Domino Theory's Marketing Blog

It's bound to happen. You put hours, days, and weeks into building a Smarter Business Communications plan, you have your social media networks running at full speed, your blog is attracting new leads, your inbound marketing is firing on all cylinders. Then, it happens, someone blasts you on Facebook, you get a horrible review on Yelp, your business is being dragged through the mud for everyone to see. What do you do now?



I'm sure our little town of El Dorado Hills where Domino Theory is based, is not much different from where you live. News spreads around town like wildfire. Whether good news or bad, the coconut telegraph never stops clicking out new messages. The Internet operates the same way, but it's not limited by geography. Everyone has a voice and a means to broadcast it. And while we do everything we can to make this exciting new technology work in our favor, it's inevitable that you're going to get kicked in the teeth at some point.

How you deal with a negative situation lays the groundwork for your company culture and customer relationships. Businesses deal with these situations all the time, some better than others. If you make the right decision at the right time, you have the opportunity to not only nip the problem in the bud, but even make your business look better for it.

A Smarter Business Communications Plan includes a pre-determined process for how to handle these situations. Here's ours:

Don't react emotionally. Sure, it's hurtful when bad things are said about you and your business, but when we react emotionally we tend to either fight back or rationalize and ignore the issue. Neither of these two things solves your problem and will likely escalate it. Take your time to be emotional if necessary, but work through that and get your footing solidly beneath you before you respond. It might take only a few minutes, but more likely you'll need  more time than that to separate your personal feelings from your desired professional outcome.

Take the complaint to heart. Whether you agree with the complaint or not, the fact that one customer feels a certain way means there might be others who feel similarly. Most often, your customers won't complain, they'll simply take their business elsewhere. While you do everything you can to please your customers, a complaint offers an opportunity to review your products and processes find areas where you can do even better. Look at the problem as an opportunity to make your business even better.

Look at the issue from your customer's perspective. Maybe she was just having a bad day, but more likely, whether you agree or not, she feels she has a legitimate complaint. Put yourself in her shoes and think about what might turn the situation in your favor.

Most people won't remember the problem, they'll remember how you deal with the problem!

Be contrite. Even if in your heart of heats you feel you've been wronged, turning an already bad situation into a fight will not benefit your business. Apologize and start working on how you can turn an unhappy customer into an advocate. No one wants to hear excuses, what they really want to hear is how you're gong to make it right!

Publicly acknowledge the situation. Make sure everyone knows that you take it seriously, respect your customer's position and are adressing it. Then, as quickly as possible take the conversation private. Send a direct message or e-mail with an offer to discuss the experience in a more personal manner. This gives them the attention they seek without having to deal with issue in public.

Share your appreciation for the feedback. Remember, most customers won't complain, they'll just take their business elsewhere. If you're serious about this step, you have a great opportunity to improve your business and begin to turn a problem customer into an advocate.

Ask how he would like to see the problem solved. If the request is reasonable, you should meet it immediately. If the request is beyond what you can afford, explain that and offer an alternative. Keep your focus beyond the one event. Try to make your solution one that gives you another opportunity to work with the upset customer within the environment where the problem started. Help them understand that the bad experience was an exception. The goal is not to make the problem go away, but to turn a back experience into a good one.

Take this approach and you'r much more likely to have your once upset customers singing your praises - and that'something it's even difficult to get happy customers to do!



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Tags: Inbound marketing, social media, Facebook, Communications, plan, Business, El Dorado Hills, word-of-mouth, Social, strategic, customers, advocates

Tags: leads, Marketing, Content Marketing, Inbound marketing, Facebook, Communications, Customer Acquistion, Business, El Dorado Hills, word-of-mouth, strategic, customers, Sacramento, Folsom, Smarter, El Dorado County

Just like Smarter Business Communications is part of our DNA at Domino Theory, martial arts is part of our lives at home. My wife and I started our kids in kinder-kicks before they started grade school. We thought it would be a great way to help them develop their coordination while learning respect and discipline in a setting outside the home. Somewhere along the way, rather than turning martial arts into something we make the kids do (you parents know what I mean!), we decided we would turn it into a family activity - something we could do together, forever.



We've all watched action movies and seen various martial arts performed. I always thought, as a pretty good athlete, how hard could martial arts be? Kick, punch, I mean I wasn't Bruce Lee, but I'd done these things since I was a kid. I didn't know, what I didn't know.

The thing I remember most about my early training was how awkward the movements felt, how difficult it was to master the little things - proper stances, balance, hand positions. I was learning what I didn't know. My recourse was to to muscle my way through, eschewing technique for brute force.

