MackCollier.com

by

The Difference Between Passive and Active Fans of Your Brand

I'm thrilled that Troy Janisch asked me to speak to his Advanced Social Media class at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls tonight. His class has read Think Like a Rock Star and I'll be doing a Q&A with the students. 

One of the students asked if it was possible for a brand to have different degrees or types of fans.  It's a great question and I think it definitely is.  Let's talk a bit about some basic differences among your brand's fans. 

Your fans are as unique as your customers, but for the purposes of this post, let's break your fans down into two groups; Passive and Active.

Passive Fans - These fans love your brand, but typically will not proactively share that love. They will promote your brand, but typically they need an opening to do so. For instance, if a passive Ford fan is asked if his Ford Edge has been reliable, then he would happily endorse the vehicle. But otherwise, they aren't going to promote your brand if there's not a natural reason to do so.

Active Fans - Active fans are more 'passionate' about your brand. The active fan who owns a Ford Edge would be trying to organize a local car club just for Ford Edge owners. These fans are more motivated to act on the brand's behalf, and more likely to view themselves as being 'brand owners'. 


Perhaps the easiest way to identify the difference between passive and active fans is that passive fans are often happy to work with your brand if you contact them, whereas the active fans will typically contact your band first. They will want to know what they can do to help your brand (which they really view as THEIR brand). 

So why are some fans 'active', and others are 'passive'?  

It could simply be that some fans are introverts and some are extroverts. Introverts by nature are more likely to be passive promoters, and extroverts are more likely to be active promoters. 

Another reason for the difference between passive and active fans is the level of loyalty and devotion that the fan feels toward the brand. If the loyalty and passion a fan has for the brand is mostly rooted in the products it sells, then they may be more likely to be passive fans.

On the other hand, if a fan is loyal to the products the brand makes AND the brand itself, they could be more likely to be active fans. For instance, Patagonia makes very high-quality clothing and outdoor wear, but they also support environmental causes that Patagonia customers are very passionate about. This could motivate Patagonia fans to be more devoted to the brand and more active in promoting it.

This topic of different degrees of fans is a fascinating concept to think about. You could break it down further but you have to be careful to do so in a way that's still useful and helps explain the underlying concepts without being too confusing.  

by

Social Media is Destroying Our Ability to Create Impactful Content and Meaningful Connections

Go scan your timeline on Twitter or your news feed on Facebook.  Look at the articles being shared, and more importantly, look at the headlines.

After a while, you’ll begin to notice something. The headlines are written in a way to attract people that are already on Twitter and Facebook.  This is important, because the content is created in a way to attract people from social media sites, instead of creating content that appeals to your blog’s current readers and subscribers.

Social media has trained us to chase bigger numbers.  We want to go ‘viral’, we want more social shares, we want that flood of visitors from Twitter that gives our analytics a nice hockey stick.

But there’s a trade-off in this approach, and it’s one that a lot of us haven’t really thought about. If you chase new readers, what impact does that have on your current ones?  Because when you chase new readers, you change the way you create content.  You create content that will be more likely to ‘go viral’ on Twitter and Facebook.  When in reality, you should continue to create content that your CURRENT readers love.

We rail on companies for trying to acquire new customers and ignoring their current, loyal customers.  But it could be said that we do the same thing with our own content.  We chase more shares, more visitors, when we should be delighting the people that are ALREADY reading and enjoying our content.

A few months ago I was listening to Rush Limbaugh, and he said that social media has nothing to do with the success of his radio show.  He said he built it before social media, and even now, he’s not on Twitter at all.  He does repost show updates on Facebook, but that’s all designed to drive people off Facebook and back to his website.  He said if social media went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t affect his show in the least. And he has the most popular radio show in the country.

Seth Godin really doesn’t use social media either. He blogs every day, and every one of his pithy posts gets thousands of social shares. For years he wasn’t even on social media. He now does have a Twitter account for his blog, but all it does is repost his daily blog posts.

Rush and Seth are both great marketers and both highly successful.  And neither really uses social media in any meaningful way.  Certainly, neither is creating content that’s tailored to sharing on social media. Now you can easily say that both of them built their following BEFORE Twitter and Facebook, and therefore don’t need either of them. And you’d be right. But the point is, neither is altering their content to leverage social media.

I think there’s a lesson in that for the rest of us. I was looking back at my early blogging from 2006 and 2007, before I joined Twitter or Facebook. I blogged in a completely different style, it was almost like every day I was writing a letter to friends. As a result, I had a devoted community of readers, many of which commented on every post I wrote, and we had wonderful discussions in the comments section. Then, I would go and read their blogs and leave comments as well.

When social media sites came along, the conversations for many of us moved from our blogs to those social media sites. We lament how commenting fell off a cliff on our blogs, as it was ‘just easier’ on everyone to comment on Facebook and Twitter.

But along the way, we also changed the way we created content, and that change in the way we create content had an even bigger impact on dampening the number of comments on our blogs. We stopped writing in a way to elicit conversations. We trust people that we understand, and we understand people we can connect with. Those connections start by creating content that helps us be vulnerable and accessible to our readers. Ironically, this is the very type of content that the ‘experts’ have told us not to create.  Don’t inject too much ‘personality’ into your posts, you don’t want to offend potential customers or clients. Focus solely on business, don’t blog about your passions, that’s being ‘off-topic’.

