Is Your Company Engaging its Promoters???

The Net Promoter Scoring system is a fairly well known concept in the marketing circles.

What makes NPS work is its simplicity, based on the ‘fundamental perspective that every company’s customers can be divided into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. By asking one simple question — How likely is it that you would recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague? —  a company can get a clear measure of its performance through its customers’ eyes. Customers respond on a 0-to-10 point rating scale and are categorized as follows:

• Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth.
• Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
• Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

To calculate its Net Promoter Score (NPS), a company can take the percentage of customers who are Promoters and subtract the percentage who are Detractors.’

The results derived are not only indicative of the goodwill that exits in the market for your company but is also reflective of your growth in profits and going further the areas within your company which might require improvement.
The decision to recommend a company is often influenced by a lot of factors – from the quality of the product being sold to the sale experience and after- sales service. Enough reason to prioritize and measure customer satisfaction at each level of customer interaction.

To ensure you get value of the NPS system it is important to make it a part of your day to day company processes. If the goal of every employee in your company is to ensure customer satisfaction both in principal and action, rarely can you go wrong.

In this era of social media, the NPS system can give a whole new meaning to marketing. Drawing your promoters to help you with the process of brand building by sharing their brand experiences with a larger audience can be a great add-on to any marketing strategy. This also increases the chances of turning the Passives into active Promoters.

I personally see the NPS system as a great value add for the PR and branding team of any company.  This can be a two level process –

Engaging your Promoters & Converting the passives

1. Create campaigns which encourage your promoters to share their positive feedback about your company with others on and across the social mediasphere.
2. Reward them for their loyalty by either recognizing their efforts or by providing them with a more premium service offering. Their happiness should be your company’s ultimate goal; these are your walking, talking assets, your investors and advertisers.
3. Create campaigns which offer value to the Passives in turning Promoters of your brand. It could be seasonal discounts, opportunities to participate in contests, priority redressal of complaints, referral programs etc. which ensures they see value in sticking to your brand and also of promoting it to others. Remember these groups of people have used your product and probably like using it but may switch brands if something better comes along – so the idea is to hold them and offer them value in sticking to the brand that goes beyond just your product.
4. At the engagement level it will help to identify the channels most commonly used by your Promoters, so that you can optimize your presence there. Also, since these are channels your promoters are used to, they would be more comfortable sharing their experiences here than anywhere else. If the sites and networks are different to those, you use for your promotions, its best to come up with a plan on how you will interlink the two, so that your existing networks can get a peek into your promoters endorsements.

Engaging your Detractors

1. Engage them to understand the cause of their dissatisfaction. This insight is critical for your future plans. Also, it will inform you about areas and processes within your company which need a re-look. Working on these will also reduce the number of Detractors you might have in future.
2. Most people feel unhappy about a company, when they feel the company is not bothered with the issues they have faced when dealing with the company. So it is important to build an image of your company which listens and responds to the complaints of its customers. Ensure your website has a complaint and suggestions address and a prompt response system in place – it says a lot about your willingness to address the issues raised by your customers.
3. Winning back people can be a difficult task and a long drawn process – but sometimes it is worth the effort because then the loyalty towards a brand is much more. Invite your Detractors to re-use your product or service, assure them that you have tried to address the issues raised by them and this time around if you can ensure them a fulfilling experience, you will have a customer who will talk about “how you cared to look into his concerns and made him feel important.”

The effectiveness of the Net Promoter Score has been a topic debate among marketers, market researchers and marketing professors ever since it was first developed by Fred Reichheld in 2003. But the concept continues to find believers and has been successfully adopted and implemented in big organizations like Microsoft, GE, Intuit etc.

It is a great brand growth measurement tool – and also one that helps in deciding the way forward.

Creating Brand Awareness the Google – Oops! The 'Gogola' way

The image in this post is one of the best I have come across in recent times, not for the quality or aesthetics but purely for the messaging and what it implies in terms of marketing and PR.

This is a street vendor from some city in India, who is trying to sell flavored ice sticks which are called ‘Golas’ in Hindi, and what you see in this image is his store or cart. The image stands out for how innovatively the vendor has used the Google homepage branding to market his ‘Golas’. It immediately catches your attention and you actually stop to read what he has to offer and probably even try it since it promises to be hygienic – a rarity when it comes to street side food in India. 

