer experience should be added to the equation as well so that all three functions are marching to the same drummer.

That approach will help tear down the inherent silos that exist in most organizations and will encourage everyone to turn their focus to the customer.

Also, experiment with incorporating shared goals in your compensation programs for your marketing, sales, and customer service teams.

It’s amazing what financial incentives can do to change behavior when it comes to alignment and collaboration.

Content marketing

Content marketing sometimes is confused with native marketing. Though the two often go hand in hand, content marketing is its beast.

Native marketing is simply another way for marketers to distribute content. Content marketing is a strategic marketing technique to create and distribute relevant information to attract a target audience. It’s not a paid-and-done transaction, like placing a native ad. Rather, it’s an ongoing process that’s best integrated into an overall marketing strategy.

It can serve as the cornerstone to nearly any marketing plan and works for all types of brands because everyone uses it differently. The key is to be consistent, staying in character for your brand. If that brand voice is clever, interesting or funny, your target audience can’t help but be engaged.

The bottom line

Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer.

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.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

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 Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

Nordstrom Marketing Strategy Uses Customer Experience as a Difference Maker

Be everywhere, do everything, and never fail to astonish the customer. Have you noticed how customer experience design has grown in importance of brand marketing? More and more trying to astonish the customer. Certainly a real discriminator, isn’t it? The customer focus at Nordstrom has led to the retail giant having a reputation for an absurdly great customer experience design. In fact, the Nordstrom marketing strategy uses customer experience design as a key difference maker. The company is perhaps as known as much for its experience design as it is for the merchandise it sells.

Nordstrom has managed to make service its strongest selling point, and it certainly seems to have been the smart choice.

Today we will examine 10 different ways the Nordstrom brand has chosen to use their customer experience to stand out above the noise and become a significant contributor to their marketing strategy.

The end state quality of the product or service the customer receives is what counts. However, this includes the experience the customer remembered while he purchased the item. Often that is what is remembered the most.

So what constitutes a great customer experience?

The quality of your company’s customer experience is ultimately determined by the way customers feel after their last interaction. If the customer is unhappy, your company’s customer experience is bad. If the customer doesn’t have a feeling one way or the other, your company’s customer experience is mediocre (and some would argue bad). If the customer feels good, your company’s customer experience is satisfactory, but it does not stand out. But if the customer feels delighted, your company’s customer experience is a substantial competitive advantage. That is the only one that really matters to success. It is the one everyone is attempting to find the magic for.

Consider the invention cycle:

Imagination is envisioning things that do not exist.

Creativity is applying imagination to address a challenge.

Innovation is applying creativity to generate unique solutions.

Entrepreneurship is applying innovation, to bring unique ideas to fruition, inspiring others’ imagination.

This framework is relevant to start-ups and established firms, as well as innovators of all types where the realization of a new idea — whether a product, service, or work of art — results in a collective increase in imagination. An entrepreneurial spirit infects others, leading to wave upon wave of imagination, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Let’s examine 10 smashing examples that Nordstrom uses to delight customers:

Customer care

Feelings and emotions certainly have a significant role in the way customers influenced in the marketing process. Some are saying that all customers are concerned about right now is price. I challenge that. It takes no special skill to follow the leader or be the (momentary) leader with the lowest price. Companies that are thriving (yes, thriving) do more. They have made deliberate decisions about how they would run their business, and they live out those decisions every day. The most important of those decisions is the one that determines that taking great care of their customers is the highest priority.

Nordstrom marketing strategy … hire nurturers

Hiring nurturers to take care of customers is the best place to start the process. You can identify this natural ability in employees during the interview process.

As much as there is a tendency to move customers quickly in and out your doors in the name of efficiency, resist this approach. Today’s customer wants and expects to be cared for as an individual. For example; on “Black Friday,” as customers were standing in cold lines to get into stores in the middle of the night, one intern at a local store decided to pass out coffee, hot chocolate, and doughnuts to keep the crowds calm. A great small touch that had remarkable long term results via word of mouth marketing because of that “nurturing” gesture.

Related post: Some Great Story and Storytelling Examples to Study

In Nordstrom’s salespeople can offer to ring up your purchase without you ever having to stand in line. A great small touch that had remarkable long term results via word of mouth marketing because of that “nurturing” gesture.