The reality is, the only true value you get from your blogging is in the connections that you make. It doesn’t matter if you are a personal blogger or if you blog for business. I can tie about 80% of the business I’ve gotten over the last 10 years of consulting to about 10 people. Those are all people that I made connections with over time, via my blog. Maybe once every 6-12 months do I get someone that I don’t know who comes to my blog from a search engine, and we end up doing business. Almost all of my customers know ME first, then trust me, then decide to do business with me.

What if there were no social media sites? What if you could only create content on your blog, and that was the only way you could connect with potential customers and potential friends?

Would that change the way you created content? Would you go from focusing on increasing social shares, to increasing subscribers and readers?

I bet you would. I know I am.

by

This is Why a Brand Ambassador Program is Your Best Way to Acquire New Customers

In 2013, Forrester did a study into which forms of content were most trusted by American shoppers. In short, Forrester found that if content originates from a customer or 3rd-party source, it is far more trusted than any content that originates from a brand.

The most trusted form of content was product recommendations from friends and family (70% of shoppers trusted).  Second was professionally written online reviews (55%) and third was consumer reviews (46%).

Communications directly from the brand were far less trusted:

  • Text messages from a brand – 9%
  • Ads on websites – 10%
  • Information on mobile apps from brands – 12%
  • Social media content from brands – 15%
  • Emails from brands – 18%

Clearly, the most trusted forms of content originate from the customer, the least-trusted forms of content originate from the brand. So why do most brands spend billions on creating the least-trusted form of content, while all but ignoring the most trusted form (content from customers)?  Why don’t more brands let their marketing messages flow through their customers?

In my experience, there’s two main reasons why most companies don’t leverage customer to customer communication:

1 – Most brands prefer to advertise for customers because they want total control over messaging. It’s that simple. Even if the messaging is far less effective (driving up costs exponentially), most brands will pay more to have more control over what the message is and how it is delivered.

2 – Most brands don’t understand their customers well enough to trust them to communicate on their behalf. Almost all interactions that the average brand has with its customers flow through customer service, and then it is a numbers game. Get the customer off the line as quickly as possible and move onto the next call. A wonderful chance to better interact with and understand its customers is often lost.

 

So the most trusted content originates from customers, the least-trusted content originates from the brand.  How does your brand manage this disconnect?

By building a brand ambassador program that lets you manage the message that your customers share with other customers. A brand ambassador program is a program that allows you to have an ongoing working relationship with your most passionate customers. This comes in many forms, but one of them includes working with your customers to help them better promote your brand. Your best customers are already promoting your brand naturally, by working with them directly you can give them the tools and guidance to improve their efforts and make them more effective and efficient.

Which also improves your ability to acquire new customers, since customer recommendations are the most trusted form of content, by letting your customers engage with other customers, you gain new customers. And the best part is, the customer acquisition comes at a much lower cost than if your brand invests in traditional advertising. Plus, a brand ambassador program allows your brand to have more control over its marketing messages between customers.

Look at Patagonia’s Worn Wear program that we discussed here yesterday. Think of the positive word of mouth that this program creates for Patagonia. Patagonia has created a way to connect directly with its customers, and during its road trip stops, it also gives Patagonia customers a way to connect with each other and share their love of the Patagonia brand.

This is a great example of why it makes sense to create a customer-centric program like a brand ambassador program.  You bring your customers in touch with the brand, and with each other. Those connections spark understanding, which sparks trust, which sparks advocacy.

And that creates word of mouth. Which means your happy customers are acquiring new customers for you.

Want to create happy customers by optimizing your digital and content strategies? Check out my Digital Optimization Playbook!

by

Let’s Take a Closer Look at Patagonia’s Worn Wear Road Tour

Several years ago, Patagonia started its Worn Wear program. The program was based around Patagonia’s corporate values of extending the lifespan of every garment it creates. The Worn Wear program will repair your Patagonia clothing, and if the clothing is beyond repair, it will recycle it for you.

A few years ago, Patagonia decided to take it’s Worn Wear program on the road, literally.  The company loaded up in a wooden truck and with a couple of seamstresses in tow, toured the country, repairing clothing along the way.  All for free, and not just Patagonia clothing either, any clothing you had with a rip or a ruined zipper could be mended by the Patagonia team.

Here’s a video Patagonia created to give you a sense of why they take the Worn Wear program on the road:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7muOgpX8vaQ

As you might guess, this program has been wildly successful, and has expanded to stops outside the US, and within the US the Worn Wear road trip has grown to have it’s own tour of colleges. This is a very smart move by Patagonia because it lets the company connect with millennials on college campuses that will likely be even more receptive to the company’s reuse and recycle culture.

