MackCollier.com

by

Brands, Stop Chasing New Customers and Ignoring Your Existing Ones

DIsh

Now is a good time to be in the market for a new satellite television provider.  The two main competitors, Dish and DirecTv, are throwing all kinds of incentives at you.  iPad minis, free DVR upgrades, free Visa cards.  Free, free, free.

The catch is, you typically have to be a new customer to take advantage of these offers.

It’s backwards, and it’s bullshit. When you reward new customers instead of existing ones you are training your customers that it pays to leave you.  Valuing new customers and ignoring loyal ones basically mocks your repeat customers.

Many industries do this, especially when the space is dominated by 2-3 competitors with very similar offerings.  Companies have to constantly offer new and additional incentives for new customers because they aren’t giving loyal customers any incentive to remain loyal.

Rock stars typically do the exact opposite.  Fans are rewarded.  Fans get special access, they get VIP treatment.  They typically get the best seats at concerts, they are the ones that get secret shows, they are the ones that get first access to new products and breaking news.  With rock stars, new customers are ignored in much the same way that many markets ignore existing customers.

I’ve talked about this before, but you build loyalty and create fans with rewards, not incentives.  Offering me products if I will switch to your company doesn’t win my loyalty to your brand, it simply gives me an incentive to take advantage of the offer.  I may have to sign a 2-year contract to get all the goodies, but if you have ignored me and my business, guess what happens in 2 years?  I will switch to your competitor, because they just offered me prizes and incentives for switching.

You are training your customers to leave you.

It’s not about offering incentives for new customers, it’s about offering rewards for existing customers.  Because referrals from happy customers is a far better marketing tool for you.

If the goal is to acquire new customers then you need to follow the rock star marketing model: Focus on delighting your existing customers, with the understanding that this will encourage your existing customers to become fans who will bring you new customers.   

by

How to Turn Your Blog Into A Platform, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

4858103965_083f516565_z

Here’s the link to the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat

Tonight at #Blogchat (2-16-2014) we will discuss how to turn your blog into a platform for your ideas.  Many of us blog because we want to share our ideas and our voice with the world.  But if you are truly committed to having your ideas reach as many people as possible, then you need to build a platform.  That’s what we will talk about tonight at #Blogchat.

To turn your blog into a platform, there’s certain steps you need to take:

1 – Understand that it will take a LOT of work to build your platform.  Look at the most successful bloggers, the one that have built a platform for their ideas.  They blog almost every day.  They create content in multiple forms.  Many of them also have podcasts, they are active on Twitter and Facebook, as well as other tools.  The point is, there is a lot of hard work involved in building a platform.

It’s great to want to see your blog grow and reach readership milestones, etc.  But you need to be honest with yourself about the work involved in reaching those goals.  Granted, as you reach your goals, more doors will open for you, but you have to first invest the work necessary to get there.

2 – Decide why you want a blogging platform.  What’s the end goal here?  Do you want to leverage your platform to launch a public speaking career?  Do you want to eventually write a book?  Why do you need a platform?  What goals are you trying to reach?  Once you’ve figured out why you need a platform, that will help you greatly in developing your strategy for building one.

3 – Narrow your focus.  It’s almost impossible to build a platform around 5 different topics, even if they are complimentary.  Focus on 1-2 core topics that you want to build your platform on.  Or think of it this way, if someone mentions you to a friend, that friend would say “Oh I know her, she’s the ______ gal!”  What would go in that blank?  Do you want to be known as “The WordPress gal!” or “The Facebook gal!” or “The #TwitterChatNameHere gal!”  Think about how you want others to know you.

4 – Build the Castle first, then the kingdom.  What will be the foundation of your platform?  In many cases, I think your blog is a great choice, so focus on first building your blog.  Think about how you can build your blog and turn it into a platform to help spread your ideas.  Think about how you can create better content and MORE content.  Simply writing better posts and blogging more often will be huge drivers in helping you grow your blog’s audience.

5 – Build a support network for your platform.  How can you use other tools to help build your platform?  For example, I use Twitter extensively to drive traffic back to this blog.  In the last year I’ve also started growing an email newsletter that helps send people here.  You want to think about how you can use other tools AWAY from your blog to help build out your blog.

