Marketing is Education – Part 4

differentiation, differentiation, education, Marketing, Positioning, route to market

How many of you have heard of the perfume brand ….Fragonard

When we think of perfumes, the typical names which come to our mind are Nina Ricci, Channel, Givenchy, Boss etc. Fragonard…never heard of it, or at least I had never heard of it.

When we went to Paris, we had taken the Paris Pass. One of the coupons as part of the Pass was the visit to a perfume museum where they would show you how perfumes are made.

So we decided to take the tour because we had never seen perfume being made. They had various language guides and the moment they had a large enough crowd they would start the tour. Our guide was tremendous. Inspite of the fact that she was French, she spoke very clear English and explained the complete history of how the initial perfumes got made, then how the various flavours and fragrances are created etc.

After the history and the processes she spoke about how perfumes evaporate, how they should be kept, what kind of containers should be used, and the concentration levels if the perfume has to last long on your body.

All this information you need to understand was biased towards what they were offering. This is not to say they were giving wrong data. They were however showcasing data that got you oriented towards their offering.They also took up the issue of not doing mass advertising to create a brand awareness, head-on, and eliminating it as a objection, as part of the education process. This differentiation of using education rather than showing models has kept them in good stead. They have been in business for more than 100 years I think.

All the queries were so masterfully handled by the guide, it was as if she was an amazing teacher.

At the end of the tour then she came up with the offer, since we had spent time visiting them, only at that time (limited time / scaricity )from her (reciprocity)- because she had given all this education free of cost to us, quite a few of us ended up buying a lot of perfumes.

My family and I had not gone with any agenda to buy, we still ended up buying more than Euro250 worth of perfumes. And the bigger fact is that we didn’t have a buyer’s remorse, that we had been tricked. We were actually feeling so happy that we got such good perfumes.

As a sidebar – the perfumes are really good, they do last much longer than the other brands even in the hot weather of India because the concentrate level is much higher than others. Also since they are packed in metal containers , unlike most other brands which are packed in glass, these last much longer in the bottle also.

You see the benefit of the education they gave me, I have given you the exact things they taught me about what should be seen while buying a perfume. They have made a permanent client. Whenever I go to Paris, Fragonard….will be on my list of places to visit to buy perfumes.

Can you see how you can utilise education to create a strong image in the mind of the customer.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

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

Marketing, messaging, Methodologies

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!!!

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!!!

Successful failure

Marketing, Methodologies, Product Management, Testing

I read this term today while I was reading the book The Bezos Letters by Steve Anders.

I just finished reading the 1997 letter to the shareholders and started reading the first chapter of the book. I was astonished by the amount of emphasis Jeff Bezos places on successful failure.

I keep writing about testing everything because only the market has the right to decide what will succeed. You may have the best product, the most expensive and elaborate media roll out, but if you don’t first test and see, it can bomb.

But Bezos takes it further, he’s talking of billions of dollars that he’s spent on failures, learnt from them and made other things successful and made many more billions.

In marketing and product management, especially when you are a small company , you need to be very agile at testing continuously, learning and adapting to make your product more attractive in the market.

When you do testing ensure you only do with one variable at a time, to keep reducing the risk of a complete disaster. Never try multi variable testing because you will never be able to figure out the interplay between two variables which could create an indeterminate third variable.

Everything that you do has risk. You mitigate it by testing, identifying the failures and then converting into success.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!