MackCollier.com

by

#RockstarChat Recap: Should Brands Connect With Their Fans and How Can They?

This afternoon we had the first #RockstarChat, and it was such a smart conversation!  The topic was Should brands connect with their fans?

Everyone was in agreement that brands should be connecting with their fans, but what happens if a brand can’t connect with all of their fans?

 

I love Bob’s thinking here, by taking all your fans and breaking them down into lists or buckets, it becomes a more manageable process.  But that raises another question: How do you decide how to create the lists/buckets and which fans go where?

 

Now we’re getting somewhere!  A big reason why many brands don’t connect with their fans is that they don’t really have a process in place for doing so.  There’s no roadmap.  But first, Bob says you should create sublists or buckets of fans to make the connection process more manageable.  Then Kristy builds on that, saying that the criteria for connecting with your fans should tie back to your business goals!  For example, if you want to raise awareness of a new product, or boost trial signups, factor those goals into your connection efforts with your fans.  Let that be a sort of qualifier to decide which fans you connect with.

But then again, let’s remember that our fans are passionate people that love our brand, so maybe we don’t even have to look for them?

 

I love Jennifer’s point here, often our fans will reach out to us!  Look for handraisers, these are often fans that want to help you and connect with you, which is why they are initiating contact.

And as Kelly reminds us, it always pays to be listening:

So those are a few key takeaways I saw from today’s #RockstarChat.  If you joined, what were your favorite points that I missed?  And BTW, here’s a preview of next week’s #RockstarChat topic:

 

Next Weds at 1pm Central we’ll be chatting about how to deal with dissatisfied or even angry customers and convert them into fans! Hope to see you then!

by

How Rock Stars Will Forever Change the World of Marketing

Last year Nielsen surveyed 28,000 internet users to discover what sources they trusted.  It should come as no surprise to anyone that the winner was Earned Media (media created about a source by someone other than the source) at 92%.  The second result at 70% was customer reviews online.  Paid Media, media that a source pays for to promote itself, fell in trust down to 47%, falling by 24%, 20% and 25% yearly since 2009.  Earned Media, especially Word of Mouth, is up 18% since 2007.

In other words, if someone else is talking about a brand, we trust them, but if the brand is talking about itself, we don’t.  This should come as a surprise to no one.

The disconnect is that brands know this as well, yet they continue to spend billions every year on advertising and marketing in an effort to get the attention of a group of people that have little to no interest in paying attention to them.  Brands seek to grow by acquiring new customers, and they create marketing strategies built around this goal.  But getting the attention of people that have little to no loyalty to your brand (as well as little to no interest in what you have to say) is a very expensive game.  For decades, the marketing idea has been to accept that most people won’t see your message the first time, so you just repeat it constantly until they do, and then pray that it resonates.

Rock stars play a different marketing game.

Rock stars actually have the exact same marketing goal as brands, they also want to acquire new customers.  But rock stars don’t focus on acquiring new customers via advertising and promotion, ie Paid Media, they focus on acquiring new customers via the efforts of their existing customers.  And specifically, a small subset of their existing customers, they focus on connecting with their biggest fans. Rock stars find the people that are the most fanatically passionate about them, and then connect with them and empower them to market the rock star to other fans.

DSCN1197

The benefits are obvious:  Rock stars are connecting with the group that has the most incentive to positively promote the rock star to other potential customers.  How many rock stars paid CBS $4M for a 30-second spot in this year’s Super Bowl?  Exactly, rock stars don’t have to throw money at crappy advertising that’s designed to gain the attention of people that are purposely trying to avoid the brand’s marketing messages.  They shift control of their marketing messages to the very people that customers trust the most: Their fans.

This is how rock stars are going to change marketing forever.  Rock stars have always built their careers around remaining connected to their biggest fans.  Brands have built themselves and their marketing strategies around gaining market share by acquiring new customers and effectively building the largest promotional megaphone.  That model worked well in the 50s when there were three media sources, the newspaper, television and radio.  Then, if you could afford to get your message distributed via those three sources, you won.

