Think like your customer, not yourself, when marketing online

It’s important not to forget how your customers think. There’s the old adage: “put yourself in their shoes” – but there any many businesses who don’t.

The trouble is, they get so wrapped up in what they’re doing, the technology and the objectives, the jargon and the statistics, the products and the profits, that they stop seeing the wood for the trees.

It seems the larger the organisation, the more cocooned in their technological bubbles they become. The marketing lingo is almost like a foreign language, acronyms are bounced about like rubber balls, the bigger picture is adhered to without any consideration for the ‘here and now’.

Therefore it is a good thing to deliberately put yourself in the place of the customer, and try and analyse exactly what is going on, what decisions they are making, what your promotions actually mean to them and how understandable they are.

This is a common problem in such a fast moving technological world, where new methods are constantly created and objectives, opportunities and outcomes change. So much new knowledge needs to be absorbed, implemented and monitored, and it is easy to forget that your customer may be struggling to keep up.

So sometimes the words that are used, the message that is put across, the way your business communicates with their customers, seems to have lost touch with the ‘real world’.

Some owners are so proud of their products and this can cloud over the real purpose of any promotion: you need to use the same words the customer would use, empathise with their problems, and provide a solution with real added value.

–oo0oo–

About the author:
Alice Elliott is a online marketer and blogger who runs Fairy Blog Mother which trains, explains and creates awareness about blogs and blogging for businesses and individuals. She specialises in using ordinary, everyday words within easy to understand workshops and courses.

Don’t get left behind

The world moves at a terrific pace, especially within technology. It is positively frightening how rapidly everything moves is at the moment, with nothing standing still and continuously evolving, developing, becoming something new.

In business terms this could make all the difference to your survival. Look at all the big names that have gone under this year, all because they didn’t embrace technology as it whizzed past them at breakneck speed. It seems if you haven’t totally embraced the internet and are using it to its fullest extent, you will become irrecoverably left behind, unable to catch up in time.

There is another downside to this – cost! One of the reasons I gave up being a graphic designer is because I couldn’t afford to upgrade my software every five minutes. Battling with stuff that is a year out of date meant that I wasn’t compatible with all the other firms who were. Something had to give, and it was me!

In this dog eat dog world, life can be very cruel if you are unable to keep up with the times. OK, things come and go, trends make a come-back and a good grounding in the basics will always stand you in good stead, but only if you are aware of what is new and how to cope with it.

It doesn’t help if you bury your head in the sand, or get bad advice from others who also don’t know what is going on. Usually these are those that shout the loudest, which is unfortunate, as they attract the most attention – but it is the canny business that will see through all this glitzy razzamataz and learn to recognise good value for what it really is: solid, straight-forward, uncomplicated advice with real, proven examples and a desire to help businesses rather than make money from them.

Another downside to this technology lark is that it’s very hard to understand it. There is a lot of jargon flying about, young whipper-snappers who make you feel stupid, a strange new world that doesn’t relate to anything you know. And anything that is out of this world is frightening, especially if it takes you out of your comfort zone.

Even I break out in a cold sweat when I’m confronted with something new. It’s only natural. It harps back to living in caves when anything unknown was dangerous and life-threatening. Tentatively coming out of my cave to try out some new software or system gives me the absolute frights. And usually I don’t have a nice person on hand to help me through this ordeal.

The last comment is particularly prone. It is so important to know that there is somebody else who has gone through the same ordeal, suffered on your behalf, pulled all their hair out so you don’t have to, translated this strange language into ordinary, everyday words so that you can understand it.

And why? So that you can embrace technology and not get left behind. That is so important in today’s business world. Don’t end up like a comet, jessops or woolworths. Keep abreast of what’s going on. And start today – there’s nothing like the present, isn’t there?

–oo0oo–

About the author:
Alice Elliott’s alter ego is the Fairy Blog Mother, a magical educational resource for all your blogging needs. Find out about her tuition and design services at http://fairyblogmother.co.uk

How intuitive is your business?

Yesterday I got very angry. Not sure if this is a result of a change in hormones, or as a result of turning into a crabby old woman, but I find I am not as tolerant as I used to be to inadequate instructions.

This is mainly due to frustration. If things are not immediately obvious, we inwardly panic, especially if we’re in an unfamiliar environment. I suppose it’s a reaction to increased adrenaline, fight or flight, and for me the fight comes to the fore.

One good think I learned from a past boss was never to assume anything. We have not developed clairvoyancy yet as part of our evolution, so nobody knows what the other is thinking, has thought or will think.

This means that every single detail needs to be laid out so that the other can understand. And shown in an obvious position so that it cannot be missed. And be clear in its instruction to be fully comprehended, step by step, with no transaction missed out or – and here’s that buzzword again – assumed.

And it is that supposed assumption we have to try and fathom out that causes the frustration. This can materialise in the unexplained use of jargon, a missed portion of a visitor’s journey through a website, an expected function that the web designer does every day of his life, but doesn’t realise that the ordinary person doesn’t.

My grief was also aggravated by having to ring up an automated telephone help service, and being greeted by a robot who takes you through a series of options, mostly using terminology that has nothing to do with your problem, does not appease an already heightened state of ire. (And this is made worse if you take a wrong decision and end up going around the houses with no resolution.)

So the moral of this post is, make it obvious, but not condescending, what you want your customers to do. This stems back to the good old days when computers had be to told precise steps to enable them to perform any function, or everything went disastrously wrong. Nowadays this has been transformed into predictive text, as in my iPad ‘assuming’ the word I’m trying to type – grrr!

I think we have grown too complacent as technology has advanced, with that bad practice of ‘assumption’ taking over, and if we are to set ourselves above the noisy masses, it should be our understanding of alleviating frustration that will set us apart.

–oo0oo–

About the author:
Alice Elliott’s alter ego is the Fairy Blog Mother, a magical educational resource for all your blogging needs. Find out about her tuition and design services at http://fairyblogmother.co.uk

Are you overcomplicating your sales message?

Just over two weekends ago I noticed my trainers had finally given up the ghost. All that pounding of the streets to shed a few kilos and kick-start my metabolism had taken its toll, my poor old purple shoes I had bought as a present 3 years ago for getting my first job in 15 years were now crying out to be retired.

So after a quick bit of research on the net, off I trotted down town to the nearest running shop. I walked in to be greeted by a nice young salesman who introduced himself. He obviously was a runner himself (fit, young, good looking) sporting slim, muscly legs (steady, girl!) underneath his welcoming smile. And he was certainly passionate and knowledgeable about his sport – and that’s where it started to go wrong (well, it would have done for anyone else who didn’t recognise the signs).

Once upon a time I was totally enthusiastic about the subject of blogging and social media, and was willing to share all my knowledge to anyone who would listen. The trouble was, not everybody could keep up! I pitched my delivery at such a high level, the majority of people either glazed over or edged away sideways muttering excuses. I revealed so much of what I knew, there wasn’t anything else to make some money with. Sure this certainly positioned my expertise, but at an expense – and those who knew they could fleece me for information without paying promptly did. I learned the hard way that less is certainly more.

This young chap launched straight into describing running styles without bothering to find out what level I was. To me it would have been obvious: an overweight, middle-aged lady wearing bright purple trousers was hardly the right candidate who would be running the Reading half marathon next March! Immediately talking technical jargon to a customer who had wandered in off the street just because they were curious about buying some new trainers would certainly have resulted in seeing their heels disappearing over the horizon before he had reached his second sentence!

But I persevered (probably because I recognised something of myself in him). Slowly interpreting his spiel, I learned that most top athletes don’t run on their heels, because that is where most of the strains are transferred to the rest of the body. A straight back and placing the toe directly underneath the body will propel the runner forward faster and further – a tall order if I wanted to redesign my running technique.

I managed to steer the conversation to how the store worked out which shoe was the most appropriate for each customer. After embarrassing myself several times on an indoor running machine while my ‘action’ was recorded with different running shoes on, I learned a lot about how I run and how certain support within shoes can help my stance. The result was a purchase of some very expensive running shoes (heavily discounted and in turquoise, my least favourite colour). So perhaps all this jargon did impress upon someone who really, subconsciously, did want to buy some running shoes?

That evening, back at home, I watched Mo Farah win his second gold medal in the 5,000 metres – and yes, unlike the chaps panting behind him, he was running on his toes!

There’s no such thing as a free lunch

I received a personal email invitation from Sir John Madejski (a successful Reading businessman) to attend a seminar about marketing and social networking at the Madejski Stadium (home of the Reading football club).

So I accepted. After all, it was free, and sitting at the back could do no harm, and I was intrigued to see how much they really knew about social media. I saw from the website I signed up from that it was hosted by 107.fm, the local radio station associated with the Royals (football club), so I expected some promotional activity for radio advertising.

They were very clever. Sir John himself was there, pressing the flesh, graciously meeting everyone as they came in. They’d got one of the 107.fm presenters in, so the maitre-d was suitably slick, through reading from the presenter’s profiles was a bit stilted. The first presenter was a successful young sales marketer who had recently written a book, and after flinging out some suitably spell-binding statistics of all his successes (undoubtedly true), he gave an entertaining and thought-provoking (for the non-marketing suits) presentation based on its contents.

Then an imposing marketing man from 107.fm stood up, and an air of expectation bristled around the room. Apparently he was well known amongst the majority of the businessmen there (ladies, it’s another world when it comes to male networking!). He started his presentation with boring powerpoint slides and a mouth full of jargon (does this really impress anyone?), and after about five minutes of this, without mentioning social media once, he launched into the benefits of radio advertising.

I had been expecting this from the beginning. After all, 107.fm was hosting the show, and its logos were plastered all over the place. But where was the social networking information? A tiny mention about their Twitter account, and an app that allowed interaction with a live radio programme, and that was it!

After a dismal presentation by Debra Mann about the various packages they had to offer (smacking of desperation to fill air time), we adjourned for coffee and networking. I asked people what was their purpose for coming to the event, and the answers were: social networking information and networking – well, at least they got one of those! Interestingly, nothing about radio advertising, even though that was at least 80% of what was forced down their throats.

So the moral of the story is, if it’s free, it’s probably rubbish. This is a sad situation, but you do pay for what you get. So much is available on the net now for free that people expect to pay nothing, and any price put on an event results in wrinkled noses.

So paying £30 to attend an absolutely superb International Women’s Day event, hosted by Success Network, was money well spent! Stimulating speakers, inviting venue, scrumptious food, friendly clientele and excellent networking prospects, what incredible value! Sir John – you’ve nothing in comparison.

Think like your customer, not yourself

It’s important not to forget how your customers think. There’s the old adage: “put yourself in their shoes” – but there any many businesses who don’t.

The trouble is, they get so wrapped up in what they’re doing, the technology and the objectives, the jargon and the statistics, the products and the profits, that they stop seeing the wood for the trees.

It seem the larger the organisation, the more cocooned in their technological bubbles they become. The marketing lingo is almost like a foreign language, acronyms are bounced about like rubber balls, the bigger picture is adhered to without any consideration for the ‘now’.

Therefore it is a good thing to deliberately put yourself in the place of the customer, and try and analyse exactly what is going on, what decisions have been made, what the promotions actually mean, how understandable are they, and how easy is it to perform online what the company wants to be done.

This is a common problem in such a fast moving technological world, where new methods are constantly created and objectives, opportunities and outcomes change. The personnel inside the organisation adapt to maintain the status quo, but do their customers? So much new knowledge is absorbed, implemented and monitored, that they forget outside world is struggling to keep up.

So sometimes the words that are used, the message that is put across, the way the company communicates with their customers, seems to have lost touch with the ‘real world’. They are so proud of their products and the technology behind them, this sometimes clouds over the real purpose of promotion: you need to use the same words the customer would use, empathise with their problems, and provide a solution with real added value.

Want to make a positive, lasting impact online? Choose your words carefully!

It all started with my bank’s slogan ‘visit us in branch’ which had been irritating me for ages! I just felt the sentence was incomplete and wondered how people would react if I said ‘visit me in office’ or an airline or rental firm said ‘visit us in airport’??

So the other day, finally, I asked people on Facebook, whether it really did sound wrong, or whether I’m just a bit touchy when it comes to grammar and jargon.

My question caused a discussion on Facebook with people agreeing that it sounds wrong. One of my Facebook friends suggested they could have just said ‘visit us’and then let you decide whether this is in branch or on-line. She felt ‘visit us in branch’ was prescriptive or dictatorial as well as sounding grammatically wrong.

