We just finished some new TV spots for South Centre Volkswagen. The spots were designed to stand out in 15 sec presentation to deliver brand awareness and memorability. Complex production, with a simple presentation that appeals to all market segments for this Volkswagen dealer in Calgary.

How do you make yourself so valuable to your customers that they could’t think of doing business with anyone else.

The following ideas from Tomas Lydahl will help you become a trusted advisor and help create that WOW experience for your customers.

I have always had perfect 20/20 eye sight, until a few years ago when I woke up one morning and had a hard time reading an article in a magazine. I couldn’t understand what the problem was. I thought I had an eye infection or something in my eyes because my sight had always been perfect.

My sight eventually got worse and after fighting it to the bitter end, I finally gave up and bought some reading glasses. I try to remember to bring them with me everywhere, but there are times that I forget or I don’t think I will need them.

For some reason, I seem to always forget to bring them when I go to a restaurant; and my arms are no longer long enough to make the text on the menus readable. It is very embarrassing to ask the waiter or the company I am with to tell me what’s on the menu, but I have to if I am going to eat… unless I am at the Macaroni Grill in Fort Myers, Florida. They have reading glasses right next to the menus at the hostess stand. WOW! This service goes beyond their product (serving food) and shows that they anticipated their customers’ needs.

I have always liked eating at Macaroni Grill, but I didn’t actively refer new business to them. Now I tell everybody about my experience in Fort Myers. (If they had just served good food, I wouldn’t be raving about them!)

How do you anticipate your customers’ needs? What value are you creating beyond your product or service? How are you differentiating yourself from your competitors?

All customers need help with something, and it is up to you to find out in what other ways you can help. Simple questions like “What are your biggest challenges right now?” or “In a perfect world, what would your company look like?” can reveal tons of information on how you can help them.

Each time you can help your customers beyond your products and services, you increase your value and your customers’ loyalty to you. This is the start of becoming their trusted Advisor, which is the ultimate relationship you can have with a customer. Imagine having customers calling you to get your input on how to better their company!

Here are some tips on how to get started with the customers you already have:

1. Call them and book a meeting with them (in person if possible).

2. At the meeting, tell them that your highest priority is to help them become successful in any way that you can.

3. Ask them what you are doing well and how you can improve (or other ways you could help).

4. Ask them about their biggest challenges right now.

5. Identify what kind of contacts could be useful for them.

6. Identify their sales process to their customers and see if you can help them in any way.

7. Identify their ultimate customer and look in your contacts to see if you can find new customers for them.

8. Make sure they use your product or service in the most productive way. Spend a day or two with them. (This will also help you identify other areas where you could possibly help.)

9. Make sure your personal relationship is as strong as it could be.

10. Identify areas where you can help your customer in his/her personal life.

Do this and there will never be a reason for your customers to ever look at your competitors again.

We love it when we can talk about companies doing great things here in our province of BC. This week we feature a company right in our own back yard at Simon Fraser University, 4D LABS.

We recently finished a huge video project for 4D LABS and were absolutely blown away at what they were doing in their facility. To explain everything that goes on there would take way to long, we’ll let the video do the talking. You can vist them online at www.4DLABS.ca

The shift has been taking place right beneath our very noses, more and more people are coming to your website via their mobile devices. If you don’t believe this checkout your google analytics! The following information from Mark Watson tells you how to get ready for these visitors.

It’s becoming a fact of life: Without your phone, you’re disconnected from the rest of the world. Mobile devices are finding their way in the hands of every man, woman, and child. With their ever-evolving usefulness, from voice texting and Internet access to apps and GPS tracking, the demand is skyrocketing. And as the demand increases, so does the need for businesses to prepare their brand for this major shift in consumer behavior.

That’s right – a shift in consumer behavior. Your customers are now visiting your website via mobile phones more and more. In fact, studies estimate that 1 in every 4 web searches come from a mobile device. That’s a huge statistic, and one your business should take to heart.

Luckily, making your website mobile friendly is a snap if you know where to start. First, you need to update your web strategy. It’s likely when you first built your website you took into consideration who your audience was, where and when they would access your site, etc. That same effort should be put into updating your strategy, only this time with mobile users in mind. Similarly, think about adjusting the design and layout of your site specifically for mobile browsers. Have you ever visited a website on your phone that was obviously not meant for mobile users? Tiny tabs, hidden login links, oversized images. Those issues shouldn’t happen.

