Unlock The Success Of Influencer Marketing Through The 4 ‘A’s

Earth is flat and exists at the centre of our Galaxy…

If someone taught you this in school hundreds of years ago, no one would bat an eye. However, if this was taught today, our smartphones would prove them wrong before the chalk hit the floor.

The four ‘P’s of the Marketing Mix (Product, Price, Promotion, Place) is one of the oldest marketing theories still enforced. It hasn’t faded from our textbooks and acts as the foundation for many marketing plans. Is it wrong? Not necessarily. Is it due to be updated? Absolutely.

As a newer concept, influencer marketing doesn’t fit the traditional marketing mould. With the emergence of social communities there are more factors than ever to consider when evaluating a brand’s ability to sell their product or service.

To keep things simple, I’ve combined old school with new school. Discover the keys to developing a new-age marketing plan. Introducing:

The Four ‘A’s of Influencer Marketing:

Product vs. Answer

Product: A tangible good or intangible service that fulfills a need or want of consumers.

Answer: Why do people buy products? To solve a problem or fulfill a need. Simply put, a product is nothing unless it’s an answer to a consumer’s problem. If you think about it, you don’t buy a car, you buy a way of getting from point A to point B. A campaign’s purpose is to prove that one answer is better than the answer of competitors.

A product fulfills a need or want, but what is that to marketers? At times, advertisers have failed by trying to sell features rather than the solutions that the good or service offers. With content and influencer marketing taking the industry head-on, there is confusion over what that product really is. Why is this so?

Content is the medium for engaging with consumers, and when delivered via an influencer campaign, the content aligns with both the needs and wants of the consumer and the brand. So from this perspective, the content itself is the answer.

A brand will engage in influencer marketing if it can increase profit or revenue. Theoretically, the brand’s good or service doesn’t matter. It’s the content that is used to target, attract, and retain customers that is important. An influencer campaign will be deemed successful if the good or service is shown through content as being the answer to a real problem.

If you spilled red wine on your carpet and used the tips a homecare blog taught you on how to clean it up, the content would be the answer to your problem. You wouldn’t have known what to do otherwise, and whether the blogger suggests Brand A’s product or Brand B’s, it doesn’t matter if the problem is solved.

Sometimes the solution lies outside the framework of the traditional marketing mix. Instead of bending the word product to mean the same as answer, we should think outside the textbook and consider the content as an opportunity to show off the solution over the feature.

Product vs. Agreement

Price:
An established value assigned to a product for the purpose of an exchange.

Agreement:
Have you ever wanted something but thought the price was higher than you were willing to pay? Most of us have and that’s just an unavoidable factor of capitalism. While quid pro quo won’t get you anywhere when purchasing a computer, it’s the backbone of influencer marketing.

Consider your relationship with the medium. Unlike buying ad space or airtime, influencer marketing establishes a relationship for content creation. A product is traditionally sold for a predetermined price. But with influencer marketing, the exchange is intended to create some type of positive ROI for both sides. To ensure a campaign is successful, the exchange must be treated as a partnership. Both the brand and the influencer must work together to ensure the integrity of both the content and the good/service remains uncompromised. While money may change hands, the mutual benefit does not fit the traditional “price” of the marketing mix.

An “agreement” on the other hand, explains that both sides of an exchange are satisfied with the return they are receiving. The agreement may not be to exchange money, but could be to supply products for reviews, hotel accommodation for event exposure, or to mutually increase the awareness for both the brand and the influencer.

Product vs. Awareness

Promotion:
The delivery of marketing messages to target consumers.

Awareness:
Do you ever skip commercials on TV or press “Skip Ad” on YouTube? I certainly do. And as a result, I’ve missed the targeted promotional efforts by brands. It may have been for something I would’ve loved, but I never became aware of it.

Promotion is a necessary aspect of marketing, but can only yield results if the targeted consumers are actually reached. Awareness is what promotion is created for. Awareness is the difference between a message sent, and a message received.

The goal of promotion and awareness is to inspire a certain action from consumers. As described through the name, an influencer has influence to generate awareness that inspires action. Sponsored posts and unnatural product endorsements are weak forms of promotion that all consumers can see through, especially Millennials. Awareness shifts the focus away from pushy promotions to the more suggestive word-of-mouth approach. With family and friend recommendations as the number one trusted source for buying decisions, and online reviews as the number two, influencer generated awareness is able to cover more than promotion can account for.

