MackCollier.com

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Facebook Wants to Charge Users, Grok Debuts, Brand Loyalty Drives Purchases

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you are ready to have a productive week! Here’s a few business stories that have caught my eye over the last few days:

 

If you haven’t noticed, we are transitioning from social media being free, to being paid.  First Elon bought Twitter, which he claims was in huge financial distress (I believe him) and ever since he has been attempting to monetize basic features of Twitter which had always been free. Now, it looks like Meta is trying to do the same thing with Facebook and Instagram.  Under the guise of ‘we have to do this, we have no choice!’  Remember Elon has framed many of his initial monetization attempts as being necessary ‘to combat bots’ on Twitter. This is a big topic and I will have more to say on it in a full post on Thursday.

 

Elon has debuted Grok, X’s attempt at a ChatGPT/Claude AI rival.  And shockingly, it will be a feature only available to Premium X subscribers, tying into the first story.  Again, more on this on Thursday. The big advantage that Grok could have will be real-time access to tweets that can inform answers.

 

People buy from brands they trust. You can say that’s common sense, but if that’s the case, why is 99% of advertising aimed at acquiring NEW customers versus appealing to EXISTING ones? Also, note that for customers aged 55+, the only two significant drivers of purchases are past experience/trust in a brand, or a recommendation from a friend or family member.  That’s it. Which shows that advertising a brand that the customer is unfamiliar with has almost no impact on purchase behavior if that customer is 55 or over.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute, thanks for reading! Tomorrow will be the November Power List update for the Tourism industry, and on Thursday there will be a post on the trend of social media sites moving from free to paid.

There might be a Bible-related post on the weekend, I honestly haven’t decided yet. I do have a new app recommendation I want to share, and will do so if I write a post.

I hope you have a great week, please return tomorrow for the Tourism Power List for November!

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Restaurant Reputation Management: The Data-Driven Playbook for Turning All Reviews Into Raving Fans

restaurant reputation management

If you are a CMO in the restaurant industry, few things keep you up at night like your online reputation. A handful of negative reviews can counter hundreds of positive interactions in the digital age. But effectively encouraging, monitoring, responding to, and leveraging guest feedback online is complex. With fierce competition, restaurant reputation management becomes vitally important.

That’s why taking a proactive, strategic approach to managing reviews and amplifying authentic earned advocacy is now mission-critical. This playbook explores proven ways restaurant marketers can use data, processes, and creativity to turn any review into five stars.

Strategically Solicit First-Party Reviews

Don’t leave review generation to chance. Proactively collect feedback from delighted guests through:

  • Review links on receipts and emails surveys to lower barriers. Make it quick and easy for customers to leave reviews. Also, track your restaurant’s reviews online and point customers toward the sites that would help the most with your restaurant reputation management efforts.
  • Thank you follow-ups checking on the experience, offering review links. These can be done via a newsletter than also offers coupons on future purchases.
  • Occasionally offering a free dessert in exchange for a review. I am subscribed to Olive Garden’s newsletter, and they will occasionally offer a free dessert in exchange for my feedback.
  • Manager outreach to VIPs asking for reviews based on their satisfaction. VIPs can be identified by membership in your loyalty program, or by managers and staff simply identifying a frequent customer. Frequency of business obviously signals satisfaction with service and product, so your restaurant should encourage reviews from frequent guests.

Empower your happy customers to sing your praises via stellar reviews.

Leverage Servers to Solicit Reviews and Feedback

Your servers are in direct contact with your restaurant’s customers, and as such they have the best sense of how their meal is going. Servers need to remember to:

  • Praise in public, criticize in private. If a customer is pleased with their meal and experience in your restaurant, the server should encourage them to leave a review, and steer them toward the sites where a positive review would be the most beneficial to your restaurant.
  • If a customer is unsatisfied with their meal and experience, the server should encourage the customer to leave feedback or to even talk with a manager. This gives the restaurant an opportunity to address the customer’s problem, without it going public. Obviously, the customer could still leave a review online or tell others, but if they are unsatisfied, you want to know why so you can address their concerns.
  • Train wait staff to recognize if a customer is satisfied or unsatisfied with their meal and experience. Your staff will pick up on cues from the customer naturally throughout the course of the meal as to whether they are satisfied or unsatisfied with their experience. At the end of the meal, if the server believes the customer has been satisfied with their meal, ask them to leave a review and encourage them to review on the site that best helps your restaurant. If they appear to be unsatisfied, then ask them to leave feedback on their experience. If the customer does leave feedback, but it is positive, you can contact the customer directly and thank them for their feedback, then ask for a review at that time.
  • Have managers observe customers and check in with them. When doing so, the manager can also pick up on cues from the customer as to whether they are satisfied or not with their meal, and address appropriately.

Praise in public, criticize in private. Empower your servers to help create positive word of mouth for your restaurant.

Activate Brand Advocates

Happy, frequent customers are your best source for positive reviews and the frontline in your restaurant reputation management efforts. Empower them by:

  • Offering incentives like loyalty perks for shares and reviews. Tie this into your existing loyalty program. Remember, happy customers WANT to sing your praises, you are just giving them the tools to do so.
  • Making it effortless to post through review widgets and social media links. Offer to collect reviews on your site, and ask for permission to repost on your social channels. Communicate how this can help your restaurant, and true fans will jump at the chance.
  • Have staff help in identifying frequent customers. So a few years ago, I got on a serious kick for Pizza Hut breadsticks. Every time I was running errands in town, I would stop by my local Pizza Hut and grab some breadsticks. The staff quickly recognized me, what my order would be, and how I liked them made. They would then ask me while I was waiting if I would please fill our a survey for them, and then inform me that I could win a $10 credit toward a future order. I would do the survey while waiting for my order, then when my order was ready, the staff would let me know it was prepared the way I wanted it, and I would let them know I had filled out the survey. The staff was smart enough to recognize that I was a happy customer, so they encouraged me to offer reviews.
  • Spotlighting top advocates as “VIPs” on your digital customer wall of fame. Treat your happy customers like they are rock stars, because they are. Put the spotlight on them, it encourages them to give you more reviews and feedback, which is exactly what you want.

Proactively activating your biggest fans maximizes their impact. Oh, and read the best book on the topic, Think Like a Rock Star: How to Create Social Media and Marketing Strategies That Turn Customers Into Fans.

Monitor Third-Party Review Sites

Actively track guest feedback using tools like Hootsuite (Perch is another option) to:

  • Get alerts when new reviews are left. When a new review happens, it’s vital that you know about it ASAP. For instance, let’s say your server followed the above advice and encouraged a happy customer to leave a review. The customer did as soon as they got home. If you have their contact information, you can contact them personally and thank them for the review. This encourages them to not only return to your restaurant, but to spread more positive word of mouth about you both online and offline.
  • Identify recurring themes and systemic weaknesses. Actively tracking reviews and customer feedback helps you identify themes versus isolated experiences. Whether it’s a positive review or a negative one, you need to understand what triggered the review. If there’s a problem with service, that needs to be addressed. Likewise, if customers are happy, you need to understand why so you can replicate that experience for other customers.
  • Keep pulse on your average ratings compared to competitors. If possible, set up monitoring alerts for select competitors. Just as you want to identify recurring themes in your own restaurant, you can do the same for competitors. Perhaps another local restaurant has added a feature that customers are raving about. Could your restaurant offer something similar? Once you know what their customers are excited about, then you can evaluate if a similar feature could work for your location.

Proactively monitoring online reviews empowers you to act quickly and appropriately.

