Local Cafe found to be myopic

August 18th, 2009 Dean

LOGO

In an age where cafes are trying very hard to build customer loyalty and get people to hang out at their outlets, one little cafe chain seems thinks that it is not really worth it.

Roderick, my colleague and I, met at Cafe Galilee @ Bedok Library yesterday for a discussion. We each bought drinks and sat down at a table. The discussion went on for about 2 hours plus. Then came along a staff and told us that we can’t sit for too long without ordering more food. Not to say that the drinks are really cheap coffee shop prices. I would understand it if there are limited space and we are actually preventing more customers from patronizing the cafe. But I looked around only to find many more empty tables (!).

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Study: Narrative Words Does Better Than Shocking Ads

August 13th, 2009 Roderick

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I have just discovered an  instructive lesson for marketers that comes from this study in Psychological Science (via Neuronarrative).

In the study, they found that showing a live example and getting people to relate to it doesn’t have much success when it comes to getting them to do something. Instead, providing someone with a narrative that they can follow, read and mentally envisage works better.

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The Art of Using Interns In Your Social Marketing Program

August 5th, 2009 Roderick

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Developing a social media program is like building a house: You will need experts that understand the tools as well as leaders that craft it and interns can be a very important part of that team. With many companies dabbling in social technologies, it is easy to assume that social media is the domain of the young. While we talked to our customers, we are also hearing of more companies handing over their social media strategy to interns and in my opinion, I think that’s a bad idea. Using low cost interns can help get the program up to speed in house, but relying on them for strategic corporate communications is nd to be risky.

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Get Your Stakeholders to Design and Distribute Your Products

July 30th, 2009 Roderick

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Social media is about getting your stakeholders fully engaged with your brand or marketing message and encouraging them to spread the word about the products. However, companies are starting to actively get their stakeholders to help come up with marketing campaigns. Introducing to you “Viralsourcing”.

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Being Too Unique Can Kill You

July 24th, 2009 Dean

matchsticks different

You have heard it before: If you want to stand out, you have to do something unique. True, but not always.

I came across this article in RainToday.com talking about how trying too hard to be unique in business and marketing can sometimes be a silly thing. Here are the salient points:

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If Local Chinese Restaurant Can Gets 1,000 fans on Facebook in 3 Weeks, So Can You

July 21st, 2009 Roderick

chinesebox

It has been proven once again that social media have the reach and power to launch new brands and create awareness. Newly opened Chinese restaurant Chinese Box recently jump into the social media bandwagon by launching it’s own Facebook page. Read the rest of this entry »

Six steps to boosting the online profile of your brand

June 8th, 2009 Dean

Received an EDM about Search Engine Marketing from Marketing Interactive Magazine. The intro gave a simple, straightforward steps to boosting your online profile (ie. PR). Allow me to shameless cut and paste here so that the knowledge can be shared:

THE ISSUE
There are myriad methods to help boost your presence and build your brand via online search engines, but which is right for your business? When do you focus on optimising your site’s content, when is it more effective to engage paid or organic search, and how much should it really cost you? As the online battle for top rankings in search engines really starts to heat up, marketers need to be as informed and prepared as possible of their options in order to accomplish what’s really important: achieving greater lead generation and online conversions.

STOP STABBING IN THE DARK
1) Identify your issues – Key challenges marketers face maximising their online spend and ROI
2) Get the data you need - Enhance your knowledge of free product offerings
3) Know your audience – Understanding general search engine usage behavior
4) Be informed – New trends for managing your SEM campaign
5) Make more sales – How to optimize & convert your website traffic to real $$
6) Make it easier for your audience to find you – Incorporating offline-online integration into the marketing mix

AWARE t-shirt : an accidental PR coup for designer

May 7th, 2009 Dean

If you are a Singaporean, you probably would have been following the Aware saga (unless you are a totally apathetic citizen). On 4th & 6th May, we had the story of a designer who came up with quirky slogan t-shirts taken from memorable and mostly infamous quotes from the AWARE EOGM. Vicki Lew, design director at Bionic Creative, was featured in almost all the major newspaper and radio and TV news. So how did all that happen?

Here is the story.

On Sat, 2nd May, at around midnight (the night after the results of the no confidence vote against the ex ‘new committee’) I was checking out my Facebook posting my elation at the results and reading what my friends are saying about it. And there was Vicki’s post on her Aware t-shirt.

