MackCollier.com

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 23: Your Fans Are the Cool Kids

Hey y’all! In this episode of #FanDamnShow, I talk about how your fans drive sales by encouraging non-committed customers to try your brand.  I also reference a study done by a Princeton professor who wanted to learn if a product’s popularity was driven more by quality or positive WOM.  The results might surprise you, and I talk about the study and what was uncovered in this episode.

Here’s the NPR episode that talks about the study and interviews the Princeton professor that conducted it.  Just fascinating!

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that the sponsorship slots for May and June are on hold.  All available sponsor slots (starting with July) will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next week!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 22: Your Brand’s Guide to Dealing with Trolls

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In last week’s episode of #FanDamnShow, we discussed how to respond to a customer that leaves a complaint or negative comment online.  But what happens if you aren’t dealing with a customer?  What if you encounter a troll that’s trying to make your brand look bad?  This week’s episode walks you through exactly how to identify a troll, and how to respond to them!

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well! BTW, thank y’all SO much for helping to grow #fandamnshow, the podcast had over 1,500 downloads in March and it’s almost topped that for this month just two weeks into April.  As a result, I’ve started to get requests for sponsor #FanDamnShow so I’ve created a custom page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. All available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next week!

Pic via Flickr user sboneham

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Has Content Glut Killed Content Engagement?

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Or do we simply need to change our expectations for engagement around the content we create?

Last year when I decided to launch The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show, I tried to focus on how I could make my podcast different to help it stand out from everyone else that was jumping into podcasting.  I came up with three ideas:

1 – I didn’t want to have a co-host, and I didn’t want to make the podcast an interview podcast.  So many podcasts interview guests, and IMO few do it well.  And the few that do, like Kerry Gorgone’s Marketing Smarts do it so well that you’re probably not going to come close to what Kerry does, so it’s better to fight the battles you have a chance of winning.

2 – I didn’t want to have every episode be 45 minutes to an hour.  I just don’t have time for it, and now that more and more people are listening to podcasts during travels back and forth from work (which is typically a trip that takes less than 30 mins), a longer episode doesn’t work as well.  Plus, what I’ve noticed from a lot of podcasts, whether they have a co-host or not, is that many podcasters seem to approach their podcast as a pseudo radio show.  The opening 5-10 mins of the podcast is off-topic banter and small talk that has zero to do with that show’s topic.  Some listeners love it, I hate it.  Don’t waste my time, get into the show and cut out the fluff.  So I wanted to shoot for 20 mins or less per episode for my podcast.

3 – I wanted to create a way for listeners and fans of the show to have a real stake in the direction that the podcast took.  My idea was, since #fandamnshow is focused on how companies can create and cultivate fans, I wanted to let the fans and loyal listeners of the podcast have ownership of the show’s direction.  I didn’t really see any other podcasts really making an effort to empower their listeners and give them a way to make the show feel like their own.  The way I wanted to do this was to encourage listeners to engage with me and fellow listeners via the #fandamnshow tweets.  My thinking was that this would be a way for listeners to share their thoughts on the show and also suggest future topics, etc.  And I could pick topics that listeners suggested, give them shoutouts during the podcasts, and they could see that their voice was being incorporated into the flow of #fandamnshow so in many ways it would become their podcast, as much as it was mine.

 

Fast-forward almost a year, and #3 hasn’t happened at all.  I’ve been lucky enough to have some listeners (thank y’all!) use the #fandamnshow hashtag to promote the podcast, but there’s been almost none of the discussion around the podcast itself via the hashtag that I was hoping for.

And yet, the audience for #fandamnshow is growing at a rate that I never would have dreamed was possible when I launched the show.  Last month the show had over 1,500 downloads, which was a 170% increase over the previous month.  April looks like it could double the number of downloads from March.  So the show’s audience is rapidly expanding, but the engagement via discussions I am getting around the show via comments here, emails and tweets with #fandamnshow continue to be very low.

Now granted, a lot of that is simply a byproduct of podcasts not being the best channels for creating engagement via discussions.  As I said, a lot of people listen to podcasts while they are on the go, and mobile commenting isn’t a very convenient way to engage.  At the same time, I see discussions here have fallen for the last couple of years as well, and I’ve already talked about how no one is talking on Twitter anymore (Although I do like the recent ability Twitter added that lets you add a comment to a RT.  That’s a nice touch).

