MackCollier.com

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The Business Link Between Customer Empathy and Brand Loyalty

The other day I was talking about mapping content and marketing to the buyer’s journey with Alexandra. Alexandra mentioned what comes after the purchase, and that’s when we began to discuss the role of creating and cultivating brand loyalty. We then had a fascinating discussion about the role that empathy for the customer plays in creating and cultivating loyal customers. I started doing some research into empathy and I wanted to do a deeper dive into the topic here.

Let’s first examine some of the drivers of brand loyalty:

  • We trust the brand. This trust can be established via a consistent experience, customer support, following through on brand promises, etc.
  • We relate to the brand. Here we feel we have common interests and values as the brand We feel as if what’s important to us is also important to the brand.
  • We feel that the brand acknowledges us and appreciates us. They listen to us, they communicate they hear our feedback and act on it. This also leads to us feeling a vested interest in what happens to the brand. We will promote it to other customers, we will defend it against criticism.

 

Now let’s look at empathy. According to Greater Good Magazine, empathy is “used to describe a wide range of experiences. Emotion researchers generally define empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.”  All of this ties into the drivers for brand loyalty; Trust, understanding, being able to relate to the brand.

Empathy for the customer is a paramount skill to have if you are working in customer service. And quite often, customer service is called upon post-purchase, by the customer. Which is also the point at which brand loyalty often is created or enhanced.

A big part of showing empathy to someone is making sure that person understands that you are listening to them, and you are being considerate of their feelings. Whenever I consult with companies on addressing customer complaints, I always stress to them that the company should never apologize unless they actually did something wrong. I tell clients to focus on listening to the customer, and making sure they know that you are listening. That’s far more important than simply saying ‘sorry’. Upset customers want to know that you are listening to them, that you have heard and understood WHY they are upset, and that you give the customer a solution for their complaint.  Starting a customer service interaction by saying “Well I’m sorry that happened to you!’ and then NOT solving their problem, can actually lead to more anger and frustration for the customer. Communicating that you are listening is more important than saying you are sorry.

Taking the time to listen shows that you DO care. It’s critical that your brand listens to its customers, especially when they contact customer service, post-purchase. It’s also important that even though the customer is very likely upset, the main thing the average customer wants when reaching out to customer service, is a rep who will listen and understand why they are upset. This communicates that the brand values that customer and their feelings.

Feeling appreciated is one of the key drivers of brand loyalty. Also keep in mind that everyone, your customers, your employees, we are all under additional pressure and stress right now. Communicating you appreciate others has never been more important. And it will never be more appreciated by others.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: eCommerce Sales Spiking, Smart Marketing For Virtual Events

Happy Thanksgiving week! I hope everyone has a wonderful week with friends and family! Let’s jump into some marketing stories that caught my eye the last few days:

 

According to eMarketer, eCommerce sales will rise by a little over 10% both this year and in 2021. When you consider that’s a big increase over 2018, 2019, it suggests that the changes in shopping behavior we are picking up this year will carry over. As a result, your company should be doing everything it can to streamline the online buying process on your website.  Calls to action should be clear and consistent, content that’s relevant and that moves the buyer through the purchase process should be utilized. More customers will be shifting purchase behavior toward buying online, and your website needs to be able to capitalize on this change.

Virtual events have been very popular this year, for obvious reasons. I love this idea of sending lunch to attendees of virtual events. There are so many opportunities with virtual events, and quite honestly, I’m not a fan of most virtual events because they are a really bad version of live events. But with a little thought and consideration for the attendees, you can come up with ideas like this that greatly improve their experience.

 

It’s been very troubling to see how social platforms continue to censor content it disagrees with. This censorship is often done under the guise of ‘policing misinformaton’, but the end result is typically that content moderators simply remove content because its expresses an opinion that the moderators disagree with. Which is very disturbing, and will likely lead to a removal of the CDA 230 protections that content creators now enjoy. I’ve written before about how this censorship could affect individual content creators in previous posts.

 

Hope everyone has a wonderful Monday! See you back here in 24 hours!

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What Will the Next 12 Months of Social Media Look Like?

As I write this, CEOs from Twitter and Facebook are being grilled during a Congressional hearing, with censorship of content being a hot topic. It seems that user frustration with major social media sites like Twitter, Facebook an Instagram finally came to a head, for a variety of reasons, in 2020. The environment on these social sites has been increasingly toxic in 2020 as politics has become a dominant topic.

Interestingly, Twitter’s moderation efforts have led to the rise of Parler, which has emerged as the first viable competitor to Twitter in nearly decade. Top influencers who recently joined Parler have already seen their follower numbers surpassing their followers on Twitter.

I’ve been spending more time on Parler recently, but it’s clear that the toxic exchanges around politics that people are sick of on Twitter, are slowly migrating to Parler.

But I think (or rather hope) that the rise of Parler signals a potential shift in the future of social media. Parler is a social site where almost all of the conversation happening is around politics. But what if more sites similar to Parler arose, with each one focused on a particular topic. For instance, Twitter is a catch-all. You can find discussions about literally any topic you are interested in.

But what if there was a ‘Twitter’ just for people who are interested in your favorite hobby or topic?  What if there was a platform just for discussing sports, or gardening, or cooking, or Sherlock Holmes, or Pokemon, etc?

I’ve been using the internet long enough to remember when AOL switched from 10 hours a month for $24,99, to unlimited access for the same price. When AOL went unlimited, the experience on AOL changed dramatically. When AOL went unlimited, obviously everyone had a lot more time they could afford to spend on the site.  AOL had many forums and message boards, and when the service went unlimited, the activity levels went up, but so did the amount of arguing. The reality is, when you only have 20 or so hours a month you can use on internet access, you probably aren’t going to waste that time arguing. You are going to search for and share only the most important information. Which means the value of the content in those forums increases. But when you open the floodgates and let everyone in, you also let in a lot of people that have less interest and knowledge of said topic. Which led to more arguing and less informed viewpoints.

By the way, this is why Twitter chats work so well. Because you bring together people that are knowledgeable and passionate about a particular topic. As a result, the conversations that happen in these chats are so much more valuable than what we see on Twitter as a whole. I’ve had so many people tell me that chats are the only reason why they are still on Twitter.

So I’m interested in the success of Parler simply because I’m intrigued by the idea of having social platforms that aren’t a ‘catch-all’ like we have now with Twitter and Facebook, but which are focused on just one topic or area. I think such an approach would lead to much healthier conversations, and the quality of those conversations would increase dramatically, as well.

Here’s to new social media sites that offer us better and more valuable conversation and content in 2021.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Growing Distrust of Influencers, Driving More Sales With Email

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and is ready to have a great week! Here’s a few stories that caught my eye the last few days:

 

I thought this study from Ipsos was very interesting. It found that most consumers don’t put much trust in influencers. In fact, the study found that consumers felt that influencers were only marginally more trustworthy than politicians! Yikes! I do think these results are a bit of an outlier, but at the same time, I do think trust levels for influencers are falling. A big reason why is because influencer marketing has become a cottage industry. Big money is flowing to these influencers, and some are creating content around their sponsors that looks and feels more like an ad, and less like organic praise for a product they use and enjoy.

 

Interesting findings from eMarketer on what we want from our emails. Emails that are pointing us toward products based on our purchase history seems to be the clear winner here. It makes sense, we often want and need products that compliment or are similar to what we’ve already bought. This works in stores as well. How many times have you seen a small display of ketchup placed to the french fries in the freezer section? Or maybe a display of buns placed next to the hot dogs? These are reminders that hey, you might want this product that works well with the one you have already bought. This is simply taking a tried and true upsell opportunity from offline, and bringing it to online in the form of smart email marketing.

 

One of the areas of marketing that I think is ripe for growth is visual representation. Pictures are so important to driving engagement on social media, so if you can nail the visuals, you have a much better chance at grabbing your audiences attention. I love this tweet from Alabama’s football team. Look at how they utilized including multiple images in a tweet. They included two images, and have them both combine to form one larger picture. This is a great example of leveraging visuals to drive higher engagement rates. This is an area I want to focus on with my own content.

Hope you have an amazing and productive week!

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Building Employee and Customer Advocacy Really Is This Simple

Think about a brand that you love. Why do you love that brand? Most people are loyal to brands for many reasons, such as the value they create, the ideas and beliefs they stand for, they feel that the brand actually cares about them.  There are many reasons more, and they are personal.

And that word, ‘personal’ is the key. If you have a personal relationship or view of a brand, then you have affinity for that brand. And affinity leads to advocacy. You want to tell others about that brand, you feel a sense of vested interest in seeing that brand succeed. You want to play some small role in that brand’s success.

This is the simple, 4-step process for creating advocacy. It works for both your employees and your customers. And the reality is, if you don’t have employees that will advocate for your brand, it’s very difficult to create an environment where customers will.

At both the employee and customer level, it starts by initiating interactions that communicate that you care. On the employee side, instead of having 4 weekly meetings a month to discuss how your employees are progressing with their work, what if you made the 3rd meeting of every month instead be focused on helping your employees? What if that meeting was focused on discussing what THE BRAND can do to better help the employees do their job better? Give the employees a chance to discuss what’s holding them back, let them suggest changes that could make their job easier.

“I could be more productive if I could do _____”

“I wish I could devote X amount of time to personal work projects”

“I could get more done if we had fewer meetings like this”

Ok I just threw that last one in there cause I know so many of you were thinking it! But the point is, by interacting and LISTENING to your employees then ACTING on their suggestions, you signal to them that you value their opinions. Also, you are signaling to them that you TRUST your employees to come up with good ideas, and then run with them.

Want to inspire your employees? When they come to you with an idea, give them ownership to get it done. It communicates that you trust the employee, that you value them, and that you know they can do the work without your supervision. That’s incredibly inspiring to the employee.  That’s what creates advocacy.

Also, make sure your employees understand WHY your brand does what it does. As Simon Sinek says “People don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it”. What impact does your brand make on the lives of your customers, and the world? Make sure your employees understand that. We all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We all want a vision to unite us, a larger cause that binds us as a team working toward a common goal. There’s the famous story of the time President Kennedy was touring NASA, and he was stopping employees as he met them and asking them to explain what they did at NASA. He eventually found a janitor, and asked him what he did at NASA.  The janitor replied “I”m helping send man to the moon!”  That was the vision and the ‘why’ that inspired him to do his job.

The same things apply to your customers. Interact and engage with your customers. Ask them for feedback on your brand.  What can be improved, what do they like.  Take their suggestions to heart, and follow up with them on what your brand is doing to implement the changes they want to see. This helps your customers become more invested in your brand and helps create higher levels of customer advocacy.

Interaction leads to Understanding leads to Trust leads to Advocacy. When both your employees and customers advocate for your brand, that leads to higher sales and profits.

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Money Can Buy You Happiness, If You Spend it On This

It’s an age old question; Can money REALLY buy you happiness?

Science has chimed in on this question with a definite answer; It depends.

According to scientific research, money CAN buy you happiness. But, and here’s the catch, that happiness can either be short-term or long-term, based on WHAT you spend your money on.

If you buy products, your happiness from that purchase tends to be short-term. Additionally, your happiness is typically at its highest levels at the moment of purchase. The amount of happiness that you get from a product purchase tends to degrade over time. When you are dealing with products that are frequently updated, such as a new version of the iPhone coming out every year, your happiness levels from your purchase can fall even faster.

So product purchases tend to bring you short-term happiness that fades quickly.

If you want long-term happiness, then scientific research shows that you should spend your money on experiences. For instance, travel. And your happiness from these experiences increases more, if you enjoy those experiences with other people.

Here’s why; Word of mouth. Think about it, your family goes on vacation and that creates memories that you will share for the rest of your lives. In recalling those trips, you continue to get happiness and joy from simply recalling with your family what happened.

I grew up in a rural area of Alabama that had no toy stores. As a child, my exposure to toys in a retail setting was one isle of boys toys and one isle of toys for girls in the local department store. But when I was 8 years old, my family took a trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It was in December, so very cold, in fact I think it was snowing. My family and I were in an area with many small shops on both sides of the cobblestone street. I was walking around marveling at the shops when I saw it. A toy shop! I turned around and there was a huge store display of 12-inch Star Wars dolls! For the rest of my life, I will always remember seeing that gorgeous display on the other side of a frost-covered window.

I could not, for the life of me, remember a single product my family bought during that trip. But I will always remember the experience of being on that cobblestone street and seeing that display of Star Wars figures in that toy shop.

Product purchases bring short-term happiness that fades quickly. Long-term happiness comes from spending money on experiences.

So what does this mean for product marketers? If what you sell only provides short-term pleasure, how do you overcome that?

You focus your marketing, product design, sales and research on the EXPERIENCES that your product enables for the customer. You aren’t just selling a product, you are selling a product that allows the customer to engage in amazing experiences!

Here’s an example. When a financial planner talks to you about planning for retirement, what do they talk to you about?  A good deal of the conversation revolves around ‘what do you want retirement to look like?’ In other words, when do you want to retire, and what do you want to do WHEN you retire? The planner focuses on the life you want to live when you retire, then customizes a financial plan to help you achieve those goals. But when selling the services, a smart planner will focus on what good retirement planning today will mean to your financial future. She will talk to you about the experiences you will be able to have if you create a solid retirement plan today.

Look at Red Bull’s commercials and content. Red Bull sells energy drinks, but almost none of its marketing or content is focused on the products it sells. Instead, almost all of Red Bull’s content focuses on the experiences that its athletes are engaged in. The amazing stunts, tricks and accomplishments that make us ‘ohhh’ and ‘ahhh’! But the underlying message is clear: If you want to do amazing things like this, drink Red Bull.

 

So when you designing your product marketing, focus on the experiences that your product can create for your customers. Ask yourself “What does this product allow our customers to do that’s amazing? How does this product change the lives of our customers?” At first this might seem silly, but after a while, you will probably realize that your product can make a bigger impact on the lives of your customers than you realized

Now you need to make sure your customers realize that as well. Remember, the key is to create happiness for your customers that lasts for life.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Covid Vaccine Spikes Markets, Parler Taking Off

Happy Monday, y’all! Apologies for not posting since last Tuesday, I got too caught up in the election drama like we all did. Unfortunately, it looks like it may be a few more weeks before we get everything sorted. As I tweeted last week, the best thing we can do is turn OFF the media. It’s wonderful for your mental health!

 

Speaking of health, hugely important news from the pharmaceutical world is breaking this morning, as Pfizer has announced that its covid vaccine candidate has achieved 90% effectiveness in trials. The stock market just opened up well over a thousand points to an all-time high on the news.

 

Kids are spending a lot more time with electronic devices this year. This is another indication of how our behavior is changing as a result of spending more time at home due to covid. As parents, it will be a challenge to monitor the new habits our children are adopting in regards to use of electronic devices, and make sure they don’t overdo it.

 

If you haven’t yet heard of Parler, you probably will soon. Parler is the first competitor to Twitter to actually gain some decent traction with users since…gosh…probably Identi.ca, a decade or so ago. Parler is positioning itself as the ‘free speech’ alternative to Twitter. GAB tried this last year, and it really didn’t work that well for them. But Parler has roped in some big-name influencers in conservative media and that’s helping its popularity.  Personally, I love the conversation there, and the exchanges are basically free of the constant arguing and trolls that have taken over Twitter. I’m not a huge fan of the interface, Twitter’s mobile app is much more intuitive for me. But I will definitely be spending more time on Parler, you can find me there under the name MackCollier, same as my Twitter handle.

https://twitter.com/dbongino/status/1325630382088269825

 

That’s it for Monday, hope everyone has a wonderful week! Remember to tune the toxic people and information out of your life, and embrace the good people! See you tomorrow!

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October’s Blogging Recap

October was the second month of this blog’s ‘relaunch’ as I like to call it. I started blogging here in 2009, and during that time I had a very inconsistent posting schedule. I would go periods of months where I would post 2-3 times a week, then go months when I would post 2-3 times a month. It was mostly a function of my work schedule and I always felt if a choice for my time had to be made, that work would always come first.

But earlier this year, I saw the massive disruption that covid was playing on all our everyday lives, and I made an assumption that since more of us would be spending more time at home, that blog readership would increase. So I decided to double-down on my blogging efforts.  Over the Summer I worked to figure out what my content calendar would look like, and decided on an ideal schedule that would let me post up to 6 new posts a week.

Now, I have to be honest, when I started this, I figured I would hit a wall after about 2 weeks, and by now I would be down to 2-3 posts a week. For October, I actually averaged 5 posts a week, so I’m very proud of myself. I did have a couple of weeks recently where I only had 4 posts, but I haven’t gone below that, and really don’t want to. I’m trying to balance the perfectionists curse of wanting to write an amazing post every single day (which is impossible) and wanting to write SOMETHING every single day. I’ve given myself permission to write more as opposed to only writing when I have something ‘awesome’ to say.

So the main takeaway from October is:

Traffic up 7.8%! For the first 2-3 months, I mainly wanted to see traffic increase and get that moving in the right direction. As time goes on, I’ll get more dialed in on boosting keyword and page traffic.  Speaking of which, search traffic had a big jump, up over 30% in October! Pretty surprised it took that big of a jump, will be curious to see if that continues.

My goals moving forward are to commit to at least 4 posts a week.  The posts on Weds (Marketing and Movies) and my posts on Friday (Any topic I choose) and Saturday (Toolbox Saturday) are proving to be the hardest to write every week.

Thank you all for reading, I greatly appreciate the emails, messages and comments on social media. I’ll see everyone tomorrow!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Pinterest’s Growth, B2Bs Leveraging Content Marketing

Happy Monday, y’all! Here’s a few marketing stories that caught my eye over the last week.

Social media may be taking it on the chin right now, but Pinterest is an exception. The site is benefiting from people spending more time at home, and I have to admit, I’ve spent more time on Pinterest in the last 5 months than I did the previous 5 years. The challenge ahead for Pinterest is how they can continue to give sellers opportunities to sell through the site, while not compromising the user experience. In fact if done properly, Pinterest could actually add more sales opportunities for sellers and ENHANCE the user experience. We’ll see how well they navigate this.

 

KIND bars are making an interesting move to stand out from other health bars like Cliff. The company is trying to change customer behavior and have customers eat their bars before working out and not as a snack. To this end, they offered $100 to the first 1000 people that submitted a receipt for their products OR a competitor.  The $100 is to help with fitness expenses for customers. It will be interesting to see if KIND has a strategy in place to stay connected to those 1000 customers. This could be the start of a larger and long-term advocacy effort, and it will be interesting to see if KIND is thinking that far ahead.  I suspect they are, given the amount of money spent just on the giveaway.

Mixed results on how content marketing is working for B2B marketers, according to new research from CMI/On 24 and Marketing Profs. On the one hand, more marketers (75%) are reporting that content marketing has helped them generate leads this year versus last (70%). On the other hand, the percentage of marketers who generated sales/revenue through content marketing also dipped slightly (51% in 2020 vs. 53% in 2019). You can review the study here.

 

Thank you so much for reading, I greatly appreciate it, and will see you here tomorrow!

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Marketing and Movies: Top Gun

A few weeks ago I talked about how the movie Smokey and the Bandit had the greatest movie product placement of all time, Bandit’s jet black Firebird Trans-Am. The movie had an immediate impact on sales of the sporty Pontiac, and the car is still highly-prized by vintage car collectors to this day.

The car played an integral part of the movie Smokey and the Bandit, and did so in a way that wasn’t forced, that made sense to the audience and that actually made the car seem cool and desirable. While Smokey and the Bandit was at its heart a comedy-adventure movie, General Motors no doubt saw the movie as a 2 hour promotional video for the Pontiac Trans-Am. And a far better one than GM could have produced.

That brings us to 1986’s blockbuster movie Top Gun. The film’s protagonist is Pete Mitchell.a brilliant fighter pilot, who is constantly being disciplined for refusing to follow all of the ‘rules of engagement’ while flying. Pete is the son of Duke Mitchell, who was also an excellent fighter pilot, who flew in the Vietnam War. Pete has been told by the government that his dad disappeared behind enemy lines, and his family name has been engulfed in controversy as a result. In fact, we learn in the movie that Pete was denied entry into the US Naval Academy because of the actions of his father.

So understandably, Maverick flies with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, to not only live up to the flying skills of his father, but to prove himself to fellow pilots that doubt him based on the reputation of his dad. Maverick is eventually given the opportunity to join Top Gun, the premier school for teaching dogfighting skills to pilots. This school is for the elite of the elite, so it’s the perfect place for a pilot with a chip on his shoulder to prove himself. Maverick quickly positions himself as one of the top pilots in the school, but a tragic accident while training leaves him questioning if he should quit the school or not. Before deciding to leave, he visits one of his instructors, who tells him that he had actually flown with his dad in Vietnam, and that the story he had been told for years about his father was wrong. The instructor told Maverick that he and his father were hopelessly outmatched in an aerial combat exchange.  Maverick’s father had a chance to leave the fight and save his own life, but he stayed to save the lives of several teammates, before his plane was finally shot down.

The story itself is interesting enough, but what makes the film is the breathtaking flight sequences. It was actually a wonderful recruitment tool for the US Navy, who saw a massive spike in enrollment because of the movie. Saavy recruiters even set up booths in the lobby of movie theaters so they could talk to candidates as soon as they left the movie, no doubt excited about what they had just experienced.

And the Navy will likely see another spike in recruitment when the film’s sequel, Top Gun 2, is released next Summer. As you can see from this trailer, the flight scenes are absolutely incredible:

If you were to argue that the Top Gun films are simply a protracted recruitment video for the Navy, you wouldn’t be completely wrong. The Pentagon worked with the studio to make the original Top Gun movie and has worked with the studio on the sequel. Because the government knows that storytelling is a very effective marketing tool. We talked yesterday about using storytelling to make your blog writing more interesting, and it also works incredibly well for movies.

Help your customers understand how your products or services are valuable and make their lives more meaningful. That’s great marketing at its heart. Top Gun inspired many Americans to join the Navy to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And hopefully fly cool planes as well. But it was all marketing.  The fact that it didn’t really feel like marketing is what makes it so effective.