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The Promise and (Potential) Peril of Social Commerce

Social media sites like Pinterest and Instagram are embracing the idea of social commerce. Social commerce is about making it easier for users and accounts to sell products directly via their feeds and content. For instance, Instagram users that meet a certain follower threshold can link directly to products in their Stories.

For marketers, the appeal of social commerce is obvious. Leveraging social content to drive sales has always been a goal for marketers, and as platforms are embracing functionality that makes this easier, companies are obviously quite excited at the potential for social commerce. From the user perspective, my view is, how can social commerce be leveraged to improve the user experience? If the user experience is enhanced, then those users will embrace social commerce functionality on these sites.  The attempts at incorporating social commerce will pass or fail in great part on how successfully these attempts understand user intent and only sell to those users who are truly ready to buy.

I think there is great promise and (potential) peril when it comes to social commerce, and I wanted to discuss how social commerce could work, and how it could fail. For now, marketers are focusing on social commerce to immediately complete sales. But when you factor in the social element, there’s great opportunity for these platforms to facilitate the awareness, consideration and research phases that then lead to commerce, and do so in a social setting, with users working together to help move each other through the sales funnel. So lets look at both the good and potential bad about social commerce:

So What Is Social Commerce?

Social commerce is about leveraging social media sites and platforms to facilitate and complete sales directly on that site or platform. For instance, Instagram recently announced a Checkout feature that will eventually let users buy products without leaving the Instagram app.  This feature is currently in beta, here’s how Instagram says it will work:

“Today, we’re introducing checkout on Instagram. When you find a product you love, you can now buy it without leaving the app.

When you tap to view a product from a brand’s shopping post, you’ll see a “Checkout on Instagram” button on the product page. Tap it to select from various options such as size or color, then you’ll proceed to payment without leaving Instagram. You’ll only need to enter your name, email, billing information and shipping address the first time you check out.

Once your first order is complete, your information will be securely saved for convenience the next time you shop. You’ll also receive notifications about shipment and delivery right inside Instagram, so you can keep track of your purchase.”

 

The idea of using social media to directly drive sales is not a new concept, in 2014 Twitter let brands add a Buy button directly to tweets. This feature was later removed, but it shows that social media brands have been trying to find a way to add social buying functionality into its platforms for a while now.

How Social Commerce Could Benefit Users

The idea of implementing selling directly into social media streams and sites is a scary proposition for a lot of social media users. That’s because, marketers tend to push sales on customers even when they aren’t ready to buy. If used smartly, social commerce could greatly benefit customers by tapping into the ‘social’ element of social media.

First, let’s revisit the buyer’s journey and talk about how it applies to social media. This post on How to Sell With Social Media covers the topic, and I’ll summarize the stages here:

  1. Unaware, AKA Who the hell are you?. The buyer has no idea who you are, or why they should want to listen to you, much less buy anything from you. When companies talk about using social media to ‘Build Awareness’, this is the group they are targeting.
  2. Slightly aware and slightly interested. This group has begun to understand who you are, and can start to see how your products and services can fit into their lives.
  3. Interested and considering buying. This group knows who you are, knows what you sell, and knows how those products and services fit into their lives. Now they are trying to decide who to buy from, you or a competitor.
  4. Ready to buy. Take my money!

 

These are the stages for the journey that the average buyer goes on. As you can see, the buyer isn’t READY to be sold to until really the 4th and last stage. And the buyer doesn’t want any promotional content focused on products and services until the 3rd stage when they are doing research.  So the challenge for social media sites and platforms that want to incorporate social commerce is to factor in user intent. If the user isn’t ready to buy, selling them won’t create a positive experience for them.

On the other hand, when you add a social layer over the buying process, that can change things. If you take a product that I don’t know about or know I want, and add an endorsement for that product via a person I trust ON SOCIAL MEDIA, that can quickly move me to a point where I am ready to buy.

Let give you an example of how this can work: A few years ago I was invited to join a Facebook group based around business travel. These are peers (many of who I knew and trusted) who wanted to create a Facebook group just to discuss navigating a lifestyle where you are traveling more than you are at home. In the course of the conversations of this group, product recommendations would often come up. Someone would mention a problem they had with frequent business travel, someone else would recommend a product they bought that helps solve that problem. Several times I saw members buy a product another member had recommended, I did as well.

The funny thing is, I wasn’t interested in buying those products until someone I trusted recommended them on social media. If I had seen an ad for those same products appear in my feed, I would have ignored them, but because someone I trusted recommended those same products, I bought them.  But even then, all they could do was link to Amazon or another site.  We didn’t have the ability to buy right there without leaving Facebook.  Social commerce is about removing that layer of friction to the buying process AND it’s about shifting the buying process to people you know and trust. When leveraged correctly, social commerce can merge with the organic discussions that are already happening on social media, and add utility to the user experience, instead of degrading it.

For instance, Pinterest has begun incorporating social commerce into its platform. If executed correctly, this could improve the experience for Pinterest users as many are on the site browsing for ideas or doing research for future purchases. Additionally, comments from other users can help users make decisions on which products to buy and which ones to avoid. The key is adding social commerce in a place and time that the user is OPEN to the addition and doesn’t view it as a distraction or irritant. Social commerce should enhance the user experience, not detract from it.