Product vs. Audience

Place:
The point of access for a consumer to acquire a good or service.

Audience:
Do you enjoy ice cream? Most people do and I apologize to those with lactose intolerance, but it’s delicious. In theory, an ice cream company could target everyone. Ice cream trucks are a proven success, but there’s a reason they don’t roam Manhattan on December mornings. Not only would the traffic and cold weather hurt business, the clientele isn’t going to be influenced by a loud and colourful truck driving down the street.

When? Where? Who? These questions remain unresolved through our first three ‘A’s. In order for a campaign to be successful, there must be an audience to absorb an influencer’s content. When a brand selects an influencer to work with, the location, demographics, and overall identity of that influencer’s audience is analyzed. The location is important, but can be useless if timing and the type of consumer is ignored. All three rely on each other and not just the ‘When’ and ‘Where.’

The ‘Who’ matters as much if not more than the ‘When’ and ‘Where.’ An audience encompasses the current and potential consumers a brand could be trying to reach.

Cereal boxes are located on top shelves in grocery stores because they’re lightweight. On a strategic note, you may have noticed that cereal box characters are always staring down. This is so children will feel connected to the fun tiger or goofy triplets on the box. Is this just clever placement? I like cereal but don’t feel compelled to buy a certain brand based on the cover cartoon. That’s because I’m not the audience that needs to be persuaded. Cereal is strategically placed where it is to accommodate a certain audience. The place adjusts to suit the audience, not the other way around.

Conclusion

Whether you choose to stick to the old school marketing mix of four ‘P’s, or adopt the four ‘A’s is entirely up to you. What matters is that you know not every type of marketing fits traditional theory, and that nothing we’ve been taught is written in stone.

Which marketing mix works best for you? Are there any other dated theories you think need refreshing?

Unlock The Success Of Influencer Marketing Through The 4 ‘A’s

The Influence Of Buyer Goals On Content And The Search For Good Ideas

One of the most under-realized areas of understanding in marketing today has to do with the powerful influences of buyer goals and their goal-directed behaviors. This is especially true in B2B marketing. Most notably, in terms of understanding the impact of buyer goals on how buyers conduct informational searches, as well as, gather content and make choices based on the information acquired.

The ongoing concern for many senior marketing executives is the lack of effectiveness in content marketing today. Surveys in the past two to three years indicating marketers are struggling to break through even being thirty to forty percent “somewhat” effective with their content marketing efforts. Making decisions on how much to allocate resources specifically to content marketing quite difficult.

Consumer And B2B Buyers Differ

The fact that buyers, including B2B buyers, will spend time researching online is not debatable. This consumer-first behavior has transferred to business buyer behavior rapidly. Depending on which survey you read, the percentage of business buyers indicating research is their first form of activity hovers between the eighty-five (85%) to ninety-five percent (95%) level. An established fact, which has made not necessarily just content marketing important, but also several other areas of marketing such as branding.

While this research first behavior has become similar for both consumer and B2B, things get quite different when you start looking at the goals of B2B buyers. In the consumer world, goals tend be more concrete in nature.

For example, if you are seeking a new dishwasher for your home, you may begin researching the factual attributes of dishwashers. Such as price range, delicate versus normal settings, stainless steel tub versus plastic, and other types of factual product attributes. Abstract oriented goals still are very powerful in consumer behavior as well. Usually related to affinity and feelings towards brands. In this same example, you may have a strong emotional and affinity attachment to Kitchen Aid due to your experiences with the brand.

B2B buyer behavior differs significantly in this respect. Research and surveys show a majority of business leaders first research ideas and concepts. A recent The Economist Group survey of five hundred (500) global business executives indicated for seventy-five percent (75%) of those surveyed, the primary purpose for seeking business content was to research a business idea.

In my own buyer research efforts, conducting in the vicinity of twenty-five hundred buyer interviews over the past fourteen years, this is a distinct pattern I have seen.

The Connection Between Ideas And Goals

There is a powerful connection between ideas and goals. They share in both being a form of abstract thinking. Meaning they are conceptual in nature, cannot be easily described or articulated, reside below the surface, are not fact-based, and involves mental thinking. Consumer behavior tends to have more concrete thinking as opposed to the high degree of abstract thinking in B2B.

