MackCollier.com

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Three Ways Your Marketing Needs to Adapt Before it Dies

Microsoft

Over the past 5 years or so, there has been a rush by companies to understand how to use social media tools.  Customers are using these tools, so brands rationalize that they need to learn how to use these tools to better sell to those customers via those tools.  The idea is to take a marketing strategy built around using analog channels, and incorporate digital tools into the mix.

The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t consider how customers are using these digital tools.  As late as 1990, there were three main channels to reach the majority of your customers:

1 – Television

2 – Radio

3 – Print

Because the majority of your customers were using these three channels for their news, information and entertainment.  Today, any person that has access to the internet and a laptop/tablet/smartphone is a potential content creation and distribution channel.  The marketing dynamic has completely changed in that customers are no longer looking to brands to get their information and marketing about a product, they are looking to each other.

So simply incorporating digital tools into your existing analog marketing strategy isn’t enough.  You have to adapt your strategy to reflect the fact that your customers have a greater ability to create and spread information than your brand does.  Re-read that sentence until it sinks in.

So in short, your marketing needs to adapt to make it more consistent with the content being created by other customers.  Here’s how you can do that:

1 – Make your marketing less about the product and more about how your customers use the product.  Think about why your customers buy your product and what they want to accomplish with it.  What problems are they trying to solve, what are they trying to create?  They are buying your product because it is going to help them do something.  Focus more of your marketing on that something.

2 – Make your marketing more useful.  Why have we seen a huge uptick in companies creating white papers and ebooks in the last few years?  Because this content is useful to potential customers.  It educates them, it helps them solve their problems.  Tying in with the above point, it helps them do something.  Create marketing that empowers your customers, and they will spread your marketing.

3 – Make your marketing more human.  Your marketing will resonate with your customers if it is spoken in a voice they understand: Their own.  That means not taking yourself too seriously, sometimes having a sense of humor, and being willing to admit your mistakes.  A couple of years ago The Red Cross had a huge social media faux pas, but they turned a potentially negative situation into a positive for the organization by responding in a human tone.

The main point to realize is that your customers are now creating far more information and content than your brand ever can.  Which means that most of the ‘marketing’ that’s done about and around your brand is not coming from you.  Your customers are now getting their information about your brand from each other, so you need to understand this, and adapt your marketing to make it consistent with what your customers are now expecting.

I also created this short video presentation talking more about this topic.  Let me know what you think!

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Guest Post: How We Think Like a Rock Star at Paper.li

PaperliRockstars

Note: This is a guest post from Paper.li’s Kelly Hungerford, who heads up Marketing and Communications for the brand.  I asked Kelly to write this post for several reasons, but mainly because she’s been a huge supporter of me and my book Think Like a Rock Star for months now.  Plus, she’s working with Paper.li’s fans to build an advocacy program and I wanted her to talk about what the brand is doing and what they are learning because it is not an easy process.  But building a strong connection with your most passionate customers is definitely a worthwhile goal and I’m so grateful to Kelly for sharing what Paper.li is learning along the way.  Please drop Kelly a comment and let her know what you think!

A few months back, before Think Like a Rock Star was available for sale, I approached Mack for some advice. I wanted to pick his brain on the beginnings of a brand ambassador program for Paper.li.

After two years I felt we were ready to move make a commitment and take the plunge into developing a structure and process to begin formally recognize our core users — our advocates. I wanted a program that would

  • officially recognize our most loyal advocates and say thank you
  • enable them to take part in shaping the service in the future
  • empower them to inspire others

After speaking with speaking Mack I realized I couldn’t answer a fundamental question, which was “what are the key elements that would excite your users in a program?. “  I could only make an assumption.

I had spent the past two years listening, responding and engaging but still didn’t understand enough to formalize a process around my fans. I needed to change my approach. Mack sent me an early copy of TLARS and I began reading and realized that I needed to bend my ear past listening to achieve deeper understanding.

Applying TLARS principals at Paper.li

I spent the next 4 months fine-tuning my listening skills, applying and adapting approaches from TLARS to my work. Four months may sound like a long time, but I purposely took extra time to evaluate our users’ needs for three reasons:

1- Resources: Paper.li is still a small company, with colleagues covering multiple rolls. NOT doing my research will impact my team and create more work for everyone

2- Goodwill:  we feel a large sense of responsibility to get things right when we roll out enhancements or launch new features. Formalizing a program is no different. Their time is valuable and we value their time.

3- No revenue pressure: my aim is to reward our most loyal users, not to increase any revenue. We recognize the benefits of formalizing a relationship for both sides, but there is was no time pressure to roll anything out before it was ready.

 

And these were the changes that were implemented:

1- Increased engagement outside of our owned channels

I noticed that when I engaged with users under the Paper.li name, I naturally put on my “helping hat”. I was always looking after issues, giving advice, solving problems. This is a great way to build trust and keep users loyal, but it is a bit similar to going to grab a beer with a colleague and only talking about work the entire time — it doesn’t lend to interesting conversations.

So I increased the engagement under my own name and out from underneath the Paper.li hood. This may seem like a natural thing to do, but when you work for a company, it doesn’t come naturally. The natural thing is to interact with your community through official channels and campaigns set-up through your company.

One of the first outside events I organized for our community was a #BlogChat sponsorship. Although it was company sponsored, I was there on my own time and under my own name. By reaching out this way, the dynamic changed and so did the information flow. I was able to listen without a customer service or marketing hat on my head, participate with my community to better understand what was important to them.

2- Quit making assumptions

There is nothing wrong with assumptions, but when you are structuring something around your users, for your users, why make any assumptions if you don’t have to?

