ALL review is important. Is it?

After the sudden surge of all these review channels in recent years, one thing is very much prominent. That people are no longer giving a blind eye on the brand voice only. Every customer is interested to weigh their experience / importance through someone else’s lens. It’s ironical, isn’t it(when all the companies are going gung-ho about personalised customer experience)? Think about it. Maybe at this point of time you don’t agree with but again that’s my lens. But it’s a discussion I intend to have later.

I am thinking about all these reviews, pouring in from all the direction and while moving lengths and breaths to address them, companies are lost. As a result they are missing out on a big opportunity to elevate customer experience and instil some loyalty. It’s always important that companies prioritise these reviews before reacting to them, which not many companies are doing it right now. Companies should find out pointers to make their offering better from these reviews. Instead they are trying to cover up the issue on top level or pacify customer. Trust me when I say this as a customer that, when your customer is giving a bad review it’s not always to show the brand in bad light or trying to get some extra % off deal. It’s because their trust/expectation that is taking a hit. This is invariable making customers looking into those other review lenses before trusting (or keeping my trust on) a brand voice.

Why am I feeling in this way? Because companies are replying to all of these reviews in a predefined manner (ctrl+c and ctrl+v of template). They are creating a cheatsheet and replying back in a manner which don’t speak to the customer in their language. As a result they are not addressing their real customers (who matters for business) with the right precision & importance it’s worthy of. My personal take is we should take these review and add little salt before addressing. This salt is the reviewers ‘business result weight’. 

To explain the situation in a very crude way lets take an example, I have a restaurant and one fine day my chef is absent. The supply chain gets effected, resulting either bad food or delayed service. Which can translates into 10-20 bad reviews online, what should I do? Should I reply back to all of them and pacify them? Or prioritise each response on the base of my regular customer, loyal customer and then irregular customer and treat them differently? Like for loyal customer I can be true to explain the situation and serve some discount coupon while regular customer can be conversed with truth in a more personal way to seek redemption. While for irregular customers I may apologise for the experience and then request for a visit back so that we can get another chance to elevate their experience. 

As per my lens this will not only solve the issue in most economic but also very effective way instilling some loyalty. For loyal or regular people there is nothing more special than personal recognition from the brand itself.

But that’s again my lens…..

This is a personal scribble ground. The opinions expressed here are all personal they do not express any direct or indirect linkage to the organization I am attached to. But I love changes so they might be changing time to time. :o)

Contextualization ?? What the heck is that?

Armed with modern technology at the cost Human touch?

Last night I was thinking about what I have done and doing for last 7 years. A sudden repercussion of neuron and I had my answer which is marketing (which again I am not sure how much is plain vanilla). Then there was another thought came creeping in, that this is not something I started working. Obviously as the time went by, along with corporate environment the marketing eco-system also changed a lot. From someone who saw this from ground zero, I think I have a ‘point of view’ about all these changes / movement / so called modernization (which is negative, to some extent).

But before you make your assumptions please read though. To start with let’s see about the innovation which came into the picture –

New technologies like marketing automation, statistics models (Being quite weak in maths, this segment translates as hebrew to me) changed the whole ball game. For instance, 

How I used to plan the marketing activities? Still remember those funnel planning to connect revenue with approx. number of leads or responses depending upon some numbers (they were easy though I must say than the current marketing models). Do we still follow this? I don't... I do it with the help of more statistical, probability models which seems to predict where we should invest and what to expect. But I don't think marketing is that easy. If you feel otherwise then would like to know with the growing complexity of marketing models did the results grown? Please don't tell me your sales has increased because that's bound to happen because of your existing brand value, increased market, increased budget of other companies etc. You are bound to get more than what you have got last year (Else you are almost out of business in this competition). If you are growing more than market's growth then I would say please don't rest of the topic because you don't need them your models and complexities are paying their price, but leave a comment so that I can learn something. 