Today, the game has changed.  Instead of 3 media sources, here are 300,000,000, and 99.99999% of them are customer-driven.  Anyone that has a smartphone in their pocket has a promotional megaphone that’s more trustworthy than anything the average brand can create.

This is exactly why I wrote Think Like a Rock Star, to help brands learn to navigate a marketing world that rock stars conquered decades ago.  How much differently would the world of marketing look if brands didn’t focus on acquiring new customers via advertising, but instead connected directly with and delighted their biggest and most passionate fans?

It’s a question that your brand had better figure out the answer to quickly, because that’s where we are headed, like it or not.  Because there is big money to be made by embracing your biggest fans.  That’s another lesson that rock stars learned decades ago.

When will your brand wake up?

by

Sorry Brands, Like It Or Not You’re Going to Have to Start Talking To Your Customers

In Think Like a Rock Star I devote an entire chapter to giving brands a step-by-step process for responding to customers online.  It’s honestly the most instructional chapter of the entire book, but I wanted to do this because in general companies have no idea how to respond to customers.  Not only do they not understand how to respond to customers, they don’t understand how other customers view customer feedback.

For example, emarketer ran a study that was recently done that found that 26% of US internet users distrusted a fellow customer’s online review if it was too negative.  As customers, we have pretty sophisticated BS meters.  I can tell if a company is trying to BS me, but I can also typically tell if a customer is going overboard in attacking a brand.  At some point, a customer’s criticism stops reflecting poorly on the brand, and starts reflecting poorly on the customer.

You can’t understand a conversation that you aren’t a part of.  

This is exactly why the smart companies are the ones that are connecting with their customers online.  Because by doing so, they are getting a better understanding of their customers as well as the online conversation around their brand.

One of the main recurring themes in Think Like a Rock Star is the importance of why companies need to better understand who their customers are.  In most cases, there’s an alarming disconnect between who the brand thinks its customers are, and vice-versa.  That disconnect in understanding exists in great part because the brand and customer have no real interaction with each other.

Perhaps the one thing I love about social media more than any other from a marketing standpoint is that now customers have the tools available to them to quickly and easily create content about a brand, and respond to a brand.  So brands are being forced, for the first time, to answer those customers.  They are being dragged (some of them kicking and screaming) into an era where they have to interact directly with their customers.

Which is scary as hell for many brands today, but it will lead to big benefits tomorrow.  Because interaction leads to understanding, which leads to trust, which leads to advocacy.

SteveKnoxQuote

by

Patrick Murphy Excels At Winning Games and Winning Fans

Alabama softball fans that ordered season tickets had a bit of a surprise when their tickets arrived yesterday.  They were expecting the tickets, but probably weren’t expecting to see the person that hand-delivered them.

Head Coach Patrick Murphy.

Every year, Coach Murphy and the Alabama softball players make a point to go out and hand-deliver tickets to the fans that order season packages.  Recall that last month we talked about how you create loyalty in your customers by rewarding them after the purchase.  Alabama softball fans were expecting their season tickets this week, but having the head coach and team deliver them is the reward.

It’s also an example of how Coach Murphy and the team created something amazing for the people that love them.  To the fan, this moment of surprise and delight also validates why they support the program.  The fan feels better about supporting the program but also in a way feels better about themselves for supporting a head coach that would do this.

And to clarify, Patrick Murphy is only the 2nd softball coach that Alabama has ever had.  Murphy was named the coach in 1998 and was named assistant head coach when the program launched two years earlier in 1996.  So he had to literally build not only the program from the ground up, but its fanbase as well.  He knows the value of connecting with the program’s fans, and how important they are.  The first year of the program’s existence, the average attendance at softball games was 50 people.  Today, Alabama’s softball team is among the national leaders in attendance, and in 2011, the program set an NCAA record for single-day attendance at a softball event.

Oh, and winning helps.  Last year Coach Murphy led Alabama to its first softball National Championship in school history.  Showing your biggest supporters and fans that you appreciate them doesn’t hurt either.

by

Is a Fan the Same Thing as a Brand Advocate?