The reality is that most of us have decided that we would rather spend our time consuming content, than engaging in discussions about and around that content.  The time I spend crafting a comment about a post/podcast/video is time I could take to read another post or watch another cat video on Facebook.

From a business context, this change in how we define engagement could be a good thing.  For too long, businesses have relied on ‘soft’ metrics to try to measure social media success.  Comments, Likes, RTs and Favorites were tracked, metrics that have little correlation to real business growth.  Since these forms of engagement are harder to find, businesses will have to adapt and measure/track more relevant forms of engagement, like leads generated, white papers downloaded and click throughs.

But for all of us, I think we need to realize that the heady days of 2006-2008, when you could create almost any piece of social content and a discussion would spring up around it, are gone.

Pic via Flickr user Udo Springfield

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Is Your Blog Ready For Google’s Mobile Search Update?

UPDATE: Here’s the link to the transcript for this #Blogchat.

Tonight at #Blogchat (4-12-2015) we will be discussing the changes that Google is about to roll out that are aimed at rewarding sites that are Mobile Friendly.  These changes will start to take affect on 4-21-2015, or Tuesday of next week.

Here’s where you can read about what these changes mean on Google’s webmaster blog.  In short, it seems that the main change will be that sites/blogs that google deems to be ‘mobile-friendly’ will rank higher than similar sites/blogs that are not mobile-friendly in google’s eyes.

You can use this site from google to check and see if google sees your blog as being mobile-friendly.

First, what does ‘mobile-friendly’ mean anyway?  In short, it means that your blog adapts to whatever device being used to view it, to present an adequate viewing experience.  For example, have you ever tried to view a blog on a smartphone and it looks like a smaller version of the entire website?  And you have to expand the text with your fingers to read any of it?  That’s an example of a blog that’s NOT mobile-friendly.  This is also called having a responsive design/theme/template for your blog.  It means your blog adapts to the device you are using to present text in a way that can be easily read.

Second, is google going to penalize my blog starting on 4-21-2015 if it’s not mobile-friendly?  Well, yes and no.  I think it’s more accurate to say this latest update from Google is more about rewarding mobile-friendly blogs that it is about penalizing ones that aren’t.  If you go now to your smartphone and do a google search, you’ll see that when you look at the results, some of the sites will have MOBILE FRIENDLY under their entry.  This is telling you that since you are on a mobile device, that these sites will give you an optimal viewing experience.  So the odds are that you will click a mobile-friendly result moreso than one that isn’t.  Additionally, Google has said that starting on 4-21-2015, it will begin using whether a site is mobile-friendly or not as one of its ‘ranking signals’.  Meaning that Google will start to consider if a site is mobile-friendly or not as one of the criteria when it ranks sites for results.  Will this only apply for search results on mobile devices, or all devices?  I’m not sure, maybe someone could chime in?

What are your options if your blog is NOT mobile-friendly?

If your blog is NOT mobile-friendly and you want to make it so, then you will want to either switch to a responsive theme, or make some alteration to your existing theme/site to make it responsive.

The first thing I would do is go to your Google Analytics and see how much of your blog’s traffic is currently coming from mobile devices.  For my blog, about 33% of my site’s traffic is from mobile.  That number is too big to ignore, so over the weekend I made some tweaks to my theme (Thesis) to make it responsive, and mobile-friendly in Google’s eyes.  If your blog is only getting 5% of its traffic from mobile devices, then you might decide to wait and see how your traffic changes on 4-21-2015 (if it does at all) before you make any changes.

Before changing themes, I would check to see if there are any options for making your existing theme responsive.  For example, I am running Thesis 1.8.6 here, and I found out there IS a way to make this theme responsive.  I did so by adding this responsive skin (so if you have Thesis 1.8.x, you can use it to make your blog responsive).  I would google your theme and see if there are any options for making it responsive.

If you do decide to change themes (and your blog is a self-hosted WordPress blog), keep in mind that WordPress 4.0 came with the Twenty-Fifteen theme, which is a responsive theme.  It’s a very simple and no-frills theme, but switching to it should make your blog mobile-friendly and ready for Google’s upcoming changes.

