Shoestring marketing tip #1: local online reviews

The culture of reviewing

I read an online review yesterday for a self-help book that actually said this:

I only read the first page. As a buyer with an obvious need, I was looking for an answer from the first page. guess i have to finish the book before my problems could be solved.

Fortunately, the site where the review was posted, also provided this useful information:

0 of 30 people found this review helpful.

This online retailer — all right, it’s Amazon.com — also gives reviewers the opportunity to comment on other people’s reviews, not that anyone bothered to comment on this particular, and, might I say, remarkably stupid review.  But I found myself spending a good half hour reading other reviews and the resulting back-and-forth discussions on the reviews.  For the most part, the conversations were thoughtful and respectful of the other reviewers, if not of the product being reviewed.

People always want to make their opinions known.  Now, research is showing that people’s opinions are becoming increasingly important to other people who are looking for information about something they’re considering spending money on.

The more information people need, the more online reviews matter

If your product is Mountain Dew or McDonalds, people probably already know what they think about what you’re selling.  They are already consuming your product or they know people who are or if they’ve just fallen off the moon they can get up to speed pretty quickly because your products are everywhere — on television, in print, on everyone’s lips.

But what if your product is plumbing services or residential painting or a new restaurant where that salon used to be?  A study published in the March 2010 Journal of Marketing suggests that the less well-known a product is, the more influential online reviews are.

The more niche-y your company, product, or service is, the more relevant online reviews can be.  Here are some tips for cultivating a strong local online review presence:

1. Check the local directories for Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, Yelp, etc., and add your company’s information, if it’s not already listed there.
2. Make certain that every one of your customers has an experience worth writing home about.  Literally.
3. Make it as easy as possible for people to post good reviews for your business.  I don’t mean just asking people to write reviews for you.  Even if they want to, even if they mean to, there are a lot of distractions between your door and their computer that might derail their good intentions.   Some ideas for getting them to the keyboard:

Post a sign at check-out that says, If you were unhappy with our service, please tell us. If you were happy, please write an online review for us.

Print the URLs of the sites where you’d like to see more reviews onto cards for cashiers to slip into shopping bags.  Make sure the cashier asks, first, “Would you be willing to post a review online of your experience with us?”

Follow up transactions with customer satisfaction surveys through an online instrument like SurveyMonkey.  At the end of the survey, ask if the respondent is willing to post a brief review online, and set up the survey to automatically take him/her there if the answer is yes.

If you belong to a referral-passing group like BNI that makes testimonial-sharing a regular practice, ask the people who offer up testimonials for your business to post those testimonials online where someone else can see them.

The good news is, the more niche-y your product is, the more salient reviews can be.  The bad news is that one review can take you down.  Here’s some advice about how to respond to bad reviews.

Have an approach for cultivating online reviews that has worked for you?   I’d love to hear about it!

Bonus:  If you have a few minutes to read some completely unhelpful and hilarious product reviews, check out some of the 1,700+ reviews for the amazing Mountain Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee on Amazon.com

We see what we look for

True story #1:

I have a friend who is a dedicated patron of the small shops in a nearby village with a thriving art community.  When I go out with her, she requires that we stop at every blessed shop and strike up a conversation with every single shopkeeper.  Except the glass shop.  And the glass shop is beautiful — there’s always a cat sunning in the window, and its walls and shelves are adorned with lovely one-of-a-kind lamps, gazing balls, statues, stained glass windows, and blown ornaments.  One might surmise my friend dislikes glass, or has had some blowup with the owner that keeps her away.

One Friday afternoon, we stopped in front of the shop.  I asked her if we were going to go in.  “You go in first,” she said, “and make sure that cat is shut away.”

True story #2 (thanks to Ananonva.com):

“A pair of flamingo chicks at London Zoo have been left ‘terrified’ of the colour pink.

The birds, named Little and Large, developed the phobia after being fed using a pink sock puppet.

