Category Archives: Consulting

March 29, 2017 · 11:49 am

The Margin Of Error

One bit of my old life as a broadcaster that I seem unable to leave behind is the ratings. TV ratings – and specifically those from Nielsen – are the currency of the TV ad business and billions of dollars of media are bought and sold based on these numbers. What caught my eye this morning was the reporting of last week’s late night ratings and the analysis connected to the report. The writer did a good job dissecting the numbers except that they conveniently failed to mention one thing that should be instructive to any of us in business: the margin of error.

English: Graph showing weekly Nielsen Ratings ...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What the author failed to mention is that there was no statistical significance between the reported audiences in any of the numbers that Nielsen was reporting. Since the numbers discussed in the piece were Adult 18-49 numbers, the reporting is based on a subsample of Nielsen’s panel, meaning that the margin of error is wider than on all the ratings as a whole. While I don’t have a rating book in front of me, I know there always used to be a disclaimer in every book explaining that the numbers it contains are only accurate up to a point. They’re estimates. When we’re looking at number this small (and the late-night numbers are in tenths of a point), it’s just as possible that the network reported in third place could, in fact, have more viewers than the network reported as in first place.

The point here isn’t to denigrate the ratings system (I’ll save that for another screed). The point is to remind each of us that almost every piece of data that we look at needs to be taken in context and with appropriate disclaimers. What I find helpful is to pay attention to trends and not to absolutes. The only numbers without a margin of error are those pertaining to actual money received and actual money spent, and even those are generally only snapshots of a moment in time.

The next time someone comes to you with a data point, ask about the margin of error or about any factors that could affect that data. New visitors to your website are up? What percentage of people routinely delete cookies and, therefore, seem to be new when they’re not. App installs are up? How many people deleted the app last week, was that an increase, and could the new installs, in fact, be reinstalls? See what I mean?

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March 22, 2017 · 10:51 am

Unkept Promises, Ungathered Feedback

Last week I wrote about how a company with which I did business became a source of annoyance. I realize that the odds are slim that they read the piece, especially since they, through a surrogate, managed to do something even more annoying than spam a good customer.

A few days ago, I got an email from a company who was acting on behalf of the golf ball reseller with whom I had done business. The email lead with “We want to hear your opinion. It will take less than 15 seconds” and featured the logo of the reseller. It further stated that the company:

asked us to contact you to hear about your experience regarding your recent order. Your ratings and comments, whether positive or negative, will help improve their customer service. Your review is also valuable information for new customers who are considering shopping with this company. All feedback will be made public, we will not publish your name.

Scrolling down through the mail, I just had to award 1 to 5 stars, which I did. When I hit the link to enter, I was taken to a website which asked me to write a few words of feedback about my transaction. No problem, at least not until I tried to submit my review. You see, the page wouldn’t submit until I had also written a review of each of the three brands of balls I had ordered, leaving stars for each one as well as several words of text. The 15 seconds (actually quite a few more) being up, I closed the browser tab, feedback, rating, and review unsubmitted.

Yet another thing we can’t do in marketing. We can’t make promises that we know won’t be kept. Asking for “15 seconds” of my time is fine. Requiring many more seconds (minutes, actually) under a false pretense isn’t. The feedback I left initially was my opinion (positive, by the way) of the transaction as well as the quality of what I had received. It would have served to encourage people to do business with this company since they deliver what they promise at an excellent value. Instead, they got nothing, because a vendor they had hired put a gun to my head and demanded I write multiple reviews and wouldn’t take what I had written for them until I did so.

It’s a customer-centric world, folks. You can’t turn a happy customer into one that is left with a bad taste in their mouth because of something you want, not the customer. And for goodness sake, don’t promise anything that you won’t deliver, OK?

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March 16, 2017 · 11:09 am

Marketing, Not Annoying

As the weather warms up (despite a blizzard rearing its ugly head), I start to get ready for the upcoming golf season. For me, that means ordering a supply of balls. I’m too cheap to pay full retail price for the high-end balls that I prefer so I usually order from one or more sites that feature “recycled” golf balls. These are often “one-hit wonders” that some hacker dumped in a pond or the woods and have been reclaimed for sale. High-quality, low-cost = great value, especially for someone like me, who is only going to donate them back to the golf gods in short order.

English: Golf balls.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I placed an order last week for 100 balls. It was an easy transaction with good email communication throughout. It’s what happened over the next few days that is our topic today. You see, I’ve received an email from the site every couple of days, informing me about sales, coupons and other inducements to place an order. The issue in my mind is that I just did buy from them, and even I can’t go through 100 balls in a couple of days. This is symptomatic of a big problem for many brands. We try to use the very effective email channel to communicate and instead we use it to annoy.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with trying to sell via email. Like other channels of communication, however, we can’t use it exclusively for that purpose. If customers are going to enjoy hearing from you, it can’t all be about “ME ME ME!” Providing information that’s helpful from the customer’s point of view is not announcing a sale on items the customer just bought a week ago. That is annoying.

What happened here is that one system – the sales system – wasn’t taking to another system – the marketing system. That might have been acceptable several years ago but today it isn’t. Even Amazon, whose systems are about as cutting edge as anyone’s, will show you remarketing ads for products you just bought. For example, I bought my daughter a snow blower in December through Amazon and yet I was seeing ads from Amazon for the same one I bought on Facebook. That’s not marketing – it’s annoying.

Put yourself in the customer’s position. You hate spam and you probably don’t like a constant barrage of “BUY THIS” emails either. Provide content of value – useful information that helps the customer. Doing so gives you permission to do the hard sell every so often. Don’t silo the various departments – make them communicate and integrate. And for goodness sakes, don’t be annoying!

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