Respond Skillfully to Negative Reviews

Negative feedback is inevitable in hospitality. Yet if handled correctly, a customer’s negative experience can be defused, or possibly even converted into a positive. Here’s some tactics to employ:

  • Reply promptly, calmly and avoid defensiveness. Make sure that the member of your CS team that responds does NOT take the criticize personally, because it isn’t.
  • Do NOT admit fault UNTIL it has been clearly established that the customer’s negative review is a direct result of unsatisfactory service from your restaurant.  You SHOULD communicate to the customer that you are sorry they are unsatisfied with the service they received, as this communicates empathy for their concerns. But wait on apologizing for an error until you have established that an actual error was made.
  • Offer to move your exchange with the customers OFF THE REVIEW SITE or social channel. Give them a way to contact you or your staff directly. Emphasize that you value their privacy and the privacy of your staff, and can better address and server them in private.
  • If you find that the customer has a legitimate complaint, clearly communicate to them that their feedback will be addressed and let them know how. This communicates that you are taking their feedback seriously.
  • Share improvements made to address broader issues raised. Followup with the customer to let them know what you found and how you are addressing their feedback. This will also communicate to the customer that you value their feedback.
  • For false claims, politely correct with facts. Do NOT argue with the customer, especially if the exchange is happening online, in public.
  • Consider inviting unhappy reviewers back to improve perceptions. This is another way to illustrate how feedback is taken seriously and improvements made.

I’ve worked with clients for over 15 years in helping them deal with angry customers, and I can tell you this from my own experience: Angry customers can often be converted into your most passionate fans IF you handle their complaints correctly. Follow the above steps and you will be on your way.

Continuously Improve Based on Insights

Regularly analyze customer reviews and complaints to:

  • Identify recurring complaints and focus training to strengthen weaknesses. Frequent sources of complaints should be flagged by your customer service team and sent to management so it can be addressed at the frontlines in your restaurant by staff and management.
  • Identify what’s working. If there are features of your dining experience that are consistently praised by customers, highlight those features to make customers aware of them. This can encourage more positive reviews.
  • Set targets for ratings improvements by location and category. Set realistic goals and give management a plan of action to reach those goals. Make sure everyone on staff understands what the goals are, why it’s important to reach them, and how to get there.
  • Conduct text analysis of online reviews to detect shifts in sentiment and perceptions. Identify gains and losses and drill down to figure out what triggered the change.

Insights inform operational investments that can help your restaurant reputation management efforts exceed expectations.

Today’s diners heavily factor reviews into dining decisions. With strategy, creativity and commitment, restaurant brands can leverage guest feedback to perpetually improve and manage reputation. Are you ready to turn reviews into five-star raves? The impact on guest acquisition, loyalty and sales makes this effort well worth the investment.

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Unlock Sales Growth Through Social Sharing: The Retail Marketing Playbook

social sharing retail

Driving recommendations and organic social sharing has become imperative for forward-thinking retail marketers. Over 14% of retail sales were online in 2022, representing over one trillion in total sales. That’s a massive market that’s only growing every year. Your retail company can greatly accelerate its growth by giving your more passionate customers the tools they need to share content about your brand quickly and easily.

This article will explore 6 proven tactics to facilitate digital and social sharing that accelerates awareness, consideration, and sales.

Conduct Social Listening Research

It’s vital that you understand the online conversations happening around and about your retail brand. Here’s a few important considerations:

  • Monitoring social conversations for motivators like unique products, quality, brand affinity and customer service. Both positive and negative brand mentions should be escalated to the appropriate team and given a response ASAP. Don’t simply react to negative comments and ignore positive ones. Just as negative comments need a quick response, so do positive comments from customers. The quicker your brand can respond appropriately to a positive account, the more likely that customer is to create MORE positive content around and about your brand.
  • Tracking patterns in sharing by geography, demographics and other factors. Look for trends that indicate customer behavior. Once you’ve identified behavior patterns, it will become even easier to respond quickly and appropriately to customer feedback.
  • Identifying brand advocates and influencers driving significant word-of-mouth. These are your MVP customers. They are the customers who are consistently driving positive word of mouth, and you want to create and build a relationship with them. We’ll talk more about how to do this throughout this article.

These insights inform a targeted approach to activating consumers.

Incentivize Customers with Loyalty Program Perks

Loyalty programs present a prime mechanism to directly motivate social sharing and recommendations. Here’s some mechanisms to keep in mind:

  • Award points or discounts for shares, UGC, tags, and reviews. Prioritize which behavior is most beneficial to your brand and structure your customer incentives to encourage that outcome.
  • Develop tiered rewards based on volume and authenticity of advocacy. Structure rewards so the best rewards are given to customers for engaging in the behavior that’s most beneficial to your brand.
  • Recognize top brand ambassadors and evangelists through VIP badges and perks. I’ve talked before about rewarding the behavior you want to encourage. Identify your best advocates and loyalty participants, and put the spotlight on them. Think of it as modeling to your other customers what the ideal behavior is that you want them to engage in.
  • Promote social sharing pathways and benefits clearly across program touchpoints. Focus on encouraging social sharing via the channels that are most beneficial to your brand.

Leveraging loyalty initiatives turns customers into promoters and salespeople for your brand.

Launch User-Generated Content Campaigns

User-generated visuals like product photos or videos, store experience captures, and creative use cases provide customers the opportunity to sell your brand directly. Prompt UGC creation through:

  • Branded hashtags – Encourage customers to tag posts with your campaign hashtag. This helps with monitoring and attribution to track ROI.
  • Integration in on-site experiences – Provide signs, props and tools to make sharing in-store fun. Place prompts in high traffic areas and around products that are driving organic excitement and attention.
  • Contests – Build UGC volume through prize incentives tied to creative challenges. Lean on your existing loyalty program for implementation and ideas.
  • Spotlights – Repurpose compelling user content across your social channels when permissions allow. Use the most effective UGC to not only drive awareness but to also serve as an example for other customers of the type of UGC you would like to see them create as well.

UGC activates customers while expanding your original content library.

Simplify Social Sharing

The easier you make sharing, the more it will be embraced. Best practices include:

  • Add social sharing buttons prominently on product pages, blog articles, in-store and across all platforms. Make sure that sharing buttons are attached to the content that you want to see shared. Low-hanging fruit should always be taken advantage of.
  • Give customers examples of content they could create, such as example tweets or posts. This helps simplify the content creation process for customers.
  • Develop shortlinks, custom URLs and QR codes to make links highly shareable and trackable. This gives you a better sense of what content from which customers is generating more or less traction.

Seamless social functionality entices more participation.

Partner With Micro-Influencers

Work with real customers with engaged niche followings rather than celebrities. Micro influencers have smaller followings, but typically are far more engaged with their networks. Ideal alliances:

  • Offer free product and insider access in return for organic promotion to their networks. Never overlook the value of special access. True fans of your brand will see the value in getting special access that the average customer does not have. For example, bring customers on-site to engage directly with key executives involved in product marketing, design and rollout. Fans will see this access as a true perk, and view it as compensation.
  • Develop exclusive collaborations and products with unique codes for them to share. Whenever possible, always make sure every piece of content that every influencer you work with creates has tracking attached to it. Unique codes are perfect to attribute shares and traction to a specific influencer.
  • Seek advocates who genuinely know and love your brand over one-off sponsors. Multi-touch relationships amplify impact. If an influencer already loves your brand, they will likely already be working to help you build your brand via their content creation. On the other hand, if an influencer has no affinity toward your brand, then that influencer will be working to build their personal brand, not your company’s brand.

When followers view an influencer as a peer, their advocacy drives action. Micro-influencers have a smaller following, but that allows them to have tighter connections with that smaller following. They reach fewer people, but they can more easily have an impact on each individual person as a result.

