Archive for the ‘Matt Harrison’ Category
Friday, March 12th, 2010
This week Director Matthew Harrison draws the key marketing lessons from his (now dormant) seduction techniques.
Each and every year, the month of March is a joyous occasion for me. The brutal New York winter dissipates and makes way for 8 months of glorious sun. The English football season reaches its climax, as along with the rest of the Western world I fix my attention on Nottingham Forest’s promotion challenge. Most importantly and joyously of all, the month of March marks the anniversary of my wedding, which I should highlight (just in case she’s reading) was a day of unparalleled perfection.
And so this week my mind took a surreptitious walk down memory lane to a warm September day in 1997, a lucky 13 years ago. This was the day when I targeted my now-wife and (eventually) convinced her that I would fulfil her every need. Now, as a marketer first and lady-magnet second, thoughts of this distant time got me thinking. What, if anything, could my seductive exploits of the late 90s teach me and the wider marketing community about appealing to their target audiences? If I can successfully target that most notoriously demanding of audiences, the attractive female, surely there is no limit to my marketing prowess?
That sunny day in 1997 had been an inauspicious one, at least from a professional point of view. My finest achievement had been to break the photocopier and spend 90 minutes failing to fix it. As I returned home at 5.30, I frankly needed a beer. I delicately broached the subject with my housemate Dave, who pondered my request before suggesting we go to the pub immediately.
Two hours and 5 pints of Kronenbourg later Dave and I were deep in discussion, our agile minds flitting between the meaning of life and whose turn it was to buy the next drink. I was just about to walk towards the bar when I noticed the door open and two girls in their early twenties walked in. I salivated, ordered another round and began plotting my next move. My mission: to make the blurred, dark-haired girl on the right fall in love with a drunken photocopier-wrecker. Mercifully, Dave told me a joke about Camilla Parker-Bowles, distracting me for the rest of the evening.
Several evenings later, a group of friends and I decided to meet up in the same bar. Word was that a selection of females would be present, some of whom would be more than happy to meet the man of their dreams this evening. Even better, one or two discrete enquiries amongst the local cognoscenti revealed that the blurred girl was called Caroline and would be making an appearance along with her friends.
I sensed my chance, and quickly set about polishing my shoes, getting Dave to iron my shirt, and splashing myself in enough Fahrenheit to make a cactus wilt. I donned my leather jacket and, fusing debonair cool with rugged Anglo-Saxon masculinity, unbuttoned the top 2 buttons of my shirt. It would be no exaggeration to say that I looked irresistible.
Scanning the bar as I arrived mid-way through the evening, I immediately saw Caroline, chatting with her friends in the far corner. She was tall and slender with long, dark brown hair. Her dark knee-length skirt and tailored jacket clung enticingly to her figure and her top revealed a hint of décolletage. Her outfit reminded me of the perfect hors d’oeuvre: just enough to keep the interest; not quite enough to make me feel queasy and rush for the exit. I wonder if anyone’s ever delivered a finer compliment than that to her? I do hope so.
Rather than striding confidently towards her and delivering a killer chat-up line in front of her friends, I bravely decided to wait until she was on her own and then pounce. This must have been my lucky day because a few minutes later I found myself standing next to her at the bar.
We started talking. Now when I talk to attractive ladies, I have something of a magic touch – I start talking and they immediately disappear. Strangely, however, for an apparently sane woman with all of her faculties intact, Caroline responded – and not with a restraining order. She laughed at my jokes. She nodded as I told her all about my big-shot job in the photocopying room. She gasped with relief as I finally asked her a question. She seemed to believe me when I said that it must be the man behind me that stank of vinegar.
We met up a few more times over the following week or two, each encounter becoming slightly more relaxed than the last. I took her to a restaurant and tried to show off by buying some expensive wine that I’d never heard of. We went to a football match with a group of friends. Gentlemen, I hope you are learning as you read this. After 4 or 5 ‘meetings’ we were officially an item and I was congratulating myself on my marketing expertise.
So, when I look back at the seductive marketing techniques I employed in my early 20s and reflect upon how they changed the course of my life, I am struck by how similar the art of attracting a business-to-business customer is to the seduction of a beautiful woman. I therefore leave you with my key tips on how to attract and keep the most demanding of b2b customers:
Make the first impression count – A sober, well prepared marketing approach is always likely to be more effective than an impulsive dash in the direction of the target customer. This applies to all aspects of the marketing mix, from promotional materials and interpersonal contact through to pricing and proposal preparation. By the time you get to undoing an early bad impression, the object of your desire will already be looking elsewhere.