This is the one aspect of the Worn Wear road trips that’s always fascinated me.  It’s a wonderful opportunity for the company to connect directly with its customers in a one-on-one setting, and convert them into brand advocates. As the employees are repairing the garments (for free), they are also talking to the customers about why they have the Worn Wear program, and why they believe so passionately in the value of repairing old garments rather than simply throwing them away and buying something new. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that Patagonia has to spread its culture and mission to other people, and win them over as advocates for those causes.

I recently came across a great case study that Amp Agency did as they helped Patagonia organize the road trip portion of the Worn Wear program.  Here’s some key takeaways (These numbers appear to be from just one US tour, 21 stops):

  • 88% merchandise sell-through rate during the road trip. Patagonia takes used clothing as part of the tour and sells it during stops on the road trip.
  • 11,075 tour attendees
  • 68,481 visitors to the Worn Wear landing page

What I love about the Worn Wear road trips is the ability it gives Patagonia to connect directly with current and potential customers.  The seamstresses get to hear stories from the customers about how they ripped their Patagonia coat and what it means to them.  In the process, those Patagonia workers get to give the customer back their coat almost as good as new, and along the way they get to explain what the Worn Wear program is and why it’s so important to Patagonia.

The Worn Wear road trips should be viewed as a way to build a long-term relationship with Patagonia customers who believe in the Worn Wear cause, and who will willingly spread it to other people. I’m not sure what Patagonia gives customers that have their clothing repaired during these stops. But at minimum, the brand should focus on ways to give these customers the option to mobilize on behalf of Patagonia and to tell other customers about the Worn Wear program.  Customers who have their clothing repaired by Patagonia (for free) during these Worn Wear stops are going to naturally be very appreciative toward the brand for helping them. They will be very receptive to the Worn Wear message, and will be open to telling more people about what the program is, and why it exists.

If you go to the Worn Wear landing page, you do get a pop-up invite to get email updates:

If I were advising Patagonia, I would suggest they view the road trip portion of the Worn Wear program as a way to find like-minded customers who will champion the ideals of the Worn Wear program. I would even set aside a small area where Patagonia employees can talk to customers about how they can help nurture and grow the Worn Wear program. This is a message that many people who come to the Worn Wear road stops would be receptive to. These people would want to know how they can help Patagonia grow the Worn Wear program, and Patagonia should think about how they can better give these people an opportunity to help, during these road stops.

If your company is trying to decide how to create an initiative as successful as the Worn Wear road trip, you have to understand why it works.  The Worn Wear road trip stops aren’t focused on promoting the Patagonia brand, they are focused on helping Patagonia’s customers, and communicating Patagonia’s core values to its customers.

It’s worth noting that even though this initiative isn’t specifically build to increase sales, it will do just that.  It drives sales during the events, but also gives customers who have had their garments repaired an incentive to spread positive word of mouth about the brand.  This will result in additional sales, and additional positive PR for the brand.

By putting its customers and values first, Patagonia will realize increased sales as well. What a novel idea!

by

Marketing Conferences; Here’s What to Look For on Post-Event Surveys From Attendees

Marketing conferences, for the most part, are divided into two seasons; Spring and Fall. The Fall season began earlier this month, with a few big events already happening, and more on tap for October and November. So I thought this would be a good time to talk a bit about the post-event surveys that all these conferences will send out to attendees.

For the most part, these surveys are boilerplate, you answer a series of questions about the event from a scale of 1 to 5.  At the end, there will typically be a “Are there any additional comments you’d like to leave?” chance for attendees to get one last chance to speak their mind.

Typically, the feedback given in these open-ended answers falls into four catergories:

1 – The attendee talks about the event

2 – The attendee talks about themselves

3 – The attendee talks about the venue

4 – The attendee talks about the organizers

 

Obviously, there can be some overlapping among those four areas of potential feedback, and often is. But the question becomes, “Which type of attendee feedback is best?”

The answer is simple; You want your attendees to talk about themselves. You want them to tell you that attending your event sparked a positive change in their behavior.

Here’s an example of the type of feedback you want: “I had hit a wall in implementing a digital marketing strategy at my company, but the sessions at your event helped bring clarity to my efforts. I came to your event hoping to learn more about measuring results, engaging customers online, and generating better content. Three sessions stuck out in my mind, Kami Huyse’s session on Digital Marketing ROI, Mack Collier’s Think Like a Rock Star session (customer engagement) and Andy Crestodina’s session on Building Better Content. I got so much value from these and other sessions that I actually took a break from the conference on Thurs to go back to my hotel room and have a GoToMeeting session with my team to share some of the things I had learned so they could immediately start implementing those changes. I will be leading an All Hands meeting next week at my company and cannot wait to share everything I have learned. This was money well spent and I will be returning next year.”

This is the perfect post-event feedback. Note that throughout this comment, the attendee is detailing how your event made a positive impact on their work. This is what you want to see, it’s not enough to have a great event with great socializing at a cool venue.  That stuff is WAY too easy to copy and improve upon.

What’s much harder to do, is send your attendees home having solved business problems they were facing. If your event can do that, you’ll not only win their repeat business, you will get them to bring you more attendees the following year(s).

So when you realize that the best type of feedback from attendees is when they talk about themselves (ie you helped them solve their business problems), then how could you change the structure of your event so that you increase the chances of getting that type of feedback from more attendees?

