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Post This, Not That: Social Media Etiquette for Brands

6129906404_23b3c21065_zNote from Mack: This is a Guest Post from Kerry Gorgone, who is an instructor at Full Sail University, a lawyer, and Wonder Woman in her spare time.  Check out her previous guest post here on protecting yourself and your works online.

Your brand needs to participate in the conversations that people are having about you in social media. 44% of Americans get information about brands via social networks, and more than half of consumers who mention a brand on Twitter expect a response within one hour. You can’t have a positive impact on brand sentiment or customer service until you join the discussion.

Consequently, going where your audience is makes good sense, provided the content you post there enhances your audience’s experience, rather than disrupting it. Here are some pointers.

Be conversational, not promotional.

For starters, don’t overtly shill. No matter which social network your brand is on, every post can’t be “Enjoy a hot cup of Brand X coffee!” People will unfollow you—or at least hide your posts—if your content is too self-serving.

Hidden posts are especially detrimental for marketers, because it looks as though you have a certain number of “Likes” for your business page, but people aren’t seeing your content, so engagement rates plummet.

Facebook’s algorithm already engineers things so that only a small percentage of people who have liked your page will see your posts, so you can’t afford to lose any.  For some general guidelines on how to behave on Facebook, check out Jennifer Kane’s excellent primer.

Instead of pitching or selling via social, ask questions, share tips or quotes, or share photos. Visuals are playing an increasingly important role across the board. Multi-photo posts on Facebook increased engagement 1290% in one case (and that’s not a typo).

Exercise caution when “newsjacking”

“Newsjacking” done right can masterfully direct traffic to your social media profiles and site while the news story you’re playing off of remains “hot.” Newsjacking done wrong can really damage your brand.

Social media posts during a crisis demand extra-thoughtful consideration. While your brand may well want to express sympathy for people impacted by a tragedy, it’s better to say nothing than to post something that people perceive as insensitive or exploitive.

Entrepreneur suggests asking 5 questions to guide you through the decision-making process on social media posts about the news. Run through them before you post: you won’t regret taking the time to reflect.

Match the tone of the conversation

Also remember that each social network has its own culture, so people who follow you on Twitter will expect a different conversational tone than those who follow you on Facebook or Instagram. If you haven’t been active yet, spend some time observing how your audience posts on each social network, so you’ll know what they expect.

Amy Howell of Howell Marketing shared this apt explanation: “Twitter is like being in a crowded, noisy bar. Facebook is like your living room. LinkedIn is like the chamber of commerce.”

Know when and where to use #Hashtags

Including hashtags in your social media posts can help people to find your content and follow the conversation, but they don’t work on every social network, and even if the functionality is supported, they might not be a fit for the culture.

Tweets with hashtags get twice the engagement, but hashtags actually lower engagement for Facebook posts, and hashtags don’t work on LinkedIn at all.

Understand your unique audience

Social media statistics provide a good starting point, but understanding your own audience will help you to deliver the kind of content that users will truly appreciate. Gather information on your audience through analytics and customer surveys, and test different types of posts, as well as post times.

Whether you sit down in a “noisy bar” or network at the “chamber of commerce,” think of social media as an extension of your relationship with your audience.

Is a brand you follow doing it right (or wrong)? Post a comment and tell us about it!

Pic via Flickr user Brett Jordan

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Your Field Guide to What it Means When Someone Complains About Your Brand Online

J0202218It can be a scary (online) world out there, y’all.

For brands, this online world is particularly scary because they are very visible targets.  There’s no shortage of complaints and negative comments being hurled at them.  What’s worse, if they ignore the comments, they tend to multiply.  What’s even worse, most brands aren’t sure how to respond.  It can easily become a no-win situation.

So if we accept that your brand can’t ignore negative comments and complaints online, then we need to figure out how you will respond to them.  But before you can respond appropriately, you need to properly assess who you are responding to!

The Three Types of People That Will Complain About Your Brand

When you encounter a negative comment about your brand online, you need to understand who it is coming from, because that impacts how you will respond.  Negative brand comments come from one of three sources: Angry customers, passionate fans or trolls.  Here’s how to recognize each.

1 – Angry customers.  This is the most comment source of complaints you will see online.  Typically the complaint will deal with a very specific issue that this customer is having, and nothing else.  The complaint may include some larger statements about how this issue reflects poorly on your brand, but these are typically included to stress to the brand the need to pay attention to the person and fix their problem.  

Example complaint from an Angry Customer: “I just bought your writing software program and I can’t get it installed on my PC, and I can’t get anyone to help me!  I followed the instructions I found online (no manual included, why did I have to go online for instructions?) and it still won’t start.  I called your 1-800 customer service line and it said there was a 2 hour wait!  I just left a tweet to @SoftwareCustomerService on Twitter but so far no response!  Look I just want to get this product working, but I can’t get anyone at your company to help me!  Can you please call me at 1-800-frustrated customer or email me at need.help@acustomer.com?”

Note the complaint is only about their specific issue and how they want a resolution.  That’s it.  Note also that this customer is only contacting you because he tried to get the help he needed by himself, and couldn’t.

2 – Passionate fans.  This one is difficult for the untrained eye to spot.  The difference between a complain coming from a fan is that since the fan views themselves as owners of your brand, they feel an obligation to bring the issue to your attention.  But the fan will also communicate to you how you should resolve the issue, or they will offer to help you resolve the issue.  This is the easiest way to differentiate a complaint from a passionate fan vs a complaint from an angry customer.  The angry customer simply wants you to resolve THEIR issue, then they could care less if you fix the larger problem with your brand.  Whereas a passionate fan will focus less on a specific issue and more on how this is a larger problem for your brand, that needs to be corrected.  The fan will typically offer advice and suggestions for fixing the problem or making it better.  And they will frequently volunteer to work with you to help implement their suggestions.  Again, fans view themselves as owners of your brand, so they feel they have ‘skin in the game’ and will act in what they perceive to be the brand’s best interests.

Example complaint from a Passionate Fan: “Hey there! I’m a frequent customer at your restaurant on 201 Church Ave and typically love the service I get there when I come in for lunch.  However, over the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed that lunchtime service seems to be getting slower and slower, and the line of customers waiting to have their orders taken seems to get longer each time I go there for lunch.  I do notice that there seems to be several new members working there, so perhaps it’s just a matter of them needing to get up to speed.  But I have to say, I’m starting to notice that customers are leaving due to the long lines and going elsewhere for lunch, I hate to see you lose business due to slow service!”

Here, the person is careful to identify herself as someone that frequents this location, and that she is typically happy with the service there.  Also, she is careful to point out how the long lines are having an impact on the brand, by driving customers away to a competitor.  The tone isn’t angry, instead its sympathetic, she’s hoping that your brand will correct these issues, because she is a fan.

3 – Trolls.  Trolls typically attack the brand in vague terms rather than specific issues or events.  Rather than complaining about a specific issue with your brand, they might try to attack your brand based on your brand supporting certain charities or causes or political candidates.  Or they might complain about your products or service in general, and not focus on specific interactions they have had with your brand.  ‘You suck’ is their catch-phrase.  A troll simply wants attention and engagement, whereas angry customers or fans want a resolution.  Trolls just want you to keep engaging them, and they will typically try to piss you off in order to make that happen.

Example complaint from a Troll: “Is your brand still trying to act like it cares about the environment?  You can launch all the ‘go green’ initiatives you want, but we both know it’s purely propaganda, your brand doesn’t care about the environment, you are only piggybacking on a popular marketing trend for your own benefit!”

Note the attack is very vague and the claims are difficult/impossible to substantiate.  Again, the idea is to spark a response, ideally an angry response, at which point the troll would likely claim that they were being attacked by your brand.  Remember the saying ‘Don’t feed the troll’.

