If you had to spend 13 hours on hold each year, what would you want to hear?

I'm asking because you probably do spend 13 hours on hold each year. So do your customers.

According to a new study, more than half of the 500 consumers surveyed wait on hold for about 15 minutes per week, or 13 hours annually. And if your company has lengthy hold times, your frequent callers are likely spending much longer than that on hold.

So, it's worth thinking about what you're doing for your callers to a) keep them on the line, b) shorten their perceived wait, and c) create value, so they won't feel as if they're wasting time whenever they call your company.

As an On Hold Marketing provider since 1989, we have more than our share of experience with creating this specific type of content. Here are three key points to keep in mind, whether you're creating your own On Hold Marketing or evaluating the philosophies of various providers:

1) It's all about your callers. Promoting what you do and sell is fine, as long as you present the information in a way that addresses specific caller needs or answers common caller questions.

2) Change is good. Your On Hold Marketing content should be updated regularly and as frequently as your calling patterns dictate. Fresh copy and music let your frequent callers know that you care about their time on hold.

3) Provide a unique experience. Strive to use your On Hold Marketing in a way that both serves your brand identity well and differentiates your company in a way callers will remember long after they hang up.

Our sense of smell is the sense that's most strongly tied to memory, but smells can also drive us to action.

Dunkin Donuts recently tested a concept called "Flavor Radio" on public busses in South Korea. Using an aroma dispersal system, they pumped the smell of coffee into the buses every time a Dunkin Donuts ad played on the radio. The experiment resulted in a 16% increase in visitors to Dunkin Donuts shops near the bus routes and a 29% increase in coffee sales at those stores.

Dunkin Donuts is just the latest in a long line of establishments to see an increase in sales through the use of aroma marketing.

• The Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando used the scent of waffle cones to attract customers to its ice cream shop and increased their sales by 50%.

• H.H. Gregg increased sales by 33% in remodeled stores by using the scents of apple pie, sugar cookies and other home-baked favorites on its sales floors.

• Grocers across the nation find that releasing bakery scents within their stores at key times during the day increases bakery sales by more than 20%.

• Nike saw incredible results when two identical pairs of running shoes were each placed in separate, but identical, rooms. One room was infused with a mixed-floral scent and the other was unscented. Consumers preferred the shoes in the room with the fragrance by a margin of 84%. And they also estimated the price of the shoes in the scented room to be about $10 higher than the shoes in the unscented room.

How can you incorporate aroma into your marketing initiatives to create a unique customer experience and improve conversions? We'd be happy to talk with you about the possibilities.

The 2011 holiday shopping season is over and, with overall sales projected to exceed figures from the last several years, economists and retailers are ready to call it a success.

But the Christmas season is just a six-week segment of a 52-week year, and retailers can’t rely solely on traffic-driving deals and deep discounts to keep their balance sheets in the black.

So, how can you encourage sales and engagement throughout the rest of the year? One way is to create memorable customer experiences.

From electronic endeavors such as email, social media and your website, to in-store sensory efforts using audio, video and even aroma, your marketing should create a customer experience that drives your customers to not only think of you first when they need to make a purchase, but to spend more (increase customer share) when they’re in your store – whether it’s virtual or brick and mortar.

Maybe you pride yourself on offering great customer service. Maybe your clientele think you’re the best at what you do. Maybe you’re growing by leaps and bounds, adding new products and services.

Even if that's your company in a nutshell, just remember this: With every move that you make, always ask yourself, “Is it good for our customers?”

That question seems to have slipped the collective mind of the folks at Netflix, who are in the midst of a marketing nightmare. Since the company pioneered the DVD-by-mail service in 1999, many have sung its praises for the outstanding customer service it provides. But the company with the iconic red envelopes is getting a pink slip from nearly a million customers, and more could be canceling subscriptions soon.

Why? Because Netflix is taking a beloved service and making it more expensive and harder to use. It started back in July when Netflix announced a 60% price increase under a plan to separate its DVD-by-mail subscriptions and its Instant Viewing online service.

Now Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings has upped the ante by announcing that the reorganization will include a re-branding of the DVD service, to be named Qwikster. Netflix will be the Instant Viewing service. Separate names, separate web sites, separate monthly bills.

What was a synergistic service that analyzed your viewing habits and offered DVDs and Instant Viewing choices will now become two very separate entities. No more suggesting a similar Instant Viewing feature when you add a DVD to your queue of preferred films. Nor will they remind you that the DVD you want by mail is already available for Instant Viewing. Netflix won’t exist on Qwikster, and vice versa.

If you’re a Netflix customer, you get less convenience, less service and a bigger monthly bill, plus a dorky new name on those iconic red envelopes. And many of you are not happy.

Since the price hike was unveiled, some 800,000 subscribers have cancelled their Netflix memberships, and the company’s stock price has dropped by nearly 50%. Thousands posted angry comments to the Hastings announcement, and more cancellations are expected.

The move to separate the DVD and Instant Viewing services might make good business sense in the long run, as Netflix looks ahead to a world without DVDs. But what should have been delicate surgery to split the two seems more like an amputation without anesthetic to millions of Netflix customers.

There’s a lesson here for every company. Ask yourself, “Am I always thinking of my customers, to make the experience the best it can be?” If not, you could be standing side-by-side with Netflix, learning the hard way that goodwill and loyalty built over many years can evaporate quickly when customers realize that you don’t put them first.

There may be dozens of opportunities to differentiate your company easily and inexpensively right under your nose. The first step is actively looking for places to inject more of your brand’s personality.

Here’s one example of how Taco Bell does it. They add humor to their sauce, or at least their sauce packets.

Take a look at the quirky copy inside the white space (at left). During a recent visit, my kids and I got a good laugh out of these - and nine or ten others. (We use a lot of sauce.) And all because someone at Taco Bell recognized the opportunity to personalize an everyday touchpoint and make more of it.

Other fast food restaurants have sauce packets, but I’ve never had a memorable experience with them, or shared a few laughs with my family because of them, or written a blog post about them. (Starting to see the added value you can create for your customers and your brand?)

What are some of the touchpoints you can re-think and then customize to elicit a more powerful response and support your brand personality? Product packaging? Invoices? Email signatures? Can your staff answer the phone in a unique way? Could your Facebook page be written from the perspective of one of the products you sell?

Sometimes, it’s the little things that people respond to, remember most vividly, and are more likely to share with others. So, get creative with the goal of helping your brand stand out.

Remember the movie Field Of Dreams and the famous line, "If you build it, they will come?" Some people think that's true about business websites too - just build a great one and they'll come.

But to keep them coming, you need to begin renovations immediately. Keeping your website fresh is vital for everyone and every thing that's visiting.

People like to see new content and features, and so do the search engine robots that sample your website looking for updates to your pages. But what should this content consist of? Scott Randolph of 7xo Media has some sound advice in this area:

You need to craft all your content with an eye for the ultimate goal - conversion. You need to come up with a schedule and stick to it (this is much harder than it sounds). You will need to create content that is interesting and useful for someone, even if they aren’t your customer. You need to give options to share your content (social bookmarking buttons, email this buttons, etc.) and encourage people to use them.

A website upgrade doesn't have to be a huge task if you're freshening your content on a regular basis. You can create customer tips and produce mini case studies. Add testimonials or start a blog that lets you comment on industry trends and pass along great ideas. Open a Twitter account for your business and include a listing of your Twitter posts on your website.

Piece by piece, you can build a better business website. The first step is accepting that the job is never fully completed.