Expect the sales process to take 4 or 5 contacts – Business-to-business buyers, like women, are complex creatures. The quick ‘hard sell’ is far less suited to their multifaceted needs and their focus on interpersonal contact than it is to the more impulsive and impersonal world of consumer marketing. It is critical to take the time over a number of conversations to understand customers’ rational and emotional needs, before providing a personalized solution built around these.
Ask lots of (intelligent) questions – Like the most boring of inebriated men, bad b2b marketers focus so much on their own offering that they forget to ask the target customer what makes them tick and what would make their lives better. This is a fatal mistake when each target customer has needs that are often technical, complex and unique.
Always leave them wanting to find out more – Successful business-to-business marketing is a long-term, dynamic process built around frequent conversation and mutual exploration. The effective b2b marketer answers every question concisely, whilst hinting at new, intriguing ideas that make the target customer want to find out more next time.
Tell a coherent, authentic story and stick to it – This is the most difficult and most critical trick of all. Just as the single man identifies an overall impression he wants to project to the fairer sex and attempts to dress, smell and speak in a way that authenticates that impression, so the successful b2b marketer must identify the story that target segment wants to hear and ensure that every customer touchpoint authenticates that story. This requires consistency, and – most fundamentally – a deep and accurate understanding of what the target market wants from you. Master these two basics and you are on your way to becoming a seductive b2b marketer.
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B2B Marketing, Business To Business, Customer Satisfaction, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Matt Harrison, Needs, Price, Pricing Strategy, Thursday Night Insight |
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Monday, December 14th, 2009
With worldwide expenditure on online research predicted to almost treble over the next three years, market research specialist B2B International believes the future is rosy for most online techniques, especially focus groups.
The technological revolution of the past 15 years has led to the rapid development of online data collection methodologies. Of these, the online survey is the most established but, more recently, online focus groups have emerged, making it possible to obtain qualitative information online.
Following similar principles to Internet message boards, the online focus group differs from online surveys in that it allows every participant to see the responses of all of the other respondents and encourages them to respond to these views as well as to the initial question posed by the researcher. In addition, the researcher inserts questions as the discussion develops, in order to probe areas of particular interest, or to gain further information on new topics that participants introduce to the discussion. In this way, online focus groups enable a real-time, dynamic discussion to develop between the researcher and the respondents, just as would be the case with a face-to-face focus group.
Business-to-business market research specialist B2B International has been firmly established in the online research industry since the company’s inception in 1998 and remains one of the forerunners in e-enabled research. B2B International has recently published a comprehensive White Paper – Using Online Focus Groups As A Business-To-Business Research Technique – which gives a balanced assessment of the rationale behind using the online focus group as a research methodology.
The White Paper outlines 13 key reasons to conduct online focus groups:
- Volume of information
- Depth and quality of information
- Reflection time
- Accuracy and granularity
- Inclusiveness
- Honesty of respondents
- Better spread of respondents
- Incorporating different geographies and time zones
- Researching senior respondents
- Participation rates
- Introducing stimulae to the conversation
- Everyone has an equal say
- Client participation
In addition to highlighting the undisputed benefits, B2B International Director Matthew Harrison, author of the White Paper, shares some of the insights that B2B International has learned through the large number of online focus groups it has conducted over the last several years. According to Harrison: “Online focus groups can take place for a defined period of, say, 90 minutes, as with a face-to-face focus group but our experience shows us that online groups are more effective when spread over a period of 2 days, with respondents entering the discussion at different times to suit their convenience. This way, groups generate more considered opinion and a greater volume of information, adding real value to the research.”
However, internet focus groups are not suited to every research project and B2B International is quick to recognise the limitations. These include the fact that certain target audiences – particularly the less web-savvy – are less suited to online groups than others; respondent recruitment can be labour-intensive and expensive; and certain limitations exist with presenting physical stimulae for respondents to touch, feel or smell.
In spite of this, Harrison is optimistic about the future for online focus groups: “There are many reasons why we believe the prominence and effectiveness of online focus groups will increase, but key among them would be convenience and technology. Increasingly busy schedules coupled with the need to speak to respondents all across the world make online focus groups an ever more viable option. Secondly, there will continue to be huge advancements in the capabilities of and familiarity with technology, enabling greater numbers of respondents from all across the world to take part with increasing ease and improved effectiveness.”
To read the white paper in full, please click here.
