Monthly Archives: December 2015

December 16, 2015 · 10:49 am

Letting Customers Win

I know we talk a lot in this space about being customer centric and how that paradigm shift can result in great sales.  It’s always nice when I can find evidence to back up that assertion, and I have some for you today.  Adweek ran the following as part of their eye-opening digital marketing stats a few days back:

English: Nissan car dealership

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Port City Nissan, Portsmouth, N.H., recently ran a campaign in which it claimed a 49 percent closing rate on the automotive leads it generated online using Dealertrack‘s system. The key to such success is pretty simple, Dealertrack told Adweek: Create as much digital transparency as possible when it comes to every car and give consumers a ton of control over the shopping experience.

I don’t care what you’re selling, online or off:  a 49% conversion rate is off the charts.  You can see the difference as soon as you bring up their website.  There are three very clear paths put in front of you – I know what I want (you search by make, model, and year), I know my budget (search by price), and I just want to browse (which is subdivided into price ranges).  But as it turns out, it’s not the website per se.  My local Nissan dealer is using the same template.  The key seems to be the Dealertrack system, which is basically an integrator of all of the dealerships activities.  They start with marketing and include CRM, inventory management, and all related functions.  They key is the system’s emphasis on this statement:

Customer transactions have always been the lifeblood of your business, and in today’s more transparent retailing landscape, they’re where reputations and long-lasting relationships begin.

Exactly.  They are trying to build increased customer trust, an area in which car dealerships have historically not been leaders.  Tying all the systems together to maintain that focus has been a critical component in delivering great results. Creating transparency and control for the consumer is key. The statement above is true no matter what your business, along with the willingness to make the consumer your partner.  After all, they’re paying the bills, so when they win, so do you, right?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, digital media

Tagged as , , , , ,

December 15, 2015 · 10:08 am

A Gift For Whom?

I received an email yesterday from a golf-related company with which I’ve done business as a consumer. I’m not going to name names, but I’ll bet you’ve had a similar experience as the one I’m about to describe, and you can feel free to hit up the comments, ratting out similar offenders. The note came with the subject line A Genius Gift For You. The body of the mail left me wondering exactly for whom the gift was intended.

English: Santa Claus with a little girl Espera...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Enclosed in the mail was the following offer:

Tell us how (name of their product) helped to make your 2015 golf season great and be entered to win a $200 Amazon Gift Card.

So you’d like me to write you a love letter (which I assume will also require me to give you use of whatever I write in promotional materials) praising your product in return for a chance – and only a chance – to win something? How is that a gift, exactly? When your Aunt Sally comes in with a holiday gift, she doesn’t say “Hey, stroke me out a recommendation for promotion I can give to my boss and just maybe you can be entered in a lottery with all your cousins to win a nice sweater,” does she?

This isn’t bad advertising.  It’s not the equivalent of those horrible Michael Bolton in the snow ads from a couple of years back that never seemed to go away nor some of the random Santa appearances you see in an attempt to holiday up an otherwise bad campaign.  No, this  more Scrooge-like.  Do you want to give me a golf related holiday gift?  Maybe find 10 fantastic game improvement golf videos on Youtube, build a branded playlist, and send me the link?  Improve your game this Christmas!  Don’t like that?  How about a real sweepstakes then, one that doesn’t require me to spend even a second conjuring up what just might be  false praise? Enter me automatically and maybe even offer multiple prizes?

A gift or a present is an item given to someone without the expectation of payment, according to the dictionary.  This isn’t a gift.  Me sending along this free consulting advice to the marketing contact in the email – that’s a gift!  You want in?

2 Comments

Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints, Huh?

Tagged as , , , ,

December 14, 2015 · 11:42 am

Pro Choice

I never had cable TV until I moved into New York City after college.  You needed the cable there because the big buildings interfered with the over-the-air signal.  Suddenly, a new world opened up, as I had access to several more channels, including HBO.

Cable tv

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had more choice, and I was all for it.  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one either. Cable television contributed to the substantial drop in the broadcast network viewing from 1983 to 1994 when weekly broadcast audience shares dropped from 69 to 52 while basic cable networks’ shares rose from 9 to 26 during the same period according to A. C. Nielsen.  What had been a 6 or 7 channel universe now had almost 40!  100 channels was a dream for down the road and today’s world over several hundred channels seemed impossible.  But of course, as The Boss reminds us, there were 57 channels and nothing on.

Fast forward to today.  Our T/V (television/video) choices are unlimited.  The only real choice we need to make is who is going to do the programming – us or the channel’s programming department.  When we do it, we can watch what we want when we choose to do so.  We can binge on an entire season over a day and we probably won’t have to be interrupted by nearly as much advertising.  Allowing the channel to program our viewing means that those of us who don’t choose to make a decision about programming need not.  We can watch T/V as it traditionally was done – passively.

This changed environment has led to cord-cutters and cord-nevers.  After all, when 75% of people just want a “light” package of channels, paying more for the hundred the cable company chooses to carry seems silly.  As eMarketer predicts:

In 2015, there will be 4.9 million US households that once paid for TV services but no longer do, a jump of 10.9% over last year. And that growth will accelerate in the coming years, with the number of cord-cutting households jumping another 12.5% in 2016. In fact, by the end of next year, the number of US households subscribing to cable and satellite will drop below 100 million…Also noteworthy, the share of viewers who have never subscribed to cable or satellite (“cord-nevers”) is growing as well. This year, the percentage of US adults who have never subscribed to cable or satellite TV will reach 12.9%. That share will grow to 13.8% by 2016.

I have no doubt the cable providers will innovate – allowing you to upgrade your TV, for example, as the wireless carriers do your phone, bundling in streaming music, or changing their business emphasis entirely to being broadband providers (BYO Programming!).  But it’s going to be an interesting transition in the pro-choice video world.  You agree?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under digital media

Tagged as , , , ,