We have the tools available today to virtually reach and shake hands. We should use them to our advantage to better incorporate our users voices into our organizations and create more experiences for them, with them.

I stopped making assumptions and started sending an email, tweet or post to get the information I needed. It took more time, but it yielded the information I was looking for.

3- Leveraged our support function

Where I didn’t have an answer, I asked. This sounds like a “duh” statement, but I am convinced that 50% of the time we don’t have the answers we require because we simply haven’t asked the right question — or any question.

Both Twitter and our support forum give us the opportunity to engage and inquire, but most users contact us via Twitter for quick responses, so this wasn’t the place to ask 20 questions. I opted for our support desk and we began increasing our conversation with our end users there.

We added a simple question like this “Would you have time for one more question?” and then asked our question.

That extra one minute invested to formulate a question not only resulted in beautiful feedback but ultimately strengthened and built a stronger mutual relationship between our team and our users.

This isn’t something that we implemented just to understand our advocates wishes better, this was a change across the board.  By going the extra mile we have seen our advocate circle organically grow and we are not just responding to requests, we are building relationships. In fact, a lot of our users just drop us a line to say hi during the week now.

 

The results:

After adjusting our listening, analyzing results and putting a few internal processes in place, we were able to structure the first phase of a very humble ambassador program — around user feedback– for our advocates.

Here’s what they asked for along with what we were able to implement to get the program started.

1-  Direct contact with our team: via email, G+, Skype or a special address in our forum, our advocates wanted to be able to tap into at any time. This is great for not only for keeping in touch or answering questions but is essential for getting feedback on features or input on new ideas.

Solution: We set up a private G+ community, gave access to key members of the team via direct email and Skype.

2- Early notification of product releases: our users want to be empowered. They want to show their audience what’s happening before it’s made public. They also want to educate others.

Solution: We hold G+ product, information and best practices hangouts. We invite users to speak and share their impressions with the rest of the group, share best practices and hear what’s new.

3- Badges/recognition: who said the badge is dead? Our core users want to show what they are a part of. They are proud to be associated with the company and would like to show their pride off. Additionally, they wanted to be easily identifiable by other publishers.

Solution: a badge that identifies them as an ambassador/super-user. They will be highlighted in blog posts, cited as distinguished publishers when asked by PR, included in presentations, blog posts and so forth.

4- Testing new product: this take number two a step further. Our users want to be a part of what’s happening and help shape the product for the future.

Solution: shared access on our pre-prod environment. We inform them when new features, improvements or enhancements are ready and let them test. The feedback has been great and they are having a blast and they are helping us resolve issue and define new ways of working and thinking about our product.

5- Receive Swiss chocolate: no kidding! Our fans would like to get their hands on authentic “can’t be found in the supermarket” Swiss chocolate.

Solution: Unfortunately, this part of the program isn’t yet in place. it isn’t easy to ship Swiss chocolate (or food) internationally. We’ll work on this.

Our ambassador program is truly a work in progress. There is no glam, fancy announcements, t-shirts or mugs being handed out. But the anticipation of how this can progress is as exciting as the feedback that we’re receiving from our advocates.

We’ve succeed in pulling back the curtain back and incorporating our most passionate users (formally) into our team as honorary members, giving them a backstage pass and total access to us. We’ve truly begun to Think Like a Rock Star at Paper.li and we’re proud of it!

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How to Create and Market a ‘Cool’ Product with Social Media

Harley

I recently got this email from a reader of Think Like a Rock Star that’s interested learning how to use social media to connect with her fans and market a ‘cool’ product.

“I loved your book and not only found it extremely helpful from an execution perspective of how to put an advocate program together, but your mentality and approach to social media was truly eye opening and has reignited my passion for my business and connecting with my fans.

While your book discussed selling the benefit rather than the product I feel that my customers buy my product for the “cool factor” which is a bit harder to put into words than say it makes a faster breakfast or cleans your clothes better. If I dig a bit deeper I have researched and seen that exclusivity and originality are essential in this area of fashion. If some one did it already fans aren’t afraid to point fingers.”

One of the things that the book also talks about is how to create content that taps into the ‘Bigger Idea’ behind your product.  But if one of the big reasons why someone buys your product is because it’s ‘cool’, then how do you create content around ‘cool’?

Another way to think about having a ‘cool’ product is to have one that, as Kathy Sierra says, ‘inspires The Nod’.  Your product is ‘cool’ to other people that get why it is cool.  Your product says something about them as a person.  Maybe that they’re smarter than the rest, or more selective, or maybe that they’ve been a fan of your brand for a longer period of time.  Harley-Davidson is cool because the brand says something about the owner and their lifestyle that Victory motorcycles do not.

In the Introduction to Think Like a Rock Star I talk about how Jewel connected with her fans to empower them to organize the JewelStock concerts.  Wearing a Jewel ‘Intuition’ t-shirt likely wouldn’t impress anyone, not even hardcore Jewel fans.  But if an EDA sees you wearing a JewelStock tee, it would instantly grab their attention.  Wearing the JewelStock tee communicates to other long-time Jewel fans that you were there in the beginning, and if you were seen wearing it by another long-time Jewel fan, they would likely run up to you ask ‘OMG were you there?’  Within that very small community, it communicates status, that you were part of a rare moment that helped launch Jewel’s career.  But what if that same person passed by a girl that had a JewelStock sticker on her Bug?

They’d share The Nod.  Because they’d both instantly have a bond that most Jewel fans don’t share.

