Put Yourself In The Customer's Shoes And Make A Normal Business Fun

When we promote our products, the first channel we usually think of is a website. Because most people think of it, how to compete with others to attract customers becomes an important issue. To be prominent among competitors, a brand should consider about UX (user experience) when building their websites.

Hershey's, a well-known chocolate brand with long history, faces severe competition since chocolate is not a kind of product requiring high technology to mass production. Compared to Godiva or Ferrero, having exotic tasting and romantic atmosphere, Hershey's is deemed a family-friendly brand. So how does Hershey's website communicate with its customers? 

Like other big chocolate brands, Hershey's has many products to introduce on their website. Through its website map, customers can also access its family brands such as Reese's and Twizzlers. You can understand Hershey's more by looking at "Videos" and "Our Story".

Understanding why customers visit your website is critical. People do not visit a traditional chocolate brand's website for the general information, because they can purchase Hershey's chocolate at supermarkets and they are not curious about Hershey's. Therefore, "Recipes" becomes a drive for customers to visit Hershey's website. When they want to make some special desserts, they may visit Hershey's website to look for special recipes and recommended materials. They also can place orders for special chocolate, such as personalized chocolate bars on the website through "Shop".

A good website does not only show the functions but also creates the personality of the brand. Customers probably know Hershey's is the largest chocolate brand in the USA, but they may not know that they can have a great tour at Hershey's chocolate world. By talking about the attractions on "Visit Us", Hershey's enhances the connection with its fans. Besides, "Crafts" provides some creative ideas to enrich customers' lives. Recently, several ways for celebrating the Halloween are shown on the website.

Finally, the theme color of this website is the same as Hershey's classic milk chocolate and that can be a strong identified signal for customers. Overall, this website fulfills customers' needs well and makes user experience fun. 

Smartphone users are a group which should not be ignored. Due to the small display, most brands have special interfaces for smartphone users. So how does Hershey's website make smartphone users feel? What are the differences?

Let's see the front page first. 4 buttons are shown with Hershey's milk chocolate and its brown color. It is easy to understand why Hershey's still keeps "Visit Us". Also, it is a good choice to eliminate "Our Story" and "Video" since they are the least parts mobile users access. However, the aesthetic design should be improved because the interface doesn't seem to arouse any curiosity for people to keep surfing.

"Recipes" is still important. The button for visitors to email the recipe is much larger than that on the website laptop users see. This is cool. Mobile users normally do not review the information for very long time on their smartphone, because they may keep moving or the screens are just too small. But if they can email something interesting then they can keep reviewing it after going home.

But I am not sure if it is smart to keep "Shop". I mean that doesn't matter if there is no other choice and there is still some room available. However, "Promotion" has been removed. Here is a question, are mobile users interested in reading promotion news or placing orders when they commute? Think more about users' motives and behavior, then we can figure out the answer.

"The Days of Dumb Advertising Are Over."

For many consumers, smartphone and tablet become part of life today. They spend a lot of time on these mobile tools for checking email, browsing websites, and utilizing apps. Perceived by brands, more and more consumers spend their money through the apps on their mobile devices. Therefore, we may think if there will be any influence on digital marketing industry. This topic was discussed in the article, "Will mobile kill digital advertising?", from CNN Tech on Spe 24, 2012. http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/24/tech/mobile/keen-mobile-advertising/

According to this article, mobile will not destroy digital marketing but impacts it absolutely. Randall Rothenberg, the President and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAM), said, "The days of dumb advertising are over." The commercial messages must be interesting enough to attract engaged consumers' attention. Therefore, advertising messages are packaged in apps and the communications are created by interactive manners. Mostly, brands deliver their marketing messages in 3 ways by apps: 1) advantages, offering discounts or promotions to consumers; 2) usages, providing convenience and useful information; 3) entertainments, bringing fun.

However, I prefer not to say mobile impacts digital marketing. I would like to say digital marketing works in a better format today. Because the screen becomes smaller, it is difficult for impatient consumers to check all the information thoroughly. They download useful apps, which are actually a kind of "saved webpages" but only listing the most important information, what is it (creating brand image) and how to get it (facilitate the transaction). When consumers love the apps, they will be fond of the brands. The apps decrease consumers "defensive mechanism", which is the most tough barrier traditional media always want to avoid. The other good thing for marketers is that consumers cannot compare the offers easily since most of the apps are offered by specific brands, excluding the accessibility to other competitors.  

Recently, I am following 3 fine chocolate brands to see how they promote their products through digital marketing. They are Lindt, Godiva and Mast brothers, and they are defined as larger, medium and smaller corporations in turns by their annual sales. Not surprisingly, they are all very active on their own social media. However, Lindt and Godiva keep launching their apps for different holidays and seasonal campaigns to fulfill consumers' needs of advantages (special offers), usages (store locators) and entertainments (Lindt Bear). On the contrary, Mast Brothers, the smallest seller among them, does not have any app. This phenomenon can be a downside for consumers' alternatives. Because some small brands may not be able to afford the cost to launch and manage apps, strong brands will be stronger in mobile market. Another question we can think about is, even some small brands can have their own apps, are consumers willing to download an app from a nameless brand on their mobile devices, which have limited space? 

Image source: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/say-it-with-the-lindt-bear/id481185526?mt=8

Image source: http://www.instant.ly/blog/2013/04/for-the-love-of-chocolate-mobile-marketing-and-godiva/

   

What Are The Triggers Motivating You To Act?

One of my Professors, Joanne Tombrakos, teaching Digital Marketing awesomely in NYU, shared a personality assessment with us. The test is the first science-based personality assessment and it was created by Sally Hogshead. If you are interested in it, you can get more information through its website: http://www.howtofascinate.com/ and Hogshead's lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG0WiP5ux1Q.

After testing, I got a report about my "triggers". What do "triggers" mean? Well, in my understanding, they are innate drives influencing your personality. All your behaviors are affected by these triggers. So let's say if you see you as a brand, then these triggers are important essentials forming your brand image. 

My primary trigger is "Trust" and the second trigger is "Prestige"; on the contrary, my dormant trigger is "Rebellion". Therefore, according to the analysis, I fall in the Diplomat cell. I am a person who is ambitious, detail-oriented, reliable, stable and uncompromising. Like some other personality tests, most of the descriptions from this test are positive. (Who would be happy to accept negative comments?) So the result interests me in some introspection, which means that I would like to explore more about myself. Then I can see if how I understand myself is similar as the evaluation from the test. 

I would like to give 3 characteristics to describe who I am by the examples from my previous work experience. 

First, I don't talk a lot and I usually like to think thoroughly before I talk. Working as a sales director in a small company, I was in charge of the annual local and international sales. Therefore, every decision I made affected customers' attitude toward our company and all the policies I set influenced my co-workers' actions on their duties. I always thought that a leader should not talk too much since that sometimes would confuse others and even easily made wrong statements.

Second, I keep all the promises as I can. I used to over-work (even at home) just to satisfy my clients' requests to make sure they would receive their orders on time. So even I have left my previous company, most of my previous customers still keep very good relationship with me. I would feel bad if I did not finish what I had promised. There was one time, one of my subordinates said she would quit. She did not explain why but I knew Taiwanese employees did not always say what they really thought about. So I checked if there had been something wrong. Then I found I had promised to raise her salary for 12% and I had informed the accounting department to do that, but the accounting people just forgot it. So I asked the girl if that was the main reason she wanted to leave and she said partly it was. (Though I did not believe it was "partly", it should be "totally".) I felt very embarrassed and reimbursed her what she should get and gave her a vacation for week with salary. She finally decided not to quit and stayed 2 years more until I left.

Third, I am a cautious person and I tare care over the details. I do not say yes or no when somebody has a request, I tend to say "I am going to check it but I think it will / will not be fine." Then I will try to collect required information before making the decision. I have very good memory, but I understand that not everyone does. Therefore I was very cautious at partnering with other companies. In the beginning of cooperation, people were often very polite and did not speak out what they really wanted. I would like to list all the agreements and send a copy to them after the important meetings. Sometimes I met some clients did not like this serious way, then I would send an email to say "thank you" but simply attache all the points we had agreed. All I did was try to avoid any issues in the future and this would help create longer partnership.

However, I feel my personality have changed a little bit after coming the States. For example, I found that most Americans like to express what they think directly, or I should say Americans like to talk and think at the same time. This is totally different from what it is in Taiwan. In Taiwan, if you say something wrong without consideration, people will think you are very rude. Sometimes we would think our idea is not good and others would think it is stupid. But here, everyone's opinion is respected and no one's idea is stupid. I actually like this culture more, since a creative idea often looks rough in the beginning when it is proposed but then proved excellent after more open talks. So this is the part I am working on to change - talk more as I can and do not eliminate any idea in mind even I do not believe others will really like it.    

Above all, I feel this test describes my personality accurately (well, I think it achieves 85%). Even it is not always the case, you can have the chance to explore yourself more. So why don't you also take the test and see how it will talk about you?

PS. By the way, if you are also interested in reading my Professor's articles, here is the link for the great blog!  http://onewomanseye.blogspot.com/