For instance, you could go to your speakers and stress to them the need to focus on solving specific problems for attendees.  Have them create their presentation so that it solves particular problems, and that it clearly provides those solutions to attendees.

Another thing you could do is have one on one consulting sessions with attendees. I know the Marketing Profs events have done this in the past. Maybe schedule them for the last day as a sort of catch-all, if an attendee came to the event needing certain questions answered and still didn’t get a solution by the last day, then schedule a quick consulting session with an expert.

What about having a designated ‘note taker’ in each session who takes detailed notes and captures takeaways from each session?  Then at the end of the day/event, the summaries for each session are made available to all attendees. Or better yet, ask the speakers to provide these beforehand to give to attendees.

By focusing on trying to elicit a particular type of feedback from attendees, you can completely restructure your event in a way that provides much more value to those attendees. If you would like to work with me to improve your event in 2019, please email me as I am happy to help either in a consulting or speaking capacity.

by

Trust is the Currency On Which Your Content Trades

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read it, you’re misinformed.” – Denzel Washington

I recently came across this video on YouTube about what social media usage is doing to us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKd2QVrQVIM

But it was Denzel’s quote at the start that really grabbed my attention. I’ve been saying for a while now that social media in general in headed toward a breaking point. Overall trust in major platforms like Facebook and Twitter continues to fall, as users of these platforms aren’t sure how their content is being shared and if they have equal access to everyone else’s content. I believe users were already becoming a bit tired with the platforms, but recent concerns over a lack of transparency and explanation of how our thoughts are shared and curated with others has reached a tipping point for these platforms. It’s a big part of the reason why I’ve been advising you for a while now to double-down on your blogging efforts. Too many companies use social media as its primary communications channels, and a blog is often an afterthought. If anything, that order should be reversed.  If Twitter and Facebook go away tomorrow, I will still have this blog, and that makes it the most powerful communications channel I have.

But this whole debate about where social media is headed brings up the larger issue of trust in relation to the content you create, that I create, that we all create. If you, as a content creator, aren’t trusted to create content that will be useful and relevant to your audience, then your content will be invisible. Remember yesterday I talked about how the best marketing is invisible but the worst marketing BECOMES invisible? It’s the same thing with your content. If we don’t see the value in your content, we’ll ignore it. And unfortunately, as we see in the video above, our attention spans are being ‘trained’ by social media to shrink every day. For a content creator, this means it’s even easier to pass over your content, plus it means that many of us won’t have the patience to stop for 2-3 minutes to read your post, then leave a thoughtful comment on it. Unfortunately, this is simply the way of the social media world in 2018.

I’m not sure what the answer is. I started blogging before sites like YouTube and Twitter were launched, and before Facebook became mainstream. So I started creating content in a world before 2.3 second attention spans. In a time when having thoughtful discussions in the comment section of every blog post was the norm, not the exception. I suspect it was simply easier to build trust with your audience when you could interact with them every day in an actual discussion.

And perhaps that fact hints at why there is so much distrust on social media today. It seems as if the number of deeper discussions and interactions on social media has decreased, distrust and trolling on social media has increased. We don’t talk to each other anymore, we yell at each other.

Perhaps this is part of the reason why podcasting is taking off in popularity, and has been for years. Hearing a human voice matters, and it’s a form of content you can create that, at least from one side, can replicate having an actual conversation with someone.

I do know this; Likes, ReTweets and Shares are the currency of social media, and those are not the best ways to establish trust. I will admit, I have often been guilty of RTing a link that was shared by someone I trust, without actually reading that link to verify the value of the content. I trust my friend, so if they feel the content is worthy of being shared, I do too. Maybe my friend did the same thing, maybe we all messed up together! But the trust I have for my friend was created by our personal interactions.

As you move forward with your content creation efforts heading into 2019, think about what elements make your content more trustworthy, and what could cause people to trust it less. Think of the value of your headlines, is the value promised in the headline reflected in the post itself? If not, you may be using ‘clickbait’, a quick way to lose trust.

But are you creating content that helps facilitate interactions directly with your audience. Or content that makes it easier for them to understand your voice and your point of view?

If you can do that, I believe you make it easier for us to put down our devices for a few seconds, and to actually listen to what you have to say. And that’s incredibly powerful.

 

QUESTION: If Facebook and Twitter disappeared tomorrow, how would YOU connect with your customers online? Would you have a way to do so, or did you just assume that “Facebook is my website”.  When did Noah build the Ark? Before the rains came.

by

Marketing Shouldn’t be a Nuisance, it Should Be Sexy


Writing about marketing can be challenging. If it’s treated as merely a business function, writing on marketing can get very boring, very quickly. Not just for the reader, for the writer as well.

But marketing can often be so much more than it is. The best marketing is never noticed, and you could argue that the worst marketing isn’t either. The difference is, we immediately know bad marketing when we see it, but we often view great marketing as being anything but….marketing.

The challenge is, how do you teach companies to market better if they simply view marketing as a way to get more sales? And how do you create marketing that’s more interesting and even alluring to customers who have been conditioned all their lives to know that marketing is a nuisance?