So if you want to create content that taps into the ‘cool’ factor about your product, then you need to figure out what it is about your product that makes it cool?  And you have to remember that the ‘what’ ties back to the person that bought the product, it says something about them.

For example, one of the other examples in the book is how Fiskars connected with scrapbookers to drive sales.  Any pair of scissors can be used in scrapbooking, but an orange-handled pair of Fiskars scissors communicates that you are serious about your scrapbooking.  That you take your projects more seriously and that perfection is important to you.  Owning a pair of that particular brand in that particular color communicates something about you as a scrapbooker.

Now my friend’s email also mentioned looking to appeal to the brand’s fans and that they are interested in exclusivity and originality.  Back to the Fiskars’ example. The orange-handled scissor is a ‘cool’ product to scrapbookers.  But Fiskars has also created The Fiskateers movement that’s just for scrapbookers.  If you want to join this movement, you have to be approved to join by the existing members.  But if you are, you get your own numbered orange-handled scissor that’s only available to Fiskateers!  The orange-handled scissor is already cool to members of the scrapbooking community, but the fact that it’s numbered also communicates that that person is a Fiskateer!  Extra cool points!

So if you want to want to market a ‘cool’ product, focus on two areas:

1 – What makes the product cool and what does it say about the person owning it?  Are they smarter?  Concerned with the environment?  Geekier?  Bolder?  More active?

2 – How will others be able to spot someone else that has your ‘cool’ product?  This goes beyond the product itself, especially if it’s a clothing product.  But if it’s not a clothing product, maybe a t-shirt or a sticker could work.  Or, in the case of Fiskars, maybe its the same product (orange-handled scissors) with a special modification (numbered) that’s only available to a select group of customers (such as your biggest fans).  Maybe this could be a special color of an existing shirt that’s only sold to your fans, or maybe your fans create the modification, and that’s added to the shirt, it becomes a ‘badge’ or ‘marker’ to other members of that community of fans.

And finally, go back to the qualities listed in the first step above.  Think of those attributes (smarter, more active, bolder) as Superpowers.  How is your product going to help your customers be smarter, more active or bolder?  Red Bull gives you the fuel and energy you need to do bold and daring stunts and activities.  Patagonia creates clothes that last longer, that also environmentally-friendly.   Think about what it is that your customers find ‘cool’ about your product, then focus on how you can enable that coolness.

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Fan Organizes Global Movement Celebrating Nutella, So the Brand Sends Her a C&D Letter

NutellaSara Rosso is definitely what you would call a ‘superfan’ for Nutella.  So much so that in 2007, Rosso decided that the chocolate-hazlenut spread deserved its own holiday and created World Nutella Day.  Over the past 6 years, the ‘holiday’ has grown into first a community for fellow Nutella fans, and now a movement celebrating the brand.  The stated goal for creating the holiday was to ” encourage Nutella enthusiasts worldwide to enjoy and get creative with Nutella.”  The event has its own Facebook page with 40K Likes, and a Twitter account with almost 7K followers.  On the event’s website, fans have currently submitted over 700 recipes for Nutella, and the entire platform is obviously driving interest, fandom and sales for the brand.

And Nutella just told Rosso to shut the whole thing down.  Last month, Rosso received a Cease and Desist letter from Ferrero, the parent company of the Nutella brand.

“They asked me to take down the site because they consider it to be an unauthorized use of their intellectual property and trademarks—the Nutella logo and brand,” Rosso explains.

In Think Like a Rock Star, I devote an entire chapter to helping brands understand who their fans are, and what motivates them.  No doubt, Ferrero looks at World Nutella Day, and likely sees little more than customers using its logo and likeness in an unauthorized manner.  The company feels it needs to step in and protect its brand, and to be fair it has every right to do so.

But in acting this way, Ferrero is also communicating that it does not understand its own fans, and why they are driving this effort.  A fan sees itself as the owner of a brand, in many ways the parent of that brand.  As such, they want to see the brand grow and succeed.  So they act in what they perceive to be the brand’s best interests.

Ferrero would likely counter that even so, the fan’s best interests for the brand might not be the same as what the brand wants for itself.  This is why Ferrero should be working with its fans.  Fans are special customers, they want a relationship with their favorite brand.  Fans want the brand to step in and give them more instruction on how they can better serve and help that brand.

One of the case studies from the music industry I talk about in Think Like a Rock Star is the fan-run site TheDonnasMedia.com, which was created by fans of The Donnas.  The site contains hundreds of thousands of hours of live concert footage from the band’s performances, and even custom made liner notes and photos so fans can literally create their own CDs of The Donnas’ concerts.  The band found out about this site years ago, and instead of shutting it down, they contacted the fans running the site, and began working with them to make the site better.  They understood that the point of the site from the fans’ perspective was to create new fans for The Donnas, so instead of sending a C&D letter to the site’s owners, the band instead began promoting the site to its fans!  And for their part, the fans self-police the site, and won’t allow any material to be uploaded to the site that’s been commercially released by the band (remember what I said about fans acting in what they perceive to be the brand or in this case band’s best interests?).

If Ferrero would reach out to its fans that have organized World Nutella Day, they would no doubt find that Ms Rosso and her team would bend over backwards to accommodate any request from the brand, and would be thrilled that Nutella was reaching out to them.  There is an obvious opportunity here for Nutella to work with Rosso and these fans, and create a huge platform for the brand’s fans that could create a significantly positive financial impact on the brand.

But instead, the brand is attempting to shut down the entire movement, and that has, shockingly, led to Nutella now receiving criticism from its own fans on its Facebook page:

“Today, i decided to remove Nutella and other Ferrero products from my grocery list because of the legal actions taken against the http://www.nutelladay.com/. Do whatever you want, but without my money.”