Slowly, and I mean slowly over the course of years, I began to learn to flow, to relax my movements and allow speed rather than mass to power my strikes and kicks. Force=Mass x Acceleration²; Acceleration contributes exponentially more to force than mass does, and since you can't easily alter your mass, concentrating on speed will better increase your force. I could do this, but I needed to concentrate, to tell myself to relax, to allow my muscles to loosen and flow. I could do this only so long as I was conscious of doing it.

Now years into my practice, I am a 2nd degree black belt in my school (as are my wife and kids). My instructor occasionally mentions how much I've improved and how much better and relaxed my movement is (it still needs lots of work). I can more often let my subconscious take over and put movements together into a flow without having to think about them.

Equally important to me, I have also learned why pursuits like the martial arts, piano, chess, writing, etc. are lifelong endeavors, why earning a black belt is not just a box to check along the way.

The more I learn and the more I advance, the more I realize what I don't know and the more I see where my skills need improvement. The farther I advance, the farther away the final destination of expertise seems. However, I can also recognize how far I've come and can better respect the perspective of the white belts who come to class thinking like I did, how hard can this be? They are just beginning to learn what they don't know. Many never get past that stage - they decide they don't want to make the commitment to learning a new skill, and I can't blame them - it is a commitment of hours, weeks, months, and years - a lifetime.

But you know what? We all start there in any new pursuit! A black belt is just a white belt that didn't quit! By starting and not quitting we are way ahead of those who never start at all.

These 4 stages my training goes through are the normal stages of learning. To put it perspective, think about when you learned to drive.

1. You don't know what you don't know. Riding around with your parents, you always thought driving would be easy. If you are like I was, you were better at it than your parents before you even got behind the wheel!


2. You know what you don't know. The first time you get behind the wheel, you can't find the pedals with your feet, your eyes can't find the mirrors, the car doesn't seem to go where you steering it. It is much harder than you had imagined it would be.


3. You consciously can perform the skill. You can drive, but it takes all your concentration (turn signal, mirror, look over your shoulder, change lanes...).


4. Until finally, you subconsciously can perform the skill. Now you drive down the highway and realize after five minutes, you have no idea what's been going on around you because you've been lost in thought; your conscious mind is engaged in another activity while your subconscious mind is driving the car. You've mastered driving and can drive without even thinking about it.

I've been going through this same process in the world of social media and content marketing since I launched Domino Theory. I have over 25 years experience in media and marketing. I have been involved in web site and e-mail marketing since the early days of both in the 1990's (just like I was always active in sports and fitness). But social media, content marketing, search engine optimization and similar skills were areas outside my daily work (like martial arts was new to me). It was easy to ignore them since I was entrenched in "traditional" media and marketing - I didn't know what I didn't know.

And just like when I started in martial arts, I thought, "How hard can this social media stuff be?" Fortunately, my martial arts experience helped me to quickly realize I was a social media white belt. I realized right away what I didn't know. I dove into reading, researching, and tapping social media and online training.

The more I learn, the more I realize I have to learn. The better I get, the more I realize there are people who know more than I do. But I also know that I am way ahead of most. Most, like the white belts who never come back after visualizing the journey ahead, have decided they don't have the time, energy, or inclination to learn a new skill or fit a new activity into their lives.

This describes most business owners I meet when it comes to social media and business communications. They haven't even walked in the door to the dojo yet to put on their first white belt and step onto the mat. They are mostly very good at what they do, but they don't do business communications! And that's too bad. Too bad because they are falling short of optimizing their business opportunities. And too bad because if they continue to ignore the opportunity they will eventually be leapfrogged by a competitor that made the commitment.

You are a black belt in your business arena. No one knows your business better than you do. No one needs your expertise more than your customers do. No one is looking for your expertise more than your potential customers are. A smarter business communications plan will allow you to stake a claim to your expertise in your marketplace, make you the go-to resource. It will help you keep customers around longer and attract more of them. To share that expertise, you need a smarter business communications plan.

Unless you plan to sell your business next week, now is the time to join the social media dojo. If you do it now, chances are excellent you'll be there long before your competitors and gain that first mover advantage. The longer you wait, the more you put your business at risk.

Working on smarter business communications is a lifelong pursuit. At some point, probably sooner rather than later, the skills will be required for business survival. You've likely thought about it before and you know it to be true. There is no better time than now to start your training.


 


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Start your planning with a FREE Copy of Domino Theory's Interactive Smarter Business Communications Worksheet, just fill out and submit this form.[contact-form-7 id="541" title="Contact form 1"]

 

Tags: Marketing, Content Marketing, social media, Content, Communications, Customer Acquistion, plan, Business, Social, strategic, customers, Smarter

At Domino Theory we continually are talking to businesses that have no formal communications plan or strategy. Many of these businesses are moving as fast they can to running day-to-day operations and while they'd like to have a communications plan, they view it as a "soft" business area meaning it would be nice to have, but not necessary to profitable operations.