I was pondering this as I came across this quote from Kathy Sierra:

“Knowledge cannot be pushed into someone’s head while they sit passively reading or listening. Knowledge is a co-creation… the learner must construct the new knowledge in his own head. And usually (or some say ALWAYS), the new knowledge must be mapped into something that’s already IN the learner’s head.”

Now obviously, Kathy’s point was concerning the learning process, and how people learn better when they do more than simply read content. If you can involve them in the process and give them a way to apply what they are reading as they are reading it, you increase learning. Basically, you learn by doing.

But the ‘co-creation’ part grabbed my attention, as did the part about mapping new knowledge to something that’s already IN the learner’s head. If you change ‘knowledge’ to ‘marketing’ and change the ‘learner’ to ‘customer’, you get: ‘marketing must be mapped to something that’s already IN the customer’s head’.

In other words, marketing must tap into something that the customer finds value and relevance in.

For example, think of the Volvo print ads from many years ago with the safety pin. That helped associate ‘safety’ with Volvo vehicles, and it’s a connection that carries over to today. The key is that customers were already interested in having a safe vehicle, so Volvo was smart enough to associate itself with something that was already important to the customer.

So in order for marketing to be effective and win the attention of the potential customer, it has to be related to something that the potential customer already values. This is the classic mistake that most companies make, they try to immediately close the sale with potential customers. A potential customer has little to no idea who you are or why they should buy from you. So obviously, you should not sell to these people UNTIL they understand who you are, what you sell and why it fits into their lives.

The key then is to market to what’s important to the customer. Volvo didn’t market their cars, they marketed safety to potential customers. That got the attention of those potential customers.

I’ve talked about this before, but in order to gain awareness with a group of customers who don’t know who you are, you must focus your marketing completely on the customer.  THAT is how you gain their attention. Once you have their attention, then you can market yourself to them. But not before.

This is why the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing to your customers. Because we view marketing as being a nuisance, but if marketing is focused on what we as customers want and need, then it becomes USEFUL to us, and we actually can seek it out. We don’t view it as marketing and we don’t even realize we are being marketed to. But if marketing is bad, we immediately notice it, and ignore it.

The best marketing is invisible. The worst marketing becomes invisible.

by

The Secret to Creating Word of Mouth That Most Companies Completely Miss

When you think of ‘Word of Mouth’, you probably think of ‘building buzz’, right? This is what most companies think word of mouth is about, what can you do to get people talking?  Seth Godin has the classic example of a purple cow in a field.  No one would talk about a regular cow, but if you saw a purple cow in a field, well everyone would talk about that!

So the generally accepted idea behind word of mouth marketing is “What can we do to get our customers talking?”  In other words, what can we do or create to give our customers something to talk about?

But what if your customers don’t need anything to talk about?

I have a Ford Fusion. In many ways, it’s a very average car, but it’s my car. It has every feature I want, it’s the right color, it’s got bulletproof reliability, I love it. I am also into detailing my car, so there’s certain products from companies like Klasse and Poorboy’s World that I love as well. These products make my Fusion look gorgeous, and increases my satisfaction with the car itself.

So here I am, a customer who loves my Ford Fusion, as well as Klasse and Poorboy’s World products.  There’s likely thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers just like me across the country.

All of us would happily promote Ford, Klasse and Poorboy’s World products, but these companies aren’t connecting with us. We would happily create word of mouth, and positive word of mouth, about these companies, if they would only help us do that.  Years ago, I worked with a major brand on a customer advisory event. We brought in several customers and spent all day with them talking with and listening to them. At the end of the day, we asked them what they would like to see the brand do for them.

The first customer answered “You guys have to figure out how to give us better tools to help us better promote your products to other customers”. This is the secret to creating word of mouth that most companies completely miss. Your happy customers would LOVE to create word of mouth on your company”s behalf, but you have to give them the tools and the permission to do so.

The reason why most companies don’t do this is because they don’t make the time to do it. It would be very easy to identify these customers that would love to create word of mouth for your products. One simple way would be to track online sales. You know what the average order amount is, how often the average customer places an order, etc.

Let’s say I am the online manager for Poorboy’s World, and I see that the average customer places 2 orders a year, for an average of $35 an order. You could create a threshold for your customers where if they buy at a level predetermined by you, that they will be offered a chance to join the Poorboy’s World Fan Club. Say, if you place 5 orders a year, you flag that customer as being a ‘loyal’ customer, and then invite them to join your fan club. Part of that could be giving them discounts, education on how to better use Poorboy’s World products, and encouraging them to promote the brand both offline and online by being active on message boards and forums devoted to detailing.

Your brand could easily do this, track customer sales (which you are already doing), and when an individual customer hits a certain level, you invite them to join your program devoted to encouraging your happy customers to create more word of mouth for your products.