“Bad move Ferrero. Bad, bad move. I won’t be buying your delicious nut butter anymore. It’s a good thing there are plenty of alternatives!”

“We love Nutella, BUT after hearing how you treat your fans, we’ll be switching to an alternative brand.”

“I will never use your product again! You lost more than 1 fan today.”

Rosso has said she will be shutting down the site and all accounts associated with World Nutella Day on Friday.  Now there’s still a chance Nutella could step in and say that they want to work with the fans, but the time to do that was before they issued a C&D letter, which is why they are now dealing with backlash from their own fans.

We will be discussing how brands should handle fan-run efforts like this tomorrow during #rockstarchat on Twitter at 1pm Central.  But for now, here’s how a brand should respond when it discovers that a fan is running an effort that involves its brand.

1 – Contact the fan(s) first before pursuing legal action.  Even if what the fans are doing is clearly against what you feel are the brand’s best interests, it still helps to contact the fans and communicate that to them directly.  Normally, the fans will be thrilled to hear from you, and happy to incorporate any changes you request.

2 – Work with the fans to figure out how they can continue to have a relationship with your brand that benefits them, as well as you.  Let’s assume that your fans are running a site that, for whatever reason, your brand decides needs to be shut down.  Instead of simply sending lawyers out to the fans, contact the fans and carefully communicate to them why their effort is such a disconnect with what your brand is trying to accomplish, and communicate to them that you want to see if they can work with your brand in a different capacity.  For example, by attempting to shut down World Nutella Day, Nutella has now alienated an army of literally thousands of fans.  If the brand had reached out to these fans and figured out a way that they could keep working together, the fans would have loved it, and the effort would have become an even bigger platform to help the brand.  Instead, it’s now become a PR headache for Nutella.

3 – See if there is an opportunity to bring the fan’s initiative under the brand’s umbrella.  Instead of shutting down the effort, why not see if the fans would like to help you run it if your brand takes it over?  I honestly suspect this is what will happen with World Nutella Day.  There is enormous potential in this community, Nutella could easily morph this group into its own brand ambassador program, etc.

4 – Buy Think Like a Rock Star.  It shows you exactly how to create a better relationship with such fans, and helps you understand them and how they are trying to help you brand.

 

If all else fails, you may need to pursue legal action against the fans running such initiatives, but it’s usually a good idea to first contact your fans, and voice your concerns to them.  Typically, your fans will go out of their way to work with your brand because remember they are your fans.

If you are a fan of Nutella, what do you think about this story?  Should Nutella be shutting down World Nutella Day, or is it a movement that can only help the brand?  What do you think?

PS: Thanks to Lauri Rottmayer for the tip about this story.

 

Afterthought:  If Nutella wanted to start today building a new fan community that was 40K strong like the one Rosso has already built (for free), what would be the costs and how much time would it take?  I’m thinking about half a million, and remember Rosso has been doing this for 6 years.  Whatever the cost, that’s the minimum amount Nutella would be throwing away by not trying to embrace this effort and bring it under the brand’s umbrella.

 

UPDATE: Nutella just posted on its Facebook page the following “Positive direct contact between Ferrero and Sara Rosso, owner of the non-official Nutella fan page World Nutella Day, has brought an end to the case.  Ferrero would like to express to Sara Rosso its sincere gratitude for her passion for Nutella, gratitude which is extended to all fans of the World Nutella Day.  The case arose from a routine brand defense procedure that was activated as a result of some misuse of the Nutella brand on the fan page.  Ferrero is pleased to announce that today, after contacting Sara Rosso and finding together the appropriate solutions, it immediately stopped the previous action.  Ferrero considers itself fortunate to have such devoted and loyal fans of its Nutella spread, like Sara Rosso.”

 

Kudos to Nutella for doing the right thing!

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How Can You Create Monster Loyalty? Q&A With Jackie Huba

photo (3)I was so excited to hear that Jackie Huba’s new book, Monster Loyalty would be coming out soon after TLAR.  For the last decade, Jackie has been teaching us all about the value of embracing and empowering our fans.  With Monster Loyalty, she looks at how one of the most successful rock stars of all time creates and empower fans: Lady Gaga.  Here’s Jackie telling us more about why you should buy Monster Loyalty(I’ve already pre-ordered my copy!).

Q: You’re a customer loyalty guru who has written two previous books on the subject already – Creating Customer Evangelists and Citizen Marketers – what prompted you to add this book to the list? Why Lady Gaga?

A: I’ve been intrigued with Lady Gaga as an artist since she burst on to the music scene in 2009. In studying her in-depth for four years, I began to see that Lady Gaga is doing something casual observers and many business professionals may not really comprehend. While creating a buzz with her wild outfits and crazy performance art, she is methodically building a grassroots base of passionate fans for the long term. The more I observed, the more I began to realize that there is a lot she could teach the business world about how to generate customer loyalty.

 

Q: Lady Gaga has such a specific brand and audience; can the average business and businessperson really learn from her?

A: Gaga’s business of show business may be very different from the “average” business, but her focus on growing through devoted customer loyalty is a universal business objective. Research has long shown that it’s five times cheaper to keep a customer than to get new ones. Gaga gets the math. It’s her overarching philosophy to focus on her core advocates, the superfans, the Little Monsters. These advocates will ultimately be evangelists who bring in new customers on their own. This customer philosophy is one that businesses would do well to learn from Gaga.

