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As individuals, companies, and product and service providers, we can benefit from introspection, especially at a milestone like the arrival of a new year.  In fact, there’s no better time than now to do just that.

While you’re looking back at the business year and analyzing successes, near-successes and setbacks, one thing to seriously consider is to augment that thinking with input from those who know you best, your customer or client base.

There are many types of surveys and other methods to engage your customers in a productive dialogue.  Customer satisfaction surveys can help you define or update a benchmark measurement and are valuable in assessing your products, operations and even associates.  For marketing, branding and message development, however, a quantitative satisfaction survey has limited value.  

What we want to do is get a fresh insight into who you are in your customers’ eyes.  What does your role in their business mean to them?  We need to determine whether the features and benefits of your offerings, which you spent hours and dollars developing, are really the features and benefits that keep that customer interested in conducting business with your company.

You want to get out of your head and into theirs to find out what makes them tick.  Your success, it seems, lies closest to the approach that you take with the survey and how you process and act upon what you learn.

The best surveys focus on the survey taker.  That sounds simple enough, but consider this hypothetical approach:

1. How’s company X doing in helping you with your taxes?
2. What’s the three best things about company X’s people when they come to do your taxes?
3. Is company X’s brand promise working for you?

Seems straightforward - and it is - but you’re not really asking them to open up about their motivation for engaging you, Mr. or Mrs. X.  And that survey approach is all about your company, not them.  Consider this approach:

1. As tax deadlines begin to approach, what concerns start cropping up in your mind as you’re running your business?
2. Rank these concerns in importance to you and your business.
3. Which aspects of company X’s services best put your mind at ease?  Why do you think that is the case?
4. In light of this, what do you think makes company X best qualified to serve your tax needs?

AdWeek reports that the NFL is taking back control of its website from CBS Sports. For the fan, this means increased film footage, both current and archival, which represents a tremendous plus. For the league, this represents the next step in gaining control of what could be considered its intellectual property.

"The ability to control your own destiny and be able to experiment and invest in building a robust platform was something we thought was best doing by ourselves," said Hans Schroeder, vp and gm of NFL.com. "It was hard to figure out a way to evolve the platform when you're doing it through a third party."

Let's hope this great league walks the fine line of journalistic integrity in reporting on itself.

Smart people will tell you that if you're selling a service (a broad term, I know) you need to focus on selling the process and not the product. What they mean is that you sell your expertise and experience along with the thing that you deliver to them. There's a couple of reasons for this, I think. One, your product, whether it's a logo, a marketing plan, or a legal document, has more value in the eyes of your customer if they understand that there's a process behind it and that you, as expert, know this process inside and out. Secondly, process can be a safety net for your product as well. If your customer doesn't like your product, take them through the process for how you got from point to point to the product. You may not change their mind on the product, but you'll start a dialog. If they're astute, they will ask questions and point things out as you retrace your steps that will help you with round two of revisions. Todd Henry, in a recent Accidental Creative podcast talks about process versus product in terms of creative individuals and their managers, and how if each will look to the process, better results can be had for the entire team - the same scenario as above. For managers, Todd points out the need to understand that process and product are often one and the same in the mind of a creative individual. If you don't like what you're getting, ask them to take you through their process and (tactfully) point out along the way where they can think differently. Likewise, Todd calls on the creative to constantly promote their process so that coworkers, bosses or clients don't "get lost in the product."

In the blog On Message from Wagner Communications, John Wagner strikes a chord with any of us who try to help companies tell their story. Fear of failure with regards to innovative marketing tactics and non-selling storytelling approaches kills many great ideas. We must acknowledge that consumers today are more adept at sorting through sell messages and have access to vastly more useful information than in the past. Wagner puts it well: "In today's world, public relations and marketing should be designed to facilitate dialog and stimulate interest that will lead someone to learn -- on his or her own -- more about your product or service. "That's a pathway that doesn't always lend itself to neat and tidy ROI measurement. But don't let that fear stop you from taking the road less traveled."

In quick and visual fashion, David Armano shows how to use Widgetbox to link your static website to your related blog. That done, the challange becomes remaining true to your blog's mission all the while knowing your entries are now filling your homepage. An interesting system of checks and balances for your overall online strategy.

When The Richards Group landed the Motel 6 account, their charge was to increase room-night stays at this national discount motel chain. The Dallas-based ad superstars had the luxury of planning and strategy, even calling for the chain to STOP advertising while The Richards Group and the motel collaborated on a strategy. First the group arrived at the positioning, "For frugal people, Motel 6 is a comfortable night's stay at the lowest price of any national chain." Who are these frugal people? In general, they fall into three categories, seniors, vacationing families, and self-paying business travelers. From here, the brand personality and marketing strategy was developed. Tom Bodett's voice was heard in commercials and in wake-up calls. John Jantz, writing in the Duct Tape Marketing blog, warns the small businessperson not to be tempted to start employing marketing tactics without developing a strategy. In working with many small and growing businesses, I've heard again and again, "Well, can't we just do this while we're figuring out all that stuff?" Sometimes, yes, but let's not jump too fast. The positioning, branding, strategy and planning process doesn't have to take long or cost "an arm and a leg" as Bodett promises.

There's no place for "Word of Mouth" within a marketing strategy or on a tactical marketing plan. That's like bringing your toothbrush on a first date. Optimistic, yes. A reliable strategy or tactic, no. Word of mouth is something that's achieved through superior product or service design, proper positioning, and just a good product or service launched at the right time. Seth Godin taught us that in Purple Cow. John Wagner writes about "discoverability" from the consumer's point of view. The consumer will trumpet something much louder if they feel like they're discovering it, versus being prodded along to "tell a friend" by a marketer. I could not agree more.