It’s that easy. BTW, if you want to try out Klasse products, this guide is a great start. The two products you want are ‘All-In-One’ and ‘High Gloss Sealant Glaze’. AIO cleans and preps the paint, HGSG protects it for at least 6 months, possibly as long as a year. Cost for both is around $50 shipped (shop around), and they will last you for years, only need to apply twice a year, I use them in the Spring and again in the Fall.  Enjoy!

by

It’s Time for a Social Media Reboot, Based on Communication, Not Narcissism

It’s not getting a lot of coverage, but social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are facing serious trust issues right now from their users. And it’s hurting their stock prices, Twitter’s stock has gone from close to $50 a share in June, to $35 a share today at the end of August. Facebook’s stock has also been hit hard, going from around $220 a share in July, to around $175 a share now.

What’s causing the drop? It would be easy to say that concerns over how the social media platforms display content and worries over potential censorship based on political affiliation is driving the fall. This is definitely playing a role, but I think there’s a far bigger underlying issue that’s been at play since the sites were launched over a decade ago.

Over the years, social media has morphed from being communications tools, to being ego tools. It’s somewhat understandable, appeals to ego (number of followers you have, how many Likes and RTs your updates get) are very strong, perhaps even necessary to some degree to drive user growth. But these appeals to ego have fundamentally changed user behavior.

And in a very bad way.

The great promise of social media was always that everyone has a voice. We are all connected. Conversation changes the world.

Yet if you look around, there’s not a lot of conversation happening on social media these days. There’s a lot of broadcasting, and a lot of yelling.

I’m in a rare place among most social media users, in that I can remember being active online before Facebook and Twitter. Back then, we didn’t call it social media, we called it ‘blogging’.  There were blogs, and MySpace.  That was pretty much social media in the days before Likes and ReTweets.

In those days, there weren’t a lot of numbers to game.  It’s wasn’t about how many followers you had or how many Likes a post got, it was about the conversation that it started. I can still remember waking up at 2am on many nights simply because I couldn’t get a blog post I’d read earlier that day out of my head. I’d have to get up, open Word and write a comment.  Or if the comment grew long enough, just open Blogger and write a new blog post.

As Facebook and Twitter grew (then later Instagram and Pinterest, etc), we became sort of ‘trained’ to gravitate toward shorter and faster communications. Which led to broadcasting more than talking. I mean if you have a deep thought you want to get out there, you have to constraint it to 140 characters in a tweet. And hell, who can wait 2 mins to see if anyone responds, so just stick it in a blog post, tweet out the link, and wait for everyone to ignore it.

Social media has changed our thinking, and our behavior. We don’t talk to each other anymore, because we don’t have the patience to wait 5 mins to hear what the other person thinks. We send out a tweet and immediately start looking for RTs and hearts. When you do that, it changes your behavior. You create content (tweets or updates) in a way to drive engagement. That means less talking and more yelling.  Because yelling drives engagement. Being angry drives engagement.

Taking the time to listen to the other person’s perspective? Well you don’t get Likes or RTs for that, so to hell with it.

But How Can I Tell Who is the Most Popular or Influential on Social Media Without the Numbers?

The argument for Likes, Followers, Retweets, etc has always been that we need a way to measure who is ‘worth listening to’.  Who should you follow? The guy with the most followers, so the logic goes.

The problem with focusing on numbers is that numbers can be gamed. If you tell me that number of Twitter followers is the most important metric, then I can instantly get 1,000 followers in the next 24 hours by simply following 2,000 people.  About half will follow me back. Or I could simply buy 10,,000 followers, likely for a few bucks.

Again, if we just go by numbers, then someone will find a way to game the numbers. Look at Twitter, and note how many people you see with 50,000 followers who are following 50,000 people. Yet here you sit with 5,000 followers following 50 people, and you think that person is more influential than you are.

What if you had no idea how many Likes or RTs or Followers someone had on Social Media? What if all the numbers we currently use to decide if someone is worth following or listening to, were gone. How would we judge if someone is worth listening to?

By what they say. We would judge people based on the content they create. This is honestly how it should be. Our criteria for creating content shouldn’t be “Is this going to get social shares”, it should be “Is this going to make an impact on the people that read it?”

Think about the word ‘impact’. Think about something impacting another object. It changes that object. A literal impression is made.

Will your content make an impression on its audience? Because if it doesn’t, then what the hell are you doing?

 

BONUS: Great post from Kathy Sierra – More buzzwords, likes, RTs and followers are only a potential competitive advantage if both you and the competition are mediocre. Think about that.

by

How Much Does a Brand Ambassador Program Cost?

cost of a brand ambassador program

Organized brand ambassador programs are becoming more popular with companies, but there’s very little information out there about the prices companies can expect to pay for creating and maintaining a brand ambassador program.

So I wanted to give you some information on pricing with this post.  Let me state up front that the prices you see in this post are intended to be used as a guide and a starting point for your research.  The prices you are quoted might be completely different, or they could be exactly in line with what’s listed here.  The prices listed here are based on my experience working with companies on  similar programs, information gained from talking to industry peers and from good old-fashioned online research.

First, let’s start with a definition of a brand ambassador program for the purposes of this post:

A Brand Ambassador Program is an ongoing business initiative designed to create a relationship with select customers that helps the brand work with these customers to reach certain business goals.

