Brand Choice: “vision of perfection” or “perfect visibility”

A "Goof-up" can be a great social media marketing opportunity.

The transparency required of us in a social-media led world causes a number of fairly wrenching paradoxes. One of the clearest of these is the difference between marketing’s goal of being a “vision of perfection” and social media transparency’s goal of “perfect visibility”.

The reality is, none of our organizations, our products, or our services, are perfect. However, it was historically very possible to present a “we are perfect” aura to the outside world, through tightly controlled marketing communications, and careful hiding of any issues. That is no longer possible, as social media ensures that anything noteworthy can be highlighted by communications outside of your control.

But is the goal the opposite – one of “perfect visibility” and total transparency. That is equally unachievable, as there are so many things happening within any organization that it would be impractical to present them all to the outside world.

What is the Goal of Transparency?

So what are we as businesses trying to achieve with transparency efforts? I would suggest that transparency efforts are really company branding efforts. By being a transparent organization, and becoming known as such, we build the following 3 key brand messages in the market:

- No Denial: We’re human, we will make mistakes. Every organization does. However, we will not waste anyone’s efforts in denying those mistakes, we will put all our effort into fixing them.

- No Stalling: We recognize that you rely on our products or services, are happy to shine a light on anything that you, the customer, believe needs to be improved and fixed. It will be in the public eye from the first moment, so you don’t have to worry about delay tactics, misdirections, and stalling. It’s in our best interest to quickly and clearly give an answer (even if the answer is not the one you’re hoping for).

- No Surprises: Rather than being surprised, after the sale, as to what the realities (both good and bad) of the solution are, those things will be communicated upfront.

Most buyers, when looking at providers, would ideally find a provider who doesn’t deny problems, doesn’t stall on solutions, and doesn’t surprise them with disappointments after the sale. Having those perceptions as part of your company brand can be a very good thing.

So how are Goof-ups a good thing?

We all make mistakes – those little errors that are painfully embarrassing, but generally don’t cause significant damage. Things like inviting people to an event that took place a month ago, or is on another continent. When we do this, we often cringe, and want to hide from the world. However, this is a great opportunity to display the transparency we want our customers to see and in doing so build our brand and reputation.

When a mistake happens, be the first to publicize it proactively and apologize – on a company blog, in your community, or via a follow-up email to those affected – whatever is appropriate given the mistake. There’s no need to add extra drama to the situation, but describe what happened, how broad the effects were, where people can find more information (if relevant), and what you’re doing to ensure it doesn’t happen again (even if that is just having an extra coffee in the morning). Over time, your audience’s trust in you will grow as they realize that you are truly running an accountable, transparent organization.

Not only will your audience appreciate the transparency, but your own internal organization will realize that shining a light on the topic wasn’t as bad as feared. Developing this culture of transparency takes time, but is immeasurably valuable in a time of crisis. Don’t let the opportunity pass when a small issue takes place.

Here’s an example from a recent goof-up that we made (Jim suggested I write this post to talk about the topic), where we (as experienced as we are in all things email marketing) left a hard-coded email signature personalization in a communication. Sure enough, there were no major negative effects as a result of this...

Do you have any interesting stories of well-handled goof-ups?

SaaS, Social Media, and the Economics of Smart Buyers

There are a few trends in the industry that are worth commenting on in that they relate in a very interesting way.

Economics Shifts towards Renewal/Retention: Software-as-a-Service and subscription-based revenue models in other industries have shifted the economic weight away from the upfront sale and towards the renewal in those businesses

Information Access becomes Free: The information resources available on the Internet have put buyer education in the hands of buyers, allowing them to educate themselves more easily than ever before.

Brand Reputation Control Shifts to the Audience: Social media has taken brand reputation out of the control of marketers and into the control of the audience, both in terms of good reputations and bad reputations

So, what is interesting about this? If we look at this from a purely theoretical standpoint it begins to become clear why it is the right strategy to begin to freely provide education, insight, guidance, and help to the audience at large through social media.

Looked at simply, the social media investment we make in providing guidance, best practices, pitfalls to avoid, etc, is an investment in buyer education. It is not a direct cash investment, in the same way that we historically would have made large cash investments in marketing campaigns. However, as anyone involved in social media knows, it is a significant investment in time and energy. Many times this investment of time and energy comes from key folks within your organization.