Also, Copyblogger has a nice write-up on what this change could mean for your blog.

So join us tonight at 8pm Central at #blogchat to discuss these changes and how to get your blog ready!  If you haven’t joined #blogchat before, here’s what it’s all about.

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 21: From Rants to Raving Fans

Hey y’all! Welcome to the 21st episode of #Fandamnshow! Today I talk to you about how to respond to complaints from customers online and turn them into raving fans of your brand! This topic is SO misunderstood by brands, so I wanted to spend an episode walking you through the process for not only responding to an angry customer, but doing so in a way that converts them into a passionate fan of your brand.

Show notes:

2:00 – Understanding the mindset of the customer that’s complaining about your brand.  Understanding what’s motivating their behavior is vital to your brand responding to them correctly.

2:50 – How does the average customer handle a problem they have with a product or service?  What’s their response?

4:00 – By the time the customer complains about your brand online, they are already aggravated, and here’s why.

5:50 – What every customer that complains about your brand online wishes you understood about WHY they are complaining.

6:20 – The seven steps you should take to respond to an angry customer online, and convert them into a passionate fan of your brand.

 

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well! BTW, thank y’all SO much for helping to grow #fandamnshow, the podcast had over 1,500 downloads in March at it looks like it will easily top that in April.  As a result, I’ve started to get requests for sponsor #FanDamnShow so I’ve created a custom page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. All available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again next week!

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BMW Pulls ‘Reverse April Fool’s Prank’, Teaches You About Digital Marketing

On April 1st, a BMW dealership in New Zealand ran a newspaper ad.  At the bottom, it added an ‘April Fool’s Day Special’ coupon.  The coupon said that the first person to bring the coupon in and ask for ‘Tom’, would be able to trade their old car in for a new BMW.

Here’s what happened:

Now, let’s look at this giveaway as being a marketing campaign.  First, let’s consider the costs.  There’s the cost of the BMW itself.  Then add on the cost to create the video you just watched.  Let’s assume there were also some costs associated with PR efforts around the giveaway.  Add in any miscellaneous costs and let’s assume a total cost of say….$60,000.00.

Now, what did this BMW dealership gain from the giveaway?  Let’s look at earned media generated:

First, there’s currently over 1.3 million views of the above video on YouTube.  The odds are it will eventually approach 2 million views, if not pass that.

Next, we have earned media in the form of articles written about the giveaway.  I googled “BMW new zealand april fools” and found 143,000 results:

BMWThen you have to consider the coverage that this giveaway got on television and radio shows.  This is just the type of giveaway that morning radio and television shows love to cover.  “Hey did you hear about the woman that answered the April Fool’s ad and won a free BMW?”

Additionally, it’s going to drive an increase in foot traffic to the BMW dealership, and will likely result in increased sales from this giveaway.  Many people will appreciate the fact that this dealership did the giveaway, and it will make them at least consider doing business there.  Also, if the dealership wants to do something similar in the future, it can expect a much higher response rate for its newspaper ad call-to-action!

So for $60,000, here’s what this business got:

  • A video on YouTube with over 1.3 million views
  • Over 140,000 positive articles about the dealership and its giveaway
  • Any negative articles or posts about the dealership will be completely buried by the avalanche of articles about this giveaway
  • A ton of free coverage on television and radio shows, and likely some newspaper column mentions as well
  • Increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sales

I think most businesses that could afford to spend $60,000 on its marketing would consider this to be a good investment.

The key to the success of this campaign has been spreading the story via online channels.  And the story spread online because it focused on the customer.  If this dealership had created a video promoting the same BMW it gave away, that video would have generated a small fraction of the exposure that this giveaway created.  Instead, this BMW dealership found a way to put the focus on the customer, and in doing so. made the video far more interesting.  Putting the customer at the center of the giveaway and video makes the video more relevant to other customers.

Customer-centric content spreads further and faster than company-centric content.