 

Q. She is undeniably an eccentric icon. How do more practical companies partake in her business philosophies without going over the top?

A: The best ideas sometimes come from the unlikeliest sources, and this is how innovation happens. Gaga has blazed new trails in creating fan loyalty and setting the foundation for long-term success in her industry. Whether you love her or hate her, you can’t ignore her what she has accomplished. I think it’s important to study what she does, how she does it, and why, because there are ways to replicate her success in more traditional business settings. In every lesson from Gaga in the book, I highlight how traditional companies – from Whole Foods to MINI – are applying her methods to their customer base, and without wearing any meat dresses.

 

Q: In the book you explain that Gaga focuses on her “One Percenters,” a term that you and previous co-author, Ben McConnell, coined. Can you explain this concept?

A: The idea of the One Percenters is based on research that my co-author Ben McConnell and I did for our 2007 book, Citizen Marketers. In the early days of online community and social media, we looked at online communities and tracked what percentage of members in those communities created content. In other words, who was most engaged. We found it amounted to just 1 percent of the total community members. This was surprising. The amount of super-engaged community members did not follow the usual 80/20 rule (aka the Pareto principle) which states that 80 percent of value comes from 20 percent of participants. Our research was showing the volume of content creators was much smaller, at just 1 percent. One percent is a very small part of the community, and yet this disproportionate number was creating most of the value for the entire community. Our thesis is that these One Percenters are businesses’ most die-hard customers who love the company, buy new products as soon as they released, give them as gifts, and evangelize the company to everyone they know.

 

Q: One of the seven loyalty lessons is “Give Fans a Name.” It’s well known that Lady Gaga calls her fans her “Little Monsters.” Can you give an example of a business applying this lesson?

A: One of the best examples of a brand naming their fans is Maker’s Mark, the premium bourbon company out of Loretto, Kentucky. In 2000, Bill Samuels, Jr., son of the founder, was looking for a way to better connect with the brand’s fanatical customers and created the Maker’s Mark Ambassador program. Ambassadors are those brand evangelists who volunteered to tell others about the product and also encouraged bars that didn’t carry the brand at the time to do so. Today, there are hundreds of thousand of Makers Mark Ambassadors who receive custom business cards from the brand, fun holiday gifts and gather for events at the history distillery in Loretto each year.

 

Q: Whether it’s about Lady Gaga, customers, loyalty or even yourself – what’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing this book?

A: Lady Gaga’s business sense impresses me, but her passion for changing the world for the better through any means possible is what truly inspired me to study her. She is influencing an entire generation of young people to stand up for each other, to be more tolerant of differences, and to be brave in the face of difficulty. I have spent hours and hours reading fan comments about how she has changed lives for the better. I have cried watching YouTube videos of kids saying they thought about hurting themselves or ending their lives, but that her belief in them, a woman they don’t even know, kept them from doing it. They listen to her music, especially “Born This Way,” and they feel better about themselves. Part of why I wanted to write the book is that I am compelled to share all of the things she is doing, not just her business acumen. I believe that if there was ever a candidate to continue Oprah’s legacy of inspiring people to live their best lives, it’s this five-foot-one, twenty-six-year- old in a studded bikini.

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How to Totally Botch a New Book’s Marketing In the First Month (Hint: Create a Plan)

Hey y’all!  So over the last few months as I began promoting the fact that Think Like a Rock Star was coming out, more and more of you started contacting me saying you were either starting to write your own book, or thinking about doing so.  So I wanted to share my experience with the book’s launch so that maybe it will help you.

First, you need to understand this: You are on your own when it comes to marketing your new book.  Seriously, 99% of the book’s marketing and promotion is on you.  No, your publisher isn’t going to help you, at least not very much.  Not because they are evil people, but they are in the publishing business, not the marketing business.  They have limited marketing resources, and what they do have goes to proven authors with big names.  That’s not me, and it’s not you.  So as Michael Hyatt says, you have to essentially assume the role of CMO of your own book.  Because you are.

Now, when you are marketing a new book, one of the big considerations is your launch strategy.  We’ve all heard stories about this author or that author that moved several thousands of copies of their new book at launch, and made the New York Times Bestseller List.  What that author won’t typically tell you is they sold 5,000 copies during launch week because they promoted the book at launch endlessly to their email list, which had 200,000 members that they have been building since 2000.  The point is, unless you have a huge platform to promote your book from, IMO it’s not worth the effort to focus most of your efforts on a big launch.  You SHOULD try to sell as many copies as possible at launch, but you should be trying to sell as many copies AFTER launch as well.  But there’s no denying that making a bestseller list is a huge deal, but for me, I felt my efforts could be better placed elsewhere.

Amazon sells your book when they get it

This is a lesson I learned the hard way.  First, let me back up and tell you what my plan was:

1 – The paperback version of TLAR was scheduled to go on sale on April 19th.

2 – From watching other books that had launched from my publisher, typically Amazon would start selling the Kindle version of the book about 3 weeks prior to selling the paperback version.

3 – That gave me a 3-week window to get as many reviews up as possible for the Kindle version of the book.  This is big, because a review for the Kindle edition also shows up on the paperback/hardback version of the book, even if it’s not out yet.  So if the Kindle version of the book comes out 3 weeks before the paperback version, that means any reviews of the Kindle edition will show up in the listing for the paperback edition.  What I wanted to happen was to have several great reviews up for the book at launch, to drive more sales.