Most people use the terms interchangeable, but I think they are two separate types of people.  In my mind, fans have a higher level of passion and sense of ownership over a brand.  Both brand advocates and fans want to see their favorite brands succeed, but  I think the difference is that fans will work with the brand to make that happen.

And to be clear, in this context fans are much rarer than brand advocates.  Their level of devotion and passion for the brand also makes them far more special.  In Think Like a Rock Star, the underlying focus of the entire book is to help your brand create a process and framework for connecting with your fans.  And I constantly stress that your brand shouldn’t get hung up on how many (or typically how few) fans you have.  The people that will Like your Facebook page aren’t typically your ‘fans’.

For example, if you join Maker’s Mark’s brand ambassador program, the brand views it as if you are accepting a job.  Your new job is to promote the product to other customers, as well as talk to bars and restaurants and either encourage them to carry it if they are not, and to thank them for carrying it, if they do.  Your job is to be a raving fan of Maker’s Mark.  Now a true fan of the brand will jump at the chance, and the brand’s program has been extremely popular from its onset over a decade ago.

But if you were to look at everyone that Liked your Facebook page or that followed you on Twitter and made them a similar ‘job’ offer, how many would take you up on that offer?  Probably not many.  So if you are a brand, you need to understand that your true fans are pretty rare customers, there’s probably not a lot of them out there.

Still, it’s incredibly powerful to connect with them, because the thing about your fans is:

1 – They have extremely high levels of loyalty.  So high that they will go out and recruit new fans among your existing customers, and attempt to acquire new customers for you.

2 – They have a high sense of ownership over your brand.   For example they will tell you what’s wrong with your brand, then work alongside you to correct it.

3 – They are your best source of marketing.  Your fans can more effectively connect with customers than your brand can because your fans are speaking in a voice that the customer can relate to: Their own.

 

So don’t get caught up in the numbers game, and don’t fret if your brand doesn’t have 50,000 fans, it may only have 50.  The point is to connect with the fans you do have.  If you need the roadmap to get you started identifying who your fans are and how you can connect with them, now it’s available.

PS:  Here’s a freebie from the book:  One way to help identify your fans is by looking for ‘hand-raisers’.  Remember that since your fans feel a sense of ownership over your brand, they will often reach out to you and initiate contact.  Look for people that are emailing you, that are contacting you on Twitter and Facebook, or even writing letters.  If you are a blogger, the reader that emailed you last week to let you know that they loved your latest post and that it resonated with you, they are likely a fan.  They want to connect with you and thank you for what you do.  Your fans have the motivation to connect with you that your ‘brand advocates’ may not.

by

The Art of Book Marketing and the One Thing Many Authors Miss

Think Like a Rock Star is now less than three months from hitting stores.  So as you might guess, these last few months have been a crash course for me in how to effectively market a book and help it be successful.

Most of the information I’ve found and advice I’ve received from other authors has focused on The Launch.  The idea is to sell as many copies of your book as possible into a small concentrated window, typically the week that your book comes out.  You want to sell as many copies as possible during that launch week because typically those bestseller lists from sources like The New York Times and others reset each week.  And focusing in sales on that one-week launch period might be the difference between forever being known as a published author, and being a New York Times Bestselling author.  For the author, it’s a really huge deal.

So as you might expect, I’ve got a ton of stuff planned to help Think Like a Rock Star have as successful of a launch as possible.  And over the next few weeks I will be asking for your help in seeing that successful launch take place.

But the thing about a book launch is that it’s mostly focused on what’s best for the author.  As I was researching this, I realized there was a parallel to my book, in that really the launch is all about acquiring new customers.  Getting as many new sales as possible so that it helps the book’s ability to hit all those bestseller lists and all that jazz.  So in a way, if I strictly focused my book’s marketing on The Launch, I was really undermining one of the core lessons of Think Like A Rock Star.

Focus on  New Customers or Existing Fans?

The thing that really separates rock stars from most brands is who they market to.  While most companies focus on acquiring new customers, most rock stars focus on delighting their existing fans.  Rock stars focus most of their time and energy on connecting with their existing customers, not their new ones.