 

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My Blog Traffic and Podcast Audience Results For March

For every month in 2015, I’ve set specific goals for growing my blog readership, and podcast audience.  The end goal is that by December this blog will have at least 100,000 visitors for that month, and the podcast will be downloaded at least 10,000 times for December.  Every month I am going to write a post like this recapping how I did in the previous month, and share any lessons I have learned.  The goal is to help you learn how to build a blog readership and podcast audience as I do.

First, here were my goals for February:

Blog – At least 58,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 1,100 downloads

Let’s start out by looking at how the blog did in March.

My blog traffic in March was 48,901 visitors, averaging 1,577 a day.  In February I had 50,225 visitors and averaged 1,735 a day.  So traffic fell about 10% in March.  Yikes!

So what happened?  I need to figure out why the traffic fell, so I can then work on getting it back up.  Let’s start by going into Google Analytics and compare March’s traffic to February’s:

TrafficMarchThe blue area on the bottom is daily traffic for March, and the orange lines above it are February’s daily traffic.  I was curious to see if maybe there was one or two days in February that had a huge traffic spike that maybe could help account for why traffic was down in March.  But as you can see from this picture, traffic in March was pretty much down every day compared to February.

So next, let’s look at the traffic sources for each month.  I want to see if any particular traffic source moved up or down, as that would give me another clue as to what happened.

Search traffic – Down 13%

Direct traffic – Up 3.5%

Social traffic – Up 254%

Referral traffic – Up 4%

 

Now the picture becomes clearer.  If you remember from last month’s traffic update, I made some backend changes to the blog which were designed to primarily increase load times.  And it did, I culled a lot of plugins and made some tweaks to reduce average load time here from around 6 seconds in February to around 2 seconds now.  But it appears that the changes I made also led to a decline in search traffic.  At least I think that’s what the cause of the search traffic decline is, I’m not sure.  I started noticing that search traffic was down early in the month of March, so I started promoting my posts more on social media (especially Twitter), which is why there was a big jump in social traffic.  This boost was almost enough to cover the decline in search traffic.  But either way, I missed my blog’s goal for traffic in March badly.

I wrote 13 posts in March, which was 3 more than I wrote in February.  At this point I need to seriously consider trying to write 4 posts a week if I want to continue to push traffic upward.  I’ll have to watch that closely in April, and see what I can do about getting more posts up.

Podcast Numbers and Overview for March

After that beating that the blog took in March, I am ready for some good news.  Thankfully, The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show crushed its goals for March!

Goal for March: At least 1,100 downloads

Actual downloads: 1,547

So the podcast exceeded its March goal for downloads by 41%!  Awesome!  Here’s the podcast’s daily downloads for Jan 1st-March 31st:

PodcastMarch The inflection point seems to have been March 16th, from that point on for the rest of the month the daily downloads steadily went up.  I didn’t really do anything different in March, other than a bit more promotion of the podcast.  I think the increase is simply a function of the podcast finding its audience and resonating with listeners.  I even got a couple of sponsorship inquiries in March!  As a result I’ll be getting up a sponsorship page in a few days for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show.

So those are my blog traffic and podcast audience results for March.  Here’s my goals for each in April:

Blog – At least 62,000 visitors

Podcast – At least 1,500 downloads

As you can see from this post, it will be a hike to reach my blog’s goal, but it looks like with the growth the podcast has shown, 1,500 downloads should be within reach for April.

I’ll be back in one month to share my results!

 

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 20: Earning the Trust of Your Customers

Hey y’all! Welcome to the 20th episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show! In this episode I discuss the value of appreciating the point-of-view of your customer and how it helps your brand win your customer’s trust.

Show Notes:

1:20 – History lesson: How James Baker secured a key agreement with Russia by focusing on what the Soviets needed to make the deal work for them

4:15 – A smart brand thinks like a smart politician, and considers the point of view of the customer and ‘what do they want out of this?’

4:50 – How this can be applied to your marketing and social media strategy, how to create valuable content and experiences for your customers

5:30 – Getting your customers ‘on board’ with your efforts by addressing their wants and needs

6:30 – Customer-centric marketing wins trust.  Period.

8:30 – Creating a win-win, what do we (the brand) get out of this, what does the customer get out of it?  Both parties need to benefit.