 

So those are some of the areas we will cover in tonight’s #Blogchat when we talk about building a platform for your ideas.  #Blogchat will start tonight at 8pm Central.  I think this is an incredibly important topic, and here’s one reason why I think building a platform for your ideas is so important.

Since my book Think Like a Rock Star came out, I have become enamored with not only my book’s progress, but I also watch when other books are released by people in this space.  I want to see what I can learn from their efforts, but I also want to compare their results against my own.

One thing I began to notice a few months ago was that even though TLARS had excellent reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, some books that didn’t have as many positive reviews were selling better than mine.  I started trying to figure out what they were doing differently, then I realized that in every instance, these authors had a bigger platform to promote their book from than I did.  They had the popular blog PLUS they had 100,000 followers on Twitter PLUS they had 50,000 people on their email list PLUS they had a popular podcast, etc etc etc.  It helped me realize that simply having a great idea/book isn’t enough, you need to have a platform in place that helps carry that great idea to other people.

Tonight let’s talk about how you can build the platform that your ideas deserve.  See you at #Blogchat!

Pic via Flickr user PhotoAtelier

by

Sharing Your Voice Versus Building a Platform

5210511841_a01481cbb1_z

Yesterday was the best traffic day ever on this blog.  I checked and the 2nd best traffic day came in January of 2011 and the 3rd best in July of 2009.  In other words, it took a long time and a lot of work to reach yesterday.

Something else I noticed as I was going through my Google Analytics yesterday was to look at how the day-to-day traffic increased.  Today I would immediately know that something was ‘wrong’ if I ‘only’ got 500 visitors tomorrow, but back in 2010 or 2011, that would have been cause for celebration.  Hopefully in 2-3 years, if I get the same amount of traffic as I did yesterday, I’ll be disappointed as well.

Whenever we talk about the significance of blogging, people always offer that they blog because they want to share their voice.  I’m a huge believer in the power of blogging for this very reason.

But there’s also incredible power in sharing your voice and using your blog to build a platform for your ideas.  And I mean ‘build’ literally as it is a LOT of work to build a blogging platform.  Since June of 2009, I’ve currently written 655 posts here.  So many hours spent on creating content.  But that content is helping me to build a platform.  In June of 2009, this blog averaged about 84 visitors a day.  Currently I get that here every hour.  That’s a huge increase in exposure for my ideas.  And yet, as I was giddy watching my traffic go up yesterday, and as I saw yesterday’s post top 250 retweets, I realized there are many bloggers that see every post get that type of exposure.

Your platform has incredible value.  Yes, it takes a ton of time and energy to build it, but that platform can open doors for you.  It brings your ideas to more people.  If you are a brand, it expands the reach of your content to more potential customers.  It becomes ‘proof of concept’ if you want to sell a publisher on why they should buy your book idea.

Want to know a secret?  Many of the people that are viewed as thought leaders today in this space started building their platform 5-10 years ago.  No one knew who they were then, but today they have a blog that’s read by 100,000 people every month, they have 100,000 people following them on Twitter and have an email list with 50,000 names on it.

All because they invested the time and work to build a platform that would allow them to share their ideas with more people.  Isn’t your voice worth the same attention? 

Pic via Flickr user nigelhowe

by

That Esurance Super Bowl Stunt and Finding the Real Value of Social Media

Esurancetweet

So here’s the deal: Instead of buying a Super Bowl ad, Esurance bought the first ad AFTER the Super Bowl.  And they saved $1.5 Million in the process, then gave away that money.  If you wanted to win the cash, all you had to do was tweet the hashtag #ESuranceSave30 within 36 hours of the ad being aired.

AdWeek lauded the stunt as a huge success, and cited these results in making that claim:

• 5.4 million uses of the #EsuranceSave30 hashtag
• More than 200,000 entries within the first minute of the Esurance commercial airing
• 1.4 million hashtag uses in the first hour and 4.5 million in the first 24 hours
• 2.6 billion social impressions on Twitter
• 332,000 views of the Esurance commercial on YouTube
• 261,000 new followers on the official Esurance Twitter account—an increase of nearly 3,000 percent
• A 12x spike in visits to the Esurance website in the first hours of the sweepstakes

Does that look like a successful social media sweepstakes to you?