What I feel about this whole scenario is, these technologies are taking out human touch. I forgot to understand our clients and started to define them with some attributes (e.g. persona) i.e. revenue, vertical, sector, employee number. And by doing so I might have increased the number of target market, responses, efficiency. But without increasing the conversion ratio, which resulted into nothing but ability to sustain in this market (either growing below market growth rate or running business as no profit organization). Personally I would say my previous work scenario was better because even though I couldn't target 100 people per day but I knew my target market personally. Because I had to understand each of them by their name not only by the attributes. Yes attributes then also played a role but not as main criteria instead it played a secondary subtle one to classify people. Now because of all these technology I missed that human touch to understand to each of my clients separately from each other. And along side I am not able to target them with their specific pain points and connect them personally.

This circumstance is available not only in marketing. For a better understanding lets take  another great example of this technological catastrophe. Think about your resume what it is today? A 2 page document with full of generic jargon's. Every-thing is point based, but actually point-less. We don’t feel like explaining things in details, at least for them who wants to read them anymore.  Lets think why this change happened? It’s because our HR friends (please don’t take anything personal friends because I might need your help too in future..) they search their fit for resume as per the key-words. But that doesn't give a proper selection panel / view? For an example suppose I have some previous experience in java, j2ee product selling and it’s mentioned in one line deep inside of my resume. But still I get java j2ee development job offers because our friends doesn't have enough time to check why I wrote those words.

Not sure if this helped anyone but creating a nuisance into the environment. I still understand that the volume of work is humongous. Adding up personalization into everything is gonna take 100% time than what’s current performance yardstick. And reading up resumes which are 5-6 page long is not gonna reduce the job. Instead I am advocating on the basis of penetration rate. Don’t you think if we are facing this issue it’s time for us to decide what we need, is it quality or quantity. I know many of us are thinking quality in our mind but while executing it, we will choose quantity way for it's thin risk distribution. I think this mindset is restricting our new ideas? Are we that afraid that can’t go beyond technology and place innovation above all?

After reading all these you must be thinking that I am against technology, I hate technology, sophistication, statistics. To all of you who are thinking in this way would humbly say that “no, I am not”. I love technology, automation but will withstand when technology suck out the best part us, 'human touch'. In current market it’s huge getting into this market without the help of technology will be a foolishness. Today’s market is not only driven but depended on technology like mobile, internet. So technology is the way-out and may be only one because traditional mediums are kind of either became or becoming obsolete day by day. But does that mean, there isn't a way to utilize the technology and personalization together? I would say “sure thing, mate” we just have to find the break-even point. Don’t let the automation do what you are supposed to do. Use your gray matter then take help of technology to make the best use of it. I would like to have a personal touch with every one of my clients, because there is no way better than hard-way. Because usage of internet and mobile doesn't change my client or their mindset, then why should I.

Sometime I also think about this if I am working in this way (without personalization), why shouldn't I be replaced by a fully automated marketing system which will automatically find its target audience based upon given criteria, finds out the best marketing campaign previously worked on them change it with relevant data (up to date numbers and stats again) and run the campaigns and then follow up. Am I doing enough to be relevant in this world? Am I using my gray matters (automation's can be the result of gray matter but can’t evolve because it’s not with them) to the best? I would like to use technology as a cart behind horse, but the horse.

This is a personal scribble ground. The opinions expressed here are all personal they do not express any direct or indirect linkage to the organization I am attached to. But I love changes so they might be changing time to time. :o)

Personalized marketing glorified. Rightly so?

Personalized marketing indeed is a buzz word now. Reason of this new topic / technique / theory is same old reason of making marketing investment more fruitful and to make the process more streamlined & effective. But the beauty of marketing is its impact are not bonded or related directly into ROI. That's more of a sales thing, marketing can have its impact but direct sales values (obviously there are few specifically designed campaigns can generate revenue but without a guarantee). Marketing is more of an impact business, and convincing people for your clients. Coming back to the point topic we are here to discuss or dissect.

Before the start, we need to understand what is personalized marketing? It's not a rocket science but science of grass root. It tells about customers who are the very first reason we need marketing. Personalized marketing from its name itself means planning your marketing around each of customers differently. Even you will understand that all your customers are unique in their personalities, business patters, needs, demands, and aspirations. If your each customer is so different from each other how one marketing campaign can create the traction/requirement pull from all over of them. 

