Surprise Your Customers

Rick Spence, at the Financial Post tells us how he got pleasantly surprised by a hotel and the marketing lightbulb came on.






From the article:

"People get jaded fast," he says. "People have seen it all, and they expect it all. They expect that product quality, service and the experience will all be right. And the only way to please people who expect it all is to give them something they don't expect."

Are you surprising your customers? For more ideas, read the article here: Rick Spence: Surprise marketing tactics endear.

For more marketing advice and lessons, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot.
Our company website is: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

Clothing Website Experience

Case Study: HIZwear.com

Idea Wanted: Enhance the website experience

Challenge: Give customers a more involved experience at the website without cluttering its simple, effective design.

Background: Three friends decided to turn their passion into a business. Six months later they had HIZWear.com, a site that sells inspirational, scriptural-based t-shirts for women. Now that's a niche!

Advice: Here's a website that has a great lesson for small business owners: You don't have to be complicated and flashy to be effective. HIZwear is a simple website that sells what it sells without overburdening the visitor. Our advice is to give visitors a chance to connect a little more with the website in ways other than buying a shirt.

Ideas:

1. The “Our Story” portion is good; it's an honest, personal story that reveals something interesting about the business. However it appears to all run together. It might be a little easier to read if it were broken into some paragraphs. That may make it necessary to do a little editing, but it would also make it more readable. Also, when you have several paragraphs in a story, use subheadlines to break it up and keep the reader interested.
   
2. To make the site more personal; under the “3 Girlz Picture” include a caption identifying who is whom. The picture is great, because it shows that HIZwear is not a corportation, just three friends following their call from God.
   
3. To create a future customer base, include a link for visitors to sign up to be notified when a new t-shirt is released. Releasing a couple of new models every two months or so, will keep customers involved and coming back for more. For example, in November, release some long-sleeve T's and send an announcement to the email list that winter models are now available.
   
4. Create a suggestion box and let visitors suggest new t-shirt ideas. There may be some inappropriate suggestions but this idea would also create repeat traffic and build a community of believers who are hungry for ways to express their faith. Plus, the suggestions will probably yield some pretty good ideas.
   
5. Consider putting men’s models right next to the female shirts for a hiz & herz package. It would be perfect timing for Christmas shopping.
   
6. Add the signature to the website: Clothed in the Word of God. We love the signature, but only learned about it in email exchanges with one of the owners, Leisa Gay. It appears nowhere on the website. Add it just the below logo (which we also like).

The Lesson: When you have a product that fundamentally speaks to your customer's life values, you have to give them an opportunity to connect emotionally with you. Give customers the opportunity to be part of your company by engaging them and soliciting feedback. Create a community of customers who share common beliefs and you will foster word of mouth and customer loyalty.

If you would like free marketing ideas for your small business, fill out this form: Request for Ideas
For small business marketing advice, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot

Seed Your Existing Customers' Next Purchase

Businesses are often caught up into trying to get new customers to spend new money with them. But don't forget your existing customers. Show them a little love and prevent them from becoming someone else's new customers.

Here's an idea to reward them, and nudge them along to their next purchase. Give them a seed. Not a literal plant seed, but a figurative one. A free small item that will be appreciated by the customer, yet at the same time cause them to want to buy more from you.

For example, if you have a tree trimming service, give all your good customers a small seedling to plant in their yard or give to someone else in their neighborhood. Along with the seedling, remind your customers to schedule a trimming before the busy seasons starts.

If you are an accountant or you have book keeping service, send desk calendars to your clients with the important tax days marked. Also, on each important tax day, promote an additional service you offer that the customer could use.

How else could you see your customers? Think about and watch your existing customers grow.

For marketing advice and lessons, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot
For more about our company, see our website: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

Send Welcome Emails

Remember when we suggested that you Make The First Visit Count? This idea is based somewhat on the same principle.

Your brand new customer has just discovered you and purchased from you. Within 24 hours you should send them a welcome email. Why? Because marketing is courtship.

