Planning Messages and Incentives for Brand Contact

STEP 3 PLANNING MESSAGES AND INCENTIVES PLANNING MARCOM DELIVERY Analyzing Brand Contacts or through other forms of contactlike word of mouth or product usagethat are outside the marketers control brand contacts for a technology product As shown the whole brand consists of much more than just traditional communication elements It includes employees word of mouth merchandising post sales support and so on In short it is all the ways a customer or prospect might have contact with the product or service before purchase during use and after experiencing the product in action Promise Public relations Internet Media relations Advertising Employee communication Sales practices Service standards Performance Recruitment Compensation incentive policies Information systems In short the marketer must develop a full inventory of the various forms of communication to which customers and prospects are exposed Exhibit 73 Whole Brand Contact Inventory Exhibit 74 Whole Brand Contact Priority Grid For longterm brand communication success it is important that the message or messages the customer or prospect receives at all points of contact are fully integrated and aligned That means the easiest way to improve those brand contacts in areas II and III of the grid is to align and integrate them with the positive contacts in areas I and IV This integration and alignment process is necessary even if the contacts are difficult to manage or control To resolve some nonintegrated and negative contacts it may even be necessary to move resources from one budget area to another thereby ensuring success for the brand going forward impact If so the company is not only wasting money but may be actually driving customers away by investing in this contact point Once the inventory chart and priority grid have been completed they can be used in a number of ways Clearly they are useful as the basis for deciding which points of contact will be most effective in delivering messages and incentives and in helping the marcom manager fashion the content of each communication Beyond marcom applications they are a useful starting point for developing a fairly sophisticated customer satisfaction measurement plan that identifies areas for reinforcement and improvement For example the inventory chart gives a broad understanding of the areas that should be included in a satisfaction initiative Similarly the priority grid provides guidance on how to weight each area or contact point The analysis of customer expectations versus actual experience is a telling and often painful indication of critical gaps and misalignments within the organizations operations and communication efforts Additionally an examination of the priority grid can identify how well the firms priorities line up with those of customers and prospects Finally the grid can help identify where resources are currently being allocated or distributed to customers and prospects and helps the manager identify areas of misallocation Matching Experience to Expectation Most companies are aware of gaps that exist between customer expectations and customer experience yet few know how to close them Brand Imprinting a research group with branches in Detroit and Chicago offers a methodology to remedy the situation Through extensive interviews with customers the firm seeks to determine not only how customers feel about a brand but how they behave toward it Recall that it is behavior not attitude that is the basis for customer valuation Researchers are then able to deconstruct how demand occurred and map out the customer purchase process The firm can then demonstrate to the client the gap between what the client wants its brand image to be and what that image is in the mind of specific customers and why it exists This type of customerinformation feedback allows the client company to modify its selling process based on customers image of the brand Lets look at an example In a study for Audi in Florida Brand Imprinting was assigned the task of understanding how the customer discovers the Audi brand Researchers learned that this occurred primarily through curiosity of what the brand and automobile were all about It seemed that curiosity rather than expectation of the kind of car it was triggered demand Brand Imprinting reasoned that if curiosity leads customers to discover the brand then the dealership experience is the most important aspect of the selling process Yet as researchers followed customers through the buying process they discovered that most cars on the showroom floor were locked The prospect could not experience the interior of an Audi without finding a salesperson thus violating the first expectation of curiosity Researchers further discovered that the testdrive experience helped transform curiosity into demand With this insight Audi was able to adjust the showroom experience by having dealers unlock the car doors and urge more people to testdrive its vehicles In another study this time for teenage clothing company Union Bay Brand Imprinting sought to determine how the brand should be portrayed at the retail level Through observation of teenage shoppers and oneonone interviews researchers discovered that most teens were not confident when shopping They had trouble determining which separates went together well or looked cool Brand Imprinting concluded that stores were somehow failing to help nonconfident shoppers fit in Union Bay seized the opportunity to close the gap between expectation and experience They helped department stores increase sales by placing shirts together with pants so that teens could easily see which pieces worked together as outfits Discovering How and When Customers Want to Be Contacted Everything we have discussed so far about how customers interact with brands shows that brand contacts are not under the exclusive control of the marketer This means that to find out about effective brand touch points the marketer needs to stop talking and start listening For this reason the IMC approach to message or incentive creation is to start off by determining how customers want to receive brand information This requires a new method of customer research that revolves not around the brand or the organization but around the requirements of the customer Research questions focus on how prospects would like to receive information or material from the company or about the brand These alternative brand contact points are ranked based on the individual customers preferences The results are then matched against the firms current delivery investments In almost all the companies we have researched we have found that 50 percent to 60 percent of the message delivery systems used by the firm do not align with customer preferences or desires This means thatregardless of the communication message itselfmarcom managers can potentially increase consumer response and decrease communication costs simply by aligning their delivery systems with customer preferences The message to marketers is elegant in its simplicity talk to customers and prospects when and where they want to hear from you not at your own convenience One final point to consider when determining brand contacts we recommend