They probably don’t it just feels like that sometimes doesn’t it?

The reason for the question is that this morning I sat open mouthed as a senior figure from a sizeable firm talked about customer research.

The emphasis was on his firm …there was no fleeting reference to any of his competitors,he seemed oblivious that they existed..madness.

An interesting Powerpoint presentation gave nuts and bolts what customers were doing thinking and spending…very good,justified his salary no doubt.

No mention of the competition…This is dangerous for the survival of his operation…

Competitor Research is vital, listening to customers is important watching the competition is crucial…

Why?

• They may be taking business from you ,they may be trashing your reputation
• You may be missing out on contracts by not knowing their strengths and weaknesses
• What do you do the Same,Better? Where do you are they have that WOW moment?
• Who is that company that everyone is mentioning and what do they do?
• If you went out of business tonight where would your customers go in the morning?

What can you do on a regular basis to keep in touch with competitors?

• Little and often mystery shopping – check their service and product offering
• Look at their web sites, are they being constantly refreshed?
• Where do these web sites rank? Higher than yours? if YES then why?
• What’s their Social Media output? Better more focused than yours?
• Check their reputation by chatting with some of their clients…YES talk to their clients…
• Monitor key competitors by running searches..Google Alerts,Twitter and LinkedIn ..

In short if you don’t monitor what is going on you will be left behind…every business needs to grow and that doesn’t just apply to the revenue base its about growing your offering..

Shopper marketing

Recently Shopper Marketing has emerged as the new way to understand customers motivators of purchase.

It is far more focused on a strategic approach to marketing and less concerned with the short term gains of promotions and trade marketing.The long term is the objective, to increase sales but on a sustained basis.

A key plank in the thinking is that it is about selling to the shopper and not the consumer…

Radical approach given that the broadcast method of advertising and promotion has been used up until now. Generally everyone gets to hear about every offer…OK you could argue that loyalty points target your past purcahses but do they predict future decisions?

Current economic conditions make it even more imperative to make sure that customers are treated as individuals and that we are not all the same…we all have different routes to that till and getting underneath the skin of shoppers is where gains will be made.

Customer research is changing,mystery shopping and the mass of statistical information that retailers have plays a part but the approach is decidedly more shopper focused on the customer experience.

How many of us go out with the intention of buying X and come away with Y? We are brand fickle and cost concious…

This thinking is beginning to become more mainstream..O2 Rewards are catching on to the Shopper Marketing approach.

New services will undoubtedly emerge quickly but one innovation caught our eye..it’s called Beep Treat ..

It essentially allows customers to scan a Beep Treat poster and get a treat, discount etc, that can be used straight away..it also lets you post a Like to the Facebook page of the shop that you are in..

Smart technology that uses Social Media to drive sales and create brand advocacy as well as deploying new thinking…shoppers are not all the same and have differing purchase motivators..choice is important

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Marketing and Social Media go hand in hand,I would be surprised if anyone would say that it didn’t.It may be said that the combination works better for some than it does for others which has elements of truth.

Essentially all companies from whatever sector of what ever size can derive huge benefits form using platforms such as Twitter,Facebook and LinkedIn… Social Media has taken off and every business needs to be part of the conversation.

Most often the key positive factors in having a Social Media campaign are centred around brand building,raising awareness,reputation enhancement,establishing expertise. These are of course important but they don’t cover an area that is often neglected,that of Customer and Competitor  Research.

Customer and Competitor Research

It is easy to overlook the fact that there is free information out there that gets you closer to your market sector.This same information allows you to mine for New Business and gain insights into your competitors that you would never have had before.

New Business

What if you knew how to find the people who currently, as of now,need your service and want to buy that service?

Well you can…Twitter allows you to search for key words and phrases..think of it as Google in reverse..

If you needed a plumber then you might Google “Plumber Town X” and look at the results and phone a couple…imagine if a plumber called you and said they could help with your burst pipe…wow, you’d be amazed..

Searches can be run using Twitter itself and platforms such as Hootsuite..there are simple searches and you can even refine searches with an Advanced search function on Twitter.

Customer Research

By using Twitter,FaceBook and LinkedIn you can ask questions of your customers and conduct effective research.

Simply ask you followers for feed back using a variety of available tools...FaceBook has plenty of platforms that can be used, LinkedIn has Answers for example, in Twitter just ask and you will get responses from your followers..if the post is Re Tweeted then you automatically get a wider potential base of answers.

Competitor Intelligence

Track your competitors by checking their FaceBook pages, interrogate LinkedIn company profiles to see what they have been up to – very useful to see who the key people are in rival organisations.Quick research often gets good results, key people,new hires,new services…

Use Twitter to stay in touch with what competitors are up to. Follow key companies and people,check their lists and see who they are following,using tracking tools of which there are many..

The key to making this work is organisation…use the tools available and make sure that you have the basics in place, Google Alerts,a good Twitter platform such as Hootsuite,with lists and searches organised properly.Follow companies in LinkedIn,Like companies on Facebook,build relationships.

