I always say if you treated your external customers the way you treat your internal customers (or employees), you wouldn’t have any customers.

That is the key.  All great companies depend on great employees who will support products and services, and validate the brand.   Employees who are enthusiastic and gracious service providers make the greatest brand impression on consumers and are most effective and enduring, and ensuring repeat visits.

For successful companies, the most truly effective marketing starts with employees.  It has to.

Companies can do all the clever marketing in the world, but if your internal customers aren’t on board, engaged, and enthusiastic, the results will be unsatisfying for the brand.  And any executive who understands this aspect of four walls marketing tends to reap tremendous rewards.

What kind of marketing plan do you have for your internal customers?

Marketing is the message, but human beings with hearts and souls are the messengers.   We’re in the feeling business; everyone is.  We need to focus on the experience your customers and your employees have with you and your company.  Respect authenticity, empathy, being vulnerable.

So, I recommend a plan for everyone that I work with to always start with an internal customer survey.  You have a two-point prong here.  First, it’s recruiting, and I have lots to share about this subject later, and the other is all of those internal customers you have on board now.  How are they feeling about themselves?  We do all this external research, but we do not seem to do the internal research as we should.  Our role isn’t to measure employee satisfaction; it’s to create employee excitement.  So, the survey really gauges the self-esteem of the employees that becomes the litmus test for what happens next in the sales-growth plan.

Many clients are surprised when they find out that only 35 percent of their employees   would recommend their product, service, or business to their friends and families.

Look at the revolutionary power of employees Zappos has created!

In our digital age, marketers must continue to make personal connections with their customers, even though technology can seduce us into distancing ourselves from one another.  If used properly, technology allows us to engage in a more dynamic dialogue with our customers, and to stop interrupting them.  It lets us be available to our customer whenever she needs us, in the way that she needs us, and in the language that she understands.

While my philosophy is very “local,” the basic tenets apply globally towards any industry, including high-tech.  We’ve all got to figure out a way to break through the clutter and to allow our customers to invite us in to speak to them. The days of shouting and interrupting customers are over. Use technology as a tactic to touch your customer and speak to them in a way they understand.

The 21^st century neighborhood is wherever you customers congregate – individuals with similar interests, with similar needs and desires, attitudes, beliefs and values. You can find them in your own block or across an ocean. You can invite them to participate in your blogs and on your Facebook pages. You can find them in churches, schools, libraries, fund raising events, your local chamber of commerce, or in chat groups, phone books, forums… and through other companies who have already found them. But most importantly, and most effectively – you can find them through your present customers.

I’ve always said that your business works the same way your brain works. The single largest detriment is that we fall in love with our product or service. Just for a month I invite you to fall in love with your customer. Look at your business as if you were a customer, think of the interests, values, needs and priorities of your customers – and then you’ll begin to find them. Use your technology to listen to your customers and to find out how you can best fulfill their needs. Devote your life and your enterprise to making their life better, richer, fuller, happier, more meaningful – and the marketing strategies and tactics will begin to unfold from their own lips.

Newspaper articles and blog posts hail Pepsi’s decision to opt out of advertising during the recent Super Bowl as the giant cola manufacturer’s Big Gamble.  I say, “horse feathers!”  Choosing not to waste money on multi-million dollar ads that do not move the sales needle is not a gamble, it’s a sound decision.  Super Bowl ads never have, and never will, generate a strong return on investment.  Although they’re sexy, often controversial, and create a big buzz, these mega-productions are a giant waste of money.

Instead, Pepsi said it has chosen to devote more marketing resources to social media, which is essentially a neighborhood marketing strategy for the digital age.  After all, social media platforms such as web sites, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter gather together communities of individuals who share common interests, engage in intimate conversations, and exchange ideas.   Doesn’t that sound exactly the way people interact in neighborhoods?

Congratulations to Pepsi for finally accepting the neighborhood marketing challenge. Let’s hope more companies follow suit, and choose to spend their marketing dollars wisely.

By Tom Feltenstein

During the start of my career in marketing, I was fortunate enough to work for several years with Ray Kroc, the legendary owner of McDonald’s who revolutionized the franchise business through neighborhood marketing.  Although Ray imparted enough wisdom to last a lifetime and fill countless volumes of literature, I’ve distilled his most valuable insights into the following 7 Lessons.   Please read them carefully, because if you adopt them as the guiding principles of your own business philosophy, you cannot help but win your competitive battles, no matter how formidable your foes are.

1. It’s all local
2. The heart and soul of your business is marketing inside your own walls
3. Community involvement.  Become an integral part of your community by being generous with your time and efforts to lend a helping hand to those in your neighborhood who are in need.
4. Trust your people.  Allow your employees the freedom to contribute their opinions, insight, and knowledge.  Give them the power to make decisions to benefit your customers.
5. A good idea doesn’t care where it comes from.
6. To make it work from top to bottom, it has to work from bottom to top.
7. Deliver a powerful level of service – beyond what’s expected – and you’ve created a tangible bond with a customer that no mass media program can achieve.

The Most Potent Strategy for Businesses of All Sizes

A popular misconception exists that because neighborhood marketing is a community-based strategy, it’s most effective with small businesses, and that bigger companies ought to stick to mass media campaigns. To the contrary, big box stores will also gain the competitive advantage by deploying neighborhood marketing strategies, as will non-retail businesses such as maid services, lawn care, pest control, etc.  The truth is, any mass-market media campaign won’t work without a complementary neighborhood marketing campaign. It actually doesn’t matter if you’re a multi-billion dollar company or a corner grocery store – the same principles apply.  In fact, these days more and more big-name companies like Starbucks, The Cheesecake Factory, Virgin Group, and Harley Davidson rely on neighborhood marketing strategies rather than mass media campaigns  Mass

A Revolutionary Concept as Old as the Corner Grocery Store
The revolutionary concept of Neighborhood Marketing is as old as the 19^th Century corner grocery store, whose owners knew their customers’ names, addresses, and birthday.  From the corner grocer to the big box superstore, what distinguishes neighborhood marketers from their competitors is the fact that they care about the people who live and work in their communities.  As a result, they deliver superb service, provide a product line that’s sensitive to their customer’s needs and desires, and generate an ever-growing following of intensely loyal patrons.   Not until you’ve maximized all of your opportunities within your own four walls, should you even give mass marketing a passing thought.  For the past 40 years, we’ve been teaching thousands of businesses that it’s all local, and that everything sells.  Neighborhood Marketing begins inside your four walls, from your employees, to the real estate located within 10-minute drive or walk from your place of business.  And it’s your most powerful weapon in your marketing arsenal, no matter how big or small you are.