Category: Branding

Do you feel that your audience isn’t connecting with your brand? If you believe this is the case then it’s because of one reason, and one reason only: you’re not listening to your audience.

The marketplace today has greatly changed in the last 20 years, and that’s for the better. Thanks to developing technologies, high-speed Internet connections and constant communication, consumers expect a personalized experience. They want to feel as if they’re the only customer. And if they aren’t getting this vibe from your brand then they’ll feel disengaged and indifferent.

If you’re purposely despondent with your clientele then those same customers will head on over to your competitors. You’ll lose out on sales and revenues and your bottom line will diminish. This is how the marketplace works nowadays. Prices matter, but so does customer service.

At the same time, however, perhaps you are connecting with your audience. Or, at least you’re trying too. This can feel rather embarrassing for your brand. What are you doing wrong? Maybe you rub your customers the wrong way or maybe you’re trying too hard. Here are a few reasons, according to Entrepreneur magazine, why you’re not connecting with your customer base:

• Your business lacks a target audience.
• Your brand seems too self-centered.
• Your company doesn’t have a unique selling proposition.
• Your content marketing isn’t compelling or emotional.
• Your employees aren’t the right fit for your firm.
• Your firm doesn’t engage with your audience.

Listening to your customers can turn things around rather quickly. To start engaging is to begin reaching out to your customers. Consumers feel valued when businesses reach out to them for feedback. Ben McConnell, co-author of Creating Customer Evangelists, writes the following:

“Research firm TARP has found that for every person who complains, there are 26 who do not. That means if 10 customers complain, another 260 may have quietly dumped you, never to call again. To know what customers are thinking, ask them.”

That’s pretty important and powerful information. It’s something that could revolutionize your overall business model.

Now, let’s look at the six reasons why you should start listening to your audience:

Improving Your Product

Indeed, you may think that you have the greatest product since sliced bread. Of course you’ll say that. You’re biased since you’re the one selling the product, or you’re the inventor of said product. If the sales sheet contradicts your viewpoint then perhaps it’s time to start finding out why customers aren’t buying the product. Is it too expensive? Does it serve no purpose? Is your rival invoking better promotional values? Your customers can give you the answers you’re looking for.

Loyal Customers Are Crucial

Once you have one or two loyal customers then the rest will follow suit. Loyal customers not only provide you with a steady income, they’ll serve as your advocate. Word of mouth is the bread and butter for startups and small businesses. If your most loyal of customers are recommending your product to another person then that person will suggest your product to somebody else. It’s a ripple effect and you’ll enjoy the fruits of such a tidal wave.

What About Your Rivals?

First, if you don’t listen to your customers then they’ll head over to your rival(s).

Second, your customers can tell you what you need to know about your competitors. Take the time to start asking your customers about the business that just opened up across the street. They’ll likely give you the truth, even if it’s bad news for your business. Think of them as your own personal Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or Philip Marlowe.

The Feeling of Feeling Valued

One of the reasons why some customers are so loyal to a company is that they feel valued. When a customer feels valued then that feeling invokes reciprocation. Just by listening and understanding their needs and wants will make them feel valued and return to your store.

A Focus on the Customer

The primary objective of any business is to satisfy the consumer. If you’re not looking to keep the customer happy then you should close up shop and move to Northern Canada in an igloo.

From Dissatisfied to Advocates

Are your customers dissatisfied? Well, you have a lot of work ahead of you. Your aim now should be to transform your unhappy customers in to advocate customers. Whether they’re displeased with the customer service, the product or the aesthetic value of your store or website, you have to listen to them. Once you address their dislikes, and you work to improve them, then you can succeed in having a brand advocate, loyal customer and another steady income source.

How to Act on Listening

Now that you understand the reasons for listening to your audience to grow your business, the next step is to act. Are you going to act? You likely will, but how? Let’s look at how you can:

Surveys

The easiest and most effective way to listen to your shoppers and to garner valuable feedback is to create and hand out surveys. The reasons why surveys are superb techniques to generate opinions is because they tell you what you’re doing right and, more importantly, what you’re doing wrong.