I was pleased to hear that I wasn’t the only one who felt irritated by the choice of words! Then a marketer colleague added that “it’s a typical case of an organisation wording something in their own jargon, rather than using customer-friendly language.”

To give another example, I read an interesting blog recently in which people were described as ‘service users’. I couldn’t help thinking that jargon may be acceptable in an official, professional and industry specific context, but it doesn’t translate well into a more personal one.

Lloyds probably had no idea that their customers might object to something they say.

Along the same lines, I had no idea that some people might object to a term I used in a series of blogs recently – ‘mumpreneur’!

I was unaware at the time of several heated discussions online about this word’s negative implications!  MyDonut for small business even devoted a whole week of posts to the term.

Language is emotive and once you use jargon or apply a label, there is no way of telling what happens next. You may have pushed someone’s sensitive button, just like Lloyd’s did with me and just like I know I did for others by using the word ‘mumpreneur’.

So should you just play safe when writing for business?

I think not! Using language in a way that makes people think and react, is important especially in the fast-moving and interactive world of blogs and Facebook pages, where people can give immediate feedback.

But using language that has negative implications in a one-way communication such as a website or in TV advertising, isn’t usually advisable.

Unless a provocative slogan, word or visual image has a clear objective and a shock is intended, the risk is that negative responses could be devastating to the brand.  People will take avoidance action, whether they click away from your website or stop reading your newsletter.

So the time to be ultra careful with language is when writing for your website – why not ask a colleague to check your copy, or test your words on some of your readers before making them ‘permanent’.

And remember that when writing blogs you may never be able to ‘play safe’ all the time: you will never please everyone by what you say in the same way as you will never please everyone by what you do.

As long as you keep communicating, have a balanced mix of messages and avoid jargon when you can, then, like Lloyds, at least you will make people think!

Ute Wieczorek-King is an experienced trainer, mentor and business coach who specialises in helping busy women to be more efficient, productive and profitable in business.

If you like this post, why not leave a comment below or connect with Ute via Twitter,  the Success Network Community on LinkedIn, or

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Not understanding is both frustrating and frightening

Fairy Blog Mother

For two days last week I struggled with a defect in my blog. Undergoing this experience brought home how scary it can be when you don’t understand what is going on and why something doesn’t work. In this case the problem sorted itself out (with a bit of help from some experts), and now I understand a bit more about blogging.

Why am I confessing this? Well, it gave me some more empathy with beginner bloggers and how daunting blogging can be to those who aren’t technical. I remember my first days when starting my blog, how confusing it was because it wasn’t ‘obvious’, even though it was to others.

This became even more prevalent when I ventured into the world of WordPress.org, and had to learn how to understand HTML, PHP, FTP and other technical goodies. And when I went onto a WordPress forum to find out what to do, I was greeted by bright young things that spouted jargon at me left, right and centre, and became totally frustrated when I didn’t immediately understand what they were going on about.

Reading self-help books about blogging revealed there was nothing that was totally jargon free, and there was an assumption that the reader had some experience in web-language and programming. This I considered to be unfair, and I also realised that most of these books were geared towards creating blogs in WordPress.org in order to make money, as that is what made the books sell.

Thus the Fairy Blog Mother was born. I wanted to create a personality that would explain blogging in everyday language, slowly, carefully and patiently, so that anybody could start a blog. I wanted to share how I had learned how to blog, in a way that was accessible to all, so others could do the same. I made all my e-courses available for free so that not only could people gain access to them when they needed them, I could refer the links to people who could benefit from this instructions, and I have done this many times since.

Recently I have strayed from this purpose, with a post that provided code for removing comment boxes from pages in WordPress.org. It was purely for SEO reasons, and I am now ashamed, because it probably didn’t make any difference and turned some people off. From now on I will concentrate on WordPress.com, and only will offer WordPress.org elements if it doesn’t detract from the subject matter.

To help me with my quest, I would value what other people think, want, need explaining or require further research into the world of beginner blogging. I will endeavour to provide succinct explanations, and maybe all this ‘fodder’ I have in this blog may go towards a ‘totally beginner blogger’s book’ that fills in the gap that is unrequited by self-help blogging manuals.