Analyze and Continuously Optimize Social Sharing Among Your Retail Customers

A data-driven approach ensures social activation delivers measurable impact. Track:

  • Share of voice vs competitors on digital and social channels. Compare and contrast your results versus those of other companies in your space. Identify what’s working for the competition, then determine WHY it’s working, and decide if you can apply the same or similar principles to improve your own efforts.
  • Web referral traffic, account creation and sales derived from shares. It’s vital to know which channels and which customers/influencers are driving shares and ultimately sales. Address laggards as well as your best performers. Identify what’s working and attempt to replicate those results across all channels and shares.
  • UGC content engagement rates and user sentiment. Track content creation volume as well as engagement rates and response rate. Track the types of engagement and prioritize the types of response that are most desired.
  • If sharing incentives lead to a boost in participation rates among customers. Track which incentives lead to changes in behavior that are beneficial to your bramd.

Continuous optimization and creativity sustains momentum as tactics mature.

Activate Advocates Authentically

Channel the influence of delighted customers and brand advocates through innovation and ingenuity. A comprehensive plan to encourage social sharing will lead to customers driving online word of mouth, and sales. Prioritizing one high-potential tactic builds foundation for a scalable sharing ecosystem.

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Igniting Organic Advocacy: The Tech Brand Growth Accelerator

online reviews technology industryYour best salesforce is your happy customers. I’ve build a business on this reality, I wrote a best-selling book on the process. No one does a better job of marketing your technology brand and driving revenue that leads to real bottom-line growth than you most passionate customers.

This article explores six proven strategies technology leaders can leverage to encourage online reviews, referrals, and vibrant community engagement across the user lifecycle.

Conduct Comprehensive Sentiment Research

A granular understanding of current user perceptions, frustrations and delights is crucial. Approaches may involve:

  • Journey mapping key touchpoints and interactions to reveal pain points and moments of value. This should apply to standard customer journey mapping to track the purchase process, but also include loyalty mapping. You need to identify potential pain points and bottlenecks in both journeys, at the same time.
  • Conduct surveys and interviews to gather direct feedback from users. Surveys are vital, given that feedback collected is accurately assessed and improvements applied as a result. Surveys of customers as well as members of your loyalty or brand ambassador programs should be done as these are different customers and both groups can provide valuable feedback.
  • Social listening across forums and platforms to analyze patterns in sentiment. Don’t focus simply on social media channels. Today’s technology consumer is frequenting message boards and forums to do product research. Make sure you monitor all online chatter around and about your brand, regardless of where it happens.
  • Review analysis to uncover systemic issues affecting satisfaction as well as product strengths to highlight. Look for trends across all feedback collected, regardless of the source. Examining all feedback will reveal consistent positive and negative traits and brand associations. These can be addressed in the case of problems, and amplified if they are positive.

Armed with rich insights, you can develop targeted advocacy initiatives addressing user needs and amplifying customer advocacy.

Incentivize Authentic Reviews

Reviews directly from users provide credible organic advocacy that fuels growth. But review generation requires motive. Consider:

  • Follow up on support tickets or onboarding by asking for a review and direct link for ease. Make a special attempt to solicit reviews from any user that communicates a positive experience or association with your tech brand.
  • Offer perks like free months of service for leaving detailed positive reviews. However, these can also be used as a reward for an existing online review. For instance, if you identify a blog post that promotes your brand or product, reach out to the blogger and say thank you, and offer them a perk such as a discount or swag as a reward. Remember that rewarding existing behavior is more powerful in creating advocacy than incentivizing new behavior.
  • Develop reviewer leaderboards and recognition for top advocates. One of the keys I always stress to clients is ‘reward the behavior that you want to encourage’. If you want more online reviews for your technology brand, then look for ways to reward customers for engaging in that behavior. Leaderboards are a great way to spotlight your best advocates, and it makes them feel like the rock stars that they are.
  • Highlight customer feedback on your site, and also highlight how that feedback was implemented at your company. This is incredibly powerful as it communicates to customers that you take their feedback seriously, and you act on it. This encourages customers to leave MORE feedback once they see that you take their feedback seriously enough to act on it.

It’s a marketing reality: We trust our fellow customers more than we trust brands. Do all you can to encourage your happy customers to sing your praises, and spotlight them when they do.

Launch a Referral/Affiliate Program

Referrals are a great way to attract new customers and reward your current advocates for behavior they are already engaging in. Formalize advocacy through:

  • Create referral landing pages that highlight the value proposition and call to action. This helps increase referral conversions, which helps both your brand and your customers who are driving referrals.
  • Tiered rewards for referrers based on conversion rates, from discounts to premium services. These can also be integrated with your customer loyalty program to amplify the perks that members receive from participating.
  • Promotion of the program through email, in-product, social media, and community channels. If your tech brand has a community forum, highlight your referral program there, as forum participants are a great pool to draw from for your referral program.
  • Streamlined sharing tools such as custom referral links and social share buttons. Give your customers the tools they need to more easily drive referrals, and track their progress doing so.
  • Leader boards spotlighting top member advocates and referrers. Reward the behavior you want to encourage. Spotlighting top referrers encourages them to increase referrals and the recognition they receive prompts others to engage in the same behavior.

Leverage affiliates to expand reach beyond your owned channels.

Encourage User-Generated Content

User content like tutorials, use cases, and product demonstrations serve as compelling proof of value. Encourage UGC by:

  • Identifying key customer success stories to request content development support around. Work with your customer support team to identify tickets that could serve as the basis for a positive case study.
  • Making it simple for users to contribute content through built-in creation and submission tools. Have your content marketing team work with users to take their submissions and craft compelling stories that highlight the user and their positive experience with your tech brand.
  • Promoting contributed content across your social channels when approved. Make sure that your promotion content is spoken in the voice of your customer as often as possible.
  • Spotlighting user content creators through badges, rewards, and campaigns. It’s a broken record, but reward the behavior you want to encourage.

UGC reaches buyers with authentic peer perspectives that resonates with customers in a world where we trust ourselves more than we do brands.

Build Vibrant User Community Interaction

One of the best ways to accelerate customer advocacy is to create ways for your happy customers to engage directly with each other. Ways to foster community include:

  • Hosting active user forums for knowledge sharing and feature discussions. User forums and message boards are vital to success for tech companies, they serve as a way for user to do product research, to self-diagnose problems, and simply connect with others who share a common interest.
  • Facilitating user groups organized by interest, experience level, geography or use cases. As you begin to build an online community, you can further segment that group to better connect users with their peers. An additional perk of this approach is that more experienced users can become candidates for moderator duties in your community. This can make the task of community management easier for your brand, but it also makes the community more likely to participate if ‘one of their own’ is involved in overseeing the direction of the forum.
  • Supporting meetups, events, and virtual community hangouts enabling users to connect. In-person meetups among your happy customers are wonderful ways to build advocacy. For example, here’s a recap of a customer meetup event I helped coordinate for Dell.
  • Engaging power users with early access privileges or advisory council roles. This is another perk that can be tied into your loyalty program. Early access is a great way to provide a low-cost perk to customers that drives appreciation, engagement and positive reviews, all at a low cost.

Relationships between users amplifies loyalty, retention, and advocacy for your brand.

Track and Optimize Initiatives

A data-driven approach ensures advocacy efforts deliver measurable impact. Key metrics span:

  • Review volume, ratings, product sentiment and category benchmarking. Determine what are the common traits associated with reviews, such as sites used, content of the reviews, what prompted a review, etc. By analyzing reviews you can determine trends and how to encourage more positive online reviews.
  • Referral traffic and account creation driven by links. Custom links should be given to all referral participants so the number of referrals they create can easily be tracked by them, and your brand. Each participant in your referral program should have their own unique link.
  • UGC contribution growth and user engagement rates. Track your most frequent contributors and reward their behavior to encourage more submissions. Collect feedback on what UGC is driving engagement, and share that feedback with contributors so they can improve their own UGC efforts.
  • Renewal, retention, and frequency metrics within advocate groups. Identify potential bottlenecks to review and content creation. Study your most successful contributors, and find ways to distill their success down into easily shared bits that can help other contributors improve their own efforts.