Surveys, particularly anonymous ones, allow customers to be open and honest about their experiences with your business. So, what should you be asking your customers who are taking your survey? Here are just a few questions that you can put forward:

• On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate your experience today?
• What was the intention of your visit?
• Did you complete your visit as you intended?
• Would you recommend our business to your friends and family?
• Is there anything you would change about our company?

A survey shouldn’t take longer than 60 seconds, unless you’re offering an incentive, like $3 off your next order or a chance to win $1,000. They can be done online or in person. It’s best to avoid doing it over the phone because consumers generally dislike telephone interviewers.

Customer Service

Any veteran business owner will tell you that customer service is a valuable point of interaction with shoppers. It’s a superb opportunity to elicit feedback so don’t waste it. You don’t know if they’ll ever come back to your store or website. Remember, the best companies listen at the front of the line, and employees embark upon one-on-one conversations with customers.

Listening to your customers during the customer service experience understands what they value, what they want you to deliver and what you can improve upon. Active listening, not pretending to listen, can showcase to your customers that you’re valuing their time and ideas.

Indeed, many shoppers dislike being approached by sales staff so be diplomatic in your approach.

Social Media

Ah, social media! The greatest invention known to those participants in social media. If you’re an avid social media user then you realize just how much you can listen to your audience on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks.

To succeed in this realm, you have to really know what you’re listening for. According to PR News Online, there are seven things you have to be on the lookout for on social media:

• Early warnings based on product quality or service matters.
• Learning keywords customers type to improve SEO campaigns.
• Monitor conversations during a campaign.
• Hone in on websites to increase your level of engagement.
• Offer a level of support to customers and answer questions or concerns.
• Grab ideas from users to improve or innovate products, services and marketing.
• Connect and build relationships with your fellow industry competitors.

The main objective of social media is to converse. In no other time in history has business been able to garner instant feedback, instant customer service and instant adulation (or criticism). Social media also allows you to target your audience like never before.

Simply put: social media is very beneficial to business owners.

Email Marketing

Did you know email still plays an important part to a business? Yep, email hasn’t died.

In an email marketing campaign, you can show to the world that you are actually listening to them. All of your emails in this campaign can actively highlight the fact that you welcome feedback, you listen to it and you are actually working on improving or introducing your products and services to ensure the customer is always 100 percent satisfied.

To gain immediate and direct access to your shoppers’ attention, you can always request that they submit their email addresses for future newsletters, promotions, corporate updates, discounts and free products, like ebooks, whitepapers and case studies.

In these emails, you can also spotlight certain customers and their reviews, whether it’s good or bad (see below). This is where you can take advantage of negative reviews. Let’s say Katherine Baxter wrote a negative review about shoddy customer service. You then tell your audience that you revamped customer service training and refunded the customer’s money.

Also, you can occasionally send a note to your audience asking how you’re doing. You don’t have to do everything manually, try to incorporate into your marketing plan an email marketing platform so you will have a better control over your campaign.

Online Reviews

Online reviews are windows into your customers’ souls. Well, let’s not get too dramatic.

But customer testimonials are very valuable in various ways. They can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, they can enhance your online reputation and influence the decision of other shoppers. Although you want positive reviews as much as possible, negative reviews can prove to be very valuable to your business.

A negative review tells you what you’ve done wrong. This may anger you, but don’t let it. Consider this poor review as an opportunity to do better next time. Here are a few things you can do with this negative review (besides throwing it in the trash or recycling bin):

• Respond to the negative review and apologize to the customer.
• Ensure to the customer that you will do better next time.
• Take their complaints and find out what you can do improve your business.
• Produce content that shows you’ve taken the complaint and did something about it (see above).

User reviews are meant to be seen and heard (or read). The next step is to act upon them.

