More Growth - consumer insight, brand positioning, growth strategy

What the election results can tell you about what is important to your customers

The European elections are all over our screens today (Monday 8th June).  This is a pretty big poll of public opinion (15m voters).  I have been having a look to see if the results provide any useful insights for business leaders and marketers.

 

At Differentiate we say you must understand what drives customers to choose one product over another product.  We call these drivers "Power Attributes".  This insight from Power Attributes analysis helps you develop products, services and marketing messages that are more attractive to customers.

These Power Attributes do not shift every month or even every year, but they do change over time as external factors influence what is important to customers.  2009 seems to be one of those times when big changes are affecting customer motivations.  The recession, the banking crisis and the UK political row over politicians expenses seem to have had an effect on what matters to customers compared to just one or two years ago.

 

Studying the aftermath of the European elections suggests that the themes that arise and we need toi explore are grouped into three A's - Apathy, Apprehension and Anger

 

Apathy and detachment is demonstrated by the fact that no party got more votes than last time.  Labour lost because they got a lot fewer votes.  It seems that Labour voters could not only not bring themselves to vote Labour but they also did not want to vote for anyone else either!

  

Apprehension and fear comes from uncertainty regarding our personal financial futures (will I have a job? will I have a pension? I have lost 40% of my savings etc.)

 

Anger seems to be directed at banks for rewarding themselves whilst squandering our money and politicians for giving even banks even more money and then fiddling their own expenses at the same time.

 

How is this relevant to marketers and business leaders? 

  

These emotions are out there and real.  They affect what really matters to people.  These kind of macro changes and customers' emotional responses means it is highly likely that the drivers of how customers choose what to buy in your market have changed in the past 12 months.

 

We have been looking for some indicators of what might be changing.  Exploring the Google search terms database is just one way to do this.  Here are some examples, we have compared May 2009 with May 2008.

 

What is up
Grow your own +500%
Best buy +20%
Green +12%
Good school +10%
Healthy +5%

 

What is the same
Value is level
Chocolate is the same

 

What is down
Organic is -25%
Holiday in France -23%
Gardening -20%
Luxury -15%
Banks -15% (a long term trend which has accelerated this year)
Cheap -14%
Security -6% (long term trend)

 

This brief analysis suggests a return to more basic human and community values and decreased interest in fripperies.  Whilst on the other hand, it shows that some basics will always endure like chocolate and value for money.

 

Making sure you understand how the fundamental drivers of choice are changing is one important tool to survive the recession.

Do you promote what you do well or what matters to customers?

If you want to discover the Power Attributes that drive your customers to choose your brand rather than the competition, you have to have start by generating a list of possible attributes.  When we help clients do this, we get the initial attribute list from talking to the customers.  You can only really rely on customers to think like customers.    However, the business team can think of attributes that customers cannot even begin to imagine, so we also get some valuable attribute ideas from the client management team.

We do this through our facilitated workshop approach.  These workshop events often attract a senior audience.   When we work with these knowledgeable and experienced managers we often find that the list of attributes is a list of features or things that the company does well.   But that is not always what we need.  We know that what will be powerful for the customer is a specific benefit or a special way the business helps the customer solve a problem. 

So for example the director of a financial services firm tells us that what really matters to the customers is "we give independent advice",  which we translate  into a more customer focused benefit "has independent advice I can trust", but when we talk to the customers, this is still not good enough, the most powerful attribute turns out to be "makes my business more successful" .

Time after time, we discover that the hot power attributes are all about the customer and the cold attributes are all about the business and the brand.

Experience this week brought this home to me and showed that directors may not always be the best choice when we are generating potential insights about what matters to customers.

In one of our current projects we are trying to discover some Power Attributes in a whole new category for the business.  We ran a workshop this week where we wanted to generate a list of candidate attributes that we plan to investigate with customers.  The investigation and consumer research will establish which attributes are most powerful in influencing customers to choose a product. 

The project is being led by the sales director who helped us bring a fresh approach. Rather than directors, he invited a number of the PA's and front line team to the session and this proved to be an inspired choice.  They seemed to think more like customers and in a more natural way.  As a result, we have come up with a list I am confident is much closer to what customers will suggest.  This means when we do workshops with the customers we are already part of the way there and we will be able to spend time discovering why the attributes are powerful rather than just generating the list.

Our ezine always aims to deliver practical advice, so I would suggest you can take two things out of this When you are thinking about what is important to your customers,

1.    always challenge yourself to think "is this about the brand or about the customer"  I can pretty much guarantee that if it is about the brand it will not be that important to the customer.
2.    go and ask some customers or at least a few "real" people around the office, they might just shed some insight on your thinking.

Our Power Attributes paper discusses how you can come up with this insight in more detail click here

Give your customers a New Year Present

Happy New Year! There may not be a tradition of New Year presents but you can get your 2008 growth plans off to a great start by giving your trade customers a present.

I'm not suggesting you "re-gift" those socks from Auntie Dot at Christmas but rather you share some knowledge, free, with no strings attached, and no proposal at the end that you want them to agree to.  After all, these are the people who stand between you and your product getting into the hands of the people who use or consume it.  Why wouldn't you give them a present!

In days gone by their critical role in the success of your business might have been recognised by a lavish gift.  All your competitors did the same.  That sort of behaviour is no longer tolerated but there is no ban on giving knowledge "gifts" that benefit the organisation rather than the individual.  And your competitors probably aren't doing this which means it increases the relative value of your relationship with the customer.

Most of you will have gathered all sorts of new knowledge during 2007 whether from research, attending conferences or visiting other countries (and as an aside if you haven't then you are behind the game because everyone else in your market has!).  You will have diligently figured out how to use this to best advantage to persuade your customers that your new initiatives will transform their business.  In the process you will have carefully screened out anything that will distract from the laser beam of logic that leads towards the inescapable conclusion of your desired outcome.  Whether your customers believe you rigged the research or not will depend on their preconceptions of the initiative in question.

This is of course a huge missed opportunity. The customer thinks you are only interested in your own business.  While in reality you have lots else you could share that they might find really valuable in the development of their own business.  And of course it is no bad thing to help them grow their business because if it grows then yours probably grows too. 

The knowledge or insight is best packaged as a single digestible thought rather than a long detailed analysis or report.  The real gift is making the insight useful and easy to assimilate.  This doesn't take a lot of time; it is more of a mindset shift.  It doesn't need formal presentations with all the expectations that this creates, often a simple email can be more powerful.  Something that reads: Hi, we were doing x, found out y that we thought might interest you, here's some detail, hope business is good, see you soon.  It's short, simple and shows you care about their business

Imagine the impact of doing this over time. Instead of always struggling to get meetings you might actually get an invite when they want to know more.  It might enhance the credibility of the research and insight evidence you use when you next have an initiative you want to implement.  And they might start to ask your view on more than just your narrow product expertise.  In other words they would value the relationship more and while a valued relationship doesn't guarantee revenue growth, one that isn't valued certainly hinders it.

This is a goal worth pursuing so, as sales and marketing teams, why not start the New Year with a new attitude towards customers.  Think not just about what you want them to do for you, but also what you know that might help them - and start handing out those presents.