Zoo staff are now hoping they get over their aversion before developing their distinctive colour, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Keeper Alison Brown, 30, said: ‘To try to encourage Little to feed by himself we’ve been wearing a hand puppet which imitates adult flamingos, but unfortunately he was really terrified of the socks.’

Young flamingos take up to a year to turn pink, after they shed their grey downing feathers, so Little and Large are not afraid of themselves or each other – so far.

Ms Brown added: ‘We’ll just have to hope they get used to the colour pink, but I’m sure it won’t be a problem. Once Little gets his own pink colour he’ll be fine.'”

I wonder if it occurred to the zoo staff to find out if is really the color pink that terrifies the chicks.  Maybe what the chicks are afraid of are the zoo staff.  Or sock puppets.  (Come to think of it, who isn’t afraid of sock puppets?)

Moral:

When we observe behavior, whether it’s the behavior of buyers or the behavior of birds, we tend draw conclusions based on our own preconceptions.  The truth might be right in front of your face, but you won’t see it if you’re looking for something else.

Lesson:

Market researcher Katie Harris of Zebra Bites asked recently, “Are you measuring what you think you’re measuring?”  A related question is, “Are you seeing what you think you’re seeing?”

Let’s say you operate a retail establishment that sells, among other things, pink flamingo sock puppets, targeted to flamingo children.  If these youngsters are terrified of your store, the last thing you want to do is toss out all the pink items if what they’re afraid of is sock puppets.

If you’ve been in business for any period of time, you’ve figured out that what people say and what people do are often two differenct things.  (See my earlier post, Omission Detection.)  What people do will give you greater insights into their values than what they say, but be careful about mind reading when you are trying to figure out why people do what they do.  Connect the dots.  Ask people why.  And then watch their behavior to help you figure out whether they are being truthful with you (and themselves) about why they do what they do.

Only then will you know what decisions you need to make to turn your business into one that your target customer — be they flamingos or families or ailurophobes — want to patronize.

Winning the Yellow Pages War

We interrupt this blog for an important, albeit temporary announcement for readers within earshot of Madison, Wisconsin.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 16, 2009
Contact: Vicky Jones
Phone: 608-218-9005
Email: mail@vickyjones.com

Yellow Pages Seminar Will Help Businesses Avert Costly Mistakes

[June 16, 2009, MADISON, WI] Vicky Jones, principal consultant of Victoria Jones Strategic Marketing Communications, LLC, is leading a half day seminar for business owners, entitled “Winning the Yellow Pages War,” on Tuesday, June 30, and Wednesday, July 1. The seminar cost of $95 includes materials and refreshments.

Marketing consultant Vicky Jones says that this is the time of year when the telephone directory sales reps start knocking on doors and locking up advertising contracts for the coming year. “’Winning the Yellow Pages War’ will help business owners ask their reps the right questions and make good decisions regarding directory advertising and listings.”

The seminar will cover:

• Why most yellow pages ads fail
• What people look for in the yellow pages
• How to decide if you really need the yellow pages
• How to avoid the biggest mistakes yellow pages advertisers make
• How to choose the right directory for your business
• How to create yellow pages ads that generate more calls
• How to get ready to talk with your yellow pages rep

The seminar will also provide practical, hands-on exercises to help participants determine the role that directory listings should play in their businesses’ marketing plans, the essential elements of a strong directory ad, and tips for tracking results.

Jones says she developed the seminar because there is much at stake when a business owner considers purchasing a listing in the yellow pages of a telephone directory. For many, it is the biggest advertising investment they will make all year, and once they’ve made the commitment, there’s no turning back. Unlike other media, which allow the advertiser to make changes to an ad or withdraw it if it’s not working, directories are published on an annual cycle, and the advertiser is billed every month for a year, regardless of whether an ad is producing the desired results, business has fallen off, or he/she has run into cash flow problems.