Augie Ray has an exhaustive analysis of the social sharing results Esurance saw from this stunt, and is critical of the rush to laud these results as being a sign of a win:

I am deeply disappointed to see Esurance’s Super Bowl sweepstakes results widely celebrated. Six years into the social era, I thought we had reached a certain point of social media maturity where we realize that fans and followers are not leads and that relationships are built through shared values and meaningful interactions. I naively thought that we had turned a corner, with widespread understanding that winning in social media occurs by providing great experiences that build long-term relationships and not with campaigns that yield short-term spikes of activity. I was wrong.

It’s easy to look at the results and be wowed.  But as Augie pointed out in his post, let’s not lose sight of the fact that these engagement figures are based on Esurance giving away $1.5 Million dollars.  I’m betting any of us could do the same thing on Twitter and get a shit-ton of new followers.

Augie also points out in his post that ESurance has already lost 15% of the followers they gained from this stunt.

And to me, this is the key point.  How well does Esurance convert these new followers and visitors into customers?  A 12X spike in website traffic is significant, as long as those visitors didn’t simply go to the site for 15 seconds because of this sweepstakes, and then never return.

On the other hand, if Esurance found a way to stay engaged with those new website visitors, then that does have value for the brand.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the people that engaged with the brand immediately after the ad likely had no loyalty toward the brand, they just wanted to win the cash.  So while the ‘eye-popping’ social engagement numbers look good, they are the social media equivalent of farting in an elevator.  It gets everyone’s attention…till the doors open up and then everyone moves on with their lives.

The ultimate success of this stunt will be dictated by how many new customer relationships are created as a result.  If Esurance built into this ways to leverage the new exposure into an ongoing relationship, then the chances of this stunt being a success increase dramatically.

My guess is they (and their agency) are thrilled with the extra ‘pr value’ they got from this.

What do you think, do the above results make this a successful initiative in your mind?

by

What Are the Top 3-5 Reasons Why I Won’t Do Business With You?

45174111_0322090980_z

We are self-selecting buyers.  Thanks to the huge amounts of information, opinions and data available online, we can research any type of purchase decision beforehand, and know whether or not it makes sense for us.  This takes the ability of your brand to ‘sell’ me completely out of the equation.

Or does it?  Last week I spoke at the Bank Operations and Management Summit in Birmingham.  At one point I was discussing how to build blog readership with this room full of smart bankers.  I asked them to think about the reasons why someone chooses not to bank with them.  What are the top objections?  Take these objections or questions that their current and potential customers have, and answer them in a blog post.  When you address customer concerns and questions head on with your blog, you are re-inserting yourself into the sales cycle for that customer.  Your content then becomes a selling tool for your brand.  For example, if I don’t want to do business with your bank because I’ve heard that you charge too many checking fees, if you detail that you offer a ‘Zero Strings Attached’ checking account that charges no fees, that puts my concerns over fees at ease, and could win my business.

I do this as well with my own content.  One of the areas that has confused companies for years about social media marketing is questions about pricing.  Few companies had any idea what they should expect to pay for social media marketing services, so in 2010 I wrote a blog post detailing what companies could expect to pay for social media marketing services.  It has been viewed over 30,000 times.  In 2011 I updated the price list, which has now been viewed over 50,000 times, and which led to the biggest traffic day ever for my blog.  The most recent update to this list came in 2012 with my post ‘How Much Does Social Media Cost Companies in 2012?‘.  That post has currently been viewed almost 85,000 times, and is the most popular blog post I’ve ever written.

Another reason why it helps to address questions and concerns head-on is because it saves time for both you, and your customers.  Around 2009 or so I started getting regular emails from companies saying they needed someone to analyze how they were using social media, and tell them if there was anything they needed to be doing that they weren’t.  They’d ask if this was a service I provided, I’d explain that I did indeed offer a social media strategy audit for companies.