Use your LinkedIn company profile to post updates about what you are up to as a company,a powerful way to supplement your Online activity.

Remember…your Social Media marketing activity will take time to bear fruit,but your Customer Research and Competitor Intelligence will deliver immediate feedback…business intelligence that can be acted upon NOW..

We know what works because we have worked hard at finding out ….practical solutions that gets our clients results.

Not sure how to get the best from your campaigns?

Get in touch and arrange a chat,happy to help…..please contact socialmedia@customeyes-research.co.uk
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You can beat the big boys....keep trying

A great article in the FT on 23rd November  -”The Value of Being an Underdog” gives hope to those of us who are up against industry Leviathans.

At times all effort seems futile until cracks appear that allow us smaller,leaner outfits to steal an advantage.

Steve Jobs once said “why join the navy when you can be a pirate?”…this approach has allowed Apple to still be seen as a challenger brand,a maverick that delivers great products.

4 key areas were identified as crucial to the challenger approach.

1.Decide what you stand for and stick to it..retain your core principles

2.Craft a compelling story….make sure that you have a consistent bio that grabs attention

3.Build a Lighthouse Identity….Adam Morgans phrase relates to being a thought leader and instigator – don’t navigate by the consumer let them navigate by you..

4.Be Brave…stick with what you believe to be the right way…

There is of course another factor and that is confidence… be supremely confident in the image that you portray and in story you build your company on.

To challenge successfully takes determination and steely nerves and a dose of basic research awareness…

Steve Jobs may think focus groups are a waste of time but the average company can only benefit when undertaking some straight forward business intelligence ground work.

Who is doing what and where?

What does the market place customer have to say about who is in and who is out?

Any nugget can be turned to your advantage…it was after all a small stone that felled Goliath…a small stone that was delivered effectively…

Go get ‘em

Big day for England as they take to the pitch,vital that they do convert the expectation into action and a good result.

They really are taking to a field of dreams.Dreams of another world cup glory and to give us something to cheer about.

This made me think of the film,Field of Dreams, and the  line in it “Build it and they will come”which many companies have followed to the letter when they have put up their web sites.

The expectation is that huge visitor numbers will descend on the site, by the end of the first week orders will be stacked to the roof,by the following week you are looking at retiring…would be nice but not realistic.

Build it and they might come…

PPC,Pay Per Click, is a powerful tool that helps you to get the numbers visiting your site.It’s a delicate process of key word management,timing and an understanding of how Google works.

We believe that Google is not enough to get you business, your web site is but one part of the marketing mix needed to be used in business development.

Customeyes have PPC which to us means Phoning Prospects & Customers.It works as well.

We are surrounded by references to Social Media, what’s Sociable about it? Very little as we seem to have lost the desire to talk with prospects and customers.Most communication is by in Twitter,Facebook,Linkedin and email.

People buy from people not from keyboards…

If companies picked up the phone and actually had a conversation with a prospect or customer then far more business would be done with less reliance on the web delivering the goods.What happens when your web site is down? Do you close down for the day? Do you wait for it to be back up and hope that a prospect has found you and then has decided to call you? What happens if prospects don’t ever find you on the web?

Customeyes can help you to Tel-E-Market and get results from our version of PPC.

How can we help with Business Development?

• We can use the telephone as an effective tool to research and discover what prospects and customers want from you company
• Help with appointment setting
• Clean up old databases making sure that prospect and customer details are up to date -are you still sending Christmas cards of Christmas emails to people and companies who no longer exist?
• Use Web based surveys(we have our own web based survey tool)to learn more about what customers and competitors think
• Integrate and don’t Separate – Link the phone,web and Social Media to bring you a wider trawl of responses from research

So why do any or some of the above?

It may succeed in doing the following for a start -

• Get you some new customers
• Prevent customer churn and defection to companies that do phone and ask if all is OK
• Introduce customers to services you offer that they didn’t know about
• Win back lost customers – why did they leave you?
• Find out what your competition is up to
• Highlight possible New Product or Service areas
• Get some good PR material for future marketing

Sounds like some good reasons to consider getting in touch with Customeyes Research

It’s easy to Tel-E-Market effectively, its about not getting confused over when to use which variant of PPC – both get results.

Why not give us a call and we can explain how we can help in more detail.Email if you’d rather and we will call you and gladly explain how Customeyes PPC can help you.

Customeyes and their customers..

We do practice what we preach and on a regular basis we make sure that we find out what are clients really think about us.

The feed back is always illuminating and often not for the right reasons.Having said that we have never lost a client because we have let them down it’s always for a reason beyond anyones control.

Clients have come to expect that we can provide results and that we can  translate research findings into good business direction. To help this we use our own simple metric to group customers into easily understood categories. These are by no means hard and fast and are designed to offer broad guidelines on what type of customers our clients have nad hence inform resource allocation.

These categories areas follows and are designed to illustrate the customers desire to help you achieve more success.

