Satisfied customers are your best sales people....

Positive Word of Mouth, making your customers brand advocates is today an important part of any marketing strategy.

With the clutter and the shear volume of advertising ‘ spam ‘ we are all subject to, trusting and listening to others who have already experienced a brands many touch points ( sales team, call centres ) and used its products or services, gives us an authentic message no marketing department can replicate.

After all whose interests do they have at heart ?

Previous posts around WOM spreading product adoption through recommendation have all given positives to this medium. However as with all positives there are negatives.

None better demonstrated than through a recent article on a colleagues blog about creating positive relationships, his example of how not to do this was taken from a kitchen manufacturer called Moben.

Reviewing user ratings of both the companies service and product comments made on the price comparison site DooYou, it was a good opportunity to apply a simple but effective method for measuring customer satisfaction – Net Promoter Score ( NPS )

About NPS

A simple question is asked with a scale of between 0 and 10 – “ How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague “ .

Score

• 9 – 10 you are classed as a promoter
• 7 – 8 are passive
• 0 – 6 are known as Detractors
  

Promoters

The thinking is promoters are you brand advocates, the people who will likely recommend your company and it’s products to friends ( depending on the product and also the peer standing of these people will effect the pass on rate and acceptance of these recommendations – more here on this topic )

Passive

Neither a promoter of a detractor. Not likely to promote or air negative views.

Detractors

Will not be a long term customer, have a negative and will be vocal in their criticism.

Results

As you would expect gaining a NPS of 100% is the highest accolade an organisation could hope for, however in the real world star performing score in the high 80%’s, with most companies occupying the 10 – 5% space.

Those with a negative number are in trouble, customers are defiantly not happy.

Why is NPS it important ?

Studies conducted have linked NPS to a companies financial performance against it’s peers.

Research from the London School of Economics ( Advocacy Drives Growth ) has shown companies with high ( NPS )and therefore higher word of mouth advocacy out perform their competitors.

More importantly the research found a 1% reduction in negative word of mouth, led to over £24 million in additional revenues.

While there is debate as to whether a single number can predicate a companies success, there can be no doubt people willing to promote your company can only be positive.

Now Moben - Winner or Looser ?

Applying NPS to the feedback on DooYou, they scored a worrying

– 56% *, a definite looser.

NPS Stars

* The scoring used was not in line with the 0 – 10 NPS uses , therefore the following scale was applied . 5 -4 promoter, 3 passive and 2 - 1 Detractors.

Sources Wikipedia, http://www.netpromoter.com.

1000 Albums to hear before you die

Three great things about this list now that technology is involved.

• You can listen to all the tracks easiliy through music portals


• The list can be changed, voted and ammended over time in a fluid manner with the use of blogs


• Evidences a tradional media channel making good use of new technology to drive people between print and the web.

One thought though - They could have gone one step futher and teamed up with iTunes or Amazon ....

View the list : http://music.guardian.co.uk/1000albums

The power of WOM

First Maurice Levy , the chairman of Publicis was quoted as saying there are essentially too many new media companies ( Facebooks, Myspaces , Second Life’s ) chasing too little advertising revenue.

Then Google’s UK Director highlighted too many brands are venturing into the Web 2.0 space and not thinking of their position or the key attributes of their products, urging them to ' get back to basics ' or risk being ineffective.

All of this points towards brands and agencies still grappling with how to effectively use Web 2.0, but then something really smart –

Primark has decided to not create it’s own dedicated space within Facebook – the reason, it’s own customers ‘ unofficial ‘ group of over 94,000 users is of far more value than “ anything they could themselves create.”

Primemark recognises that social networks are about the people who reside there, this is a great example of how it is using it’s customers brand loyalty to good effect – giving up an element of control it recognises this loss gives an honest and genuine platform for engaging conversations to grow and take place.

Motorola adopts Google approach.....

Motorola is developing software which scans SMS messages on the users handset to then deliver ' relevant ' advertising, using a combination of key words from the text and also your GPS location.

The article in the Times goes on to give examples of a user texting the word ' hungry ' to then be sent adverts for restaurants in the local area.

Recent studies from Dynamic Logic for the Hilton’s Hampton hotel chain showed a positive increase in the Hotels brand awareness by advertising on weather.com’s WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) site, demonstrating there is indeed a market for relevant mobile advertising content.

All sounds interesting working in a similar fashion to Google Mail, therefore the same concerns have to be raised over privacy and relevance.

Speaking of relevance, I can't help thinking with the circle of friends and the ' colourful ' language they use, I could have a quite a few offers from the local sex shop if the technology goes live...... marketing technology

What are you looking at ?

During the click

Before and after the click , cause and effect. Two major areas of investment, research and interest to ad agencies and clients alike.

The click is the result of a conscious ( driven possible by a subconscious ) action, but what leads us to this point ?

Marketing departments portray the journey of the customer mapping and plotting the ‘ causes and effects ‘ media and previous experiences have on us ultimately to a point in time, be it a supermarket checkout or a webpage.

Insight and the future

Understanding this journey is important, it is an insight as to what brings people to these points and can be the difference between success and failure of a product or brand.

Gaining insight is a key area of growth and an area where increased effort and marketing budgets are focused as media becomes more diverse.

Brands and companies spend millions on market research to gain understanding, books are written on the subconscious elements which affect our decisions all the while pushing for a better understanding of an ever increasingly more complex consumer.

Behavioural targeting in the online space is growing , it monitors your browsing habits and makes connects and assumptions based on your previous history and serves advertising based on these assumptions – not perfect but at least this adds an element of relevance.

The question : Using web analytics gives us insight as to our final decisions, but what made us actually click?

Research again helps, however it does not always tell the full picture, we tend to answer in after thought rather than the there and now.

When I am actually on a web page what triggers me to click on a section or message as opposed to another similarly designed placement ? Does position really dictate success ?

Where is your Focus

Eye tracking used to involve headsets to track the users gaze – not the best way to give a ‘ real world experience ‘ with 10lbs of plastic on your head and wires running down your back.

As always though newer technology which uses infra red laser built into the monitor allows a users gaze to be tracked and monitored, the end result ‘ gaze maps ‘ and ‘ hot spots ‘ maps.

By following a users eye focus it is possible to build maps of where their eyes are spending time on the page ( Hot spots ) and the path of the eyes take over the page ( Gaze map )



maeting " heat map " n tend tecy" marketing" gaze map "

Things to consider

When looking at Heat and Gaze maps you must also take into account our peripheral vision, they are therefore not entirely ‘ pin point accurate ' but act as a guide.

Try this

Find a book or article which has over 15 words on the line, place this in front of you on a table or flat surface and focus on a single word while closing one eye.

Place your thumbs either side of the word and then slowly move these outwards, keeping focused on the single word as you go.

Stop when you can see no further words without moving your eye.

As you can see, your peripheral vision is quite large even when considering text as a format is one of the more difficult types of visuals we deal with.

So does eye movement monitoring give us the answer to our actions on a page?

On their own they do tell an intriguing story, but combined with web analytics and survey data they help increase our insight into peoples online ‘ click ‘ behaviour.

Note :

Advertisers may also do well to consider the technology to measure the effectiveness of their placements ' in game advertising ' .