Caring about customers - at home

Yesterday I used my brand-new Kitchenaid electric hand mixer for the first time (baking banana bread - yum!). Inside the instruction manual (yes, I admit that I actually flipped through the instruction manual), Kitchenaid had printed a dozen recipes that involved the use of my mixer - some cream cheese spreads, whipped toppings, coffee cakes, and other desserts.

Now, it's not uncommon for purveyors of foodstuffs to print recipes on the outside of their food packages, for obvious reason: a consumer is more like to purchase a food item if they have a delicious-sounding recipe for which that item is an ingredient.

But why would Kitchenaid bother to print useful recipes in the instruction manual inside the box of a kitchen appliance? In a location where the recipes would only be discovered after the consumer purchased the appliance and took it home?

Could it be that Kitchenaid wants consumers to have a good experience actually using their product? That the company wants their product to be useful to the consumer, not just a wasted expense that sits in a cupboard? That they care about the Kitchenaid brand experience - not only before the purchase, but after?

Sometimes we marketers get so focused on acquiring new customers that we forget to take care of the customers we already have. We spend our time making a product look useful enough for customers to buy, and forget to make it useful enough to use. We work to improve the in-store or online experience, and forget to improve the at-home experience.

As marketers, we ought to spend 80% of our time improving our product - making it more useful and more enjoyable for the customer - and 20% of our time improving the way we communicate about that great product. Sometimes we get this backwards.

It looks like Kitchenaid is getting it right.

Look, Ma, the moon's on sale! Let's buy it!

Allsup's, the convenience store chain local to Texas and New Mexico, is currently offering a promotion called "Pump. Drink. Win."

When customers buy at least eight gallons of gasoline and a twenty-ounce Pepsi product in the same store visit, they receive a game card that gives them the chance to win prizes from any one of a number of brands, including Allsup's, Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Wrigley, Blue Bunny, Jack Links, Kellogg's, Mars, Cadbury, and Tyson.

A promotion like this one is great way to (a) reward customers who purchase gas and Pepsi products at Allsup's stores; (b) motivate customers to purchase Pepsi products over another brand of soft drink - that is, if those customers have no strong preference for one brand over another; and/or (c) motivate customers to purchase a full tank of gas at Allsup's, rather than just a few gallons at a time.

This promotion is meant for those customers who would normally (or who might) buy gasoline and a drink during the same stop at the gas station.

Now, when I stop for gasoline and sees a promotion like this one at the gas pump, I have to avoid the temptation to go inside and buy a bottle of Diet Pepsi just for the sake of getting a game card. I don't normally buy soft drinks when I stop for gas, and I don't need to get soft drinks when I stop for gas. I wouldn't even have really wanted to get a soft drink at the gas station if I hadn't seen the poster. And if I had bought a soft drink and gotten the game card, I wouldn't have really been interested in drinking the soda anyway.

As a consumer, I have to remember that the fact that an item is on sale is not enough reason for me to buy it. As a consumer, I should buy on-sale products when those are products that I needed anyway. Just because the moon is on sale, does not mean that I need to buy the moon.

As marketers, our promotions are meant to provide a product to consumers who needed that product (or a similar one) to begin with. We do not market to convince people to buy products they don't need.

Creating for Your Audience

Ad Age published a white paper this week called "Shiny New Things", exploring the influence of those customers known as the "early adopters".

The term "early adopters" was introduced in 1962 as the valued second category in Everett Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory. The theory asserts that all consumers can be grouped into one of five categories - innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards, consecutively - according to their willingness and quickness to adopt new ideas and products.


Rogers' diffusion of innovations curve. From the Wikimedia Commons.
For a good, brief online explanation of these five categories, I recommend ProvenModels.com/570.

Of these five categories, the early adopters are the consumers whom many marketers seek to impress when they release new products (hence the motivation behind Ad Age's white paper). Early adopters are revered as the consumers who can "make or break" a product's success. They are the ones who will tell the rest of the world whether the product is worth buying or not. They tell the world this by their words (increasingly so, in the days of social media), but also by their actions (are they seen actually wearing and using the new product or brand?). And they are the ones to whom the rest of the world listens.

