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Every day we ask our 4 year old how was school. Often times it is good, but just as often we hear some bad stuff as well. Like, “we only read books once in a while.” And one time she came home and told us she had to sit in the class room while all of her friends played outside “the entire time.”

As you can imagine, we were very concerned as parents. Over the course of a month and a half, we became so frustrated with the school and lack of academic focus (and I’m talking ABC’s here), that we began investigating alternatives to finish the rest of this school year, from local private schools to home schooling. But before we took any steps, we wanted to talk to the school to truly understand the problem.

Consequently, we found the program is more structured than we thought. They do get to read books every day, learn their ABC’s, and much more.  Additionally, the extent of their discipline strategy is a 5 minute time out on a bench, and only after speaking to them and they continue to disrupt the class and not listen.

What this continues to reinforce for me is the difference between perception and reality, and the school’s inability to influence the dozens of factors that influenced my opinion. To provide context on how we arrived to home schooling was pretty logical at the time. I mean its not like we took a 4 year old at her word:).

First we must address brand perception. What is the first thing you think about when I say NYC public school?  Yeah…me too.  What does your brand represent and what challenges or opportunities have you created for yourself before the point of purchase, and afterwards?

Then there is media – B2B trade pubs, B2C sites, and even social media.  What are people saying about you that you aren’t telling them. I spoke with other NYC public school teachers, blogs, online reviews by parents, education websites, and even a movie! Not so far fetched…I bet Facebook didn’t think someone would create a movie about them so quickly. Documentaries have made their way mainstream and popular movies have been created to highlight issues around schools, fast food, guns, insurance and healthcare, smoking, etc.

Once your brand perception is shaped by all of this, the customers’ own interpretation of reality changes based on their interactions and experiences. No matter how good your product or service is, your customers will only focus on the negative and demand unrealistic performance.

What I hope to share from this experience is:

1. Your customers may be, and are oftentimes wrong. They are providing you with feedback that is often influenced by someone or something else. You need to not only hear what they’re saying but listen carefully too.
2. You do have a certain level if control what and who your customers are listening to. Do you have a well thought out public relations campaign? Are you leveraging brand advocates and evangelists?  Are you active in social media.  Give yourself the opportunity to listen to what people are saying and head off any issues right away.  Try getting unsolicited feedback from both customers and non-customers.
3. Use your best judgment to interpret what your customers are telling you and translate that to product success. Taking customers at their word will convince you to make changes for a vocal minority, and will not help you evolve your product or service to reach the 92% of potential customers you never hear from.

I’m sitting on the subway today tired of carrying around a book and a dozen printed out white papers and realized I need a Kindle or an iPad.   Then it hit me. I would pay for eBooks Sam I Am.  But why is that? Why would I pay for an eBook, but not so much for music or movies?  Why is my perceived value of a book so much greater than that of music or a movie?

As long as I can remember, price is driven by 2 things.  The cost plus profit margin along with supply and demand. Because supply is essentially unlimited online, you set price based on demand.  The higher your price, the lower the demand.  As for the cost equation, the internet eliminates a significant amount of logistical costs, so it comes down to how much more money you can charge.  But now, media organizations are trying to maintain the same margin equation with a new distribution model. But this post isn’t about price.  It’s about value.

Let’s look at a magazine. Cost equals printing, paper, shipping, and overhead to name a few.  The perception of a consumer is that I’m paying for all those things. But now online, those costs disappear, so as a consumer, I’m left to decide if the content is worth the price.  The perceived value of the content must now stand on it’s own.  For whatever reason, I feel the value of a book can stand on it’s own with out the paper.

Looking at your own product, are you able to convey to your customers the real value your product offers, or are you selling a bunch of fluff? If you had to strip down your product to it’s core, do your customers still see the value? Are they willing to pay for what you’re selling without all the add-on and fluff? Look at it this way, if a competitor enters the market, and copy’s all your fluff (which by definition should be easy to copy), can you still defend your market position?

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Much of the content on this blog has been influenced by my work and experiences at IQPC with a focus on social media marketing within the events industry.  As of Monday I will be embarking on a new chapter in my career as the Vice President of Marketing for AxialMarket.

AxialMarket, is the world’s first business investment marketplace where qualified buyers and sellers of privately held companies can confidentially, efficiently, and securely discover, engage and close private transactions. Essentially, our platform connects active and qualified buyers and sellers of privately held businesses. Members include Fortune 2000 corporations, private equity and venture capital firms, privately-held companies, investment banks and other qualified private market participants who use the online platform to confidentially accelerate and streamline their deal origination and deal management processes.

With that, this blog will continue to focus on marketing, but will take a more holistic view. This will be based on the work I will be doing, which includes branding and PR, online marketing, traditional direct marketing, and events (as a sponsor to provide some of my event professional colleagues with insight into your customers).  Furthermore, I’m also excited to write about M&A and VC activity and how consumers and industries are affected by it.

