When a Taco Truck Meets Twitter

July 29, 2009 By 14 Comments

There has been a lot of buzz around Kogi BBQ, a Korean BBQ taco truck in LA that has used Twitter (@KogiBBQ) to create a phenomenon that produces lines that stretch around street corners to wait for the truck to arrive.  While I travel through LA around once a month, I have yet to stay in LA for any amount of time where I would have the opportunity to visit the Kogi BBQ team and try one of their tacos.

If you don’t know the story of Kogi BBQ, instead of me retelling you the story, check out this excellent video on how they started and what Twitter has done to enable them to grow so fast.  Starting out not having any sales on some days to now adding a 2nd truck and looking into options of opening brick & mortar locations is awesome to see!

YouTube Preview Image

As a restauranter who has used to social media as a primary means of marketing my steakhouse, I love the story of Kogi.  As someone who works in this social media space, it’s always exciting to see companies that take these social tools and use them in a different way then we’re used to seeing.

Have you had a chance to partake in a Kogi BBQ taco yet?

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Filed Under: Business, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

Are You Marketing to Buyer Personas

May 11, 2009 By 5 Comments

idealcustomerWouldn’t it be great if you had a profile of who your exact customer was?  Imagine all of the things you could do with that information.  You could do research specifically on that ideal customer.  You could design your marketing creatives and programs around exactly what that ideal customer likes and is receptive to.  You could get rid of the fluff and only target those leads who fit that ideal customer profile.  No more wasting time having to call, email or meet everyone…you only seek to interact with those who meet that profile.  Sounds great huh?  Sounds like something impossible or that you have to pay tons of money to a consultant to develop a lengthy report right?  Wrong.

This “ideal customer profile”, as I refer to it, is actually called a “buyer persona”.  A buyer persona is a detailed profile of an example buyer that represents your audience – an archetype of the ideal customer.  The word “buyer” actually represents whoever your target customer is.  As Adele Revella explains:

The goal for buyer personas is to make them so real and persuasive that the company will be willing to take direction from them…Their [the buyer persona] purpose is to tell a story to internal audiences about how a particular type of buyer views the decision to buy the company’s product, service or idea.  The story must be real, even though the persona is not.  Persona developers need to continously interact with buyers to keep the story real, reiterating the buyers’ perspective whenever an internal decision loses its focus.

Want to see what a buyer persona looks like?

David Meerman Scott highlights Kadient, a SaaS application provider, who have successfully implemented buyer personas.  To check out a couple of the buyer personas they have developed, check out David’s post.

How can you develop your own buyer persona(s)?

While there are a bunch of ways to develop your buyer personas, here are just 3 that I think will keep you pretty busy for a little while and will help you to start to gain a better detailed picture of your ideal customer.

1. Analyze you current customer data – If you collect any demographic or user data, analyze to see what your average customer looks like.  Of course, the more information you collect during the customer acquisition phase of your sales cycle, the easier this will be to develop a complete picture.

2. Listen to your team – Listen to what your internal sales and marketing team tell you about interactions they have with people about your company’s products or services.  Are consistently noticing that they’re talking to a middle-aged woman with kids yelling in the background and who always seems to be in a rush?  That’s important to note.  You have a lot less time to get your message across with that person then you might with others.  Maybe your marketing team runs into the same type of people at every conference you set up a booth at.  Again, important to note, analyze and target your messaging towards.

3. Ask for feedback – Ask your customers for feedback on what they would like to see.  Did they really like that last website refresh because it made their life easier to find some information because of how busy they are in meetings all day?  That’s important to know.  Then you need to make your messaging snackable.  Marketing delivered to that persona in any other manner will crash and burn because they’re too busy to read it and just delete it or never get around to it.

Have you developed buyer personas at your company?  If so, have they been successful?  If you’re not using buyer personas at your company, what are you waiting for?

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Photo by: emery.josh

Filed Under: Business, Business strategy, Marketing, Marketing Strategy Tagged With: , , ,

Providing Customer Service Without Ever Speaking

May 6, 2009 By 5 Comments

Is it possible to provide great customer service without ever speaking to your customer?  I think so.  Actually, I know so.  Since its inception, I have been a regular customer of Netflix.  There have been a couple times where I’ve canceled the membership because of traveling, moving, etc but I’ve always come back.  Why?  Well, beyond the fact that it’s a genius system for a great price, I have always loved their care for the customer experience.  I’ve never talked to one representative at Netflix.  Do they even have customer service reps?  I’m sure they must have to but I’ve never had a need to go looking for a number.  Yet, I always feel like they are continually trying to improve customer service thus improving the overall customer experience.  How so?

One of the big ways is through the below email I get randomly from Netflix.

netflix

It usually comes about once every couple weeks.  It simply asks what day I dropped the movie I was returning in the mail.  But, it is so much more than just remembering that you dropped it 2 days ago.  Netflix is using that data to track the delivery time from mailbox to shipping facility.  Sure, that allows them to know it takes 1-2 days from the greater Boston area because they have a shipping facility in Worcester, MA (about 1.25hr drive from Boston).  It also allows them to strategically determine where to open new shipping facilities.  If they see that the average delivery time moves from 1.3 days from Boston to Worcester up to 2.2 days, that will show them that maybe the Worcester shipping facility is overburdened because of the number of customers in the area.  Netflix could then build a new shipping facility closer to Boston using their customer address data and the average return time of a movie based on what customers tell them on these email surveys.

Those are just a few examples of the many possibilities for using the data that Netflix receives just by you telling them what day you sent back a movie.  Also, that’s only one way of many that Netflix is working to improve their customer experience and they’re doing it, at least in the above example, without ever speaking via phone to their customers.  Furthermore, they’re making the customer feel as though they’re valued by the company.  Remember, every customer matters!

So, how are you working to improve your customer’s experience?  Do you analyze every touch point that your customers have with your brand?  Do you strive to continually improve those touch points?

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Are You Developing Raving Fans

February 17, 2009 By 15 Comments

It’s no surprise that word-of-mouth can be the best marketing a company could ask for.  It can also be the most detrimental to a company’s brand if that word-of-mouth is negative or even indifferent.  As we are going through difficult economic times, it becomes even more important that you cherish every single customer.  Furthermore, word-of-mouth is now on steroids with the speed at which information travels across and through social networks.  So, how do you ensure that your customers become a positive word-of-mouth vehicle for your company?  One way is through developing raving fans of your brand.

A few years ago I first read Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service. Back then I was in college studying sociology.  While the book made sense, it didn’t really sink ravingfansin what a “raving fan” was or why they were so important.  I recently decided to re-read the book again since I’m fascinated in developing positive employee cultures and the concept of developing raving or super fans.  If you haven’t ever read this book, this is a must-read and you should order it immediately.  Even if you have read it before, it’s one of those classic business books that should be read once a year or so just to remind yourself how important it is.

What are some ways that you can develop raving (or super) fans?  These are just some of the ways I try to develop raving fans at my steakhouse.

Developing Raving Fans

  1. Take the time to learn their name and something interesting about them.  Write it down and next time you meet them, ask them about whatever it was.
  2. Set up a listening post.  If you find someone talking negatively about your brand, address it directly with that person.  Chances are, they will appreciate it and may actually become a super fan of your brand.
  3. Learn what your customers actually want and then find a way to deliver it.
  4. Be humble
  5. If you find someone talking positively about your brand, reach out to them and thank them.
  6. Don’t always make it about your top or bottom line.  Zappos.com runs their warehouses 24/7 to provide fast service to their customers.  Inefficient from a labor prospective? Probably.  Develops raving fans who continue to buy?  Absolutely.
  7. Be human

Do you agree with this list?  What are other ways that you develop raving fans of your brand?

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What You Can Learn From My Dog

December 22, 2008 By 2 Comments

sasha-snowThis weekend I had the chance to take my dog out and really play around in the snow with her.  I love spending time with my dog, Sasha.  But unfortunately, my schedule over the past few months prevents me from doing some of the really fun things that we enjoy doing like going on hikes, swimming, and running around at the park.  Being part Australian Shepherd and part Siberian Husky she loves to zip around…especially in snow.  

So, on Saturday morning she came into the bedroom and woke me up waaay too early to go outside.  I suited up and went outside to start jumping through snow piles, rolling around, and throwing snowballs.  Sasha acts just like a kid in the snow.  She runs head first into the biggest piles of snow she can find.  She bites snowballs as they’re thrown at her.  She runs as fast as she can on the pavement then stops so she slides.  We repeated this every couple hours on Saturday and Sunday.  It was tons of fun.  But, then as I was watching her run around, something occurred to me.  Though she was having a lot of fun, everything she was doing was a calculated risk.  She never jumped into or off of anything that she didn’t know.  Sometimes she miscalculated and once she even hurt her paw for a brief minute.  She knew the general layout and then just had fun.

Going into 2009 we need to take calculated risks.  In order to take these risks, we need to know the general landscape of the area.  Once we assess the potential risk and determine that it presents a good opportunity then we need to jump in and have fun with it.  You must have fun.  There may be bumps along the way, there are always bumps.  Sasha tweaked her paw a couple times so then she slowed down for a little while but then jumped right back in not afraid.  We need to do the same when those bumps happen.  Slow down, assess, and then figure out how to overcome that issue but not be afraid to try another idea, grab another project or whatever the opportunity may be.

How am I doing this in 2009?  I am setting sail by taking a new position with a new company in a new state.  This includes my fiance having to find a new job, paying all of the relocation costs and diving into something uncertain.  Oh yeah, and we’re doing all of this 6 months before our wedding.  Why?  Because I know the landscape of the field that I work in and of where I want to get to.  I assessed the opportunity along with the potential risks and decided to jump in and have fun.  For me, 2009 is going to be a lot of work, a lot of change but it’s also going to be a lot of fun.  I’m capitalizing on an amazing opportunity and am looking forward to seeing that risk pay off.

What risks are you going to take in 2009 to make sure you succeed?

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