Continual optimization and injection of creativity sustains momentum over time.

Turn Customers into Confident Advocates

With user trust in brands declining, transparently earned advocacy provides a competitive edge. By championing customers first, technology leaders can build communities and spur authentic referrals that fuel sustainable growth. Remember, technology users trust fellow users more than your brand when it comes to product communications. Accept this fact and lean into UGC and online reviews from your users.

What’s your biggest obstacle to unlocking advocates? Identifying friction points? Incentivizing reviews? Enabling UGC contribution? Prioritize progress on one front then build from there.

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7 Ways Tech Brands Can Build Customer Loyalty Through Digital Experiences

customer loyalty technology industry

Building customer loyalty in the technology industry can be quite the challenge. The industry marketplace is crowded and this creates a very competitive environment for customer attention, much less loyalty. Unfortunately, the days of simply building a better mousetrap and reaping the financial rewards are long gone. Over two decades ago, Apple carved a niche in the music industry for itself with the iPod. Despite being a technically inferior product to competitors, Apple better understood WHY customers would want its product, and that made all the difference.

The reality is that today, you need a superior product AND a focus on designing superior customer experiences. Couple a great product with a great customer experience, and you can create genuine brand loyalty and turn current customers into passionate fans that love your brand. Let’s look at 7 ways that your technology company can tap into digital experiences to increase customer retention, loyalty and advocacy:

Leverage Social Media to Its Fullest Potential

Social media optimization is an easy starting point for a better digital experience. Still, you don’t want to simply create a presence on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and call it a day.  Remember that technology customers tend to be more analytical. They are more interested in diving deeper into topics and 101 level content that can be found on some social media sites may not be their cup of tea.  For instance, if you want to stay up to date on the latest technology news, you are more likely to hang out on Reddit and LinkedIn than you are on Facebook and Instagram. No matter what industry you are in, always keep in mind what type of content your customers are looking for, and where they would expect to find it. Ditch the boilerplate when it comes to planning your social media strategy!

Here’s some tips to optimizing your social media efforts:

  • Responding promptly to comments, queries, and feedback shows you are listening. Don’t let mentions go unanswered. Warning: Make SURE the information you give is correct, and if you make a mistake, own it and apologize. Technology customers will often know your product as well as you do. So if you give incorrect information, they will call you out on it. However, if you can quickly correct any misinformation and act on the customer’s feedback, you will often win their approval and advocacy as a result. I’ve worked with technology companies like Dell that realized the benefits in real-time of connecting with customers and utilizing instant feedback from customers and acting on it. It can create big loyalty and advocacy wins for your brand.
  • Proactively highlighting and thanking followers who post about your brand or share content. I have a saying I tell all my clients: Reward the behavior you want to encourage. There is no easier way to encourage customers to create MORE positive content about your company than thanking them. Whenever you see any customer on any social media channel saying ANYTHING positive about your company, thank them immediately. You would be amazed at how many companies ignore customers who positively promote them. It’s the lowest hanging fruit in social media. Learn to say ‘Thank you!’ early and often.
  • Featuring user-generated content like reviews, unboxings, or creations showcasing your products. User content builds authenticity, and it is viewed as being more credible than content that comes from the brand itself.
  • BONUS TIP: Don’t be afraid to promote content from your customers who are promoting your brand. If a customer has written a blog post that includes an endorsement for your company, then promote it on your social channels! Ford used one of my tweets waaaay back in 2010 as a Promoted Tweet! The automaker was using content from fans and enthusiasts, as a way to draw attention to others who were talking favorably about the brand. As I said, it’s all about rewarding the behavior you want to encourage.

The more you reward and spotlight social media advocacy, the more it will grow.

Optimize User Experiences Across the Entire Journey

Every touchpoint that customers have with your technology shapes their loyalty. Ensuring seamless, frictionless experiences is crucial.

This means obsessively optimizing key user interactions like:

  • Onboarding – Making the setup, installation, and initial usage intuitive and simple. Remember that the first experience that customers have with your technology product or service will greatly impact their perception of it.
  • Education – Providing easy to follow instructions, tips, and how-to’s guide users in becoming experts. Additionally, giving customers easy access to help can not only divert customer support inquiries, it can help boost customer loyalty and advocacy!
  • Support – Fast, effective technical troubleshooting and customer service keeps users happy when issues arise. Make sure your CS department has easy access to Subject Matter Experts who can provide more technical support if necessary.
  • Upgrades – Migrations, new releases, and added features should build on the familiar and avoid disruption.  As long as the upgrade feels like an improvement, it will be welcome and lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction. But if every upgrade feels like ‘starting over’, it will lead to a frustrating experience for the customer, and could even prompt them to explore competitor’s offerings.

Mastering end-to-end user experience removes adoption barriers and frustration while exceeding expectations. Delighted users then pay it forward with referrals.  Remember, your best salespeople are your current, happy customers!

 

Build an Engaged User Community

What’s the difference between an audience and a community?  With an audience, all the interaction is one way, from the stage toward the seats.  With a community the interaction is happening from person to person. Creating a community around your products and services is one of the best ways that a technology company can build loyalty and advocacy from customers.

Consider digital community building strategies like:

  • Hosting user forums and groups to share tips, product hacks, feedback, and more. Let users help each other. BONUS: Over time, elevate the most proficient contributors to your group to the role of Moderator. This encourages more engagement from the group, and it signals to your user group that its users will share ownership of the group along with your company.
  • Promote user-generated content and reviews. Even if it promotes the creator as much as it does your brand.  Also, don’t be afraid to highlight 4-star reviews. Most customers actually view 4-star reviews as being more credible than 5-star reviews. If a product or service has all 5-star reviews, it looks suspicious. But if the reviews are excellent overall, a few 4-star or even 3-star reviews sprinkled in can actually make all the reviews as a group seem more credible.
  • Holding live or virtual events and meetups to cultivate relationships between fellow users and the brand. These can be intimate gatherers with a few customers, or massive user conferences like Adobe Summit. Remember, any time you can get your passionate customers and users together in the same place and interacting with each other, it’s good for your brand loyalty.
  • Private community groups on Facebook or Slack for power users. VIP access builds exclusivity, and is viewed as a perk or reward for your most passionate users.

Bringing users/customers together is a wonderful way to build affinity and loyalty toward your brand. Look for ways to connect your most passionate customers to each other, it will pay for itself every time.

Develop a Customer-Focused Content Strategy

Can I let you in on a secret? (Leans in) Content that’s useful to your customers makes it easier for them to trust you.  If you constantly create content that’s relevant to your customers, then they will actively seek out your content and it will reflect positively on your brand. It will also make your customers more receptive to all your brand’s communications.

Valuable types of loyalty-focused content include:

  • “Insider tips” or “pro tips” articles with advice for power users. This is content that’s targeted at your current customers, who have a higher degree of awareness and knowledge of your products and services.
  • Step-by-step how-to tutorials for maximizing capabilities. Become users’ go-to resource. Let’s say you buy a graphic design program for your mac. After a few weeks of using it, you feel like you have the basic functions and usage down, but you want to learn more. So you will start to seek our deeper dives and more detailed how-tos. Why not give your customers and users the content they will be looking for?  If you don’t give them this content, they will find it from another source, or another customer. And that customer might suggest using a competitor’s design program instead. Something to think about.
  • Sharing inspiring user stories and creations featured in the community. Applaud their innovation. Remember earlier how I talked about rewarding the behavior you want to encourage?  This is a perfect example of doing so. When your users create amazing content or art or whatever by using your products or services, put the spotlight on them! Make them feel like rock stars, because they are. All this will do is encourage and inspire more users to create more content with your technology.
  • Insights from product designers, founders or engineers. Pull back the curtain, make your SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) accessible to your community of users.
  • Sneak peeks and early access to new features or product roadmaps. This will be viewed as a perk by your users and they will greatly appreciate your brand giving them access that the ‘general public’ doesn’t have.