4 – In February, McGraw-Hill put TLAR on NetGalley.  NetGalley is a site where publishers provide a free ebook version of their books, and potential reviewers ask for a copy of the book to review, and the publisher then sends the book to the people they approve.  The idea is that if you request a copy of the book via NetGalley, you are doing so because you intend to review it online.  Think Like a Rock Star was the most requested title on NetGalley that McGraw-Hill has ever published.  So I was pretty stoked about that, and thought it would drive a LOT of reviews leading up to the launch.

5 – In March and leading up through the end of April, I had planned on doing multiple guest posts on multiple sites.  Now this is something I honestly wasn’t looking forward to doing.  I hate the idea of asking (which to me seems like begging) other bloggers to let me write a guest post for them.  I had already done a few by the end of March and everyone I talked to was extremely gracious about it.

6 – I created a small Street Team to help me promote the book.  This was honestly the smartest thing I did, as it was effectively tying into the core concept of TLAR: Connect with your fans and give them control of your message.  The Street Team would help get the word out about the book, review it on Amazon and elsewhere, etc.

7 – I created #Rockstarchat in March to help support readers AFTER they bought the book.  This was also smart, because it provides value for people AFTER they buy the book, but it also drives NEW sales as people participate in the chat.

8 – I sent out a small number of paperback review copies to people that I *knew* would likely buy the book.  I didn’t see this as losing sales, I saw it as a way to THANK people that were supporting me and the book.  This was a very small number, maybe 10 copies total.

 

So now I had my launch strategy

And when I say ‘launch strategy’, I don’t mean ‘my strategy to move enough copies at launch to make the New York Times Bestseller List’.  I just assumed THAT would never happen.  But I did want to make a splash at launch to give the book a nice jumpstart and help it hit the ground running.  But again, I wanted the launch to be the START of the book’s sales, not the high point!

So the plan was this:

1 – From mid-March through the end of April, do multiple guest posts for other bloggers to build exposure and awareness for the book

2 – The Kindle version of the book should drop around late March, the paperback version on April 19th.  That gave me a 3-week window to get as many reviews up as possible on Amazon.  Inbetween the Street Team, the people on NetGalley that had requested a review copy, and sales from new customers, the goal was to have a few dozen reviews up by April 19th.  My feeling was that that many would be enough to help drive NEW sales of the paperback at launch.

 

So I was ready to go, and then Amazon pulled the rug out from under me

On March 26th, I noticed that the Kindle edition of TLAR went on sale.  Excellent, this was the 25 days before the paperback version was set to go on sale, which was exactly where I was thinking it would start selling.  Perfect.  I immediately emailed the Street Team, and a few friends that I knew had read the book and asked (read: begged) them to please post their reviews on Amazon ASAP.  By the next day Amazon already had 3 reviews up, and I was feeling like the plan was starting to click into place.

Then it happened.  On Friday, March 29th, I got an email from Amazon saying the on-sale date for TLAR had been moved up from April 19th to April 1st!  So that 3-week window I was expecting between the on-sale date for the Kindle version and the paperback version had been reduced to 5 days.

Lovely.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the worst part.  The paperback version of TLAR went on sale on April 1st on Amazon, and immediately sold out.  And was out of stock for three freaking days.  Which was awesome and terrible all at the same time.  It’s awesome that the book was so popular that it had sold out, but terrible that I missed three days worth of sales during launch week because Amazon can’t properly manage its inventory for a book that had pre-sold well for 6 months prior.  As you can tell, I am no longer bitter 🙂

So it’s now the 1st week of this month, and my launch strategy is officially in the toilet.  Best laid plans, and all that jazz.  But I started noticing something happening:  People started telling me that their copy of the book had shipped, or a few had already received their copy of the book, and were posting pictures of them on Twitter.  Of course this thrilled me and I went out of my way to thank them and engage with them.  Then strangers started doing the same thing.

Then it hit me:  The fans of the book needed to be the people that were driving the promotion of the book, not me!  So I went out of my way to start engaging with fans of the book, which is what I was going to do anyway, but I did so aggressively.  I thanked them profusely, and I noticed that they started promoting the book MORE as a result!  They started encouraging other friends to buy the book.  They started reviewing it on their blogs and other sites.  Of course I would ask them to also review it on Amazon if they could (a couple of people THANKED ME for asking them to please review MY book on Amazon!)

This is just a sampling of what I was seeing on Twitter during launch week:

TLARTweets3

What I also noticed was that sales went up after launch week.  More reviews started coming in on Amazon (Four 5-star reviews last Thurs and Friday alone), and more people started talking about the book on Twitter and Facebook.

Then last Tuesday just before I started presenting TLAR at Jacksonville State, I saw this on Amazon:

Amazon#1#2

BOOM!  That was the high-point for sales of the book at that point, and what’s most important was it was being driven by fans of the book.  Now I’m not posting this just to brag (ok I am a little because I’m super proud of this book), but mainly to make the point to you that this was painfully easy to do!  All I did was embrace the fans of the book and THANK them for helping me promote the book.  How many times have I said that the two most important words in social media are ‘thank you’?  This is not rocket science, folks.  Find the people that are supporting you (your fans), and embrace them and THANK them.

Say ‘Thank You!’ early and often, and mean it.  That’s really all there is to it when it comes to driving new sales.  If I can figure this stuff out, anyone can do it 🙂

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#RockstarChat Today is With Billboard’s Social Marketing Manager Katie Morse!

katie mo headshots 4Today’s #RockstarChat will have its first co-host, Billboard’s own Katie Morse!  I interviewed Katie for Think Like a Rock Star, and in today’s chat she will talk to us about how rock stars are using social media and other marketing channels to connect with their fans.  Then we’ll talk about what brands can learn from rock stars in connecting with their own fans.