Buyer education can be a double-edged sword. More knowledgeable, sophisticated buyers know what they are looking for, they can easily determine what is right for their business, and what capabilities they do and do not need. They are more able to look beyond flashy demos and slick brochures and dig into less sexy things that will really matter; service levels, community depth, ability to map to their precise business process. This can wreak havoc on businesses that focus heavily on selling at all costs, as it allows customers to only purchase what is truly going to fit their business, and avoid surprises after the sale. However, customer satisfaction among educated buyers is generally much higher as they avoided these post-sale surprises and bought solutions that were well fit to their needs.

Customer satisfaction makes more sense the more your business is dependent on retention. If your business model is based on a one-time sell, with a single up-front payment, you are much less tied to customer satisfaction than if your business model is based on a long-term, recurring revenue stream. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and many recurring revenue model businesses are well aware of this. Whereas in the historical, on premise, model of software sales, post-sale surprises were the norm, with SaaS, they have a much higher economic cost to the vendor.

Social media acts as a magnifier on this effect as it puts control of brand reputation squarely in control of the audience. Products that do not deliver on their brand promise are quickly discovered and communicated, whether through structured reviews, such as in the travel industry, or one-off efforts, such as the United Breaks Guitars song-writing crusade.

An investment then, in the product itself, becomes the best marketing effort that many organizations can make. With this, I am referring to the whole product experience, including the service elements around the product and after the sale. We’ve seen many examples of this, with Frank Eliason at ComcastCares and Tony Hsieh at Zappos being among the more prominent examples.

Looked at from a high level, there are two very distinct cycles. In today’s businesses, with a reputation is easily shared through social media, and many with revenue models that are recurring, it makes the most economic sense to invest in educating buyers and in the product experience itself. This way, although you may end up with slightly fewer new customers, due to educating some in a direction that does not indicate that they have a need, you will end up with more satisfied customers over all. Contrast this with a historical model, that was dependent on a flashy demo, and great marketing, but not satisfied customers, the investments would be in significant marketing promotions and demo-friendly features.

In today’s market, especially in SaaS and subscription-based businesses, the recipe for success has changed, and it has done so based on the underlying economic drivers as much as anything. It is a change that is for the best as it aligns the interests of software vendors and software purchasers more tightly than they ever have been aligned before.

Service Economics in a "Something Failed to Go Right" World

I don’t think I’ve been to a conference lately that didn’t have a mention of Twitter and its effect on service teams everywhere. Frank Eliason from Comcast, Tony Hsieh from Zappos, and their teams, as well as a number of other great examples are shown as the “new way” of providing customer service. I don’t disagree, but the challenge here is that this must cause a massive shake-up of budgets and the way that organizations are structured if it is to succeed – and that is not a topic that is discussed in any significance.

What I mean is, the idea that Twitter and social media can, and should, be used to enhance our service offerings will almost certainly fail if we just think of it as a service team challenge.

Let’s look at the math.

If you look at an average service team, let’s say a call center, they receive calls that generally meet three criteria:

- Definable: a discrete problem that can be identified, discussed, and either resolved or not resolved

- Significant: enough of a problem that a person saw fit to pick up the phone, wait in a call queue, and bring it to your attention

- Solvable: a problem for which one can generally visualize a defined, near-term solution

If the problem is outside of that criteria set, we will likely not bother phoning support as they will not be able to help us.

Given these criteria, which I would call the “something went wrong” set of problems, we staff our support centers. Rarely do the teams in these support centers find themselves lacking work, and they are often very strapped for resources, as we manage the budgets for the call centers to maximize utilization and minimize costs.

Then, however, if you look at the set of problems that might surface in social media you see that these three criteria are not met.

- Definable: a complaint can surface without being discrete, or naturally resolvable. General dissatisfaction with airline flight delays, as an example.

- Significant: a negative Tweet about a company or its products requires less effort than calling a service center, so the bar of significance is much lower

- Solvable: many problems that are discussed in social media are not inherently easy to solve, and success may mean guidance, coaching, or training, as much as technical support

I’m not in any way suggesting that these are not important problems, just that they are a much bigger universe of problems than the problems that make their way to today’s call centers. This is the “something failed to go right” set of problems.

So, if we are to staff our service teams to proactively reach out and deal with the “something failed to go right” set of problems, rather than reactively deal with juse inbound “something went wrong” problems, we are dealing with many more problems. Whereas there may be some mild efficiency gains from connecting in an online environment, I would guess that these gains are far outweighed by the increase in size of the problem set.

Where will this budget come from? My suggestion is Marketing. I have long believed that social media is forcing marketers to think of their overall brand experience, including product and service realities, rather than just the visuals like logos, when they are considering brand. Rather than set your service team up with Twitter handles and send them an article on Frank Eliason and the Comcast Cares team, proactive marketing organizations should realize that this new approach to service opens up a much broader universe of problems that must be addressed. Doing so will have a significant positive impact on your company’s brand, but may require a significant investment in service people.

Next time you allocate marketing budget to “brand”, think about whether the best investment in brand that your marketing team can to is to hire an extra few people for the services team and start tackling more of the “something failed to go right” problems.

A Logo is Not a Brand: B2B Marketing and Social Media

I’ve been part of the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) tour this summer, and it has given me a great chance to interact with a lot of marketers about the challenges they are facing. One recurring topic, as you would expect, is social media and the role it plays in marketing and sales. A common focus has been on the potential for using social media for demand generation and direct connection with sales. I would argue instead, that social media is best thought of in the context of an organization’s brand.

Wikipedia defines “brand” as “A brand is a collection of experiences and associations connected with a service, a person or any other entity.” Other definitions exist, but the concept of a brand being the associations that we have with our overall experience of a service or entity is common to most of them.

B2B Marketing has always had an interesting relationship with the concept of “brand”. Perhaps dominated by impressions of what it means to be a strong brand that came from the consumer space, we’ve been hesitant to think that brand plays a strong role in B2B purchases. However, I would argue that the opposite may be true. Each aspect of a buying decision in a B2B purchase cycle is heavily influenced by reputation, and hence brand.

The following questions, which your prospects may be asking themselves, represent various perceptions (or misperceptions) of your brand:

- What companies have solutions to this problem?
- Which solution provider has better service?
- Which product is best in my industry or for my company size?
- Which product is the “cheap and cheerful” of the industry? Which is “robust and full-featured”?
- Which product is the most or least expensive?
- What are the key factors in deciding on a solution to this problem?
- Which company is going to be innovating more as we move forward?
- Which solution is more reliable? More stable? More scalable?

Although each of these decision aspects can be researched independently, more often than not, we all rely on general industry reputations to provide us with at least a good sense of the answer. I have spoken with many marketers who are frustrated by situations in which the general reputation they have in the industry on certain questions, such as the above, does not match with reality. This, in many ways, is a brand question.

Social media has one of the best opportunities to influence this brand reputation of any marketing approach I have seen in recent years. Each discussion in social media that concerns these questions is an opportunity to adjust the brand perception of your solutions. If you have a reputation for being the expensive provider in the industry, but in fact have a very competitively priced entry product, you have an opportunity to correct that misperception. If you have a reputation for poor service, addressing each individual with a complaint, as Frank Eliason did with ComcastCares on Twitter, allows you to reverse that reputation. If decisions are being made that overlook key factors that lead to success, you have an opportunity to educate the market one conversation at a time.

A good framework for thinking about these challenges is provided by looking at the challenges that buyers face in a buying process. Each challenge, whether it is a Flying Car, Wallflower, or Red-headed Stepchild challenge can be addressed by looking at the reasons potential buyers choose not to include your organization at each stage. Social media provides an excellent means to address each of these challenges.

The rise of social media has given us B2B marketers a unique opportunity to address and improve their organization’s brand in the marketplace. However, to do so, we need to think of brand beyond the logo. The entire experience, from market education through purchase to service quality and the customer experience affect our brand.

Employees, Social Media, and Superstar Economics

I was watching a great video from 1981 the other day talking about how, in the future, it might be possible (albeit absurd) to get the content of a newspaper on your computer. You could tell from the tone of the announcer that this concept was patently absurd to her. Who would ever do that?

So that got me thinking about what we might look back on in 20 or 30 years and laugh at ourselves for thinking it was absurd.

Here’s one thought – what if Marketing begins to recruit and acquire employees who have established their domain expertise via all the tools within the social media realm, in the same way that sports teams recruit and acquire all star players?

It may not be as absurd as it at first seems.

Business has begun to realize that the way buyers gather information has fundamentally changed. Credible online sources are of critical importance in market awareness, education, and solution validation. Increasingly, this information is created, disseminated, and validated by the key online personalities in each space. In wine, a comment from Gary Vaynerchuk has an effect on wine sales, Michael Arrington’s opinion on a new technology product can be a make-or-break moment for a small company. David Armano wrote a great post the other day discussing the overlap between personal and corporate brands with Ford's Scott Monty as a case example.

So, as a marketer, influencing these influencers is critical. The public is smart enough to see through paid endorsements, but other options are possible. Microsoft hired Robert Scoble, Panasonic invited Chris Brogan, Greg Verdino, and others to CES as guests.

The initial reaction is that employment will impact their impartiality, and their audience will reject them. But will that actually happen? There’s reason to believe that it won’t. Converting an independent opinion into a paid advertisement is destructive to both parties. The blogger will lose their audience, which is their most critical asset, so they are motivated to avoid appearing biased at all costs. The sponsoring company would then lose the main reason they hired that blogger in the first place. Rather than a paid advertisement, the best approach is to add new perspectives, highlight ideas and evaluation frameworks that may not be obvious at first glance, and raise awareness that a product exists.

I mentioned the economics of all-stars in sports, which is very different to how marketing salaries are today. I think again, there is an argument to be made that this is actually a reasonable thing to expect. In sports, the pay for the best athletes is many times that of the very good athletes. In social media, the audience sizes, and hence the influence, of the biggest names is many times that of the somewhat big names. This means that hiring the best name in the space might be many times more effective than hiring the second best name in the space. Economics will follow, and the best names will be able to charge rates that are many times the rates of the second best names.

So why not build your own social media presence? Again, the preferential attachment situation comes up. If you are starting now, and there is a social media leader in your space, you may never catch up. All else being equal, having more followers leads to having even more followers.

The need for impartiality also leads to an interesting side effect – the key names in the space will naturally be able to act as free agents. As long as they are within the space their audience cares about, there is no fundamental reason for them not to be able to shift from one employer to another.

So how much will they be worth? That will depend. In the same way that the superstars in sports make differing amounts of money depending on the popularity of the sport, the superstars in social media will make differing amounts of money depending on the size of the audience in their particular specialty.

Proactive Service, Twitter, and Brand

I said that yesterday's was my last post, but the folks at TripIt gave me a reason to write another one. There's a lot of debate going on with regards to how social media can be used in B2B, and here's one example of a great way.

TripIt is a service that organizes your travel - you forward your itinerary to an email address, it parses it, organizes it, gives you maps, directions, etc. It even tells you when people you know are in the area. I travel a lot and it's a great service.

But I don't like their calendar synch. It's not that it's broken, it just does things in a way that I don't like. I would never actually call into their support desk because it's not a big enough deal to bother. I did a tiny bit of looking around to see if I could make it work the way I wanted to, and I couldn't - I wasn't sure whether it was me or the service, and I will admit, I didn't really put that much effort into it. I just went about my day as a mildly grumbly TripIt user.

And then I Twittered about it, part happy, part grumbly.

Within a short period of time, I got a tweet back from Kristin at TripIt, asking me to connect with her offline.

I did, and it turns out that I wasn't missing anything in the calendar synch, but they know about the issue I was complaining about and are working on it.

So now I'm a happier TripIt user. Interestingly, the problem I had did not change. I still don't like their calendar synch, but the proactive nature of their service made me significantly more happy.

A few points from this experience for any companies who are not on Twitter yet:

1. Get out there and listen. You'll be amazed what you hear that you wouldn't hear from any other channel (in this case they knew it already, but in many cases, you may not).
2. Don't fool yourself into thinking that if you have a great support desk, you don't have to listen on Twitter, there are a LOT of issues with any product, service, or company, that are annoying enough to stop someone referring you, but not significant enough (or the type of issue) that one would pick up the phone to call a support desk about.
3. Proactive service, even if the problem isn't resolved, is very helpful for customer satisfaction. In this case, I at least now know (a) my problem is not currently solvable, and (b) the folks at TripIt know about it and are working on a solution. That makes me feel a lot better.

If you're not actively listening on Twitter, on blogs, on all forms of social media, you should be.

Here's my prediction:

In a few years, we'll all be laughing at service organizations that "wait for
unsatisfied users to actually pick up the phone to reach out to THEM."

Merry Christmas to all, have a great holiday season.