Content acts as fuel for loyalty when it highlights common user pain points and fulfills unmet informational needs.

 

Launch a Formal Loyalty or Brand Ambassador Program

Once you have identified your most passionate users and customers, it may be time to create a formal program to manage your ongoing relationship. This can be a loyalty program, or something more in-depth such as a brand ambassador program. In either event, you want to create an ongoing relationship with these customers where you can more easily access feedback from them as well as stay connected. Being in closer contact allows your brand to leverage these special customers to more easily communication key messages to the larger marketplace, as well as collect valuable feedback from your customer and userbase.

Tactics such as:

  • A tiered-points system with points/credits earned for actions like reviews, referrals, UGC. More engagement means more perks.
  • Early access to new products and sales. This could also include special access to your brand’s SMEs, designers, engineers, etc.
  • Swag, discount and free services. Also, create free swag just for your members. It will make them feel special to get a piece of clothing or device that the ‘general public’ doesn’t have, but it also creates word of mouth. People will ask where they got that special item, which then gives the user a chance to brag on themselves for being a member of your program and having ‘special access’!
  • Free products to review or prime positioning in marketing content. One year I worked with a tech company to facilitate an on-site customer event at its world headquarters. As part of the event, a camera crew was on hand to record the sessions and discussions. The following year we had the group back again, and I was again on hand to moderate the event. Part of the event included a sneak peek at a new commercial that the brand would be releasing that included some of the video that had been shot at the previous year’s event. While showing the commercial, one of the attendees suddenly burst into tears, and exclaimed ‘I just saw myself in the video!’ The brand had included a short clip of her speaking at the previous year’s event. Needless to say, it made a VERY positive impression on her!

Creating a well-structured brand ambassador program can greatly amplify your ability to engage your most passionate customers and boost customer loyalty. BONUS: Here’s how a brand ambassador program can work for a technology company.

 

Get Creative with Contests, Games, and Activities

Gamification, when done right, can tap into users’ competitive spirits and drive more active engagement with the brand.

Some examples can include:

  • Photo contests for fan art, or video contests for best product demo. Let users showcase their skills, let the larger community vote on the winners. Promote winners on the brand’s main marketing and social media channels, and use entries as repurposed content throughout the year.
  • Leaderboards and badges for top forum contributors. This is a great way to encourage more community involvement, plus badges and ‘digital flair’ serve to drive online word of mouth. For instance, give top forum contributors a badge they can display on their blog.
  • Referral and feedback quests with prizes or charity contributions. Increase advocacy behaviors.
  • Easter eggs hidden in products, packaging or content. Add an element of surprise and delight.
  • AR experiences along with virtual quests. These help add entertainment and functionality to your technology, along with giving unique digital experiences.

With a little creativity and strategic planning, your technology brand can develop endless quests and challenges that not only entertain users but get them more invested in your brand.  And a deeper investment leads to higher levels of loyalty.

 

Pull Data Insights to Refine Your Loyalty Strategy

The beauty of digital channels is the ability to closely track activity and glean actionable data insights that fuel constant optimization.

Analyze key metrics like:

  • User retention rates (churn rate) over time and after milestone actions. Keeping a close eye on churn, and what is prompting it, let’s you identify bottlenecks in the brand loyalty journey.
  • Web traffic source patterns showing top referral channels. This data gives you insights into where your most loyal customers and users are spending their time. This also helps you refine where your brand spends ITS time, so you can better connect with your customers where they are.
  • Behaviors that correlate to the most loyal vocal advocates. By constantly tracking and engaging with your brand advocates, you can build a persona and understanding of who they are, and the behaviors they engage in.
  • Touchpoints users frequently interact with. By mapping all touchpoints along the customer journey, you can identity where conversions are happening, and where churn is as well.
  • How advocacy amplifies at different customer spend levels.

Crunching user data identifies what is moving the needle on loyalty so you can double down on what works and change course when needed.

 

The Never-Ending Quest to Earn Customers for Life

True brand loyalty and advocacy cannot be bought. Consistently exceeding expectations and nurturing community are the digital building blocks for creating passionate fans that love your technology brand. While challenging in competitive, noisy tech environments, putting the customer first both on and offline establishes genuine connections.

With people increasingly turning to peers for product recommendations, earning customers for life through loyalty and advocacy is the most powerful marketing strategy you can pursue. Once again, your best salespeople are your current, happy customers. The strategies and tips listed in this article will give you the framework to begin cultivating an army of customers who are also advocates for your brand.

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Every Sports Franchise Needs a Chief Storyteller

Every sports franchise should hire a Chief Storyteller. This point was driven home recently as I re-watched one of my favorite movies, Moneyball. It’s written before about the business and marketing lessons you can learn from watching Moneyball.

If you aren’t familiar with the Moneyball story, at the end of the 2001 season, the Oakland A’s lost its two star players, Johnny Damon, and Jason Giambi, because the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox could offer them more money. GM Billy Beane went to the A’s owner and implored him to please give Beane more money to spend on payroll so he could get better players.  The owner refused, and this left Beane scrambling to figure out how to keep the A’s competitive with far less money to spend than other ballclubs.

This led Beane to meet Peter Brand on a trip to meet with the Cleveland Indians. Brand had developed a system for identifying talented players who were undervalued due to ‘biases’ against them. Such as being ‘too old’, having a ‘funny pitch’, or whatever. Beane was intrigued by Brand’s ideas, so he hired him to be his Assistant GM. Together they began working on building a roster of 25 players who were undervalued, but still talented enough to make the A’s competitive.

As Beane began acquiring his desired players, even his own scouts had never heard of them. The movie shows A’s fans reading the paper prior to the start of the season and asking ‘Who are these bums?’  So obviously, the A’s had a brand awareness problem when it came to their new acquisitions.

And as the season started, the losses piled up. But after the All-Star break, the team started to click.  And they started to win.  A lot.  In fact, in September at the end of the regular season, the A’s actually set the American League record (at the time) for consecutive wins at 20. Here’s a recap of that 20th win, which could have been a movie all in itself:

So I was curious as I was watching Moneyball again, how did the success of the A’s in 2002 affect revenue?

Turns, out, not by much. Revenue for the A’s in 2001 was 90 million, and it increased to 96 million in 2002, an increase of roughly 7%. But in 2003, revenue for the A’s increased to 110 million, or 15%. Since the A’s 20-game win streak didn’t happen until the end of the season, much of its impact on revenue for the year was negated. Yet the excitement for how the 2002 season ended no doubt carried over into excitement for the 2003 season, contributing to the larger boost to revenue for that year.

While the 2002 A’s didn’t have many ‘star’ players, the pursuit of the record for most wins became the ‘story’ that sucked fans in. Unfortunately, not every sports franchise will have record-setting seasons that become stories that sell themselves. This is why sports franchises need to invest in Chief Storytellers.

The Chief Storyteller needs to first tell the story of the players, then tell the story of the fans. First with the players, we all follow our favorite sports teams, and as we do, we develop a fondness for certain players. We appreciate their accomplishments, especially if they overcome setbacks to help lead their team to victory.

Here’s an example.  The 2012 depth chart at RB for Alabama was loaded. The starter was Eddie Lacy, who would go on to have a long NFL career with the Packers. A pair of 5-star RB recruits TJ Yeldon and Kenyan Drake were added to the mix, both of who would also go onto have solid NFL careers. While TJ Yeldon was able to come in and immediately contribute in the 2012 season, Drake didn’t do as well, and was relegated to 3rd and 4th string on the depth chart.