To prep for today’s chat, I wanted to share an interview I did with Katie several months ago while I was still writing Think Like a Rock Star:

Mack: For Rockstars, it just seems so natural for most of them to have a very close connection with their fans.  Yet for most brands, the exact opposite is true.  Why do you think Rockstars go out of their way to embrace their fans, when most brands keep their’s at arm’s length?  

Katie: I think this dichotomy exists for 2 reasons.

1 – Brands never HAD to “embrace their fans” before social media. Many brands spent millions doing the opposite, in fact – turning their customers into anonymous data points and trying to make the most amount of money possible based off of statistical models and predictions.

2 – Rock stars have a necessary connection with their fans based off their model of monetization… in these days (and even previously) you had to tour to make money. Now that’s apparent more than ever, and who goes to a show? PEOPLE! Musician’s couldn’t ignore their fans the way brands could before.

I also think that brands, for a long time, were afraid of “being human”. You see this pop up in all sorts of areas… scripted customer service calls, for an example. Somewhere along the line from the mom and pop shops of the 1800-1900’s to the monolithic corporations of today brands lost that “human touch” which musicians could never afford to lose.

Mack: Throughout your professional career, and especially now handling Social Media Marketing for Billboard, you’ve been exposed to how Rockstars connect with their fans.  What do you think is the most important lesson or two that brands can learn from the relationship Rockstars have with their fans?

Katie:  1 – Go off-script. I Tweeted the other day(Edit by Mack, this interview was done last Aug for the book ;)) that Josh Groban’s Twitter account is consistently one of my favorites to follow. Why? Because he’s not a marketing machine. He’s a real person with a personality. He even has some pretty good jokes! Brands don’t need to learn to “be human” but they DO need to learn how to better communicate with real people online. That requires adopting a more conversational and human tone and not being afraid to be honest, or deal with the unexpected.

2 – Less Wizard of Oz, more Dorothy. People want to see what’s behind the curtain more than ever these days. Musicians have taken to Instagram en masse, just as an example, and many share photos of life on tour or even daily live (Rihanna, Drake, etc). This content is GOLD in fans eyes… who doesn’t want to see what Drake’s hotel room in Cannes really looks like, or what Rihanna really gets up to on a “night out with the girls”? The same thing should apply to your brand. No, not everyone cares to see photos of worker bees in cubicles, but we DO want to take a peek into how your bottled beverage is really put together, or what the raw incredients for my favorite meal at a restaurant really look like. GE does a wonderful job of this with their Instagram account, by the way.

Mack: How can a brand measure the bottom-line impact of connecting with their biggest fans?  I think most brands accept that fans probably spend more than the average customer and speak more positively about the brand, but if a CMO wanted to convince her boss to launch a formal program to connect with its brand advocates, how would she sell the boss on spending the money to do so?

Katie: It has to tie back to revenue, so start there. First – start with proving that your biggest fans DO spend more, do your research! From there, I’d suggest asking for a small budget to launch a pilot program to connect with and reward brand advocates. They may love your company, but everyone loves getting a little something in return, too. Perhaps a small meetup (drinks on your company!) might be a good place to start. You can invite the CMO, structure it like an informal focus group and get opinions from your biggest fans. From there, show them that you used their feedback in some way! Measure the amount that they spent before and after, and also measure the buzz they helped to create for your company online over time. Those are the results the CMO wants to see and those results also give you a great parameter in asking for budget. On the up side, if your initial foray ends up creating more referrals/sales/revenue than you projected, you can ask for a bigger budget! Increased online buzz is great, but ultimately if that leads to sales, page views, or whatever your revenue driver is it’s a win. If not… try again.

 

And Katie will be joining us today at 1pm Central at #RockstarChat on Twitter to share more smartitude like this.  Hope you can join us!

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How The Zac Brown Band Cultivates Fans, By Feeding Them

The power of connecting fans with each other.  It’s a key business lesson that rock stars have long understood, that many brands still don’t get.

About three years ago, The Zac Brown Band started doing something before each concert called an Eat N Greet.  The idea is to bring the band’s biggest fans together before the show, and feed them a ‘gourmet Southern meal’.  But more than that, the band has created a very low-key and comfortable way for their biggest fans to connect with them.  The band serves their fans, then as they are eating Zac Brown and other bandmates will walk around and mingle with the fans and spend time talking to them.  It’s not a time for taking pictures and signing autographs, it’s a time for the band to truly connect with its biggest fans and get to know them a little better.

Last year I blogged about how Taylor Swift does something similar for her biggest fans with the T-Parties.  With both the Zac Brown Band’s Eat N Greet and Taylor’s T-Parties, the idea is to create a special experience for the artist’s biggest fans.  But more than that, these rock stars are creating a way to get their biggest fans together and connect them to each other.  They’ve created an intimate setting where the fans are connected to each other over a love of their favorite artist.

This is important because these fans will share stories with each other about their favorite artist, and it helps validate to them why they love them.  And as the fans connect with each other, it increases the chance that they will become friends themselves, since they now have a very common interest: They are both fans of their favorite artist.

Maker’s Mark does something similar to this with its barrelmates in its brand ambassador program.  Each brand ambassador gets a chance to buy whiskey from a particular barrel.  Their name and the name of 29 other ambassadors goes on each barrel.  The barrel spends several years aging, and as it does, Maker’s Mark creates an online forum to connect these 30 people to each other, and let them get to know one another.  But the common thread here again, is a love of the brand Maker’s Mark.

