How to Handle Negative Customer Reviews

November 17, 2008 – 4:15 am

Our last blog post discussed the positive side of negative product reviews. Not only can negative reviews provide valuable feedback, but your response can have a beneficial effect on your business. Here are a few pointers:

1. Respond! It’s tempting to simply ignore bad reviews, but if the review reflects on your customer service, that’s the worst thing you can do. Do your best to ensure customer satisfaction, then post a response explaining the steps you’ve taken.

2. Thank the Reviewer.  Start your response by thanking the reviewer for bringing a problem to your attention, or for caring enough to take the time to write. Consider customer feedback your report card; it’s essential to help you determine what you’re doing right and where you need improvement.

3. Ask Reviewers to Contact You. Sometimes reviewers post a criticism of a company’s customer service without ever contacting the company first. In that case, include that fact in the response you post. State clearly what you’d be happy to do for the customer if they contact you directly. If they do so, post a follow up after the issue is resolved.

4. Encourage Reviewers to Follow Up. When a situation that’s been discussed in a customer review has been resolved, ask the reviewer to write a follow-up post explaining the outcome.

For some examples, both good and bad, of how companies handle negative reviews, have a look at www.gardenwatchdog.com. Read a few company responses, and you’ll quickly see how a company can rise or fall in a prospect’s estimation based on how they handle negative reviews.

By Val Gosset | Posted in Online marketing | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The Positive Side of Negative Product Reviews

November 14, 2008 – 4:15 am

Nearly every company that adds customer product reviews to their web site discovers that reviews revolutionize their business by dramatically boosting conversions and reducing refunds.

Companies that have not yet added a product review feature often cite fear of poor reviews as a concern. If that includes you, stop worrying and get moving. Here’s why:

Better Conversions. Customers don’t expect every product they buy to be a 5-star winner. But they do want to be reassured that whatever drawbacks a product may have are ones they can live with. Independent reviews from users give them the objective feedback they need to make an informed decision. By moving more prospects out of indecisiveness, reviews typically increase conversation by 20% or 30%, sometimes as much as 100%.

Lower Returns. Not every product is appropriate for every situation. By helping others avoid products not suited to their needs, customer reviews play a significant role in reducing returns. What’s more, smart marketers can make alternative suggestions next to their reviews to steer prospects towards more appropriate choices.

Market Research. Every now and then, a truly disappointing product can creep into the mix. Customer reviews can serve as an early warning system for those products and alert you to a problem long before you’re flooded with returns.

More Help. In an upcoming blog post, I’ll offer some suggestions for handling negative reviews. For help on setting up customer reviews, see The Easiest Way to Boost Conversions.

By Val Gosset | Posted in Online marketing | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Do You Make These Mistakes With Your Email Marketing?

November 12, 2008 – 4:15 am

I cringe when I get emails like the one I received this morning. It started out promising: the “from” line came from a well respected gardening company (I’ll call them “Company X) with a terrific product line. But from there, it went straight downhill.

The first problem was the subject line: “Company X Newsletter.” No benefit, no clue about the content, no reason to open it.

The second problem was that it wasn’t a newsletter at all. Rather, the email was a straightforward ad for three products. No news, nothing useful, nothing personal. I don’t know about you, but when I sign up for a newsletter, I expect something informative, not a blatant sales pitch.

The third problem was that the headline for each of the three products didn’t offer any benefit (no big surprise after the “newsletter”” subject line). Each one was simply a boring product name, nothing more.

Bad email campaigns hurt all of us by training recipients to ignore future emails. Unfortunately, because email is so inexpensive to product, it often doesn’t get the same attention a catalog, magazine ad, or direct mail package does. But if more companies don’t deliver email that subscribers find worth their time, we’re all headed for the unsubscribe list together.

By Val Gosset | Posted in Email marketing | Comments (0)

Mailorder Gardening Associaiton Conference Preview

November 10, 2008 – 4:15 am

The conference brochure for the Mailorder Gardening Association (MGA) Winter 2009 conference, January 5 to 7 in Baltimore, just arrived and it’s chock full of excellent reasons to attend:

• Talks on Trends. National Gardening Association’s research guru Bruce Butterfield will discuss how the gardening customer is changing, and popular industry expert Ian Baldwin will address trends in product offerings.