Next, you need to determine if you want to be just mobile compatible or mobile friendly. Mobile friendly means when people see your site, it has all the content they need to access while mobilized. It’s not encumbered with excessive text or images, which would be okay if someone is at home with their laptop, but not when they’re on the go. Keep users on your site by giving them only what they need. And if that means giving them pages of lengthy copy, it may be time to go back to the start and reconsider your mobile strategy. You also need to get rid of Flash. (Sorry, but that debate has been fought and has ended.) When it comes to mobile, nothing says “I have no idea what I’m doing” more than Flash.

Finally, keep in mind that bandwidth does matter. Time is not your friend with mobile devices. If your website can’t deliver what people are looking for fast enough, they’ll simply move on to the next site. Mobile users simply don’t have access to the blazing speeds they’re used to getting at home, so reduce the file size of your website and make sure it’s easy for a device to load.   Preparing your website for mobile use doesn’t have to be a stressful ordeal. Call us if you would like to find out more!

We are often asked by our clients or potential clients how can help their businesses grow or become better marketers. We more often than not have suggestions or solutions, but for the times that the answers are not so clearly present, critical thinking may be the solution necessary.

Paul Schoenmaker shares some key insights on how the great critical thinkers solve complex problems.

The best problem solvers see a complex problem through multiple lenses. Here’s how to become a better strategic thinker and leader yourself.

In 2009, J D Wetherspoon, a chain of more than 800 pubs in the UK, was facing declining sales. Demand for beer had been down for five years. In addition, pricing pressure from super market chains was intense, and higher alcohol taxes further squeezed its already tight margins.

What would you say is the company’s real business problem?

Most people see it as a sales problem and recommend better marketing and promotion. But this reflex may be wrong. In Wetherspoon’s case, the company examined the problem more deeply, looked at data, and framed the situation from multiple angles. In the end, they found the real problem: A subtle but profound shift in consumer preferences.  As a result, the chain responded with much bolder actions, transforming all its pubs into family friendly cafes during day hours.

The strategy worked. Wetherspoon saw its earnings per share jump by 7.1 percent in the first year. Two years after this frame shift (2011), it has maintained its earnings per share and, with the investment in this new strategy, its free cash flow is up 12.9 percent. Exploring multiple problem framings, by zooming out rather than in, gets you to the root of issues and more creative solutions.

 If you fail to do this, you risk solving the wrong problem. 

Ironically, the more experience you have, the harder it will to break from conventional mindsets. Leading companies often get stuck in old business models. Kodak engineers develop an early version of the digital camera, while the rest of the company remained focused on chemical film processing. Microsoft executives doubted the value of online search as a revenue model. Barnes and Noble seemed convinced that people will always want a physical book in their hand.

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman attributes shallow framing to people substituting easy questions for hard ones. We often miss the crux of the issue by drawing imaginary connections between what we see and what we expect to see. As our own book Winning Decisions explains, the essence of critical thinking is to slow down this process, learn how to reframe problems, see beyond the familiar and focus on what is unique in any important decision situation. Here are four ways to hone these critical thinking skills:

 1. Slow down.  Insist on multiple problem definitions before moving towards a choice. This need not be to be a time consuming process – just ask yourself or the group “how else might we define this problem – what’s the core issue here?” This should become a standard part of every project scoping conversation you have, especially when the issue is new or complex.

2. Break from the pack. Actively work to buck conventional wisdom when facing new challenges or slowly deteriorating situations. Don’t settle for incremental thinking. Design ways to test deep held assumptions about your market. Of course, different is not always better so seek to understand the wisdom inherent in conventional wisdom as well as its blind spots.

3. Encourage disagreement. Debate can foster insight, provided the conflict is among ideas and not among people.  Increasingly we live in a world where people can choose to interact only with those who agree with them, through Facebook friends, favorite news sources, or our social cliques. To escape from these cocoons and echo chambers, approach alternative views with an open mind. Don’t become a prisoner of your own myopic mental model.

 4. Engage with mavericks. Find credible mavericks, those lonely voices in the wilderness who many dismiss, and then engage with them. It is not enough to simply be comfortable with disagreement when it happens to occur.  Critical thinkers seek out those who truly see the world differently and try hard to understand why. Often you will still disagree with these contrarions, but at times they will reframe your own thinking for the better.

Howard Schultz shares some great advice and insights on what it takes to make sure that your business survives and strives!

We’ve heard rumors that Google was working on “augmented reality” eyeglasses that would display information relevant to wearers as they go through their daily routine. Now Google itself has confirmed this as Project Glass, complete with a video of what they might be able to do.

Pretty amazing stuff especially relating to the future of marketing trends!