 

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well! BTW, thank y’all SO much for helping to grow #fandamnshow, I will have a comprehensive write-up tomorrow here, but the number of downloads grew in March by 170% over February!  Love that the show is starting to build momentum, and I’ll talk about that more tomorrow.

Thanks for listening!

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It’s Not About the Tools, It’s About the People Using the Tools

6847365223_4b5bdabf97_z“Sometimes the world is cruel to shiny things.” – Lucky, King of the Hill

So you’ve heard of Meerkat, right?  If you read more than 2 social media blogs a month, you have.  If you don’t, you think the mammal, not the app.  Meerkat is an app that lets you stream live video.  And it was also this year’s overhyped SXSW darling.

Every 6 months or so, the social media echo chamber goes batshit-crazy over a particular site/tool/app.  Identi.ca.  Quora. Color.  Gowalla. Ello.  And the Super Bowl of overhyping shiny objects happens each year at SXSW.  This year, it was all Meerkat, all the time.  Social media gurus/ninjas/experts were everywhere proclaiming how amazing Meerkat was, and yes, how it was a total ‘game-changer’.

For future reference, whenever you hear that a shiny new social media site/tool/app is a ‘game-changer’, this is the tech equivalent of shark-jumping.  It likely means this cool site/tool/app is about to die.

And it looks like Meerkat just did:

The ugly truth that U.S. tech media has declined to mention even in passing is that Meerkat had never been a hit to begin with. All those breathless media reports about “the hot new app” and “the break-out app” were deeply misleading at best — and cynical legerdemain at worst.

Meerkat’s highest daily ranking on the U.S. iPhone download chart was No. 140, on March 20th. At this point, the app had already generated thousands of news stories and blog posts, most of them enthusiastically describing it as a hit. But actual American consumers never showed the slightest sign of warming up.

Meerkat’s “success” was the creation of a handful of West Coast tech bloggers who managed to lure major newspapers into covering a phenomenon that did not exist.

It’s not accurate to say that Meerkat is dying.  Moreso, the buzz/hype around it is.  This is the problem with sites/tools/apps like Meerkat that get an explosion of hype from social media types: Usually, that hype is driven more by peer pressure than utility.  Meerkat and every site/tool/app I listed above all at one time reached a tipping point when buzz was being driven by the ‘social media cool kids’.  This A-List tech blogger started claiming it was the next big thing, so this A-List Twitter Power User said the same.  Then suddenly almost overnight you either said this site/tool/app was cool or YOU were the one that was uncool.  Then another shiny object comes along (Hello Periscope!) and suddenly the cool kids realize that their current love is about to become uncool, so they dump it and quickly move to the next ‘big thing’.

Did I mention that social media is high school?  Because it is.

Earlier this month I had people asking me what I thought about Meerkat.  I told them to ask me in a month, and this is why.  Whenever a new social media site/tool/app gets really hot like Meerkat did, I always wait till the influencers and ‘social media hipsters’ leave before I decide if it’s for real.

Because honestly, the tools are very very boring to me.  Painfully so.  But the people that use them, and considering why they are and how they could use these tools?  That fascinates me.  Look at podcasts.  I launched my first podcast 8 years ago.  I dumped it after about 5 episodes because the creation, the post-production, the distribution, was all a huge pain in the ass.  And it was difficult for listeners to take the episodes with them as downloads, they pretty much had to be landlocked to their desktop to listen.  But I knew the idea of a podcast was a good one, it was just a matter of the creation and distribution processes becoming easier, as well as making listening to audio files more accessible and convenient for the listener.  Eight years later, technology has caught up, and podcasts are hotter than ever.  I’ve launched a new podcast and absolutely love it.

Don’t focus on the tools, focus on the connections the tools help facilitate.  The tool isn’t cool, what the tool allows the user to do is what’s interesting.  Let’s go back to Meerkat and Periscope for a minute.  Both apps allow you to stream live video.  So think about instances where watching someone’s live video stream could be compelling.  Maybe for covering a breaking news story?  Or a live event?  A concert maybe?  A ballgame?  Although there may be copyright issues that need to be ironed out in these cases.  The point is, don’t get too caught up on whether or not the tool is ‘cool’, think about how users could potentially use it.  Why would people want to use a live-video app?  Why would they want to use a site that lets them send 140-character messages?

