Effective Marketing Requires More than Perceived Value

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:37:10 +0000

Before the digital age of today, effective advertising meant creating perceived value through its communication. Marketing does indeed need to communicate value to an audience, however, the actual products and experiences must become the biggest asset. With social media and countless amounts of information accessible to us via the internet, a product or services inability to stand out from the crowd and offer actual value is going to hurt. Despite the advertising message, a person’s experience with the product is going to far outweigh any perceived value attributed to the product.

Frank Streifler in his AdWeek post entitled “5 Marketing Principles Brands Should Embrace in 2010″ explains this so well:

A Bain & Co. survey notes that 80 percent of CEOs believe their product to be differentiated, but only 8 percent of consumers agree. And Y&R’s recent Brand Asset Valuator found a 90 percent erosion in brand differentiation over the last 10 years. These are not just sad examples of illusory superiority, but a staggering statement of our industry’s failure to add value in the past decade.

It’s critical that marketers realize that the product itself is the most powerful brand-building tool. We’ve all heard it before: “innovate or die.” But today’s hyper-connected society adds a sense of urgency to this broadly accepted mantra because mediocrity is getting extinguished with increasing speed via social networks.

Because reality always trumps image, marketing needs to create real value versus just adding a perceived value. Marketers need to shape the offer — the product, service and experiences consumer buy — not just communicate it. Marketing becomes the product and the product becomes the marketing.

I would love to hear your thoughts on creating real vs. perceived value!

Once Your Advertising Has Done its Job, Positive Customer Experience Must Follow Through

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:33:10 +0000

The power of a good customer experience is hard to beat. You may have the greatest product in the world, but if your customer did not have a pleasant experience with you, they will look elsewhere.

It is easy to get caught up in the trap of focusing TOO heavily on the “glitz and glam” of advertising and not enough on what your customer actually experiences. Attention getting and effective ad campaigns only work when they are paired with a positive customer experience. Follow through is critical! Your ads are designed to draw people into your doors, but once they are there it is no longer the responsibility of the advertising. Now is the chance to really wow your customers and turn them into word of mouth promoters! (The ultimate goal!)

Here are a few quick tips to help you determine your customer experience strategy:

Go above and beyond: People expect to be happy – word of mouth occurs when those expectations are blown away.
Communicate with your customers: Invite your customers to give you feedback and take their responses seriously (even if it’s not what you want to hear!)
Take an objective look: Being in the midst of the business, this is sometimes very difficult to do. If so, hire a team of professionals to assist you in determining what needs to change and tweaks that can be made.

I would love to hear your thoughts about customer experience. What companies are doing a superior job?

3rd Idea » effective advertising

Effective Marketing Requires More than Perceived Value

Once Your Advertising Has Done its Job, Positive Customer Experience Must Follow Through