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Seven Business Books to Make You a Better and Smarter Marketer in 2014

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I’m often asked about what some of my favorite business/marketing/social media books are.  Here’s seven of my favorites that will make your job as a marketer much easier in 2014:

Content Rules – The ultimate guide to content creation.  Walks you through how to create compelling content and the different ways in which you can do so.  If any part of your job includes creating online content then this is the book you must own to show you how to do so correctly.

Who should buy it: Anyone that is tasked with any form of content creation, be it blog posts, podcasts, video, anything.

The Passion Conversation – I love marketing books that focus on science and research.  For example, early on in The Passion Conversation, the authors tackle the three forms of motivation that spark Word of Mouth: Functional, Social and Emotional.  I won’t give it away but I did do a Q&A with John Moore a few weeks ago here that has more information on the book.

Who should buy it:  Anyone that’s responsible for connecting either directly or indirectly with customers, and who wants to increase customer loyalty and improve brand perception.

YouTility – YouTility is one of the breakout hit in the business/marketing/social media space in 2013, and it’s a great read.  Jay walks you through how to change your marketing approach and to actually bake usefulness into your marketing messages.  Because if your marketing is useful to customers, they will spread it.  Jay said you should try to create marketing that’s so useful that people would pay for it.

Who should buy it:  Anyone that has ‘content marketing’ listed as part of their job description.

Resonate – Slide:ology is probably Nancy Duarte’s best-known work, but I’m actually a bigger fan of Resonate.  Resonate walks you through how to incorporate effective and compelling storytelling into your presentations.  She takes some of the most famous speeches in history by some of the world’s greatest orators (Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King, Jr, Steve Jobs, etc) and dissects their presentations literally line by line and unravels why what they said was so compelling and why it held our attention.  I’ve incorporated so much of Nancy’s teachings into my own presentations, and it’s greatly improved them.

Who should buy it: Anyone that’s responsible for creating presentations and materials (both internally and externally for clients or the public) that wants to sell others on adopting a particular idea.

Think Like Zuck – I will be honest, I did not expect to like this book.  I’m not a huge fan of Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook, but I am a huge fan of Ekaterina Walter, so I decided to give it a shot.  I’m glad I did because Ekaterina created a wonderful book that helps you not only understand Mark Zuckerberg, but also a lot of the driving forces behind most successful entrepreneurs.  Packed with case studies and littered with scientific research and takeaways, it’s an interesting read, even if you’re not a huge fan of Facebook.

Who should buy it: Anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit or who loves reading ‘how they got there’ accounts.

The Invisible Sale – Again with the scientific foundation!  I love Tom’s focus on the science of Propinquity, which says that the more you come in contact with someone and have favorable interactions, the more likely you are to enjoy their company.  The same applies to online interactions, if you can frequently interact with potential customers/clients and give them valuable content, the more likely they are to buy from you, or at least the more likely you are to move them closer to a sale.  Tom teaches you how to help potential clients and customers self-educated themselves, so that they literally reach out to you and when they do, they are ready to buy.

Who should buy it: Anyone that’s responsible for driving sales online, especially creating online content that helps generate sales.

Think Like a Rock Star – Think only rock stars have raving fans that literally love them?  You’re wrong, many brands have extremely passionate fans, fans that love them and that are driving real business growth for their favorite brands.  TLARS shows you exactly how to find, understand, embrace and empower your biggest fans.  With dozens of case studies, it walks you through exactly what rock stars like Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and even Johnny Cash do to create fans.  The book also shows you how brands of all sizes and industries have built loyal followings of passionate customers that literally consider it their job to promote their favorite brands.  If you want to stop ‘acquiring’ customers and become a fan-centric brand where passionate customers happily bring customers to you, then Think Like a Rock Star is the book for you.

Who should buy it: Anyone in a marketing role that’s tasked with increasing customer loyalty, improving marketing efforts or generating sales.

 

BTW for each book above if you click on the title it will take you to Amazon where you can read the reviews and order.  You can’t go wrong with any of them.  Also, if you live in the US and want to buy a signed copy of Think Like a Rock Star for $25 shipped, click here.

Which books were your favorites this year?  Any that need to go on this list?

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Your Job as a Content Marketer is to Create Superheroes

KathyQuote2Content marketing has been all the rage for a couple of years now.  Most companies are allured by the idea of using content marketing as a way of generating inbound leads.  The problem is that too many companies take the term literally and think of it as content that markets, that promotes your brand and drives business.

That’s the indirect result of effective content marketing.  Your job as a content marketer is to create superheroes.

“What the hell does that mean?”

It means that you ask yourself “What superpower would I give my readers?”  What new skill would you teach them, how would you make them more amazing?