Now, I have always known Vicki to be a damn good designer. But I was pleasantly surprised at what she had done! Who would have thought of such a clever idea of making commemorative t-shirts from the most memorable quotes? And very nicely done too.

So I started chatting with Vicki who happen to be online also and found out that she was doing it as a means to raise money for AWARE. Wow! I immediately saw this as hot news, and told her that the media must be notified. Poor Vicki had been cracking her head to get publicity for her design work for some time. Ironically she didn’t seem to realise she actually just created the perfect PR opportunity!

So I had to do what a real friend must do. I jumped into action, got her to give me all the necessary info and in 15 minutes wrote a press release (see below) and then had it sent off to my media contacts. It was already past 1 am by then.

Monday came and her phone began to ring off the hook from all these interested media. Walah! You go girl, Vic!

At the time of this post she was already featured in Channel News Asia, 938Live radio, My Paper, The New Paper, Straits Times Online. Her design will be featured in 8 Days. Her t-shirt featured and her design firm name mentioned. Good Stuff!!

Lessons we can all learn:

Sometimes you don’t have to try so hard to get publicity. Do what you do best and the opportunity might just come to you…but of course having a friend who does PR would help :)

So if you want to be my friend, add me on Facebook. Click here. Or you can search for me: Dean Shams

Here’s the press release.

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Don’t sell your reputation with your coupons

April 28th, 2009 Dean

I came across this blog post by Elaine Fogel about gift coupon, or commonly known as vouchers in Singapore. She wrote:

I was a gift card virgin – until recently. Now, I will not use them anymore. Number one – they aren’t worth the trouble. Number two – they aren’t worth their full face value. There’s hidden info that consumers don’t know about until they try to use them, which brings me to number three – they’re aggravating!

It reminded me how true it is even here in Sg. I remember getting a $20 coupon with my credit card for one of them restaurants only to find that there were so many conditions to use it, i might as well throw it away. No way am I going to arrange my schedule to fit their requirements so nicely!

So if you are in the retail business and you have used (or thinking of using) coupons to get sales going, think carefully. Are you setting too many conditions on the use of that coupon such that it seems you were not being sincere? Are your coupons an extension of your brand’s core values or will your customer see it as just another $$ deal?

“A national survey [in USA] of 1,500 consumers done last spring by WSL Strategic Retail, based in New York, found gift-card fees and expiration dates were among the top causes of frustration. And that’s just among people who attempted to use them. Earlier this year, TowerGroup, a research firm in Needham, Mass., estimated the value of unused gift cards in the U.S. at $8 billion for 2006. And in its fiscal 2006 annual report, the retailer Best Buy revealed a $43 million gain from gift cards that were unlikely to be used.”

Consumers like to deal with authentic businesses. If your marketing tactics involves giving away coupons, you might as well make it another vehicle to promote your brand values and use it as a means to get customers to like you. It shouldn’t just be about getting them to come back. It should also be about getting them to interact with your brand more so they can get to know more. After all, true friendship comes from constant communication.

Have you gotten a coupon and thought it was pointless to use it because of all the restrictions? What are your thoughts on it?

Time your sales right and earn PR points for your shop

April 9th, 2009 Dean

I got this interesting piece of insight on customer behaviour from Marketing Profs.

If you offer a sale, say 10% on a coffee maker, for a limited period. If a customer just missed the sale dateline and you wanted to be kind and extended the offer to her, there is a 87% chance that she will reject the offer. But if you told her that the sale for the coffee maker has ended and you offer her a 10% discount on another brand of coffee maker (probably as a ‘peace offering’) there is a 40% chance that she will accept your offer. Isn’t that interesting?

Possible reason:

“The researcher suggests that consumers may transfer the “negative affect” (regret at missing a sale) to the promoted product itself, leading to a lower opinion of the product.”

 

Lesson we can learn from this:

“time sales of different brands, or even of different items in [a] product line, to ensure that a consumer who misses a sale on one product can find another sale on a different yet similar product,” this researcher suggests….When one item goes off sale, consider offering similar products at a slight reduction, to keep latecomers happy.”

Now isn’t that easy way to make build a good reputation with your customers? 

If you are offering services, would you be able to apply the same principles? get back to the drawing board, friends…

Source

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