Related: Pinterest explains its new social commerce products on the Behind the Numbers Podcast.

 

The Potential Risks of Social Commerce

At its best, adding a commerce layer to social interactions could provide great utility for users, while helping customers work with other customers to better organize information and recommendations. It helps connect customers with products they need and can use, and can help them make smarter purchase decisions, by leaning on advice from peers and friends they trust.

But there is a potential risk to adding commerce to social interactions, especially if the commerce involves leveraging those social interactions to create new sales that otherwise might not happen. It can lead to spending more than you wanted to, and increase feelings of remorse, post-purchase.

Here’s an example of what I mean: Last year during the week of Thanksgiving, I downloaded and began playing a game on my iPhone called World War Rising. I figured it would be a fun time-killer and I had some free time during the holidays. The game itself it pretty forgettable, but it does have a very strong social element driving it. The game is set up so alliances of people wage ‘war’ on each other by attacking each others bases. An alliance can have up to 100 members and members have chat functionality as well as private messaging to connect with each other.

Here’s where things get tricky. The game is set up to encourage you to interact with your fellow alliance members. You get to know your teammates, and feel a connection to them. The game has events where teammates work together so that the alliance as a group receives prizes.  So you quickly develop an affinity and sense of kinship for your teammates.

What’s curious, and a bit scary, is how the game monetizes its players. The game offers players packs of goodies that are designed to help them grow their bases and become stronger. These packs can range in price from $5 all the way up to $99.  And believe it or not, there are a LOT of people that spend a LOT of money on these packs. It’s not at all uncommon to find players that have spent THOUSANDS of dollars on this game.

Many times, I have had a player tell me that they bought a $99 pack and they justified the purchase to themselves by saying “I felt I owed it to the team to get stronger”. When I first joined the game and learned that people spent hundreds if not thousands on the game, I thought these people must be insane! But after playing the game for a while, I can totally understand why people spend money on the game. There really is a sense of wanting to HELP your teammates by buying packs to get stronger. And when a player buys a pack, they are congratulated by their teammates. I’ve talked to players who have played previous versions of this game by the same developers and they all comment on how the developers have selling to its players down to a science. They know how to drive sales, and I would even say it comes dangerously close to manipulating players to spend money. If your base is attacked and you suffer a major defeat, you might be offered a pack that promises to “help you recover now!” or something similar.

 

Selling via social media has always been about accepting the behaviors of the users and improving the experience for those users. If you try to change behavior via commerce, it’s very easy to alienate and irritate users. But if you accept the organic behavior of users and only introduce commerce functionality to users who are ready to buy, then you are offering utility, not hindrance.

Either way, social commerce is here to stay. There will no doubt be growing pains, and hopefully marketers will work with existing user behavior when incorporating commerce into social channels, instead of trying to change behavior.

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What I Saw and Learned at Adobe Summit 2019

This year I made my third trip to Las Vegas for the Adobe Summit as part of the Adobe Insiders group. This is a group of influencers who serve as on site ‘correspondents’ for Adobe in helping to promote the event and share key insights. We also serve to advise Adobe on the focus, structure and strategy behind Summit, but that’s in a more limited capacity.

I wanted to share some of the things I saw and learned in my 4 days in Las Vegas for Summit. This post will be structured to cover two main areas. First, I wanted to discuss the event itself, some of the key takeaways and topics discussed. After that, I wanted to talk a bit about the structure of the Adobe Insiders group as I know many of you are working with influencers at your companies, and it’s always helpful to see how other companies work with influencers.

Retention is the new ‘Growth’ 

This was a big theme at Adobe Summit. The idea that by delivering amazing experiences for your customers, you retain them longer, reduce churn, and the associated costs from acquiring new customers.

This is, of course, a theme that’s near and dear to my heart, and was a big driver behind my writing Think Like a Rock Star. The idea that your current customers can do a much better job of acquiring new customers and driving growth than traditional marketing efforts. Tying into this theme was the importance of delivering amazing digital experiences to customers. One of the key focus points of the entire conference was the significance of personalizing the experience that the customer receives.

Now, this is where I want to play devil’s advocate a bit. Many of the sessions and discussions I saw and participated in at Adobe Summit around the idea of personalization centered on the idea of delivering a personalized experiences to the customer in order to complete a sale. This is understandable, as Adobe’s Experience Cloud suite of products are focused on helping businesses increase customer sales to a great degree. But when marketers think of personalization when it comes to digital experiences, this effort needs to be applied throughout the buying process, not just when the customer is at a consideration stage. In fact, the ability to personalize content and experiences prior to the consideration stage, is key to moving the uninterested or unaware customer to a point where they are ready to buy. ‘Personalization’ to many marketers means “how can we customize the sales offer to each individual customer, in order to increase sales?”, while ‘personalization’ to many customers means “give me relevant content and experiences at every touchpoint, regardless of whether I am ready to buy or not”.  That is a disconnect that many marketers need to be aware of, and address by closing that gap between customer expectations, and what marketers deliver.