The implication here, especially for B2B marketing, is very significant. When you shine this unique light on the big problem of content marketing ineffectiveness, one aspect becomes clearer. That is, we see content marketing (especially B2B) addressing primarily concrete and factual-based thinking versus ideas and goal-directed thinking, which are more abstract in nature.

How does this look? You see content marketing tied, still, to facts and products. Messaging on concrete elements related to product and outdated buyer profiling due to lack of insights into buyer goals and their connection to ideas. It is no wonder then that more than seventy percent (70%) of the five hundred (500) business executives surveyed by the Economist Group indicated business content lacked substance.

Understanding Buyer Goals Leads To Understanding Content Desired

Increasingly in the B2B marketing world, many organizations are beginning to realize they can no longer use conventional approaches for understanding buyers. Many efforts have gone into doing so, including attempts to develop buyer personas. However, such attempts to develop buyer personas have had a high failure rate. This failure rate is largely due to the same problems plaguing content marketing. It is akin to passing along a viral contagion between content marketing and buyer persona development.

In this case, the contagion is focusing in on the same concrete product, facts, and criteria based profiling of buyers. Profiling buyers on concrete facts related to company initiatives, product criteria, buying criteria, success or risk factors, and etc. A form of profiling, which cannot explain nor ever go deep enough to gain insights into how and why buying decisions are made.

Years of research in the psychology, business, and academic fields have proven that goals and goal-directed behaviors are the largest, as well as, the deepest forms of influence on purchase decisions. Yet they reside in the abstract and takes skilled qualitative research to uncover. Thus, if organizations truly want deeper buyer insights and understanding, they must go beyond concrete based thinking and get to the deepest levels of buyer goals and their goal-directed behaviors.

Influencing Through Content Connected To Ideas And Goals

As of now, we can reasonably estimate that seventy-five percent (75%) of business executives researching business ideas are finding instead, seventy percent (70%) or more of the times, product and criteria-based content. Thus, no help in furthering the important ideas and goals they are thinking about.

The unique shining of light, through buyer goals, on what ails content marketing as well as buyer personas provide a powerful compass to CMOs and their teams then. In order to truly impact buyers with content and information, they must first connect with the deeper understanding of their ideas, goals, and goal-directed activities.

The evidence is clear. If an organization is unable to make this connection and continues to focus on concrete facts and criteria-based content, then whatever content they produce will wind up in the small corner of the window of a buyer’s PC, tablet, or mobile phone device. Dragged into the trash icon located on most devices – along with the other seventy-five percent (75%) or more of content already there.

(What follows is a short video on Where Good Ideas Come From? by Steven Johnson. He covers how good ideas come from connectivity with others. Involving a slow level of abstract thinking. As mentioned above, global business leaders primarily search for content when researching a business idea. Content, then, must be helpful in enabling the pursuit of goals and the gelling of good ideas.)

The Influence Of Buyer Goals On Content And The Search For Good Ideas

Shortcut to ROI With the ‘Modified Content Marketing’ Approach

Content marketing has become one of the dominant, if not the dominant form of online marketing today. But frankly, it takes a lot of time to work. At least that’s what I hear from some of my clients.

I know we’re supposed to tell our clients, bosses and stakeholders that content marketing takes patience—that we shouldn’t treat it like a campaign. But there are many companies who may never have the patience, the resources or the stomach to stick with a content marketing strategy long enough for it to bear fruit.

Does that mean you can never do content marketing? Or if you do, that you’ll be perpetually stuck with the other 62 percent of content marketers who aren’t seeing results?

No. I believe there’s a middle way.

I believe that you can borrow tactics and strategies that others (such as direct marketers like Jeff Walker and Rich Schefren) have used before to short-cut your time to content marketing ROI without investing in building a full-fledged in-house media department.

How can this be possible?

Introducing the Modified Content Marketing Approach

To explain what the modified content marketing approach is, I think it’s best to compare and contrast it to classic content marketing, as we know it.

With classic, full-blown content marketing, your goal is to build a content destination. You create a blog, a resource center or a honey-pot that you hope will become a major content resource for your niche. Think American Express’s OPEN Forum for small business, or Blackbaud’s npENGAGE for online nonprofit fundraising.

