FOXY Lady blog’s Guest Editor is Ian Williams of Jericho Consulting

Ian Williams was part of the University of Hull’s MBA class of 1999 – I met him at the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s HQ in Cookham for many a weekend’s study programme between 1996 and 1999.  This topic matters to women because considerably more of us (than men) are at Facebook. But will we stay there,  jump ship or have the time to learn and maintain both presences, simply because Google+ is the new kid on the block. One thing is for certain, Google+ will want to be seen as a more female friendly experience than Facebook.

Read what Ian has to say about Google+…

OK – so Google+ is now out of beta testing and is available to everyone. For anyone not in the know; it’s a bit like a cross between Facebook and Twitter. And Facebook are worried, hence the new redesign that everyone hates. Should they be? Hmmm….

Well, I think Google have messed it up…again. Despite them having some great innovations, in the past few years, they have had some major league screw-ups too, especially in the social media field, including Orkut, Buzz & Wave. I fear that G+ will fair no better.

Is G+ superior to FB? Well yes…and no! From a technological design perspective it is better. Once it gets people on there, it allows them to do things that neither Twitter or Facebook can do. “Hang-outs” and “Circles” are a case in point. So that means that they will steal lots of market share from Facebook, right? Sure, they’ll steal some, but I’m not sure how much. Of course, geeks, techies and innovators (Diffusion of Innovation model) will open an account, but will they and others migrate? Here’s why I think not:
…
Firstly, stop with the soft launches Google!
Beta testing is all well and good – it worked for gMail – but we can see what happened with Wave. A brilliant piece of technology that nobody used. Why? It was a functionally brilliant piece of social media software…but it was anti-social. Once you got on, there, it was impossible to find anyone else. I remember going onto Facebook to ask people who was on Wave!! Once I found someone who was, we decided to stay on Facebook to chat anyway! Crazy.

So then, in a blind panic – Google had invested millions of dollars into Wave – they then decided to launch Buzz to everyone with a Google account (probably to gain some leverage for Wave) and ended up breaking every single data privacy law in the book. Using people’s data to give them something they have not asked for – even for free – is a big no-no! So, back to the drawing board…and along came G+…

Secondly, whereas Google seem to understand technology brilliantly, they don’t seem to understand people. From the design of G+, you can see that they simply expected people to “jump” straight off Twitter and Facebook onto G+ overnight. Nuh hu! Ain’t gonna happen. Why? Social media is all about connectivity. On Facebook, I’m connected. Google+ would allow me to do more cool things with my “friends” than Facebook would, but nobody is on there! I sent out loads of invites to connect on G+ and very few of my contacts took it up. And those who did opened an account, used it for a few days, and then finding that none of their friends were on there went back to Facebook.

Let me explain a little more what I mean about connectivity. Google+ allows people to post updates on Google+ that will appear in Twitter and on Facebook. Great! However, it currently doesn’t allow Twitter and Facebook posts to appear automatically on G+. Boooo! People are not going to automatically switch their allegiances overnight and start posting on G+ because their friends are not on there. The people at Twitter and Facebook understood this, which is why they allowed full two-way integration between their two platforms. But at the moment, whereas G+ are quite happy to open this up one-way (utilising Twitter and Facebook’s open APIs), they are not (currently) opening up the other way.

Social Media – rather like successful communication – is all about openness. If G+ were completely open, then people who are fans of Facebook and Twitter would fully integrate their platforms with G+ and, over time – when they slowly work out that G+ is superior – would migrate their time onto G+.

People are creatures of habit, hence all of the uproar about the new Facebook design. You are not going to get them to switch their behaviour onto a new platform overnight, especially if their friends are elsewhere. You are going to have to slowly coax and encourage them. Full integration is, in my opinion, the only way that is going to happen.

Will G+ work? Well, it may do, but I think the good people at Google are going to have to work this one out first. Slowly, slowly, catchy Monkey…

Thank you for this Ian and please keep us posted in future, especially when it’s for or to do with marketing to women.

FOXY Steph

You’ll have noticed that when you start to type in a search, Google tries to be helpful listing your choices below so you can see how many searches have been made by others for specific terms.