Bob Adams of Adams Media tells the story of a service business owner who had to close his doors because he couldn’t afford the monthly bill for his Yellow Pages advertising. “This may be an extreme case,” says Adams, ” But Yellow Pages advertising salespeople are among the best in the industry and among the best paid, and they convince many small business people to buy larger Yellow Pages ad space than they should.” (Source: BusinessTown.com)

Jones says she has heard similar horror stories from her own clients, but her concern is not only that business owners often buy larger ads than they can afford. “The most expensive kind of directory ads are the ones that don’t work,” she says. “Business owners deserve good advice, not only about size, but also about headlines, design, page placement, and content that differentiates their businesses from the competitors whose ads appear alongside theirs. And they need good counsel regarding whether directory advertising is even the best medium for them – advice from someone who isn’t in the yellow pages business.”

“Winning the Yellow Pages War” will be presented in the training room at Jones’s office at 330 S. Whitney Way, Suite 201, Madison, Wisconsin. To accommodate business owners’ schedules, the seminar will be offered on two consecutive days at different times: Tuesday, June 30, from 8:30am-noon; Tuesday, June 30, from 5:30-9:00pm; and Wednesday, July 1, from 1:00pm-4:30pm. The seminar cost of $95 includes materials and refreshments. Seating is limited, and interested business owners are encouraged to register for “Winning the Yellow Pages War” by June 26 to secure their place at the table.  Download a flyer.

Victoria Jones Strategic Marketing Communications, LLC, is an independent marketing consulting firm that offers assistance to for- and non-profit organizations in positioning, strategic marketing planning, and tactical implementation. The firm’s principal, Vicky Jones, has been helping companies, large and small, plan, develop, and execute strategic, integrated marketing communications programs for over twenty five years. The firm is neither affiliated with nor sponsored by any advertising medium or directory publication. For information about Victoria Jones Strategic Marketing Communications, LLC, contact Vicky Jones at 608-218-9005 or mail@vickyjones.com.

Rethink doing it yourself

A group of boiler installers were venting in an online forum. (Usernames and grammar have been tampered with to protect the innocent.)

HEATMAN: These do-it-yourselfers really burn me up.
DALE49: They think that because they have a box of tools and internet access they know how to install a furnace.
GASSER: Are they trying to prove something or just do the job on the cheap?
DALE49: If they’re trying to save money, they’re deluded.
HANDY1: It never fails that whenever some guy gets it into his head to DIY, he ends up making a mess and everything costs more than it would have if he had just called a pro in the first place.
HEATMAN: And then they gripe about how much the job ends up costing. Like it’s my fault.
GASSER: Amen, brother.
DALE49: Maybe we just make it look too easy. We need to let people know how much school we had to go to, all the experience we have.
GASSER: That reminds me. Do you guys think that it’s better to do email marketing or post cards?
HANDY1: Email is a lot cheaper.
HEATMAN: I found a website that’ll let you build postcards online. They have art and everything. All you have to do is type your message.

If I were looking for advice on direct mail versus email marketing, I don’t think a bunch of boiler installers would be my first choice resource.  But what I find most interesting from this exchange is the notion that doing it yourself is misguided if you’re installing a boiler but not if you’re implementing marketing tactics.

Moral: We tend to think that people are making an expensive mistake if they try to do something for themselves that we have expertise in.  But we have blinders on when it comes to our own decisions.

Lesson: Find your expertise and make that your personal focus in your business.  This does not mean that this is the only thing your business should focus on; as a business owner, you need to understand the importance of managing your books, attracting customers, and drafting solid contracts.  But unless you are an expert in bookkeeping, marketing, and law, it is likely that your resources of time/energy/money are better spent doing what you are great at and paying experts in these other areas to do what they are great at.