These efforts are characterized by:

• A regular schedule of frequently published short form and long form content
• Building a visible content brand for your industry
• Use of content that spans the sales cycle—from attraction content to conversion, sales and loyalty content
• Driving traffic via keyword optimization, social media promotion, native advertising, PR and guest posting

In other words, large, coordinated efforts that look more like a publication than a marketing department. In fact, “becoming the media” has been the rallying cry for content marketers for a while now.

The modified content marketing approach, on the other hand, is a lot less ambitious. Its goal is not to create a content destination, drive tons of SEO traffic and social media shares, or follow a strict editorial calendar.

The goal of a modified content strategy is to drive a niche target market of subscribers into your database through the use of a content cannonball, and then execute a focused spurt of blog and email content to nurture your prospects into customers.

A modified content marketing strategy pushes the content destination and content brand concepts to a much lower priority. Instead, it focuses on driving as many subscribers as possible through an initial, focused campaign with the content cannonball as the catalyst. It is then followed by a spurt of short-form content that is used in an email automation campaign to nurture your prospects.

It looks something like this:

The initial focus is an epic long-form content piece (e.g., an eBook, guide to your industry niche or major research report). This is called the content cannonball because its purpose is to make a big splash in the market. It is designed to be the focus of PR efforts, attract buzz in the market, and drive subscriptions.

Following that, another focused effort is spent on creating between 10 and 20 blog posts and associated content that will be used in an auto-responder campaign designed to build demand for your product.

The dripped articles, sent over a period of weeks or even months, serves the same purpose as the classic online product launch. Each communication is designed to progressively take the prospect from know and like, to trust and finally buy.

Let me delve into the individual pieces of the modified content strategy, with specific examples to illustrate my points.

The Content Cannonball

As I mentioned above, the content cannonball is your magnum opus. Wikipedia says the magnum opus is: “…the largest, and perhaps the best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement of an artist.” You’re really trying to make an impact with this piece of content.

The content cannonball can be an ultimate guide to your industry, a new concept, original research, or even a full-length book.

A perfect example is Relevance’s eBook, “The Content Promotion Manifesto,” written by Chad Pollitt. The Manifesto put Relevance on the map as the content promotion agency. It was originally designed to be sold on Amazon and is subsequently longer and more in-depth than the standard lead generation eBook. It was even mentioned by OneSpot as one of their 10 must-read content marketing books.

It is definitely Pollitt and Relevance’s “magnum opus.”

Promote the Content Cannonball

The next part is promotion, the focus of the Content Promotion Manifesto. With modified content marketing, the promotion of the content cannonball is planned from the very beginning, and takes on many of the characteristics of a book launch. But instead of driving sales, the purpose is to drive subscriptions.

When big data provider Infochimps was pivoting from its earlier business model as a seller of data into a big data infrastructure provider, their challenge was to attract a completely new client base.

To quickly attract a large number of new leads, Amanda McGuckin Hager, Infochimp’s director of marketing at the time, commissioned a joint study with the SQL Server Worldwide User Group (SSWUG.org) about big data. They published the results in a major research report entitled “CIOs and Big Data: What Your IT Team Wants You To Know”.

This was one of the first reports of this kind ever published, and became Infochimp’s magnum opus. And because the study was conducted jointly with SSWUG, promotion to all association members was a fait accompli, garnering a large number of downloads and subscriptions in a very short period.

But McGuckin Hager went further. In her presentation to the Austin Inbound Meetup, McGuckin Hager described how she used traditional PR to promote the study to industry press, generating industry buzz for the report.

So did the Infochimps content cannonball make a splash? It sure did. They increased their house database by 94 percent, and grew demand 358 percent to produce a multimillion-dollar pipeline.

Drive Email Marketing Through Automation Sequences

After you make a splash with your content cannonball and have driven as many subscribers into your marketing database as possible, then you must nurture them to the point where they’re ready to buy (or at least ready to talk to a sales person).

Use an auto-responder to drip nurturing content to them over time using a sequence of emails designed to generate awareness and trust, and ultimately get your prospects excited about your offering. The concept is similar to a product launch sequence.

A recent example of a marketer successfully using this method is Neville Medhora and his Kopywriting Kourse blog.

Medhora is a brilliant copywriter, but his blogging is fairly sporadic. His last three blog posts were published July 30^th, August 14^th and Sept. 3^rd, or more or less every two weeks.

But I receive emails from him every one to three days. Just look at my inbox:

It feels like Medhora is producing content all the time (and the content is really valuable). But they’re all blog posts he’s written in the past scheduled into his autoresponder sequence.

