Amazing lesson in marketing

Customer Delight, Marketing, service quality

I am always on the lookout for amazing execution of marketing activities especially when they are at the ground level. If you’re frontline employees can be brilliant at execution, there’s no stopping your growth.

It’s one thing to say you are good, its another when your customers go public showing their appreciation.

In India, only now has there been some opening up of the tourism sector over the last 2 months. A lot of families have got their 2 doses of vaccination and are therefore a little less scared of travelling. So now people are slowly starting to travel with their families and visit holiday destinations.

My family and I also decided to have a change of scenery. So when we were booking our hotels and had shortlisted on two brands of five star hotels, my wife decided to look at TripAdvisor to search for unbiased views.

Among the 2 hotels, one of them had such rave reviews by guests that it was a no-brainer to choose this one.

Boy when we reached, were we delighted to have chosen this hotel.

Incidentally if you have to see what hospitality is, you have to visit India. You can’t get better hospitality anywhere else.

However we stay in India, so our expectations and benchmarks for hospitality are different. So when I say this hotel was way above on the hospitality scale you can imagine the quality. But the best is yet to come.

We had booked our room with dinner and breakfast included. So we go down to the restaurant for our first meal in the restaurant. And the hostess seats us and asks about our stay etc. Then mentions if there’s anything special that we would want, we just need to mention.

The food was very tasty and the staff was extremely helpful. On the second day at dinner we liked 2 dishes which were exceptional so we called the floor manager to give the chef our compliments for the dishes. He mentioned he would, but would we be kind enough to give our comments on TripAdvisor because then his whole team would be enthused. Note the first nudge to go and comment on TripAdvisor.

In our next day breakfast our hostess again asked if there’s something special which we would like to have. My wife asked her for suggestions on local dishes. She suggested a dish and asked the chef to get it ready for that night’s dinner.

The dish was amazing and the fact that they had specifically got it made for us, made us feel very special. Again the hostess and the floor manager asked us if we had liked the food. When we said we loved it, they again asked us to post our review on TripAdvisor. Note the second nudge.

The hostess then came to leave us till the elevator and told us how we can quickly find where to put our comments on TripAdvisor so we don’t have to waste time. Note the third nudge along with a helpful piece of advice. Most of us are lethargic and we tend to delay doing these kind of things and eventually forget about it. By nudging us this way, they ensured that we put our glowing comments there.

The story does not end here. That’s the reason I found it so interesting and I am writing about it.

These guys were monitoring TripAdvisor. So when we put our comments they noticed it. So immediately in the next meal, the hostess came to thank us for the comments and again asked if there was anything special that they could prepare for us. Again we took her advice for the dish and that night we again had a fabulous meal. When we again complimented the team, the hostess again asked if we can give another comment on TripAdvisor and my son this time said why not and went and put a comment there.

Now this special treatment was not only for us. It was for all the guests which I observed with the number of comments on TripAdvisor for this hotel.

Its not only important to give great service, its also critical to get happy customers to spread the word by writing a recommendation. These guys have mastered this art.

Even though we are in the B2B business I have been thinking on how we can incorporate this kind of a system into our business.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Single Target Market- once again

B2B, differentiation, Marketing, messaging, Product Management, route to market, segmentation, single target market

This is such a major piece in any market plan that I cannot lay enough emphasis on the topic. I have already written a lot of posts on just this one topic , but there’s so much at stake in your plan with just this one concept that its critical that you get this right.

Some would call this segmentation, some would call it finding a niche. Call it by whatever name, the idea is to start in a minimum viable piece of the market, learn everything and then expand. Never ever try to address all segments at once.

You can segment by geography- so choose only one location to start, or you could look at a vertical industry to start with if you are in the B2B market.

One useful way to find the Single Target market is also by usage. Suppose you have a service and as an example say you decide to focus on New York City. But NYC has 9 million people. So you could then either break it down by identifying the neighborhood because different parts of NYC have different buyers in terms of paying capacity.

You could then go further down to see if your service is for first time users, or for emergency usage, or a a replacement service etc.

Once break it down to such granularity each interaction with a prospect becomes a learning and you can quickly understand and test different messaging, different media etc. so that you can quickly dominate the market.

If you are in anyway responsible for product management and going to launch a new product or service or in marketing in a similar situation first get clarity on this aspect.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Riding the elephant- you still need to market

B2B, Marketing, need, relationships, Riding the elephant, route to market, Symbiotic relationship

While I keep harping about the advantages of using my philosophy of riding the elephant. You need to be aware that, at the end of the day you need to keep your marketing principles in mind over there also.

I have written on some ofvthese points earlier also, but its important to identify the need of the elephant. The elephant has to see the benefits of giving you a ride.

This is a critical aspect, because if you try to tell the elephant about your capabilities to cut branches of trees, then the elephant may not be interested in you. On the other hand if you show the elephant that you can help him get bananas faster, it may become your friend and give you a ride. However some elephants may not be interested in bananas, so you may end up missing judging and spending time in convincing the wrong elephant.

Year before last, we invested a lot of time in building a solution on one of the biggest cloud service providers. We had a unique solution and we thought that the cloud service provider would take us along where they saw prospects. But inspite of spending more than a year we realized that the technology platform that we were working on was not a priority for them in India. So this elephant was not interested in the fact that we could help it get bananas faster, because it was not interested in eating bananas.

So whether you are going out on your own or you are using my philosophy of riding an elephant you still need to identify that one need in the market which you can address.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Riding the elephant- once again

Marketing, Product Management, route to market, Symbiotic relationship

Today’s post is a short one. You all know my philosophy for a small business in the technology space- ride a large OEM (the elephant) and wherever the elephant goes, you get a ride . In case you are interested I had written around 4-5 posts earlier in the year on this whole philosophy.

Today’s post is about how my team has used the same concept. I have trained some of my team members into following this philosophy and while it took them some time to learn the techniques of first learning to give before asking and building long term relationships.

It took about 8-9 months with our technical and marketing working closely with the OEM to keep building solutions on their platforms without any desire for business.

But now that so many of the OEM’s people see the kind of investments we have made and our commitment to their business, they themselves have started taking us forward.

We are still no way near reaching the full potential of what’s possible with the relationship, but if my team does it right then it can have a snowball effect.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!