Domino Theory's response?
- Define profitable.
- How profitable do you want to be?
- How much more profitable could you be?

Studies conducted over the last two decades suggest that formally documenting a company's communication strategies positively impacts the bottom line. In fact, consulting firm Watson Wyatt found that companies with the "highest levels of effective communication experienced a 26 percent total return to shareholders" over a four-year period as compared to the "-15 percent return experienced by firms that communicate least effectively," as reported in "The Essentials of Corporate Communications and Public Relations," published by the Harvard Business School Press. 

Putting together a Smarter Business Communications Plan does not need to be a daunting exercise nor does it need to dominate your working hours. Done correctly, taking your business through the following steps will have benefits far beyond the development of a Communications Plan.



Domino Theory's Smarter Business Communications Planning

Objective
Define your desired outcome. Be specific. More customers isn't enough. How many more? Over what time frame? Are some customers more profitable than others? How are they different? Are you looking to grow a market or grow share in an existing market? What is your current competitive situation? Who are the leaders and laggards in your market? What are they doing better, worse and differently than you? It would be highly beneficial at this stage to complete an entire SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). How do customers find you? Why do they leave? Research shows word-of-mouth to be the number one influence among purchasers. Keep this in mind as you shape your communications objectives. Most importantly, always tie your communications objectives to business objectives.

Resources
What resources of time and money can you allocate to a communications plan? Should you manage this in-house or contract with an outside firm like Domino Theory? There are benefits to both approaches, but if keeping the process in-house means you won't get around to getting a Smarter Plan in place, be honest with yourself. Even if you outsource, you will need to dedicate time in your calendar each week and month for status updates and evaluation, so don't expect to be able to hand off the process completely.

Audit Your Current Communications
Take an inventory of all of your current communications. Get copies of every every piece of collateral, print outs of web pages, social media pages, signage, logos, promo pieces, etc. What is working? What isn't? What is being neglected? What is current? What is out of date? What are you doing well? What are you doing poorly? Do an honest evaluation and build from what you have already created.

Define Your Audiences
Most businesses will have multiple audiences to address through a Smarter Communications Plan. Internal audiences, existing customers, past customers, potential customers, and influencers are among the audiences you should consider for your plan.

Craft Your Message
You will likely find that there is significant crossover of the messaging for the various audience segments you've defined. Each segment is likely at a different stage of their buying cycle (Interest, Educate, Trial, Purchase, Reaffirm). A well crafted message can often speak to each segment of the cycle eliminating the need to create a new message for each. Testing your messaging at this stage is an important step that is overlooked by too many businesses. Include A/B testing in your plan. Testimonials can also be very powerful, ask for them from satisfied customers.

Select Your Communications Channels
Advertising, brochures, flyers, web sites, e-mail, and social media are often the first channels that come to mind. But don't overlook verbal communications - are there conversations within your place of business and with your audiences that you can start now? Can signage and logos be better displayed? Start with the basics and move from there.

Build a Communications Timeline
Which of your communications elements should roll out first? Which will take longer to create and implement? Set priorities and deadlines. Commit to your dates!

Measure and Tweak
None of the above matters if you don't have the tools in place to measure your progress. If you set measurable objectives against time in Step 1 (above) you now can measure the success of your program. Keep rolling with what works and tweak and evolve the elements that aren't delivering as expected. Be sure you are measuring both business and communications objectives. The feedback you get from this sage of the implementation is your roadmap as you revisit each of the steps outlined above.

Remember, a product, service, or business strategy that is not widely and skillfully communicated to company stakeholders is likely to limp along and eventually fail or simply disappear. Don't short sell yourself or your business by not letting the world know what you do and how good you are at doing it. The only one who will be happy with that strategy is your competition!

For a free consultation on your Smarter Business Communications Plan, contact us through the form below or fill out our interactive planning worksheet online here. [contact-form-7 id="541" title="Contact form 1"]

Tags: leads, Marketing, Content Marketing, Content, Communications, Customer Acquistion, plan, Business, word-of-mouth, blog, time management, strategic, customers, advocates, Smarter

Domino Theory can come to only one conclusion: Netflix wants out of the DVD rental business.



We've been a Netflix subscriber since July of 2001. At that time our kids were little, we were homebound many weekends and evenings, and the ability to have 3 movies on hand at any given time without the worry of late fees was manna from heaven (this has absolutely nothing to do with the detour to return a DVD on the way to hospital for the birth of our first child - I swear!). We've been turning family and friends onto Netflix since the early days.

Our kids, now pre-teens, stream movies and TV shows and we watch our DVD's, all for only $19 a month. Well, that was BEFORE Netflix decided that streaming and renting deserve unique billing structures. Now we pay $26 a month for the same privilege.