Final Thoughts

If your objective is to open up a business and then shut your doors within a year then by all means you shouldn’t listen to your audience. Avoid them like the plague. However, if your objective is to start a business and make it succeed then you should definitely listen to your audience at all times. Be very attentive to them.

You can either fail or succeed based on their dollars (or yuan or euros or pounds).

The customer is the key to growing your business. Go ahead, start listening!

CBS New York notes that carpet cleaning can drastically improve the appearance and life of your carpet. While you likely know how it can reduce pollutants, dust mites and mold to improve the home, it’s up to you to get that information to your customers. Marketing is an important method of communicating with your customers, but the way you go about doing that makes a substantial difference in how your message gets received.

Most Important Trends

According to Forbes, there are several marketing trends for 2015 that every business should be aware of. It essentially comes down to making sure every customer is treated as unique, make the best use of technology, create better brand engagement and focus on your content.

Millennials Matter

Millennials are a growing market that needs careful attention. Many of the marketing trends of 2015 have grown in response to this specific market. They desire communication and a friendly, conversational tone that speaks their language. When you speak to the Millennial generation, you need to get past the traditional marketing techniques. According to Forbes, Millennials are more concerned with experiences and less concerned with milestones like buying a car or house.

Real-Time Expectations

Customers today want real-time interactions, and for the most part they don’t want to pick up a telephone. They would rather use live chat so that they can stay occupied in many different activities at once. By staying updated with the current trends, companies need to gear their marketing toward providing products and services that customers can enjoy immediately. If you’re a retail store, consider offering customers who place an order online with a coupon to come down and get a free item or discount at your store that day. It’s a great way to leverage the online and brick-and-mortar world of purchasing.

Provide Information

CBS New York notes that carpet cleaning can drastically improve the appearance and life of your carpet. Carpet cleaners likely know how cleaning can reduce pollutants, dust mites and mold to improve the home, it’s up to them to get that information to your customers. Marketing is an important method of communicating with your customers, but the way you go about doing that makes a substantial difference in how your message gets received. The same is true of the medical establishment. If you run a practice, you need to help your patients by providing general advice and help through your social media pages.

Offer Sales

Microsoft notes that having a sale is still one of the best ways to get customers into your store. Be careful if the sale isn’t anything substantial though. A mediocre sale will only bring in the casual customer who was likely planning on visiting anyway. A huge trend from the recent Black Friday specials was that younger kids didn’t care as much about the discounts unless it was at least a 50 percent reduction in price. Money is not all that the newer generation values, they also value connectedness, information and emotional value of items.

Promotional Events

It’s still a good idea to have promotional events, but make sure you don’t make them overly promotional. It’s better to advertise your event as a festival or a store event. This sends the message that you’re not just trying to get your customers to buy. Use a method of passive sales where the items are clearly listed as discounted, but discuss the value of the product instead of talking about the discount. The moment you tell a Millennial that a product is normally much more expensive, you will lose their attention.

Most importantly, be real in your marketing. Infuse personality into your product offerings, and make sure you always focus on what your company can do for the customer. Don’t focus on how they can help improve your bottom-line, and you will begin to get loyal customers that share your products and recommend you to their friends. Millennials often speak about companies that don’t oversell you or focus on how much a product costs because the relationship matters more.

Nowadays, online shoppers can close their browser or visit a competitor’s site within seconds. There’s no savvy store manager to smooth things over or suggest alternative products if you are out of stock. With less time to change the customer’s mind, operations must be seamless from online checkout to final delivery. It takes five good impressions to make up for one bad impression.

The eCommerce market is extremely competitive so ensuring that every aspect of your business is operating smoothly is crucial. One area that does seems to remain overlooked is the final stage: delivery. Flawed delivery is one of the biggest reasons behind poor customer reviews and in the end they will blame you, not the courier. You chose them. Let’s look at four case studies from some of the biggest names in e-commerce.