For example:

• An attorney is having trouble with her computer.  She’s pretty smart and knows a lot about computers.  She could probably figure it out in a couple of hours.  Or, she could call her Mac guy and have him take care of the problem in thirty minutes.  She has to pay him, but now she can use that one-and-a-half hours she was going to spend fixing her computer to do networking or billable work.
• A plumber is considering what to do with the Yellow Pages this year.  It’s his biggest marketing expenditure, and the Yellow Pages rep  — whose expertise, by the way, is in persuading terrified business owners to buy bigger and more expensive ads than they did the previous year — has offered to give him free help in designing his ad.  With a several thousand dollar invoice staring him in the face, the plumber could save money by doing it himself with the help of the YP staff.  Or, he could find someone a marketing expert who can help him decide whether he really needs a YP ad, how much of an ad he needs, and how the ad ought to be crafted to get the best results.  Yes, he has to pay her, but he might end up spending less on his YP ad and get an ad that brings him more business.
• A caterer wants to grow her business serving corporate lunches.  She could advertise on this one radio station she likes.  Or she could pay a advertising expert to help her find the medium — radio, television, internet, print, skywriting, direct mail, doorhangers, etc. — that her corporate lunch planners are most likely to respond to.  And, if she doesn’t know exactly who it is in corporations makes the decision to engage caterers, or what messages are most likely to push their buttons, she can hire a marketer and/or a market researcher to find out.  Yes, she will have to pay these people to learn what needs to be learned, but that’s better than spending a lot of money on advertising that doesn’t reach the right people with the right message.
• An appliance repair shop needs a new roof.  The owner is a handy guy; he could figure out how to reshingle the roof himself.  Or he could hire a roofer, who will come out with a crew to get the job done quickly, while he spends his time in his shop strengthening his reputation for speedy and reliable service.

As smart as you are, the fact that you watch television doesn’t mean you are an expert in advertising.  The fact that you know how to insert clipart into a Word document doesn’t mean you are an expert in graphic design.  The fact that you speak English does not make you an expert copywriter.

Sometimes, especially lately, we have more time than money, and doing it ourselves seems the most prudent path to take.  When you’re trying to save money by doing it yourself, remember that the most expensive marketing is marketing that doesn’t work.

f u cn rd ths…

Apocrypha has it that Tolkien’s first draft of The Hobbit was written in Elfish.  He showed it proudly to a buddy of his who said, “That’s brilliant, Ronald, old chap.  Trouble is, nobody can read it but you.”

Moral: People shouldn’t have to learn a new language to figure out what the heck you’re talking about.

Lesson:  Every business, from cheesemaking to accounting, uses jargon.  It provides shorthand for note-taking and helps us make our meaning clear when we’re talking with our colleagues.  Every one of us gets caught up in the language of our business.

There are only three reasons to use language this is incomprehensible to your prospects and customers:  (1) you’re clueless, (2) you’re lazy, and/or (3) you want to demonstrate how much smarter you are than they.

But your customers shouldn’t need an advanced degree in [insert your profession here] in order to understand what you do or to communicate with you.  Are you in business to make people’s lives easier or harder?

For one thing, most people won’t work that hard — see my first post, “Don’t assume” — and will likely go looking for a vendor easier to talk and listen to.

For another thing, it limits the range of people you can work with to people who are already expert enough in your field that they can speak your jargon.  (Besides, if they know so much, why would they need to hire you?)

Do this: Pull up your web site and plop someone in front of it who doesn’t know what you do.  Ask her to point out the words, phrases, and acronyms she doesn’t understand.  Then translate those words into plain English (or whatever common language your audience speaks).  Do the same thing with your brochures, selling scripts, and PowerPoint presentations.

Don’t worry that converting your communications from jargon to English will “dumb down” your image.  Intelligent people appreciate clarity just as much as stupid people do.

(Thanks for Mark Anderson for this cartoon.)