THAT is the goal of your content.  Your content should make the people you are trying to connect with better.  Better at some core competence that is important to them.  For example, if you sell cameras, your job isn’t to create content that sells more cameras, your job is to create content that teaches your customers how to take better pictures.  If you can connect with a grandmother that has never used a digital camera and with one blog post teach her how to use a digital camera to take great pictures of her granddaughter’s wedding then you have indeed given her a superpower.

And you’ve created a new fan that will tell everyone about your site and your cameras.  Because fans generate sales.

So when you are crafting your content marketing strategy, do this:

1 – Figure out who you are trying to connect with, who your audience is. (For me I am trying to connect with companies that want to learn how to better use and understand social media marketing)

2 – Figure out what skills this group  needs, or what information has value to them.  (This group needs to understand not only how to use social media tools effectively, but how to use these tools to drive business growth)

3 – Decide on the focus of your blog/social media content , ie the ‘superpower’ you will give your readers (I am focused on teaching companies how to better use social media marketing to connect with customers and to create fans)

So when you are crafting our your content strategy, think about what’s important to your audience, whether it’s new skills, the latest information, or whatever.  Once you’ve decided what that audience needs, create content that helps give them these new superpowers that will make them more successful and more awesome.

Besides, creating superheroes is a pretty sweet gig to have!

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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:

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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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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

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Four Ways Your Advocates and Fans Are Saving Your Brand Money Right Now

EvangelistsFirst, consider your typical brand advocate.  This person is going out of their way to sing your praises to other customers.  They view themselves as owners of your brand, so they are acting in what they perceive to be the brand’s best interests.  Here’s four examples of how your brand advocates are saving you money:

1 – Brand advocates lower your marketing costs.  Marketing communications are utilized to generate sales, typically via acquiring new customers.  But brand advocates do that for you.  Brand advocates are spending every day promoting your brand to other customers, and encouraging them to buy from your brand.  And given that it costs your brand 6-7 more to acquire one new customer than it does to retain an existing one, the marketing cost savings add up quickly.

2 – Brand advocates lower your customer service costs.  As brand advocates interact with other customers, they are also answering their questions and helping them with any issues or problems they have.  Additionally, brand advocates create content that can help solve questions or problems that other customers have.  Every problem that another customer solves for a brand saves your brand the time it would have taken to work with that customer individually to help them.  And since time is money…

3 – Brand advocates can help you diffuse or avoid a social media crisis.  This is a critical benefit that your fans provide that most brands miss.  If your fans encounter people attacking your brand, they will defend it.  This greatly decreases the chance of other people ‘piling on’ and it also tends to ‘scare off’ the people that launched the attack.  Think of your advocates as having a guard dog in your yard.  If someone comes into your yard starting trouble, they will start barking and scare them off!

4 – Brand advocates lower your market research costs.  Advocates proactively connect with your brand,  They look for reasons to reach out to your brand, and often they do so while providing feedback.  They tell you what they like and dislike about your brand.  Remember that advocates view themselves as the owners of your brand, so if they see something ‘wrong’ with your brand, they will notify you of that problem.  Of course, since they love your brand they will also offer a solution to the issue and want to work with you to make that solution become reality.

 

Why working directly with your brand advocates makes sense

Take all of these benefits that your advocates provide for you naturally.  Now if you had a program in place to work directly with your fans, you accelerate each of these benefits.  And since we are discussing cost-savings, then you increase the amount of money your brand saves by working with its fans.  So the effort can easily pay for itself!

Here’s a few examples of how brands are working directly with their fans to see big benefits:

Pitney Bowes set up a user forum were its users provide customer service directly to other customers.  PB has tracked that every 5 visits to a forum question averts one customer service call, which PB places an internal value of $10 on.  You can do the math, but this is a huge cost-savings to the brand, that only happened because Pitney Bowes created a forum that allows its fans to more effectively help each other (see point #2 above).

Paper.li has set up a program where its members are given advance access to new features that the publishing platform will be rolling out.  The advantage here is that when Paper.li makes these new features available to everyone, its fans can go out and help other members realize the potential of the new features and why they make Paper.li better.  So this generates a marketing cost savings (point #1) as well as a customer support benefit.

The Red Cross avoided a potential disaster of a social media crisis a few years ago when an employee made a mistake and accidentally tweeted a personal tweet from the Red Cross account!  But since The Red Cross does such a great job of engaging its fans on Twitter and quickly addressed the situation, it turned out to be a big positive for the brand.

 

If you’d like to create a formal program to work with your fans, check out this post on creating a brand ambassador program.  Want more help?  Then check out Think Like a Rock Star.

Not sure if it pays to connect with your fans?  Try this very simple experiment:  For the next five people that tweet something positive about your brand on Twitter, reply to them and tweet the following: “Thank you so much, we really appreciate that!”

