Painful Lessons to Be Learned Through The Samsung Note 7 Experience

Background

Too often the history of our collective corporate experience has repeatedly chronicled  the failings of companies that have brought products to the market without having performed the required amount of due diligence and as such have let down, financially disadvantaged and in extreme cases even harmed their customers.

Multiple Examples

In recent memory for example examples have been highlighted from various markets including Toyota from the motor vehicle market with their tragically under tested brakes that caused the deaths of unsuspecting drivers, pharmaceutical products such as some statins and T Channel blockers that were directly connected to patient deaths and now we find The Samsung Note 7 which potentially, whilst charging may in some cases catch on fire.

Implications

 For Samsung the implications are indeed dire. Approximately 2.5 million phones have been recalled globally and incredibly the replacement phones were also prone to the same fault. Initial financial data released to the market suggested that this mistake will cost the company around five billion dollars and more importantly will force them to shut down what was one of the biggest and most prestigious brands in telecommunications, namely The Samsung Note.

No doubt the product designers and technical staff are already at work trying to redesign a new flagship that long with some inspiring marketing may yet re-position it as a winning brand for the future.  Of course this will all take time and as the clock continues to click other android makers such as Google with its Pixel phone and Apple with its i Phones are naturally the big winners as the users are forced to switch across to other phones.

The Way Forward

For Samsung and all of us watching some serious lessons need to be learned. 
1. When you make a mistake, you need to own it.  Samsung knew about the problem and initially were very slow to respond.
2. When you do respond, be measured and put the customer's needs first. Samsung rushed  replacement units out again without and proper due diligence which again put their customers lives at risk.
3. Apologise.  If Toyota from the example above deserve credit for one thing it is that they did admit fault, and went on the proverbial front foot early to make positive changes. This approach I suspect bought them good will amoungst the PR disaster that they were involved with.

So moving forward let us wait and see what Samsung do next and how they learn from some terrible mistakes that have hurt their brand so profoundly this year

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

 

Targeting Facebook Ads to Specific Business Locations

 

Facebook now allows you to specifically target your businesses Facebook ads to individual addresses. This provides an obvious advantage to those businesses that would ideally benefit from location based targeting.

 

The number of possible examples for such a system are endless but as a simple illustration imagine a mobile coffee vender that   drives around and wants to promote their business and perhaps promotional codes that incentivise first time and repeat usage of their coffee.

Such a business would be able to send the ads to actual physical addresses where the maximum chance of usage would be in play not to mention the maximum potential benefit from the customer who works there and therefore receives the maximum amount of convenience by having the coffee delivered to their doorstep.

So here's how you go about it.


1. Design the campaign based on what it needs to convey to the intended target audience.
E.g. Buy a coffee and bring this included bar-code for a free muffin.
External content can also be leveraged here with hyperlinks to: additional pictures, videos or posts.

Then simply post this tailor made content and core message on your Facebook page.

Now you can utilise the Ads Manager function that will allow you to deliver that same message to specific locations. Alternatively this can also be accomplished via the Create Campaign function under Business Manger.

Access the Ads Manager and start a new campaign.

This will drive you to another display with various options to select from. For this example, the best option is the first, Boost Your Posts. Make a  selection from the sidebar to choose preferred campaign objectives.

Name your campaign as a matter of Standard Operating Procedure  and then click on the Set Audience Option to proceed.

2. Decide on Your Targeted Audience

Here you make a conscious decision on who will see the ad based on location. The:
More Demographics Options allows for example you to target Workers by Employer name, Job title, industry or office type making it a simple matter to precisely control who will see the ad.

3. Set a Budget

As is the case with Adwords or any other digital advertising option setting a realistic budget is an important step. You can set the daily budget and the number of days that it will run for. So for example if you set a $3 per day budget to begin with for 7 days you know ahead of time that it will cost you $21 for the week to assess how effective this type of advertising is for you.

Additionally Facebook provide the option of naming the ad so that in a setting of multiple ads for that campaign where AB Testing is happening, it will be simple to assess the relative success of each individual ad.

4. Write the Ad

Click on the Choose Your Ad Creative

You may chose to select  an Existing Page Post drop-down list to the left of the preview.

Select your content and place your order.



The current limitation is that as things stand we can only target one location per ad although this may change moving forward.

So if you think this system could help your business, give it a try and see what impact it has on your sales.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.


Regards,
Daniele.