Over the last couple of years there’s been a pattern of brands running campaigns designed to ‘show our fans how much we love them’. Typically this involves the brand surprising the fan with some sort of free gift, the fan(s) is thrilled, and this is all filmed and turned into a commercial, then promoted in case studies at conferences, white papers, etc. The basic format is a commercial or video that says ‘We found 10 fans that love our brand, and we decided to show them how we love them right back’.
It’s great that brands are connecting with their fans and rewarding them for being fans. It really is. But brands should be smart enough to embrace their fans all the time, not just when the cameras are rolling.
Your brand shouldn’t embrace its fans because it could lead to good publicity, you should embrace your fans because you want to.
Fans don’t want to hear from you just when its convenient to you, they want a relationship with you. They want constant contact and interaction. So if you launch a ‘campaign’ designed to connect with them once or twice then disappear, you are actually hurting that relationship with your fans and making them less likely to promote you.
As I said Wednesday in #Rockstarchat, the most successful brands are the ones that make the transaction secondary to the person. These brands want to connect with their customers and create a better experience for them and a deeper connection. With the understanding that doing so will lead to more sales.
Your fans love you and view your brand as being their brand. Which is why they want you to connect with them, they want you to ask them how they can help you and when they give you advice on how to make your brand better, they want you to act on that advice.
This isn’t rocket science, folks. This is about building relationships. Think about when someone likes you, if you only initiate contact with that person when you want to see them and if you only want to do the things that you like with them, how would that person react? They probably wouldn’t like you for very long. You want to show that person that you are willing to do some of the things that they like to do as well. It can’t be only about you, there has to be some compromise.
It’s the same thing with connecting with your fans. You can’t do it only when you can make a commercial out of it and get positive publicity. It has to be because you love your fans, and want a closer connection with them.
That closer connection takes time and energy and a plan to develop, but its so worth it for your brand. And before you say that you have no idea how to create a plan for connecting with your fans, remember that I wrote the book that shows you exactly how.
You are so right Mack.
A little empathy goes a long and brands (and anyone who has real people as clients, customers, users) need to make the time to take time to listen.
I just got off a Skype call with a user who is frustrated with us because we can’t fix her issue soon enough. We know it’s going to be a couple of more months and she does too.
There is no short-term satisfaction we can provide her, but by taking the time to listen and strengthen the bond between us when things are not going right, we can be a lot more confident that she will be happy and hanging around when things ARE going right. She got off Skype at least feeling that she and her problem is cared about. That is something right there!
I strongly feel that we as brands need to do more than just listen – we need to be human and care. Even when we don’t have all of the answers, we shouldn’t shy away from reaching out and lending an ear when our customers are experiencing pain — even if it’s unpleasant.
Kelly you’re so right, just taking the time to listen and to let her know that you care enough TO listen is very important. By placing that call you’ve impacted her opinion of Paper.li and by extension what she will tell others about your brand. That’s the value of making that call.