I read almost everything he sends, and I even bought a couple of courses as a result of the emails he’s sent, all thanks to his autoresponder marketing.

Content marketing has become the most effective form of marketing in the era of almost infinite competition for attention. But it requires a long, sustained effort to really pay off. A content marketing consultant and friend of mine from Germany recently told me he advises his customers not to expect ROI until one year, or in some cases even two years, after they get started.

For those who don’t have the resources, in-house talent or patience, the solution could be the modified content marketing approach. By focusing on a large, up-front effort to create a content cannonball that drives subscriptions, and executing a product-launch type of email marketing sequence, you can leverage the concepts of content marketing (i.e., giving away value) without the long-term sustained effort typical of the media company approach.

Shortcut to ROI With the ‘Modified Content Marketing’ Approach

Known Problems with IP Targeting

What Is IP Targeting?

Wel,l let’s start off with the basics. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), IP targeting is delivered to a user’s geographic location as determined by his or her Internet Protocol (IP) address. So every computer connected to the Internet has an IP address associated with it. Pretty cool and quite a lot of laptop and desktop screens to show advertisements!

It’s no wonder that IP-targeted advertisements are quickly on the rise and are here to stay! Imagine having the ability to place your ad in front of millions of households reaching an audience within the comforts of their home. For a fraction of the costs of radio, print or TV advertisements, IP targeting is the more cost-effective approach.

IP Targeting Is An Attractive Form of Engagement

The strategy to target households, Starbucks, airports, buildings is an attractive one, no doubt. Compared to other forms of advertising it’s innovative, and a fresh approach to marketing. It is cheaper compared to other forms of mobile audience targeting, but I’ll get into the pros and cons in just one second.

For marketers, IP Targeting is a tool that is here to stay. In some cases, we are only looking to engage with a captive audience who is attending a trade show or conference. IP Target is a good way to deliver a timely and relevant message. In other cases, just adopting an IP-Target strategy may costs you more money in the long run.

When we recommend solutions for our partners at SA Interactive, IP Targeting is one of the last strategies we will recommend. Over the years when new members join our team, we will explain to them the deficiencies with IP Target to help them understand the pros and cons. I decided to turn this internal document into this blog post. Now I fully expect to get flamed by those who love IP Targeting – so be it. For us, our partners prefer a more laser-targeted solution that we offer.

Known Problems with IP Targeting

For those marketers smart enough to do your homework about IP Targeting, when you go to Google and search for known problems you get some decent results. There is really not a one-stop resource to cover all the issues so I have done years of research and built this following list.

First one is a big one – the numbers in IP addresses have no correlation with a specific geographical location. The computer’s location cannot be determined by IP address alone. For that you need to team up with an IP intelligence firm that matches IP addresses to a physical location. Even with the help of a third party data provider you need to question the accuracy of their targeting.

Then there are the added costs of having your advertiser outsourcing this work to an IP intelligence firm. Believe me, you will be paying for these additional costs whether you know it or not. The cheaper something costs the cheaper something is. There are also are limitations to the quality of data relative to advertiser intent.

Accuracy Can Be A Challenge

The second problem relates to reaching actual people versus their IP addresses. The inconsistency between the location of an IP address and a consumer’s physical location cuts at the precision and accuracy of IP Targeting. There are several factors that contribute to this difference. Some IP addresses change physical locations each month. Since the IP address is a static number and not based on a phone number with a geographical area code assigned, the location of the IP address can be virtually anywhere.

As a marketer, if you want to serve advertisements to employees who work for a specific organization, you need to keep in mind that some organizations have multiple locations around the country and the world. If your servers are registered to a Louisville, KY location and you want to target Humana, serving content relevant to Louisville, KY where Humana is headquartered presently is a great strategy for brands like Maker’s Mark or the Kentucky Derby. If the organization you are trying to engage with is headquartered in Los Angeles and you are working for that company in Louisville, then getting advertisement for the L.A. Lakers won’t make much sense yet sometimes that is the case when adopting an IP Targeting strategy. Sometimes you are targeting a centrally located server.

If you are not too concerned with local relevant ads then IP Targeting is the way to go. The same goes with proxy servers, where some ISP’s use a small number of servers on a server farm like AOL does. Sometimes AOL customers may see content for business in northern Virginia where AOL is headquartered. See, I’m not completely bashing IP Targeting here…..