What does a real-life CEO have in common with the central figures of a fictitious Mafia crime family in The Godfather? According to Justin Moore, CEO and founder of Axcient, plenty.

Here are five essential leadership lessons from “The Godfather”.

1. Build a powerful community.

Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. ~Vito Corleone

Uttered in the iconic rasp of Marlon Brando, the words of Vito Corleone illustrate how he creates a loyal community among those he has helped. Moore says, “By granting these favors and helping people with their problems, Vito Corleone is building a network of influence–relationships that may or may not deliver a specific or quantifiable return, but all which serve to strengthen his power base and which have the potential to be reciprocal in the long run.”

Moore says building strategic partnerships enables companies to work through challenging markets and fast-track overall success. “As a CEO, I see it as part of my job to be a super connector, networking with the technology and investment community without an expectation of reciprocation. Partnerships forged through time, trust, and mutual benefit–such as those Axcient has built with HP, Ingram-Micro, and a vast network of service providers and resellers–are the types of community relationships that bring about the greatest returns.”

2. Hold people accountable.

What’s the matter with you? I think your brain is going soft. ~Vito Corleone

The Godfather reminds us of the importance of being tough when necessary. “As soon as Vito Corleone allowed a few moments of weakness to be seen by his enemy, they attempted to assassinate him. And it was largely because of failures of his team,” Moore observes.

“In business, accountability isn’t achieved by a murderous rampage. But the lesson is this–to be successful in business you have to be tough, and you have to be extremely focused on hitting goals and getting results,” says Moore. That doesn’t mean patience and understanding don’t have a place, he says, but ongoing tolerance of low-performing people or products just eats away at the success of the entire company. “You are ultimately responsible for all of your employees and shareholders, and that requires tough and swift decisions.

3. Don’t get emotional.

It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business. ~Michael Corleone

“Many people don’t like to talk about the fact that in business, there are winners and losers. When Sonny Corleone reacts impulsively and emotionally, he gets taken out. In business, if you don’t take the opportunity to out-sell, out-bid, or out-market your competitor, they’ll take you out. I’m not suggesting doing anything outside the boundaries of morality or rightness–simply pointing out that when people make emotional decisions, they start making bad decisions. To lead successfully, you have to take your emotion and ego out of the equation.”

Likewise, Moore says it’s important to play to win. In business, that translates to knowing the competition and always staying at least one step ahead. “Operate your business with integrity and have respect for competition, but you also need to seize opportunities to eliminate your competition and win.”

4. Be decisive.

Moore says that he, like most people who appreciate The Godfather, watch the movie with a combination of shock and respect. “Shock because he is so ruthless that he kills his own family member, but respect for the fact that Don Corleone knows exactly what he wants, executes decisively, and commands respect through unwavering leadership.”

While you don’t have to kill anyone to prove a point, as soon as you know what choice to make, move forward. “Know who on your team is making the right choices, and trust them to take decisive action as well. Hesitation too often leads to missed opportunities.”

5. Spend time with your family.

Do you spend time with your family? Because a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man. ~Vito Corleone

Moore isn’t endorsing 1940s machismo, but he is decrying 100-hour workweeks that many entrepreneurs fall prey to in hot pursuit of the next big thing. Though he’s been dedicated like that in the past, Moore finds it’s not sustainable in the long run.

“A leader can’t be successful in creative problem-solving and making excellent decisions unless that person is connected to people and passions outside of work. I find that it’s often time with family and friends that gives me the perspective I need to build the relationships and make the decisive actions required for continued success in business,” says Moore.

Think we missed any big leadership themes from The Godfather? Get thee to the comments and let us know.

Here is some great advice on how to engage your customers socially from Scott Meldrun.

Many of us in the marketing world are focused on the science — and art — of customer acquisition. It’s a very direct, number-driven game. Not a lot of room for branding in this world. It’s about driving a volume of consumers through a gated funnel process and trying to get as many to activate as you can. The more customers, the better.

But what kind of customers do we really want? As we all know, getting a customer takes much more work than keeping a customer. Assuming your marketing department or agency excels at both, the only real consideration left is how to get more of those customers to connect socially because as everyone knows, social customers are the best ones to get and keep, bar none.

Some of your customers are preternaturally social. It’s in their DNA. They love to connect. They seek it out. They activate easily, and they share frequently. Still, the process of going from customer to social customer isn’t intrinsic to the larger majority of consumers. They need to be stimulated, led, and in some cases, pushed into the social fray.