Posted in
Focus Groups, Global Research, Matt Harrison, Online Focus Groups, Online Research, White Papers |
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Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Earlier this week, we posted a blog article about marketer of the year. Well, in today’s Thursday Night Insight, Matthew Harrison outlines his nomination of B2B International’s very own Helen Bailey as his marketer of the year.
As I sat perusing this blog’s discussion of potential ‘marketers of the year’ earlier this week, I took it upon myself to think back to some of the great and not-so-great marketing experiences that I have been exposed to (or perhaps had inflicted upon me) over the past 12 months. I must confess I found the exercise relatively cathartic. Although not as cathartic as my nomination for anti-marketer of the year – the pizza restaurant in Beijing that preceded my 4-day stay in a hotel bathroom with nothing but German faucets and the dulcet tones of CNN for company.
That got my thinking about the other foreign trips I have made, and in particular my visit to our UK office back in February. An extremely pleasant opportunity to meet colleagues old and new, and to renew my acquaintance with life at B2B’s bustling Head Office.
I decided to turn up fashionably late, at around 10am, for maximum impact. No-one seemed to notice. Especially the guy (I’ve no idea who he was) who told me to hurry up fixing the U-bend. Undeterred, I chatted to a couple of colleagues and was just about to start working the room when – at about 10.30 – a mysterious ripple of excitement began to emanate from the far side of the office. I assumed either that a minor celebrity had shown up at reception or that one of the supervisors had had a fit. The ripple quickly became a wave, and was approaching me at a rapid pace. I was transfixed, like one of those poor souls that sees a tsunami head towards the beach they are standing on and only realises it’s time to run when their mother-in-law surfs past on a piece of plywood accompanied by the family dog.
The epicentre of this morning’s excitement soon became clear, as the lovely Helen emerged from our kitchen pushing a stainless steel tea-trolley crammed to buckling point with a quintessentially English cargo: millions of shiny white cups huddled around three huge tea-pots, as if to keep themselves warm or prevent themselves from being pushed overboard. Matching saucers stacked obediently at the stern of the vessel. And a plate of chocolate digestives spread regally across the bow, like Leonardo Di Caprio in Titanic. Pens were placed on desks, phone calls ended and curious, expectant heads peered from behind doors and above the blue partitions. I cannot imagine a more contentedly English scene, not without sending the staff down to Wimbledon to queue all night in the drizzle for their tea before being interviewed by Sue Barker.
Helen began by serving the supervisors at the far end of the floor, before making her way gradually through a group of temporary workers, tentatively through the researchers, crawling through the managers, idling through the administrative assistants and slowly – very slowly in fact – towards myself and my colleague. What a fine egalitarian tradition, I thought – the serving of tea and biscuits to every member of staff from the temporary workers up to the CEO. A brief hiatus during a busy day, in which friend and foe, boss and bossed-about could exchange jokes, stories and gossip before returning to their questionnaires and reports.
It was, however, beyond my comprehension how splashing a bit of tea and milk into 50-odd cups could take so long. I am ashamed to say that I was becoming impatient and wondering whether the productive Helen I remembered so well had turned into someone who would rather push a tea-trolley round an office than do any work. As I observed events more closely, however, I realised two things. First, that I was someone who would rather watch someone push a tea-trolley round an office than do any work, and second that Helen was charged with achieving the impossible – serving tea and biscuits in a satisfactory and orderly fashion to a room full of English office workers. For every person that smiled and thanked poor, harassed Helen as she carefully placed a cup of tea onto their desk before briskly returning to their work, another three would engage her in animated discussion about the tea/milk ratio of their upcoming beverage, the number of sugars, whether those sugars should be heaped or flat, whether the milk should be poured direct from the jug or injected via a syringe, and whether the digestives should be served on plates or fed in chunks to each staff member as they took turns to recline naked on a chaise longue like Roman emperors.
A dieting temporary worker had pre-ordered – I repeat pre-ordered – tea laced with sweetener rather than sugar, as if she’d come to a theatre performance and this was her interval refreshment. Another insisted on lemon being squeezed into his brew, as if it was a gin and tonic. And some nincompoop, having decided that PG Tips was not good enough for her, had insisted Helen make her a tailored beverage with the assistance of some silly peppermint tea-bags that made the whole office smell like toothpaste. Personally I’d have taken 10 minutes to serve lukewarm PG Tips and milk to everyone and then thrown 10 sugar lumps into the office before shouting ‘scramble’. But this was a marketing company, and no-one aspired more diligently to meet every individual customer’s needs than Helen. No-one understood better that as each year passes, the expectation for customized, tailored solutions to needs and wants increases.