This prompted me to rethink my marketing plan for this book a bit.  There’s no doubt that The Launch is insanely huge to a book’s eventual success.  But in my opinion, even more important than marketing to new customers is finding ways to support your existing readers.

So over the next few weeks while I prep for the book’s launch, I will also be launching some efforts to support the readers of this book.  For example, starting within the next 7-10 days, I will be launching an email newsletter to compliment the book.  This newsletter will also be a tool to help readers learn how their businesses can better connect with their fans.  It will be an ongoing effort, and it will provide the most value to people after they buy the book.  I also have a couple of other projects that I’m not ready to announce yet.

But for now, I am going to end this post by asking for your help.  If you have or did buy Think Like a Rock Star, what could I offer you after your purchase to help support your brand’s efforts to better connect with its fans?  Maybe a place where readers could connect and get advice from me and each other?  Or what have other authors done for his/her readers that you really liked, that added value to you as a reader?

I saw where someone, I think it was Seth Godin, said that one of the best reasons to write a book was to start a conversation.  That was really the driving force for me to write Think Like a Rock Star, I wanted to start a conversation about how companies can better understand who their fans are, and connect with them.  Part of that conversation is finding ways to support the people that want to find ways to do just that for their companies.

What are your thoughts?  What could I do as an author to create more value for you as a reader after you buy the book?

PS: I’ve started sending out copies of Think Like a Rock Star to a few colleagues and I recently got feedback on the book from Paper.li’s Community Manager, Kelly Hungerford.  Here’s what Kelly thought:  “Simple, jargon-free and true to Mack Collier’s authentic style, this book explains exactly why your brand need fans and not customers, and how you can turn your most enthusiastic ones into powerful brand advocates.  Mack delivers his passion for brand advocacy, knowledge of customer-centric marketing and in-depth understanding of what makes the most devoted of fans tick in a language we can all relate to: rock stars and fans.

I love this this book for many reasons, but mostly because that for every “why” in this book, there is a “how” to back it up! The case studies, tips and social media advice are perfectly aligned with Mack’s underlying mission of helping brands understand the true value of their most passionate customers. It’s a must read for modern day marketers and I highly recommend you purchase two copies: one for you and one for your team.”

by

You Build Loyalty and Create Fans With Rewards

It’s the timing and context of the reward that’s crucial.

If you walk into Best Buy and the door greeter smiles and hands you a coupon for 20% off any purchase over $100 during your visit, that’s not a reward.  It’s an incentive to make a purchase.  While that coupon might increase the chance that you will make a purchase during that trip to Best Buy, in the grand scheme of things it’s probably not going to make you more loyal to the chain.

If you walk into your favorite antique mall and the owner greets you and says “BTW, do you still need that final glass to complete your Pepsi collection from 1975?  Because we just bought a large collection of glassware and I found it and put it aside to ask you about the next time you came in.  Here you go!”  That’s a true reward because it comes as a result of previous purchases and isn’t directly tied to a future purchase.

Above that, this type of reward communicates appreciation to the customer for their business.  That builds loyalty because the business is literally saying Thank You.

The Best Buy example communicates a desire to have you buy something.   So even though you are getting a coupon, you understand that Best Buy is acting in its best interest.  And yes, the antique shop owner is also acting in their best interest by giving you the Pepsi glass you need, because they could sell that to someone else.  So it is worth money to the owner, but the owner also understands the value that you place on this item.  It’s the final glass you need to complete a collection that you’ve been assembling for 10 years!

So if you are wanting to offer rewards that also build loyalty, focus on ways to reward existing behavior versus trying to incentivize new behavior.

Now, what about loyalty punch cards?  You’ve probably seen these at restaurants, coffee shops and the like.  Buy 5/10 meals, get one free.  Is that what we mean by building loyalty by rewarding after the purchase?

No, because even though the reward comes after the purchase, there’s an incentive to make the next purchase.  So really, punch cards like this are building loyalty to the offer, not the brand.  For example, let’s say it’s your lunch hour and you are about to run to Subway, when you remember that you have a Pizza Hut lunch buffet punch card, and that with one more punch you card will be full and you’ll get a free meal.  That will probably swing your lunch decision to Pizza Hut, but what happens next week when your Pizza Hut punch card is empty?  Will there still be the same level of incentive to start a new punch card, or will you then decide to go to Subway for lunch?

