Robert L. Ferguson 付峻岭’s Post

Small things and marketing. For decades marketers have found certain stages in a person’s life where they are more susceptible to messaging and marketing. Whether it is the impending birth of a child to a physical re-location there are times where people are more open to change or to paying attention. Marketers also recognize that there are moments of interaction where up-selling or cross-selling is likely to be more successful, such as when someone is opening an account or when one is about to pay for items in one’s real or digital shopping cart. Basically, marketers look for moments of greatest attention and interest. The challenge is that everybody knows these rituals and some combination of high costs and fees to show up at these moments or a certain weariness and understanding by people of what is happening, makes these less differentiable. If instead of thinking only about where someone is on a customer/purchase journey we think about where we can surprise them positively the most, or turn a negative to a positive, we find compelling moments. For instance, if we want to get people to speak well about our product or service instead of advertising to them or desperately try to get likes or influencer mentions, why not give them a sample of the product for free? Why not re-allocate a portion of the communication budget to enhance the quality of the product or service which will then speak for itself and get its satisfied users to speak about it. In today’s world brands are more likely to scale through people if they have a superior product or service rather than just telling people they have a superior product or service. Imagine if you were a cable company or publisher and re-allocate the “stop them from unsubscribing” budget where you slash prices, increase channels in a bundle or enhance broadband speeds to people who are quitting, to instead reward the most loyal customers by going to them and cutting their fees and/or upgrading their services to simply say thank you. When someone least expects an act of generosity it has a tattoo like impact. It means they are special, and they are not being taken for granted. It is just a special small thing. So many marketers promise to “surprise and delight” customers but do we really? One or two small “surprise and delights” might be worth a year of messaging Less is more. The rare is meaningful. The special resonates. Traffic in scarcity to stand out in a world of abundance, sameness, and noise. Think about the small things, the moments that you can tattoo by asking “what can we do and where can we do something that will make someone come away different”? It may be small things. But small things matter. More below

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