Thinking Like A Customer

In assessing marketing talent, there is one thing that sets hyper-successful marketers apart from everyone else - they can put themselves in their consumers' shoes and they do so all of the time. 

Designing a website? Who will use it? What are their needs? What will they be looking for? What will they notice first? What information do you want to convey to them? What do you want them to do? What language will they understand best? What is the optimal navigation path for them?

Writing copy for an email campaign? Who are you writing for? Where are they in the process of interacting with your brand? How do they feel about your brand? What do they need to know now? What will hold their attention? What do you want them to do? What next step do you want them to take?

Creating a television ad? To whom should this ad appeal? What state of mind will they be in when they are watching the ad? How familiar are they with your brand? How will you appeal to their values and their emotions? Do you know what their values are? How do you want them to respond to the ad? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do next?

Top marketers naturally think like this - not just once in awhile but all of the time. 

If you encounter a "marketer" who seldom considers the customer's perspective, don't hire him or her. If that person is a close friend, suggest that he or she might consider pursuing another career. This insight has to come naturally and it has to be active 24/7. 

I have encountered marketers who are good at graphic design or copywriting or social media but do not think in this way. At best they will be good tacticians if given enough direction. But they will never be great marketers. 

Do you want to be a great marketer? Think like your customers. Put yourself in their shoes.

Why Brands Can Seem More Scattered and Conflicted Than Humans

Humans can at times seem quite scattered or conflicted. Some can exhibit substantial mood swings. While others might seem to have multiple personalities. However, most of us are quite predictable day-to-day and over our lifetimes. 

While brands should strive for a similar level of consistency and predictability so as to seem trustworthy, often brands will have significant swings in values, behaviors and personalities. A radical example of this is Abercrombie & Fitch.

Abercrombie & Fitch was founded in 1892 as an upscale sporting goods store. In 1928 Fitch retired and sold the company to his brother-in-law James Cobb. Under Cobb, sporting guns, fishing tackle and polo, golf and tennis equipment were added to the mix. During the Great Depression, sales dropped precipitously. After that, the products were mostly sold in seasonal shops at resorts. The brand continued to struggle for years until it filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1976. Oshman's, a sporting goods retailer, purchased the brand for $1.5 million in 1978 and continued to operate it as a sporting goods store, trying different product mixes, but without success. The biggest change came in the years 1988 through 1999 when Limited Brands purchased the brand for $47 million and turned it into a trendy brand focused on teens, sex and pop culture. This was as big a pivot as ever has occurred for a brand. More changes have been made between 2000 and today and the brand has had its struggles. In 2006 CEO Mike Jeffries made a comment disparaging customers with body types not like those of Abercrombie & Fitch models. That comment came back to haunt the brand in 2013, when detractors launched the "Fitch the Homeless" Internet campaign. The campaign highlighted giving used Abercrombie & Fitch clothes to the homeless. With the advent of celebrating differences, including different body types, Abercrombie & Fitch continues to struggle with its product mix and brand positioning.

A second example of a highly schizophrenic brand personality is Volvo. In the late 1990s to mid-2000s, Volvo Car executives believed the brand position of the “ultimate safe car” for families was too limiting and began to extend the brand into the performance car segment targeted at men. Results were disappointing. When Ford bought Volvo in 1999, it pushed the brand into the crowded luxury brand market. Ten years later, sales were down 20 percent from where they were when Ford first purchased the brand. Volvo Car Corporation was then acquired by China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. Under this new ownership, in August 2011, Volvo Car announced a new global brand strategy—”Designed Around You,” focusing on a position of human-centric luxury cars that are safe and dependable. In November 2013, Volvo Car Corporation announced a new brand strategy designed to revive the brand in the United States after a decade of declining demand. According to Automotive News, “The new focus is on ‘Scandinavian’ design, safety, environmental leadership, and ‘clever functionality’ reflected in state of the art—yet simple— infotainment systems.” 