that marcom managers always keep in mind that people generally feel more comfortableand therefore more receptivewhen they feel they have some control over a situation A recent study for instance found that when blood donors were allowed to choose which arm blood would be drawn from they showed significantly less discomfort Similarly customers respond well to choice whether theyre deciding between an alarm clock and a wakeup call at a hotel or when to have their meal on an airplane Not only does choice increase value in the eyes of the consumer but it increases the value of the brand as well Choice allows customers some control over brand contacts If they can choose when and where they receive marketing communication they typically are more active and involved in the process When given A brand contact is meaningful to customers and prospects on two conditions it must be relevant to them and it must be delivered when it is wanted or neededthat is when customers are receptive to it For a brand contact to be relevant it must be available to the customer or prospect when he or she wants or needs it not when the marketer wants to make it available Because they ignore this simple tenet traditional marketing efforts have rightly been perceived by consumers as intrusive or interruptive Marketers interrupt television dramas to advertise products or slice up a football game to allow for commercial breaks For the most part the only relevance in current marcom delivery systems is relevance to the marketer Receptivity is directly related to relevance When a brand contact is relevant and comes at a time that is convenient to the customer or prospect he or she will generally be receptive to it People are most receptive to brand contacts when they either have a current or latent need to solve a problem or make a marketplace choice For example when a couple get engaged they suddenly become receptive to brand contacts related to married life such as setting up a house decorating and so on As the wedding approaches they seek out information that will help them make the most of their special day During a specific window of time the prospective bride and groom are very receptive to specific types of information The marketer who wishes to offer relevant brand contacts at a time when customers and prospects are likely to be most receptive to them has a duty to know understand and identify not just when that window is going to open and close but the form and method through which specific customers would like to receive information This kind of relevance and receptivity planning is a key element of the IMC process and is illustrated in Exhibit 75 Customerprospect exposure Brand contact information can provide clues as to what customers or prospects may consider relevant about a brand as well as when they might be most receptive to communication about it This leads directly to the selection of delivery systems most likely to be relevant and to which customers are likely to be receptive As noted before the choice of vehicles is not driven as is the case in traditional marketing by how marketers want to distribute their messages or incentives but how customers are most likely to want to receive them Thus in an IMC plan delivery efficiency takes on a new meaning Instead of measuring media efficiency in terms of the cost of reaching so many thousands of consumers cost is directly related to outcomes or behaviors that occur That is for the first time marketers are able to measure what it costs to achieve the desired behavior on the part of the customer or prospect the Advertising Research Foundation clearly showed how wrong these assumptions are Using a base of more than 7500 individual responses gathered online and balanced demographically to reflect the US census consumers told Schultz and Pilotta the following Reversing the Communication Flow Historically marketing communicators have relied on the outbound distribution of messages and incentives That is the organization decided what it wanted to say developed messages or incentives selected distribution forms and methods and then sent those messages and incentives on their way They then sat back and waited for customers and prospects to respond to or ignore their communication Yes there was noise in the process caused by a wide variety of factors ranging from the receivers inability to decode the message to clutter in the media channels to interruptions and message conflict And there was generally some type of feedback loop where the sender tried to determine some type of response from the intended audience such as whether they would buy the product or service visit the retail store repeat a purchase and so on The basic model however was and continues to be much the same as it is shown in Exhibit 76 The problem as we have already discussed is that in the new interactive marketplace the communication process has changed Instead of the marketer being in control power has shifted to the consumer The customer or prospect becomes the message sender or message requester and the organization is now the receiver and respondent As an example the customer or prospect can now access the marketers website ask questions online or raise issues with customer service about the product service offer warranty and the like In short the communication flow is reversed as illustrated in Exhibit 77 In this reverseflow model channels change too Rather than consisting of traditional media forms channels are those to which the customer or prospect has access including tollfree numbers letters salespeople customer service the Internet and so on Noise still exists in these channels of course but that noise is now a busy signal on the telephone delays in response from the organization incomplete information packages and so forth The feedback loop changes as well It is now driven by how well the organization responds to the customer or prospect It includes such factors as response time the opportunity for recourse by the customer or prospect or what kind of respect the marketer gives the customer Browsing through the Internet on any given day one can easily see that consumers can talk to companies For example Nordstrom has a live customer service representative who can answer questions over the Internet for inquiring customers Ben Jerrys invites comments suggestions and questions through its website Tollfree numbers websites and mailing addresses are all mechanisms that offer customers a new freedom to talk with and to companies These forms of inbound communication are a prerequisite for any company wishing to incorporate reverse communication into its marketing efforts In short the marketer must be prepared to listen as well as talk to respond to customers as well as communicate messages to or at them resources thinks that marketing is responsible for internal communication while marketing thinks its the other way around The result is that internal communication falls through the cracks and even those employees on the front linewho constantly interface with customers fielding questions and answering complaintsare commonly unaware of communication initiatives dont know what the firm is promising customers or what they are supposed to deliver