Merge ahead

More and more, your web presence is the front-door to your brand, not just a sales channel.

More and more, mobile, and all things digital, blur the lines between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar.

More and more, your channel-centric thinking–and organization, metrics, incentives and budgeting–are becoming barriers to meeting the customer where she is.

More and more, your mission, if you choose to accept it, is embrace the world of channel hop and focus on delivering a frictionless customer experience.

Merge ahead.

Or risk being side-swiped.

 

 

The useless jury

Whether we acknowledge it or not, much of the time many of us are playing to one or more juries.

I’m not talking about a literal jury–or even one of those goofy panels HLN puts together for sensational legal cases.

I’m talking about those sometimes nameless and faceless people that we consciously or unconsciously allow to drive our attitudes and behaviors.

We not only believe that there are these groups of people who are out there constantly judging us, but we take action to seek their approval, to get them to agree with us, to persuade them to buy whatever it is we are selling. To try to make them like us.

There are useful juries of course. Hopefully we all have friends, confidants or other members of our tribe whose input is trusted and valuable. They help us sharpen our message and fine-tune our product or service. They give us confidence to walk through our fear.

The customers we have or want are useful juries as well. Ultimately if they aren’t voting on behalf of our value proposition it matters a lot. And we have the choice to adjust our strategy and try to win them back, or move on to something new.

The useless jury, however, is the most pernicious.

Sometimes they take the form of the relentless defender of the status quo. They are filled with fear and hate most change, particularly if it might somehow reflect badly on them.

Sometimes they are the folks that aren’t engaged enough with your project to fully understand what it is about and who it is for–and you are powerless to change that. If they aren’t willing to do the work, they don’t get a vote.

Mostly, though, the juries that bring us down–that keep us stuck–are those whose judgment is irrelevant, yet somehow we feel compelled to listen.

When, as Seth reminds us, you choose your customer first then you can be emboldened to say and accept that “this is not for you.”  And if it’s not for them, why does their opinion matter, why do you have to listen, why let them hold you back?

It’s time to dismiss all the useless juries in your life.

 

 

When the vehicle becomes the destination

If you read most marketing magazines, attend a typical industry conference or listen to professional service firms pitching their latest offering you hear mostly about tactics and techniques.

Whether we’re talking about social media, mobile apps, big data analytics, cross-channel integration–or whatever the buzz-phrase of the moment happens to be–there is a tendency to glom on to how something works and whether whatever is being sold can deliver ROI as a stand-alone investment.

Yet the reality is that your journey toward impactful customer-centricity, toward being truly channel agnostic, and ultimately delivering on the promise of a frictionless customer experience, isn’t merely about picking the right individual component pieces that move you closer to your vision.

This is not to say that individual investment decisions aren’t important or that one should completely ignore ROI calculations.

But the remarkable brands of tomorrow are likely to be run by leaders who understand where they need to get to and are committed to work through the ways to get there. They realize that their brand is an eco-system and creating it requires ruthless experimentation, making some bold investments, driving a culture that puts the customer first and aligning the organization and metrics against that end vision.

In an ever-changing and fast-moving world the vehicles we choose are likely to come and go.  When we hold too tightly to them we  risk losing sight of the destination.

Running to stand still

A typical day for most of us is likely jam-packed with activity: going to meetings, scrambling to meet deadlines, responding to interruptions, running errands, maybe squeezing a bit of personal time in between family commitments. And on and on.

To paraphrase the African proverb: it doesn’t really matter whether we are the lion or the gazelle. All we know is that with the rising of the sun we feel we had better start running.

The ability to be connected anytime, anywhere drives many of us to obsessively check our in-box, go to social media sites dozens of times a day (what if we miss something!?!?) and keep our smart phone always at the ready just to be sure we stay abreast of any text messages.

Yet…

How often is our daily agenda controlled by things that we tell ourselves we are supposed to do versus truly need or want to do?

How much of our time is spent on things that seem urgent, but are hardly important?

Why do we feel we must constantly know what’s going on?  Is it because we see ourselves as super heroes who might be called into action at any moment to save the planet? What are we afraid of if we don’t get to that e-mail for a few hours?