Tying into the idea of delivering better experiences was the idea of the B2E business.  You have B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer), but then you have some businesses that sell to both consumer and business customers. And in some cases, the buyers may be buying for both their business as well as personal (consumer) use.  So the idea of the B2E (business to everyone) was mentioned early and often at Adobe Summit.

The underlying idea was to stop thinking of a client as being solely B2B or B2C since we are rapidly moving toward a business environment where many companies will have both consumer and business customers, and marketing will need to reflect that and offer a sort of hybrid approach that’s still relevant to end customer.

BTW I would be remiss if I did not mention the exhibit hall/trade show area at Adobe Summit. Summit has always done a fabulous job with its trade show area. At many events, the trade show area is a huddled group of booths that event organizers are constantly pushing attendees toward, that most attendees really don’t want to spend time at. But Summit’s ‘Community Pavilion’ is so nicely done. The area has plenty of booths and all the things you expect at a conference exhibit hall. But it also has a ton of activities, food and drinks, and other attractions that suck you in and keep you in the area. All this is entertaining and makes you want to walk around and see the sights. And as such, increases the likelihood that you will stop by a few booths and talk to the exhibitors. With all the ancillary activities happening, it gives everyone a reason to come to the area, slow down and mingle. Which greatly increases the chances that more attendees will stop by more booths as a result.

 

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@kateoneill is doing some serious hand talking with @kerrygorgone #adobesummit

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In addition, Adobe provided ‘recharging stations’ throughout the conference area, which were greatly appreciated.  Adobe Summit has grown incredibly in just the last few years.  The first time I attended in 2016, I believe the attendance was 10,000.  This year, it was a little over 17,000. The event just keeps getting bigger and I honestly did not talk to any attendees who ever got tired or felt overwhelmed, just the opposite in fact.

Adobe Insiders Influencer Group

I wanted to shift gears a bit and talk a little about the structure of the Adobe Insiders group that was on-site and working with Adobe during the Adobe Summit.  2016 was my first year working with Adobe as a member of its Insiders group.  I believe the size of the group was under 10 in 2016.  I was also part of the Insiders group in 2017 when it was around 20 members, and this year the group totaled around 60 social media, marketing and technology influencers.

The over-arching goal of the group was to help promote the Adobe Summit and for each of us to share relevant insights and information from the speakers, keynotes and even attendees. Our feedback and insights were shared across all our usual social media channels, with an emphasis placed on Twitter since its much easier to track and access mentions on Twitter, especially at volume. The main hashtag used, #AdobeSummit, was a top trending topic on Twitter for pretty much the duration of the event. The work of the Insiders group played a big role in that.

I advise and consult with many companies who are working with groups of influencers or brand ambassadors. I always advise these companies to create platforms and channels to allow the group to become connected and to interact with each other prior to the event. Adobe did a wonderful job of facilitating communication channels for the group, including a private Twitter group, a Slack channel, conference calls, and even through #AdobeChat. It helped build camaraderie among the group, and by bringing some of the same members back every year, we form a bond as well.  Some of the members of this year’s group I knew from working with them in 2016 and 2016 at the Summit.

And what a group it was. I was able to see many old friends and a few people like Ann Handley and David Armano that I hadn’t seen in years.

All said, Adobe Summit was a wonderful event and I loved every minute it. Typically, I hit what I call ‘The Introvert’s Wall’ on the 2nd or 3rd day at an event. I get exhausted and honestly am ready to go home. That never happened in my 4 days in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit. The event kept my interest and attention throughout, and being able to spend so much time with my friends in the Insider group as well as my friends at Adobe made it a wonderful week. Information is already up for Adobe Summit 2020, and I hope I will see you there!

Disclaimer: Adobe sponsored my trip to Adobe Summit and the opinions I shared about the event here and on other social media channels were my own. 

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The Factors That Drive Brand Loyalty in 2019

Wikibuy recently surveyed 5,000 people to learn what made them loyal to a particular brand. You can find the research here, but I wanted to go over some of the findings:

Product Quality is the Top Driver of Brand Loyalty. 40% of respondents identified product quality as the attribute most likely to make them loyal to a particular brand. What this means is that social media will not save you from having a shitty product. We can talk about social media, content marketing, digital transformation all we want, but if the product is crap, nothing else matters.

So if you have a product that isn’t considered to be high-quality by your customers, how do you change that? The starting point is in better understanding what your customers value and view as being a quality product.

In the past couple of years Voice of the Customer programs have become en vogue at many companies as a way to have a structured plan in place to better solicit then act on feedback from customers. Whenever I am advising companies on building a brand ambassador program, I try to see if there’s a way to create a Customer Advisory Panel as an offshoot of this effort.

Regardless of the name, the end goal of better understanding your customers can greatly improve product design, functionality, and quality. Remember, quality is a subjective term. If you better understand your customers, you also better understand what they view as ‘quality’ in regards to your product or service. By incorporating and acting on customer feedback, you can improve the quality of the product in the eyes of the customer, which increases the chance of creating brand loyalty.