What I noticed after doing this a few times is that often, the company either wasn’t interested because they would realize they didn’t need an audit after talking to me, or they did, but didn’t have the budget at that time.  But along the way, we’d likely have multiple emails and schedule phone calls, etc.  Both myself and the company ended up investing a lot of time into trying to decide if we were right to work together, only to discover that it wasn’t a good fit.

To address this, I created a page here detailing my Social Media Strategy Audit.  This page details exactly what is included in the audit, as well as the exact price.  This way I am answering many of the questions that the potential client would have upfront.  As a result, the majority of the emails I now get about my Social Media Strategy Audit are similar to “Hi Mack, I read about the Social Media Strategy Audit you offer on your site, I think this might be a good fit for our company.  When can we talk to discuss the next steps?”  And it also helps me even when the customer doesn’t see that page because I can offer it for them as information.  A few weeks ago a company emailed me asking if I could do a social media strategy audit for them, and that they wanted to know when I could talk to them about it?  I emailed them back and gave them some times I could chat with them in the coming week, but also gave them a link to my Social Media Strategy Audit page and explained to them that it would have all the information on the service, as well as the price.  Within the hour the company emailed back and said they only had $500 to spend on an audit.  By simply listing my price I saved both of us the time we would have wasted on the phone call.

So if you want to apply this same method to your own blog, make a list of the top objections that people have for doing business with you.  And it doesn’t have to be your particular business, it could be for anyone that does your type of work.  For example, I think we can all give you several reasons why we hate going to the dentist.  If you’re a dentist, you could write blog posts that address each of these objections head on, which will put my mind at ease, and increase the chances of my doing business with you.

Plus the added bonus is that you are creating more valuable content for your blog’s readers!  Which means more readers and more exposure for your business!

So the big question: If this works, why don’t more (blogging) businesses do this?

Because addressing your flaws (real or perceived) is viewed by many businesses as a sign of weakness.  That’s why you rarely see businesses that are viewed to be ‘blue chip’ brands doing this.  The few that do are typically lesser known businesses looking to make a name for themselves.

But the reality is that when you address the reasons why a customer might not do business with you, you are helping to build trust with them.  Which means that the lesser known business is addressing the actual concerns of customers, so that makes it easier to trust them, and do business with them.

Which means one day that lesser known business will not only grow its customer base to reach yours, those customers will be more loyal to that business because they trust them.

The reality is that your competition is already doing this.  They are focused on the reasons why customers would NOT want to do business with you.  They are already focused on what they can offer that you cannot.

So figure out your flaws (even flaws that your customers perceive that don’t really exist) and the reasons why customers are reluctant to do business with you, and address them head-on.  Answer their questions for them and solve their problems, and you will win their business!

Pic via Flickr user Sister72

by

Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic is ‘Content Shock’ With Special Co-Host @TheSalesLion!

Marcus

Here’s the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat!

Tonight (Feb. 9th, 2014), Marcus Sheridan, AKA @TheSalesLion will join us to discuss the idea of ‘Content Shock’ and whether or not it’s too late to start blogging.  You can read Marcus’ thoughts on ‘Content Shock‘ here.  One of the reasons why I wanted Marcus to co-host on this topic is because his views on supporting new bloggers and new voices dovetails with mine.  We both believe the entire online community is richer and more valuable for all when more people feel empowered to share their thoughts and ideas with the world.

Tonight’s #Blogchat will cover two areas:

From 8:00-8:30 Central we will discuss if it is too late to start blogging.  And if you start a blog today, what do you need to know?

From 8:30-9:00 Central we will discuss the idea of ‘Content Shock’, and how you can make your content stand out from the rest!

 

Please follow @TheSalesLion on Twitter, and check out Marcus’ blog tonight in prep for #Blogchat!

by

Why Context Makes Word of Mouth Marketing So Powerful

J0149057

Tomorrow I’ll be speaking in Birmingham to the Alabama Banker’s Association, presenting Think Like a Rock Star.  One of the points I’ll be making is the power of your fans utilizing context in their word of mouth.  We all understand the power of word of mouth, and there is a raft of research that proves that a product recommendation from another customer is considered more valuable than a marketing message from a brand.  We know this.