Keep in mind that a Brand Ambassador Program is more robust than a Brand or Customer Advocacy program.  These programs typically revolve around engaging with fans to help promote the brand and spread certain messaging about the brand.  A Brand Ambassador Program typically has a self-promotional element for the brand, but it’s also focused on other key business drivers, such as customer feedback, customer service and generating sales.

It’s also important to note that the brand ambassador program is ongoing.  Often when companies think of a brand ambassador program, they are considering something closer to a brand advocate outreach program, or an influencer outreach program.  Both of these are closer to a campaign in structure in that it typically has a starting and ending point.  A brand ambassador program is an ongoing effort.

Since a brand ambassador program is ongoing, there are two major considerations:

1 – Startup and maintenance costs are typically higher

2 – Business gains realized from the program are typically higher

So the answer to the question ‘How Much Does a Brand Ambassador Program Cost?’ is typically ‘it depends’.  Let’s look at the factors that influence the costs of launching a brand ambassador program:

1 – Determining the strategy and desired outcomes from the brand ambassador program.  Answer the ‘what will success look like?’ question.  What needs to happen as a result of this brand ambassador program in order for it to be deemed successful?  You’ll need to do an audit and strategy creation for the proposed program.  This is also where you can decide if it’s financially feasible to go forward and launch your brand ambassador program.

2 – The scope of the program.  Will your program have 5 members initially or 500?  The size of the program at both onset and over time will play a huge role in its cost.  Also, what type of relationship do you want to have with your Ambassadors?  Many brands are excited about the idea of launching a Brand Ambassador program because they like the idea of having passionate customers spread the brand’s message.  Brand promotion is only one way that ambassadors can help grow your brand.  Since ambassadors are constantly in direct contact with other customers, besides selling directly to them, your ambassadors can collect valuable feedback about your brand.  This feedback can then be applied to improve your brand’s existing marketing. design and customer service efforts.  These improvements can lead to a real decrease in business costs that should be considered when calculating the return of having a brand ambassador program.

3 – How many employees will be required to work with the program?  This ties into the previous point.  Keep in mind that the costs associated with this point and the previous one are typically far less when the program is launched, but will likely increase over time as the program matures.  However, as the program matures and grows, it will self-fund any additional staff that’s necessary to the program.

So as you can see, there are a lot of moving parts in place and it is difficult to get exact dollar amounts on the cost of your brand ambassador program.  A good rule of thumb is to shoot for breaking even during the first year of your brand ambassador program.  What I mean by that is have the costs associated with launching the program at least equal the amount of revenue/business value generated from the program’s first year.  Keep in mind that these projections should be included in the strategy plan and audit that’s created in the first point above.  Also keep in mind that in the first year you’ll incur some startup expenses that won’ be a factor after the program is up and running.  So once you factor in program growth and running it more efficiently over time, if you can break even during the first year, you’ll be in good shape.

So What Are the Actual Costs to Launch and Run a Brand Ambassador Program?

First, let’s look at the cost of the Brand Ambassador Audit.  This will give you the strategy for your proposed program, and help you decide if it is financially feasible to launch.

For a Small Business (Up to 500 employees) – cost for the Brand Ambassador Audit is typically $1,500 – $5,000.

For a Medium-Sized Company (500-10,000 employees) – cost for the Brand Ambassador Audit is typically $3,500-$25,000.

For a Large Company (Over 10,000 employees) – cost for the Brand Ambassador Audit is typically $10,000-$50,000

In short, the bigger the company the more extensive the audit required.  This audit is a one-time fee paid before you launch the program.

Next, let’s look at training and ongoing maintenance.  This is where you work directly with your chosen ambassadors to train them on how you want them to engage with customers, and what they should be working to accomplish.  Also included is time devoted to working directly with your ambassadors.  Keep in mind that, as mentioned above, the scope of your brand ambassador program is critical when calculating ongoing costs, as well as returns.  For example, many brands are simply interested in a program that helps them use fans/advocates for self-promotion.  To that end there are plenty of vendors that are focused on helping brands ‘activate’ their brand advocates, such as SocialToaster, Zuberance and Social Chorus.  However, if you also want your program to focus on other areas such as customer feedback, improved customer loyalty, etc, then additional costs will be accrued.

Monthly training and maintenance costs:

Small business – typically $500-$2,500 a month

Mid-sized company – typically $1,000-$10,000 a month

Large company – typically $5,000-$25,000 a month

Again, the main factors here are number of ambassadors (fewer means less cost) and scope of the program (more limited means less cost).

Employee and Ambassador Compensation Costs

Let’s look at the third major area of expense in a Brand Ambassador Program, the costs to compensate employees and ambassadors.  First, keep in mind that you should expect to compensate your ambassadors if you are asking them to perform certain functions on behalf of the brand that they normally would not do.  You will not only spend time training them, you will also be asking them to spend actual time working on behalf of your brand to connect with other customers.  They deserve to be compensated for their time.