Both of these examples demonstrate why brands can change quite a bit. The change is usually the result of poor positioning in the midst of changing market forces leading to new ownership (or at least new leadership) that then pursues a radically new brand position. Though sometimes brand change can occur associated with a leadership or ownership change without the pressure of a poor brand positioning. 

For your information, the image at the top of this post is of a vintage Abercrombie & Fitch Leather Rhino, circa 1970s. This item is not appropriate today and has no fit with the current brand. 

Marketing Automation and the Human Factor

Today, much of a marketer's work is related to digital marketing and marketing automation. Considerations include choosing the right CRM, setting up automated sales funnels and drip email campaigns, linking online databases, making sure autoresponders are working properly, creating Google ad campaigns, feeding Facebook pages with the appropriate content, making sure the website is mobile optimized, setting up meta tags and other SEO, using Google analytics and setting up other data analytics. Much of this requires the evaluation of different software solutions and the linking of different software components and plug-ins.

All of this can be quite time consuming and distracting. But where is the human element in all of this? Does the customer get to develop a relationship with your company or brand? Is there an emotional connection? Is there a human being they can call upon? Do they really feel heard?

This is why television advertising still makes sense for many brands. And this is why front line customer service is so important. People want to interact with other humans, maybe not all people and maybe not all of the time, but certainly most people and at least some of the time. Admittedly, some people prefer the convenience of using ATMs over interacting with bank tellers. But others still prefer to interact with a person even if it means waiting in line in the bank's lobby.

Yes, we want everything to be scalable and we are enticed to replace people with automation. And organizations usually want to pay the customer facing service employees as little as possible because there are so many of them and the organizations want to maximize their profits.

But where does that leave our brands and us when emotional connection is largely removed from the process and the few points of human contact are overworked and underpaid (and often undertrained)?

The sole point of this post is to encourage marketers to not undervalue television advertising, videos, personal selling, technical support, customer service and other sources of personal interaction. While Walmart no longer does this, why do you think they employed store greeters for so many years? And guess what they replaced the greeters with? Higher paid "customer hosts" with more stringent hiring criteria and expanded responsibilities.

Again, do what you need to do with marketing automation but never forget about the human touch.

After 35 Years in the Business, My Thoughts About Marketing

Following are my stream of consciousness thoughts about marketing.

• People have beliefs, attitudes, values, hopes, anxieties and fears. Marketers must understand these to be successful.
• In marketing, less is almost always more. This is true of copy and visuals. 
• The actual customer experience is the most important driver of brand perceptions.
• Building awareness is the most important marketing activity. Communicating relevant differentiation is the most important branding activity. 
• People make purchase decisions based on emotions, not logic. Every marketer should understand this.
• Brands should focus on their most compelling assets, especially if they are unique.
• Humor and entertainment can be very powerful components of marketing communication. 
• Shared values and "brand as a badge" (self-expressive vehicle) are the two most powerful sources of brand differentiation. 
• Related to this, many brands succeed as status symbols.
• Customer service is a very important part of a brand's success.
• Know customers' primary sources of information and where they are most likely to shop.
• To a very large degree, marketing is a combination of consumer psychology and common sense.
• The sales function is critical to successful brands. Personal relationship-building matters.
• Sales and marketing must work together seamlessly. 
• Build a robust but flexible brand identity system. Colors matter. So do symbols and icons. 
• Brands can often connect with people at a sub-conscious level. 
• Where a brand is distributed (and where it is not distributed) says a lot about the brand. Make sure your brand's distribution is consistent with its positioning. 
• Price can be an indicator of quality. Use reference prices to create desired price perceptions. 
• Inconsistent execution can kill a brand in the long-run. Brands must be trustworthy. 
• It has been my observation that successful marketers tend to be entrepreneurial, opportunistic and good at ideating. They are always looking for new approaches to marketing.
• Never forget that marketing is about relating to people and their needs and desires. 

The Limits of Marketing (and Customer Service) Automation

In the past few years, I have used marketing automation extensively for my own business and I have interacted with marketing automation from many other businesses. While there is the argument that marketing automation enables one to market 24/7, even when one is sleeping, there are also some cautions that should occur regarding this technology.