1. Your delivery driver is often the first and last human interaction your customer has with your online business.

Case Study: M&S & Yodel
Marks & Spencer’s ran into unwanted problems over Mother’s Day 2015 with its courier partner Yodel, when hundreds of customers’ mothers did not receive their flowers for the big day. Poor Mum! Customer tweets expressed frustration and even confusion as to why the retailer was relying on a courier with a dubious track record. Over Christmas 2014, major retailers like Waterstones, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer’s admitted that services were delayed up to four days with Yodel. Yodel was also forced to suspend deliveries in a bid to catch up. Over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, customers claimed items were left in bushes, in bins and with unknown neighbours. It’s claimed Yodel drivers only receive 50p per delivery and that the company relies on casual or contract drivers.

Verdict: If you are relying on a logistics partner, don’t try to save on courier services with a cheaper provider. Cheapest has been often proved to not be best. Your customers will thank you (or at the very least you won’t receive angry tweets).

2. Is it better to have a van deliver your products with your company’s branding or a courier’s branding?

Case Study: Net-a-Porter & In-House Logistics
Premium brands like net-a-porter.com offer a masterclass in warehouse operations and logistics. Net-a-porter relies on robots to fulfil its endless stream of orders. Robots swish up and down the warehouse packing new products away or selecting boxes and totes to be delivered on a conveyor belt. The robots move at 30mph to pick, pack and dispatch simultaneously. The company behind the robots, TGW offers engineers on site 24/7 to make sure nothing stands in the way of the e-commerce’s relentless operations. As part of the operation’s complete package net-a-porter retain their own in-house delivery fleet, with branded vans.

Founder and executive chairman of the group, Natalie Massenet explained the success of the platform, “A lot of people are trying to create social shopping destinations, but they’re missing some of the ingredients. Either they don’t have the scale and reach and audience already, they don’t have the relationship with the brands, or they don’t have the logistics or in-house tech team we have.”

Verdict: Net-a-porter understands that logistics leaves a lasting impression on customers. However, few e-commerce sites can afford their own in-house logistics team and van fleet. Net-a-porter’s logistics is impressive, if not unusual, given its size. The company has invested heavily in its warehouse operations and delivery fleet as a core proposition. Net-a-porter’s strategy is aspirational, setting the bar very high for other brands. While you may not be able to afford your own van fleet, you can select a trusted courier partner to represent and             deliver your goods.

3. Real-Time Tracking information reduces customer queries & improves operations.

Case Study: ASOS & DPD Partnership
One of the biggest (but worst kept) secrets behind ASOS’s success is its logistics strategy. Over the past two years, the company has expanded into China, Russia, Asia, India and Brazil. This expansion comes at a price. The company has invested heavily in warehouse operations and technology.

AllPort Cargo Services keeps a tight reign over ASOS’s international transportation management, managing its international air and sea movements. In June 2013, ASOS and DPD introduced the ‘Follow my Parcel Service’ to provide real-time tracking, dramatically cutting the delivery window down to a 15-minute slot. On the day of delivery, ASOS customers are sent a text or email message with a one-hour delivery slot. Customers have the further option to have their parcel delivered to a safe place, collect from the nearest depot or upgrade their delivery. The service allows customers to track their purchases with GPS and online mapping on the web or with mobile devices.

Verdict: Accurate Real-Time tracking information has been instrumental in ASOS’s international expansion and customer experience. DPD’s innovative tracking services has allowed customers to arrange deliveries around their schedule and reduce the number of customer queries.

4. Offering multiple delivery and/or return options can dramatically increase conversion rates, encouraging customers to return to your site.

Case Study: Zappos & UPS
While you may not have heard of US-based retailer Zappos, it is a household name in the US. Zappos was an early pioneer of putting customers at the centre of the shopping experience. From the beginning, the company made returns a core part of their marketing strategy. If you’ve ever worked in merchandising, you’ll know shoe fit and sizing is one of the most challenging aspects of store planning. Zappos removed the challenges of selling footwear online by allowing customers to order any style, colour and size of footwear and return the shoes free of charge. Not only does Zappos allow free returns, it actively encourages returns with an innovative UPS returns section on their website, which allows customers to call a driver for pickup. After pickup, UPS handles the rest.