But what we often don’t appreciate is the power of context as it applies to word of mouth marketing.  When customers market to each other, they tailor their message to make it more appealing to others, based on their knowledge of the person they are talking to.  This is incredibly powerful, because your friend likely understands your wants and needs better than the brand that’s trying to win your business.

For example, a bank might be rolling out a new mortgage offering it wants to promote, but you know your friend is looking to buy her daughter her first car, so lower rates for auto loans is more important.  A fan of the bank would promote it to the friend with the daughter based on that context, understanding that the friend isn’t interested in a mortgage or re-financing their home right now.

Here’s another example that I’ve witnessed multiple times on Twitter.  I’ll be chatting with someone and we’ll start talking about my book and I’ll mention they should read it.  They will respond with something like ‘Thanks, I’ll check it out!’  Then a few minutes later, a friend of their’s will tweet them and say something like ‘I’ve read Think Like a Rock Star and it was great!  It would be perfect for your company, you should buy it!’  Then the person will say they are going to buy it.  My recommendation (as the author of the book) wasn’t enough to convince them to buy it.  But when their friend steps in and endorses the book, and adds context to why it would benefit them, that clinches the sale!

The end goal for your brand is to communicate a relevant marketing message to your customers because the more relevant the message is, the greater its chance of converting into a sale.  But sending relevant and customized messages to every customer would have exorbitant costs, which is why brands send a few select marketing messages out designed to reach the mass market.

But your satisfied customers are the link that gives other customers those relevant marketing messages that convert into sales.  This is exactly why word of mouth works.  And when you connect with your satisfied customers, you empower them to better communicate relevant selling points for your brand, to other customers they come in contact with.

Real business benefits from connecting with your biggest fans.  Look back at your own experiences and think about what has worked for you, are you more likely to purchase an item based on seeing a cool commercial, or hearing a recommendation from a friend you trust?

by

Your Brand Is the Sum of the Stories We Tell About You

KatyFirework

Facebook has just launched an elegant mobile reader/app called Paper.  Facebook is trying to position the app as less of a reader and more of a way for users to share and create ‘stories’.  Jay has a great write-up on the direction Facebook may be heading with the app.

Over the last few years, our ability to create content and weave multiple medias has increased dramatically.  Our smartphones are becoming computers that are far more powerful that the klunky desktops from just a few years ago.  The ability to create pictures, high-definition video and text has all been fused into a small item no bigger than our hand.

While our ability to tell stories via digital content has greatly increased, many brands are still missing what an opportunity they have in letting customers speak on their behalf.  It’s scary for many brands, I get it.  You spend millions in carefully orchestrated marketing messages designed to communicate specific points to a mass market.

What you miss is that we don’t care about that.  Well we do, but not to the degree you think.  Every customer has their own connection to your brand.  Many customers have complete indifference to your brand.  Some have slight levels of affinity and loyalty, and a select few are raving fans.

We are all telling stories about your brand.  And if you don’t connect with us, we will tell the stories on our own.

But if you do connect with us, two important things begin to happen:

1 – We begin to understand you, and the story you want us to tell

2 – You begin to understand us, and the stories we want to hear

The thing to remember is this:  While most of us have the ability to tell stories about your brand, most of us don’t have any desire to.  Unless we either love you, or hate you.

And again, either way it pays to connect with us.  If you connect with your fans, the customers that love you, those fans will work with you to make sure they tell the story about your brand that you want other customers to hear.  Read that again until you understand just how important that is.

On the other hand, when you connect with your fans, they will come to your defense against customers that are telling negative stories about your brand.  Truly a win-win situation.

Keep in mind that when you empower your customers to tell stories on your brand’s behalf, your customers tell your brand’s story in their own voice.  This is incredibly powerful because customers respond more to a message that’s delivered in a voice they recognize and trust.

Their own.

by

Brands, You Have to Build Your ‘Trust’ Muscle

Steve Jobs was probably the greatest business orator and speaker of the last 50 years.  Jobs had a wonderful talent for delivering amazing presentations and captivating an audience.