First, technology should not completely replace human interaction, which allows for emotional connection. If one uses technology independent of human interaction, it will be more difficult to make or close a sale and it will be virtually impossible to create customer loyalty based on that emotional connection. You must carefully integrate your marketing automation with human interaction.

Second, older people would rather talk to other people, not read FAQs, click through predetermined menus, "press one for...," fill out forms, receive auto responses, etc.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, many companies are not fully competent at designing their marketing automation systems. They don't turn off a prospect email drip campaign when the prospect turns into a customer, leading to confusing or annoying email messages. Or they present the customer with an automated cost estimate that only allows for an "accept" response with no ability to ask questions, discuss or partially accept the estimate.

I have encountered companies that have put me on multiple email streams based on how they coded me on their systems. Because of this, I am inundated with multiple email messages a day from these companies. I have also encountered a couple of companies for which "unsubscribe" only turns off one email stream, not all of them. I find that I have to repeat the "unsubscribe" request multiple times until I am actually unsubscribed from all of their email streams.

Then there are faulty executions of older automated telephone customer service approaches, which can be quite frustrating. Some systems don't mention your need in their menu of choices, forcing one or more of a few things to happen - choosing an option that may get you to the wrong person, putting you into a continuous loop of scrolling through the options again and again, or worst of all, hanging up on you. Another problem is when one system sends you to another system, for which you need to reenter your name, account number, password, PIN, telephone number or payment method.  People don't like to have to do this more than once, and the best CRM systems, if programmed correctly, can eliminate the need to do much of this even once.

Marketing automation and customer service automation are here to stay but don't overestimate their ability to make a sale for you or build your brand. And don't underestimate their potential to annoy your customers.

The best systems are carefully constructed with sophisticated filters, triggers and decision logic. And they provide for human interaction at critical points throughout the process. I have encountered too many systems that are poorly constructed, with the potential to damage the brands they were designed to help.

So be very careful when designing your marketing and customer service automation systems. They are useful tools but need to be carefully designed.

Brand Switching

"62% of consumers who switched brand in the past 12 months did so because brands successfully attracted them, rather than bad customer experience pushing them away.

61% of consumers switched brand at least once in the last year, with automotive (70%) and supermarkets (68%) showing the highest percentage of customers willing to switch brands due to the lure of new opportunities.

Only banking found previous poor customer experience to be an equally decisive factor for the switch, where it was a 50-50 split.

Consumers see a brand being ‘genuine’ as more important in encouraging them to try a startup versus an existing brand they haven’t tried before (31% vs 17%). ‘Innovativeness’ (25% vs 20%) is also important, as well as ‘reflecting a consumer’s values’ (17% vs 13%)."

Source: MarketingWeek Monday, September 30, 2019 email 

Data source: Data & Marketing Association (DMA)

So authenticity, innovation and shared values are brand attributes that can lead to new brand trial and brand switching behavior. And, per previous research, high customer satisfaction does not guarantee customer loyalty. In fact, in categories in which customer satisfaction is high across most or all brands, loyalty is diminished.

For other thoughts on brand loyalty, authenticity, innovation and shared values consider these blog posts:

Loyalty: 

• Brand Loyalty vs. Brand Entrapment

Authenticity:

• Brands and Authenticity
• Brands and Authenticity
• Authentic Brands

Innovation:

• Brands, Change & Innovation
• Innovation and Brand Growth
• Creating "Category of One" Brands
• Creating New Categories Versus Battling it Out for Market Share

Shared Values:

• Brand Attributes, Benefits & Values
• Sharing Your Brand's Values Through Storytelling
• Improving the World Through Brands
• The Tesla Brand

Other reasons why customers may switch brands:

• Customer service is poor or lacking
• The brand does not deliver at least an adequate value for the price
• You do not have an adequate understanding of the customer and his or her needs
• Your brand is resting on its laurels, it is no longer exciting, it is not keeping up with the competition
• Your brand is not readily available or accessible compared to other brands
• Another brand offers a free trial and delivers a better value proposition
• A superior disruptive brand enters the market
• Your brand has not established sufficient emotional connection with its customers

We recommend that clients constantly measure their customers' attitudinal loyalty and emotional connection to the brand. Our BrandInsistence brand equity measurement system measures attitudinal loyalty and increasing degrees of emotional connection. Even small statistically significant changes can be bellwethers for potential problems. But know that no amount of measured satisfaction or loyalty can guarantee that brand switching won't occur.  