• Social Media. Nationally known author and speaker Lena West of xynoMedia Technology will teach us how to make social media such as blogs, podcasts and forums easy to use, manageable and worthwhile. I’ve heard Lena speak before, and she does a terrific job of making her subject easy for the non-technical business owner to understand and profit from.

• Merchandising, Marketing and More. Other speakers include Andrea Syverson of IER Partners on merchandising, Michelle Farabaugh of LENSER on multichannel marketing and Patti Moreno of marketing to a new generation of gardeners. (For more on Patti, see our Oct 10, 2008 blog post on marketing to Gen X and Y.)

• Ask the Experts. Book one-on-one half-hour private consultations with any of 10 experts, including yours truly.

• Direct Marketing 101. A panel of four top industry marketers – Michael Allan of Gardener’s Supply, Steve LePera of Schiller-Pfeiffer (Mantis), Don Zeidler of Burpee, and Jim Zuckermandel of Zed Marketing – will host an in-depth pre-convention seminar (at no additional cost) covering proven principles that will help you build a more profitable marketing strategy.
 
• Round Tables. Always one of the most popular sessions, round tables will cover topics from successful upselling to web site security issues.

The conference is timed to immediately precede the popular MANTS horticultural trade show, just a couple blocks away. For a copy of the MGA convention brochure and a registration form, click here.

I hope to see you there!

By Val Gosset | Posted in Events | Tagged | Comments (0)

An Alternative to Expensive Video Production

November 7, 2008 – 4:15 am

According to a recent survey for Internet Retailer, only 36.4% of merchants currently use online videos to demonstrate product or educate their customers. That’s about to change fast: 53.3% have plans to include videos on their web sites in the next 12 months.

The Internet Retailer report goes on to say that “it can take up to 30 days and several thousand dollars to write a compelling script and then film, edit and post a professional-looking video.”

While that’s technically true, it’s by no means necessary. For an alternative approach, take a look at our client, Clean Air Gardening. Using a simple home video camera, they film product demonstrations themselves. Click here for some samples. I think you’ll agree that their homegrown approach is surprisingly effective – and a lot less costly.

By Val Gosset | Posted in Online marketing | Tagged | Comments (0)

Tips on Prioritizing Your Marketing Goals

November 5, 2008 – 4:15 am

When I ask clients about their marketing goals for next year, I’m usually told, “Make more money.” Sometimes they may have a particular revenue goal in mind, but few are more specific than that.

There are only two ways to make more money:

1) Get more customers, or
2) Sell more to existing customers

(For guidance on which of these is more important for you to focus on, see What Should Your Goals Be?)

To get more customers, you also have two options:

1) Do more prospecting, or
2) Turn a higher percentage of inquirers into buyers

If on the other hand, you want to sell more to existing customers, there are several possibilities:

1) Contact your customers more frequently
2) Use a wider variety of media – including catalogs, direct mail, postcards, package inserts, email promotions, enewsletters or telemarketing – to reach your customers
3) Expand your product line
4) Increase your average sale with upsells and other offers

Each of these approaches implies a different strategy. Most companies excel in a few of these areas and neglect the others. How about you?

By Val Gosset | Posted in Advertising, Marketing goals | Comments (0)

SQUINCH Your Web Site for Higher Profits

November 3, 2008 – 4:15 am

Most catalogers are familiar with square inch analysis, commonly referred to as SQUINCH. Calculating the percentage of space each product occupies on the catalog page and comparing it to the percentage of sales generated provides many marketing insights. For instance, SQUINCH analysis points to:

– Which products to feature more prominently
– Which products to drop
– Which product categories to expand
– Whether to increase or decrease the catalog page count

The same analysis can apply to web pages, but few online merchants use it. Since adding web pages doesn’t increase costs the way adding catalog pages does, online marketers tend to overlook this tool. But as a key to what products and categories to emphasize, SQUINCH is just as applicable online as it is off.