Again, it’s not that rock stars have a natural advantage that brands do not when it comes to cultivating fans.  It’s that rock stars understand the value of their fans, and relentlessly focus on giving their most passionate customers ‘more than they expect’.

As you watch this video, think about this; What if your brand had a way to connect with its biggest fans, 50 or 100 at a time, all across the country? How would that impact the number of fans that your brand has? The relationship with those fans? Customer loyalty? The amount of sales driven by those fans?

Now ask yourself why you aren’t working to create an amazing experience like this for your biggest fans. And if you want to learn how to get started, I’ve written the very book that shows you how.

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Selling Your Colleagues on the Importance of Connecting With Your Brand’s Fans

community building, online communityThanks to Kelly Hungerford for suggesting today’s #RockstarChat topic: How to Get Colleagues and Employees Involved in the Process to Better Connect With Your Fans.  #RockstarChat will be on Twitter today at 1pm Central.

This is an important topic because as you are trying to build out programs to help your brand better connect with its fans, you will probably encounter some internal resistance.  You may need to convince some of your colleagues of the value of connecting with your brand’s fans.

So to get skeptical co-workers on board, let’s show them how connecting with your brand’s fans will actually help them be more productive and better at their jobs.  If we can show them how connecting with your fans will directly benefit them, your co-workers are far more likely to help you with your efforts.

In Think Like a Rock Star(In Chapter 5), I talk about the four different ways you can work with your fans:

1 – To help you promote your brand

2 – To help you drive sales for your brand

3 – To help you provide customer service

4 – To help you collect customer feedback

So when you are trying to sell a co-worker on the value of connecting with your brand’s fans, ask yourself ‘How would connecting with our fans help this person do their job more effectively?’  For example, if you are trying to sell a marketing manager on the importance of a brand ambassador program, you might point out how connecting with your fans will mean more promotion and exposure for your brand.  If you are trying to get a customer service manager on board, you might show them how your fans can help other customers with their problems, potentially saving your brand money and time dealing with customer service issues.

We’ll have a lot more advice and ideas at today’s #RockstarChat, on Twitter at 1pm Central!  Also, if you haven’t pre-ordered Think Like a Rock Star yet, Amazon has dropped the price to an even $11.00!  The book will be released sometime within the next 3 weeks, and I am proud to say it has 5-star reviews on Amazon!  If you’ve already read the book via NetGalley, please post your review on Amazon so your insights will help other people decide if the book is right for them.  Thank you!

UPDATE:  So we just finished our fabulous #RockstarChat discussion.  Here’s the transcript.

In the chat, we came up with a three step process for helping your co-workers get on board with the value of connecting with your fans:

1 – Educate your co-workers on the value of engagement.  Teach them the importance of engaging with fans and customers.  Show them what happens as a result of that engagement.  It’s also a great idea to show them past examples of where you have engaged with fans and the positive outcome (this also helps answer the ‘what’s the ROI?’ question).

2 – Educate your co-workers on HOW to engage.  After they see the value of engagement, work with them to learn HOW to properly engage.  If you have the resources, a formal training program for the company would be a good idea here, it could be similar to and compliment any social media training programs your brand may have.

3 – Educate your co-workers on the value of building relationships with your fans.  You don’t want them to just engage with your fans whenever it benefits your brand directly.  You want them to learn the value of answering fans, and helping them when it serves the fans, not the brand.  If you create relationships with fans, that simply gives them more reason to advocate on your behalf!

Thanks to everyone that joined #rockstarchat today.  Would you add anything to this list?

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Customers Don’t Trust Brands, They Trust Themselves.

ForresterStudyThe above graph comes from a Forrester report How to Build Your Brand With Branded Content (I was given a complimentary copy for this post).  The graph ranks how likely customers are to trust different forms content.  Note that the Top Four types of content are partly or wholly created by customers, not the brand.  The fifth most-trustworthy form of content is information on company websites or blogs, and then less than a third of customers trust these sources.

This won’t be breaking news to any savvy marketers, who know that customers tend to trust other customers and recognized experts, and they tend to distrust brands.  Note that the least-trusted sources are ads at the bottom.

One of the reasons why I wanted to write Think Like a Rock Star was to help brands become better connected with their most passionate customers, because this makes their communications more credible to other customers.  When brands start connecting with their customers and listening to them, the way they connect with their customers changes.  They begin to speak in a new voice:  The voice of the customer.

For example, what if you started letting your customers write guest posts on your company blog?  Your brand, and the content it creates on its blog, instantly becomes more credible and trustworthy.  What if you started interacting with your customers on Twitter and Facebook?  Then you’d start to understand them (gasp!), and the content you create in the future would be different, based on the interactions you have with your customers.

Customers gravitate to communications that are spoken in a voice they recognize: Their own.  Here’s three ideas for incorporating the voice of your customers into your brand’s online communications:

1 – Embed product reviews on your website.  Ideally, on any product pages on your site.  This is a great way to make your brand more trustworthy, plus it helps you have easy access to feedback from your customers.  Plus, in actually increases sales because it helps customers manage expectations (which also leads to fewer returns).

2 – Provide a customer service forum for your customers.  Give your customers a place to seek help and information about your products and services.  Bonus points:  Enlist customers to help monitor the forum and help other customers.

3 – Let your customers guest post for your company blog.  If you encounter a customer that leaves a thoughful review about your product, maybe you should invite them to write a blog post talking more about your product and especially how they use it.  Let them talk about who they are, and HOW they use your product, moreso than the product itself.

The overarching point here is, when you become more connected to your customers and their point of view, it changes your brand’s communications, and makes them more credible and trustworthy to other cutomers.  Give it a try.