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Moving communication campaigns into action |
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Do you communicate what's relevant to customers? Here is a back issue of Marketing Booster, the email newsletter that Richard Groom writes and sends free every fortnight to subscribers. You can subscribe here or read over 60 back issues using the back issues index page. A couple of weeks ago I received one of Gerry McGovern's excellent 'New Thinking' e-newsletters. Gerry is a web usability expert and his article was entitled 'The most irritating website in the world'. Gerry looked at how an airline's website gave him information about their sixtieth anniversary when all he wanted to do was book a flight to Copenhagen. You can read his funny and useful article here: www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2006/nt-2006-09-25-irritating.htm Quite apart from the usability angle, Gerry's article raises the issue of organisations losing touch with what matters to their customers. So often, we see companies talk about what matters to themselves instead. It's easy to see how this happens. People spend eight hours a day or more at work, separated from the rest of the world by concrete, steel and glass. It would be interesting to know what percentage of employees have frequent (or any) contact with their customers. It wouldn't surprise me if it's quite low. At a senior level, we have a bunch of people who are naturally obsessed with their organisation. They have helped to make it successful and they have probably been there a long time. So for them, it really matters that the company is 60 years old, or has won an award or has record profits. I'll hold my hands up and admit that when I worked for large companies I also got wrapped up in the internal stuff. I was a 'company man' at times and lost sight of things from the customers' view. So we need processes and techniques to keep in touch with what customers care about. Obviously marketing research can play a part. I'm sure that any good researcher presented with this problem could suggest ways to ask customers what information they need, and what they would prefer to miss out on. Maybe also those involved in marketing and customer communications in general could get other perspectives from time-to-time. Perhaps employees from other parts of the organisation can be consulted. It might be good to make a point of asking a few customer-facing staff for their input on communication materials. But no matter what processes you put in place, the most important thing is to attack the problem at a cultural level. If the company culture is one of communicating anything and everything without ruthlessly assessing the value of the information to customers, then maybe that needs to change. Anyone in marketing who sees room for improvement in this area should in my opinion be bold and brave, challenging the status quo and making positive suggestions for an alternative approach. Another way to think about this issue is to consider what you think as a customer of other companies. If you get an email or letter from your broadband provider or credit card company telling you all about what they are up to, do you even read it unless it has something specifically relevant to you? If you don't care about your suppliers' internal issues, it's safe to assume that your customers don't care much about your organisation's sixtieth anniversary either, at least not enough to slow down the buying process because of it. |