Advertisements based on location or for local events perform poorly with IP Targeting. The more granular the Direct Marketing Area (DMA) the less reliable IP Targeting can be. You can still deliver your messages but is the right message reaching the right audience?

Right Message for the Right Audience?

Do you even know if your message is reaching the right audience? Let me explain with the following personal example. Lately I have been receiving political advertisements from GOP candidates running for office in Kentucky at my home where I am connected to our IP Address on our Wifi. When I am scrolling through Facebook from time to time, I will see these ads. I just shake my head because everyone who knows of my past work experience, knows that if I am definitely the wrong demographic for GOP served advertisements.

Second, I live in Indiana just across the river from Louisville and the Indiana/Kentucky border. When I see these ads I think to myself, man they just wasted their money trying to engage with me. Now you could make the argument that I might know someone living in Kentucky and can convince them to vote Republican but that’s a real stretch. Those offering an IP Solution might have matched the previous owner of our home who IS a Republican and therefore included our IP Address in their advertisement campaign.

Even if adults who are registered Republicans are living in a household in Kentucky, how do you know that they are even logging on to their computer, laptop or mobile device while in that physical household location? When I get these Republican ads on my personal Facebook page, I just shake my head. Imagine how hard it must have been or a political campaign to raise that money in the first place only to later discover they served ads to Democratic voters living in Indiana. They would be furious, yet it happens all the time because the inaccuracy that IP Targeting presents.

There is a Better Way

If you are willing to invest more into your mobile marketing efforts then a data-driven marketing strategy is the way to go. When we consult with prospect who later become partners, in some cases they have been using a IP vendor and they have been underwhelmed. They had been promised huge results yet they don’t see many new leads.

There are some really good IP Targeting vendors out there, but we hear too many horror stories and that is why we recommend IP Targeting as a last resort. Our approach is different. We match online and offline consumer profile records with their mobile devices so we can serve native advertisements on their mobile devices. Everyone seems handcuffed to they’re mobile devices like me and we are seeing much better Return on Investment (ROI).

When you match mobile devices to consumers it opens up the door to match their media consumption habits, buying behaviors, their passions, and their affiliations. You can target more precisely and on the platforms you know they spend the most time on like their mobile versus desktops and Facebook versus Candy Crush.

I encourage you to investigate a targeted audience on mobile strategy. If you like I am more than happy to share more information with you. Recently, I wrote an eBook making the case for Mobile Audience Targeting. You can download it here and read it on your own if you like!

Known Problems with IP Targeting

School Is Back In Session: Time For Your CX Program Grade

Like millions of other households, the start of September brings the groans from my kids who have to start waking up early again to go to school which is coupled with the promise of homework, tests, and a teacher grading their efforts.  As an adult, I find myself in the odd position of envy that they get the opportunity to dedicate time to learning new things.  Call me crazy, but I have an ever growing list of cool things I wish I could learn more about which all too often sit on the back burner, while I tend to the immediate needs of home, family, friends, health, and of course work.  This doesn’t mean I don’t spend my fair share of time grading experiences and efforts though.

I have been working in the customer experience space for over 20 years now and I cannot help but grade the experience and the efforts, or lack of efforts, in every place I go and every interaction I have with organizations.  I know I am not alone.

Every consumer is constantly evaluating, grading and telling others about their experiences.  Go online and conduct a search for any organization using positive or negative key words and you could spend a day reading or watching testimonials about recent experiences.  However, since the focus of my career is not on just measuring the outcome of customer interactions but also how to deliberately build the strategy and design of the programs which create those experiences, I am left systematically trying to evaluate what building blocks of the organizations CX program are in place and working, and which ones are absent or not functioning as planned.

CX Grades: Part One

Grocery Store Grouches

Take an example from the last time I went to the grocery store.  The store is bright, attractive, laid out in a fashion which makes the shopping experience engaging for the senses and is stocked with all of the products I need and don’t need.  I have grown accustomed to this store which is not far from my home.  What is also customary is the bi-polar service experience I get between the pharmacy and check-out.  In the pharmacy they know me by name, quickly pull up my records and notify me about changes to prescriptions or needing to call my physician for extending authorizations on my prescriptions.  The checkout process, while not a bad experience, is on the other end of the continuum of personal.  As my turn arrives to check out I am “sort of” greeted by a young, high-school-aged cashier dressed with a partially untucked, wrinkled white shirt and loosely tied black tie.  This person may make eye contact, but probably not, ask me in a monotone voice if I found everything I need and if I want paper or plastic.  As they are checking me out they frequently have a conversation with the bagger about something unrelated to anything going on in the store.

GRADES

Hiring: A (Pharmacist) & C (Cashier/Bagger)

Pharmacist:  I have only seen our pharmacist in the pharmacy, but Kim knows me and my family like we were neighbors.  She expresses genuine concern for our health and knows us by name.

Cashiers/Baggers:  While it may not be high-paying job, most cashiers don’t appear to be happy about being there, let alone genuinely care about their customers, certainly not enough to go beyond a required verbal script and attire guidelines to the point of personalizing their greeting or simply ironing their shirt as if they were attending something important.  While it is easy to use the “it is a low paying entry level position” as an excuse for low performance I would recommend you watch the inspirational story of a bagger name Johnny.

Training: C

Regardless of the genuine care, they are obviously all trained on what they should do and say, and what they are supposed to wear, to the point it becomes predictable.  The training is pretty simple and it would appear the employees are not encouraged to stray much from their training.

Processes: A (pharmacy) & C (check-out)

They both clearly have processes in place and both areas apply them.  It would appear there is a greater use of empowerment in the pharmacy than in the check-out area as the cashier is not even allowed to sell me (decades beyond 21) a bottle of wine without asking for an ID and keying in the date of birth.  My father used to get annoyed that the check-out personnel would automatically apply the senior citizen discount but needed to ask him for ID to purchase alcohol. 

Rewards & Recognition:  D

There is little evidence that employees are encouraged to strive to create a good customer experience.

VOC Program: C

While they have a VOC program in place the process is cumbersome and as noted online, frequently not functioning.  The questions are fairly general and unlikely to pinpoint improvement needs though there is an open ended section.

What grades do you give your local grocery stores when it comes to CX? Comment below with your worst and best experiences.

School Is Back In Session: Time For Your CX Program Grade

How to Modify Your Communication Style

Each communication style is equally important and valuable. However, a particular style might be more effective in a given situation:

• If you’re trying to brainstorm, an Expresser style is valuable.
• If you’re trying to explain a process to a group of engineers, a Thinker style is valuable.
• If you want to build trust, a Harmonizer style is useful.
• If you’re trying to deal with a crisis, a Director style can be valuable.

You can “flex” other styles like you would a muscle.

The more you practice flexing different styles in communication with other people, the stronger a communicator you become. Some people find adopting a different style to be unnatural. And it can be. The trick is to act yourself into a way of believing. By adopting the body language, the style of speaking, the mannerisms of a particular style, you will find it less of a stretch than you think.

Here are some tips when speaking to each style:

The Rule of the Center

The Greek philosopher Aristotle espoused a simple philosophy of life.

“All things in moderation,”

Being too courageous meant you were foolhardy. Being too talkative, you were a gossip. If you were too quiet, you were a recluse. The best course lay in the center.

The Matrix has a law of the center, too.

Here’s how it works: Put your finger on one of the four middle styles. You’ll see that your finger is surrounded by eight different styles. Therefore, if you occupy a middle square, you are adjacent to eight different styles without moving at all.

Now touch one of the corner styles. Your finger is surrounded by only three styles. By touching the mid-perimeter styles, you’ll see they border on five styles.

What does this mean?

If you need to communicate frequently with many different styles, then it helps to modify your style toward the center of the Matrix. The Rule of the Center is a formula for being successful in many settings with many different people.

If you’re not already there, the Rule of the Center will initially seem uncomfortable. For example, if you are an Initiator who moves toward Organizer, there will be a period of adjustment. After all, it’s contrary to your nature to think things over and ask questions before you speak your mind. But as your symbolic step begins to pay off, the inner discomfort will disappear.

Here’s a set of rules to help you apply the Rule of the Center:

Conclusion

Modifying your style of communicating will ensure a clearer line of communication between you and another person. Once you know someone’s place on the Matrix, a single step can mean the difference between a conversation that falters and one that exceeds your expectations.

Some people find adopting a different style to be unnatural. And it can be.

The trick is to…

“Act yourself into a way of believing.”

By adopting the body language, the style of speaking, the mannerisms of a particular style, you will find it less of a stretch than you think.