How much are we driven by the warm blanket of busyness that keeps our mind full rather than allowing ourselves the space to be mindful, present and intentional?

And how often, at the end of the day, do we beat ourselves up for not having accomplished much at all?

If we are honest with ourselves, how much is just running to stand still?

Exhausting ourselves on purpose, ultimately seems devoid of purpose.

Baby’s first rifle

Perhaps you heard the story about the 5-year-old boy in Kentucky who accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister yesterday.

He did so with a product manufactured by a company called Keystone Firing Arms and marketed with the charming slogan “my first rifle.”

This heart-breaking news raises all sorts of questions, big and small. And my intention is not to weigh in on the gun control debate. Though it does occur to me that the framers of the Constitution might have wanted to specify that the members of that  ”well regulated militia” should have at least graduated from kindergarten.

This event also comes just days after more than 400 people were killed in the collapse of a Bangladesh factory that existed to make the world–or at least the United States–safe for cheap blouses and swimsuits.

Any mindful person–and hopefully that includes you–will not have much difficulty identifying companies that engage in strictly legal, but morally questionable, activities.

Some, like the entire world of spammers, are merely annoying. Others are complicit in deeply tragic results.

If you are anything like me and you hear about these horrific events, you have a momentary jolt of sadness, perhaps reflect on the craziness of the world, and then move on to the busyness of our day. We tell ourselves this is somebody else’s problem to solve.

But I have to wonder.

Shouldn’t we be more appalled? Shouldn’t we be angrier?

Aren’t we all, in some way, accountable?

Less bad, not yet good

Unless you are the #1 choice for your core customers, with staggeringly strong loyalty & advocacy ratings and nary a competitive threat on the horizon, you’re probably working to close performance gaps between you and the market leaders.

But here’s a potentially big problem. There’s a pretty good chance you are working to become less bad. But don’t confuse that with actually being good.

I worked at one major retailer where we analyzed a mountain of consumer research, identified key drivers of market performance and rated ourselves against our “best in class” competitors. On a scale of 1 – 10–across key purchase dimensions–we had lots of “5′s” and “6′s” whereas the market leaders had primarily “8′s” and “9′s.”

At a meeting of our top executives our recently anointed leader breathlessly announced, with considerable fanfare, that we would drive all our efforts (all of them!) to close the gaps versus our targeted competition. He was confident that with the right focus and intense commitment we could quickly improve our scores to “7′s” across the board.

In other words, we would still suck. Just not quite as much as before.

Inspiring.

He didn’t last long.

In my experience, way too much time, energy and money is spent in search of mediocrity.

And even on the rare occasions that a company is successful in closing the identified gaps, by the time implementation occurs, consumer expectations and/or competitive performance has shifted. The cycle begins anew. And you’re still #2. Or #3. Or worse.

Compelling, customer-centric growth strategies aren’t about shoring up your weaknesses. They are about being remarkably relevant and differentiated on the key dimensions of current and future customer loyalty and advocacy.

If you have major gaps to address, clearly you have to pass through the chasm of mediocrity to get closer to the other side.

But don’t kid yourself that you don’t have more work to do. Ultimately a “less bad” strategy is never a good idea.

Built for me (Part 3): The promiscuous shopper

You may know the old joke that ends: ”We have established what you are, madam. We are now merely haggling over the price.” Now apply that in the retail context.

I introduced the notion of the promiscuous shopper nearly 3 years ago. This special, but hardly rare, breed of consumer is always on the hunt for the best deal and completely devoid of any potential to be loyal.

When you choose to anchor your marketing strategy on relentless un-targeted promotions, and then layer on extra coupons and rewards points, it’s the promiscuous shopper who is the first to bite, and who then spikes as a percentage of your business.

To be fair, most businesses need some of these consumers from time to time. There is clearance product to be sold and any sensible marketing and merchandising strategy will reflect a natural demand curve.

An unusually high level of discounting may also be necessary to drive initial trial, so long as you are confident that repeat business has the potential to be loyal and profitable.

And certainly promiscuous shoppers are not always immediately apparent. Time and solid analysis are needed to separate them out and start to chase them away.

But always bear this in mind: when the promiscuous shopper feels that your business is built for them, it’s the first sign of trouble. Big trouble.