Cartoons by Andertoons

For Love of Cat

Concerned about occasional customer complaints about pricing, a specialized veterinary clinic was at a loss. It wasn’t like the staff were all spending their giant paychecks on Jaguars and Italian shoes. The clinic was constantly reinvesting in state-of-the art equipment and continuing education for technicians, assistants, and veterinarians.  The vets donated tons of of time to the international boards, state veterinary school, and local shelters.

And every cat who came in to the clinic received unparalleled care — before an appointment ends, she will have been seen by a veterinary assistant, a veterinary technician, and the veterinarian. If a cat needed surgery, there were always a vet and two vet techs working the procedure, not just the vet and an assistant.

If only everyone knew the value of what they were paying for!  Surely the complaints would stop.  So the clinic began posting its credentials.  Diplomas, commendations, awards covered the walls.  And some people kept complaining.

Worried about losing clients, the clinic did a survey of pricing of other, non-specialty vets around the area and cut some of its prices.  Within a couple of months, it was operating in the red. It didn’t know how to cut its prices further without sacrificing service. It was determined not to sacrifice service.

And yet people were still complaining.

Almost as an act of desperation, they agreed to pay for some focus groups. I told them that I wanted a list of their favorite clients, and a list of the people who would be their favorite clients if only they weren’t bitching so much about prices.  I said, “Let’s see what the difference is between the two groups. Then we can go out and look for more people like the ones in the non-complaining group (we’ll call them Group A) and let the complainers (Group B) take their business to the cheap vets, since they don’t appreciate you anyway.”

The vet expected to find a difference in income, education, marital status, proximity to the clinic, gender, presence of children at home.  What we found was this:

Group A: “My 16-year old diabetic cat needs injections every day.  Last Christmas, we called a family meeting and we had a vote: Christmas presents or medicine for the cat.  We voted medicine for the cat.”

Group B: “Are you nuts?  It’s a cat.”

There it was.  People’s willingness to pay high prices for veterinary care wasn’t about how much they valued the veterinarian.  It was about how much they valued the cat.  They weren’t spending money on veterinary services; they were spending money on the cat.

The clinic discovered through this process that it wasn’t just in the business of providing health care for cats; it was in the business of keeping a family’s beloved cat happy, healthy, and in the family for as long as possible.  It came to understand that its “patients” weren’t just the cats, but the cats’ owners as well, who needed to have their relationships with their cats supported and affirmed.

The veterinary clinic would never have learned this by sending out a survey, because the survey questions would have been developed in line with what the vet thought was most important — credentials, expertise, experience.  What was most important to its clients, though, was their relationship with this valued member of the family.

Learning this created a whole new marketing opportunity for the Cat Care Clinic: to groom “perfect” clients by helping foster deep bonds between pets and their owners early in the pet’s life.  Now, when you go to the Cat Care Clinic with your brand new kitten, everyone who isn’t otherwise occupied rushes to the waiting room to have a peek and coo over your find. The proud cat owner puffs up her chest and thinks proudly, yes, I did indeed find the most adorable kitten ever, didn’t I?  (Granted, the clinic staff were already doing that, which is why the non-complainers loved this clinic in the first place.  One man in the focus group had said, “I go to the Cat Care Clinic because they don’t make you feel crazy for loving your cat.”)

Then the assistant pulls out a camera and takes the kitten’s picture — and hands you a baby book to paste the picture into.

All around the office walls, little quizzes are posted which ask questions like: What does it mean when your cat walks with its tail straight up in the air? How does purring happen? What does it mean when your cat turns her ears around? All of the questions are intended to start an owner paying attention to the quirks and personality of her cat, to begin forging that bond.  Now there are very few clients of this clinic who would scoff,  Are you nuts? It’s a cat!

Moral: Pricing issues are hardly ever about price — they’re about value.  If people are talking about price, it’s because you yet haven’t tapped in to what it is they truly care about.

Even if the clinic had suspected that love of cat was playing a significant role in owners’ attitudes toward price, it still would probably not have learned what it needed to learn from a survey.  If it were to ask, for example, for people to rate how much they love their cats on a scale of one to five, almost everyone would surely have answered “five.”  But the trouble with surveys and scales is that one person’s “five” is another person’s “Are you nuts?  It’s a cat.” You can’t learn anything about love by asking people to rate something on a scale of one to five.  The only way you can find out about love is by listening to people’s stories.

Lesson: Marketing isn’t just about promotions and advertising.  It is about giving people a terrific experience that is relevant to your business and their desires.

Notice that none of the stuff the clinic is doing now has anything to do with what we think of as “marketing.”  That’s because marketing isn’t about telling people what to buy.  It’s about connecting what people want with what you have to offer.

Think of every experience people have with your business as “marketing.”  Yes, you need high quality to stay in the game.  But that’s not the only thing people are paying for.

Junior Jones

Tip: My pets have better health insurance than I do.  I get it from Veterinary Pet Insurance.

Brown on brown

“This is beautiful!” one of the advertising people exclaimed.  “It should definitely be in the running for first prize.”  The three other advertising guys agreed.  This brochure was, indeed, a thing of beauty.  It was the shining crown of this advertising competition.

Then why was the group still there, arguing about it?  Because the marketing person disagreed.

It was late.  Everyone was hungry.  Tempers were getting short.  “What is your problem?” one of the advertising guys finally demanded.

The marketing person heaved a big sigh.  “It’s brown on brown,” she said.

“That’s one of the qualities that makes it so beautiful!”

“It’s a brochure for a nursing home.  The target is the old person they’re trying to get to move into the nursing home.”

“So?”

“So, it’s printed on tan paper in brown ink in 9 point type.”

“So?”

“The target reader is not going to be able to read it!”

Moral: No matter how beautiful your marketing materials are, if they can’t do what they’re supposed to do — communicate — they don’t deserve a prize.

Lesson: It doesn’t do any good any good to tell a compelling story if nobody can get it.  Your first job is to make certain that your words can be received and comprehended.  Colin Wheildon’s research found that the harder you make people work to figure out what it is you are saying, the less likely people are to comprehend what you’ve said — that is, provided you haven’t already lost them before they’ve reached the end of the page.  The effectiveness of your words depends on their being conveyed in a way that supports your meaning.   Your words are only a part of the “story” you are telling about your business.  When people are reading your words on a printed page, scanning them on a computer screen, or hearing them on the radio or television, they are also experiencing:

• Readability — how easy/difficult it is to discern the words, based on your choice of typefaces, font sizes and colors, background colors, placement on the page…
• Language — how easy/difficult it is to figure out what you’re saying, based on your tone, accent, use of colloquialisms, the complexity of your sentences, the formality/informality of your approach…
• Visuals — the stories told by the photos, illustrations, colors, designs, and moving images you use…
• Kinesthetic — the weight and substance of the paper your messages appear on, how loud  your volume is set, the sort of music you use…

Think about the goals of your advertising.  Do you want to win beauty contests or do you want to communicate why, of all the choices people have available to them, they should choose your product/service?  A well-designed advertisement can’t make a weak story strong.  But a poorly-designed advertisement can undermine a strong story — even if it looks beautiful.

Selling mousetraps to people who aren’t shopping for mousetraps

“If a man can … make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yes, if…

• The world thinks it has a mouse problem
• The world is unhappy with the way it is currently trying to manage its mouse problem
• The world has heard of this “better mousetrap”
• The world thinks this mousetrap might be better than what it’s currently doing to manage its mouse problem
• The world believes that the relief this mousetrap will bring is what the inventor is charging for it.
• The world is unhappy enough with its mouse problem and thinks that this mousetrap is a better-enough and reasonably-priced-enough solution that it is motivated to get its tired butt off the sofa, pull on its boots, and take the time to slog through the woods looking for the house where this inventory of mousetraps is waiting to be distributed.

