Marketing Moments

Written by Dr. Bonnie Knutson

Who in your business should be responsible for your customer’s experience?  When I ask managers and owners this question, the standard response is, “We all are.”  That is true.  Everyone in the company has a vital role to play in delivering a top-notch experience to each person who walks in the door, calls on the phone, or visits your website.  But who is the experience cheerleader?  Who is the chief architect for the totality of that experience?  Just as how the definition of experience varies, so does the person responsible for leading the guest strategy.

45 NORTH AVIATION ADDS BRAND NEW PILATUS PC-12 NG TO FLEET

Traverse City, MI, November 26, 2018 — Stationed in Traverse City, Michigan, 45 North Aviation is pleased to have recently added a new aircraft to their fleet!

Written by Dr. Bonnie Knutson 

If demographics aren’t the key, what is?  The answer is emotions. This truism was brought front and center in an online report from Brand Keys.[i]  The article points out what good marketers instinctively know:  People buy with their heart and justify with their head.  As noted neurologist Donald Caine said:  The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.”  

Written by Dr. Bonnie Knutson: 

Call them Gen Z, Centennials, the iGeneration or just iGen.  Whatever it is called, this generation follows the infamous Millennials (Generation Y).  While there are no exact dates for when a generation begins and ends, in general, demographers and researchers use about a 20-year time frame for each cohort.  Typically, then, iGens are said to have been born between 1995 to 2005, putting them still in school with leading edge finishing up their college years.

When I get on my soapbox advocating this delight thing, the question I always get from managers is how do I build that culture? How do I get my staff to go above and beyond the call of duty. To see what others don’t see. To do without being told.

The notion that you have to promote to different age groups differently is accepted as a marketing truth. The practice of generational marketing had its genesis in the early 1990s when two historians, William Strauss and Neil Howe, wrote a book on generational history. They concluded that generations last the length of time of one phase of life, which is approximately 20 years. They also conclude that the members of a generation are forever connected by virtue of the fact that they share life-defining experiences during their formative years – world events, natural disaster, economic conditions politics and technology. Called markers, these common experiences create bonds that tie consumers of a generation together into cohorts with similar attitudes, values, and life skills that affect everything from how they spend, what they save, and if they become your customer.

No one can ever fault a business for wanting to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and lifetime value. It is in a company’s DNA. Isn’t it? Well, if it isn’t, it better be in this increasingly competitive, fractured, and over-communicated business environment. And isn’t that what measuring customer satisfaction is all about?

It is back to basics for customer satisfaction with the 10 Laws of Customer Satisfaction.

Law of Recognition: The most beautiful words in any language are your name. It may be impractical for every employee to recognize every customer by name, but a genuine smile and a warm greeting go a long way toward becoming as beautiful to customers as his/her name.