People who learn how to modify their styles with each other can form permanent changes in their relationship. Often it helps to codify this change in the form of ground rules for each person. Most of the time, these ground rules need not be brought up. But if a touch =y subject is on the table, it can benefit both parties to review the ground rules first.

Master communicators can flow easily from one style of communicating to another.  Often their natural style lies somewhere in the center of the Matrix. While not everyone needs to be a master communicator, leaders will invariably benefit by learning how to effortlessly shift from one style to the next.

This post was originally published at CommunicationStyles.org.

How to Modify Your Communication Style

Your Sales Team: A Major Opportunity For Content Promotion Many Brands Miss

It’s 10:13 AM. Your organization’s latest press release has just been distributed to newsrooms and online channels. You’ve targeted your lists of key journalists, influencers and bloggers with direct emails. You’ve shared your content across your brand’s social and owned channels.

You flawlessly executed your latest PR or marketing campaign, yet you feel like you’re still missing something.

Have you reached out to your sales team?

There has been a lot written about the breaking down of silos between marketing and corporate communications departments. That improved alignment is leading to a boom in great content and stories, helping both departments better reach traditional media, bloggers, and online influencers, as well as direct prospects and clients.

But has anyone in your organization started to crack the wall between these teams and your sales department?

Mirroring recent shifts in PR and marketing best practices, there have been major changes over the past five years in how sales professionals – especially in the B2B space – operate to meet their revenue targets.

Here are a few recommendations on how to leverage your content and communications to help your sales teams bring added value to their customer outreach.

Social Selling: Your sales staff is digitally connected via LinkedIn, Twitter and potentially other valuable social networks and groups. Even if each only has an average number of connections, the total reach can be significant and likely greater than the potential of your branded company profiles.

So how can marketers and communications professionals support this channel?

One of the easiest ways is simply repackaging some of the messaging and assets you’re utilizing in other key channels, such as press releases, content from your corporate social media accounts, pay-per-click copy, whitepapers, infographics, and videos.

Sales representatives who are utilizing social networks in the right way are starved for engaging content that could open a conversation with a potential customer.

Identifying and providing social media assets that are timely and interesting can help empower your sales team.

Take this one step further and provide sample text for sharing on multiple networks like their Twitter and LinkedIn. Providing sample text increases the likelihood they’ll use the content, and keeps reps on brand.

Credibility Building: According to Forrester Research, 56% of B2B buyers would prefer not to interact with a sales rep prior to the transaction point.

This creates a huge challenge for both gaining the interest of new business prospects as well as creating conversations with existing clients who are operating in “business as usual” mode.

So how can marketing and sales work together to address this challenge? With each individual rep working to create interest and develop credibility within their own market, there’s a lot of recreating the wheel when it comes to outreach.

By working directly with top sellers and sales leaders, communications teams can develop key email messaging templates with supporting multimedia and thought leadership assets.

Point-Of-Sale Enablement: While many things in the sales world are changing –meeting face to face with customers and prospects remains key to moving complex sales forward.

What is changing is the way these conversations are happening and the way messaging is being delivered in these meetings.

With buyers becoming more and more self-educated with digital search and the plethora of information available online, it’s becoming more and more important to move away from the traditional PowerPoint conversation and move to a flexible model to support sales conversations.

With tablet adoption on the rise, your sales team can more easily share your brand’s press releases, multimedia, case studies, ROI data and other valuable content with prospects.

When planning and designing your branded content, keep your sales teams’ conversations and technical needs in mind.

Packaging multiple assets together in a cohesive, responsively designed content piece, such as these multimedia news releases and audience engagement platforms, can go a long way in supporting your sales reps’ messaging during a client meeting.

These are just three ways that you can repurpose much of the work you’re already doing to deliver great value to your sales teams. And don’t be afraid to start small! It doesn’t take a grand plan to make an impact.

Any little bit you can do that helps a salesperson even set a meeting will begin to bring you into closer alignment, deliver more direct revenue contributions and meet your brand’s business goals.

To keep up with today’s and tomorrow’s business demands, corporate communications professionals need to reconsider how they plan their campaigns. Get more PR and marketing strategy tips in our white paper High-Impact PR Planning that Drives ROI & Supports Demand Generation.

Your Sales Team: A Major Opportunity For Content Promotion Many Brands Miss