Product presentation

Have you ever been in a Nordstrom store? If you have you will remember the emphasis of the visual presentation of their products. Draws your eyes to many, even if you are not looking for them. Helping customers visualize and sometimes try on the products.

Personalization

Customers don’t want to be treated like a number. They want to feel valued and understood. Their belief? That the money they spend with your company entitles them to such treatment. The differentiation of the experience your company delivers will therefore be at least in part contingent on your ability to personalize your interactions with customers across all channels. That means knowing their name, their previously expressed preferences, or the particulars of their current situation. Lots of small ways to create customer personalization.

A Nordstrom salesperson rarely points. If you have a question about where something is located, they walk you there. The personal touch is remembered.

Care

Customers like knowing that you care. Great service is the top reason customers keep giving their business to companies and the top reason they recommend those companies to others. On the flipside, 80 percent of customers say that they have stopped doing business with a company because of a bad service experience. More often than not, they will never do business with such a company ever again. For these reasons and others, it is critical to ensure that your company delivers great service care. Care that results in great experiences that are remembered and talked about.

Separate checkout bays by department, unlike many other retail department stores that have central checkout bays that can feel like a cattle call.

You can’t over prepare on your customer experience if you want customers to select or stay with your company.

Empower employees

Be relentless about cutting out those rules that make your frontline folks have to bounce back and forth between themselves and a manager to take care of a customer or extend a special gesture they feel is warranted.

Take another page from Nordstrom’s that gets rid of the rule book for customers, or minimizes the rule book for employees, telling employees that the major rule they all live by is “No Customer Can Leave Unhappy.”

Differentiated value

This example, while being traditional, will surprise you in the best brand in this discrimination category. Ever shopped Nordstrom? Our favorite retail store because of its great, unique discriminators. Consider its high touch service, its spacious look and feel, and top quality products. One-to-one service. In most departments, if you indicate the desire to shop, there is a salesperson designated to helping you find sizes, etc. They are number 1 in our minds.

Get away from the desk

Be where your customers and the folks who serve your customers are.

Be agile, be on the lookout for what people are asking for, and then be responsive. If you do something for one customer in need, spread the idea through your employees to extend the gesture, too. Being responsive and empathetic and adjusting how you do business for your customers now will pay off as the memory of your kindness stays with them.

Let your customers know

Let the marketplace know about who you are and what you value in your decisions and actions. Be authentic at all costs.

More to know: 19 Top Marketing Initiatives We Should Be Discussing

When you make a decision, it results in action. And the accumulation of those decisions and actions becomes how people describe you and think of you. It becomes your story. So decide what story you want told about your company and your people. Your “storefront” is the accumulation of your decisions and actions.

So what story is emerging about who you are and what you value? Having customers who love you tell your story will make your business grow. Make decisions that will earn you the kind of story you want told. No wonder the only rule at Nordstrom to this day is “Use good judgment in all situations.”

The bottom line

Here’s the thing, social and customer experience isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s really a new way of running a business. Many businesses certainly have figured this out and are using social marketing and improved customer experience to rapidly grow their business.

Remember, don’t talk about how great you are. Tell your customers a story about what you do well will make them and feel awesome. Make customer experience the centerpiece of your marketing success strategy. Learn from Nordstrom’s, one of the best.

Do you have a customer service experience to share with this community?

So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.

It’s up to you to keep improving your customer attention and focus. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

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

When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.

Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Do you have a lesson about making your customer focus 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 G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

Target has managed to make customer service its strongest selling point, and it certainly seems to have been the smart choice.

Today we will examine 10 different ways the brand has chosen to use its customer experience to stand out above the noise and become a significant contributor to their marketing strategy.

The end-state quality of the product or service the customer receives is what counts. However, this includes the experience the customer remembered while he purchased the item. Often that is what is remembered the most.

So what constitutes a great customer experience?

But if the customer feels delighted, your company’s customer experience is a substantial competitive advantage. That is the only one that really matters to success. It is the one everyone is attempting to find the magic for.

Consider the invention cycle:

Imagination is envisioning things that do not exist.

Creativity is applying imagination to address a challenge.

Innovation is applying creativity to generate unique solutions.

Entrepreneurship is applying innovation, to bring unique ideas to fruition, and inspiring others’ imagination.

