Digital Marketing - P's Or S's

Is it the 5 P's or the 5 S's ?

The letters are different but the fundamentals are the same. The lovely Geraldine thought us the 5P's in practical marketing. 

Plan
Process
Perspective
Position
Ploy

It would appear we have the 5 S's in Digital Marketing. (Source : Emarketing Excellence)

Sell
Serve
Speak
Save
Sizzle


In another life I wrote a sales strategy for a company based on the principles:
Define your market
How do we get to the market
What do we go to the market with
How to build & keep what we have
Customer relations

There is common ground between all of these strategies. Identify & satisfy the need would be the first train of thought, certainly in a B2C (Business to Consumer) industry. I want to hone in on customer services or our third "S". After-sales service has moved on so much now, there is huge scope here in Social Media, with the power of Facebook & Twitter.

I purchased a bed in Harvey Normans when we moved house a few years ago, there was a problem with one of the uprights, they sent a team of two subcontractors out to look at it, they could not fix it so they apologised took a replacement bed out of the van & assembled it.  I was delighted with the service. I have told this story several times. This was pre-Facebook days. Could you imagine this happening now &  had not been as professional as they were,I would have posted in Facebook my good lady wife would have done the same, there's 300 people already. Any one that comments on this their friends will also see the post. This is not to mention any boards that it could have been on. Bad press is no longer a thing for the papers, it is now viral & has enormous damage potential.

The need to talk to your customers is more prevalent than ever before. Companies need to open e-channels of communication with their customers. DHL & other shipping companies give access to their customers to track goods, this is a prime example of letting customers help themselves. I would implore all web sites owners to have a structured approach in dealing with complaints and/or comments. There should be space given on websites for customer feedback, there should be an immediate call to action to deal with any issues, engage the customer. This can quickly be turned into a positive if done correctly. Boards, Facebook & Twitter should be checked for feedback about the company. If you were to pay a market research company for the information available about your company it would cost a small fortune to research. The information both negative & positive is available, use it to make improvements. Again engage the customer. A few years ago I remember receiving customer complaints over the phone, the first thing I done was thanked them for telling me so I could fix this, you could always (most times) turn a bad situation into a good. The tools are there now to search what customers are saying about you, use them.

There are programmes that can be used to search what is out there on your company, Dell use Radian6. (emarketing excellence), there are a number of programmes out there that will suffice. Last point on this "S", if you do have a feedback page ensure that there is someone there to action with a response or it would only add fuel to the fire.

This week on RTE's current affairs Primetime, the CEO of Ryan Air Michael O'Leary gave an interview. Ryanair are renowned for poor customer services and I was astonished to hear Michael state that he was addressing his customer services issues as that they were no longer acceptable.  Have the masses got to our Michael via Social Media?


Regards,

BIP/ S'OD.