The tool isn’t cool.  The behavior of the human being using it is what’s cool.

Pic via Flickr user Chris Lott

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Why Are Brands Trying to Publicly Shame Their Customers?

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Seriously, what are brands thinking today?  And I’m not even talking about the ones that throw a pool party for their customers that involves knockout-gassing them.  Specifically, I want to talk about two brands that recently launched campaigns to engage with their customers at the point of sale, and why both efforts immediately fell flat.

First, there’s McDonalds’ ‘McLovin’ campaign.  This short-lived (thankfully) campaign ran the first 2 weeks in February, and the idea was simple: Customers would be randomly selected to pay for their meal with ‘McLovin’.  So when you go to pay for that Big Mac, you’re told it’s free, all you have to do is hug the 5 total strangers that are standing in line behind you.  Or maybe you have to join the staff in a dance-off, or maybe you have to call your mom and tell her you love her, while the staff listens in and cheers you on.  But the upshot of publicly embarrassing yourself is that you get a greasy $3 sandwich for free.  Which of course makes it all worthwhile.

Starbucks’ #RaceTogether campaign is a bit different.  Starbucks employees put #RaceTogether stickers on cups, and were encouraged to prompt customers to talk about the racial issues in this country when they place orders.  You can imagine the reaction, it’s 8am, you are half groggy and want to grab a coffee to wake you up before heading to a the office and a barista asks you what you think about race in this country.  This might be a healthy conversation to have, but asking half-asleep customers in a crowded Starbucks is not the ideal place to initiate that conversation.  Starbucks immediately caught backlash over this effort, ended it after about a week, then claimed it was the plan all along to end it after a week.

What’s really odd about both these efforts is that they aren’t just making the customers uncomfortable in many instances, but think about how the poor employees feel?  Can you imagine being an introvert working the front line at McDonalds and being told you have to get a middle-aged man to pay for his meal with ‘McLovin’ by following him around the restaurant taking 3 selfies with random customers?  Or being an introvert working at Starbucks that’s required to spend the day encouraging total strangers (customers) to talk to you about race relations in this country?  In both cases the employees are likely to feel as completely awkward as the customers do, which only makes the situation much worse for everyone.

But curiously, it seems that Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ politically-active CEO, is intent on pushing forward with the idea of having his employees start a conversation about hot-button political issues with Starbucks’ customers.  Imagine trying to buy a coffee at Starbucks, then when you go to pay, the barista informs you that your price depends on your stance on legalizing marijuana.  Or gun control.  Or marriage equality.  Or another hot-button political issue that is honestly none of Starbucks’ damned business what your views are.

Brands are looking for ways to engage customers and build loyalty.  I get it. And a little out-of-the-box thinking can be great sometimes.  But if you truly want to build an amazing brand, all you really have to do is nail the fundamentals.

For example: I went shopping at Publix yesterday.  The cart was new and the wheels rolled like a champ (Hi, Wal-Mart!).  Every employee I encountered in the aisles was friendly and helpful.  Sales were everywhere, the prices were the lowest in the area for several items I buy regularly.  Then when I went to pay for my items, a manager rushed up and unloaded my buggy for me.  The woman that checked me out was friendly, remarked that she’d seen me here before, and thanked me for coming back.  Then when she finished she told me to come back soon.  Then the girl that loaded up my buggy begged profusely to let her follow me to my car and unload the buggy for me.

The fundamentals.  Treating your customers as friends and people that you want to continue to do business with.  I feel appreciated every time I go to Publix, which is exactly why I keep going there.  The crazy thing is, McDonalds launched the McLovin’ campaign to try to boost sagging sales.  If they want to boost sales, all they have to do is tell the cashiers that the next time they are all standing around up front chatting, to instead walk out to the restaurant area and ask the customers if they need anything.  Ask them if you can refill a coke for them, or take their tray to the trash.  It will take them a few seconds, and shock the hell out of the customers.  Just treat your customers with respect and gratitude, and leave the silly gimmicks and public-shaming of customers initiatives in the trash can where they belong.

Pic via Flickr user Tony Fischer