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I recently upgraded to the HTC Incredible Android phone on Verizon. With that came a flurry of new online activity for me (just isn’t the same on a Blackberry). One of those is Foursquare.  I enjoy sharing professionally, which includes blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but am more reluctant when it comes to my personal life.  Foursquare has much more personal application for me than professional, so I was definitely stepping out of my social media comfort zone.

I believe location based services such as Foursquare will truly bring local to the internet.  This is a revolutionary leap for business to tap into the power of social media.  I believe search has become so complicated for local businesses; understanding keyword mapping, anchor text, and meta data is just beyond their level of expertise. Not to mention, as quickly as things change, local will never be able to keep up to date.

With search or fan pages, interaction is generally driven by the user and is more conversational.  Local businesses such as restaurants, with owners working more hours than are available in a day, just don’t have the time to chat online.  Foursquare on the other hand, provides businesses with the opportunity for an easy way to build a direct marketing channel and come up with programs to reward loyalty and increase customer retention.

I’ve decided to continue on with Foursquare. Maybe switch to Facebook Places. Not sure yet.  I will likely be a bit more reserved with my check-ins.  I’m not sure if anyone really cares about all the places I visit, except for one person, the business I check into.  Let’s see if they can figure out how to maximize this new service.

As I read through this book, I couldn’t help but create my own analogy to marketing, social media, and every other aspect of our brand that impacts our customers’ decision to buy something from us. We strive to measure the impact and ROI of social media, but are we measuring the right thing? Do the number of followers really matter? Maybe we should ask ourselves, “How does our social media impact our click thru rates?” Looking at it from this perspective allows us to take a step back and look at our marketing campaigns more holistically. It forces us to reevaluate how we measure success.

For example, let’s take the idea of looking at social media as a tool to increase click thru rates.  How would that change how you post, when you post, or what you post. How would that impact your measure of success? How would this improve the ROI of your direct mail campaign or more so, how would it change how you execute your direct mail campaign?

Ultimately, the point of the book is not to plan out or create a strategy for each connection. Quite frankly, the point is that you can’t because the connections are so complex (particularly on a global scale), but to create a framework and an environment to facilitate the customer acquisition process.  Marketers seek to find the connection and ROI impact of various initiatives, and with the internet, measuring the ROI of specific initiatives is super easy.  What we have lost though is the interconnection of all of our other marketing efforts.  We now tend to look at marketing in pieces.  Which one email performed the best? Which one email drove the most registrations? Our direct mail didn’t drive any registrations so let’s stop sending out direct mail.  Looking at it like that, is basically asking which grain of sand caused the sandpile to collapse.  We need to look at the entire sandpile and create an unmapped and interconnected marketing experience for our customers.

I am happy to report that they won the award in this category with competition from Informa Life Sciences and Glasgows.  Features of the Corporate Counsel Exchange™ that impressed the judges include:

• Strictly senior (C) level delegation
• Personalised and busy itineraries for delegates
• BrainWeave™ roundtable discussions
• Pre-scheduled business meetings
• Effective use of meeting software
• Multiple networking functions
• Marketing Campaign/Social Media

We were also able to demonstrate a number of key business relationships that had been formed as a result of the Corporate Counsel Exchange™, and our entry was backed up by a plethora of positive testimonials from both delegates and solution providers.

This is a great example of thinking of different ways of meeting your customer’s needs and reinventing your product. IQPC continually looks at it’s business and finds ways to meet customers’ needs in different ways. That goes for the Exchange group as well as my own.

Nice Job IQPC Exchange team!

First off, you can’t do anything without knowing your customers.  And I mean truly know them to the point where they are giving you candid feedback. Break your customers up into groups.  Your first group is small, so small you can have a one to one relationships with them. Know their names, where they live, kids names, and interests.  This will help you build their buyer persona. They will also be more candid with you, giving you ‘real’ feedback about your event or product, not just a 1-5 rating. But be cautious; don’t allow a minority to represent the majority.

The rest of the groups are up to you to build. Customers vs. non customers, broken down by vertical markets, geography, etc. Feedback can be gathered via social media, surveys, or any other way you can capture their opinion.

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Next, you should understand the why. Why do they attend your event? Why do they buy your product?  Is it to save money, be more efficient, find new customers? This is where you will begin to find out whether or not you are filling a need in the market, and more importantly, how you are filling that need. This is where you can identify your strengths and weaknesses. What aspects to build upon and what to get rid of. What is the 1 thing you are doing right? You’ll learn here where to get rid of the fluff.

The next step is the magic. The black box. This is where you go back and start brainstorming, the part you do on your own.  This is where you need to be true to yourself and think outside the box.  This is where most companies fail, especially the bigger ones. Most big companies are designed to provide incremental improvement.  Year over year growth of 5 or 10%. Here you need to challenge yourself. Challenge the norm. Challenge your business.