27% of Customers Who Are Brand Loyalists Will Buy Another Product From That Same Brand. This is an interesting finding as it says that loyalty for a brand can transfer across products for 27% of your customers. The study also found that over half of respondents recommend products and services from their favorite brands to other customers.

This ties into another study that found that less than 5% of your customers generate 100% of your Word of Mouth. What we can take from these two studies is that your most loyal customers are generating new sales and they are also the most engaging and active customers you have. As a result, new customer acquisition should flow through your current, loyal customers, instead of through advertising. This is a disconnect that many brands can’t get past.

 

There’s a common thread running through both this points and it is this: Leverage your most loyal customers to improve product design, marketing and sales. Some of the most successful (and bravest) companies leverage their current, happy customers, to drive growth and acquire new customers. Many companies see the value in leveraging current customers to promote their brand, but the true value in working with your current customers comes from leveraging them as a feedback channel. Customers are more trusted than brands when it comes to product promotion, which means we value the opinions of our friends and family more than we do brand advertisements.

Let’s say Tom is in the market for a new car. Based on his situation, he decides he wants a sedan. He would probably start by doing research on the internet, consulting websites and blogs to get a sense or what the most highly-ranked sedans are.

After that initial round of research, he settles on 5 different models. One of which, is a Ford Fusion. His co-worker, Lisa owns a Ford Fusion, so Tom decides to talk to her about her Fusion. Another of Tom’s models being considered is a Honda Accord, and his brother-in-law Hank has an Accord, so he also asks Hank his opinion on owning an Accord.

The feedback Tom receives from Lisa and Hank will likely go a long way toward determining which model car Tom decides to get. Note that the majority of the information Tom uses to make his decision is NOT coming from Honda or Ford. It’s coming from other customers and third-party websites and bloggers.

But what makes the interactions with Lisa and Hank so valuable for Tom is that they both know and understand Tom and what he wants from a vehicle. Tom really likes how Hank’s Honda Accord looks, and believes it has better features than the Ford Fusion.  He’s almost sold on the Accord, and mentions this to his co-worker Lisa.  Tom and Lisa are vendors, and their jobs require them to spend a lot of time visiting retailers in their sales district.  So they are both spending a lot of time driving. Lisa tells Tom that she actually considered buying an Accord, but opted for the Fusion for one reason only.

“It’s a more comfortable car. The drivers seat is wonderful, and as you know Tom, that makes a big difference given how many miles we have to drive every day”, Lisa explains to Tom. Since Lisa understands Tom, she can give him customized feedback that’s more relevant to Tom.

Guess which automobile Tom will likely buy? And if Ford were working with Lisa in an ambassador program, Lisa could relay that feedback to Ford, and perhaps Ford could tweak its marketing communications to highlight how comfortable the seats are in the Fusion, especially on longer drives.

 

So if you want to brand loyalty in 2019, focus on improving product quality, and also on leveraging your current, satisfied customers, as a way to acquire product feedback that will help you improve product quality.

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How to Structure a Welcome Pack For Brand Ambassadors

Recently, the Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association launched its first Brand Ambassador Program. You can learn more about the program here. I gave AMLTA some feedback on the program at launch, and they sent me the Welcome Pack they are sending their Brand Ambassadors as they enter the program. I wanted to share the contents with you here as I know many of you are considering a brand ambassador program for your own company or organization and this can help you figure out what to include when you reach out to your own brand ambassadors.

AMLTA promotes the North Alabama area and its ambassadors are a new tool to help local and regional travelers and tourists learn more about what makes North Alabama such a wonderful place to visit. These ambassadors will be helping to tell North Alabama’s stories and to help put a spotlight on what makes the area so special and unique.

 

What is a Welcome Pack for Brand Ambassadors?

A welcome pack is given to brand ambassadors as they agree to enter your brand ambassador program. Typically, a welcome pack will include merchandise associated with your brand, and other items designed to communicate to the brand ambassadors that you appreciate their involvement. Additionally, a good welcome pack will include guidelines and advice for creating social media content that promotes the brand, as well items that can be given to customers such as swag or discount codes. A good welcome pack will make ambassadors feel appreciated, but also give them the tools they need to create content that better promotes your brand, as well as connect with potential customers.

With that definition in mind, let’s look at what Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association included in its Welcome Pack.

The Welcome Pack given to brand ambassadors includes:

  • Three t-shirts
  • One ball cap
  • North Alabama Activity Book
  • Spiral notebook and calendar
  • Flyer for connecting on social media
  • Spiral instruction book on how to use social media

Here’s the clothes included:

Welcome pack for AMLTA ambassadors

The three shirts and hat include the #VisitNorthAl hashtag as well as mentions the NorthAlabama.org website. This also gives the ambassadors clothing to wear when they are visiting sites and attractions around North Alabama. It’s worth remembering that with a program such as this, where a tourism association is using a brand ambassador program, the tourism association is attempting to get its member attractions and sites engaged in the program. By launching a brand ambassador program such as this, AMLTA is communicating to current and potential members in North Alabama that its ambassadors will help promote tourism in North Alabama. Sites and attractions around North Alabama will be able to more easily identify the program’s ambassadors, and see the value from their work. This will likely lead to members being proactive about working with the ambassadors directly to help coordinate trips and work with them on site. As the value of the program is more clearly communicated to members, those members will be more willing to participate and work with the brand ambassadors.