By applying some of the direct marketing principles that drive customer acquisition, we can create a model that more effectively acquires and retains social customers. These social customers can be a tremendous asset in acquiring more customers. Social customers do an awful lot of advertising for you. This can sharply offset your media costs and drive the new customer acquisition costs down.

So we are clear, this article doesn’t focus on how to acquire more customers who are social. Rather, it focuses on strategies and tactics that will enable us to drive more of our existing customers into forming a social connection.

Contact
Clearly, brands cannot acquire social customers without making contact. Sure, brand loyalty will deliver some social customers. But a customer stumbling across, let alone seeking out, one of your social channels and connecting with you is rare. It’s certainly not a scalable model. It’s up to you to initiate the contact. It’s really the only way to drive awareness at scale.

Potential social customers can be contacted through any number of channels, most of which you likely own. Every single customer touchpoint creates an opportunity to establish awareness of your social channels. Email, websites, SEO, ecommerce, point of purchase signage, and printed receipts are just a few of the touchpoints available to you.

I’m amazed to see recent case studies in social media marketing that involve the acquisition of social customers by way of exclusively paid media. It’s a tactic that, while necessary in some cases, shouldn’t be the only avenue of awareness. The touchpoints I mentioned above are from “owned” media channels. They are yours to leverage. Simple icons that click to your social pages aren’t enough. Not anymore. Define every customer touchpoint you have, and harness them to bring awareness to your social channels.

Convince
Let’s face it: The days of casual “liking” are over! Even if they weren’t, we’ve learned that a casual social connection is a weak one. The act of connecting and being connected are different. Nowadays, people don’t truly connect unless they get something from it. We, as consumers, are getting bombarded with marketing messages via our social networks, much like we do everywhere else. If you want your customer to form social connection with your brand, you have to clearly communicate the benefits of that connection.

It’s not about incentives. It’s about consideration. And I don’t mean “being considerate.” Rather, I mean there is a fair exchange of attention and activation on the customer’s part and benefits delivered on the brand’s part. Consideration is one of the cornerstones that make up a contract. Social contracts, while invisible to most, still exist. And if this is true, consideration (the benefit) needs to be part of the deal. More importantly, that benefit needs to be articulated in a clear, yet compelling way.

Some of the best ways to communicate the benefits of forming a social connection are by way of content. Why give them a decision (connect or not connect) when you can give them an experience? There’s nothing more convincing than content to help us make up our minds when considering whether or not to connect. Don’t just throw up a link to your Twitter page. Roll the feed right within your website. Don’t just ask for a subscription to your YouTube channel, give them something to watch that excites them into saying “yes.” The strength of the initial connection lies in customers believing what they see. If you only show them a button or a link, they can’t form any real belief about the benefits of connecting.

Convert
You have reached them. You have convinced them to connect. Now what? It’s time to make good on your promise to provide the benefit. It’s time to deliver the goods. You have to bring the customer from “let’s see” to “hell yeah.” You have to convert them from a passive social customer to an active social customer.

This is yet another attempt to convince some of you out there that content is key. And to hearken back on an earlier word, let’s substitute “content” for “experience.” Sounds better, yes? Broadcasting messages is not an experience. Sure, discounts and special offers need to be part of the portfolio of content. But in order for customers to have a true experience, the content they receive needs to give them a deeper emotional connection with your brand than they would have had otherwise.

I’ll make it simple — a kiss is just a kiss. An emotionally charged kiss is an experience.

Emotion is at the heart of every single purchase decision we make. One could argue that it’s part of every decision. The psychology behind our decisions is complicated. But one thing we can always count on is our emotions play a big role in the process. Your content needs to trigger the right emotions that will convert your passive customer into an active one.

Converting social customers is not a given. Just because they follow you doesn’t mean they are following you. A constant flow of relevant content will help to seal the bond that you are looking to form with them.

Co-connect
We’ve all analyzed the many opinions on what makes something viral. We often roll our eyes in amazement as a certain piece of content goes into the stratosphere while another more relevant or entertaining piece fizzles out. Regardless of the content, there are very specific mechanics involved in the act of sharing content.

I call this process of sharing “co-connecting.” It allows the brand to ride on the shoulders of the social customers as they share the brand’s content with their friends and family. The content can’t get there on its own. It has to be shared with the masses by your connections (social customers).

Co-connecting is a verb, not a noun. We as brand marketers need to consider who will share a piece of content, as well as why and how it will be shared. Once that’s fairly solid, focus on what the content will be. Creatives and other marketing folk still approach this first from the content perspective. It’s no wonder it’s so hit or miss.