Think about about a time when you first met someone you found attractive. You're thinking about that person and carrying around that excitement for about a day or two. Then you get a phone call, email, or a text message from that person and it makes you feel a little giddy and tingly. That's what you want to do, tingle your customers a little bit.

Here are some best practices for the welcome email:

1. First, make sure you collect email addresses from all your new customers


2. Send the welcome email out within the first 24 hours of making a new customer


3. The message of the letter should be that you are so happy to have met someone new. Thank them for placing faith in your business by making a purchase from you.


4. Put your business name in the subject line: "Welcome to The Idea Spot Family."


5. Make the letter personal; address the customer by name, and have the letter be from an indivdual (preferably you).


6. Send html emails. those are the kinds with colorful graphics and fonts in them. It's easy if you use an email service provider like Constant Contact or one from this list.


7. The jury is out on whether or not to offer a discount, award or incentive. I personally wouldn't do it, because it cheapens the whole "newness of the relationship" thing by degrading the email into a sales piece.


8. At the end of the email, include an option to "opt out" from future emails by replying with "unsubscribe" in the subject line. Then make sure you remove them from your email list.

You could do the same thing with regular mail. A handwritten thank-you card would have tremendous impact. However, that's not practical for most businesses. Save some time and some money and welcome your customers with email.

For small business marketing advice and lessons, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot

Add Premiums to Your Product

One way to add to the customer experience and increase your value proposition is to combine premiums with the stuff you sell. Promotional premiums are items, services, or experiences that you don't normally offer and are not part of your normal product mix.

The premiums can be free or, in some cases, be sold to your customers on the condition that they do business with you. They are either limited time or limited edition offers. But if you're going to get into the premium game, make sure they work hard for you.

Here is a great idea-generating read from Steven Stark in Promo Magazine that explains different types of premiums and how they might be used: Free Monkeys For All

Some of Steven's advice:

• Your premiums should deliver real surprise and delight
• Your premium should intersect with the core ideas and assets of your brand
• Develop your premiums as you develop your promotions, not after
• Think big!

For more small business marketing advice and lessons, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot

Put On A Show

When customers walk into your business, don't just let them walk into a door. Let them walk into another world. Give them something out of the ordinary and create one of those magic spots that we talk so much about.

Here are some ideas:
From the stuff4restaurants blog: Hire a magician to entertain your customers. See the video here: Magic Bartenders

Remember our Salon Experience Case Study on this very blog? We suggested that Pepper's Salon in Puyallup, Washington, team up with a local, upscale fashion retailer and have live models showing the latest fashions during their busiest hours.

Sometimes a little entertainment can go a long way. Just be sure that when you do put on a show, it is congruent with your customer experience. A magician in a bar is great, a fashion show in a salon is fine. A mime at a billiards hall would not go over that well.

What show can you put on in your business?

For small business marketing advice and lessons, please see our other blog: The Marketing Spot
For information on our company: www.themarketingspot.com

Magic Spot Ideas

In Tuesday's post, Make the First Visit Count, I suggested creating a magic spot in the customer experience as a way to create a memory and encourage word of mouth.

I found an article on national customer service week that gives some excellent examples of magic spots in action. My favorite is the free ice cream from a pizza place.

Get an idea starter in this article from the Minneapolis St. Paul Star Tribune here: Celebrating Customer Service Week.

Make the First Visit Count

Many a small business is frustrated by the lack of word of mouth they receive from their customers. Even their loyal customers won't talk about them. But that's not a surprise.

Often, it's not your long-time customers that spread the news about you; it's the customer who visits your business for the very first time.

Excitement is the key.
Customers are more likely to talk about something that's fresh and new. They are excited that they made a discovery and they want to share that experience with others.

To get instant word of mouth, make a customer's first visit to your business memorable. To immediately grab a new customer you need a magic spot: a memory anchor that your new customer can refer to when they start talking about you. It's a memorable moment that's outside a normal customer experience.