It’s no surprise that Zappos maintains 75% of its customers as ‘return shoppers’. The company asserts that service is not an expense, but an investment. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh gave credit to the company’s partnership with UPS. He said Zappos had ‘found similar cultural values and a joint passion for logistics’ with UPS.

Verdict: Zappos’s partnership with UPS and its flexible return policy has been instrumental in retaining its customer base with a tricky product. Customers enjoy the shipping experience as much as they enjoy the returns process, mimicking how they might behave in a real shoe store.

If you can’t afford to have your own in-house logistics and van fleet, you can follow in the steps of Zappos and ASOS and partner with a professional courier service to ensure your brand always makes a great impression on customers from start to finish. Don’t let your brand down on your customer’s doorstep.

Promotional products are one of the oldest forms of advertising, and in the ever evolving world of modern business where marketing has taken to the internet, some may think that grounds for considering them outdated – but they would be wrong. The marketing strategy for your business should be as multifaceted as possible, encompassing print, digital content, social media and anything else you can make time and room in your budget for. However, one area that should never go overlooked is promos.

The major and most immediate benefit of utilizing promotional products is that they create opportunities.  Ad specialties create opportunities to get your brand out in front of as many new eyes as possible, show off your ability to be creative, clever or forward-thinking and leave a good first impression with prospective customers or business partners. If you aren’t already realizing that these opportunities, if seized, could drive business and increase your revenue, then here is a list of a few more remarkable things promotional products can do for your business.

Draw Attention and Open Up Communication

You might think that inexpensive promos with all their bells and whistles are a waste of your budget and say nothing for your business, and in some cases you might be right, but have you ever attended a tradeshow? It’s a veritable marketing circus with each act competing for the attention of their onlookers. Exhibitors need to draw attention to themselves and lure tradeshow attendees into their booths in order achieve a meaningful exchange. Suddenly those chachkies that barely make a dent in your budget don’t look so worthless, do they? Promotional products, whether they are a cheap thrill or a truly compelling custom gift, will do their part to open up lines of communication between you and your consumers.

Increase Brand Exposure, Presence and Recognition

According to a study by the Promotional Products Association Industry on the effectiveness of promotional products as an advertising medium, 58% of people who receive a promotional product will keep it for an average of 1 to 4 years. These are products that end up on someone’s desk or in their kitchen at home and eventually serve as a daily reminder of your business’s presence. Some of these promos will get passed along to others, like a pen that is lent out and never returned or an amusing novelty stress ball given to a friend or coworker as a small gift. In some way or another these tangible and useful reminders of your business make their way out into the world and then stay out there for quite some time.   

Enforce the Rule of Reciprocity

It’s engrained in almost all human beings to give back after they’ve received something. You know that terribly uncomfortable feeling you get when you receive a gift from someone and you have nothing to give in return? It’s the rule of reciprocity and when you are promoting your business you should be taking full advantage of it with promotional giveaways. Do you want new prospective clients to sign up for a mailing list? You won’t make a great deal progress if you’re asking them to give out their information in exchange for nothing at all, but a simple promo will compel them to oblige. Don’t feel bad about taking small advantage of our human nature. It’s just business.

Create Positive and Memorable Experiences

To put it bluntly, people like free stuff. Gifts make them happy and create positive and memorable experiences – experiences that could be associated with your brand. Keep in mind that this is where the importance of a well thought out promotional product comes into play. You want to ask yourself if you would want the product if it were given to you and what it has to say about your brand, because this isn’t only an opportunity to create a happy memory, but a lasting impression as well. A thoughtfully chosen promotional product can speak volumes about your brand, long after the initial exchange has occurred.