I therefore end this Thursday Night Insight with two messages to Helen:
Firstly, it gives me great pleasure to nominate you, Helen Bailey of B2B International, as my Marketer of the Year.
Secondly, I will be visiting Head Office in two weeks’ time to congratulate you in person. I will be loitering at the back of the office at 10.30 and am likely to be in the mood for a slow-boiled bucket of jasmine-scented ooling with whipped cream and a Cadbury’s Flake. Hot but not too hot, with a couple of oatmeal digestives and a slice of lemon on the side.
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Sunday, August 30th, 2009
In recounting a recent – and somewhat memorable – taxi journey, Matthew Harrison is reminded of how a product or service can really differentiate itself from the rest of the pack by becoming an ‘experience’.
I must confess to being one of B2B International’s less tolerant air travelers. The 6 hours I spent imprisoned in a 747 on a Shanghai runway…the 7 course ‘meal’ served up by the good staff of Aeroflot (6 of the courses were salmon)…my interrogation by a wild-eyed immigration goon at Newark Airport…the dimwit who confiscated my cases at Rochester because I allowed said cases to complete two laps of the carousel without collecting….these and other events have been crow-barred into company folklore by my incessant moaning. As a result, it is a relief both to me and to anyone unfortunate enough to be my travel companion when my flight touches down, and all that remains is to catch a cab to my final destination.
A couple of weeks back, my colleague and I returned from Pittsburgh to New York in good spirits. The journey had gone ahead without a hitch, our meeting had concluded successfully, and both of us looked forward to the weekend. We drank a couple of beers and took the opportunity to examine the front page of the Wall Street Journal, which was reporting on Bill Clinton’s liberation of two journalists from the clutches of Kim Jong Il. Oddly, the official photograph to mark the event (see below) featured a rather kitsch 1980s wall frieze, which had been dropped onto a Tellytubbies set and gate-crashed by the cast of Madame Tussauds.
To return to the matter in hand, my colleague and I had forgotten that the efforts of the airline industry to make the general public’s life a misery extend far beyond aircraft cabins and indeed airport walls. Whatever medicine the world’s aviators take to ensure unrivalled levels of inhospitality and indolence, it would appear that the New York taxi industry has been raiding the cabinet.
The warning signs that B2B International was to experience a nadir in land travel were there from the beginning. The passenger window of the cab was jammed open and the back seat about as comfortable on the posterior as a broken Rubik’s Cube. My colleague and I had naively taken the driver’s rather blank grin upon being asked to drive to White Plains as proof of his willingness to take us there, rather than his inability to find his own backside in the bath with both hands and a personal assistant. Within 2 minutes of leaving the taxi rank, and well inside the airport perimeter, we drew despondently to a stop underneath a graffiti-speckled flyover.
- “Where you go?”
– “We were rather hoping to go to White Plains, New York.”
– “Norway?”
– “We’ll give Western Scandinavia a miss for tonight, thanks. The wife’s got the dinner in the oven. White Plains please.”
– “No Norway. You know way?”
– “Oh I see. No we don’t know the way. Isn’t that your job? If you don’t know, put the address in your GPS.”
– “No GPS.”
– “What do you mean no GPS? This is an American taxi in 2009. How can you not have a GPS? Do you have a map?”
– “No problem, I find White Plains.”
Our driver lurched into gear, trying but failing to convince us that he had the slightest idea of where he was going.
Three laps of the airport’s inner perimeter and 25 minutes later, we finally find our way onto the open road and were heading north. Disconcertingly, the driver had been steering with one finger, most of his other 9 digits clasping a telephone, through which he received nonsensical directions from someone who also had no idea where we were or where White Plains was. Over the ensuing 2 hours we stopped and asked, we shouted at passers-by, we waved, weaved and guessed our way through the streets and back yards of Southern New York, before finally, mercifully, we arrived in White Plains city center.
I dragged my weary body out of the cab and headed for home. And as I trooped through the streets I was hit, not by a Friday night drinker but by a kind of Eureka moment. I was happy! In fact I was exhilarated. I HAD ENJOYED THAT TAXI RIDE. The speed. The bumps. The danger. The nausea. The sense of the unknown. The laughs. The memories. I had experienced an adventure that evening – an adventure I am recounting to you now. An adventure I will recount to my children, and my children’s children. That useless man, that anti-navigator with whom I had shared two hours of my life had (unwittingly) met a need that few suppliers can meet. Rather than sell me a tangible product or service, this disorientated scatterbrain had given me a holistic experience that will live with me until my dying day.
