thefunnel

I’m currently evaluating various (inexpensive) tools for enabling an easy way for users to to give website feedback / feedback through the web site.  The ideal is a tab based approach available on each page. Hard to find something that’s just right. Not too heavy, not too light and moderately customizable. So far I’ve looked at getsatisfaction, uservoice and suggestionbox. Getsatisfaction didn’t really fit because it was “too community” oriented and I think our customers would have had a hard time figuring out how to leave anonymous feedback or felt frustrated having to log in twice (separate logins for the site and the satisfaction tool, in the case they didn’t use their face book account the register). Uservoice in play -looks promising.

A brand starts with a vision to solve something (a problem), by providing a service, or a product. This vision includes elements such as whom, what, where, how much, unlike others, etc., forming the basis of segmentation, targeting and positioning, from which a position statement, a value proposition and messaging can be created.

In addition to the above, the vision also includes intangible elements, providing an answer to the question. How does the organization go about “delivering a solution to the problem”? This is where culture, values and company personality comes into play. These are generally more challenging to understand, as they are often only experienced by clients during or after a service interaction.

Customers who interact with the organization, then forms an overall perception of value for the company services, interaction and relationship, in relation to other similar solutions or substitutes?

To understand the perception of value, the brand attributes, strengths and weaknesses must be measured. Since attributes can be perceived or real, and all are not equal, the relative importance of these also needs to be understood. Typically there are basic ones that are required to play in a particular industry, and then the ones that drive value. In addition, brand attributes often need to be categorized into, for example, company level, service level, category level, industry segment level, etc. The job of brand tracking is to closely monitor attributes, providing facts, data and support for the organization in strategic marketing (segmenting, targeting, positioning) and all its marketing communication (both internally and externally).

 The summary of all this is a brand system including:

• Brand Essence, Promise, Personality (culture) and Association
• A Message Architecture with Messages, Supporting Messages (or proof points)
• Communication guidelines (including social media)
• Visual Brand Identity guidelines (both print and online)
• Basic Attributes and Value Driver Attributes, grouped into some higher level categories such as the company, service, etc.
• Measurements and tracking of Familiarity, Consideration, Mindshare and the Net Promoter Score

Time to move on. The next wave is approaching, or maybe it’s already here. Start embracing semantic web and web 3.0 – “the intelligent web”. With 3.0, the information overflow will be history, information control is the future, and now we can all experience the web as a cloud that provides actionable insight, a web and search which is contextual and can predict what we want, where we want it, and deliver and tailor information based on our preferences. In addition it’s open and platform agnostic, provides a level of interoperability that is unheard of, and works on any device, anywhere (always connected – wireless anywhere). No more large systems, instead it’s all about small pieces of a large puzzle, which all work together, it’s all viral, and it’s (mostly) free. We’re already seen bits and pieces, such as semantic search, cloud computing and open API’s, but that’s nothing yet, compared to the unlimited mashup of dynamic information, all portable and tailored to your preferences.