Now if you create a revolutionary new product, getting it out to market can be difficult.  Remember, your customers don’t know they want it yet. They want the same old same old.  Your launch strategy will be critical, and it’s important to identify influencers and early adopters (should be part of your initial research group).

Much of my thinking on this topic has been influenced by Clayton Christensen The Innovator’s Dilemma (affiliate link). It’s a great read and will go into more detail on disruptive technology. It gives great examples from hydraulic cranes to the disk dive industry and how companies have disappeared overnight by not understanding their customers’ needs. All the best to you Mr. Christensen.

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Now we’ve all heard your customers are always right. Well, sometimes, your customers are just plain old wrong.  Sometimes, your customers just don’t know what they want.  Don’t try to use this as an excuse to force your product, service, or event down your customers’ throats, but as an opportunity to give your customers what they really want.

Sometimes, your customer just doesn’t know what’s out there and what’s good for them.  They don’t know what possibilities exist to add value to their business (oh, and this goes for B2B and B2C).  They will always want an incremental improvement of what they currently have or purchase.  They can’t think about innovation like you can.  Take consumer media for example.  If customers had their way, we’d all be listening to music on DVD’s and buying them in stores for $20.  Movies on Laser Discs! Thanks to companies like Apple that have introduced products like the iPod, we now have music digitally on tiny little devices, and can listen to any song anytime we want.

So now, every year, our customers expect us to put out the same conference or trade show with just a couple more delegates or attendees, a couple more exhibitors, and a little bit more value.  Or, products you have created to include a couple more features, maybe a little cheaper.

As the providers of products and services, it is our duty…our obligation, to provide our customers with the unexpected. They are paying us for something, and in this new world, choice is abundant. So we must earn their trust. By blowing them away, not only will you cultivate loyal customers, but the word of mouth and social media exposure you will receive will drive significant brand value and new business. My next post will dive deeper into ways you can look at innovating and uncovering hidden potential in your events.

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Have you ever attended a party where you knew no one? Chances are you felt a little lost and alone. You needed to figure out where the bathrooms were, start conversations with strangers, locate the bar… and all the while you were trying to put your best foot forward to make a good impression.

While that’s a bit of an exaggerated example to compare to engaging new members when they join your online community, the basic concepts are the same. Your members are a little lost when they first arrive. They need to discover new groups, make connections with new members, figure out where the resources are and more.

We put together a list of community engagement basics based on the things we do to engage people when we meet face to face. These concepts will help you get your new community members involved online as well.

1. Be a good host. When you invite a guest to a party at your house, you greet them, get them a drink, introduce them to other guests and show them where to put their coats (very important for those of us in Wisconsin). Online guests deserve the same. Your community should send out welcome emails, provide suggestions for connections and point out all the wonderful features of your community.
2. Help your guests look their best. A robust and complete online profile helps members get to know each other. Take the time to make sure your members upload their casual photos, update their bios, and include relevant links. Provide useful tags or suggestions to your guests to help them “define” themselves. Help your members build an online personality (or guess what? no one will talk with them). Members with a “shadow person” avatar don’t make a good impression, and other members are less likely to engage with them if they have an empty profile..
3. Plan fun party games. We’re not talking about online Indian leg wrestling, but you need to have something for people to do once they join your community? Will they have discussions with thought leaders? Will they ask questions of their peers? Have a poll or just give them interesting content to read. In the beginning you’ll need to do a bit of work to seed the content with examples of what you hope others will continue to contribute. Set the tone. Have others help you out. Whatever you hope they will do, you need to ask them to do it and make it simple, easy, and worth their time. And when all else fails, ask them what they want.
4. Invite other hosts to the party. An online community succeeds when leadership and momentum comes from multiple directions. Identify 5-10 industry leaders outside your organization who are passionate about your online community. Include people who write blogs or who are active LinkedIn members and even ask the media. If it’s an event community, be sure to have your presenters active and online in the site. Get people who are already online and active — Seek them out in their neck of the internet and ask them to help. These will be your initial rockstars and champions who are eager to for another opportunity to build their online brand. Train them on how to start conversations, respond to participants and keep the community active. Give them assignments (you watch the bar, you watch the dance floor, I’ll greet newbies, etc.). You don’t have the time to do everything yourself, and you shouldn’t have to.
5. Play well with other communities. Your members are probably networking on public sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (even if you think your members aren’t online). Integrate your community into these established networks by publishing updates to those sites. Likewise, your live events are communities in and of themselves. Find ways to weave your live and online content together.

Realize you might have some lulls in your community. It’s okay to have some ebb and flow. Ups and downs are healthy. They give your members something to look forward to. Just like a house party where the guests create their own festive atmosphere, your online community takes on a life of its own when members feel comfortable and start engaging. And as the host, you can simply look around the virtual room and smile at the conversations, shared resources and connections that your online community fosters.

PS – And, be sure to thank your helpers every now and then.