Remember, the timing and context of the reward is crucial to building loyalty.  It determines if you are saying ‘Thank you!’ for existing behavior, or attempting to create new behavior.

Also, when a business shows you that they appreciate your business, it validates your loyalty to them.  It makes you feel better about supporting them, and it does become an incentive to make an additional purchase.

But the incentive doesn’t come from the brand, it comes from you.  We all want to support the brands that we feel appreciate us and act in our best interests, as well as their own.  There’s a feeling of ‘well they did something for me, now I want to do something for them!’

You don’t get that with coupons and incentives, because we understand that the brand is offering these to entice sales.  Which means its motivation lies in its own best interests.

You build loyalty by offering the reward after and independently of the purchase.  Not by offering it before and tying it to a purchase.

PS: In the above picture the incentive is obvious but the reward might not be.  On June 13th, 2010, Taylor Swift held a special free autograph signing for her fans in Nashville.  She started signing at 8am in the morning, and finally stopped at 10:30PM that night.  This was one of the many ways that Taylor says Thank You to her fans for their existing behavior.   And it’s one of the many reasons why they love her.

by

Fans Create Cash

Last month Jackie wrote a post on her blog with a pretty significant business nugget that I think a lot of people missed:

“Dell has been using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure customer advocacy for the last three years. According to Bobbi Dangerfield, Dell’s VP of Commercial Sales Operations, the company is now able to show that improvements in NPS score directly tie to revenue growth”

Net Promoter Score is a system that attempts to ‘score’ your customer base and tell you if they are fans or detractors.  A score of -100 indicates that all your customers are detractors, while a score of +100 indicates all your customers are fans. Now NPS isn’t perfect and does have its detractors.  But what this means is that as the percentage of Dell’s customers that promote the brand increases, the company’s revenue also grows.

Fans create cash.

How many times have I said here and elsewhere don’t focus on the tools, focus on the connections that the tools help facilitate.  Understanding Twitter is meaningless if you don’t understand how and why your customers are using it.

Understanding your customers trumps understanding marketing/communication channels.  Understanding your fans is even more important.  Here’s what we do know about fans:

1 – They will look for opportunities to promote you

2 – They assume ownership of your brand and will act in what they perceive to be your brand’s best interests

3 – They have high/extremely high levels of loyalty to your brand, which means they spend more than the average customer that has little to no brand loyalty

4 – Their opinions about your brand is more reliable to the average customer than your brand’s advertising.

5 – When they encounter a problem with your brand (bad customer service, defective product or low quality) they will look for ways to bring this to your attention so you can correct the problem.

 

Let’s look at each of these individually:

Fans will look for opportunities to promote you

You know when you find an amazing blog post that really resonated with you?  You just have to run to Twitter and Facebook and share it with your friends, right?  Why is that?  Because you found value in the post, and want to share that value with others.  Your brand’s fans have the same mentality, they believe that your brand is simply better than other brands, and by extension they feel that if their friends buy your brand, they will also be better.  This is why your fans will go out of their way to promote your brand, because they love your brand and they love their friends.

Fans assume ownership of your brand and act in what they believe to be its best interests 

This honestly scares many brands because they don’t like the idea of having fans out there speaking on the brand’s behalf unchecked.  But this concern is easily overcome by simply connecting with your brand’s fans.  Communicate to them and give them instruction on how to represent your brand.  Your fans want you to connect with them and give them a sense of direction.

Your fans have high levels of brand loyalty and spend more

Your fans support your brand with their wallet.  They buy your products, and then they try to convince other customers to do the same thing.  This is exactly why rock stars don’t focus the majority of their time and marketing on their new customers, they focus their attention on their fans.  Because rocks stars have always understood that their ability to bring in new customers tomorrow, depends on how well they connect with their biggest fans, today.