This expense will be difficult to nail down, especially at first.  As the program matures you will get a much firmer handle on how much time is needed from both your employees and brand ambassadors and can budget accordingly.  Also as your brand’s ambassador program matures, the amount of time required for training and maintenance per ambassador will decrease to a degree as your processes become more efficient

In short, this expense fluctuates wildly based on what you expect from your brand ambassadors.  Also, keep in mind that you may not need to pay all ambassadors (In fact, paying ambassadors money is often the worst way to compensate them).  In general, if you are asking ambassadors to let you train them, or to jump on regularly scheduled conference calls, or in any way adjust their normal schedules to accommodate an ongoing relationship with your brand that benefits your brand, then you should consider paying the ambassadors.  But if all you are asking your ambassadors to do is hand out a coupon to any customer that expresses an interest in your brand’s products, then maybe not.  It’s a fine line between working with your brand’s fans to do what they want to do anyway (spread their love of your brand), and asking them to invest more time than they would normally.  In short, if it feels like you are asking them to work for your brand, then you should pay them as if they are workers.

For purposes of this post and to give you some numbers to use as a guideline, assume that 10% of your ambassadors will be paid at a rate of 5-10 hours a week.  Also assume that your employees will spend 10 hours a week managing your first 50 ambassadors, and 15 a week managing from 50-100.  Amount of employee time per ambassador will decrease as you add more ambassadors to your program.

So for example, if you have 100 ambassadors in your program, you would pay 10 of them 5-10 hours a week, and your employees would spend 15 hours a week managing the program.  That would total 65-115 hours a week for your brand ambassador program.  And again, this is just an estimate to give you an example of how you could budget time and how many hours compensation the plan would need.  Your actual hours required could be more or less.

So lets now total up the costs:

For a small business, the expenses are:

Brand Ambassador Audit (One-time fee) – $2,500 – $10,000

Monthly training and maintenance – $500 – $2,500

Monthly employee and Ambassador compensation (estimated) – $250 – $1,000

Total Year One costs for a small business to launch a Brand Ambassador program – $11,500 – $52,000

Yearly ongoing costs for a small business to maintain a Brand Ambassador program  – $9,000 – $42,000 each year

For a mid-sized company the expenses are:

Brand Ambassador Audit (One-time fee) – $5,000 – $25,000

Monthly training and maintenance – $1,000 – $10,000

Monthly employee and Ambassador compensation (estimated) – $1,000 – $5,000

Total Year One costs for a mid-sized company to launch a Brand Ambassador program – $29,000 – $205,000

Yearly ongoing costs for a mid-sized company to maintain a Brand Ambassador program  – $24,000 – $180,000 each year

For a large company the expenses are:

Brand Ambassador Audit (One-time fee) – $10,000 – $50,000

Monthly training and maintenance – $5,000 – $25,000

Monthly employee and Ambassador compensation (estimated) – $5,000 – $15,000

Total Year One costs for a large company to launch a Brand Ambassador program – $130,000 – $530,000

Yearly ongoing costs for a large company to maintain a Brand Ambassador program  – $120,000 – $480,000 each year

And again, let me reiterate that all of these numbers and figures are not absolute and should be considered a guide or starting point.

Now that you have the numbers in place based on the size of your company, you can take those numbers and compare them against the projected benefits from a brand ambassador program to decide if such a program makes sense for your brand.

For example, let’s say that you are a mid-sized company that, based on the above formula and numbers, decides that it will cost your brand approximately $50,000 in Year One, and $40,000 annually thereafter to create a brand ambassador program.  Now that you have a handle on the costs of the program, you can then look at the projected benefits from the program and decide if it makes good fiscal sense.

This is why it’s important to understand that in order to get the budget necessary to fund a brand ambassador program, you are going to need to be able to show that the program will generate more than it will cost.  So if you go to your boss with a plan to start a brand ambassador program that will cost $25,000 a year and generate $15,000 annually in sales, you won’t get that check signed.

Here’s a real-world example:  When Fiskars launched the Fiskateers brand ambassador program, it had two key goals:

1 – Increase product sales by 10% in 4 specific cities within 9 months

2 – Increase online mentions of the Fiskars brand by 10% within 9 months

With these specific goals, Fiskars can track the profit it would make from these sales as well as the sales generated from the increase in online mentions, and compare that to the cost of the program, and know if it makes sense.  BTW according to the book Brains on Fire, the Fiskateers program doubled sales in those 4 cities within 9 months and increased online mentions by 240% in the first 4 months.

Again, keep in mind that these numbers are a guide, and your figures might vary greatly.  For example, former Maker’s Mark CEO Bill Samuels Jr has claimed that it cost the brand $2 Million to launch its wildly successful brand ambassador program.  That program is now rumored to have over 500,000 ambassadors, all of which consider it their job to promote the Maker’s Mark brand.

On the other hand, let’s say your brand would love to launch an ambassador program, but you simply don’t have the budget to outsource the creation of such a program.  Here’s an excellent recap of how Paper.li is launching its brand ambassador program in-house.

UPDATE: Kelly Hungerford, who is spearheading Paper.li’s Brand Ambassador program, left a fascinating comment with more information on its program, make sure you check it out.

 

Are you considering launching a Brand Ambassador Program for your company and want to know what it would cost?  I’ll be happy to help answer any questions you have, simply email me!