Now track the responses you get to those 5 tweets.  The responses you get were generated by you responding to your fans.  It’s that simple to do, and even if you only have 1 response, if you do that every time then you’ve just increased positive tweets about your brand by at least 20%.

Love the people that love you.  It really does pay off.

 

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How One Country Increased Tourism to Record Levels By Embracing UGC

I’m not a huge fan of crowd-sourcing marketing content or campaigns.  The reason is because typically such campaigns attract an audience that has little or no loyalty to the brand, but instead wants to win a prize.

But I love the campaign that the Philippines conducted last year to drive interest in tourism.  The pacific island country launched an app called More Fun in the Philippines.  The app lets you overlay the slogan More Fun in the Philippines over a picture you take, but let’s you add an explanation of why ‘It’s More Fun in the Philippines’.  Here’s a few examples:

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Once the pictures are taken and your caption added, they can be shared on Facebook, Twitter or as you see above, on a blog.  What I love about this crowd-sourcing effort is because it puts the content in the hands of people that have a passion for the brand.  This is key, because the people that will be interested in participating in this campaign are proud Filipinos that want to showcase the Philippines and let the rest of the world see their country as they do.

The Philippines took the content created by its citizens and used submissions on its website as well as in advertising.

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“In a very real sense it’s a people power campaign because you can’t imagine how spontaneous this has all been. There’s this latent love of country that we have been able to unleash” explains Ramon Jimenez, Secretary of Tourism for the Philippines.

This campaign was incredibly popular, in fact the hashtag #morefuninthephilippines became the top trending topic on Twitter and visitors to the Philippines increased by 16% during the campaign, to record levels.

So if you want to do a similar crowd-sourcing campaign, keep in mind who you are appealing to and what their motivation is for creating content about your brand.  You want to put the content creation in the hands of people that have a natural affinity and loyalty to your brand, not those that are only encouraged to participate in order to win a prize.  Or worse, people that want to participate in order to mock your brand.

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The Passion Conversation: A Q&A With Author John Moore

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It’s no secret that I’m big fans of the gang at Brains on Fire.  You probably know them for their work with client Fiskars in helping to create and develop The Fiskateeers movement, which is a staple case study at marketing and social media conferences, and for good reason.  I used it as a case study in Think Like a Rock Star and also interviewed BoF’s Greg Cordell and John Moore for the book.

And I wanted to interview John again because Brains on Fire has just released its second book, The Passion Conversation.  The Passion Conversation looks at the science and research behind what motivates us to have passion and excitement for a particular business or cause.  It’s a wonderful companion to their first book, Brains on Fire, and I’m very excited that John has agreed to tell you more about it:

Mack – Early on in the book you talked about how brands can create ‘meaningful’ engagement with their communities of customers and you cited a study that said that said that less than 0.5% of people that Like a brand on Facebook actually engage with that brand during any week!  How can brands create meaningful engagement with their customers, whether it’s online or off?  

John – In the book will recommend businesses follow this concept when trying to create meaningful engagement with customers: PROVIDE MORE. PROMOTE LESS. As in… provide more information, provide more customer service, and provide more interesting customer experiences while promoting in a much less obvious way.

Whole Foods Market “provides more information” by having a concierge in many of its stores. It’s staffed by very knowledgeable employees who provide shoppers with the information they need to make better decisions. Customers come away knowing more and will probably pass that knowledge on to their friends and friends of friends.

Lexus “provides more customer service” before, during, and after the sale. I’ve purchased two cars from two different Lexus dealerships and every time I am amazed at their proactive attention and fast follow-up. Is it any wonder a Lexus recommendation I once made to a friend resulted in a sale?

Cirque Du Soleil provides “more interesting customer experiences.” I was just in Vegas and saw the the Beatles LOVE show. Whoa! The show experience was multi-dimensional and multi-sensory. It was nearly customer experience overload. Since returning, I’ve shared how amazing the show was to many people in-person and online.

Ultimately, the passion conversation isn’t about getting people to talk about you, the brand. It’s about getting people to talk about themselves. If a brand can make a meaningful connection with its customers, then a customer-driven conversation will naturally include how the products/services a brand provides makes them feel better.

 

Mack – One of the things I loved about The Passion Conversation was the amount of scientific facts and research you cited that explored what Word of Mouth is and how it’s created.  In Chapter Two you mentioned that there were three motivations that spark conversations about brands: Functional, Social and Emotional.  Which of these three do you think is best for sparking WOM? 

John – Let’s backup and explain the three conversation motivations. A functional conversation is about sharing basic information — facts and figures type stuff — like the specs on a fancy Nikon camera. A social conversation happens when a person visually shares their affinity for a brand such as through wearing a pair of TOMS shoes or tweeting online about how much they got a steal of a deal on wine at Costco. An emotional conversation is sparked when someone has strong feelings about a brand or a cause like when someone openly talks about how funny the “Hump Day” Geico commercial is or when someone talks about why they support the Wounded Warrior Project.

