Mark Kolier’s Blog

Archive for October, 2009

We have a fairly small company (www.YourCover.com) that has recently signed up for Power Reviews (www.powerreviews.com). The team brought this idea to me and I got very excited thinking that since we receive such positive customer feedback we are bound to benefit from being a part of Power Reviews.

In today’s (10/12/09) Wall Street Journal Geoffrey A. Fowler’s interesting article on the Business Solutions notes (http://bit.ly/3tUjbx) that Drugstore.com and Diapers.com both feel they are better connecting their brand to consumers by using Power Reviews. The article also talked about creating ‘verified buyers’ who would have badges next to their reviews in order to add authenticity to their reports.

Amazon.com was the pioneer here but now product reviews are ubiquitous. Last week I noticed another article citing that reviewers in general are overwhelmingly positive – 4.3 out of 5 ‘stars’ is the average rating. But the article also went on and noted that one particular reviewer was going the other way and not throwing around platitudes of positivity when it came to different products he encountered. And that the trend was that reviewers would become harsher as time goes on. So it could be said that these are the salad days for product reviews.

Are product reviews a component of social networking? I say yes. Is there a risk in having negative reviews posted about your product? Absolutely. But there is even greater risk is an attempt to steer or manipulate the conversation. Not everyone will love your product and while deep down we all know that it is quite another thing to have someone publicly slam your product for all to see.

What we hope to learn from (hopefully) YourCover.com having an active Power Review flow is how we can make the product and service better for our present and future customers. Not every review will be positive – nor should it be if the conversation is truly genuine. Of course we hope and expect that most of the comments will be positive, (hey we’re not masochists here), and that we are able to learn from what people think about their experience with our site and products.

I suspect for companies using Power Reviews that there will be bogus reviews – both on the positive and negative side. This is why there are recommendations to tie reviewer’s comments to their Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn page. Then there would be background on the reviewer such that you will ‘know’ them better. After all then you are getting a recommendation from a known and ‘trusted’ resource.

The question I have is – why should these folks be trusted?

I sat through a 3+ hour presentation last week by a noted social media ‘expert’. He had much to offer and kept the presentation moving and also took time to answer questions along the way which I always like to see. However despite the fact that he had spoken to groups like ours a number of times the presentation did not resonate as much as it could have because he did not do his homework on the audience. Our group is a diverse group of executives that run companies of varying sizes and distinctly different focuses.
When the conversation turned to Facebook fan pages it was his opinion that ALL companies should have a Facebook fan page. It was all I could do to not jump and say – WHY? WHAT FOR? For instance my company is a direct and digital marketing agency. Why would somebody ever want to be a fan of my company?

Furthermore the strategy was to contact people in my Facebook friends and ask them to be a ‘fan’ of my company. Since I use Facebook as a place to keep up with friends and family I felt strongly that it was a cheesy notion to ask them to be a ‘fan’ of my company. I don’t think of my Facebook relationships as a platform for business offers.

I do have friends that have retail oriented businesses that have Facebook fan pages. This makes sense to me. If you have a retail business (restaurant, gym, boutique) having a fan page allows the distribution of special offers, sales, and other types of promotions. A FB fan page in retail businesses offers the potential of real added value to those that have decided to become ‘fans’.

Where I don’t see FB fan pages working well is in the business to business sector. Would you want to be a FB fan of your health or car insurance company? GEICO actually has a fan page with more than 6,000 fans. What are these people receiving for their fandom? More offers on additional insurance? My guess is they are not receiving deeper insurance rate discounts than the general population so where would there be value?

How about a DMV FB fan page? (Ok that would never happen anyway).

What I am missing here?

We have a local restaurant here in town that serves Brazilian food. The food is quite good but it is a bit on the expensive side so I reserve it for more special occasions. In my local paper this morning I saw a ¼ page advertisement for the restaurant – the first time I had ever noticed one of their ads. The restaurant has been around for a little over a year (I think).

The ad offered $ 9.99 all you can eat on Monday and Wednesday nights. Since per person a full meal without beverage can easily cost $ 30.00 that seemed like a good deal – in fact a REALLY good deal. But in the SAME SMALL AD they also had another note saying 5% off with this coupon for orders over $ 20.00. HUH? 5% off of $ 20.00 is $ 1.00. This is supposed to motivate me? Off a $ 50.00 check it’s $ 2.50 – that does not even equal the tax!

This isn’t just bad marketing; it’s plain stupidity. Any positives generated from the interesting offer of $ 9.99 all you can eat (I do wonder what menu items would be available for all you can eat at $ 9.99) is offset by the bizarre $ 5% discount offer. In fact I don’t recall ever seeing a 5% discount for a restaurant ever before.

A different local pizzeria (Planet Pizza) which has several locations in our county does send out coupons upon occasion. But last night when it was duty to pick up the pizza to bring home for dinner I realized I had no coupon around. I recalled that coupons are available on their website. So I went to their website, clicked on the individual location I wanted and was able to download a $ 4.00 off Val-Pak coupon for my order which had to be over $ 15.00 (and was). It was so easy and the store seemed quite content to take the coupon which I told them made me happy. The pizza was great and I got it for less. Win-win.

These were two examples of completely different ways of handling a coupon. The first does not get it, the second does. Make sure if you are offering a value (discount) to your customers you make it clear and easy to understand and redeem. This isn’t that difficult folks.