Marketing Experts Speak Out on How to Attract Today’s Customers

You look at the numbers and sigh: Advertising and public relations rank 10th on the list of most hated professions in America, according to a Gallup poll. A record 69% of Americans believe the country has a major problem with incivility, according to the annual Civility in America poll. And in a study of social and traditional media sites that allowed anonymous comments, a University of Houston professor found that 53% of the comments that were posted anonymously were uncivil.

You might have felt the sting as well from a nasty online reviewer or fire-breathing telephone caller. It’s enough to make you wonder whether you should ever even bother with marketing your company.

What can you do?

What you’ve always done, a group of professional marketers told us. Be professional. Remain honest. Keep your promises, and then deliver even more.

The recent presidential campaign, questions about millennials, and the slew of marketing vehicles available today led us to wonder whether these were harder times for remodelers to sell their services. So we contacted executives from a half-dozen companies that work full time burnishing the images of clients in the building products industry. These experts’ jobs depend on making consumers feel good about those products and services. They have spent lots of time examining potential best practices for marketing your company today. Here’s what they said.

Keep it Real … and Useful
“No one wants to be sold to, and that’s even truer with the younger generation,” Heather Crunchie and Brenda Collons, co-owners of the C Squared advertising agency, wrote. “People are looking for credible information, resources, and people they can turn to as experts. Companies that embrace that and can provide objective, unbiased advice will surface to the top as leaders.”

For Crystal Washington, who runs a consultancy specializing in social media, remodelers need to figure out how to stand out in an environment in which customers are deluged with solicitations. “You see so much fake stuff—I don’t mean political in the sense of fake stuff, I mean actual fake stuff going on—that I think people are getting overwhelmed,” she says.

To break through, Brian Carter, who runs a consultancy on social media communications and digital advertising, suggests three don’ts and six dos when marketing. First, the no-nos:

• Don’t just talk about yourself.
• Don’t be edgy or offensive in your communications.
• Don’t appeal to such a small niche of recipients that most people won’t know what you’re talking about.

Carter’s list of dos represents his suggestions for the type of content you should put into all your digital communications:

• Do give (through offers and other benefits)
• Do advise (on things that show you’re an expert)
• Do warn (what potential dangers are DIYers unaware of?)
• Do amuse (with funny pictures and such that could relate back to what you do)
• Do inspire (with great quotations, for instance)
• Do amaze (with facts, stories, and pictures)

Millennial Myths
Today’s trends only partly relate to the new generation reaching adulthood. “Service expectations are now very high from all ages,” says Bill Rossiter, CEO of the Interrupt ad agency. “We know millennials have high expectations. So do boomers, as they have money and desire to do more to their homes, and want to find the right brands and people to help them do it.”

Do millennials have unreasonable expectations? “Perhaps, but that’s a function of young age and life experiences, not being part of a different generation per se,” responds Washington. “Having a clear-cut outline of what the project entails and what they can expect is extremely important for millennials.”

Martin Holsinger, who specializes in helping contractors build their online presence, agrees that customers who get cold-called or have ads pushed upon them can get cranky. “However, when someone takes the time to build a relationship with their audience through giving value on social media and online leadership … I’ve found that people are not angry when a sale is introduced in that context,” he says.

“I cannot verify that millennials are any different than boomers in regard to this,” Holsinger adds. “In fact, it seems that millennials are much more apt to engage with people online than boomers are. Millennials ‘get it.’ They want us to just be real with them. So, our job is to build up trust in the minds of our audience through the value we provide online. Then when a sale or promotion is introduced in that context, there is little to no adversity in response.”

“My personal opinion is that they are just new adults,” says James Olsen, head of Reality Sales Training. “I’ve been training dudes and dudettes for 20 years. There’s no difference. I’m training three millennials now. One of the guys who was an intern had a guy barking at him for something he’d done. So the intern is pissed when he gets into the car: ‘Bob’s an a**hole. He doesn’t have a life. My generation isn’t going to take that crap. We want a life.’ I said, ‘The part of the generation that wakes up first, the rest of the generation is going to be shining your shoes, because work’s work.’ Ninety days later, this guy has a desk and a phone and is working his a** off. Another guy says to him, ‘I guess you’ve come over to the dark side.’”

Manage Expectations
The hfa agency gathered much of its team to sort through our questions about cause and effects in today’s marketing environment. One of their conclusions is that homeowners are passionate about their homes, but the relationship they have with a remodeler isn’t as deep as it is with friends or family. Rather, it’s a transactional relationship, though the trauma of remodeling demands closer ties. “Like a physician, a remodeler needs a bedside manner,” hfa wrote.

What to do? The prescription at hfa includes a heavy dose of managing expectations. Think beyond just promising a good project outcome by examining the experience you provide, they wrote.

Many of hfa’s recommendations echoed the standard practices employed by Bob Gockeler, owner of Kraftmaster Renovations in Chatham, N.J., and winner of the 2015 Fred Case Award for Entrepreneurship in Remodeling. The day you start, you set the stage for how the customer feels about you, Gockeler says, so he regards staging as crucial to future business.

His steps include placing doormats at every junction point in the house, putting hardboards atop paper on all parts of the floor that can be walked on, taping all return vents, using a lockbox so workers needn’t bother the occupants for access, and even renting a port-a-john so workers never invade that part of a homeowner’s private space.

Deal with Complaints
The proliferation of reviews on social media leaves some remodelers feeling they’re getting lashed regularly. But Rossiter says they shouldn’t view social media solely in terms of thumbs-down ratings. “It’s less about consumers being angry, and more about leveraging a crowd-sourcing approach to finding those brands that create the best customer experiences,” he says.

Add Collons and Crunchie: “It has become increasingly important for brands to have a robust strategy in place to respond, both at the core level to satisfy the customer’s complaint, and also at the public viewpoint, to be seen as responding in a reasonable time period and in a positive manner. … Companies can no longer skate by through providing broadcast affirmations of customer service excellence.”

But don’t believe the old line that a happy customer will tell just one person and an angry person will tell three, Washington says; actually, it’s about half and half. She says she’s much more likely to post positive things about service providers, because when she encounters problems with businesses, “I just need to clear them out of my mind” as quickly as possible.

Washington suggests you seek to turn social media into a positive force by asking people to post a favorable review. And if a customer is happy, offer to take a selfie of you and them with the project in the background. “Younger people who are more used to selfies than boomers might be quite open to posing on cue,” she says. “They also might want to take a photo with their camera.”

Self-Service
Collons and Crunchie say marketers should take note that millennials are more inclined to use self-service, chat, and mobile vehicles to resolve customer service inquiries, so it’s in your interest to develop tools to accommodate these preferences. Otherwise, your slowness could prove to be another cause for complaint.

And don’t forget that complaints can become the catalyst for improvements. “Sometimes companies/people have a tendency to disregard negative feedback as complaining/whining rather than really looking at what the core of the problem is,” hfa says.

“A Harris Interactive study found that 56% of customers would be willing to switch brands based on better customer service experiences,” Rossiter notes. “When customers don’t have a great experience, they can easily tell others about it because they themselves use ratings and reviews to make their own decisions. So it’s less about consumers being angry, and more about leveraging a crowd-sourcing approach to find those brands that create the best customer experiences.”

At first glance, you might think that customers vary dramatically. But experts say they really are quite similar. In all cases, your goal should be to speak honestly, present credible information, and work to build trust.