Let’s examine 10 smashing examples that Target uses to delight customers:

Customer care

Hire nurturers

Hiring nurturers to take care of customers is the best place to start the process. You can identify this natural ability in employees during the interview process.

At Target salespeople can offer to ring up your purchase without you ever having to stand in line. A great small touch that had remarkable long-term results via word-of-mouth marketing because of that “nurturing” gesture.

Product presentation

Have you ever been to a Target store? If you have you will remember the emphasis on the visual presentation of their products. Draws your eyes to many, even if you are not looking for them. Helping customers visualize and sometimes try on the products.

Personalization

Customers don’t want to be treated like a number. They want to feel valued and understood. Their belief? That the money they spend with your company entitles them to such treatment.

Care

More often than not, they will never do business with such a company ever again. For these reasons and others, it is critical to ensure that your company delivers great service care. Care that results in great experiences that are remembered and talked about.

Separate checkout bays by department, unlike many other retail department stores that have central checkout bays that can feel like a cattle call. You can’t over-prepare your customer experience if you want customers to select or stay with your company.

Empower employees

Be relentless about cutting out those rules that make your frontline folks have to bounce back and forth between themselves and a manager to take care of a customer or extend a special gesture they feel is warranted.

Take another page from Target that gets rid of the rule book for customers, or minimizes the rule book for employees, telling employees that the major rule they all live by is “No Customer Can Leave Unhappy.”

Differentiated value

Get away from the desk

Be where your customers and the folks who serve your customers are.

Let your customers know

Let the marketplace know about who you are and what you value in your decisions and actions. Be authentic at all costs.

The bottom line

Here’s the thing, social and customer experience isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s really a new way of running a business. Many businesses certainly have figured this out and are using social marketing and improved customer experience to rapidly grow their business.

Remember, don’t talk about how great you are. Tell your customers a story about what you do well will make them feel awesome. Make customer experience the centerpiece of your marketing success strategy. Learn from these guys, one of the best.

What Exactly Is SEO?

SEO Techniques: Black Hat vs. White Hat

SEO Marketing Fundamentals: A Comprehensive Overview

Content Elements

Qualities

Freshness

Wrapping Up

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.

–Peter Drucker

When it comes to service you purchase from your physician, most people are more tolerant and more accepting than with most other businesses. But should it be that way, though?

It shouldn’t and here is why I conclude this.

What constitutes a great customer experience?

But if the customer feels delighted, your business’s customer experience is a substantial competitive advantage. (See our article on the laws of customer experience) That is the only one that matters to success to most companies. Why shouldn’t it be the same for your physician’s office?

Personalization

That means knowing their name, their previously expressed health issues, or listening to the particulars of their current situation. Lots of small ways to create customer personalization.

Lots of help and directions

Examples of poor customer service in health care

Customers like knowing that the doctor and his staff care. Great service is the top reason customers keep giving their business to doctors and the top reason they recommend them to others. It is critical to ensure that your practice delivers great service care.

The care that results in good results and great experiences that are remembered and talked about. So far based on action item response time and errors, the new doctor, and staff indicates they care much more about the business revenue than their care and service.

Poor listeners

Two-way conversations begin with doctors and staff listening carefully before responding. They should also take care patients understand the ‘whys’ for the doctors’ decisions.

Being stuck on transmit mode in a two-way conversation won’t go anywhere fast. The new physician’s office indicates that they can’t take the time to do much explaining to patients.

Follow through lacking

Don’t meet expectations

If promises are not kept, expectations by the patient not achieved, negative experiences result. Too negative and your practice will lose the patient forever. The absolute last thing that either the practice or the new patient desire. But that is what is happening.

No interest in patient feedback

Doctor customer experience … no personalized engagement

Time

Find you

Engage with you

Communicate their problem

For you to resolve that problem.

Both practices were about the same on this criteria.

Doctor customer experience … staff expertise

Patients need to believe that your practice’s staff are good at what they do. They must perceive that your staff is well-informed about products, services, policies, issues, and any other relevant subject matter.

You can’t neglect your patients’ experience if you want them to stay with or recommend your practice.

The bottom line

Remember, customers create the most value for you … when you create the most value for them.

Practices that are proactively managing all elements of their patient experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty.

Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?

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

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

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 improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

More reading on customer experience from our Library: