I spent last week at my favorite resort, Rancho La Puerta, and was inspired to write this newsletter, “Show Me You Know Me.” If you’ve ever been to “the Ranch,” you’ll have felt the deep level of personalized service. And your customers want the same experience! Read the newsletter for my thoughts on today’s key competitive advantage: differentiating your customers.
Read the newsletter: Show Me You Know Me
What are your customers doing when your marketing or sales messages show up in their lives? Sitting there waiting, minds clear, all prepared to devote their full attention to what you have to say?
Of course not!
Any time your customers encounter your marketing or sales messages, you can be sure that they already have a deep, rich, personal narrative happening in their minds. Your challenge: Become part of that story without interrupting it. Have a look at today’s newsletter, Don’t Knock Her Story Out Of Her Hands.
“If you want me to think you’re different, show me that you know what makes me different.”
This is the mantra of the modern customer, and today’s newsletter, Marketing with Tabasco Sauce, gives you some ideas for how to personalize your customer interactions, without over-taxing your systems … or your brain.
Read the newsletter: Marketing with Tabasco Sauce
Can you imagine if Apple had decided not to include the features of an iPod on the iPhone, for fear that it might cause them to sell fewer iPods?
Companies does nutty things like that all the time. Does yours?
Today’s newsletter, Cannibalize Yourself (Before Someone Else Does), takes a lesson from Steve Jobs, from a story in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs.
Go ahead, compete with yourself.
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?
The front page of the business section of yesterday’s New York Times carried a story about the $213 million dollar first quarter loss generated by United Continental Holdings, the parent of United and Continental Airlines.
If you unfold the paper to see that the back page of that section, you will see, printed inches from this story on the same side of the same piece of newsprint, a full-page ad for United Airlines.
The front page of the first section of the same paper carries a story about how the recession has caused sales of eco-friendly consumer products to plummet, claiming that American consumers’ allegiance to green is fickle, at best.
If you unfold the paper to see the back page of the front section, you will see, printed inches from this story, a full-page ad for Macy’s eco-friendly cosmetics.
Looking at those two pages unfolded in front of me, with harsh news stories set next to pretty ads that cost United and Macy’s tens of thousands of dollars, reinforces how unreal advertising is when set next to the actual world we live in.
Communicating a message to your customers is a very tough challenge in times of message overload and a skeptical public. You may need to advertise, but avoid the pitfall I see companies fall into all the time: The mistaken belief that the work is done as soon as the ad copy is written. Just because you say something, you can’t assume that your customers will believe it. They don’t read your messages in a vacuum, with their full, committed attention. They weigh your boasts and promises against everything else they see in their crowded field of vision.
As I was writing this post I browsed further into the same edition of the New York Times. I saw an article on page 3 of the business section that describes how revenue at the New York Times was down 58% in the first quarter, due largely to the drop in advertising revenue. Next to this article was a review of Morgan Spurlock’s new movie, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, which opened last night in a few cities. (Not the one I’m in now) The movie, as many of you already know, is a movie about advertising product placement funded totally by advertising product placement. Based on the trailer, which I’ve seen, it looks like the movie will point to the absurdity of having your business’s success depend on “capturing eyeballs,” “cutting through the clutter” and “getting our name out there.”
I remember hearing that an educated person in Elizabethan England read an amount of material in his or her life equivalent to that in a daily edition of the New York Times. If that person had read yesterday’s Times he would have been able to learn a great deal about the truth of advertising’s waning power in our times.
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.
Today’s newsletter, How to Do Differentiation Differently, follows up on our last issue, offering steps to help you focus on a kind of differentiation that will mean something to your customers.
Please share your comments and experiences! How well does your organization show its individual customers that your recognize what makes each of them unique?
Read the newsletter here: How to Do Differentiation Differently
Today’s newsletter, Do Differentiation Differently, turns the tables on differentiation: If it’s so difficult to get customers to see why you’re different, why not focus on what your customer thinks is different: Himself.
I explore this concept in great detail and have some innovative exercises for you and your team, so go read the newsletter: Do Differentiation Differently!
Here’s a link to my last newsletter, The Way We Connect.
In a world where products and services are, in the minds of customers, largely interchangeable, the character of your interactions with customers is one of the most important ingredients of effective marketing communication. So, how well do companies interact with you? How does your company compare?
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- 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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