Unmasking the Faceless Consumer: The Importance of Relationship Marketing

I take my car to be serviced at the same place every 10,000km, not because they're cheap, because they are not. I go there because of the relationship and the after sales service. Last year, when my radiator did embarassing things on the highway, not only could I call my service company after hours, but they saved me the expense of double towing and sent a guy to my house after work the next day to replace my radiator. To say this was excellent and convenient would be an understatement. And as a woman, who is on the road a lot, the safety and reliability of my vehicle are doubly important, so this type of personal service is a bonus to me.

Sadly, not a lot of organisations understand that there is a person behind the dollar bills which come with a sale. They take your money, and send you on your way with a sense of longing and undone-ness. It's little things like follow up calls, after sales service, seasonal greeting cards which can make or break the relationship your customer chooses to have with your brand. I was pleasantly surprised to go to my bank one year on my birthday and have the teller wish me a happy birthday and give me a cute, albeit generic branded card. But it was the thought and the consideration that set her apart from her sour-faced counterpart in another bank and kept me loyal.

Now you also have  social media, which in its essence is about getting to know people, how brands use it to manage relationships is an issue which can also set one brand apart from the next.

A lot of brands are using social media to drive sales and let's face it, this is the world we live in. We are constantly searching for new and innovative ways to raise our brand's profile and increase consumer behaviour, and social media has been a catalyst in many instances for doing so.

Yesterday I discussed the social media contest and how it has been used by one brand to build its following. The following which it has now been able to create is now a great pool from which to draw out the eager consumer and this is great for the brand. How they now manage these thousands and thousands of people and engage them will be the second part of their social media story.  I don't want to just be one of the thousands, and yes, it may be a challenge to engage everyone, but this is why you embarked on a social media strategy isn't it? And you should now have the resources to properly manage these relationships, if in fact you are eager to form them.

Yes, we constantly hear ROI ROI ROI,  and we translate this in numerical terms - sales, number of customers, etc, but what about MY investment of my trust and my purchasing power in your brand? Where does my Return on Investment manifest itself? Just in your product? I am more likely to stay true to one brand because of the interactions I have had, or the service which they provide. It's the reason I choose one airline over another, or one telecoms provider, or one restaurant. We all want to feel appreciated and special in some small way and not just as a walking wallet. And be it via a follow up call to see if I am pleased with your product, or a DM or email to help me manage my customer issue, how we treat with the faces behind the cash register is important in building the brand and customer loyalty.

It seems almost trite typing it here but in my experience, especially here, it is like rocket science to some people.

How are you building relationships online and offline?

Read More

Friday Peeve: The Black Elephant in the Room

Thanks to Guy #1 and Guy #2, you get this post. It's not a discourse, just an observation but stay tuned when we will have an awesome guest post from one of these gentlemen (you will just have to wait to see which one) about this phenomenon.

So last night I had the privilege at being at a very swanky function (which I almost never made it to but that story is from my lips to God's ears). Decor was gorgeous. Food, fantastic. The general ambience was amazing. Beautiful people, beautiful setting. Great performances. Great friends. Great moments. Except...

For the guy in front of me with the Blackberry who insisted on snapping everything that moved and those things that did  not move as well. I mean....REALLY???

And Lord help me, I was really close to taking out my own Blackberry and taking a photo of how stupid he looked but it seemed too stupid to even be ironic.

As with most of these types of events, the onus was on mingling and networking, in addition to being sold the creativity of talented people. So I would have expected this dude, like others, to be meeting people, commenting on how amazing the place looked, perhaps exchanging business cards, making some contacts. Nope. His aim in life was to take photos with this phone of his. It was as though noone else in the room existed unless you were the subject of the photo. What was most annoying was when the performance started and by this time, people had started to get loose and were having fun and shaking a little rump. Not my buddy, BlackBerry Avenger. He was snapping away. When his hand and his 6th finger aka the BB blocked my view of the great performance in front of me, that's when it became extremely personal.

I mean...why? I know I touched on this earlier this week - this phenomenon with technology, to the point that we lose sight of the things happening around us - but this guy was the poster child. He even took photos of the REAL photographers doing REAL photography. I am sure today his friends have in their Facebook feeds "Jack's night out - 100 new photos".

Pyscho!

I would hate to be a boss who sends my people to an event to network and instead of doing that they get lost in their BBs and miss the big picture. And there it is - missing the bigger picture. Relationships are under threat if these people attached to their smartphones are set to take over the world. Be it personal relationships - because the Avenger came with a significant other, who was forced to dance alone - or professional relationships. So while the technology strengthen social networks, it seems to, in some cases, adversely impact and denigrate relationships.

I also have a problem with the intrusiveness of camera phones. I  once caught a weird, pervy man trying to take a photo of me with his phone. He insisted he was not, that he was sending a text but one does not normally hold a phone like this...

to send a text message, do you?  He needed to read this.

It seems many people do not realise that their actions, besides being acutely annoying, also often can leave them on the periphery of human interaction. And while photography is an art I admire and wish I were more passionate about, it is now being cannibalised by people like BB Avenger. Mobile phone photography is not always, but can become a menace depending on the person yielding the weapon of choice - be it Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia etc. And while you may share a deep initmacy and a strong, unbreakable bond with your device, it should not affect my enjoyment or impact on my comfort level. This is an awesome statement that describes the beast:

"Public places are commonly “colonized” by the private lives of mobile individuals"

I will further revise and say "public places are being terrorised by mobile individuals". And while mobile technology has brought communications to a state of "anywhere, anytime", please, let's not take it that literally. It should NOT be anywhere everytime. I think we all have a personal responsibility when it comes to mobile phones and the accompanying tools. Let's use discretion and let's take a load off and get a grip when it comes to brandishing these devices in the public domain where other people are trying to have fun. Silly us for wanting that.

Read More

High School Reunion, Part Deux

Though we have been dragging our feet a bit, a few friends and I are trying to get our high school class together after wow...years! Facebook was the catalyst because it was through Facebook that we got reconnected with each other. And it is also through Facebook that we are attempting for a second time to have a reunion before we hit 60!

The first time we just had a discussion board and that was it. Just a lot of back and forth via a disussion board. How exciting could that have been, right? This time, I am hoping that I could utilise the tools we have today to full effect to make people excited about it and get flights booked, tickets bought and diets started. lol.

I recorded a hurried podcast this morning for the ladies, but it would be nice to use social media for something other than work for a change and engage people and hopefully get them excited about something that should matter to them. Selling something that matters to you personally is always more fun, isn't it? And having something other than work to explore ideas on is also a great stress buster and sanity saver.

Looking forward to it! And I will let you know, if you want to know, how it goes. Ideas are always welcome though.

Read More