Think Like a Rockstar Review at #SMIATL

This weekend I was lucky enough to attend and present at the #SMIATL conference in Atlanta.  On Friday afternoon, we did a Live #Blogchat session which was fabulous.  We discussed how to integrate blogging into your over-arching social media strategy, and also how to improve your blogging efforts.  Around 60-70 people attended the sold-out event, and it was a wonderful experience.  Thanks again to everyone that came!

On Saturday I presented a new version of my Think Like a Rockstar presentation, which is embedded below.  I am so proud of the fact that the session was very popular with attendees, and the deck on SlideShare has been viewed over 30,000 times in the 1st 48 hours of being uploaded.  I wanted to walk you through the deck, but also how I created it and what’s contributed to it being so popular.

First, if you’ve spent any amount of time reading this blog, you know how passionate I am about helping companies better connect with their brand advocates.  As a result, this is by far my favorite session and presentation topic.  A big reason why I love the Think Like A Rockstar session is because it takes the idea of connecting with brand advocates/evangelists, and frames it in a way that sparks the ‘Ah-Ha!’ moments.  When you ask a company ‘Would you like to learn how to energize and mobilize your brand evangelists?’, you might get some blank stares.  But if you ask ‘Would you like to learn how your brand can have raving and passionate fans just like Rockstars do?’, then companies tend to get excited.

The deck’s central question is: Why do Rockstars have fans, and companies have customers?  If you think about it, most of us self-identify as being a ‘fan’ of any music artist when we download their music or buy their CDs.  But when we buy a company’s products, we tend to view ourselves as customers of that company.

Why?

As it turns out, it’s because that’s exactly who both groups target.  Companies want new customers.  In fact, acquiring new customers is the top marketing objective of companies.  The problem is, new customers have little to no brand loyalty toward that company.  Which also explains why it costs 6-7 times as much to acquire a new customer versus retaining an existing one.

But notice in the above well-drawn graph that companies and Rockstars focus on opposite ends of the customer spectrum.  Companies focus the majority of their efforts on acquiring new customers.  This is the group that’s by far the biggest in market size, but that also has little to no brand loyalty.

But notice that Rockstars focus on that tiny sliver at the end that represents Brand Advocates (which is a fancy business term for ‘Fan’).  Brand Advocates are by far the smallest group, but they also have by far the highest levels of brand loyalty.  And then there is this:

So Rockstars are focused on connecting with their fans, the smallest group, but this group has such his brand loyalty that it not only spends more than existing customers, they also refer business equal to almost HALF the money they spend.

Which means that companies are trying to acquire new customers, and spending 6-7 as much versus retaining existing customers.

While Rockstars focus on connecting with their fans, the group that is spending more than existing customers, and they are also referring business FROM those existing customers.

So if Rockstars can figure this out, why can’t most companies?

Now I wanted to talk a bit about what I did to help make this presentation as popular as it has been (which has been SO rewarding!).

First, as I’ve said, I am so passionate about this topic.  So in the weeks leading up to #SMIATL, I made sure that everyone attending knew I was presenting Think Like A Rockstar, and that it was going to be a ‘big deal’.  The main reason why I was saying that was because I was making a promise to the attendees as well as MYSELF.  I spent over 100 hours in prepping this particular deck and rehearsing my talk.  Because again, this is my passion project.

Second, I promoted the talk all last week here on MackCollier.com in FIVE posts.  But each post tied into an element of the talk, so I was previewing the session, instead of just blindly promoting it.

Third, I had some fun with the talk.  Since the theme is how Rockstars connect with fans, prior to the start of the talk, I played a bit of a Led Zeppelin concert from 1979.  Think about it, how often have you come into a session 15 mins early, and stared at the introductory slide for 15 mins till the talk started?  I just wanted to have some fun and give attendees something neat to look at as they were coming in.  And of course I tweeted out that I had a little surprise in store if they arrived early 😉

Fourth, my delivery was solid.  It wasn’t perfect, but I received many compliments on the session itself.  Again, I had 100+ hours of prep time invested, so it had better have been good.  The truth is, there’s not a lot of short-cuts here, it’s mostly about putting in the hours.

Fifth, I uploaded the file to SlideShare immediately prior to my talk starting, and scheduled HootSuite to tweet out a link right as my talk ended.  Now this I actually screwed up, as I got the time change wrong, and forgot HootSuite was still on Central time.  I scheduled it to tweet out at 1pm, when I thought I was telling it to go out at 11am, which was right as my talk ended.  Live and learn.

The deck is embedded below, I hope you find it valuable.