(Of course, very few brands or products would do well to target the early adopters exclusively. As Seth Godin is quoted as saying in the Ad Age white paper [and in his blog], "if you want to stick around for a while, you need to make the difficult sales to the middle of the market or have a ready supply of new stuff ready to entertain the never-satisfied early adopters.")

The Ad Age white paper expanded on Rogers' theory by sharing findings from a study done for Serena Software that dissected the diffusion of innovations curve beyond its original five categories. The Serena Software study broke the "early adopters" segment into five micro-segments of its own by characteristic (rather than by adoption rate):

• Alphas - "These are the tech elite, immersed in technology. Alphas see technology as having a significant, positive impact on their lives and ability to communicate. At work, they are delegators, developing solutions to hand off."


• Accidental - "Not as comfortable with technology as Alphas, Accidentals still have a deep understanding of how technology can improve their lives. With a less direct approach at work, they consider technology a tool to solve problems, but not the key to everything."


• Practical - "Using all the technology that most other types are excited about, but they are less enthusiastic about the devices. They typically report to the Alphas and Accidentals at work, but are focused on implementation."


• Balanced - "Although similar to Accidentals, they do not place technology or work at the center of their lives. Approaching their jobs as a means to fund other things they enjoy, this group leads more relaxed lives than other types, and are hesitant to adopt emerging technology until they see how it relates to their personal lives. The most likely to be students and the least likely to be workaholics."


• Lite - "The most resistant to adopting new technologies before they are mainstream, they are less likely to take risks, actively solve problems or create efficiency. At work, they may adopt a new process once it is proven effective in another department. The most risk averse segment in relationship to technology, their work life, and at home."

These five micro-segments intrigue me. I want to discover how I can reach these customers - that is, how I can design products that fit their needs (rather than trying to convince them to buy a product that they really don't need - a much more difficult and much less honorable sell).

If I were to create a product with these five groups in mind, here are the steps (and priorities) that I would take:

1. Build for the Accidental. These are the consumers who see technology as tools, not as toys. Accidentals expect new technology to solve a problem. They will be my most valuable critics - the ones who tell me whether a new product is actually worth the materials from which it is made. They will tell me if a product actually meets a need in consumers' lives. If my product is going to be worthwhile, it needs to work for the Accidentals.


2. Support for the Practical. The Practicals are the ones who implement the technology, and are responsible for making sure that it works for their (or their organization's) needs. They use all the new technology, but they rarely get excited about it - they have to work around all the bugs, and make the solutions work for their supervisors or clients. Having technical support - especially, letting them tell me where all of the quirks and faulty solutions are, and then working my hardest to correct those things - will be key for these folks. The Practicals will be the ones who tell me how to make my product function the best.


3. Design for the Alphas. The Alphas get excited about technology, and are most likely to agree that technology has a positive impact on the world. If a new product has some new, better feature, and if some group of fanboys say that the product will be the next great thing, the Alphas will eagerly adopt the product, expecting great solutions. For this group, products should have good functionality, but also good form. Sleek design and intuitive user interface, added to great features, indicate quality to Alphas. If I care about design, I should design products that Alphas would be proud to carry.


4. Connect for the Balanced. These guys care about life, relationships, and well-being outside of work. They will adopt new technology if it improves the quality of their personal lives and social interactions. If my new product is a time pit or an end in itself, the Balanced won't accept it. My product should help them to simplify their lives, or connect with friends, or save time for the important things. If my product can possibly benefit people in a personal or social context, I should look to the Balanced to see how I can make it happen.

If I can create a product that meets these consumers' demands in terms of functionality, support, design, and connectedness, then I can sleep at night feeling that I've created a product worth buying. If my product satisfies the needs of these four micro-segments, and if the rest of my marketing mix can deliver my product to the world, then my product has a chance of being adopted by the other groups from Rogers' bell curve.