Tomorrow I’ll go more in-depth into how to respond to negative comments online.  But in short, here’s a quick cheat-sheet for responding to complaints online, based on the person making the complaint:

Angry customer – Resolve their specific issue as soon as possible.  Try to move the exchange offline so you can get specific information from them.  Also communicate to the appropriate teams internally where the customer encountered breakdowns in the customer service chain that resulted in their complaint.  Make sure you followup with the customer and ensure that their issue is resolved to their satisfaction.  Handling a complaint from an angry customer effectively is the quickest way to convert a detractor into a fan of your brand.

Passionate fan – Communicate to the fan that you are taking their feedback seriously, and will forward their recommendations to the proper people within your brand.  Ask the fan if they would be interested in giving you more feedback related to your brand.  A true fan will jump at this chance and it’s an opportunity to build an ongoing relationship with your fan.

Troll – In general, it’s best to ignore trolls.  If they are trolling on your site/blog, you are typically within your bounds to delete their comment, especially if it is a vague attack.  If they are leaving comments on another site, it’s still best to ignore them, but if they continually harass your brand you should contact the site administrator and ask them to look into the troll’s actions.

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Getting and Writing Guest Posts, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

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Here’s the transcript to tonight’s #Blogchat (Click on Transcript on the left)

Tonight (November 17th, 2013) we’ll cover one of the most requested topics at #Blogchat, how to write and get Guest Posts!  #Blogchat is sponsored all month by Pencils.com, please follow them on Twitter and check out their blog!

Here’s what we’ll cover tonight at #Blogchat, starting at 8pm Central:

8:00PM-8:30PM Central – How to write Guest Posts for other bloggers.  We’ll talk about how to approach other bloggers about letting you guest post for them, and how to figure out what they want you to write about.  Writing guest posts for other bloggers is an excellent way to build awareness and exposure for yourself.

8:30PM-9:00PM – How to get bloggers to write Guest Posts for your blog.  On the flipside, if you can have other bloggers guest post on your blog, it’s a great way to get additional and valuable content on your blog, which benefits you by boosting your traffic and exposure!  Plus the blogger that wrote the guest post for you has a vested interest in promoting the post, which also promotes your blog!  Here’s a recent guest post that Kerry wrote for this blog.

 

So join us tonight starting at 8pm Central, or stop by a few minutes early to say hi!  You can follow the hashtag on Twitter here.

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Don’t Make the Same Mistake This Company Made With Social Media

A few years ago I talked to a company that believed they had figured out how to get ahead with social media.  This company could see that (at the time) everyone was starting to use Twitter, so they wanted to hire a ‘Twitter expert’, someone that knew how to use Twitter, who could also train their team on using Twitter so the entire company could be up to speed with using this one tool.

I replied with “Ok, so you’ll spend say 3 months with the hiring process and selecting and qualifying the candidates and hiring the right one.  Then that ‘Twitter expert’ will spend another 3 months training your staff so that 6 months from now, your team will be ready to start using Twitter effectively.  So what happens when 6 months from now, Twitter is no longer the ‘hot site’, and there’s a new cool tool and you’re back behind the 8-ball?  Do you then fire the ‘Twitter expert’ and hire a new expert for this new cool site?  Your best bet is to stop chasing the tools and start investing your time in learning how your customers are actually using these tools.’

This is what you need to do as well.  So much time is spent by companies chasing tools and trying to understand how to use the tools effectively.  This is putting the cart before the horse.  You don’t need to understand how to use Pinterest, you need to understand what activities your current and potential customers are engaging in on Pinterest and why.  Understanding the behavior of your customers using social media is far more important than understanding the social media tools they use.

For example, I spend a lot of time watching the stats on sharing around the content I share.  I spend a lot of time promoting my content on Twitter, and I know that the average post here currently gets about 40-60 retweets.  But over the last month, these two posts got over 200 retweets each:

1 – Think You Know Social Media? These Stats Will Blow Your Mind

2 – My Guide to Writing Totally Awesome Blog Posts Every Single Time

So when I see certain posts like these get shared far more than others, I try to understand why people thought this content was useful, so I can replicate that with future content I create.  I look at these two posts and I make a list of what I think ‘worked’ for people with these two posts:

1 – Both posts had a very specific headline.  You know exactly what each post will be about and that’s key because when you share posts on Twitter, your post’s headline is competing with all the other content that everyone else that they follow is sharing.  I just went to my Twitter home feed and saw these 3 new tweets come in:

Twittertimeline

 

Which tweet did you look at?  I bet you went straight to the tweet with the purdy pictures and ignored the first two, right?  The tweet with the picture earned your attention so you skipped over the first two tweets.  This is the point, you literally only have a couple of seconds to earn the attention of your followers, so that headline is crucial.  You have to tell people exactly what they are getting and make it interesting to them.  I actually changed the headline of this post to try to make it more interesting and relevant to people on Twitter.  Originally the headline was going to be Don’t Focus on the (Social Media) Tools, Focus on the People Using the Tools.  That headline sort of summarizes the post, and as I stated in the guide to writing awesome blog posts above, you shouldn’t do that with your headlines.  Which is why I changed the headline to be more specific, and I’ll be interested to see how many retweets and shares this post gets.

2 – Both posts addressed an exact need.  The first post on stats was a goldmine of stats about specific social media tools and usage in general.  This information is great for several different audiences: The guy or gal in the office that wants to convince their boss that they need to start using social media, the speaker that needs some great stats to add to their social media presentation or simply anyone that wants to self-educate when it comes to social media usage patterns.

The second post was a very specific How-To.  It was also a very detailed post that specific step-by-step instructions on how to solve a particular content-creation problem (creating awesome blog posts).  In fact if you read that post, you can hopefully see that I applied some of my own advice with that post, in writing this one.

BTW note that with both these examples, I’m trying to figure out how to get more retweets for my content on Twitter, but I’m doing so by trying to understand why people shared this content.  I’m not trying to figure out some ‘trick’ I can use on Twitter to get more retweets or some phrase to add in the tweet (like ‘Please RT!).  I’m far more interested in understanding customer behavior.  Why did people share these posts?  What made the content useful to them?  What did I do to earn their attention in those 2-3 seconds I had?  Because if I understand why this type of content was useful to others, then I can apply that understanding to all the content I create here from this point forward.

Don’t focus your time on understanding how to use social media.  Invest in first understanding how your customers use social media.  

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The Common Sense Guide For Brands That Want to Show Support Without Looking Like Asshats

One of the themes last week at #SoMeT13US was how do you create social media content that communicates that your brand supports people involved in a tragedy or situation, without giving them impression that you are simply trying to leverage the situation to promote yourself?

First, you don’t do this:

RandiTweetHere, Randi has taken a holiday that’s important to so many of us, Veteran’s Day, and she’s attempted to leverage the feelings we have for Veteran’s Day to support her book.  This isn’t the first time Randi has gotten into hot-water over an ill-advised tweet.  This tweet doesn’t honor Veteran’s Day or veterans at all, it’s a thinly-veiled promotion for her book, which many people quickly picked up on, which is why she’s caught flack over it.

Now check out how Three Dog Bakery mentioned Veteran’s Day on Facebook yesterday:

ThreeDogBakeryFB

See the difference?  The focus is on veterans, not the brand.  But notice that by including dogs in the update, Three Dogs Bakery was able to make the update somewhat relevant to its brand without making it about the brand!  That’s the difference between these two updates.  Randi’s update was about Randi.  That’s why it honked people off.  Three Dogs Bakery’s update was about honoring all veterans, ‘both two and four-legged’.  So the update was about Veteran’s Day and related to the brand.  Since it didn’t directly promote the brand, it didn’t upset people the way Randi’s tweet did.

It’s always risky to use social media to comment as a brand on an event or situation that many people have strong feelings about.  Still, many brands do want to communicate to their customers that they sympathize with their feelings and that they care about the people being affected.

So if your brand feels compelled to use social media to comment on a new event or other situation that many of your customers have strong opinions about, there are three ways you can respond:

1 – Show your support and sympathy for those involved and impacted, without any mention or promotion of your brand.  Unless your brand is a natural part of the story, then it’s incredibly risky to insert them into your update in any shape, form or fashion.  If in the future there is, God-forbid, a tragedy that affects your customers, you want to communicate that your thoughts and support are with those affected, without giving any impression that you are trying to leverage feelings associated with this event to promote your brand.  Remember that emotions will likely be high at this time for your customers, so you don’t want to send them any message that could possibly be misunderstood.

2 – If you must involve your brand in the update, mention ideas and themes related to the brand, not about the brand.  This is exactly what Three Dog Bakery did.  They didn’t insert their brand in the update, they mentioned dogs.  Which are related to its brand.  This is very tricky to do correctly, so be careful.  If it doesn’t pass the ‘smell’ test with you, then don’t post it.  At #SoMeT13US I mentioned that you should have a ‘devil’s advocate’ that comes up with all the possible objections that people might have to your update.  That can help you figure out if the tone and content of the update is too self-promotional or not.  Again, if your audience smells even a whiff of self-promotion from your brand, it will quickly backfire.

3 – Use the event/holiday/situation as an excuse to promote your brand.  This is obviously what you want to avoid in almost every possible situation.  You’re just inviting backlash and anger from the very people you want to connect with.

Before you publish that update ask yourself this simple question:  Where are we putting the spotlight?  If you are putting the spotlight on your brand, then start over.

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How to Turn Big Ideas Into Big Gains For Your Brand


How many times have you attended a conference or a webinar or read an article that included that ‘big idea’ that you felt could really impact your business?  The idea that immediately sparked that ‘a-ha!’ moment and you felt that rush of excitement at the thought of implementing it.

Then you got back to the office the next day and realized that you had no idea how to implement that amazing idea!

It’s a Short Walk From Feeling Inspired to Feeling Overwhelmed 

The problem is we attend these events and connect with our peers and discuss these big ideas.  We convince each other that the big idea will have a big impact on our brand and get more excited about the prospect of acting on this big idea.  Then we go back to our office and have to implement these big ideas by ourselves.  This is when inspiration turns to feeling overwhelmed.  It’s also when many of these big ideas die before they’ve had a chance to help us.

Think Big But Start Small

The problem is that the big idea can seem like a big hassle to implement.  The key is to start small and to focus on the key element of the idea and start there.  For example, one of the big ideas that came from the Social Media Tourism Symposium was the power of embracing your fans.  Leveraging your fans to help grow your business or drive visitors to your destination is a great idea, but you shouldn’t let that great idea overwhelm you.

For example, if your company has never proactively connected with its fans, its can seem overwhelming to suddenly decide to launch a full-scale brand ambassador program.  That’s like trying to run before you’ve learned to walk.  Start small and give yourself time to grow into a place where you can fully tap into that big idea.

What’s the Core Idea of Your Big Idea?

Think about what makes that big idea a ‘big idea’.  If you want to embrace your fans, why is that important?  The main point is you want to start connecting with your most passionate and loyal customers.  If you aren’t ready to launch a dedicated program to connect with your advocates, then pick a smaller starting point.  For example, start by simply replying via social media tools like Twitter and Facebook when your fans reach out to you.  Saying ‘thank you’ when a customer says something positive about your brand might not seem like a big step, but if you start thanking all the customers that praise your brand via social media, it leads to more customers praising your brand! Starting small can grow into something big!

Starting Small is Better Than Never Starting at All

It’s far too easy to talk yourself out of getting started on that big idea.  You think about how difficult it is to get started (or to figure out how to get started!).  You think about how much work it is, how long it will take to see results, and how much work it would be.

Then three months later you read another article talking about that big idea that you forgot about because it was too difficult to implement.  You realize that if you had started working on that big idea three months ago when you discovered it, that by now it would be paying off for your brand.

What big idea are you passing on today, that three months from now you’ll wish you had acted on?

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Giving Up Control of Your Marketing Without Losing Your Mind

MP900438571Last week I keynoted the Social Media Tourism Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.  It was a fabulous event and one of the recurring themes covered was the importance of giving up control of marketing to your destination’s fans and advocates.  Obviously I was thrilled with this, but at the same time I realize that this can be scary as hell for many marketers regardless of the industry you’re in.

What it comes down to is changing your mindset, and understanding the mindset of your fans and advocates.  Let’s tackle each area separately:

Changing Your Marketing Mindset

As a business/brand/destination/organization your marketing mindset is to promote yourself.  To get the word out about who you are and what you do.  Because people can’t and won’t buy from you until they know who you are and what you can do for them, right?

But in recent years the advent of digital content creation tools has changed the game for marketers.  Now there is an incredible amount of content being created every single day.  In the days before social media it was far easier to buy attention.  Today, it has to be earned.

So how do you earn attention?  By creating useful content.  Look at the content I have created here.  Hopefully you’ll look at the posts and view them as useful posts that can help people.  But when you get down to it, these posts are marketing.  I am marketing my ability to work with companies to help them better connect with their customers and cultivate advocates via social media and other marketing channels.  There’s not a lot of directly promotional content, in fact I probably should have more.  The idea is to create useful content that you will use and share with others.  In doing so, the content spreads to people that can hire me and it also helps to establish my expertise.

So instead of creating content that directly promotes your business, create content that’s customer-centric, that focuses on problems that your customers are having.  Becky McCray suggests that you should think of every question that your customers have about your products and business, and answer those questions on your blog.  In short the rule is this:  The more valuable your content is for your audience, the more it will spread and the more it will promote you.

Understanding the Mindset of Your Fans and Advocates

Many marketers view their fans and customers as being more or less the same.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Customers feel little to no natural affinity for your brand, while fans have extremely high levels of loyalty toward your brands.  Fans want to interact with you and will in fact seek out ways to do so.  On the other hand, your average customer could care less if it ever interacts with you unless there’s a problem or issue it wants you to address.

Additionally, it’s important to know that fans consider themselves to be owners of your brand.  They consider your brand to be their brand, which is a big reason why they love your brand.

This also means that they will act in what they perceive to be the best interests of your brand.  They will actively promote it to others.  They will bring what they feel are potential problems to your attention (and be happy to help you fix the problem).

The bottom line with your fans is that they are the good guys.  They literally want to work on your behalf to help your brand, so instead of keeping them at arm’s distance, you should work with them and make sure to thank them.  Early and often.

 

So here’s your plan for changing your marketing and your mindset:

1 – Focus on creating content that creates value for your current and potential customers/donors/visitors/partners.  If your content creates value for others then they will use it and share it.  Which means more exposure and opportunities for you.

2 – Don’t ignore your fans, view them as your partners.  They want what’s best for you, so connect with them and give them the attention and respect they deserve.

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The Creative Process: How We Write Our Blog Posts is Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

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Here’s the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat, click Transcript on the left.

Hey y’all!  Tonight (Nov. 11-2013) our #Blogchat topic is The Creative Process!  #Blogchat is sponsored this month by Pencils.com, please check out their selection of writing and drawing tools as well as their blog and please follow them on Twitter.

I think tonight’s topic will be incredibly useful and it will definitely be one where you’ll want to be favoriting a lot of tweets as we’ll all be sharing some of our favorite tips, tools and tricks on how we create our blog posts.  Here’s what we’ll cover:

8:00-8:30PM Central – The Creative Process.  Here we’ll talk about how we actually write our blog posts.  Where do we start, do we write the headline first, or last?  How do we flesh out our post ideas?

8:30-8:45PM Central – What digital tools do you use to help in writing blog posts?  Are there apps or sites that help you collect information or save ideas for posts?

8:45-9:00PM Central – What analog tools do you use to help in writing blog posts?  Do you take notes the old-fashioned way, with pen and pad?  If you write your posts out, do you prefer to use pens or pencils?

 

It should be a great discussion tonight so please join us starting at 8pm Central!

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Skype’s Focus on The Bigger Idea (It’s Not the Technology, It’s What The Technology Allows You to Do)

In Think Like a Rock Star I talk about the four ways that rock stars create fans and one of these ways is be tapping into The Bigger Idea behind their music.  Instead of focusing strictly on themselves, rock stars focus on bigger ideas and themes that resonate with fans.

Brands can do this by focusing less on its product and more on how and why customers are using its product.  What are they trying to accomplish, and what does the product allow them to do?

A perfect example of this is Skype’s new video Born Friends, embedded here:

This video already has close to a million views in its first week up.  It resonates with us because it tells a human story, not a product story.  The key to creating marketing that resonates with customers is to focus on how the customer will use the product and why they would use the product.  This video doesn’t focus on Skype, it focuses on an amazing friendship that Skype helped make possible.

Many brands can’t make a video like this because many brands can’t see letting its product take a backseat to its customers.  The reality is, your product is already secondary to your customer, so you might as well embrace it and give your customers the spotlight they deserve.

Hat tip to Ann Handley whose amazing post on the video inspired this post.

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Here’s Why Your Loyalty Program Isn’t Working

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A loyalty program is a marketing tactic designed by a company to promote and encourage future purchases from customers.  A very simple example of this is punch cards that many retailers offer.  A local fast food chain offers a punch card and every time you buy a lunch buffet, you get a punch.  When your card has 10 punches, then you get a free buffet.  Effectively, you buy 10 meals to get an 11th one free.

Unfortunately, these type of programs don’t build loyalty to the brand, they build loyalty to the offer.

Here’s why:  what the company views as a reward, the customer views as a purchase incentive.  While the company views each punch of the card as a reward, the customer knows that the reward is actually the free meal that comes after the card has 10 punches.  The customer sees that each punch is an incentive, and each punch brings the customer closer to filling the card, which also makes them more likely to want to eat more meals at this retailer in order to complete the card.

But what happens to that customer’s loyalty level when the card is full?  Then they get their free meal, and a new card.  In other words, they now have to start over.  Which effectively means the customer’s loyalty level toward the offer resets as well, to a much lower level.

In order to build loyalty to the brand you need to offer rewards that come after the purchase but are not dependent on a particular purchase.  And it helps if the reward is unexpected.

For example, let’s say that you ate lunch at the same fast food chain in the above example, but you didn’t have a punch card.  In fact, let’s say you ate there 3 times over the next 2 weeks.  On the 4th visit when you went to pay for the meal the owner says ‘This one’s on the house, thanks for your business!’  That reward was totally unexpected and it helps build loyalty to the brand.  Which means your chances of  eating there more often just increased.

So if you want to create more loyal customers, here’s your cheat sheet:

1 – Don’t offer incentives.  Incentives don’t increase loyalty to the brand they increase loyalty to the offer to which they are attached.

2 – Offer rewards after the purchase that the customer does not expect.  The customer views this as your brand showing its appreciation for the customer’s business.

3 – Recognize the people that are helping to build your business and say thank you.  These people don’t need incentives because they are already loyal to your brand.  Say ‘Thank you!’ (and mean it) and you’ll create more loyal customers.

 

PS: Kathy has a fabulous comment on this topic from earlier this year, it’s worth a read as well.

Pic via Flickr user steve_lodefink