Your fan’s opinion is more reliable to the average customer than your brand’s advertising

This ties in with the previous point.  Fans spend more, and they also refer business to your brand.  Your fans promote you and that carries more weight with the average customer than your advertising and marketing efforts.  This is another reason why rock stars connect with their fan because they understand that their fans drive new business for the rock star.  Brands are mostly counting on acquiring new customers via overpriced advertising.  Super Bowl spots have already sold out at $4M a pop for a 30-second spot.  All for the hope that each brand’s spot will be the hit of the night and go viral and draw millions of views.  Creating buzz is the name of the game.

Yet for a tiny fraction of that amount, each brand could create and launch a robust brand ambassador program that would provide sustained revenue, improved customer satisfaction, and lower marketing costs for years to come.

When your fans encounter a problem with your brand, they will bring it to your attention to you can fix it

Want to know the difference between a detractor and a fan?  A detractor will say ‘Your brand sucks!’  A fan will say ‘Your brand sucks, here’s how I think we can work together to fix it’.  Your fans assume ownership of your brand, and thusly have a vested interest in seeing it succeed.  They will actively look for problems with your brand, because they want to bring it to your attention so it can be corrected.

 

So what’s stopping your brand from connecting with its fans and seeing real business growth as a result like Dell has?  And if you need a plan for how to get started embracing and empowering your fans to grow your business, here it is.

by

The Biggest Mistake Companies Make When Engaging Their Fans Via Social Media

A few years ago I was attending a conference, and the keynote was the CMO for an extremely large brand talking about how they used social media.  At one point he said ‘What we love about social media is that it gives us a way to help our customers tell our story’.  There was much smiling and head nodding in the audience, but my jaw was on the ground.

Sadly, many companies are starting to realize the ‘power’ of connecting with their fans, especially via social media tools.  And like this CMO, they are attracted to connecting with their fans because they view their fans as an exciting new promotional channel to spread that brand’s message.

Sigh.

Let me clear the air for you: The greatest value of your fans is not as a promotional channel, but as a feedback channel.

This seems counter-intuitive, after all aren’t your fans actively promoting your brand already?  And aren’t we all on the same page that a positive endorsement from a customer about a brand is more credible than an advertisement from that same brand?

Yes and yes.  Your fans are actively promoting your brand, and doing a better job of it than you ever will.  Why?  Because your fans have direct contact with your current and potential customers.

Your fans are the passionate customers that are in the grocery store isles and the department stores, encouraging other customers to try your brand’s products.  But they are also there to hear feedback from those customers.

For example, let’s say your brand is Tide.  One of your fans is in Target and sees a customer looking at different washing detergents.  She tells the customer that they should try Tide.  Think about what the customer’s response might be:

1 – ‘Well I’ve tried Tide before, and I don’t really like it as much as Joy because…’

2 – ‘Hmmm….well the water where I live is extremely hard, would that affect it?’

3 – ‘Yes I’ve tried Tide and I love how it…’

As soon as your fan engages with the customer, they are getting incredibly valuable feedback from that customer not only about the customer herself, but about the product and how she uses it.

Think about if you had an army of just 100 fans that you worked with, and each one had say 50 encounters like this a month with other customers.  That’s 5,000 opportunities per month to get valuable feedback from current and potential customers of your brand.

The best part?  Your fans will still be promoting your product to other customers, but they’ll also be collecting incredibly valuable feedback from other customers.  Once you begin collecting that feedback regularly, you can begin to spot trends in the feedback you receive, and then make changes to your marketing as a result.  Which makes your marketing more effectively and lowers marketing costs.

Now ideally, you should have a formal program in place to stay connected with your brand’s fans, and you can coach them on how to better collect feedback from customers they encounter.  And Think Like a Rock Star goes into exactly how to do all of this.  But if you don’t have a program or Brand Ambassador effort in place, there’s several quick and easy ways to collect feedback from your customers.

One example is by checking Amazon reviews.  You can do this for your product, as well as for your competitors.  I actually did this for my book.