Why it’s important to explain things in everyday language

Click the fairy for some magical blogging help!

Quite a lot of what I do is technical. There was once a time when I didn’t understand what I do, so I had to learn, usually the long and hard way, how to do this technical stuff.

Most of the instructions used jargon, and were written for people who were already technical. It infuriated me that, coupled with American words that had no relation to me as a middle-aged British woman, I sometimes didn’t understand any of it. Like most untechnical people, I explained it in words I knew, which the technical people didn’t understand because it wasn’t on their level. I often came away none the wiser, and feeling very stupid for not using the same language or understanding the instructions to solve my problems.

Eventually I began to understand, and put the information to good use. This was done by trial and error, after much swearing, tearing my hair out, threatening to throw the computer out of the window and shouting at my poor family. Now I do my technical stuff without batting an eyelid, but this is because I have done it several times, and much of it has become second nature.

Now it is me that has to explain what I do to others who aren’t technical in a way that they can understand. This is very difficult if I am to avoid using the associated jargon that goes with these technicalities; just because I now understand it, I should realise how baffling it is for others that don’t – after all, I was once there myself! So I use analogies. I explain using everyday words to get my point across, and I also use them to reinforce a point in another way to get my listeners to understand.

For example, I was explaining what FTP is to Dianne, my work colleague, and how I use it with websites. I also tried to explain how I change the appearance of WordPress blogs to suit corporate styles. For Dianne it would normally be uncomprehensible, so I wanted to simplify things so she could understand. Here is my explanation (any technical people reading this may not agree with my analogy, but remember this is not meant for you!):

I consider FTP as a wardrobe, in which you store clothes. The various elements of a website are like the clothes you put in the wardrobe. Each kind of clothing has a different function, whether to cover certain parts of your body, or to keep you warm in the winter or dry on a rainy day.

Some of these clothes can be altered: change of colour, different buttons, lower neckline, etc, so their appearance can change for the better (this is changing the CSS: cascading style sheets). Some clothes benefit from added accessories, like jewellery or a silk cravat, that can be added to enhance the outfit (this is adding in plugins and other applications). Some clothes require different hangers or mothballs to protect them from harm (security against spam or hackers). Some clothes can be acquired easily from your local shopping centre or have to be ordered in from a catalogue (WordPress installation via Fantasico or via creating MySQL and editing the configuration files in WordPress).

Oops, lots of jargon there! But Dianne was quite satisfied with that explanation, which was my main objective. Now I can mention FTP with the full knowledge that Dianne will refer to my analogy to understand this subject further.

Are you put off blogs because of the jargon?

I’ve just listened to a video about blogging. Normally I would be very excited and would take voracious notes, but this time I just sat there bemused.

As a result I am determined to develop my new niche. Since the end of May, when I developed Bell’s Palsy, I had to take a back seat from my business to recover, and I used the time to rethink my strategy and where I was going with my business. This is an important activity to do now and again, and there’s nothing like having half a face to focus on what’s doing well and what isn’t.

I’ve decided to adapt my business in stages, and the first stage will be explaining how to create and maintain a blog for British non-techie females. The ‘British’ part is as relevant as the ‘non-techie’ and ‘female’ parts, because there are so much stuff out there that is American – sorry those from the other side of the pond, but American is not the same as English. The ‘female’ part is apt because, after coping with my dear, wonderful and thoroughly techie brother who sorted out minor problems with my blog, I realised that there is another vocabulary out there that isn’t tuned in to women or mumpreneurs.

So I would like to boost my ‘marketing research’ I’ve been doing at networking events lately, and ask for questions from equally bemused ‘would-be-bloggers’ what they would like to know, which bits they don’t understand, what is holding them back from setting up a blog, and how would they like their ‘lessons’ to be presented to them in the best way for them to learn.

Oh, and for those ’starting out’ bloggers, I will be working with a ‘free’ blog from WordPress.com so you can get to grips with blogging the easy way, and don’t have to worry about all that nasty techie stuff needed for self-hosting blogs. (Once you have begun to understand blogging, then you can try your hand at the more advanced stuff at a later date.)

Come on girls, let’s have some questions… leave your contributions in the comments box below.