Generators representing the ideal.They are brand,company evangelists and are your flag wavers.

They outspend other customers, are more likely to try new product offerings and of most importance they promote your brand.The oft quoted research that says it costs more to recruit new customers than hang on to existing ones is the reason why this group is so central to success.

Resistors, the bunch of customers that you don’t want to waste marketing budgets on..

They may well switch their allegiance to another company becoming someone else’s problem.They generally are a problem in so much as they are more at loggerheads with your efforts than in line with them.As a group they spend money with you but they take out of the company at the same time. They command a higher proportion of your resources to keep them happy and its a resource that could be directed towards Generators and Acceptors.

The issue is that whilst still complaining as your customer they are not only draining your resources in having to deal with them, staff time etc, they are a negative PR campaign that is impossible to control.  Should there be a few of these campaigns going on at the same time then reputation and standing in the market can take a potential knock.

What of the middle ground, the Acceptors? These are the customers that have mixed experiences and the ones that haven’t quite decided where they should put their cross. These are the very customers that every business should be attending to so that they are gently pointed towards the Generators and become your Brand Evangelists.

So what does our feed back tell us?

To be honest we have our fair share of all the above with a couple of Resistors in there as well….

Our Generators do just that, they promote our services to others where possible.

The Acceptors are to be honest moving towards being Generators but they ain’t there yet…

What did surprise us is that some of our lapsed( we don’t call them lost,there’s always hope…)customers turn out to be Generators…How can that be I hear you ask?

Market circumstances have meant that a couple of clients are standing back from undertaking any new market research but will return to it early next year. Despite the fact that they are lapsed clients they are still actively referring our services to other companies.We have had some very promising conversations with contacts they have supplied.

That is the crux of this – lapsed clients are a source of potential business as they still hold your company in high regard. They will continue to promote your services and should be contacted on a regular basis.

“Listen to your Customers before someone else does” is something that we are passionate about, it forms the basis of what we do. We provide a cost-effective research service that enable clients to do exactly that.

Business is about customers, getting them and then building profitable relationships with them. These customers could be from your competition so it is essential to listen to all customers, yours and rivals.

Intelligent business decisions should be based on sound business intelligence – your own customers and the feed back from your competitive environment. The current economic climate makes it even more important to keep getting feed back on how your brand is performing. Every business is a brand and every brand has to stay in tip-top condition to be able to respond to changing market conditions. By gathering feedback from your existing customers and from your competitive set you are giving your brand an effective market place work out.

Every New Year brings personal resolutions to get fit, stay in shape and improve overall health. Make 2010 the year that this is extended to your business as well.

It is well established that the best sales force is always going to be your current customers who, in an ideal world, should be recommending your company to everyone they know. Too many customers defect to other suppliers because of perceived indifference to their needs.

How many times have you heard the phrase, “if only you’d asked me what was wrong” when it comes to hearing a customer moved their spending to one of your competitors? It seems strange that companies don’t find out why customers defect, especially when some of those customers may have been long term ones.

Questions=Answers=Relationships =Profit=more business = Profit

You could of course conduct that research yourself and get some good results. You might consider using the services of an independent, objective and experienced company that will be able to help build and carry out a cost-effective research framework.

The obvious benefits are that often customers feel that they should flatter by saying the right thing if approached directly by the client.Rarely is the real picture of a business relationship portrayed and rarely will a customer even begin to suggest what could be changed or what improvements would have kept them spending with you.

Lost customers will often not even want to engage in a discussion as to why they left and you will never get the full picture of what factors contributed to the departure.A third party is often seen as independent are more likely to be given chapter and verse on what is good and bad.There is no embarrassment in telling the truth to third parties .Often a good chat leads to  suggestions of other services or products not previously considered that could be extremely profitable.

Competitive Framework

Customer Insight is important but only a part of what our Business Builder Service seeks to deliver.

Your competition is a vital source of market intelligence on where the market is and where it is going and more importantly where your company brand is sitting.

Customer feedback often informs the short-term, competitive  monitoring is the long view allowing you to plan and allocate resources to potential new sectors before they become established. A joint programme that looks at both current customers and the competitive framework lets you neatly cover both bases.

Business Builder is a cost-effective service that helps companies to make sure that their brand is in the best possible shape to trade profitably.

Business Builder makes sure that current customers, lost customers and customers from the competitive set are contacted giving you a comprehensive picture of your market place. Flexibility is the main point of this service, any, some or all of the competitive framework can be covered depending upon client needs.

Benefits of the service include -

• Prevent customer defection
• Regain business from Lost Customers
• Early warning mechanism so that issues don’t become problems
• Potential New Product or service intelligence
• Market environment assessment to make sure that you know what your competitors are doing and where the market might be heading.

Please contact us at info@customeyes-research.co.uk with any questions and to ask how we might be able to help your brand and company. We will be glad to talk with you about the particulars of the service.

Please call Angus Grady on 0845 688 5272.