Around 3:00pm Saturday afternoon we discovered that our washing machine had been leaking for about an hour. And by leaking I mean wide open. I immediately shut off the water valve to the washing machine while my wife was busily putting down every towel we could find on the floor (and she’s almost eight months pregnant). I run downstairs to the basement to shut off the main water valve, because I wasn’t sure where the leak was coming from yet, to discover that our basement was the primary recipient of the water. Luckily it’s an unfinished basement. Regardless there is almost a quarter inch of water covering about a third of the basement.

So now the real fun begins. What do we do first? My wife grabbed the phone book and began flipping through the Yellow Pages to find a plumber. After about three calls ending in voicemail, she finally was able to talk to a live person. After telling him about our problem as quickly as she could, he said “it’s an appliance issue, I can’t help you.” Lovely. Now here’s the real issue. Even though he was right, it was obvious that we were in emergency mode. Instead of telling us to call a water extraction company (which I didn’t even know existed until about 4:00pm on Saturday), he just left us hanging in the wind.

Our insurance agency wasn’t much better. Usually they are right on the ball but this time we talked to a bad phone rep. He was very laissez-faire about the entire situation – and he was speaking so softly I could barely make out what he was saying. I finally had to stop his phone-based paper work routine and ask if we were covered so that I could get the right people on site as quickly as possible. He said yes. I hung up.

Back to the Yellow Pages. Now I’m in the “water” section. Then it hits me like a ton of bricks. I’m going to pick a water extraction company to come in and save what they can of our valuables based on their ad!! I know nothing about these companies at all. Some ads are very flashy, some use cheap clipart, some are very well designed but nondescript, and most have no ad at all – they just have a listing and a phone number. So I do what probably 90% of people do in an emergency – call the company with the biggest ad on the page. Luckily they were very helpful. And even though they didn’t have a crew available until Monday morning, he gave me some advice on what to look for.

My next criteria was a company that advertised 24 hour availability (significantly less than 10% of the listings by the way). This is when I started to get angry. I called four different 24 hour companies before I was able to talk to a live human. The first firm to pick up the phone started asking me marketing questions (how did you hear about us, have you used us before, etc…). Wrong part of the sales process my friend. The next rep was terrible on the phone, but he said he had a crew available. So I said come on out. Fifteen minutes later he called back to tell me that no one was available until Sunday morning. I was shocked. When I questioned him on our earlier conversation, he simply said “I thought I could get someone”. Wow, talk about a promise to a customer. When you have a quarter inch of standing water in your basement, you do not have time for broken promises.

Oddly enough, as soon as I hung up the phone with him one of the other companies in which I left a message called back. I never expected that. But it turns out that the rep was simply away from his cell phone when I called. He was already in his truck back to their offices to pick up the necessary equipment and would be at my house within an hour. This company had the second largest ad in the section and is a national provider of cleaning services.

In the meantime, I was hunched over a wet/dry vac sucking up all of the standing water that I could. By the time they arrived, I had removed almost all of the water from the basement and our first floor was pretty much dry – except for a small section of carpet. Two guys show up, one introduces himself and mentions that he is a certified water removal expert. I’m feeling better already. They inspect the house for moisture, set up dryers and dehumidifiers and let me know that they will be back on Monday to check on the progress.

So enough of my weekend; time to wrap this up. If you provide emergency services you need to realize what your customers are going through when they call you. Even though you may deal with these situations all of the time, we do not. It is your responsibility to ensure that I understand what’s going on, how you can help, and how quickly you can help. And if you cannot provide the service I need, point me in the right direction. This is not the same as buying clothes at your favorite retailer. They have their own customer service challenges, but you need to be on an entirely different level. You need to understand our though process when we pick up the phone book. And typically I think advertising in the Yellow Pages is a waste of time. But it’s the first place I went to and I had nothing to evaluate your business on beside your ad. Your advertising needs to be professional, clean, and project an image that says “we’ll take care of you”. Color is better than black and white. It needs to be at least a quarter page to get my attention. If you can provide a few customer testimonials, even better. If you have an emergency off-hours phone number, please list it in your advertising. I don’t know how many companies made me write down another number to call because my washer broke on a Saturday instead of a weekday. It’s really frustrating to know that I could talk to a human immediately if this was during “normal business hours”. Unfortunately emergencies and accidents can’t be scheduled Monday through Friday.