AMLTA also included a spiral Time to Get Social instruction book for its Brand Ambassadors. I just love this idea, as the book is designed to not only teach the ambassadors how to create content with social media, but to do so in a way that helps promote sites and attractions in North Alabama. The book gets into content creation, brand positioning and gives the ambassadors advice on how to best promote and showcase North Alabama via social media.

Social media guidelines for AMLTA ambassadors

If you’re launching a brand ambassador program, it’s vital that you give your ambassadors training and clear instruction on how to properly communicate with the people they will be interacting with every day. This instruction book on how to use social media is a fabulous example of a guidebook you could give your ambassadors to carry with them ‘in the field’.

 

When you are working with your brand ambassadors and giving them information and materials associated with the program, you want to focus on three areas:

  • Making sure the brand ambassadors are easily identified as such to other people
  • Making sure the brand ambassadors have the materials they need to promote your company or organization in a way that’s consistent with your program’s goals
  • Making sure the brand ambassadors have a way to refer other potential ambassadors to the program

When you create a Welcome Pack for your brand ambassadors, think about how you can create that pack with each of these areas in mind.  What would you give the ambassadors so they can easily be identified as such by others? What training or resources will you give them to better perform the tasks they are assigned? What tools will you give them to refer other potential ambassadors to the brand, or to spread the word about the program to others?

Hopefully this post gives you some ideas on how you could structure a Welcome Pack for your own brand ambassadors, especially in the tourism industry. To learn more about AMLTA’s brand ambassadors and program, click here.

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How to Create Content That Builds Customer Loyalty

According to new research from CMI, 81% of B2C companies are focused on creating content that builds loyalty in 2019.

So what does content that builds loyalty look like?  First, let’s think about some of the things that make you loyal to a business or organization:

  • Consistent experience. You know that every time you shop at that store or on that website, that you will get a consistent experience. There’s a certain quality expectation that you have, that this business typically meets. And once you are loyal to a particular business, you will typically forgive an occasional sub-par experience where it could be a deal-breaker for a business you are NOT loyal to. The AMA has also found that dependability is one of the key drivers of brand loyalty.
  • You can relate to the brand. They hold values that are similar to yours. They prize and promote the same ideals and beliefs that you are drawn to. Patagonia supports the environment and sustainability. This appeals to their customers. Chick Fil-A is closed on Sunday so its workers can attend church. The brand wears its religious values on its sleeve and that appeals to its customers.
  • They make you feel appreciated. I love shopping at Publix because the workers there always seem happy to see me and happy to help. When I shop at WalMart, I see a lot of long faces, and no offers to help. If I have to ask for help, they act like I am burdening them. Smart businesses value your business and win your loyalty as a result.

So if you want to create content that drives loyalty. let’s work these same characteristics into that content:

 

Consistent Content Builds Loyalty

Refer back to the AMA study that found that dependability is one of the key drivers of brand loyalty. It stands to reason, you are loyal to brands in great part because you know that you will have a consistent experience with that brand during every interaction.

The same level of consistency should translate to the content you create. When you create consistent content, you give readers the opportunity to learn more about you through the content you create. This helps develop your readership, which in publishing terms is your equivalent of customer loyalty. So you want to do everything you can to ensure that the tone, quality and topic of your content is consistent so that you can develop and grow a readership for it.

The easiest way to do this is to pick 2-3 Topic Buckets for your blog. These will be 2-3 topics that are related to both your business, and your customers. Think of how Red Bull creates content focused on athletes performing amazing tricks and stunts, not the actual energy drink. Patagonia creates content that focuses on the environment and sustainability, not selling its clothing products. You want to create content that focuses on how the products and services you sell fit into and enhance the lives of your customers.

Also, you want to create consistent content on a consistent schedule. Unfortunately, I break this rule all the time (my blogging resolution for 2019 is to get back on a regular posting schedule). The best way to handle this is to be realistic about how often you can create new content for your blog, and go from there.   It is much easier to shoot for one post a month and then write more if you can than it is to shoot for 3 posts a week, and have to scale back to 1 a week. Shoot low and try to build up, that’s easier and will motivate you to keep blogging more so than aiming too high and missing the mark.

As for what days are best to post on, that’s really subjective and greatly depends on the audience you want to reach. In general, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days for publishing new content. But you should always experiment, it could be that your audience wants new posts on the weekend, not during the week. Think about who your audience is, and when they would likely have time to read your posts.

 

Content That Helps the Audience Relate to You Builds Loyalty

What does it mean to ‘relate’ to someone?  In general, it means that you understand their point of view. You see the world as they do or you understand where they are coming from.

How does this translate to the content you create? You can help the audience relate to your content by offering examples (real or hypothetical) of how customers could use your products or services in their daily lives.  Or by sharing how you use these products or services. The idea is to communicate to your customers that you understand them enough to know how your products or services fit into and enhance their daily lives.