What is more interesting is to watch the kind of awareness Google enjoys as a brand. I say this because if a street vendor in India – who may not be aware of what Internet means or what power this medium enjoys is actually using Google branding to promote his goods.  It establishes Google’s superamacy as one of the most powerful and recognized brands of our times. 

I am sure, there is a more educated and well-informed mind working behind the man in this image, probably a young Entrepreneur who is trying to innovate the way this traditional street side delicacy is sold and marketed.

For Gogola it is mission accomplished – in a very simple and cost-effective way, Gogola has managed to capture eyeballs. Trust me I posted this pic on my facebook profile and many of my friends re-posted it on theirs…

Creating Brand Awareness.....

Is there a learning we can draw from this image when it comes to practicing Marketing and PR?

Below are few I could think of….

 Positioning differently

It pays to be innovative and thinking out of the box when it comes to positioning your brand. You could be part of an industry where you have 100 other competitors offering almost similar products or services, what will make you stand out in the crowd is your brand positioning.

Be creative and whacky, people are used to the simple and the appropriate, sometimes you just have to break the rules to stand out. Don’t take it too far to offend someone but THINK. Spend money on your creatives – ad copies, website, content, brochures etc. they should all follow the same theme and should effectively communicate your offering in a unique way. I am sure, when you thought of starting a business – you believed you had something different to offer – just ensure that difference shows through in the brand image you plan to create.  

 Brand your solution  

Whenever you think of a positioning for your brand, always think of offering a solution to an existing problem in the industry of your domain. Here, by positioning, I just don’t mean your advertisements, but any messaging you share with the outside world should focus on talking about the solution you offer. You could be offering a unique solution, you could be offering a different solution, simple solution, complex solution – it does not matter as long as you offer a solution.

People have enough problems and are most of the time seeking solutions – Google built its brand offering answers to most questions you may have. Gogola is using mineral water for its ‘Golas’ – a solution to the unhygienic and poor quality of water that is usually used in street side eateries across India.

 Tapping the right audience 

Another important aspect of building your brand is in identifying who your target audience is. Here Gogola has made it very clear – its target is the more affluent Indian population, who do not mind shelling more money for this traditional feast as long as its made hygienically, using good quality raw material. In addition, the vendor by using Google in his branding is identifying itself with a generation who is aware of Google, he is very clear about his clientele and has ensured only the target audience walks in for a ‘Gola’.

Hence it is very essential to keep your target audience in mind when planning your messaging and branding to ensure you reach out to only those who matter to your business.

 Riding on another known brand 

In this image the vendor is piggy banking on the popularity of Google. People stop to read his board because they think its Google’s advertisement in an unusual place, but in the end, they will remember Gogola because they are able to relate it to something they already knew and probably using everyday!

While it might appear cheesy to some, I think it makes perfect sense to do it if you can carry it off with élan. I think it’s a huge compliment for Google’s marketing team. Therefore, if you think there is a hot favorite subject, brand, persona, everyone is aware of and is talking about – use it to further your cause. Only ensure you do it in a creative manner and it is something you can relate your offering to (in this case the name was almost similar). However, use your discretion there is a very thin line between drawing inspiration and actual copyright/trademark infringement. If not done tastefully it can create negative implications.

 Using news to be in news 

Taking a cue from the previous point there is one more tactic you can use to get some good PR for your brand. Keep up to date with the happenings around you in your city, state, country or internationally. See how you can relate any of this to your product offering when pitching to journalists and bloggers, or when coming out with a press release. It gives your pitch or release additional news value. The 2008 recession was big news, all journalists were looking for different aspects of this great fall and anyone who raised a problem, or a solution for a recession hit economy got a hearing. There are many such events all round the year, some standard like around festival time, relating to such upcoming events or significant happenings will give you better visibility as you are talking in relation to something that’s already in NEWS!

Of course, if you manage to use any of these learnings for your brand….I am hoping, I will probably get to see some more such intriguing images and find some more food for further thought!