By Val Gosset | Posted in Catalogs, Online marketing, Website design | Tagged | Comments (0)

Will Blogging Revolutionize Business?

October 31, 2008 – 4:15 am

One last thought from the book on business blogging that I’ve mentioned before, Naked Conversations. From authors Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, thoughts on whether blogging is a revolutionary phenomenon for businesses:

“If we were to have met you in 1994 and told you that some young developers at Netscape were finishing up a ‘browser’ that would let you read Internet pages and get to these pages by just clicking on a link, and it would change world information sharing, you might have just stared at us blankly before returning to your regularly scheduled program. Your life was just fine without the World Wide Web. What possible change could it mean to you? We would speculate that revolutionary change usually just creeps in on you. We doubt that the first stagecoach driver who watched a locomotive speed past him realized that this would doom his chosen vocation. Or the monks with quills realized the full implications of the Gutenberg press. No one even noted the name of the guy who developed the wheel. He or she probably just invented it out of necessity.

“We believe the chain of small incidents that caused blogging has revolutionary implications to businesses, in marketing, customer support, internal communications, investor relations, product development, and even R&D…The genie is out of the bottle, and there is no going back.

“Businesses of all sizes will be wise to pay heed. Revolutions may be hard to predict, but ignoring them often has unfortunate consequences…In business, numbers speak. They indicate blogging is no fad, and its relevance to business cannot logically continue to be denied.”

By Val Gosset | Posted in Blogs, Social media | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

An Easy Way to Help Entrepreneurs Reach Their Goals

October 29, 2008 – 4:15 am

Being an entrepreneur can be a lonely business. Small business owners need to know a lot about many things – not just producing their product, but marketing, advertising, bookkeeping, financing, customer service, fulfillment, and more. It helps to bounce ideas off other entrepreneurs who have some understanding of your business, but few business owners have that luxury.

I’m fortunate to be part of two mastermind groups. An idea first championed by Napoleon Hill, author of the classic Think and Grow Rich, a mastermind group is a small team (usually 4 to 7 individuals) of fellow businesspeople, who meet regularly to exchange information, keep members on track, provide accountability, brainstorm, and challenge one another to reach their goals.  The group serves as an informal board of advisors – a team of objective outsiders – who understand you and your business and serve as a sounding board in an atmosphere of total trust.

Mastermind groups work best when members come from diverse backgrounds and experiences. One of my groups consists of a retail store owner, an event director, a realtor, and a professional organizer. The second includes a business coach/motivational speaker, a chiropractor and a toy inventor. The first group has proved invaluable in helping me crystallize long-term goals and business strategies. I rely on the second group for advice on resources and technological answers I wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to.

If the idea of a Mastermind Group intrigues you, look around for fellow entrepreneurs whom you admire, and give it a try. It often take six months or a year to really “gel,” but the results are well worth it!

By Val Gosset | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Can You Co-Venture?

October 27, 2008 – 4:15 am

The October 2008 issue of Catalog Success carried an interesting profile of Peter Cobb, the founder of eBags. (If you’re not familiar with eBags, have a look – it’s an impressive website selling 36,000 handbags, totebags, briefcases, backpacks and more.)

Four years ago, eBags tried expanding into the shoe business, only to find that it took them too far afield from their core competency. After selling the shoe portion of the business, they recognized that they could still take advantage of a synergy with that industry. They teamed up with Shoes.com to produce a joint catalog. Half the book offers eBags products, the other half offers Shoes.com merchandise. Customers of eBags receive a catalog with eBags on the front, Shoes.com on the back. For Shoes.com customers, the covers are reversed. A remarkably clever idea, I thought!

The idea reminded me of Kip Creel’s suggestion mentioned in our July 23 blog post for online nurseries to team up with garden centers.

What companies does your business have a synergy with? Is co-venturing a way to cut your costs and expand your business?

By Val Gosset | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)