It’s All About Making It Easier for the Customer to Buy

OK, I’ll admit it. I not the primary grocery shopper in the family. But, I’m always happy to hop over to Publix, Fresh Market, Whole Foods or SweetBay to buy stuff.  Since I’m not a grocery aisle guru, it usually takes me way too much time to find the items I have been entrusted to buy and bring home.    Occasionally, that makes me a little cranky.

SweetBay Shopping Carts Saved My Day

But,  Sweetbay has achieved the equivalent of a user-friendly e-commerce interface with its shopping cart. In a move that is as brilliant as it is inexpensive to design and deploy, they have equipped each shopping cart with a sheet that lists major grocery items alphabetically and shows the aisle in which they can be found.

At Sweetbay I was looking for coffee. Because my shopping cart helpfully listed coffee in aisle 6, I found it within 30 seconds rather than the 5 minutes of aimless wandering it would usually take.

The genius of the Sweetbay shopping cart content marketing strategy contrasted with my Publix experience.
While there, I went through the frustrating aisle-wandering exercise to find when I needed. Publix is an excellent supermarket. But, they sure made it much harder for me to buy what I needed to buy.

If a supermarket were a website, I would’ve been off like a shot from Publix to Sweetbay, knowing that they would take me by the hand to find exactly what I needed in a minimum of time.

I don’t know who came up with the idea to put that helpful guide on the shopping cart, but I hope he or she got an enormous bonus. I also hope for Sweetbay’s sake they can patent this brilliant content marketing invention.

Sometimes, it’s the little things that make all of the difference. Thank you Sweetbay for saving me so much time and inspiring me to connect shopping carts and content marketing.

Your Sales Team Must Be Content Marketers, Too!

Mike Wisner was my first boss in publishing back in the days of John Denver and disco. He was a unique, colorful, and brilliant character. I learned so much from Mike that some of the lessons he taught me still inform my approach to sales and marketing. In fact, in many ways he was a pioneer content marketer within the sales arena before anyone had imagined such a concept.

Learning a Vital Selling Secret from Mike Wisner before I Ever Got to the Office

Mike delivered a shocking and memorable sales lesson in my first 5 minutes on the job–it was all about why it was essential to get very, very close to your customers and how to make that happen.

He picked me up on an icy January morning at O’Hare Airport on my first day on my first ad sales job for Gorman Publishing. As soon as I had sat down in the passenger seat of his car, he told me, “To be successful, you have to get in bed with your customers.”

Before I had a chance to recover from my initial shock, he described how vital it is to get exceptionally close to your customers in order to sell successfully. Of course, that’s a lot harder to do than to say. Mike went on to explain that close customer relationships depend on becoming super-knowledgeable about their companies, their products, and their markets. In addition, you had to become an industry expert, too.

Why is that important? Once you, as a salesperson, have become an expert in every area that is essential to your customers, you become worthy of their trust. They know that you know what is truly important about the daunting competitive and market-driven challenges they face everyday.

The Salesperson As Thought Leader–And Content Marketer

Once you have developed relevant expertise, you have the opportunity to become a  thought leader from the perspective of each and every one of your customers. They will look to you for information that will help make them smarter and more successful. And, that’s before they ever buy anything from you. Then, when it comes time to discuss your products and services, your customers will trust that you have their best interests at heart–and care about helping them to succeed.

Simply put, when you call, they pick up the phone. And, as I learned from observing Mike, when he called, his customers–even at the highest levels of very large companies–picked up the phone. His conversations always began by discussing market trends, industry issues, and maybe even a little business gossip. After sharing valuable and engaging content, only then would he segway into a sales conversation.

Sadly, Mike is no longer with us. But if he were, he would be completely at home in a world where content marketing is a core component of the marketing strategies of companies from small to huge.

I learned a critical customer relationship lesson from Mike:

By becoming a thought leader in the eyes of your customers, you position yourself to deliver solutions that will help them succeed. Essentially, content marketing works just as well for sales professionals as it does for marketers.