If you have solid sharing mechanics in place (who, why, how) and have created content experiences that ignite and excite both the co-connector and the people they are connecting with, then you’ve got a terrific distribution model in place. Your content has a life beyond the customer and in fact, drives new customers, both social and non-social, into the activation chain. While this might be stating the obvious, it’s important to understand the sequence of events and the mechanics at work.

Co-connections are formed when an initial user believes the content is personally valuable, and valuable enough to share with others. Something is gleaned from that exchange (props, cool points, altruism), but that value needs to be there. Co-connectors do a lot of heavy lifting for you and your content. So value should be at the center of your creative decisions about what content could, and should, be sharable.

Social customers aren’t necessary to sell your product. You can build an acquisition model that is scalable and efficient without them. But what are you missing in terms of lost ROI? How much profit could a 10 percent savings in media costs combined with a 10 percent increase in unit sales deliver to your company?

Social customers form a highly cost effective distribution channel to new customers, and they strengthen purchase consideration by way of advocacy. Often they reach more people and close more sales at a more efficient CPA than most forms of paid media. Adding social customer acquisition and retention tactics like the ones above will help your already efficient customer acquisition strategy and deliver a knock-out sales combination.

This is a re-post from one of my favorite marketing minds, Roy Williams.

People today are different, less naïve, less gullible, less open to suggestion than in the past. Christopher Isherwood describes this difference perfectly:
 

“To live sanely in Los Angeles or, I suppose, in any other large American city, you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in your ear what you should desire, what you should fear, what you should wear and eat and drink and enjoy, what you should think and do and be. They have planned a life for you from the cradle to the grave and beyond which it would be easy, fatally easy, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist’s command. Wake up, wake up… you’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment.”
 

Yes, people today are definitely more skeptical than they used to be.
 

Have you noticed how few people these days spout the old “positive thinking” platitudes that were so popular during the revved-up years of Reagan, George Sr., and Bill Clinton? Quiet determination and clenched-teeth endurance are the virtues we admire today. A person spewing happy platitudes and cliché’s is likely to be told, “Talk is cheap. Shut up and do something. Don’t tell us what you believe. Show us.”
 

Conversations among friends are less likely to be shallow and superficial than in the past. Concerns run deeper, fears lie closer to the surface and frustration often simmers deep inside. Even the happiest people are a little bit angry.
 

The public is no longer looking for a perfect icon to worship. Most of them are looking for an equally-flawed friend with whom they can connect.
 
The online world gives us instant access to information. This has sensitized the public to the absence of facts in most selling messages. Unsubstantiated claims in advertising are likely to fall on deaf ears.
 

Much has been written about the importance of transparency as though transparency were still a choice. But it isn’t. You are transparent whether you choose to be or not. Search engines have removed any veil you might have hidden behind.
 

I hear a voice whispering in the night:

“Relevance and credibility, ad writer, are the words you must engrave on your heart if you will write ads that move the needle.  The customer is asking, ‘Does this matter to me?’ They are looking for relevance. And their second question is, ‘Do I believe what they’re telling me?’ They are looking for credibility.”
 

Today’s customers have been lied to by the best. All but the stupidest of them can spot a half-truth a mile away.
 

Make no mistake; there are still plenty of stupid people left in America. Fools must outnumber con men or the con men could not find enough to live upon. My seat-of-the-pants estimate is that roughly 15 percent of Americans are gullible fools whose prejudices outweigh their intellect. I’m not trying to be vicious. I just don’t want you to cling to those obvious exceptions that would appear to disprove the larger truth.
 

Fifteen percent of the population is still a pile of people and frankly, you can make a lot of money by yanking their chain with hyperbole, misdirection, overstatement and lies. But to me, writing ads that target stupid people is like beating up little children. I can do it. I just don’t want to.
 

I’ll bet you don’t either.
 

Eighty-five percent of your prospective customers are intelligent people with unprecedented access to information. And as such, they are a hard public to convince. These are men and women who have seen an actual war launched by imaginary weapons of mass destruction, an actual economy ruined by imaginary credit-default swaps, and billions of dollars bilked from hard-working investors through imaginary securities created by Bernie Madoff and his Wall Street cronies. Yes, today’s customers have been lied to by the best.
 

As an ad writer, I’ve chosen to write ads for the intelligently suspicious 85 percent. It’s hard work, requiring clenched-teeth determination and a willingness to wrestle with advertisers who desperately want to turn back the hands of the clock.

The simple truth is that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are gone, Norman Rockwell is dead and the Reagan years are over. 
 

But I believe the best is yet to come for business owners who understand the new rules of communication.
 

Come, the future awaits us.