Historical Brands in America

John Jacob Bausch & Henry Lomb

I recently purchased The Branding of America book by Robert Hambleton at an art gallery used book sale. One of the things that I immediately found fascinating (though not surprising in retrospect) is that most of the earlier brands in America were named after the people who founded the brands versus using coined or associative descriptive names, which is a much more common approach in contemporary branding.

Here are some examples:

• Colgate: William Colgate
• Levi Strauss: Levi Strauss
• Borden's: Gail Borden
• Steinway: Heinrich Engelhard Steinway
• Campbell's: Joseph Campbell
• Heinz: Henry John Heinz
• Bissell: Melville Reuben Bissell
• Gillette: King Camp Gillette
• Kraft: James Lewis Kraft
• Maytag: Frederick Lewis Maytag
• Schick: Jacob Schick
• Bausch & Lomb: John Jacob Bausch & Henry Lomb
• Westinghouse: George Westinghouse
• Johnson & Johnson: Robert Wood Johnson & James Johnson
• Dow: Herbert Henry Dow
• Ferris Wheel: George Washington Gale Ferris
• McCormick: Cyrus Hall McCormick
• John Deere: John Deere
• Yale: Linus Yale
• Otis: Elisha Graves Otis
• Crane: Richard Teller Crane
• Pitney-Bowes: Arthur H. Pitney & Walter Bowes
• Remington: Eliphalet Remington
• Colt: Samuel Colt
• Smith & Wesson: Horace Smith & David Baird Wesson
• Winchester: Oliver Fisher Winchester
• Studebaker: The Studebaker brothers
• Buick: David Buick
• Packard: James Ward Packard & William D. Packard
• Ford: Henry Ford
• Chevrolet: Louis Chevrolet
• Chrysler: Walter Percy Chrysler
• Pabst: Frederick Pabst
• Saks: Horace A. Saks
• RJ Reynolds: Richard Joshua Reynolds
• Spalding: Albert G. Spalding
• J. Walter Thompson: James Walter Thompson
• Woolworth: Frank Winfield Woolworth
• Sears: Richard W. Sears
• Dow Jones: Charles Henry Dow & Edward C. Jones
• Wrigley: William Wrigley Jr. 
• Elizabeth Arden: Elizabeth Arden
• Kresge: Sabastian Spering Kresge
• Orvis: Charles F. Orvis

As an outlier, George Eastman named his company Eastman Kodak Company in 1892. The word Kodak was registered as a trademark in 1888. George Eastman said, "I devised the name myself. The letter 'K' had been a favorite with me - it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. It became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made words starting and ending with a 'K.' The word "Kodak" is the result." The coined name 'Kodak' became the brand. 

Compare all of these brands with some of today's entrepreneurs and their brand's names:

• Microsoft: Bill Gates
• Amazon: Jeff Bezos
• Patagonia: Yvon Chouinard
• IKEA: Ingvar Kamprad
• Virgin: Richard Branson
• Starbucks: Howard Schulz
• Tesla: Elon Musk
• Google: Larry Page & Sergey Brin
• Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg
• Yahoo!: Jerry Yang & David Filo
• Lululemon: Chip Wilson
• Airbnb: Joe Gebbia & Brian Chesky
• Uber: Travi Kalanick

It is interesting how entrepreneurs have largely moved away from naming brands after themselves to creating coined, associative descriptive or fanciful names. This is an example of how branding has evolved over time. 

PS - One modern outlier is Donald Trump, who brands all of his businesses with his last name.