Think Like a Rock Star isn’t technically a social media book.  I actually walk readers through how to engage with their fans in both an online and offline setting, but a good portion of the book does deal with connecting with your fans via social media tools.  And since I knew a lot of people would compare it to other social media marketing books, I carefully studied the Amazon reviews of the most popular social media marketing books.

But I wasn’t focused on the 4 and 5-star reviews.  I was far more interested in the 1 and 2-star reviews, in other words, what were people complaining about with these books?  After checking reviews for a few dozen books, the most comment complaint I found was something along the lines of ‘The author spends a lot of time telling us ‘why’ to use social media, but not a lot of time telling us ‘how’ to do what he suggests’.  I saw this same complaint over and over again.  So as a result of this feedback, I decided to alter the proposed flow of my book and incorporate detailed how-tos into every chapter.  Basically I made myself commit to giving a ‘how-to’ for every ‘why-to’.  And while this created a lot of headaches while writing the book, it kept me honest and it forced me to carefully explain to readers HOW to do everything I was talking about.  The end result is that the book will be much more valuable to readers.

That’s just a simple example, but you hopefully get the idea.  If you are a brand that’s getting excited about connecting with your fans to help them ‘tell your story’, don’t forget that the value they can give you as a feedback channel can be far greater.

At the end of the day, your fans are far too special to simply hold a megaphone for you.

by

Lady Gaga Starts Offering Free Counseling to Little Monsters at Concerts Via #BornBraveBus

In the foreword for Think Like a Rock Star, Kathy Sierra talks about how rock stars want to make their fans better.  Rock stars, unlike most brands, have a great connection and empathy for their fans and who they are as well as their wants and needs.  I’ve blogged several times about how Lady Gaga consistently communicates to her fans (her Little Monsters) that she appreciates and loves them.

Now she’s upping the ante again:  On the US leg of her Born This Way Ball tour, Gaga will have as part of the experience a bus that will provide free counseling for her fans.  As she explains on Facebook:

At the BornBrave Bus you have access to professional private or group chats about mental health, depression, bullying, school & friends. There will also be food and games, DJ White Shadow andLady Starlight will DJ with host BREEDLOVE to keep the experience fun.

BornBrave Bus Is a place where mental health + depression are taken seriously w/ no judgement, FREE real help available to all. I feel like most kids don’t look for help because they feel embarrassed so mom + I wanted to break the stigmas around “help” and make it fun.

Now this move may draw some criticism and questions about these counselors and concerns over who they are and if they are qualified to provide counseling to troubled children and teens.  That’s understandable, but what you cannot question is Gaga’s devotion to her fans as people, not just as customers.

And this is the difference between how many rock stars cultivate fans, and how many brands do so.   At best, a brand will create an amazing product that delights its customers.  Perhaps so that those customers evangelize the brand to other customers.

But rock stars go out of their way to show their fans that they appreciate their support.  They don’t try to have a strictly transactional relationship with their fans, they strive to have an emotional one.  That means they invest a lot of time and money in doing things that don’t directly generate sales.  Like signing autographs for an entire day for free, or giving their fans a free concert or free counseling.  These efforts are met with a confusing shoulder shrug by some marketers because they don’t lead directly to sales.

But that’s not the intent.  The goal for the rock star is connect with their fans and strengthen that emotional connection.

Because that leads to sales.  The rock star’s fans don’t evangelize the rock star’s music because they love it, they love the rock star.  They love the rock star for their music, but also for how they love their fans, it means their devotion for the rock star is much deeper, as is their motivation to see other people support the rock star by buying their merchandise.  When a rock star like Lady Gaga does something like offering free counseling to her fans, it communicates to them that she truly loves them, and as a result, it gives the fan a greater incentive to promote that rock star to others.  The fans become vested in helping the rock star become better, because the rock star is invested in helping their fans become better.

But all this starts because rock stars don’t view their fans as potential marketing channels.  The view their fans as special people that they truly love and strive to have an emotional connection with.  Because rock stars have long understood that people don’t support someone or something because you give them a coupon or ask them to.  They support things and people that they believe in, that they love, and that love them back.

Which is a big reason why rock stars have fans, and companies have customers.