Starter Eddie Lacy opted to go pro at the end of the 2012 season, so that should mean Drake would be due for more carries in 2013. However, in the 2013 recruiting class, Alabama signed the top running back in the nation, Derrick Henry. Drake’s production did increase in 2013, but Yeldon was the clear starter.

As the 2014 season began, Drake was beginning to grow into his role as a true all-purpose back.  Through 5 games in the 2014 season, Drake was averaging over 5 yards a carry, and a staggering 31.8 yards per catch. In the first 5 games, he had 6 touchdowns and averaged 10 yards every time he touched the ball. It looked like Drake was finally going to live up to the 5-star potential that Bama fans had been waiting to see since he signed with the Tide in 2012.

But in that 5th game, tragedy struck. Drake suffered a gruesome leg injury that ended his 2014 season just as it was getting started. At the time, it looked like it may have ended his career as well.

As the 2014 season progressed, Derrick Henry began to blossom. When the 2015 season started, it was obvious that the Alabama running game would be built around the future Heisman winner. Henry had an absolutely monster 2015 season, rushing for over 2,200.  The most amazing thing about Henry was that he never tired. It was not uncommon for Henry to get over 30 carries in a game in 2015.

Which meant Drake’s production as a running back was further limited. In fact, the Bama staff had to move Drake to field kickoffs just to find a way to get him on the field and producing in some way. And even that move didn’t bear fruit, as through his first 18 kickoff returns in 2015, Drake was averaging a very pedestrian 22 yards a return, with 0 TDs.

But all that changed on his last kickoff return of the year:

Just like that, Drake had scored his first, and only kickoff touchdown of his career. And Drake’s touchdown put the National Championship game firmly in Alabama’s control for the first time.

Alabama fans were aware of Drake’s story because we had followed his career. We knew he was a top recruit when he signed with Bama, we saw him finally coming into his own in 2014, before he broke his leg against Ole Miss. We were deflated to see how that might end his career, then elated for him when he scored this touchdown, that ended up being the score that clinched a 16th National Championship for the Crimson Tide.

A Chief Storyteller would be in a position to tell us the stories of our team’s players. If done correctly, it can almost become like a movie for each player. I am focusing on Drake’s story and how he helped Alabama win a National Championship, but there could be a parallel story to be told about how Derrick Henry finally realized his promise in his 2015 Heisman campaign. Or what about QB Jake Coker? He transferred to Alabama after being a backup at Florida State. He came to Alabama in 2014 as the presumed starter, and instead ended up being the backup to Blake Sims, who as the 3rd string running back the year prior. But Coker preserved, eventually won the starting job, and led his team to a National Championship.

So many player stories to tell, and each one helps the fans become more attached to their favorite team. Likewise, a Chief Storyteller could tell stories about the fans. Who are they, how long have they cheered for their favorite team? A Chief Storyteller should work to seek out stories from fans so they can be highlighted. This will help the team identify and connect with its fans the same way the fans connect with the players.

It’s all about using the power of story to build a deeper connection between the team and its fans. Because when you have that deeper connection, success is the only logical result.

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Case Study: Lego Ideas

Let’s talk about Lego Ideas. Whenever I work with companies on designing customer advocacy or brand ambassador programs, I always stress the need to incorporate customer feedback into the program. Members of any type of advocacy or ambassador program are hand-raisers.  They are your most passionate customers, and they feel a sense of ownership in your brand, and want to see it succeed. So they will happily provide your brand will plenty of feedback on what it’s doing right, what it’s doing wrong, and what it could be doing.

That’s why I love what Lego does with it’s Lego Ideas program. This is an initiative where Lego customers submit ideas for future playsets. Other customers can then vote on and provide feedback on each idea.  Submissions that are popular enough, go to market.

Other brands have tried similar programs, such as Starbucks My Starbucks Idea or Dell’s Ideastorm, and it’s always a big win for the brand and its customers.

Lego Ideas

Why is Lego Ideas a good idea?

In short, Lego Ideas gives Lego a way to let its customers design new products for the brand. Take this submission for the creation of a playset for the Nautilus from Jules Verne’s book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. First, everyone can rate the submission and leave comments. This means Lego can get detailed feedback from its customers on what they like and dislike about the submission. If Lego decides to eventually make the set, it can make the set incorporating the feedback it received from customers.

Additionally, if the set ever makes it to market, Lego has a ready-made customer base ready to buy the set. Also, if Lego does decide to produce a submission, 1% of the royalties from the set go to the designer.  Not a bad deal, and this gives fan designers an extra incentive to submit ideas.

The Power of Giving Ownership to Your Most Passionate Customers

Lego Ideas works because Lego understands the connection that its most passionate customers have with the brand. Customers with high degrees of loyalty to your brand often view themselves as owners of your brand.  They view it as THEIR brand as much as it is yours! So these passionate customers will act in what they perceive to be the best interest of the brand.  Their brand.

Lets say you just purchased a brand’s product for the first time.  So far, it’s been a pretty meh experience for you.  Not a great product, not a terrible one.

What if, tomorrow, a product manager calls you and invites you to join a product design program for the brand. Where you will be required to submit new product ideas, then spend the next 6-12 months promoting and engaging with other customers about the product, fleshing out the design and creating a model that’s ready to go to market. The brand will then take your idea to market, and give you 1% of the royalties.

What would be your response? You’d probably tell the brand to take a flying leap, right?

But what if this was a brand you adored?  A brand you evangelized to all your friends, buying every new product the brand offers.  If that brand, which you are insanely loyal to, offered you a chance to join a program like Lego Ideas, how would you react?  You would probably jump at the chance, right?

Customers that are loyal to a brand want more ways to be involved with the brand in all facets, from product design, to product feedback, to product promotion.

They want a program like Lego Ideas. And that’s why it’s a winner.

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New Research Uncovers the Drivers of Customer Loyalty

customer loyalty

I recently came across a new research study from Cheetah Digital (via MarketingCharts) that uncovers the reasons why customers have a ‘favorite’ brand. The study surveyed over 5,000 customers worldwide to determine the factors that drove brand loyalty. I wanted to cover the top seven drivers of customer loyalty:

The Top Seven Drivers of Customer Loyalty

Provides a Consistent Customer Experience (80%) I think an important caveat is that the brand provides a consistently GOOD customer experience. The experience is part of the brand, and according to this study, it’s the top driver of brand loyalty.

If a brand makes the effort to create a good experience for the customer, that communicates to the customer that they are valued and appreciated. You will see that valuing and appreciating the customer are common themes on this list of drivers of brand loyalty.

 

Rewards Customers For Their Loyalty (78%) This is the where most brands make their biggest mistake in attempting to cultivate brand loyalty. Most brands confuse rewards and incentives in the context of brand loyalty. A reward comes after the purchase. An incentive is given before the purchase in an attempt to change customer behavior.

A reward creates loyalty to the brand, an incentive creates loyalty to the incentive itself. For example, look at the classic punch card, designed to ‘reward’ the customer with a free purchase afer a set number of purchases are made. Maybe Pizza Hut has a deal where if you purchase the lunch buffet 10 times, you get a free purchase.  This is an incentive to change behavior, and it builds loyalty to the OFFER, not to the brand. You will be more likely to continue to purchase the lunch buffet at Pizza Hut UNTIL your punch card is filled. When you claim the free lunch buffet, then you have to start again at zero.  And your loyalty to the incentive resets to zero as well.

As I explain in this post; If you want to build loyalty among your customers always remember: Loyalty is built by saying ‘Thank you!’ for existing behavior, not by offering coupons as incentives for new behavior.

 

Uses Customer Data In a Way That Makes Them Feel Comfortable (74%) Data privacy is top of mind for all customers. Most customers are very concerned over how their data can be used, or misused by brands. Transparency is imperative to building trust with consumers, and that’s especially true when it comes to customer data. Brands that are clear and forthright with how they collect and use a customer’s data are more likely to build trust with customers, which is the prerequisite for building loyalty.