The savvy marketer recognizes that providing a simple product or service puts the organization on a route towards low prices and commoditization. In order to add value, and therefore raise prices and profit, it is critical to look beyond the tangible. In other words, sell a concept and provide an experience. Our taxi driver, of course, made two mistakes: firstly the basics of product and service were so intolerable that most customers would be uninterested in any ‘experience’ related to these. Secondly, he sold us a basic service (to drive us home) meaning that the thrill-packed tourism experience we endured was unexpected and therefore not paid for.
So, I will not pretend that our driver’s marketing strategy was flawless. However, I thank you, Mr Clueless of LaGuardia Airport Taxis, for the memories. Your product is substandard, your service despicable, and your attentiveness to my needs non-existent. But, for a mere $90 (plus tip and tolls), you gave me an experience that was both thrilling and addictive. You, Sir, in one (and only one) respect, are an inspiration to all marketers.
Posted in
Aviation, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Satisfaction Research, Customer Value Proposition, Marketing, Matt Harrison, Thursday Night Insight, USA |
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Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
Matthew Harrison, B2B International’s Director of International Operations, was featured in Marketing’s recent special issue on emerging markets.
Drawing upon his time spent working in our China office and using his extensive experience gained through managing research projects in such far-reaching geographies as Russia, Sri Lanka and Tanzania, Matthew offers invaluable advice to Western companies looking to establish or build a presence in any emerging B2B market. The full published article is as follows:
Some years ago, the chief justification for Western companies entering emerging markets was to establish low-cost manufacturing operations.
However, in the past five years there has been a revolution in strategy as the purchasing power of emerging economies has grown and these companies have now shifted their focus from supply to demand.
The casual observer watching a Muscovite sip a Starbucks cappuccino could be forgiven for thinking that customers in developing markets want Western products in Western packaging, promoted in a Western style at Western prices.
While many Western brands have developed a cachet across the developing world, the real picture is more complex, particularly in B2B markets. There are six factors that must distinguish B2B marketing in emerging markets.
The first is the importance of conveying higher product quality. In developing markets, companies’ product requirements often place less emphasis on product durability and quality of materials than in Western countries, putting greater importance on a lower cost. This is a huge challenge to Western companies seeking to enter the market, as they may find it hard to convey the value of the technical superiority of their product.
Second, when it comes to the services associated with a product offering, buyers in emerging markets are frequently as demanding, if not more so, than Westerners. For example, branches of Subway in China often take telephone orders for their sandwiches, and deliver these free of charge to customers’ homes or workplaces. A service such as this would be seen as extravagant in the West, but is often a basic requirement in Beijing and Shanghai, and no economic value is attached to it.
The third factor is the importance of local presence. Western companies entering developing markets often assume that the prestige of their brand excuses them from establishing a local presence. This is not the case. While customers in developing countries may be willing to pay more for the quality, prestige and technical know-how of an established Western company, all these advantages must be in addition to, not instead of, the basic requirements of spare-parts availability, access to technical support and face-to-face contact with local-language speakers.
Then there is promotion. If a Western brand can deliver on its promises, its name and values can prove a huge advantage and allow extremely large margins to be achieved. This is particularly true in consumer markets, where products such as luxury clothing and perfume brands frequently collect higher premiums than they do in the West.
In B2B markets, Western brands carry a particular weight if they can boast international accreditations such as ISO or a prestigious client list. These demonstrations of a company’s aptitude are often vital.
Fifth, relationships are key. As developing markets open up, buyers are only gradually becoming comfortable with dealing with people and companies they don’t know. Relationships are widely used as a substitute for brand when it comes to verifying provenance. Most B2B offerings also involve repeat purchases or after-sales support, and this makes attendance at events, face-to-face contact and local language capability essential.
Lastly, market research is vital. This is commonplace among Western companies, and the necessity of obtaining independent information is even more critical when it comes to operating in foreign markets. Not only do many Western companies lack insight into the developing markets, but cultural barriers and a lack of familiarity between managers in different locations can often mean that the exchange of information within international companies is wanting.
The most successful multinationals conduct frequent research across geographies, challenging their own thinking as well as the flow of information within their companies.
More of Matthew’s white papers on developing markets are available on our website:
Posted in
BRIC, Emerging Markets, Market Assesment, Market Entry, Market Intelligence, Marketing, Matt Harrison, White Papers |
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