Alberta Business Marketing

I am reading a very interesting white paper today on “10 Key Marketing Trends in 2010″ which covers the overall adoption of online marketing strategies in small business.  Number 9  jumped out and hit me on the side of head and something that at one time in my life was very near and dear to me.  Last week when I was at Spring Training For Business in Arizona with MSP business coach Stuart Selbst I mentioned during my lunch presentation on exactly this topic.

IT Bottlenecks Drive adoption of on Demand Marketing solutions

In this published report (you can download here) the author report on the disconnect between IT and Marketing, especially how IT and marketing are not seeing eye to eye on the whole online marketing momentum.  The marketing folks see IT as a complex bottleneck and IT sees marketing/sales as an expense or risk to the organization.  To be completely candid in my opinion, no wonder so many small business IT shops are horrible in their own marketing efforts and struggle with this important part of business.

Also in the report, the author identifies how more and more marketing folks are starting to use software as a service (SaaS) offerings where the IT departments, MSP or IT Pro are bypassed and not involved in the process of choosing a solution.  67% of those surveyed complained about their IT service provider (or in-house IT) and are moving towards other online or web-based solutions to bypass the complexities put in place by IT and also the high costs demanded by some technology firms.  Marketing solutions are moving towards the “on demand” model vs. the old on-premise models.  These include social media platforms, CRM solutions and even email technologies.

By the way, how does IT respond – they invest in more complex solutions to block applications or web services, building more of a separation in the organization.

During Spring Training I mentioned to the group that consulting with their clients on marketing and removing the barriers will bring additional value to those they serve and position them truly as a business consultant and not just another techy firm.  This is why Ulistic launched the Ulistic Partner Program to help those Managed Services Providers and IT consultants help serve their clients in a different way and with services they are looking for.

Tags: Arizona, author, Business, business consultant, Business/Finance, even email technologies, Internet Marketing, MSP business coach, online marketing momentum, online marketing strategies, Social Issues, social media platforms, Stuart Selbst, technology firms, Technology/Internet, web services, web-based solutions
Posted in CRM, Marketing, Online Marketing | | Comments Off

My wife recently had an interesting customer experience that, although she categorized as positive, I am sure the service provider would categorize as negative. My wife was trying to redeem points from a loyalty program toward an airfare. Her first stop was online where her options would have required eight times the number of points she had anticipated. Dissuaded by what she saw, she called the loyalty contact centre. By talking to an agent she was able to obtain an upgraded ticket at one-fifth the number of points as was required by the sel-serve option presented on the internet.

My wife was delighted with the service and results that she received from the contact centre, but as a contact centre guy myself, I was haunted by the unnecessary call that was driven into the contact centre. At the core of the issue for me was the inability for two customer-touching channels to harmonize their servicing strategy. The internet, a channel used to improve customer experiences and reduce costly calls to the contact centre, had in fact driven an additional call into the contact centre.

This experience is not unique to loyalty programs or an online contact centre strategy. We see this type of unintended end result frequently caused by organizations with multiple customer touch points. When you consider all the potential ways in which you touch a customer (inbound calls, outbound calls, marketing solicitations, statements and invoices, applications, letters and so on), its easy to understand how difficult it becomes to maintain consistency within a customer touch point communication strategy.

I have seen organizations where customers question that company’s price competitiveness not because of the outside competitive market, but rather because different channels are offering different rates for the same product suite. I have seen organizations where statement inserts have not been communicated to the contact centre and thus resulted in frustrating customer experiences and lower than anticipated take-up rates. All of theses types of issues, and many more similar ones, drive both customer dissatisfaction and increased cost.

The overriding issue seems to be that the larger an organization grows, the more touch points and channels it has to communicate with customers. As the number of customer touch points grow, the control over the consistency and sharing of information internally seems to weaken.

What is missing is a customer contact guru: an individual or a team who does not own a specific customer contact channel, but rather is empowered to ensure that all information sent or accessible to a customer is appropriately disseminated within the corporate organization. A group that is tasked for identifying and eliminating conflicting information between channels. Effectively, a group that makes sure that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. Until such time that we recognize that all of our touch points with our customers need to be zealously guarded, we will continue to be our own worst enemies.

Richard Litvack, Vice President, Operations, Citi Cards Canada Inc.
& member of CMA’s Contact Centre Council

Tags: Contact Centre, Customer Experience, Get it off your chest
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

As the summer tourism season gets nearer, and marketing campaigns move into high gear, we’re investing in online multimedia to carry our message to our ideal guests.  Maybe your DMO should be too!

This month, we’ve been purchasing studio equipment to put polish on our video and audio and produce our own in-house video. Not only that, but because we know how important it is to tourism industry, we’re helping tourism businesses in our region get the media they need to sell tourism on the Social, Mobile, Media Rich, Here and Now Internet before another Internet buying season moves into full swing.

Getting Great Media

Great Video, audio and photography doesn’t just happen, it takes planning and execution with the tools (hardware and software) and investment (time and money) to get it right.

Sadly, most tourism operators don’t have the money, knowledge or time to create top notch audio and video to promote their business. For those in the CVB, DMO or Meetings and Convention partnership business, now is the time to invest in media production capacity to help your members make the most of the Web.

Don’t have the knowledge to be able to pull it off yourselves, grow relationships with professional production organizations and help make it cost effective for operators to get the photography, videography and audio they need to make the most of the media opportunities they have on the Web.

A Membership Boost

Small businesses are counting on their membership organizations to help them make an impact with their marketing.  By investing in a social media studio and associated services you could help your regional members get a leg up and in the process make your organization more relevant and boost membership.

Note to DMO’s. CVB’s, and other associations. Keep an eye out for new media projects to be streaming forth from South River, Ontario, Canada real soon.  We’ll explain our whole crazy idea and the components necessary to make such a project come to life!

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Tags: cvb, dmo, multimedia, social media, travel assocation, Video, video studio
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