 

Treats the Customer as an Individual (74%) This speaks to the desire that customers have for a personalized experience. Every customer has different wants and desires, and when a brand can give us a personalized customer experience, the brand is communicating to us that we are worth communicating to as an individual. It shows us that the brand appreciates us enough to put forth an effort to customize its communications with us.  That communicates respect and appreciation, and it makes it easier for us to adopt those same traits back to the brand.

 

Strives to Develop a Relationship (71%) This is one of the biggest misconceptions that brands have when communicating with customers. Most brands attempt to develop relationships with NEW customers, but ignore CURRENT customers. This thinking is completely out of phase, new customers typically have no interest in building a relationship with a brand. On the other hand, repeat customers are more likely to be loyal to the brand and more likely to be open to developing a relationship with the brand. Additionally, repeat customers can better serve the brand as they have a better understanding of its products/services and can better promote the brand to new customers.

 

Surprises Them With Rewards They Don’t Expect (64%) Unexpected rewards communicate appreciation. But remember, an unexpected reward is a ‘thank you’, not an incentive to make a future purchase. Sending a customer an email with discount codes for a ‘secret sale’ isn’t an unexpected reward. It’s an incentive to make a purchase, and your customers will see it as such. But a handwritten note from the manager thanking the customer for their business and delivered with a small box of gourmet cookies, that’s an unexpected reward and the customer will love and appreciate the gesture.

 

Treats Them Like a VIP (58%) This ties in with the previous point. The brands that do the best job of cultivating advocates understand the importance of their current customers and treat them as the special customers that they are. A good way to treat current customers as VIPs is to appreciate and reward them for what they are doing to help build and promote your brand.  Say ‘Thank you’ with no expectation of future purchases, but as appreciation for past behavior. Communicate to your customers what impact they have on your brand and thank them for it. You will find that by doing so, your loyal customers will work even harder for your brand.

 

Want to learn more about how to build a brand that cultivates customer loyalty?  Here’s every article I’ve written on brand loyalty.  Have questions about how to implement these strategies for your own brand?  Feel free to email me and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.

 

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What is Your Product’s ‘Job to Be Done’?

job to be done Whenever I talk with clients about positioning a new or even existing product or service, I stress the need for there to be a clear benefit to the customer, that the customer can clearly understand. The customer needs to understand how a product or service will fit into their lives, and immediately make a positive impact.

Some would argue, that the ease of collecting data about modern customers can actually make it more difficult to correctly identify the value that a product can create for a customer. Sometimes, customers simply buy a product for reasons that are their own, that really aren’t easily uncovered by simply looking at data or demographics.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

1 – I never chew gum UNLESS I am about to board a plane for a flight. If I am at an airport, one of the last purchases I will make will be to run into a gift shop or Hudson News and grab a pack of chewing gum. I want the gum because chewing the gum as the plane is taking off and climbing helps lower the chance of my ears popping! So I never need chewing gum UNLESS I am about to board a plane, then it’s a purchase I always make.

2 – I am currently playing a war game on my iPhone. The game includes chat functionality, and in playing the game, you can chat with other players and get to know them. I was talking to a player recently who said they enjoyed playing this game. They went on to explain that one of their parents had just died, and they were having to deal with the stress and worry associated with a parent’s death. They added that playing the game gave them a very welcome distraction that helped them get their mind off their real world issues.

 

I recently came across a wonderful article in the Harvard Business Review that explains this concept as buying a product for it’s Job to Be Done. For me, chewing gum bought at the airport has a job to do: Keep my ears from popping during takeoff. For my friend, playing the phone game had a job to do: Provide escape from their real world problems.

Here’s an example from the article: A consultant was hired by a Detroit building company to increase sales of its condominiums. The condos were positioned to retired couples that were looking to downsize from a larger home to a smaller condo. The units were given features designed to appeal to downsizers, and they even consulted focus groups to uncover any additional features they might have missed.

But sales were disappointing. The units generated prospective buyer visits, but struggled to close the deal. There was a bottleneck, something holding back the prospective buyer from becoming an actual one.

So the consultant decided to switch gears, and went back and started interviewing the people that had bought the units. The interviews were designed to help drill down on what prompted the person to commit to the purchase.

It turns out, it was the dining room table. Or rather, what the dining room table represented for the prospective buyer; Moving on from a home they loved, to a new condominium that had none of the attached memories.

As the article explains:

But as Moesta sat at his own dining room table with his family over Christmas, he suddenly understood. Every birthday was spent around that table. Every holiday. Homework was spread out on it. The table represented family.

What was stopping buyers from making the decision to move, he hypothesized, was not a feature that the construction company had failed to offer but rather the anxiety that came with giving up something that had profound meaning. The decision to buy a six-figure condo, it turned out, often hinged on a family member’s willingness to take custody of a clunky piece of used furniture.

This helped the company understand the Job to Be Done of its condos. It wasn’t about giving them a new place to live, it was about moving their lives into a new phase. The dining room table represented family, tradition, history. So the building company changed its offerings around the condos to reflect a better understanding of what was holding prospective buyers back from becoming actual buyers. They expanded the dining area to give more room to accommodate a larger dining room table. The company also added storage facilities to help buyers have a place to store items until it could decide what could be kept and what needed to be given away.

All of this goes back to simply understanding the customer. And with the ‘job to be done’ line of thinking, you are also thinking about ways to incorporate unpredictability into the lives of your customers. Every day, your customers are receiving unexpected good and bad news. In both cases, behavior patterns, either in the short or long-term, will immediately change.  They will suddenly need new products for new reasons to fulfill new ‘jobs’ for them.

Think back to the last two years and the impact that the covid pandemic has had on the world. If you will remember, one of the constant themes I have stressed here is considering how the pandemic would change the purchasing behavior of your customers. Some of the changes are big and easy to predict, such as a shift toward takeout from restaurants over dining in person. But other changes are harder to detect. But you need to be able to account of the possibility of changes and the resulting shift in purchasing behavior.

Here again is the link to the HBR review article detailing the theory of ‘job to be done’.

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It’s Time to Kill Your Business

business

“Data from the BLS shows that approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more.”

The average business is designed to facilitate transactions with customers.

And that’s why the average business fails.

 

I want to show you a video:

Background: This is Twitch streamer Nick Mercs. He’s arguably the most popular streamer on the planet right now. Earlier this month, 10,000 people flew to Tampa Bay to meet him, and each other. They paid to get there, Nick and his team covered the event for them.

When you watch that video and hear what it was about, you will likely have one of two different reactions to it:

1 – ‘OMG, that’s amazing!’

2 – ‘Heh, that’s cute.’

Regardless of your reaction, everyone who watches that video understands that Nick and the 10,000 people at this event do not have a transactional relationship.

Let’s watch another video:

In this video, pro wrestler CM Punk returned to the industry for the first time in 7 years. The excitement from those in attendance speaks for itself, tens of thousands of people overjoyed. Grown men crying tears of joy, and it appeared that Punk himself almost did.

This is the point at which I will lose some of you in the ‘Heh, that’s cute.’ group. But when you watch the second video, regardless of what you think of it, you also understand that CM Punk and the people in that arena do not have a transactional relationship.

What is a family?

When I watch these two videos, here’s what I see: Nick loves everyone that showed up to #MFAMBBQ2021, and they love him right back.  CM Punk loves everyone who is cheering for him and they love him right back.

That’s not a transactional relationship. It’s a loving relationship. I care about you, you care about me.

I tweeted the #MFAMBBQ2021 video on Saturday during the event. Notice the reply I got:

A member of MFAM corrected me, MFAM isn’t a community it’s a family.

A family looks out for each other. They care about each other.

Families have loving relationships, they do not have transactional ones.

