Don't fake user-generated content
The Brains on Fire Blog has a good overview on the Al Gore’s Penguin Army video.
Essentially, DCI Group, a PR firm that holds Exxon Mobil as an account, released an ostensibly funny video on YouTube mocking An Inconvenient Truth (and misusing the Linux penguin).
If their purpose was to send up a little flack on behalf of Exxon, they failed. The film wasn’t funny, didn’t make an effective point, and won’t appeal to anyone that doesn’t disbelieve in climate change.
Add some penguin egg on their faces for faking grassroots media. The lesson we can all learn is that falsifying user-generated content will backfire early and often.
Smarter Market Research: Stories (A Small Business Alternative to Focus Groups)
Following up to my last post: If it’s true that traditional market research has a bias towards answers given in the convention form, what’s that mean for your business?
Are conventions the ideal type of answer for those seeking insight into their customers’ behavior?
I think no. As the insightful commenter mentioned on Gladwell’s blog, conventions such as “It’s a good value” and “It tastes good” don’t really convey the complex set of factors that go into how we choose a brand—at least not anymore.
Conventions may have been adequate during the broadcast era, perhaps because large companies had been the first to identify and promote several of the “classic” forms of conventions in the way we know them today. It was easier for consumer products companies to fend off smaller niche competitors in this model.
You and I make modern brand choices under different circumstances. Froogle and similar services are drastically changing how can compare prices. Today’s buying decisions occur in an environment completely saturated with marketing messages. We’re processing much more information than during the peak of the broadcast area.
In today’s “narrowcast” market space, stories provide the richer information we need to stay competitive. In particular:
- Unexpected ways and reasons your customers are using your product/service
- Which factors are most persuasive to a particular market segment: perhaps a market segment you weren’t aware of
- What customizations users need to make in order to integrate your product/service into their existing frameworks
In many market spaces, stories are extremely useful for the front end of marketing. Stories relay well. They are compelling sales tools, especially when they demonstrate your understanding of a prospect’s problem. A good story will always beat a vague testimonial by the semi-anonymous John Doe of Long Island, C-level executive.
The downside is that stories seem more difficult to process. How will we put them into SPSS? How will we turn them into measurable goals? How do we rank these “complex” reasons?
The good news for the nimble venture: stories let you simplify, not complicate, your market research.
Gathering Stories
Because conventions are, well, conventional, they’re the kind of answer many of your customers will think you’re expecting. If they’ve ever been interviewed by a marketer, they’re anticipating you will ask them to rate items from “very important” to “not important”, or worse, to answer multiple-choice questions.
So there are some barriers to overcome. Step one, be clear. You’re looking to understand this customer. Make it personal. The more conversational your style, the more likely you are to have a real conversation.
A great way to get people talking is to vary the kind of questions that you’re asking. Remember “how, why, when, where, and who”? If at first a customer is giving one word or conventional answers, try coming at their experience from a different angle. Some people may give single-word answers to any question beginning with “what”, but “why” will really get them talking. Everyone has a different trigger. Once you find it, start taking notes!
Hearing Stories
This is important, and a particular reminder to people on the research side of marketing.
Once you have a story, before you do anything else, simply hear it. Don’t start highlighting words and putting them in databases just yet. You see, a large part of a story’s value is in their telling. They can excite. They can incite.
Carefully study your stories. Consider the decision-making techniques your customer uses. Think as if you’re participating in literary analysis. Who are the characters? What are their motivations? Identify actionable items as you go, but focus the majority of your observation skills on the complex, personal reasons your customer chooses your brand. Patterns will emerge, outside of and more complex than conventions. Maybe they’re chains of events that onramp towards choosing your product. Maybe they all include contact at a particular market presence point. Or maybe there’s a particular experience each of your users has that causes them to decide to switch from your competitor.
Ensure that the right decision makers see the right stories, at least in some form (maybe summarized and condensed in a digest with the other). Think of whom else you can pass it along to. Can it go in your newsletter? On your blog? Will this influence a prospect that sales with working with right now? (Don’t forget to follow up your interview with a thank you note to the customer, mention any changes you’ll be making as a result. Hearing and acknowledging good customer service activities on their own.)
Before it vanishes into the black void of a database, use the momentum of the right story to initiate some quick and creative improvement in your product and communication.
Checklist for Examining a Proof
Examining a proof is a solemn event. On your approval, the project will be mass-produced at large quantity, sometimes using expensive papers, inks, and finishes. Here’s a basic checklist for reviewing a proof at the printer’s.
- Check content and text. Is the copy correct? Is the address, phone/fax numbers, web address, and email correct? Are names spelled correctly?
- Trim size. Use a straightedge to make sure that the crop marks cut where they should. Do they intersect any items that they shouldn’t? Do the crop marks create an image of the correct dimensions?
- Type. Is the spacing correct? Are the line-lengths consistent with the electronic typeface? Is any of the type “broken” or cut-off?
- Check images and artwork. Are they correct and visible?
- Color. If you’re reviewing a laser-printed proof of a spot-color job, you will not see the actual colors, just delineations for where the correct colors are going. Double just to make sure the correct Pantone swatch is assigned to the color areas (the printer can show you this). Compare it one last time to any samples that you’re working from. Verify that screens and gradients are showing correctly — these are often troublemakers in my experience.
- Check the bleed, if applicable. If your project has any ink running to the edge (called a bleed), most proofs will show the color extending around 1/4in past the crop marks. If the proof does not reflect this, double-check that they are aware of the bleed.
- Check that die cuts/folds/perforations/scores/glue spots are indicated correctly, if applicable. The more complicated your project, the more likely you should try cutting it out and folding it up to be sure.
- Check content again.
- Confirm the size of your order, materials (paper, ink, finishes, etc), and delivery date. It helps to have the original quote sheet on hand to review it with the printer rep.
- Take your time. Okay, this isn’t something you can “check off”, but it’s important. You’ll likely be in someone else’s offices while they look over your shoulder. Don’t let that rush you. Be thorough, take as much time as you need.
Specializing to the masses: Less is more and widespread appeal.
You can view simplicity two ways. Either way is focused on attaining the optimal balance between effectiveness and bulk. The first is the way we’ve talked about so far: cut away unnecessary bulk by targeting a narrower market. Example: Building a product/service that better anticipates users needs by narrowing your market to a more specific group of users.
But what about using simplicity to gain a wider appeal and increase your addressable market?
The number of people in a Fortune 500 company is huge. But add up all the participants in small and medium-sized business and they’d vastly outnumber the participants in the top 500 companies. When looking at this from the perspective of targeting a market, this concept is called the long tail. If you’re totally unfamiliar with marketing to the long tail of business, check out this post by 37signals.
With many small and medium-sized businesses finding a need for simpler software that caters to their style of building an organization, software companies are able to flourish providing a lower-cost elegant solution to a much larger audience. Often times the software has less built in formality and is designed around members of smaller organizations typically wearing multiple hats.
A common comparison to illustrate this point is Microsoft Project vs Basecamp. Basecamp makes collaboration with a small group of people in different locations very easy, but it can’t print out a 10-foot long Gantt chart. Most small project teams I know don’t need a 10ft Gantt chart, though. They do need a smooth way to share files, ideas, and responsibilities. Basecamp does that very well.
Take a simpler product to a wider market or take a specialized product to a narrower market—either way, keep the ratio of features to user success in the user’s favor.