There are plenty of articles out there about the mousetrap fallacy, and most of them talk about how making a great mousetrap isn’t enough — you need to advertise, you need to launch a major PR campaign, you need to spread the word, you need to print brochures, you need to put up a web site, etc.  In other words, mousetraps don’t sell themselves.

But there’s another issue:  Sometimes your best prospects are shopping for solutions to their mouse problems, but aren’t shopping for mousetraps.

I know whereof I speak because I myself have a mouse problem. His name is Billy, a 5-year-old jet-black cat whose life’s mission seems to be to rid my back yard of every one of its mouse inhabitants, carry said mice into my house, and set them free, where they can spend the rest of their days happily stealing kibble from the cats’ dishes and throwing fat little bacchanals for themselves among the rolls of gift wrap in my downstairs closet.

If you are selling better mousetraps and expect me to find you and recognize in you the answer to my mouse problems, you will likely be disappointed. Not that I have an objection to better mousetraps or that there is anything wrong with your better mousetrap. You might be selling the most exquisitely-designed mousetrap that ever snapped. You might have twelve patents pending, a fistful of five-star reviews from Mouse Traps Today, and Billy Mays screeching your better mousetrap’s merits all over late night television. But if  I am using the internet to help me shop, I will not find you, and not because you haven’t loaded up your website with all the pertinent keywords about mousetraps.

I will not find you, because you are expecting me to type better mousetrap into the Google search bar. I am not. I am typing better cat.

Back in the olden days, when the advertiser was the hunter and the customer was the prey, all we had to do was shout our messages somewhere where someone was likely to hear them, resting assured that she would put two-and-two together and buy what we wanted her to.

Now, with the internet, the customer is more and more often the hunter. We, the marketers who hold the answers to her problems, must do what we can to be found. And we need to understand that although we can solve the problem, and she is looking for a solution to the problem, the customer might not be looking for us. Even if the solution is a better mousetrap, the customer might be looking for something completely different. She might be looking for a better cat or a feisty rat-terrier or an exterminator or poison or an animal trainer or a hypnotherapist (so she can “become one with the mice”).

Moral: If we want to be found, we must be wherever our prospective customer is looking. If we want the customer to buy what we are selling, we must go beyond positioning our mousetrap as the best mousetrap available. We must even go beyond positioning our mousetrap as a solution to our prospect’s burgeoning mouse problem.

Lesson: We must persuade the customer that, of all of the options she is considering, the mousetrap we have invented for her is the solution that she’s been looking for. Even if it’s not the one she has been shopping for.

If your customer calls it a basement, call it a basement

Basements or Plumbers

At a workshop I was running on how to make smart decisions about Yellow Pages advertising, I gave the group an assignment:  Imagine you are a single mom with two school-aged kids.  It’s 9:30 on a Tuesday night, you just got the children into bed, and a pipe has burst in your basement, releasing a flood of smelly gross stuff into your rec room.  Open your Yellow Pages and find help.

The participants opened their directories and, within a few minutes, most had spotted a plumber whose ad might persuade them that he could solve their problem.  One young woman, however, was having difficulty and complained she couldn’t find anything.  I looked over her shoulder.  No wonder she was baffled.  Rather than opening her book to “P” for plumbers, she was looking under “B” for basements.

Basements or Levels

On a separate occasion, a remodeler saw an opportunity: He had decided to focus on basements, establish himself as the expert in this niche, and build a franchise.  But the word “basement” just didn’t sound right to him.  Too downscale, too declasse.  He preferred the term “lower level.”

So he put the words “lower level” into his company’s name.  He put them in his printed materials and all over this web site — the word “basement” was banned.   He instructed his employees and the colleagues in his BNI group to never permit the word “basement” to cross their lips again.

And nobody ever found his website, unless they typed his URL right into the navigation bar.  The reason: when a homeowner goes to Google looking for a contractor to finish or remodel his house’s lower level, what does he type into the search bar?  “Basement.”

