Intuit's Small Business Product Failure

Perhaps you've seen the recent spate of commercials from Intuit touting its new website template and hosting offering on television. Designed to appeal to small business owners, the service is affordable, flexible, and provides a wide selection of prefab templates from which to choose. Sounds terrific and very appealing, indeed.

Because many of my customers are start ups and they might not be very web savvy, I thought I'd check out the offering myself. With a spare URL or two and an interest in kicking the tires of this sort of offering as a testbed, I went to intuit.com to sign up. Great looking site. A nice piece of video demonstrating many of the main features of the service. Sold. I selected a user name and password, hit continue and "Server Error, Try again later" hit me right back. "Huh", I said to no one in particular. Not the kind of message you want from someone who'll be hosting your site. "I'll try again", I said. After all, the web is still pretty fickle sometimes, I reasoned. Same drill, same answer.

Couple of hours later I did indeed try yet again. I input the fields for user name and password and hit enter with great anticipation. This was going to be cool. "User name already in use". "Huh", said I. I guess I must have managed to get the account set up in spite of the earlier error message. So I tried to log on as a regular account holder. Things took a turn for the especially odd when Intuit said it didn't recognize me. On the one hand it knew me because it recognized my user name but on the other it wouldn't let me in.

Being the helpful company they are, Intuit puts their toll-free number on the page. So I called. To make the long play by play a little less long, we got to the bottom of the issue after just a few minutes. I was flabbergasted to learn that users of Mac computers can't use this service. That's right, some 10% plus of the world's entrepreneurs can't use this web-based service with a web browser interface because we're using the wrong operating system on our computers.

So beyond simply recounting my frustrating afternoon, here's the marketing upshot of all this. First, the days of tying your software product to either a Mac or to a PC are over. People have no patience for this Red State/Blue State bigotry any more. Especially if your product is software as a service (SaaS) funneled to the waiting world via the agnostic web.

Second, if you're going to exclude large numbers of prospects from buying your product, make sure that tidbit is not buried deep within some FAQ somewhere. I'll make you a deal, Intuit - Don't waste my time and I won't blog about how you are likely wasting the time of hundreds of thousands of small business people.

Third, and this applies to everyone, when you're entering a highly fragmented and competitive market, don't come half-armed. Just because it might be hard doesn't mean you can punt on major criteria. When you're operating on the web, be sure that users of different browsers can access your site and have a seamless experience, for example. Or if you're a restaurant serving only vegan dishes, don't name yourself "Pete's House of Every Food" because somebody's gonna get miffed.

The other marketing lesson is that no matter how good a job you do with ads, sites, and the other things that bring prospects in, if your product managers or operations folks can't deliver the goods, you've done nothing good for your company. Intuit will take some significant hits for this sloppy roll out and ironically, the better the marketers are in driving traffic, the worse the impact on the Intuit brand will be.

As for me, I'll be testing another firm's web template/hosting service and reporting on that effort in a future post.

Social Marketing Coming of Age

Social marketing is real, it is effective, and it is here to stay. That's what I tell all of my clients today. Not news to you? Well, the reality is that companies have only just begun to leverage social media networks with any skill at all. Though it seems like we've been hearing about this new fangled thing for a long time, it remains a shiny new and generally misunderstood area of marketing.

In large measure, that's because the people executing social marketing strategies are not very good marketers. They are born-again tech people jumping onto what they rightly perceive to be a profitable bandwagon. But as I've mentioned before in earlier posts, social media "specialists" tend to be intentionally vague about the activities in which they'll engage, hoping to maintain pricing premiums by making the field an art - more magic than science. But as business people are finding, it's not so awfully difficult after all.

So on a practical level, what should you, a business owner, do? First, recognize that social marketing is simply a new set of tools that allow you to reach out to prospects in new ways. You can use these tools to help prospects and customers advocate on your behalf. You can reinforce your brand, you can develop out of this world testimonials, you can empower customers in ways never before possible.

Second, set up a Facebook page for your company and invite customers to join your group. Buy any one of the zillion books on leveraging Facebook, like Facebook for Dummies. Quick read and full of useful little tips for getting started.

Third, set up a Twitter account, and begin "tweeting" regularly. Be brief, be value-focused, and have fun.

Fourth, listen. See what people are saying not just about your company, but your competitors, your industry, and about completely unrelated businesses - that'll give you the chance to learn about what other companies are doing to good or bad effect.

Finally, iterate. Make participation a regular event, much like getting brochures updated and printed every quarter, you can now update your messaging once, twice, three times a week. You can address "big topics" in your business as they arise, not months later. Unlike static literature, the elements of social media are dynamic, timely, and oftentimes unexpected.

Don't let any snake oil salesmen make you think that there is any magic involved with social media marketing. Think instead that these are like sales conversations you can have with lots of customers simultaneously. You're still doing the same key thing here as you've been, hopefully, doing all along: engaging with your customers is meaningful ways to drive behavior and to gather critical information. No magic, just a new set of tools for making it happen.

Start today. Doesn't have to be anything too complicated. Just get the ball rolling and momentum will build.

Five Places Marketers Fail

When analyzing marketing catastrophes of all different kinds, for companies competing in wildly different industries, some fairly consistent underlying reasons for the failures begin to emerge. And surprisingly, the notion that marketing fails because the marketers in charge were morons is not one of the five. Though there are head-scratchingly bad decisions behind most campaign failures, more insidious reasons are the true propellant behind the epic failures we see in each day's newspaper (if there were still any being published, that is. But that's a marketing failure for another day).

Number Five: The Wrong Market. Sometimes the pressure to eke out just a bit more revenue from an existing but tapped out market drives marketing leaders to try to extend the product line just a bit further or to bring a marginally better solution to the game. All too often, the wrong market is the one in which we currently compete and draw the bulk of our revenue and profits. But in moving forward, a successful and winning leader will know when to make the jump.

Number Four: Bad Timing. Sometimes, however, a marketer's timing is off. Maybe by a little, maybe by a lot. But jumping into a new market too soon can mean years of frustrated "market building" activity while other technologies and approaches take their turns at being the "right solution at the right time". Jump too late and you'll face a nigh impenetrably entrenched set of competitors with too little firepower to shift the playing field.

Number Three: The Wrong Strategy. I often say that there is usually more than one way to get to the goal. However, not every path leads there. Some lead straight into the buzz saw. The number of ways in which a strategy might go wrong are legion. Wrong distribution channel for your product? You're dead. Run ads on billboards when a strong internet route is better? Toast. Doesn't necessarily mean the marketer in charge is a moron, but make enough egregious choices and it'll be tough to dodge the nickname.

Number Two: Disconnect Between Promise and Delivery. Imagine you've spec'd the perfect product for your customer's needs. You've built a demand generation strategy second to none. You've got leads pouring in from around the globe. You're a certifiable genius. But then the factory in China burns down. The contract coders from Russia stop returning your emails. Or perhaps operations disregarded your demand forecast because her bonus gets paid on a metric that has nothing to do with satisfying your customers. In any case, this scenario can lead to the very worst outcome for a company - jilted customers. Those whose passions were stirred and then left bitterly unfulfilled.

Number One: Serving the Wrong Master. This one, more than the others, will be likeliest to cause people on the outside to consider the folks at the wheel a bunch of morons. But chances are that the marketers were simply working to please someone other than the actual customer. Perhaps the CEO had a creative idea he loved and wanted to see executed or the senior management council thought they knew better.

The common element among these failures is a loss of focus and mastery of the customer's condition and needs. The ability to translate this knowledge into effecive action is quite common, but the knowledge itself, now that is an all-too-rare commodity. So while marketing groups quibble over effective SEO strategies and approaches to pricing, too few marketing pros are spending quality time with their customers. And that is why they will fail.

Today's WORD is Injunction

Today we learned that a US court has issued an injunction preventing Microsoft from selling uber-popular Office stalwart WORD after mid-January because the product violates patents held by others. Yikes! I would suspect that large sums of money will change hands prior to that date if MS can't get another ruling from another court overturning the injunction (perhaps they should appeal to the Brazilian Supreme Court). One way or another, I doubt that WORD is in any real, lasting jeopardy.

But the case does illustrate a problem that many marketers face from time to time. What do you do when your company management either breaks the law or does something unethical as part of its business practices? Just apologize, say oops and promise it won't happen again? But in Microsoft's case, it happens a lot. How can the MS marketers overcome this self-inflicted, never ending assault on the company rep?

Microsoft's current ad campaign depicting customers as saying they invented the new Windows doesn't really square with reality, assuming that their customers aren't unethical or anticompetitive or patent poachers. We are not Them. How closely do prospective customers want to align themselves with a supplier that's always in trouble? (Aside: Hey Microsoft, do you mean to tell us that in spite of a gajillion developers on your payroll WE have to come up with all the ideas? Maybe you need to pay us instead of the other way around?).

Microsoft is not a company led by marketers, clearly. The Sherman tank that is Steve Ballmer has never seemed overly interested in such vagueries as marketing. But if he were, he might take a bit more care with the company's very fragile rep and stop making it quite so hard for marketers to do their jobs. Then again, these are the guys who thought the Jerry Seinfeld commercials were a riot. Ugh. How did these guys come to dominate the world again?

Lord of the Pitchmen - Or When Your Brand's Face Goes South On You

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The Art of Introduction

I just received a new Apple laptop the other day and was again stunned with how well done Apple's packaging is done. Every element of the packaging is functional, elegant, and exceptionally effective. Even the cardboard corners of the box the machine came in. Just cool, from start to finish. Never mind the product inside, I like to unwrap the stuff because of the feelings the process evokes.

Introductions are important moments. Those first seconds where we find ourselves face to face with a new product, person, or whatever. We form important, lasting impressions that inform and color our reactions to this new element in our lives forevermore. Yet how often does anyone really give proper weight to this event? Most folks are concerned with cost and moving past formalities so they can "get to the good stuff". Why spend five dollars on packaging when you can do the same functional job for $4.50? Penny-wise, pound foolish. When spend another two pennies on a heater switch in a Chevy just to make the tactile interaction more pleasing?

Why? Because that stuff matters. Even Wal-Mart, kings of cheap where poor service is a badge of honor, has begun to come around, recently saying that they're going to spend more time and attention on service and on the way their stores look. Cheap prices can only sustain a consumer for so long. Less expensive is fine, especially in this economy. But there remain opportunities for real, lasting competitive advantage from implementing a more Apple-ish approach to product/service design, by the realization that the "product" includes everything that comes before and after the actual "thing", and by differentiating on dimensions other than price.