Bus Shelter Ads Offer Can’t Miss Message that Promotes Use of Rider Friendly Technology

AC Transit avoids the "build it and they will come" mistake to which many companies and organizations fall prey. They know that simply offering bus service and implementing technology is just the beginning to motivating Bay Area residents to take the bus regularly.  They also prove that traditional outdoor advertising can still work brilliantly at the right time and place.  This is targeted, visual content marketing at its best.

The San Francisco Bay area boasts excellent public transit systems in the city itself and in surrounding counties. AC Transit is notable not only for a well-run system, but for its effectiveness in marketing the benefits of public transit to its passengers.

AC Transit is the third-largest bus-only transit system in California, serving over 400 square miles of the East Bay.  Every weekday, over 230,000 people ride their fleet of nearly 800 buses.  They run buses on 105 routes with more than 6500 stops.

Even better, they do a great job of marketing all those buses, stops, and routes to current and future passengers.

We have already written about their wonderful online marketing campaign that paints such a compelling picture of the benefits of bus travel. AC Transit  created ACT for Me as “Your Guide to the Future of Public Transit.”  They illustrate why AC Transit should be an integral part of your life by sharing a creative range of content—from user-generated videos, to a travel savings calculator, to a discussion of community and environment benefits, and the exciting future of transit. Here’s A Public Agency That Really Understands Content Marketing.

Now they are adding even more value for their customers and continuing their effective campaign in a brand-new way.

Helping Passengers First by Adding Smart Transit Technology—and Then by  Enticing Them with Smart Targeted Marketing

AC Transit committed to NextBus to improve bus travel for their millions of annual passengers.  This system tells riders exactly when the next bus will arrive—and can even send arrival alerts so passengers never miss a bus.  However, they didn’t assume that every rider–or potential rider–would be aware of this new technology nor understand how NextBus could help them

To make the most of their NextBus implementation, they have recently added advertising to their bus shelters.  Now, even passersby get the message about how easy it is to use public transit and to stay on time.  The bus stop ads illustrate that it’s easy to know when the next bus will arrive by using NextBus technology. They use an image of a rider using a smart phone to access bus data with an additional close-up image of a smart phone and showing a NextBus prediction. Of course, they include the appropriate web address to use so that riders can access the NextBus data immediatel

In this way, AC Transit helps current riders to improve their bus riding experience while providing an easy-to-understand marketing message for folks who may be just beginning to think about taking the bus on a regular basis.

Even in Northern California, it can be difficult to get drivers out of their cars and onto the bus. But AC  Transit is doing a stellar job of marketing that is very likely to make that transit transition seem like a very smart idea .

  It’s been a very good year for content marketing. In fact, visitors searching our site for the phrase “content marketing” increased by 85% in 2009 over 2008.

Social media certainly loomed larger in the past 12 months but interest in content marketing strategy accounted for the majority of the most popular posts.

Here is the Cliff’s Notes bullet point version with more detail and links to the full articles following:

• How To Create the All-Important Elevator Speech For Your Presentations and for Your Content Marketing
• 5 Reasons an eBook Should be a Core Component of Your Content Marketing Strategy
• 5 Twitter Tips to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy
• Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? Become Their Online Content Concierge!
• Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy
• 6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
• Why Being Visual Can Bring Beautiful Business Results
• 6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today
• Top 10 Lessons Small Businesses Can Takeaway from Smart Content Marketers
• 6 Secrets to Making Online Video Work for Small Business

A more detailed look at the top 10 with links to each complete article is just below.  Kick back and enjoy.

1. How To Create the All-Important Elevator Speech For Your Presentations and for Your Content Marketing
   It is so hard, but so important to explain what it is that you do and how it will benefit the person to whom you are communicating. Not at length.  But so concisely that it can be communicated in less time than it takes an elevator to go up a few floors. And, so compellingly that your listener will remember and repeat it to others. Click to read more.

2. 5 Reasons an eBook Should be a Core Component of Your Content Marketing Strategy
   Of course, I’m assuming that you already have a website and are probably doing some business blogging.  You may also do a regular eNewsletter to inform your customers and prospects about the great content you have created recently online.  Your next step is to create an e-book that targets your ideal customers. Click here to read more.