Moral: If you want to be found in a print directory like the Yellow Pages or an online directory like the Google database, you need to describe your services using the same words your customer is going to use to look for you, not the words you think your customer should use.

Lesson: Begin with an understanding of where prospective customers will be looking for you.  The young woman in my Yellow Pages seminar will probably never look in the Yellow Pages to solve a flooding basement problem — she’ll look on the internet.  (Good thing she came to my seminar so she’ll know how to make good choices with the YP for her business, considering she doesn’t use the YP herself.)  When she tunes in, though, will she find what she’s looking for?  She will, if a savvy plumber knows she’s going to plug “flooded basement” into the search bar.

Once you know where people are going to look for you, make it your mission to understand the process they will go through to look for you.  Then make it insanely easy for them to find you.  If you’re going after the Yellow Pages user, have a listing in the section of the directory they’ll be looking in.  If you’re going after the web user, load up your page content with keywords that your prospect will use to hunt for a company that does what yours does.  Don’t require your customers to learn your language in order to do business with you.  Speak theirs.

Omission detection

Listen to what customers say. But give credence to what they do.

Let’s say you were a mom.  A market researcher calls you and asks:

What criteria do you use in selecting breakfast cereal for your kids?

What would your answer be?

My first stint out of business school was at a large breakfast cereal company, and this question was asked of thousands of moms by a very reputable and well-meaning market research organization.  The overwhelming answer to the question was, of course, nutrition.

How, then, was the brand group to account for the fact that the number one selling brand at the time was Cap’n Crunch?  Could it be that the major purchasers of breakfast cereals at the time were not moms, but college freshmen?  (No.)  Then what?  Could it be that the moms lied to the researchers?

Well, yes and no.  There are two things going on when researchers research.  The first is that they are asking questions.  The second is that the questions pass through the filters of the people being asked, which changes the answers.  That’s right: The very fact of being asked changes the answer.

Nutrition was important to these moms.  However, there was something more pressing than nutrition, which was what will my kids eat? Nutrition doesn’t do kids any good if it’s just sitting there in the bowl getting soggy.

Then why didn’t they just say that?  Why didn’t they just say that the number one criterion is what my kids will eat, followed by nutrition?  Or that nutrition is most important, but given a choice between nutrition that tastes like sugar and nutrition that tastes like bark, they’ll choose the one their kids will eat?  Or that nutrition and sugar are equally important?

It’s because the market research company was asking a question it didn’t even know it was asking.

Let’s say you were a husband.  Your wife pulls on a new pair of jeans and asks:

Do these jeans make my butt look big?

Any man on the planet knows what the real question is, and it has nothing to do with big butts.  The real question is:  Do you love me?

So, you’re a mom.  A total stranger calls you on the phone and asks:

What criteria do you use in selecting breakfast cereal for your kids?

You know what the real question is, don’t you?  The real question is: Are you a good mom?

The moms in this study gave the answer they thought a good mom would give because they wanted, not only for the researcher to think of them as good moms, but to think of themselves as good moms.

Moral: People don’t necessarily answer questions that tell you who they are, but, rather, who they want to be and who they want you to think they are.  Likewise, their expressed opinions, such as about the importance of nutrition, won’t always augur their choices.  There may be a trump card right under the surface that they haven’t given voice to — or even consciously considered.

Lesson: If you want to get to the heart of why people do what they do, start with the what, and follow with the why. A better set of questions would have been:

• What cereals are in your cabinet right now?  Why those?
• What cereals did your kids eat for breakfast today?  Why those?
• When you go grocery shopping next, which cereals are you likely to buy?  Why those?

Listen to the feedback people give you about your products and services.  But, more important, pay attention to what they do.  That will give you as much insight into their values as anything they will reveal to you through their words.

(c) 2009 Victoria Lynn Jones