Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Customer Retention - Seafood
Two nights ago, a friend brought a couple of us to this little coffeeshop that sold seafood in Serangoon. The food was pretty good and to our surprise, the owner gave us a free dish (fish head curry, to be precise) for us to try. The owner made an intentional effort to come out twice during the night (although he also cooks the food) to make sure everything was fine.
Over dinner, I made the point to my friends (both business graduates) that this really is the way businesses should market themselves.
Why spend all that money on the bus ad or print ad that people see and forget in an instant, with the hope that it will serve as an acquisition strategy and bring in new customers? Instead why not delight your customers who have already voted with their wallets to buy from you and encourage to come back time and time again?
Needless to say, in the two days since then I’ve told four other people about it and will soon be bringing my family to check it out.
So what are you doing to get your customers to come back? Or are you letting your competition put in that little bit of extra effort to enhance the customer experience and win them over?
Ps: The idea of using retention isn’t new (nor mine) and you can read Joseph Jaffe’s new book Flip The Funnel to find out more, but I thought this was a great case study to practically illustrate how it can be done.
Pps: The address of said coffeeshop is Blk 153 Serangoon North Ave 1 #01-512 (and no, I was absolutely not incentivised by the store to share this with you.)
[image credit: jensen_chua on Flickr]
Tags: acquisition strategy, bus ad, business graduates, coffeeshop, fish head curry, flip the funnel, joseph jaffe, print ad, serangoon
Posted in Marketing, Singapore, case studies | 4 Comments »
Monday, May 18th, 2009
This is a quick overview of Day One of Youth Connect! which I had the privilege of attending and being a panelist at today, and I had a really good time.
For the first time in a long time, I could listen to people who actually knew their stuff go up there and tell us about their social media efforts, demonstrate some form of ROI, and hold up under scrutiny. I admit I was all ready to roll my eyes in cynicism when a speaker went up and said he was well-versed in digital marketing with an advertising agency, but then he actually knew what he was talking about. Very different from some speakers who just talk a lot, but don’t really say anything.
So my highlight was really speaking at the youth panel with four other people from the other universities, and I have to give Graham Perkins (@grayperks)props for really revving up the crowd even though it was the last session of the day. It was by far the most interactive session I’ve had the chance to speak at, and I think the smaller size of the conference helped people get used to one another and ask questions.
One thing that I “feel” intuitively at this conference, is that people understand more about social media than they did a year ago. The types of questions I had to answer a year ago and the types of questions I had to answer today, were quite different, and basic knowledge of what Facebook is, what Twitter is, what iPhones can do, can be pretty much be assumed, which makes a lot of difference when you’re trying to answer questions without leaving anyone behind.
As always, my favourite topic of newspapers came up again (which I will blog about soon), and I did have to answer one question about the effectiveness of advertising, and whether youth actually notice them. The room gave a slightly audible gasp when I told them Gen Y is pretty much trained to “ignore” interruptive marketing and advertising, but I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that.
When one other attendee asked if anyone of the five of us saw a physical ad (print, tv, outdoor) and went online to do research on that product or service based on the ad, the answer was a resounding no. So there you have it.
Lots of other stuff I want to talk about, a few great case studies that I really enjoyed listening to, I hope to blog them soon. It’s going to be Youth Connect! Week on the blog this week, but I think you’ll enjoy reading about it.
I will say this about the organisers: It’s not a big event, but I think they brought in great speakers. Companies who paid money to attend this (especially in this recession), should be very satisfied with the value they got out of it.
Tags: advertising, day one, digital marketing, facebook, Gen Y, graham perkins, ignore interruptive marketing, interruptive advertising, iphone, newspapers, outdoor ad, panelist, physical ad, print ad, ROI, social media efforts, tv ad, twitter, youth connect, youth panelist
Posted in Events, Singapore, social media, social media business | 2 Comments »