3. 5 Twitter Tips to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy
   You may be wondering why something as seemingly simple as Twitter causes so much confusion and consternation among business people.
   Perhaps, it best likened to a tool like a hammer which is simultaneously simple and powerful.  After all, a hammer can be used to put up a basic bookshelf or to build an entire home that will house a family for a lifetime. Click here to read more.

4. Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? Become Their Online Content Concierge!
   Think of yourself as the ultimate knowledge resource like those concierges serving fine hotels such as the Ritz-Carlton or the Four Seasons—But Available 24/7. Click here to read more.
5. Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy
   How to go from clueless to compelling to transform prospects into buyers
   In 2007, the mention of content marketing brought as many blank stares from small business owners as the mention of a website did 10 years before. In fact, in 1997 when we started our small business magazine in Southwest Florida, few owners had websites, let alone an online marketing strategy.
   In 2009, most small businesses do have websites and the term, ‘content marketing,’ has gone from obscure to fashionable. When I say fashionable, I mean that the usage of the phrase has skyrocketed in the past two years. For example, the number of visitors to our website who arrived because they had done a search for ‘content marketing,’ has increased by a factor of 10. Click here to read more.
6. 6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
   It’s much more powerful than those young whippersnappers–Twitter and Facebook
   Thanks to free or inexpensive blogging tools, any individual can be on the same technological footing as the New York Times or Business Week.  That may seem relatively obvious to many of you.  What I think is less obvious is that your blog is every bit as much a social media tool as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace.  In fact, I believe that a blog is the most important social media weapon in your arsenal. Click here to read more.
7. Why Being Visual Can Bring Beautiful Business Results
   Inspiration from ‘Visual Blogger’ Mark Smiciklas of Intersection Marketing
   It’s hard to make things easy. And, it’s even harder to be amusing at the same time.
   But the very best visuals take a complex idea or series of connected ideas and make them instantly understandable. Just the right visuals make those ideas even more memorable when they are funny as well. In the case of the Intersection Marketing blog from Mark Smiciklas, he manages to do both consistently. Click here to read more.
8. 6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today
   Social media marketing is a trend, not a fad. But,  most small to medium-sized businesses have yet to participate fully and enthusiastically.
   We have just written about a powerful new research study that paints a picture of how thousands of smart companies are already benefiting from the inclusion of social media.  What’s clear from that research is that when we evaluate social media, we are not talking about the marketing longevity equivalent of the hula hoop or the Lambada.
   Social media marketing is here to stay.  Because you want your organization to be here for the long haul as well, you need to move now.  Not next week. Not next month. But now. Click here to read more.
9. Top 10 Lessons Small Businesses Can Takeaway from Smart Content Marketers
   This week, several client meetings reinforced a vital truth:  Content marketing isn’t an arcane theory taught in expensive graduate schools that only billion dollar companies can use. In fact, great  content marketing is much more about brains than big bucks.
   Those client conversations took me back to lessons learned from more than a dozen case studies we featured in Get Content Get Customers. What came through loud and clear was that content marketing requires discipline, patience, and persistence, but it doesn’t require an enormous budget.  Click here to read more.
10. 6 Secrets to Making Online Video Work for Small Business
    Kathy Saenz of Neighborhood America Shares What It Takes to Make Video an Effective Content Marketing Tool
    Even a micro business can use video effectively to communicate with its customers online.
    But, as we amateur carpenters know, you can wind up with a mess instead of a masterpiece unless you understand how to use a potentially powerful tool well.   In that spirit we’re happy to can share with you six terrific tips for using video successfully from talented Southwest Florida professional, Kathy Saenz. Click here to read more.

Thanks to everyone for their support in 2009!

Integrate your online and in person efforts by learning from Truebridge’s work in the banking industry.

Content marketing works by providing your best customers vital information that helps them be more successful or to live better lives. As a stand-alone effort, content marketing is powerful. What’s even better is to integrate your online efforts with your team’s one-on-one work with current and future customers.

As with so much of marketing, this is a lot easier to say than to do. In a world of limited resources, generating great content poses challenges, particularly for smaller organizations. Knowing exactly what to say and how to say it rarely comes naturally to the folks who are running small companies.

Within the financial world, marketers have even greater challenges because they must comply with stringent regulations that restrict how and what they communicate to their prospects and customers.