Here are some ideas:

1. Give customers a surprise bonus. On a recent visit to a restaurant, the server found out it was my first visit and brought me a free surprise appetizer. I didn't know it was coming before I received it.
2. Ask for their input. People like to feel important. When you get a first-time customer, take them aside and tell them you would like a fresh perspective and some honest feedback on the business. Ask them what they really liked about their experience, then ask them what they would like to see changed, added or improved. When they tell you, write it down in front of them and genuinely thank them. Ask them for their email address or phone number in case you have some questions later.
3. Make them feel like they are part of a new group. "Your a first time customer? We like to think of our customers as extended family." Then give them a t-shirt with your logo and tag line and say "Welcome to our family." It sounds silly, but the power of a t-shirt is amazing. If you have an salon or an upscale shop, be creative and make it a tie-die or t-shirt with a unique design.
4. Give them inside information. Nothing sensitive of course. Tell them you get new merchandise shipments on Tuesday and all the new models so come on Wednesdays to get the first shot at all the cool stuff. Got a sale that starts next week but hasn't been advertised yet? Let the customer know. You should never pay retail prices for clothing at Jos. A Bank because they always have a sale. But my salesmen tells me when the corporate club sales are around the corner with even bigger discounts.
   

So make the first visit count. Create a magic spot for first time visitors. That's when their most excited...and most likely to spread the word about you.

For small business lessons and marketing advice, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot
Our company website: www.themarketingspot.com/

Add a Map to Your Website

Give your potential customers more than just a address or static map. Google allows you to place an interactive map of your business on your website or your blog. Below is a map of the known center of the small business marketing universe:

View Larger Map

Google also allows you to add a description and photo to the map if you want. Whether you use Google's map description or your own, a photo of the front of your building should be included. (I have not included one because I did not want to fall in one of the pot holes of our parking lot while taking the picture).

To add your map, watch the video and then build your Google Map here.

Make it easy for your customers to do business with you, and that means making it easy for them to find you. Add a map and a picture to your website.

Salon Experience

Case Study: Pepper's Salon, Puyallup, Washington
Challenge: Improve website and increase traffic flow of new clients to the salon by October 2008.
Idea Wanted: Get more out business from the website, and create a customer experience that draws more new clients.

The Background: Owner Sally Flink has a reasonably successful salon, which has been operating for 20 years. They have a small advertising budget and a website that is doing okay, but not great. The website is two years old.

Pepper's has already added several magic spots to their customer experience, but these need to be tied together in a cohesive theme.

Advice: First develop your theme. Then design your customer experience around that theme.

In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, brothers Chip and Dan Heath tell us that if you want to make your experience sticky, step outside of standard operating procedure:

"The most basic way to get someone's attention is this: break a pattern."

Themes allow you to break the normal business pattern for a customer and create stickiness. Themes give you permission to create a different world within your business, surprising your customers with something sticky and out of the ordinary.

Pepper's has chosen Style as their theme.

Our Ideas:

1. Extend the Style theme to the website: Add pictures of famous hairstyles from which your clients can choose, for example Victoria Beckham's, and then add a link to "send to a friend."


2. On the website, post comparison pictures of styles that you've done for clients next to the model style or famous person's style. Again, add a "send to a friend" link.


3. When customers enter the waiting area, rather than offering coffee, tea or a water, offer an upscale stylish beverage; such as Brazilian Blend Coffee, Chai, or Voss bottled water.


4. Team up with a local, upscale fashion retailer and have live models showing the latest fashions during your busiest hours.


5. At the time of checkout, take a digital photo of the client's perfect style, load it into a database, then include it in a follow-up email to the client.


6. Advertise your hours. Pepper's is open at 7:30 in the morning until 9:30 in the evening on some days. Use the advertising budget that you do have to run a television or radio spot at 7:30am to say that Pepper's, The Salon With Style, is open right now.