Each conversation motivation can spark word of mouth equally. My advice for a brand is to pick one trigger and have it serve as the lead conversation starter but not to ignore the other two triggers because they can also spark a word of mouth conversation.

 

Mack – I loved that you touched on the fact that many companies focus on acquiring new customers, and almost seem to ignore their current ones.  Why do you think most companies are willing to go to such great lengths to chase the attention of new customers while ignoring the current customers that often want to connect with them?

John – My many years spent working deep inside the Starbucks marketing department gives me an interesting perspective on this. Our hope at Starbucks was that if we could drive in a totally new customer then they would be so enamored with their drink and the overall experience that they would come back again (and again) and become a customer for life.

This issue is similar to romantic relationships. During the courtship phase both people bend over backwards to be accommodating and to show appreciation. For some, once the couple has been dating for a period of time the bending over backwards to be accommodating and appreciative wanes. Each person takes for granted the relationship.

Brands also take for granted their relationships with current and long-time customers. Why is this? Perhaps it’s sexier to start a relationship than it is to continue a relationship.

 

Mack – Many of us are aware of wonderful examples of brands that have sparked a passion conversation with their customers, such as Fiskars with its The Fiskateers Movement or Maker’s Mark having a robust brand ambassador program that’s over half a million strong.  Why aren’t their more examples of brands that have created a Passion Conversation with their customers?  What’s holding them back? 

John – Showing love to customers in order to receive love from customers is messy work. It ain’t check the box and it’s done. It’s much more than that.

You have to treat brand ambassadors as individuals and not as customer segments. You have to be willing to let go of rigid brand guardrails and allow the ambassadors to speak in their voice and say the things they want to say in the ways they want to say them. You have to be ready to respond swiftly to the wants and needs of ambassadors. You also have to find ways to measure success because whatever results you deem as success takes time to happen.

Loving customers over the long haul ain’t easy. It’s messy work. Not enough brands are willing to get that messy for something that takes time and isn’t easy to measure financially.

 

Thanks so much to John for agreeing to share his thoughts on the book.  It’s a great read and as I said above, I think Chapter Two is worth the price of the book alone simply for the explanation and research behind what drives Word of Mouth in both an online and offline situation.  Plus the book has several interesting client case studies that you can learn from as well.  Hop on over to Amazon and get your copy today!

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You’re Marketing to the Wrong People

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This week I am headed to Louisiana to present Think Like a Rock Star to New Orleans’ AMA chapter.  One of the things I’ll talk about with that group is one of the key takeaways I had from researching and writing the book.

In doing research for the book, I wanted to learn how it was that rock stars could so easily create and cultivate fans.  I wanted to learn how rock stars create fans so effortlessly, then take that ‘secret’ and show brands how to create fans just as easily.

But the secret, isn’t what rock stars are doing, it’s what brands are not.  Brands aren’t marketing to the very customers that are most poised to drive real business growth.

Consider these stats:

  • Fans spend 13% more than the average customer – Satmetrix
  • Fans refer business equal to 45% of the money they spend – Satmetrix
  • Customers referred by another customer have a 37% higher retention rate

In short, fans create cash.  Rock stars have always understood this, and that’s why almost all of their marketing efforts are focused on their most passionate customers.  Rock stars go out of their way to create amazing experiences for the people that love them.  Because rocks stars understand that the best marketing in the world is spoken in a voice that the customer pays attention to.

Their own.

By embracing their fans, rock stars put their marketing in the hands of their most passionate customers.

In contrast, consider this final stat:  The top marketing goal for US companies is to acquire new customers.

Wait, what?

This was the most surprising thing I learned in writing Think Like a Rock Star.  Rock stars focus almost all of their marketing efforts toward connecting with their most passionate fans, the customers that are already giving them their business.

While in contrast, most brands focus almost all of their marketing efforts toward connecting with people that have never bought from that brand.

As a result, almost all of the rock star’s marketing is via word of mouth, from satisfied customer to satisfied customer.

On the other hand, almost all of the average brand’s marketing is via traditional marketing channels.

Who do you trust more:  Your best friend, or the commercial that just ran during Monday Night Football?

 

But the greatest irony is this:  Brands don’t embrace their fans because they want total control over their marketing efforts.  Yet rock stars have learned that when they give up control and freely give their marketing to their fans, they then earn the trust of their fans.

Those fans then willingly spread their marketing for them.  Funny how that works out.

PS: A special treat for you, I’ve done a free 50-minute webinar for Cision on Fans vs Influencers: Which is Better For Your Brand?  Hope you enjoy it!