Banks face a related challenge within their branches where they would like to do a lot more cross-selling of services to their current customers. Cross-selling can be difficult because today’s customers do not want to be aggressively sold and because branch employees typically lack sophisticated selling skills.

That’s where Truebridge’s unique approach comes into play.

Combining Online and in Person Content Marketing for a Killer ROI

Truebridge offers a comprehensive solution that begins with in-depth online content that can be fully integrated into a bank’s website. What makes their content solution even more compelling happens at the branch level. They create non-salesy marketing materials for bank branches and conduct extensive training for branch employees. In fact, Truebridge intentionally provides black-and-white, un-marketing like information pieces that they call "quick guides."

Their goal is to position the bank as a trusted source of financial information that extends beyond basic checking and savings accounts. Thus, their Web content demonstrates a depth of knowledge which online visitors can explore on behalf of each of their bank customers. The subject material covers everything from buying a house to retirement planning.

As one satisfied client explains the challenges they face in making great content a vital component of marketing strategy:

“Our industry faces an environment of increasing regulatory scrutiny, especially when it comes to sales process,” says Casey Roberts, Senior Vice President and Director of Retail Investments at Sovereign Bank. “We all need to put tremendous focus on regulatory compliance,” says Roberts. “Regulators want to ensure suitability, and they endorse customer education as a way of getting there. We want to be the ones to provide that education under our name, not send our customers to someone else’s website.”

Building Business at Bank Branches

Within the branch, the quick guides build on web content by offering easy to understand information that leads customers to more detailed educational material online. Branch employees are trained to offer bank customers appropriate educational material and to encourage them to check off the financial topics about which those customers might want more information.

The net result is that bank employees and the bank itself easily build the perception that they can help with a wide range of financial services for their existing customers. 

The Truebridge solution would be impressive enough as an online only solution. But where it really stands out is by integrating its online content with the off-line, in person experience at each bank branch.

Summing up: A broad range of businesses can employ exactly these techniques to strengthen their relationships with existing customers. We all know that, in principle, it is easier to generate more business from current customers than to dig up new customers. Truebridge leads the way in demonstrating precisely how a sophisticated online and in person content marketing strategy can deliver measurable results. They make it much easier for current customers to buy more products. And, they make it much easier for employees to help those customers buy those products.

This Young Neighbor Understands Target Marketing Perfectly

We have just moved into a great new neighborhood with plenty of energetic young kids. While I was out walking our dog, Mia, I was delighted to discover that we have a young marketing-savvy entrepreneur in our midst.  This smart young person has launched a dog sitting service and has figured out how to target that service perfectly to prime prospects.

We all know how important it is to deliver our marketing messages to those who are best positioned to purchase our products and services.  Our local dog sitting entrepreneur gets it exactly right.

We have strategically stationed dog poop drop off canisters around the community. Obviously, only those folks who are out walking their dogs and thinking about canine-related stuff will encounter this marketing message. Folks who don’t have a dog won’t go anywhere near those canisters.

Thus, the message goes only to prospective customers. It does not intrude on anyone who would have no interest in the service.

There are several other strengths to this marketing message:

• It has a lovable drawing of a dog that pulls in buyers even before they read the text.
• It shows us the brand name of the service: "I will be there."
• It asks us to take action: "call xxx-xxxx.”

What a great marketing reminder we get from this example of perfect buyer targeting:

Always hit the right customers with the right message at the right time.

P.S. if you live in Naples Florida and need a dog sitter, let me know and I will put you in touch with   this budding entrepreneur.

Engage your listeners so effectively that they will ride with you to the top floor and accompany you all the way to your office enthralled by what you have to say.

I was inspired again by Jay Baer’s August 12 post about elevator speeches in which he asserted that the typical elevator speech is too long for today’s attention span.

As he put it, "Understand that the Elevator Pitch is Dead. You remember the elevator pitch. The notion that you should be able to describe what your company does in the length of time consumed by the average elevator ride. I’m here to tell you, that’s way too long these days. Elevator rides seem interminable."