I think this service started in the summer so I’ve been watching how it copes with ‘female friendly garage’ and, believe me, not so long ago some one million searches were recorded and this has since risen to two million.

If you think about it, this is a very ambitious service to offer and it could be that some of the slow risers (a million here and a million there aren’t rapid risers compared with the likes of Twitter and other trendy websites) simply aren’t on the priority list of Google records, but it’s good to know there is something for us to measure how effectively FOXY Choice is managing to get the ‘female friendly garage’ message out to women drivers, always with limited marketing money to do the job.

Just to illustrate the wackiness of some of the search results Google is trying to compute, amid guffaws, have a look at their collection of some of the strangest…

I think this will be very useful and it has helped me to illustrate that what we are leading towards ie a more female friendly motor industry is where women drivers want to go! I am reassured too…

FOXY Steph

With new car sales down by a minimum of 30%, if your business is selling cars then times are terribly tough. If you are burying your head in the sand and failing to attract your fair share of the female footfall out there, however, what chance do you stand of surviving a recession?

According to Google research, in advance of ‘Driving Business – opportunities for profit and growth in an uncertain market’ a conference being staged by EurotaxGlass on 13 November at the National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham, one in three new car buyers will visit one dealership only to buy their new car and the number of test drives taken has halved during the last year.

What do we imagine this tells us?

First of all that the male and female motorist is doing more of his or her buying homework before heading to the final dealership of their choice. Online or offline research, they clearly know the car they want as a result and are not prepared to be side-tracked or have to go through the car buying experience more than one time or by taking more than one test drive.

Secondly that, because it is Google research, it will undoubtedly identify that traditional advertising isn’t working as well as it used to. No surprises there; what would you reach for given a choice? A weighty Yellow Pages directory or known and trusted Google and 24/7 online brands, for fast and convenient shopping?

This research will likely confirm what we know already, that most foxy women drivers shop online, are influenced by friends and network madly (online and offline). We know that many still find the car buying experience to be male dominated, unfriendly and patronising, so much so that they even take a man along to be sure of getting a fair deal. In today’s society when so many of us can afford to buy our own!

I also think it is grossly unfair that a foxy lady driver negotiating a new car deal at the end of the month or quarterly trading period is more likely to get a better price than the uninitiated who doesn’t know to haggle.

Does this secret pricing policy exist in any other industry I wonder? At least you know that earlybirds get cheaper holidays and that certain train times are cheaper in advance…

Why so few haggle free price promises by dealers? Why not let the manufacturers and the dealers take the financial risk at the end of the month, not the unfortunate female motorist who chooses to buy her new car mid month, for example. How fed up would you be to know that you could have saved £££s if you had waited for an uncertain but better time to negotiate your new car?

What Google’s research is unlikely to suggest however is that many dealers are missing out on the aftersales opportunity (which is the better earner anyway) as a value-added channel into the new car showroom. I think this may well be because most salesmen are more likely to be in the showroom and most technical guys in the workshop; the salesman is more likely to think about how to sell the new cars he knows, rather than garage services like MOTs, servicing and repairs.

FOXY’s anecdotal research however is that few women drivers realise that a franchised dealership may well be competent at or want to service and repair other makes of cars. Many female motorists do find dealerships to be patronising and more expensive than independent garages (which isn’t necessarily the case we find, providing we match the right customer to the right garage service solution at MOT, car servicing and repair times of course) so there is plenty of room for main dealers to compete more effectively in this area in future.

But service levels need to be (perceived as) much more female friendly in many dealerships, especially in the aftersales departments where women can feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.

We tackle this area in FOXY Choice where garages and dealerships alike sign a female friendly FOXY Promise which is a commitment to never overcharge, patronise or sell services the customer doesn’t need. It is vital that the aftersales manager signs this of course, and not the marketing manager, because they have to be accountable in the event of any complaint made to FOXY Choice.

If dealerships want to impress a customer, they need to understand her needs and to offer something special during her buying homework preparation. When I returned from the Motor Show recently I received several brochures in the post, Toyota sent everything online, but not one female friendly chatty (female even?) dealership representative contacted me afterwards to see if they could help me.

I read recently that £17m a week is lost in dealerships as a result of female walk outs. This could be the difference between survival or not in today’s tough times.

FOXY Steph