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May 28, 2006
Benchmarking for Brand, Marketing and Customer Relationships, Part 1: Why?
We were asked an interesting question during a new business pitch the other day. In the middle of our discussion of the “Touchpoint Performance Dashboard” and our ability to help clients both understand key metrics and develop benchmarks for ongoing performance measurement, a senior marketing exec piped in: “What is benchmarking?”
After a (very brief) pause to see if they were serious, I quickly dove in. But the question was illuminating. How many marketers – in this age of management focus on ROI and performance measurement – wonder what to track to prove how well they’re doing?
Our definition of benchmarking is the act of comparing a specific measurement (or set of measurements) to a benchmark. External benchmarking compares internal measurements to measurements from external sources (prospects, competitors, non-competitive functional leaders). Internal benchmarking compares internal measurements (typically by division, process, unit, customer or segment) against other internal measures.
A recent engagement on the process of identifying, codifying and transferring internal best practices fell into the internal benchmarking category. The question we answered was, “How can we (organizationally) find out what we (individually or at the business unit level) already know?”
Once they got it, this client was really interested in external benchmarking, followed by a dialogue around what they’re trying to accomplish: Would you like to benchmark yourselves against best practices in your industry? Or would you like to benchmark yourselves against perceptions of the ideal? Or do you want to benchmark performance against the ideal as perceived by the most profitable, loyal customers you have, and others like them?
The answers, unsurprisingly, were yes, yes, yes and yes. But we’ve been able to narrow this down somewhat to those metrics that really matter, with the objectives of helping them adopt best practices and increasing performance. But benchmarking should be treated as a continuous process in which organizations continually seek to challenge their practices and improve upon them. While many organizations benchmark on weekly or monthly performance data, we’ve found that quarterly measures are most manageable, while still occurring often enough to incent positive change.
The approach you’ll take is driven by exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, and what you plan to with data once it’s been gathered and analyzed.
Comments (0) | Posted by MCorp. at 8:12 AM | Permalink | TrackBack
May 15, 2006
A Touchpoint Management Overview
Managing Touchpoints to drive customers closer to your brand
As we’ve “touched on” before, Touchpoints are all of the physical, communication and human interactions that your company's customers experience over their relationship lifecycle with your company. Starting with awareness and progressing through the seven stages to trial, satisfaction and loyalty, the power of Touchpoints to drive customers is significant.
The question we’d like to ask is this: Do you know what’s driving your customers through your Customer Relationship Lifecycle (CRL)?
Do you understand their needs?
What do your customers seek, require or expect in each lifecycle stage?
Do you understand which marketing levers “move” them?
What are the Touchpoints, actions, factors or emotions that motivate advancement from one to a subsequent stage of the CRL?
What are the barriers to movement?
What’s impeding progress through your CRL? Where are you “losing” customers and prospects?
To answer these – and related – questions, you can build a view of the CRL unique to your company, and identify and map Touchpoints (what we term Touchpoint MappingTM) along appropriate CRL stages. As a result, you’ll:
> Have a perspective from which to understand efficacy, cost and potential redundancies
> Be able to identify and map specific customer Needs, Levers and Barriers to progress across each lifecycle stage.
> Articulate specific, defensible recommendations for the strategies and tactics that will optimize your Touchpoints to better meet identified needs, levers and eliminate barriers to a positive relationship with your organization.
Marry this process to a true understanding of your brand and how it influences, motivates and resonates with prospects and customers, and you’ll create a powerful set of “lenses” through which to view, manage and maximize the value of all your Touchpoints.
Comments (0) | Posted by MCorp. at 10:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBack
May 10, 2006
Bridging the Strategy Gap: Getting to Execution
I’ve heard executives talk about the importance strategic planning is given within an organization, and I’ve seen much of the impressive output from expensive consultants. And while it’s easy to bash these 100-plus page PowerPoint “paper bricks” that often end up gathering dust when some other consulting firm produces them, my tune changes pretty quickly when it’s our recommendations sitting neglected on the shelf.
The fact is, great strategy – whether brand, marketing or business management oriented (in our case, often all three) – can only succeed if it’s actually implemented. When something goes wrong or nothing happens, it can leave the organization unchanged or (even worse) only partway through a critical process.
A recent engagement with a growing financial services firm drove this point home…again. Where does it go wrong? While we see our job as the planners and champions of change, it takes internal leadership and motivation to drive it. Great leadership is about implementing change as well as developing the strategies to create change. You can't have one without the other.
But not all leaders are naturally equipped, or empowered, to deal with the challenges that this role will throw at them. Whatever their “official” role (whether you’re leading from the top or the middle), leaders need to be able to drive strategic change in their organizations, and motivate others to join them.
I’m thinking we need to add a role to our toolbox: just call me Coach!
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