I am in absolute agreement that brevity is essential. But, brevity is just the beginning. In fact, the ideal elevator speech should be exactly that–a beginning. Don’t think of your short statement as a traditional speech designed to get a big round of applause at the end. Instead, it serves as an opening gambit that engages your listener so effectively that it begins a dialogue of indefinite length.  It can become the welcoming door to your compelling content.

Your real challenge is to be both brief and compelling.  You must both explain what it is that you do and how it will benefit the person to whom you are communicating. Not at length.  But, so concisely and compellingly that your imaginary elevator ride does not seem interminable.

Jay is right on the money about brevity. However, what’s even more important is to make those few words–perhaps the length of a tweet–so compelling that your listener will insist on learning more and will begin to ask you questions about what you do and how you can help them. The very best of the elevator speech breed will burn itself into your listener’s brain so that he both remembers and enthusiastically repeats it to others.

Thus, your elevator speech is not really about what your company does. Rather, it should describe exactly how we your listener will benefit by working with you.

Your elevator speech can provide focus to every element of your marketing strategy.

I have been very much influenced by a book about giving great speeches, Give Your Speech. Change the World , by Nick Morgan.  Like Jay, he requires that an elevator speech be brief. In fact, he insists that it be a single sentence. The secret of success derives from the content of that single sentence.

As Nick explains it, there are three essential elements to every effective elevator speech:

1. It must contain a benefit for your imaginary elevator companion.
2. It must contain the word you, meaning your listener.
3. It must contain some reference to emotion, because emotion is more engaging and memorable than intellectual information.

Although Nick writes in the context of the opening gambit of a real speech, I’m convinced that his advice applies equally to your content marketing efforts.  Your customers are always asking (even if it’s subliminal), “What’s in it for me?”  In answer to their question we need to be ready with content that is driven by a tightly focused brand promise that can be distilled into a Nick Morgan-style elevator speech.

Most of us probably think of an elevator speech as an afterthought that sits on top of all the marketing stuff we have already done. I think that may be backwards. If you get it right, your elevator speech may very well serve as the foundation for all of your marketing efforts. And, that is most certainly taking your elevator speech to a higher level.

Visitors to two new client websites are spending a lot of time learning about their teams on pages devoted to team members. Why? Because your visitors understand that they must count on your people to deliver solutions to their problems.

When I recently reviewed the Google analytics data from two recently launched websites, the amount of time visitors spent on pages devoted to their team members reinforced the value of showcasing each organization’s team. Although, in both cases, a dozen or more pages got a solid level of traffic, their people pages ranked very close to the top.

Your customers want to know that you have the right people on the bus and that you truly value them.

When top corporate executives featured in Good to Great were asked to provide reasons for their success, they focused more than anything on their people. Author, Jim Collins, talked about the importance of getting the right people on the bus. Every leader understood that having the right team in place enabled them to manage almost any situation.  In effect, those leaders indicated that leadership was a heck of a lot easier if you had the right people to lead. 

Your customers know that, too. Sure, they will decide to do business with you in large part because of how you are positioned, on your ability to provide appropriate products and services that solve their problems, and on the competitiveness of your pricing. But, in the end, their trust in your team will take them from strong prospects to solid customers.

Your team = Your in-person content marketing

When we talk about content marketing, we talk about the importance of providing compelling and relevant information that helps make you trustworthy in the eyes of your future customers. Think of your team members as being vital to your in-person content marketing strategy. As we have written about the Ritz-Carlton, that’s one of their most compelling marketing weapons.

When you shine your Web spotlight on your team, you are sharing your pride in their capability to deliver results for your customers. That reinforces their role as your in-person content marketers who deliver just the right solutions for your customers.

We all love to walk into a workplace where it’s obvious that the employees love what they do. We know intuitively and almost instantly how we are likely to be treated by each company based on our initial interactions with their people.

Moreover, our employees thrive on positive recognition and reinforcement. The best employers provide that regularly on an internal basis. When you take the time and effort to feature them on your website as well, that’s one more powerful way to prove how important they are to your collective success.

The bottom line: Use your website to showcase the team that helps provide the solutions we are seeking. Sure, we want to know that you can solve our problems. But we also want to know something about the team members who will be powering those solutions. We love learning that you have great people and that you are proud to tell us about them.

How They Use Secret Shoppers to Catch Their Team Members Doing the Right Thing.