With that in mind, watch this short video of Jobs prepping for his first on-air appearance in 1978:

Isn’t it interesting to watch a fidgety and obviously very nervous Jobs say “You need to tell me where the restroom is too, because I’m deathly ill, actually, and ready to throw up at any moment.”  Then he adds to someone off camera “I’m not joking!”

Yet 40 years later in 2007, he was delivering the presentation to launch the iPhone, considered to be one of the greatest business presentations of all-time.

Experience is a wonderful teacher, and it molded Jobs from that fidgety computer geek in 1978 to a polished professional that became the gold standard for delivering compelling business presentations.

Today, we’re asking brands to do something equally scary on a scale they’ve never had to before: We are asking brands to trust their most passionate customers.

One of the things that struck me the most while writing Think Like a Rock Star was to delve into the differences between how rock stars approach engaging with their customers versus how brands do.  While many brands are reluctant to connect directly with their customers and give them any control over messaging or promotion, rock stars literally view their customers as marketing partners that they trust to act in the rock stars’ best interest.

This graphic explains why:

InteractionsInteraction leads to Understanding which leads to Trust which leads to Advocacy.  Rock stars are constantly seeking interaction with their fans, because they not only want to better understand their fans, they want their fans to better understand them.  Because rock stars know that when their fans understand them, they can then trust them, and advocate for them.  Also, since rock stars understand and trust their fans, they know that these fans will act in the rock star’s best interests.

Most brands never start on this path because they don’t seek to have those interactions with their customers that are freely available thanks in great part to the rise of social media tools.  If brands would interact more with their fans they would begin to understand them more, which leads to trust, which leads to advocacy.

Which is also a two-way street.  When your brand purposely shuts itself off from your customers, you are also restricting the customers’ ability to interact with you, and then to trust you as well as deadening the chances of having that customer advocate for your brand.

And here’s why it’s an unfounded fear:  Because when you interact with your customers and they understand you they also trust you.  So not only will they advocate for you, they will also spread your message and trust you to spread the message that you give them.  This is what so many brands misunderstand about their fans, they believe their fans will spread a message that’s inconsistent with their ‘messaging’.  Instead, fans will want to work with your brand to make sure they are spreading the message that you want them to.

But it starts with your brand taking the first step to reach out to your customers and trusting them if you want them to trust you.

by

How to Expand Your Reach in Social Media When You Have No Budget

356136498_9f9b736cb6_z

Last night I was thrilled to join Full Sail University for a special Think Like a Rock Star webinar.  It was an amazing turnout, and I wanted to talk about one of the questions that an attendee asked.

Someone wanted to know how you can expand your reach in social media when you have no budget.  The answer is that you reward the behavior you want to encourage.

Years ago when I first started blogging, I had a nice little community reading my blog.  I would only get 50-100 visitors a day (This was 2006) but every post I wrote had comments, sometimes 15-20.  A blogger friend that was writing for a site that at the time got about 10,000 visitors a month (far more than my blog) left a comment saying ‘I just want to know why you get 10 or more comments on every post and I don’t get any’.  I told him ‘because I respond to my comments’.

I didn’t have many readers, but my level of engagement was much higher than blogs with huge readerships.  If you want to build your reach and engagement then start by rewarding the behavior you want to encourage.  If you want to get more comments on your blog, then start by responding to every comment.  Communicate to your readers that if they comment, that you will respond.  This seems like a no-brainer but you wouldn’t believe how many bloggers never respond to comments, then wonder why they get so few.

No matter how ‘small’ your blog or social media presence is, you’ll have some fans.  People that enjoy your content and that follow you because of it.  Cherish these people.  Even if there are only 2 of them, treat them like rock stars.  Because they are.  And these 2 fans will tell their friends to check you out and before you know it you have 5 fans.  Then 10, then 50, then 100.

The two most powerful words in social media are ‘Thank you’.  Whenever you see someone interacting with your content or sharing your content or recommending your content, then thank them, because they just did you a favor.  And since we all like to be appreciated, when you thank them that encourages them to keep sharing and interacting with your content.

Start small, grow big.

Pic via Flickr user aleske