There are only two companies I’ll ever call back after this incident. The first company because they offered sound advice even though they couldn’t be onsite – and they didn’t make me feel bad for wanting to call someone else who could be there quicker. And the company that called me back. Both of these companies understood what I was going through. They had big color ads with prominent phone numbers. Their phone representatives were the actual workers, not some answering service. They could help me immediately when we spoke; not just pass my information along.

Customer service is paramount – especially in an emergency. If you’re not easily recognized as competent, available, and dependable; I’m not sure how you’ve stayed in business this long. Enough of my ranting, I have boxes of stuff to salvage.

PS. I know that the web has the potential to take care of a lot of these problems. Ideally something like Craig’s List would be available to show providers with customer ratings, five stars for instance. It’s not unreasonable to think the web could even display crew availability in the future. I just don’t trust that the internet has all of the local information yet to make it a viable solution – not that the Yellow Pages are much better. They are outdated as soon as they’re published. But old habits are hard to break. I did get online to find a replacement part of our washing machine.

Nick Rice

It’s rare that I see a marketing team value project management as much as an IT or software development team. And to be honest, I’m not sure why. I think it’s just a cultural thing. But here are the facts, marketing projects have deadlines, they have delicate interdependencies, they have budgets, they have multiple teams involved, they have stakeholders, and they definitely have an audience (which is not an internal person by the way). So they have all of the ingredients for successfully managing each project.

It seems like most marketing teams thrive on fire drills instead of planned activities. A lot of teams rarely see a planned activity; it’s always the task-du-jour or the whim of some executive. If I’m the marketing VP, that would scare the heck out of me. There is no good plan to grow your business or improve your skills if you simply putting out one fire after the next.

Even though I’ve been in the marketing and creative space for almost 15 years, I’m also wired to think logically or in order. A few years back I became a Certified Project Manager. It was one of the best professional development choices I’ve made. It gave me a system to use with my clients (both as an internal marketing manager and as an outside consultant). Project management is simply a thought process that is backed up by documentation and assignments. And obviously it takes different techniques to manage marketing projects than it does for software development; but you may be surprised at how similar they are.

The foundation of my system is a project brief that goes into details about who the target audience is, what they need, why this project is needed, what the goals are, offers, budget and timeline. These questions need to be answered for before any work is done. They will influence the research, the creative, the strategy, everything. It’s critical to have solid answers before you put resources on the project. And by the way, don’t try to cop out with crappy answers like audience = customers. That doesn’t fly. You need to give details that describe the audience from a demographic, psychographic, and needs point of view. Without detailed specifics, the campaign or project will be too broad, too vague and appeal to no one. Once you truly know your audience, you’ll be able to craft a message and offer that speak to their needs (not your features).

Once the project brief is written, and agreed upon by all parties involved (including stakeholders), then you can begin assigning tasks and due dates. There are tools that help you manage the process. Microsoft Project is probably the best recognized. I’ve personally used AceProject for over four years with three separate vendors with much success. BaseCamp is getting a lot of good press but it’s not as fully featured as I’d like at this point, but I’m keeping my eye on it. AceProject is nice because it has about 90% of the feature of Microsoft – the features you’ll use most of the time like Gantt charts, user workload, built-in discussion threads, templates, and a ton of reporting options. Its web based, updated regularly, and priced right.

But just like installing Salesforce.com for CRM or JD Edwards for accounting, simply having a project management system and tool in place will do nothing but cause headaches if you do not change the culture to take advantage and value what good project management brings to the table. And that’s accountability, measurement, and collaboration.

Nick Rice

I’ve had the wonderful experience of spending a lot of time recently with successful entrepreneurs. They have a lot in common. First off, there is an undeniable passion for their business. Next the uncanny ability to not only spot a new opportunity but to jump on it with little to no hesitation. And lastly they also tend to think of branding as something that just happens by doing a good job.

If you are the only employee, that might be okay because you control everything. But if you have a staff, your brand is bigger than just you and the value you bring to the table. Because you cannot control every interaction between employees, suppliers, and customers; you cannot totally control your brand.

