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By Sandra Holtzman, March 23, 2013 10:08 am

Everyone loves top 10 lists.

So now that we’re ending the first quarter of the year…here’s some helpful directions to focus on in your marketing and business (they are in no particular order of importance)

1.       Integrate your marketing
As much as everyone would really love “the answer” and that it be just one thing…social media is the “one” at the moment…that’s just not how marketing works. Marketing is an eco-system that includes social, PR, collateral, branding etc.

2.       Put in a call to action in every piece of marketing you do
This may sound self-serving but it actually helps direct the customer to the key next steps in order to buy your product or otherwise engage with you.

3.       Create content that is valuable to your customers
This includes helpful tips and case histories that will help move the prospective forward to become a customer.

4.       Communicate
Tweet, blog, get your voice out there and heard.  I posted a jobs graph from another source a while back and suddenly it’s been “Pinned” by dozens of people on Pinterest. Who knew?

5.       Do primary research with your customers
Ask them open-ended questions about what’s important to them about your product or service and what will drive them to buy it.

6.       Listen to your customers’ answers
The information may be different from what you expected. Welcome the face that you do not know it all and keep your ego out of it.

7.       Follow-up after the sale
Thank your customers. If they have feedback (which you should solicit) listen to it and if something is wrong, make changes or otherwise implement their feedback.
Follow-up again.

8.       Identify your influencers
Build a relationship with them either on-line or in person.

9.       Brand yourself, your product, your company
Remember, you are your brand.  Use experiences and stories to help with brand identification. Your customers will also help you create your brand.

10.     Write better subject lines
It’s a crowded, competitive world out there…make sure your communications are opened.

Sandra Holtzman teaches CEO 035: Licensing.
She is the author of Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing.

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By Peggy & Arthur Winters, November 29, 2012 8:24 am

As businesses and consumer groups grapple with the effects of global marketing, we are observing how various fashion designers adjust their marketing strategies to suit this uncertain new world. Some fashion designers are re-thinking creative design as a foundation for marketing. They are concentrating on how to bring a sense of personal involvement in self-styling for the consumer as a fundamental marketing strategy. When the world gets more confusing, either we pull in the reins and go to our strengths — or we go all out and cast a wider net.

Designers are focused less on “The Look,” in their seasonal collections. They are busy researching and creating a line that can satisfy more than one demo/psycho-graphic market. While staying true to their core target audience, they are also reaching beyond that to a broader range of ages and body shapes with a wider selection of fabrics, colors, styles, …. Looking to connect to “What is their world,” the new wave of fashion designer wants to create a brand story that will stimulate or revive consumer emotions and aspirations. More than ever, it is important that a style and the brand have relevance to the consumer.

A good example could be the current repercussions of the world’s poor economies. What kind of choices will be made with this in mind? When so many things look bleak for so many people, how can one’s personal styling make the consumer more optimistic? A designer may think back and design forward to create different styles that reactivate pleasurable emotions. It may be time to extend beyond the security of the “I can wear it anywhere” black dress, exploring the brighter, fun colors, patterns, and styles, offered at more reasonable, affordable prices.

What we are saying here is largely attributed to singular Lanvin designer, Alber Elbaz. Elbaz fashions are being created to resurrect one’s own “golden age,” and also to make one aware of their fashion self-actualization.

An example of “fashion self-actualization” could be one interpretation of “tomboy” style in a woman’s wardrobe. It may be a woman’s answer to not being obviously sexy. The tomboy may want to demonstrate that she has no present desire to arouse a man’s sex drive. It may signal her desire for freedom from flirting, as well as freedom from high heels, classic dresses and full-on makeup. Or it could be a desire to be trendy, yet casually elegant?

Note the following possible interpretations of the “Tomboy” fashion style. Let’s see how you react to the possibilities, as we need to find comfort in our currently uncomfortable world…

http://tomboystyle.blogspot.com/

Photo on the right is of one of Ann Mashburn’s famous mood boards — by F.E. Castleberry of Unabashedly Prep.

 As we stated above: designers look back to design forward…

The mood, the lifestyle, the “fashion self-actualization” of “The Tomboy”

Drawing by Arthur A. Winters

The designer who thinks “What is their world now?” —

is more likely to attract more customers.

Arthur & Peggy Winters co-teach SXB 200 Brand Marketing Communications for Image & Meaning and SXR 050 Intro to Branding: The Art of Customer Bonding.

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By Peggy & Arthur Winters, September 27, 2012 12:15 pm

by Peggy and Arthur Winters

Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been defined as a management tool that can be used to investigate the degrees of loyalty in a firm’s customers’ experiences. It serves as an additional tool to traditional customer satisfaction research. The Net Promoter Score is obtained by asking customers a single question on a 0 to 10 rating scale. “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” Based on their responses, customers are categorized into one of three groups: Promoters – extremely likely to recommend (9-10 rating), Passives – likely (7-8 rating), and Detractors – not at all likely (0-6 rating). Subtracting the proportion of detractors from the proportion of promoters and converting it to a percent gives a Net Promoter Score.

Any analysis of NPS reveals that it is being employed as a useful form of market research that can present companies with an understandable way to measure customer satisfaction without getting lost in deep data. It gets companies to think about their customers’ experiences and loyalty from the customers’ point of view. NPS and CX should serve as a matrix or model for how customers see their interactions with a brand / designer / store and/or website and how the brand should work to improve these experiences.

But answers to only one question will not reveal the whole story of WHY a customer might or might not recommend the brand. To improve one’s loyalty NPS, one must look for the root cause. These interactions include individual stages in the customer’s exploration, discovery, purchase, satisfied use and services rendered.

Additional ways to employ NPS as an indicator of customer loyalty could include:

ACE – Actual Customer Experiences and referrals – using point of sale, call center and billing data that signifies exactly what customer interactions have occurred…

SPA – Superior Perception of Attributes that are revealed through customer conversations that inquire how satisfying were their experiences with the good old 4 Ps — Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

APS – Analysis of Promoter Score through further evaluations of customer interactions asking what they did as a result of interactions with the brand (designer, product, store, website, or experience). Specifically: “Have you recommended this brand?” These evaluations are calculated to define customer perceptions, future intentions for purchasing, and importantly, recommendations and referrals.

NPS can be an effective predictor of whether, how, and when a customer might, and actually has recommended the brand to a friend, family or colleague.

Above all, NPS can also be an analysis of Customer Experiences (CX) that serves as a reference for a company’s Internal Branding. NPS can be infused as a metric for evaluating a company’s systems for creating related Customer Experiences (CX).

How would this recommendation affect “STAYSEXY™’s” NPS Net Promoter Score? Drawing by Arthur A. Winters.

Arthur & Peggy Winters co-teach SXB 200 Brand Marketing Communications for Image & Meaning and SXR 050 Intro to Branding: The Art of Customer Bonding.