The Lesson:
The Customer Experience is so vital to a business' success for two reasons:

The first reason is that it creates customer loyalty. Shaun Smith, co-author of See, Feel, Think, Do: The Power of Instinct in Business, says that merely satisfied customers are not loyal customers. Customers who are satisfied at level four on a scale of five have only a 25% intent of loyalty, but customers satisfied at a level of 5 out of 5 have a 90% or greater intent of loyalty.

The second reason is that when you establish loyalty, the customer experience then serves as the launching pad for word of mouth marketing. Once you have earned their loyalty, they give you their advocacy. You must design the customer experience with magic spots to give your customers talking points when they give you referrals.

For more small business marketing lessons and advice, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot
Our company website is: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

Restaurant Experience

Case Study: Small restaurant in Central Texas
Challenge: Build a customer experience consistent with the brand.
Idea Wanted: Advice on building a customer experience that is consistent with the brand promise.

The Background: This restaurant first opened last year. It's brand promise is Fine Dining, Home Atmosphere. It has fewer than 20 tables, located in a downtown warehouse-type structure without much exterior decoration.

The menu has an Italian flare, but not exclusively. The interior decoration is somewhat homey, but inconsistent. All employees are dressed in matching black restaurant t-shirts and blue jeans. The food is served quickly and is very tasty.

Advice: Develop a theme based on the brand promise and then turn that theme into a customer experience consistent with the brand.

We divided the theme up into two categories based on the brand promise. First we discussed a theme that would match Fine Dining. Then we worked on a theme for Home Atmosphere using an Italian home as our model.

We then merged the two together for the following ideas to be implemented as soon as possible.

Our Ideas:
1. Checks are paid at the table in fine dining restaurants. Give servers the responsibily of processing payment. This removes the cash register from the front door and eliminates a bottleneck of customers coming in the restaurant trying to get around people paying their bill and trying to leave the restaurant. This scene did not have "fine dining" written on it.

2. Change the dress of the servers. The concensus on our team was "casual but nice." We generally did not approve of jeans and a t-shirt. Again, it just doesn't say fine dining. We suggest keeping the jeans but adding pressed white dress shirts, maybe even with black bowties.

3. Carry the experience outside the restaurant. As your customers enter the door, prep them to enter an experience that is something other than every day. Have some Italian music playing outside the front door. Our recommendation, budget permitting, is to re-paint the outside of the building with some more traditional Italian colors. But go easy and don't get cheesy Italian, say painting the Italian flag on the outside.

4. Presentation: Add tablecloths, cloth napkins, and painted dinnerware in a traditional Italian style.

5. During the meal: Social interaction is a big part of meals in an Italian home. The owner should be strolling through the dining room and socializing with the customers. He should have Italian toasts and expressions ready and use one at almost every table.

6. The servers: Be polite and attentive, yet friendly and sociable, just like in an Italian home. Servers should also be taught some Italian sayings that they are to use on cue. For example, after the order is taken, the server exclaims "perfetto!"

7. The decor: Texture the walls and add a glaze for a Tuscan feel. Add a hanging fresco here and there. Change the light fixures, no florescent tubes. Add a wine rack on the wall, change the floor to large tiles. Add some greenery.

8. Raise the prices of the meals. You cannot get fine dining for $4.99. Your customers don't believe that either. Raise the price of the meal and you raise the perceived value of it. Remember that your customers are paying one price for the food and another for the experience, add those two together for a higher price.

The Lesson: Think in themes. The easiest way to develop a consistent customer experience is to develop a theme based on what you want your customers to say about you when they leave. In this case study, the theme was easy because the brand promise was well developed: Fine Dining. Home Atmosphere.

If you are having trouble developing a theme, imagine how you want your customers to describe your establishment after they leave. Pretend you are the customer and you are about to describe your business. Use this simple sentence: Your business name is __________.

For example: Starbucks is ___________.

Now, what do you think. Are we off? On? Did we miss something?

For more small business marketing advice, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot
You can also see our website at http://www.themarketingspot.com/