It’s time to kill your business

The definition of a business, as defined by the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, is:

“the activity of making, buying, or selling goods or providing services in exchange for money”

In other words, a business has a transactional relationship with customers. Everything about the business is designed to facilitate the transaction.

Once the customer completes or rejects the transaction, for all intents and purposes, that is the end of the relationship between the customer and the business.

This approach creates several obvious obstacles for the average business. First, they need more transactions. Which means spending more on marketing to attempt to create more transactions. Second, they need more customers, since brand loyalty is not created via a transactional relationship. Which again leads to more costs.

The customer is synonymous with a transactional relationship. If a business is built on simply facilitating transactional relationships with customers, then its costs of doing business will always be higher. The only purpose of the customer is to provide cash to complete the tranaction.  The only purpose of the business is to provide the product or service that the customer wants to buy.

This is why we need to stop thinking about a business being about facilitating a transactional relationship. How we communicate, engage and interact with each other has changed dramatically in just the last 25 years. But the basic function and design of the average business is still rooted in facilitating transactions.

It’s time we changed that.

What if a business existed to invest in the people who buy its products and services?

Let’s go back to Nick Mercs for a moment. As a streamer on Twitch, one of the main ways he generates income is via subscriptions and donations from his viewers. But it isn’t the only source of income for Nick. Another source is sponsorships. One of Nick’s sponsors is Cash App.

On a recent stream, Nick talked openly about his sponsorship deal with Cash App. He noted that when he made the deal with Cash App, he structured it so that Cash App is required to regularly give cash away to his subscribers. Cash App provides money that Nick then randomly gives away to his subscribers.

This could be viewed as an example of Nick investing back into his subscribers. At the same time, Cash App’s sponsorship of Nick’s steam could be seen as Cash App investing in the success of Nick’s stream.  By investing in his subscribers, Nick gains the loyalty of his subscribers, who are known as MFAM (Mercs Family). Since MFAM is loyal to Nick, that loyalty transfers to great degree to sponsors like Cash App. Because MFAM understands that by sponsoring Nick’s stream, Cash App is investing in Nick’s stream, and helping to make it possible.

If Nick was treating his Twitch stream as a business, and a purely transactional one, he would treat it quite differently. He would attempt to maximize subscriber counts and treat subscribers as customers who are purchasing a product (his stream content).

Instead, Nick views his subscribers as a community or family, MFAM. And as he becomes more successful, he looks for ways to take money from his sponsorship deals and redistribute it back to his subscribers. In another recent stream, Nick mentioned that he had set up Instagram accounts for the family dogs, Joey and Jackson.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by ? ? ? ? & ??????? ? (@joemercs)

Nick added that once the account has enough followers to start attracting sponsorship dollars, that Nick is going to take the money raised from the IG account and use it to buy pet food for the pet owners in MFAM. Another example of how Nick is creating an investing relationship with his MFAM versus a transactional one.

It’s time for business, and the relationships it pursues, to evolve

A business that is designed and structured simply to facilitate transactions cannot endure. Many businesses across the world are starting to wake up to this reality. We are seeing more and more discussion about how we need to focus on things besides the transaction. Topics such as focusing on customer experience, or customer loyalty or customer satisfaction are signs that businesses understand that they need to evolve.

The problem is that businesses are attempting to focus on these areas, but within the framework of keeping a transactional relationship with their customers. This is addressing the symptom rather than the core sickness.  The issue isn’t that businesses need to focus on customer experience, loyalty and satisfaction, the issue is that businesses need to focus on creating a new type of relationship with the people that buy its products and services.

Businesses need to move from having a transactional relationship with its customers, to having an investment relationship with the people who buy its products and services. And the investment will flow both ways; The business invests in the people who buy its products and services, and those people invest back in the business.

We are already seeing how some businesses are experimenting with this idea of moving from being transactional to focus on investment.  Here’s some examples:

  • Red Bull and Monster Energy both invest heavily in sporting teams and events. Both brands do so to communicate to their customers that they have ‘skin in the game’ and that they want to grow the sports and events that their customers love. This connects with customers, who see that the energy drink brands want to have something more than a business/customer relationship with them.
  • Patagonia’s Worn Wear program is actually about DECREASING transactions. The Worn Wear program is about helping current Patagonia clothing owners extend the life of their clothing by fixing and repairing it. Patagonia’s stated goal for the program is to REDUCE new purchases, and reduce consumption. This communicates to customers that Patagonia is invested in protecting the planet, and it rallies Patagonia’s customers to take up the cause, and to show higher levels of loyalty toward the brand.
  • Clubhouse and its Creator Accelerator Program. This is an initiative that Clubhouse launched earlier in 2021 where Clubhouse will invest directly in room owners that meet certain requirements. In essence, Clubhouse is putting resources, whether it’s money, equipment, or mentoring into what it identifies as promising creators on its platform. Clubhouse is investing directly in those creators, with the hope being that as these creators have more resources, they will continue to grow the popularity of their rooms, which will also help grow the Clubhouse platform. Now what’s missing from this equation, to a degree, is the investment in the room listeners. They are the third leg of the stool and are kinda left out in the cold a bit in this deal. But perhaps Clubhouse and its creators will come up with ways for listeners to both monetize room owners, and for the platform and room owners to transfer gifts or other forms of investment back to the room listeners.

Monster Energy
How do we go from transacting with our customers, to investing in them?

Let’s say we want to move our business from being rooted in facilitating transactional relationships with customers, to a model where the business invests in its customers, and the customers invest back in the business.

What would that model look like?

Let’s use supermarket chain Publix as a hypothetical example. Publix sells groceries. It’s a purely transactional model.

What if Publix wanted to shift to having an investment model with its customers?  What would that look like?

Here’s one possibility: Let’s say Publix is going to invest directly in the health of its customers. Publix is no longer in business to sell groceries, it’s in business to invest in the health of its customers.

Think about the changes that could happen at Publix to reflect this change. When you first enter Publix, you will typically see a spinner rack by the door that has the current sales circular, several coupon books, maybe even a card with a recipe or two on it. If Publix wanted to invest in the health of its customers, perhaps it could replace the coupons and sales with a list of suggested foods for each age group. For instance, there could be guidelines on foods to buy if you are ages 50 and up. One side of the paper could be foods you want to buy to gain weight, the other could be foods to buy if you want to lose weight. There could be custom shopping lists for other ages or interests, such as people who are diabetic, have high blood pressure, etc.

And throughout the store, there could be cooks preparing meals and instructing customers on how to do so. There could be physical trainers on staff or available by appointment to discuss and create a health regime for customers. As customers are shopping, food could be grouped by body type, or age, or medical condition, instead of simply grouping by brand.

This would all likely lead to more expenses for Publix, which would need to be passed along to the customer in the form of higher prices. However, if Publix could show the average customer how to live a healthier lifestyle, wouldn’t that outweigh a modest increase in prices? Would you pay 25% more for groceries if it meant you would get an additional hour of REM sleep a night, have lower blood pressure, and more energy? I think most people would.

In addition, Publix could hold workshops on how to cook food at home, how to better exercise, what vitamins and supplements to take. They could partner with local fitness centers and health organizations.

There are so many other possibilities. And it all starts with a simple supermarket deciding that it no longer exists to sell groceries, but instead to invest in the health of its customers.

It’s time to rethink business, it’s time to end the transactional relationship

Business as usual is fast approaching its expiration date. Advances in technology, especially around how we connect with each other and share information, is prompting us to expect more from the brands that we give our money to. We honestly do want a deeper relationship with brands, but brands have to earn that relationship. They have to communicate to their customers that they value them as more than simply being another transaction.

Brand loyalty is not created in a transaction model. The most successful businesses have higher levels of loyalty from their customers. Your goal isn’t to facilitate more transactions, it’s to earn the loyalty of your customers.

And you do that by investing in them. I have some more thoughts on this, so click play: