How can you get your customers talking about a brand?
Posted by joe
Today’s consumers put less stock in advertising as compared to recommendations from friends. So how does a company get its customers talking about its products. According to Martin Lindstrom “Under-Promise. Over-Deliver. And Your Brand’s Fans Will Talk” (Fast Company, January 10, 2012).
What do you think? When is the cost of “over-delivering” likely to offset the costs? Are there certain product categories or types of brands where this is more beneficial?
Tags: Word-of-mouth
This entry was posted on Friday, January 20th, 2012 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Consumer behavior, Promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I believe that this article made a good, perhaps unintentional, distinction in between ‘Under-Promise. Over-Deliver’ in the title. These two concepts do not go hand-in-hand in my mind. The three examples that Mr. Lindstrom gave had nothing to do with Under-Promising. Lego could have included a list of inventory with a disclaimer “may not contain all material required”, and then exceed the purchaser’s expectations when the box really did contain everything they needed. Same for the story about drinking sake: the cup was expected to be filled, not expected to be half-full. Though these observations are obvious, Lindstrom does make a very good point about exceeding expectations that were already rather high. Cost to Lego for extra bricks?: Maybe $0.001. Return?: fewer harassed parents. Cost to Peninsula Hotel?: $22.50 Return?: who knows, likely a lot with 15 million potential new customers.
January 24th, 2012 at 8:01 pmLooking at it this way, it seems to me that any product can potentially benefit from Lindstrom’s ‘Over-Deliver’ principle, but that has been a known fact for businesses since always. Over-delivering does not necessarily mean that you need to put a large amount of time, effort or cash into exceeding expectations, but little perks are the ones that matter, and create enthusiastic customers.
I believe the cost of over-delivering is completely situational. A company that sells in mass quantities, such as Lego, or that completely relies on customer service, such as a hotel, must over-deliver in order to keep customers, and they can afford to. The Peninsula Hotel spent $22 on one customer, perhaps who they knew was very influential, and the return they got from that extra expense is so great it cannot even be tracked. In the case of companies that produce high dollar products, and sell fewer , such as Mercedes, cannot afford to give their customers more than they expect. If you only sell 1,000 cars per year, you need to make sure you make the biggest profit possible on those 1,000 cars. In that case it is the brand that sells itself, not the extras that customers expect to be included free of charge.
January 31st, 2012 at 11:23 amGoing above and beyond says it all. This simple concept leads to endless possibilities. First of all, its a “free” marketing strategy. This is because customers notice when companies go above and beyond and they tell their friends. This is the fundamental concept for word of mouth marketing that leads to companies with a huge fan base. One of my favorite companies is REI. They sell outdoor gear and allow customers to return just about everything. Now they may be more expensive than online competitors but I still go back to them because of their return policies. In my mind, this is going above and beyond. The second thing that going above and beyond leads to is amazing customer relationships and much fewer complaints. If Lego didn’t put those extra pieces in the boxes would they receive more complaints? Would those complaints lead to time and money spend dealing with angry customers? A simple step of going above and beyond can solve many problems, improve relationships, and market for a company.
January 31st, 2012 at 11:39 amI think the concept of giving more than expected is revolutionary in the field of marketing. The current norm is just as the article stated, “at best, we deliver exactly what was promised–nothing more, nothing less.” We do this as a means of fulfilling our promise to the customer but not adding anything that will come out of our bottom line. As a customer, I want to feel special. There is so much competition anymore that a marketer must do something extraordinary to reel in new customers and keep existing ones. Giving us customers more than we expect will be very “sticky” in that we will feel that we have a personal relationship with the company we are buying from and will want to stay with them. After all, it seems our economy is driven on the idea of more, more, more.
January 31st, 2012 at 5:20 pmFrom reading this article, it seems clear that some businesses are more naturally inclined to give more than what their consumer is expecting. When the author Martin Lindstrom visited the Lego factory for example and spoke with the manager, the manager stated that, “those extra bricks [inside the new box] were more a matter of practicality than goodwill.” When a company that has been around for as long and has been as successful as the Lego Group continuously goes above and beyond, and states that it is an act of practicality rather than goodwill, that truly shows the power of customer loyalty and appreciation. Lego Group wasn’t thinking about over-delivering on their product, they were just using common sense and thinking about what the consumer would want…the benefits of obtaining goodwill was just a secondary advantage that came from their natural instinct.
January 31st, 2012 at 8:20 pmThis article brings up several good points on what is wrong with most of today good companies and what companies are doing to become great. The cost of a company doing a little extra is competitively very small compared to the revenue that they could potentially receive by doing a little extra. Companies that are going the extra mile to please its customers are creating a buzz through word of mouth and can save considerable money on advertising expenses if it being done for them through word of mouth .
February 7th, 2012 at 8:09 pm