Do your customers love you?
Do you know why they would love you?
Can you think of a more important question you need to ask related to your brand?
Have a look at today’s newsletter, Why would they love you, and then ask yourself this question. Do you know why your customers would love you?
Read the newsletter: Why would they love you?
Yes. I am telling you to ignore your mission statement! You read it correctly.
I have an alternative for you … read today’s newsletter, Ignore Your Mission Statement, and see how you can ignore your mission statement and feel good about it!
The direction of marketing has changed 180 degrees.
While marketers are trying to “get the word out,” customers are more focused on what words they let in.
I’d like to invite you to let the words of today’s newsletter in.
Read the newsletter: Letting the word in vs. Getting the word out
In 1997 my mentor/guru/client Tom Peters published a ground-breaking article in Fast Company titled The Brand Called You. Let’s take a new look at the concept of personal branding with today’s newsletter, Your Powerful Personal Brand.
What are you doing to reinvent, reinvigorate and renew your personal brand?
Which organization is likely to go out of its way for customers, a for-profit business in a very competitive marketplace, or a government bureaucracy charged with catching bad guys?
It depends.
It depends on the individual employees who are interacting with customers. It’s about the people, not the institution.
Read a story in today’s newsletter that shows how close enough for government work can sometimes be closer than you might think … as long as an individual person takes the initiative to look out for the customer.
How do I answer the question, “So Steve, what is marketing?”
Read today’s newsletter, “Definition of Marketing,” to find out … and then please share your comments here.
Why is there such a wide gap between what people say they believe about marketing, and the actual marketing they do?
Why do companies allocate their marketing dollars in ways that they know are counterproductive?
Why do I sometimes feel like much of marketing is stuck in 1973, looking at direct marketing and the online world through an advertising-based lens?
Have a look at today’s newsletter, Do as you say, not as you do, and then please come back here to leave a comment.
And … if you see your competitors marketing in the way I’ve described above, smile. And then go after their customers.
I was in Staples recently, looking at a shelf that didn’t have exactly the product I needed. So, while standing in the aisle at Staples, I called Office Max.
The Office Max clerk put me on hold to check availability for the product I wanted. Suddenly, I heard a very strange acoustic resonance, noticing that the music my left ear was hearing from the speakers at Staples was the same thing my right ear was hearing in my phone, from the music-on-hold at Office Max. A coincidence? No … the song ended and the next song came on, in both of my ears. Staples and Office Max were using the exact same music source.
I looked in our office closet the other day and noticed that we had paper from Office Max, Staples and Office Depot. Why be loyal to one when the experiences, let alone the products, are completely interchangeable?
Writing this post reminded me of another post from a few years ago, on tompeters.com. The funniest part of that post was my son’s story of hearing an ad for guitar store Sam Ash playing on the radio at Guitar Center.
Customers use brand harmony to evaluate us. Every touchpoint either differentiates you or makes you blend in the marketplace like boring wallpaper.
For generations, marketers and sales people have tried to differentiate their products, their services and themselves.
This has become more challenging than ever, because customers are convinced, in our land of plenty, that any product or service they buy could be purchased somewhere else, from someone else. Just about everything has a substitute.
So, if you want your customer to see you as different, why not focus on something that he believes is different? Instead of trying to differentiate yourself, why not show him that you recognize he is different?
As we were helping a client on a marketing plan, Amanda said, “I really don’t like the word ‘collateral’.” Collateral, as most of you know, has traditionally referred to all of those ‘other’ marketing activities, such as brochures, flyers, posters, etc. that act ‘in collateral’ to all-important advertising.
“So,” I asked, “what should it be called?” We decided, for the sake of our own amusement, to think of a word that made sense from a Brand Harmony perspective. We came up with ‘complementaral.”
I am not, of course, suggesting anyone use that term. (It really sounds silly!) The point is that the purpose of these kinds of marketing efforts is not to act as something that is collateral, or parallel, to advertising, but to act in complement of all other touchpoints the customer has with the company.
If we think of all of our marketing efforts has acting in a parallel, but non-integrated, fashion, they will fizzle into the ether. If we want our marketing efforts to be effective, they need to complement each other, and blend in Brand Harmony.
"When Steve Yastrow writes, I pay close attention"
- Tom Peters
"I had to buy two copies. The first one is so dog-eared and underlined I couldn't read it any longer."
- Seth Godin
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In addition to writing, I spend most of my work time helping companies unleash their potential by creating better connections with their customers. This happens through my speaking events and through Yastrow & Company consulting engagements, where my team and I help companies figure out who they intend to be in the future, and then engage the entire company in creating that future through strong "We" customer relationships.
Before starting Yastrow & Company in the mid-90s I was vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels. My experiences in the hotel business showed me clearly that most marketing doesn’t happen in the marketing department. Customers are paying attention to all interactions with a company, not just the promises made in traditional "marketing communications."
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