Gut Feelings

I define brand as the gut feeling of those people that has been exposed to your company and/or products and services. Since you cannot control individual gut feelings, you cannot control your brand. You can, however, influence it. You have a vision for the type of company/products that you want to known for. If your desired brand image is out of alignment with your customers, employees, suppliers, and any one else that is aware of you, you have a problem. Good branding is alignment between your promises and their experiences. If you can reliably delight those people, you’re brand will grow.

The discipline of branding is simply taking proactive steps to ensure that alignment with your vision. These steps can take many forms, here are a few:

• improved company image (logo, letterhead, advertising, marketing communications, packaging, etc…)
• improved products
• better customer service
• improved accounting processes

Obviously, some of these things are easier to implement than others. It’s easy to get a fresh look and feel for your marketing and advertising materials – though it may not be cheap. Others will take intense cultural changes throughout the entire company to see the benefits. The better you understand your unique value, your vision, and the desires of your customers, the better you can build your brand.

Branding Is Not Optional

Branding is happening whether you are driving it or not. Every interaction with your company creates an impression in that person. And it doesn’t even have to be directly with you. How many times have you steered clear of a product or service based on the advice of a friend? In that case, you never get the chance to make a positive impression. It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is because they’ll never get that far. That’s why the old adage of “one satisfied customer is worth ten” still rings true.

Entrepreneurs like to steer clear of branding because it forces them to put a stake in the ground. That’s scary because they’re comfortable pursuing every opportunity that looks beneficial – regardless of how it affects the current setup. It’s a fine line to walk. You need to be known as the best in some space. Customers aren’t looking for the next tool that slices, dices, and juliennes. They want the best slicer on the market. It’s very much the Long Tail theory.

To really be a powerful brand, you must have alignment between your vision and those gut feelings. In a commodity market, brand is the primary driver of purchase. People are loyal to brands – though that’s waning with increasing selection and standardization. A strong brand today has to be unique. It has to stand heads and shoulders above the competition. A strong brand doesn’t compete in markets, it defines markets.

The tip of the iceberg is focusing on brand alignment. The harder part is creating alignment. It’s making the changes in your organization that affect employee/supplier/customer experiences. A lower price is just one option – and usually not the best one.

If you view branding as an expense or a necessary evil, you’re already behind the curve.

Nick Rice

If you use direct marketing to reach customers, you’ve probably tried the traditional business letter. A lot of companies will stuff that letter into a envelope that screams “read me now” with starbursts, logos, and call-outs. Well bad news – customers are on to you. As soon as they see something that smells like a marketing ploy, they run. They don’t have time. If they have a problem, they’ll find you.

I’ve had the best luck (read highest response rate) with a plain white envelope. No logo, nothing. If you can handwrite the mailing AND return address, even better. A lot of companies will try to use a handwriting font, and for me, it doesn’t pass the muster test. Too obvious. No one writes that consistently.

The envelope is arguably more important than the letter. I say that only because the best letter, laden with user benefits and a measurable call to action, is useless if it’s never read. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. They get a ton of mail every day. They probably have a gatekeeper to screen out all of the obvious unsolicited marketing touches. The gatekeeper is usually afraid to automatically throw away a plain handwritten envelope. They don’t know who it’s from or what’s inside; not to mention that no one hand writes anything anymore. So you’ve passed the first test – do not get thrown away.

Even for your target audience, they cannot help but open a plain white envelope. It’s too intriguing. According to the DMA, direct mail has an average response rate of 2.77. I’ve seen response rates of at least 5% with the plain white envelope. And the best part is that it’s cheap and authentic.

So target well first. It doesn’t make sense to blast everyone you know with your solution. More than likely, if your offering appeals to everyone, you can find a better way to reach them than direct marketing. If you have a large list, segment them into manageable groups so that you can test different call to actions or letter copy.

Next, write a letter that speaks to your audience’s pain points first and then offer a solution. But only in bite size chunks. Don’t give away the all of your information with the letter. Create a desire to learn more and make it easy for them to find out more. Use every response technique you can – email, toll free telephone, fax, business reply card. You’ll be surprised at how different people take advantage of the different response mechanisms.

Lastly, use a plain white envelope with handwriting if possible. You may be tempted to use your corporate letterhead envelope, but don’t. I know that your marketing manager or corporate communications/PR team may freak out. But who cares, if you’re driving business you win. Branding comes from good experiences with you and your products more than it comes from repetition.

Nick Rice