Precision like the Swiss – how to use it in your marketing

When we were kids, we were always told about how precise the Swiss were in terms of their engineering and how a Swiss watch would be accurate for years to come….those were the days of the mechanical watches. As you roamed the streets of Geneva during those days , you could see shops where there were people with magnifying glasses on their eyes, putting in the various gears of the watch.

Now I went back to Geneva after a very very long time about two years back. Those watchmakers are gone. I wanted to showcase those watchmakers to my wife and son but couldn’t.

However what has not changed is the precision that the Swiss follow in all walks of their life. As usual, I had made Geneva my base and bought the Swiss Travel Pass which allowed us the use of all their train, bus and boats. If you are short on time and want to visit multiple places, the travel pass is the most convenient thing.

Everyone knows how beautiful Switzerland is and how safe it is etc. etc.

I am not sure however if anyone knows or speaks about, how synchronised the whole transit transport system in Switzerland is. You get only 3-4 minutes between interchanges, but you can be sure that you will catch all your linking transport. And this is not only about trains or only buses, but all the trains, boats and buses.

One day we decided to go to Interlaken from Geneva. After reaching Interlaken and admiring all the beauty from the land level we took the …..to the restaurant on the highest point. After having our lunch over there we decided to take a boat ride on the lake – all three of us love boat rides. When we reached the boat station, the next boat was not until about 3:30 PM ( I don’t remember the exact times now). The whole tour would take about 2 hours. So I was worried that we would not be able to take the train back to Geneva via Berne from Interlaken. We then started thinking in terms of avoiding the boat ride because otherwise we would reach Geneva past midnight. While Geneva is very safe, I generally have a fear of being so late in a foreign land.

Now this is where the drama comes. The steward at the boat was extremely friendly. Before he started boarding I got talking to him, sharing my dilemma. Once I told him the final destination he made out a itinerary for me, so that we would get a ride on the boat as well as not reach Interlaken at midnight.

So we got on the boat. After about 25 minutes of a boat ride in a chilly winter afternoon in Interlaken, at the second stop he asked us to get down. Right opposite the docking area was a small station. The challenge with the small station was that there was very little English so we were not sure if the train that was coming us would take us. But the steward had given us the train number and the destination.

So exactly in 12 minutes or so the train arrived. We sat in the train to reach the mainline station where would catch the train coming from Interlaken. The challenge – there was only a 3 minute gap and the platforms where the two trains were going to park were quite a walk. But our train reached there exactly as promised. We moved at a brisk pace to reach the other platform and to our surprise, the train we had to catch was just entering the platform as we reached.

I haven’t seen such precision, such attention to minute details across different transport systems in different cities like I saw it there.

Its things like these which make Switzerland such a “hot” tourist destination.

Why all this story – because if you can anticipate in advance how will each of your marketing pieces work and what will be the next steps and who will do what, when the prospect takes which step, then your whole system will work smoothly to get customers into your funnel and pass them on.

If on the other hand if any of the pieces are mis-aligned, then , there will be friction in your marketing which the customer will sense and you will delay his buying.

Till next time see how precisely you can match all the moving parts.

Carpe Diem!!!

TRUST

Character, Competence, Marketing, messaging, Trust

I have always believed that you need to create trust with the buyer. If the buyers, in the case of B2B, do not trust you (first) and the technology (second) they will not buy from you.

I had a moment of reckoning when I was reading the book The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey.

For me trust was always a factor of honesty and integrity or what can also be called character. If I was honest about how I dealt with others in my transactions and if I did what I said I would do, then I could be trusted. Over a period of time people notice this and start trusting you.

Being from marketing, I always equated Branding with a promise that people could trust.

The reckoning was that Trust has another component- Competence – the ability to get the job done. If you don’t have the ability to get a job done when you said you will get it done, then people won’t trust you.

A very good example the author gives is about a surgeon. You may believe someone has character but would you let her operate on you if she doesn’t have Competence. You will trust a surgeon if you see she has Competence (her degree, license etc.) and if after checking her earlier patients you identify Character.

The implications for marketing are tremendous of this statement. You not only need to show character, but you also need to show competence in what you do. In all your messaging you need to bring out both the aspects before expecting the prospect to interact with you.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing is Education

differentiation, education, Marketing, messaging, Positioning, Trust

Jay Abrahamone of the most respected marketing strategists, has one of the pillars of his Marketing Parthenon – education of customers.

An informed customer makes better decisions, and generally in your favor.

The bigger reason why education helps is that it goes below the radar of the prospects. Most prospects have their antennae always looking out to see if someone is trying to sell them something. The moment they sense that, they bring up their barriers to hearing about what you want to say.

When they see that you are doing selfless education, they hear you. Once they keep getting educated on a continuous basis, they start trusting you. If you show them proof of how you have helped others then the trust grows even stronger. You position your company differently.

During this process when you start introducing your product in a non-intrusive manner then subconsciously the prospects start gravitating towards you and if they have a need which your product can fill, then by default they will choose your brand because you have built the trust.

When there’s trust, factors like pricing etc. take a back seat. Your competitors will be compared to what you offer, not the other way around. Your competitors won’t even realize what hit them.

The other advantage of educating people is that then they come to you for advice, they list their challenges. Using these inputs you can further refine your product and make it more valuable in the eyes of the customers.

Till next time then keep educating your prospective customers.

Carpe Diem!!!

Testing for marketing messaging

B2B, messaging, Testing

Everyone is given the motivational talk about Edison and that he failed to 9000 times before he was successful with the light bulb. While you cannot take away the fact that he was a master inventor, he also utilized the principles of mass testing. He tested vigorously and kept learning from each test….so they were iterations not failures.

When a company says that the electric motor they manufacture has an average life of 3000 hours, they would not test each motor for 3000 hours. They would typically create a sample and then keep the sample on for 3000 motor-hours. If no motor fails then 3000 hours is a safe figure to commit. By continuously testing samples over a long period of time you will be able to come to a figure which is then extremely reliable.

What Edison did was employ multiple people for testing different filament options at a mass level on the electric bulb. So even though there were more than 9000 failures, these failures were not all sequential done by one man, but parallel tests.

In messaging also you can’t keep trying to check which message will stick to your target audience in B2B. What you need to do is test parallel messages and see on which message you get traction. Then the message that gets you the best traction, becomes your “control” piece. Now you start testing against this message by changing one variable at a time.

You need to test very fast at mass scale. One of the challenges I have faced in doing these mass testing procedures is that the people involved lose patience and the tests go haywire because people start compromising. The testing process has to be rigorous, for you to get a clear winner.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!