Another way to create content that your audience can relate to is by sharing your corporate values. If your company supports certain charitable organisations or causes, don’t just mention that, tell why you picked those particular causes and how they align with your company’s beliefs and values. Share with your audience what makes those causes important to your company and why. Customers who share your beliefs and support those causes will be drawn to your company and will be more likely to support it as a result.

 

Communicate to Your Audience That You Appreciate Their Attention 

Showing appreciation to your audience is a wonderful way to build loyalty with them. You can do this by encouraging your audience to interact with you, and by responding when they do. If you accept comments on your posts, you can encourage customers to leave comments on your blog. This can be a great way to cultivate customer feedback via the comments section. So it just makes sense to respond to as many comments as possible from your readers as that only encourages them to leave more comments.

You can also use your content to communicate to your customers that you take their feedback seriously. Patagonia often received criticism from its customers about its packaging. Most customers wanted to see Patagonia move away from sending garments in bigger boxes and toward smaller bags with would, in theory, involve less waste and less impact on the environment. So Patagonia decided to take its customer feedback seriously, and did a test run using bags vs boxes as customers had suggested.  Patagonia then published the results of the shipping experiment on its blog, The Cleanest Line. I covered the experiment and findings in a past episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show.

 

By applying these three methods, you can create content that helps build customer loyalty. It’s all about relating to the customer, being open to them, and opening up to them as well.

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Research: How to Create Loyal Customers and Reduce Customer Churn Rate

Yotpo recently surveyed 2,000 American shoppers to learn their views on brands and brand loyalty.  The results gave some interesting insights into brand loyalty in 2018, so I wanted to highlight some of the findings:

Despite the growing importance of customer experience, product is still both the point of entry and departure for brand loyalty. 55.3% of consumers are brand loyal because they love the product, and poor product quality is the number one reason why a brand would lose a loyal customer (51.3%). This echoes the success of modern direct-to-consumer brands that rose to fame thanks to “hero products,” including UNTUCKit, Quip, and Away Travel.

Second to poor product, sub-par customer service will drive away 23.5% of loyal customers, meaning that even for brands with ground-breaking products, the surrounding experience is still paramount.

No big shock here, great products drive higher levels of loyalty. Or put another way, a great social media strategy will not save you if you have a terrible product.

However, I don’t think it can be overlooked that every touchpoint between the brand and customer impacts loyalty. The product may have the most bearing on driving loyalty, but if the customer also receives an exceptional brand experience along every touchpoint, that will also greatly impact how favorable the customer views the product.

88% of Customers Say They Need at Least Three Purchases Before They Feel ‘Loyal’ Toward a Brand

The survey further revealed that the bar for brand loyalty is high — a repeat purchase or two doesn’t mean you have a new brand fan. In fact, 37% of consumers say that it takes five or more purchases for them to consider themselves loyal to a brand.

Bringing back a customer five times is no small feat as consumer demands grow: 67.3% of shoppers expect 24/7 customer service, while 71.0%  anticipate more frequent discounting and 58.4% seek out free shipping in exchange for their loyalty.

Of the respondents:

  • 37% said five or more purchases were necessary before they were loyal to a brand
  • 33% said brand loyaty took three purchases
  • 17.67% said brand loyalty took four purchases

To me, these figures seemed a bit high.  I know from my personal experience, if any brand can get me to buy its product for the third time, I consider myself to be loyal to that product enough to continue buying it. On the other hand, if my first experience with a product is subpar, and very unlikely to buy it again if I have other options.

The Benefits of Loyal Customers

The survey also had three key findings for the value to brands of loyal customers:

1 – 60% of respondents will promote their favorite brands to friends and family (creating additional Word of Mouth)

One of the things I always advise clients to do is to give your advocates the tools and training to better promote your brand. When we find a brand we love, we want to share that love with others.  It’s like discovering something cool and wanting to share it with others, not only to help them, but to feel good about sharing something useful. Happy customers tell other customers about you.  Give them the tools to more easily do so.

2 – 52.3% of loyal customers will join a rewards program

This makes complete sense. Loyal customers want to be rewarded for their loyalty, so it follows that they would be more likely to join a rewards program. However, what most brands don’t realize is that reward programs members are often good candidates for your brand advocacy efforts. Whenever I work with companies who are interested in building a program for advocates, the first thing I ask is if they have a rewards program. That’s because the most active and passionate members of your rewards program are often good candidates to participate in a brand advocacy or customer advisory group that your brand may be considering. This also makes the whole issue of finding and identifying potential advocates much easier. So if you already have a rewards program, start there in your search for your brand advocates.

3 – 39.4% of respondents will continue to buy from brands they are loyal to even if cheaper options are available

Loyal customers are trusting customers. They trust their favorite brands and want to SUPPORT those brands. Price is less important to them, they are willing to pay a bit more for a product from a brand they trust and believe in. This is why it’s so important to create a situation where customers are more likely to become loyal. For instance, combine this with the above data concerning how many purchases are necessary for the customer to consider themselves ‘loyal’ to your brand. If you know that four purchases is the magic number for your brand before loyalty is attained, then you need to think about what you can do to convince the customer during those first three purchases to commit to another one. Think of it as identifying the point at which customers leave The Loyalty Funnel. Find the hole, and plug it!

 

A lot of interesting information and data from the study, which you can find here.

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Case Study: National Geographic’s “Your Shot” Photography Community

One of the smart tactics many brands are leveraging is incorporating user-generated content into its social content streams. The idea is that you take content that your customers or fans are creating, and highlight it alongside your own. It gives the content creators a platform to get more exposure for their work, plus it helps the brand in getting more content. For example, Visit North Alabama is one of my favorite accounts to follow on Instagram. They often use pictures submitted by followers in their Instagram feed, such as this beauty:

National Geographic has taken this idea a step further with its Your Shot community. Your Shot invites photographers to submit their photos to ‘assignments’ that are posted on the site.  The assignments revolve around a particular theme, such as ‘Close Encounters’ or ‘Adventures in the City’. The submissions are reviewed by editors at National Geographic as well as the larger community on the site, and the best ones are selected to appear on the site.

When asking for customers/users/community members to submit content that you will use, there must be a clear benefit to the content creator in doing so. In this case, the benefit to National Geographic is obvious; They get a ton of gorgeous pictures submitted from talented photographers.

But what is the benefit to the photographers? Besides additional exposure for their work, these photographers also have a chance to have their work critiqued by National Geographic’s editors, as well as by the community at large:

This is invaluable advice from both the editors and the community at large. The community can comment on the work as well as select the elements of each shot that they appreciated. It can give the photographer detailed guidance on where his or her work is excelling as well as what they can improve on.

If you are going to test the user-generated content waters, make sure that the users you are appealing to have a clear incentive to share their content with you, and that there is a clear benefit to them from doing so. By agreeing to share their photos with National Geographic, the benefit these photographers get is clear, and who knows, a few spectacular shots might even land an aspiring photographer on National Geographic’s short list the next time they are hiring.

Remember, if you give your customers/users a clear benefit to share their content with you, they will be more likely to share content with you, and the content they do share will be of higher quality. The goal is to have a clear win-win for both you and your customers/users.

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Research: CMOs Say Social Media Budgets Are Surging, But Finding Solid Results Still a Struggle

Companies are spending more on social media marketing according to CMO Survey, but they also continue to struggle to see quantitative results from their digital efforts.

The survey of 324 marketers sheds light on where CMOs will be focusing their budgets and attention in 2019.

  • Spending on digital marketing will increase by 12.3% over the next 12 months, while spending on traditional marketing will fall by 1.2%
  • Currently, digital marketing accounts for 44.3% of all marketing budgets. Over the next 5 years, digital spending is forecast to increase to 54.1% of total marketing spend.
  • Spending on Social Media is expected to increase by 66% over the next 5 years

Even though spending on Social Media is surging, marketers are struggling to show the actual business impact of its Social Media efforts.

The CMO Survey found that 39.3% of respondents could not show any business impact from using Social Media. Another 36% said they are seeing a qualitative impact, with 24.7% seeing an quantitative impact.  In short, that means 25% of marketers can show the ROI for their Social Media efforts.

So obviously, companies won’t continue to increase spending on Social Media without being able to show a return on those dollars. Digging deeper into the numbers, I believe I spotted two reasons why some of these marketers are struggling to prove the effectiveness of Social Media for their companies.

First, one of the questions posed to respondents was “How Effectively Does Your Company Integrate Social Media?” The question was scaled from 1 to 7, with 1 being “not at all effectively” and 7 being “very effectively”. When it came to “integration level for linking social media to marketing strategy”, the score was 4.2.  When it came to “integration level for integrating customer information across purchasing, communication, and social media channels”, that score was 3.5. So while companies are doing better at integrating its social media strategies into their larger marketing strategies, they continue to fall short when it comes to sharing customer information and communications across the enterprise. This hurts overall marketing effectiveness and can lead to a disjointed and inconsistent service experience for the customer.

Second, only 3.9% of marketing budgets are devoted to employee training and development. This amount actually represents an 8% decline over the last 6 months. What’s worse, for B2C companies, that figure is only 2.8%.

So you can see how these two areas would be related, to a degree. First, I’m a big believer in equipping your employees with the proper training and skills they need to do their jobs effectively. It increases employee productivity, as well as their satisfaction with their work. And research has shown that just a 10% increase in the efficiency of your social media strategy nets a 2% increase in revenue. Corporate training is a smart way to increase production and employee satisfaction.

Check out the entire CMO Survey here. It’s got a ton of great takeaways on where marketers will be focusing their attention in 2019.

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How We Find Podcasts, Why AR is beating VR and Mobile Marketing Implications of iOS 12

Hey guys, I found a few links I wanted to share with you. These are articles that I found interesting, but couldn’t justify writing a stand-alone post for. So I decided to corral a few of them here and share with you as a group.

We bloggers used to do this all the time in the days before Twitter 🙂

 

1 – Augmented Reality Poised to Eclipse Virtual Reality – A big hurdle in new technology adoption is how seamlessly the new technology integrates with the technology we are already using and comfortable with. This is a big reason why AR adoption is outpacing VR. Whereas you can often integrate AR functions into your smartphone via simple apps, VR requires new headsets that honestly offer an inconsistent and often clunky experience. eMarketer says there will be over 51 million AR users in 2018, compared to just 37 million for VR. A lot of money is flowing into VR and as the tech improves, adoption will as well. But for now, AR is the more popular choice.

2 – Here’s How Listeners Discover New Podcasts – No stunning information here, but it’s good to know where the listeners are coming from.  Social media (60%) is the top driver, followed closely behind by word of mouth (57%). I did think it was interesting that half of podcast listeners say they download and immediately listen to the episode right then.

3 – Five Charts: How Marketers Use AI – This article does a research-based deep dive into how marketers are implementing AI and their reasons for doing so. Audience targeting is the top reason marketers are using AI, and ‘impact on sales’ is the most desired outcome. There’s also a podcast attached to this article on AI (mostly in Canada), so you may want to check it out as well.

4 – New iOS 12 4 Big Things Mobile Marketers Need to Know – Nice roundup of the changes that iOS 12 poses to mobile marketers. If you are a content creator, you can no longer ignore mobile traffic. For most sites, mobile traffic has now passed desktop traffic, and I am increasingly hearing from companies who are resigning their websites and how they are optimizing for mobile users first, for the first time. We’re past the tipping point and any content you deliver, whether it is marketing, thought-leadership articles, blog posts, must look good on mobile devices. There’s no way around it.

5 – Why Marketers See Gaps in Their Attribution – I’m sure for a lot of marketers, this is speaking to an issue you are constantly grappling with. Research gets into the reasons why, but the biggest takeaway likely isn’t earth-shattering: too many marketing teams are siloed, from sales, customer service and even from other areas of marketing, think digital vs traditional. Often, improving attribution and accurate sales tracking requires a bit of a culture and organizational change, but it’s worth it in the long-term.

 

Hope you enjoy these articles, BTW do you have a favorite site or aggregator that you use to stay up to date on marketing news?  Please leave a comment with your favorites, I’d love to check them out!

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What’s Next For Blogging? Delivering Personalized Content Based on Visitor Intent

Recently I’ve been discussing how blogging will have a bit of a Renaissance soon as users move away from a centralized experience (social media sites like Twitter and Facebook) and back to a decentralized experience (like blogging). I believe blogging will become popular again as we look for ways to better gain control of the data we share and the content we create. Additionally, the functionality of blogs has continued to increase and improve. Ten years ago, blogs were little more than a writing area and one sidebar. Now, you can completely customize a blog’s layout and functionality so that the line between blog and high-end website is completely blurred.

But one area where blogs have lagged a bit is in providing personalized content to each visitor. Every visitor is different and is looking for different content for different reasons. What blogging platforms and technology need to improve upon is taking visitor signals and translating that into intent and creating the content that the visitor expects. This can be done at a source level such as social media vs search, or based on search terms. Or it could change based on the landing page/post.

This is already happening a bit, I’ve been tinkering with a couple of plugins that attempt to address the content customization issue. The first is Thrive Leads (affiliate link). It lets me control where my newsletter signup popup appears. For example, I wrote a few posts in 2012 on how to write and publish a book. These posts are very popular among aspiring authors, and I get a ton of search traffic to both of them. But most of the people that would read these posts are not the potential clients that I would want subscribing to my newsletter, so Leads lets me turn off the newsletter popup on those pages, so I won’t get subscribers from those posts.

Another plugin I’ve been experimenting with is Clever Widgets (affiliate link). Clever Widgets allows you to customize the widgets that are displayed for every post or page. So if someone visits a particular sales page, you can customize the widget areas on that page to either complete the sale, or give more information about the product, or even include a live chat widget to attempt to close the sale. Or if someone visits your blog’s homepage where your latest posts are, you could serve up widgets that are designed to encourage them to become a subscriber, or view your most popular posts.

As you can see, even these content personalization options are fairly limited, but it’s a start. Definitely check out the two plugins I’m using, but also give more thought to who your visitors are, and what content they are looking for when they visit your blog. For most bloggers, at least 50% of their traffic will be from search engines. People coming from search engines are looking for specific information, and if they don’t immediately find it on the post they land on, they will leave. Check your WordPress dashboard, if you use a plugin like Jetpack (affiliate link) you can see which search terms visitors are using to find your blog. This also gives you a better sense of what information they are looking for when they arrive on your blog.

Besides focusing on visitors arriving via search, also consider that many visitors to your blog will arrive via a mobile device. This adds another layer of complexity as mobile users are far less ‘sticky’ and will quickly leave a site if they don’t get the information or experience they were expecting. It is imperative that your blog displays correctly on mobile devices including tablets and smartphones. For many publishers, mobile traffic has now reached a tipping point where it has passed desktop traffic, so you can no longer ignore mobile users. Make sure that your theme is responsive, and make a point to regularly load and navigate your blog on your smartphone. If you can’t figure out how to properly view and navigate your own blog on your smartphone, the odds are your visitors can’t either.

Soon, CMSs will seamlessly integrate machine learning to create personalized content experiences for visitors on the fly, which we can all use. Until that day arrives, think about what you can start doing now to give every visitor the content experience they are expecting.