The price change caused us to look at our Netflix usage and evaluate the relationship. While the kids still stream movies and TV shows with some regularity, we watch fewer and fewer movies on DVD (FWIW, we have a BluRay player, but still watch DVD's primarily). Our thinking was that it's only a few $ a month more and we'll probably watch more movies during the winter when it's dark earlier and there are fewer evening activities to draw us outside.

But Netflix wasn't done with us! Today Netflix announced that Streaming and DVD rental will become two entirely separate businesses. WTF? Was Netflix broken? Did anyone outside of Netflix want the services divided? Each service, Netflix for streaming and Qwikster for DVD rentals, will have its own web site and they won't be integrated? Really?


Netflix' CEO, Reed Hastings, is undoubtedly smarter than we are at Domino Theory. He must know what he's doing here. He must know that announcing this change on the heels of the recent pricing increase is going to tick off a huge chunk of his loyal customer base. I mean he's sending all his Netflix customers back to square one by shifting the DVD business to a new site and a new name. Forget about the tech savvy customers who are reading about this today in their business feed, what about all those movie fans who don't have the technology or know-how to stream and could care less about it. Off to Qwikster with ye!

So what is Netflix really up to? The only conclusion we can come to is that Netflix really doesn't give two hoots about their DVD customers. The margins for the streaming business must be good enough that any small growth there will replace the larger loss of customers on the DVD side (adding game rentals ain't gonna make up the difference, that's for sure!). Netflix is ready to take on Comcast, DirecTV, Hulu, Apple, Amazon and all other comers in the streaming space. Netflix must be willing to walk away from their dominant business in DVD rentals.

So here's how Domino Theory is voting: For the time being, we'll keep our Netflix account for the streaming service. When we're asked to migrate to Qwikster for the DVD rentals, we'll be checking out. Meanwhile, Netflix is forcing our hand to explore all the competitive movie-on-demand/content streaming services we've only flirted with up until now.

You tell us, does Netflix have  Smarter Communication Plan?

 

Tags: Marketing, Content Marketing, Content, Communications, Customer Acquistion, plan, Business, strategic, customers, Honest, Smarter

Tags: Marketing, Content Marketing, social media, Facebook, Communications, plan, Business, Social, customers, Smarter, Twitter

"Yeah, right." The common call of today's consumers. Face it, they're not buying your story.

According to the people who study this stuff, the average American sees over 3,000 ads per day. Everyone is trying to build a brand. Ads on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and web banners are ubiquitous. There are ads in your grocery cart, on your store receipts, in bathroom stalls, wrapped around cars, everywhere you turn! Consumers are so inundated that their first reactions is to ignore the message all together. (Name 3 web ad banners you've seen so far today. Not easy, is it?).

There was a time when consumers recognized the well-dressed spokesperson on TV or carefully read the nicely worded advertisement in the newspaper. Now, they don't need to believe advertising. Consumers have many choices when making purchasing decisions. Any little blip on their BS meter and you're relegated to the "Ignore" pile for eternity!

Read your own marketing materials. Are they full of buzz-words? Optmize, maximize, monetize. Best-of-breed, push the envelope, outside the box. Bandwidth, stickiness, repurpose, synergy. Let's take this offline. If you cringe at the sound, you can bet your customers do, too! The business English slung around the office is the WRONG thing to use in marketing messages.

The truth of the matter is that consumers don't want marketing messages at all. They want knowledge!

Consumers don't want overblown promises. Unless your product will make the bed, do the laundry, fold it and put it away, it's probably not really going to offer a life-changing experience. Tone it down!

The goal of you message should be to develop a connection. Earn trust. Give your clients a low-cost way to test drive your ideas or products. Invest the time to develop the conversation. Just because you are excited about the new ad campaign, don't expect your customers to share your enthusiasm. Strong relationships take time to develop.

Message on a human level. A perfectly polished corporate image is bound to set off the alarm. Share your challenges alongside your successes. Admit mistakes and turn them into opportunities. Transparency builds trust.

In a world filled with BS, it takes time for your honesty to be recognized as such. But you can be believable! Use straight forward language, share your knowledge freely without acting like the smartest person in the room. Tone down your promises.

Most importantly, make a commitment. Make a commitment to your customers and make a commitment to smarter business communications. Trust your initial instincts and give campaigns the time they need. Spread them across a variety of media. Don't expect miracles from the "killer ad" or the one-time ad blitz. Commit yourself to earning the trust of your customers over time. And once you've earned that trust feed it and nourish it.

Your customers may be jaded and skeptical, but you can win them over! The good guys can win!

Tags: Business, customers, Communications plan

Tags: social media, Communications, plan, blog, Social, strategic, customers, advocates

Tags: leads, Communications, plan, word-of-mouth, strategic, customers, advocates, Uncategorized

Tags: leads, Communications, plan, strategic, customers