If you are looking for great basic meat and potatoes cooking in a casual atmosphere, you can’t do much better than Five Guys Burgers and Fries. While working on a client project, I had the opportunity to learn about the way they operate their restaurants–and how they think about their customers and their employees. 

The company launched with a single restaurant in the Washington, DC area in the 1980s and expanded conservatively through the use of 100% company owned outlets until very recently.  The family that owns Five Guys were concerned that they could not maintain a high level of customer experience if they were to expand too far or to move into franchising.  Ultimately, they did make the move but have worked very hard to ensure excellence in every one of their restaurants whether company owned or franchised.

The Secret: Outstanding in Person Content Marketing

Five Guys is all about great food and very happy customers. That’s where in person content marketing enters the picture.  They understand their customers.  They know what they’re looking for.  And they know how to make them happy. 

The challenge then becomes how to translate that understanding into consistently high operating behavior across all of their stores.  Of course, they know how to run great restaurants.  And, they have great processes in place.  But they have added something unique that helps ensure the delivery of a terrific customer experience time after time.  It has to do with their consistent and creative approach to secret shoppers.

My guess is that when most of us think about the concept of a secret shopper, we assume that the parent company, the owner or the franchisor wants to uncover less than excellent customer service.  When that sub optimal behavior is observed, a store operator will be informed so that they can take corrective action.  This approach is probably effective, but would contribute to an unending cycle of criticism.  It also suggests to the employees that you don’t trust them to do the right thing.  This might keep poor performers on their toes, but will almost certainly be the motivating the great performers

Five Guys takes exactly the opposite approach.  The restaurant chain has integrated a secret shopping program to ensure a consistent and pervasive level of quality customer experience.  They look to catch restaurant staffers performing outstanding work on behalf of their customers.  And, when they do, the employees and the individual operators can earn substantial bonuses based on how they rank relative to their sister establishments.

Their secret shopper strategy is not kept secret from the employees.  Far from it.  In fact it’s a big deal in a very positive way.  If you are an outstanding performer as an individual or as a store, you can count on lots of positive recognition and remuneration.  The bottom line: happy employees and happy customers. 

I like the way these Five Guys think.

Their first effort tried to play the cute, sympathy card with an actual card. Now they imply its my fault that I bailed on them and trash the company they wrongly assume got my business. 

I wrote recently that Embarq could have saved a lot of marketing moola by providing great customer service in the first place: The Huge Marketing Reality That EMBARQ Forgot. I, along with a likely heard of horses had already left the Embarq barn so it was too late to whistle us back.  But, did they give up? No, now they are starting to sound irritatingly desperate.

Here’s their headline:

We don’t blame you.
We blame the cable company.

Come back to Embarq and get up to $100 in
bill credits when you sign up for Triple Play.

What’s wrong with this approach?

In this lame effort, they make it sound like we broke up a personal relationship and that they’re not blaming us(even though they imply we might reasonably expect to be blamed). Instead, they’re blaming our new beloved who has made us misleading promises.

First, it never occurred to me that we should be blamed. After all, it was their suboptimal service and careless customer care that drove us away.  So, why should we feel gratified that Embarq doesn’t blame us.

Second, we didn’t go to the cable company. We went to Vonage.  After all, we’re not that crazy about the cable company either. But, they suggest that we might be so dumb that we’d fall for the cable company’s smooth talk and city slicker ways. Well, gosh, we might be dumb but we’re not so dumb as to miss the fine print.

Third, somewhere in their records they missed the fact that we switched our service to Vonage—even though they had to give explicit permission for our old phone number to be moved over to Vonage.  I guess they must not be paying careful attention to us.  They aren’t even showing us authentic, post facto love.

After my first post, I got a slightly irritated email from an Embarq PR guy who suggested that if I had checked with them, I might not have had to write the critical article.  Of course, he missed the point that if their customer service team had looked after us, not only wouldn’t I have written the article but I wouldn’t have cancelled our Embarq phone line.

Great customer service is an essential underpinning to effective content marketing. But, when both are floundering, you really have a problem.  Thank heavens local phone service is no longer a monopoly. But, wait! Maybe the Embarq customer service people never got that memo.