Turn Your Recipients into Walking Billboards

Custom apparel, especially tee shirts, are always well received and end up working double duty for your brand. They create that positive experience that promos are so renowned for and then turn your recipients into walking, breathing advertisements for your business. It’s ingenious, if I may say so. Bags, caps and tech cases can equally get the job done.

Play a Major Role in Employee Recognition Programs

While advertising is the primary function of promotional products, many business find that they are extremely effective as employee incentives, recognition awards and appreciation gifts. In fact the ad specialties industry has placed a major focus on employee recognition over the years, as the product market has expanded to include custom awards, desk accessories, travel essentials, high end apparel, and cutting edge tech products.

Your business needs promotional products because of all the ways that you can remind your audience about your presence and create a lasting impression that will keep you fresh on the minds of prospective customers, promos are the only ones that are tangible and long lasting. That’s something worth considering.

In these days of mass marketing, to stand out from the crowd it’s essential to have a story to tell. It can set you apart from your competitors, add depth to your business and offer some human interest above and beyond corporate logos and strap lines. While it can play an important role in your general marketing strategy, it can also play dividends when planning your presence at an exhibition.

Everyone in business starts somewhere. There’s an idea, a strategy, a service, goals and a journey. Quite often it involves a key person, the founder. It’s this story that becomes your personal branding.

We see well known celebrities use personal branding on a daily basis; capitalising on themselves, their backgrounds, stories and faces to market and sell their products. Think of Karen Brady, Delia Smith, Richard Branson, Bear Grylls, or any one of the hundreds of ‘celebrity chefs’ who appear on television, write cookbooks and sell branded cookware. The appeal is firstly the familiarity the consumer has with the individual, but it’s also the human interest to each of their stories of success.

While not everyone has the celebrity factor to rely on, we all still have a story to tell. It’s a busy market place, where all manner of competitors vie for the attention of customers, competing on product, price and service. So quite often the only thing that will set you apart, make you unique, is your business story.

When it comes to the exhibition space your stand will be hustling for attention in among a sea of other stands, some of which will be direct competitors.

While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend having a larger-than-life cardboard cut-out of the boss – though that’s not to say you absolutely shouldn’t – there are still some great tactics to bringing personal branding and storytelling to your exhibition stand.

If your company has real history – something that has been capitalised on by many businesses in their post-recession marketing – using this on the stand can help inform credibility, instil a sense of trustworthiness and position your brand as an industry forerunner. This can be achieved by showing a creative time-line as part of the backdrop to the stand, including large images from the archive to chart the progress of the company, or using AV to tell the story. Any of these elements should pin-point key milestones for the company, rather than give a detailed annual account of every transaction that took place.

Even if your company lacks years of experience, if the timeline is short yet rapid and studded with success, it still tells an interesting story.

Telling the story of a family business can also provide real human interest into the marketing mix. It can be used to punctuate the founding of the company, its family ethics and position it within the viewpoint of regular human beings. Therefore presenting itself more personable than the big corporate giants.

Having the people who count on the stand can be key with regard to personal branding. This won’t always be practical, but having some presence by the founder can be a real ace card on the exhibition floor. Understandably they might not be able to attend the whole event, but having some key times where potential customers can meet them personally is a great compromise, and even offers an element of exclusivity by offering limited bookable timeslots.

Sometimes there’s space for exhibitors to present seminars or workshops and using the face of your personal brand to deliver this can be a great way of showcasing your business. Putting a face to the name with the aim of telling your business story and driving footfall back to your stand.

And finally, but essentially, ensuring all staff members on the stand know the story and are able to recount it in an engaging manner – every business in the exhibition will have facts and figures, and you obviously need these too, but having a unique story tell can set you apart from the pack.

About the Author 

This article was brought to you by Express Displays. Whether you’re looking for banner stands, pop-up displays or display counters, visit Express Displays for all your event marketing needs.