So is it something came from any alien planet? is it something we never knew about? Is it an invention or Innovation? Here comes the fact that previously we used to do the same with little more crude way i.e. segmentisized marketing which is again fading because of the very reason of its existence. So how it's different than segmentized marketing and personalized marketing? Personalized marketing is nothing but more refined (market research) and intelligent (statistical analysis) than its forefather. e.g.

Personalized Marketing = Existing Data + Market research + Statistics + Persona + Specialized Campaign Design + Segmentation + Marketing 

In today’s world need more targeted or pinpointed marketing where the concept of segment is each of your customers. One big benefit of this is your customer gets an overall feeling of personal touch in your communication towards them. It creates faith, trust that they will be in a hand who will visualize her/his profits or goods as their own. Problem of their own will be handled with a specific view which is very own to their company.

This concept can be best utilized or followed in B2C business and service industry than a product base environment. The basic reason for that is product is a result of customer requirement and has a static foundation. So the there is a static amount of rigidity comes along like a mobile banking app will not give you a Restaurant review (bluntly). All in all it does what marketing wants to do in the bestest way possible. It creates the visibility, along with trust. It creates brand as if it's your clients own extension. It's will delight your customers and push them to say Wow. Kudos to the concept. But is it viable in today's landscape where cost is still a big thing and companies are fighting a silo slow-downed business?

To understand that let’s talk about the concept in details along with some ground zero implementation part of it and find if it's worthy enough for a shot. I, personally would say yes and no. Why yes will be because it's a new concept, it has all potential to pay you back in near future. It  give you a delighted set of clients who will be happy that you are taking care / helping their business in the best way it can be done. You can have an awesome word of mouth business with the help your delighted customers and a good word about your services can make or break a deal for you. 

But (I hate to say this but word) is it all bed of roses no thrones along? I will say no (toad is making its sound again) there are hidden thrones which you will come to know once you start walking on these roads. Like there is fixed success way/method of doing it, or a ration of traditional / and personalized marketing (yes I am talking about hybrid model because I am skeptical enough to believe it 100%).  The main question of this kind of marketing model will be what’s the cost involved. Because from open play eye it's actually, but virtually impossible to have a campaign for each single of your customers unless you have less than 50 customers (its ball park figure). 

Let’s get into one step deeper; to have this kind of model implemented you need to identify different flags (e.g. Revenue, size, location, vertical, action points, recent actions, infrastructure etc.) of your existing customer base & pipeline. When I say flags it can simple means criteria. The accumulate those criteria s or flags into different division buckets to create a persona (persona is a fictional customer type with given attribute with maximum probability to buy your product. Persona is nothing but a set of customer, remember segmentation?). These personas will be your eyes and ears for whole campaign. 

These persona's will define how your customer will look like, what they do, how they do, how is their business, how you can help them. They will have pain points, happy points and delight points (You must have heard about the first one but the last 2, will have another blog explaining them). And you will build a campaign around each of these personas, why because these personas will have a set of background details and a set of problems attached to them. What you need to do the draw those relationship line, find out the actual issues and fit your product in such a way that your product is bet fit or built only for them. These personas will give you a glimpse of your segmented market and you will divide your target market into those segmented ones by matching those flags into your personas, and there you go. You have reached a level where you can start your personalized campaigns.

Now let’s think about what all channels are best fit for this (as per me digital is the best channel except CSR level contacts in a simple terms cheap is best) like TVC is the worst channel you can think of because of the cost involved. But on the other hand internet / digital / online channel seems to be an almost fit because of low cost quotient.

Let’s do a SWOT analysis of this concept and try to understand the summarized picture, 

Finally does personalized marketing really convince people? I would say being a customer myself, yes it does. For an example, last year I was traveling to my native place for a festival and I booked my tickets from an airline online through a merchant website. Now I didn't know they were tracking my travel, so this year I get a sudden call from the airline that I have a subsidized ticket during this year festival and I can book them within a month of time, with in this one month the ticket price will not change for me. So for personalized marketing there is a fair chance that I will book with the same airlines again. 

This is a personal scribble ground. The opinions expressed here are all personal they do not express any direct or indirect linkage to the organization I am attached to. But I love changes so they might be changing time to time. :o)