MackCollier.com

by

The Power Of Creating Something Amazing For the People That Love You

One of the things that rock stars do amazingly well is they create something amazing for the people that love them.  They find ways to bring their biggest fans together and create a uniquely amazing experience that’s totally unexpected.  The end result is that their fans are shocked, amazed, and love that rock star even more.

We saw that last night during the American Music Awards.  Psy was slated to close the show performing his internet sensation Gangham Style.  But halfway through, something unexpected happened…

http://youtu.be/qlUyF6q0zKg

Now I have to admit, I was a huge MC Hammer fan in the early 90s.  Down to even buying every VHS tape of his music videos and studying them to perform dance moves in clubs.  Sigh…

But Hammer joining Psy isn’t why I love this performance.  Watch it the first time just to appreciate it, then watch it again and pay close attention to the audience.

Notice that the audience is having an absolute blast as Psy is singing.  It’s a party, but notice what happens when Psy says STOP…Hammertime!  You can immediately hear the audience go NOOOOOO!!!!!! because they know what’s about to happen.  Then when 2 Legit 2 Quit starts playing and they see Hammer is on stage, the audience goes apeshit!

Psy and Hammer just created an amazing experience for their fans that they weren’t expecting.  The sheer joy on the faces of the members of the audience is infectious, isn’t it?  A big reason why I wanted to write Think Like A Rock Star was to help companies understand how to create a relationship  where they delight and amaze their biggest fans in this same way.

Because there’s nothing more powerful than giving your fans something amazing that they weren’t expecting.  How is your brand delighting and amazing its biggest fans?

by

The Power of Embracing Your Fans As A Feedback Channel

In the last year or so, brands have been increasingly aware of the power of connecting with their fans.  Unfortunately, most brands are excited about the potential of connecting with their fans as a way to help their customers ‘tell our story’.  The thinking is that brands can leverage their fans as a way to share the brand’s message to other customers.  Because we all generally accept that interactions we have with our friends and family are more trustworthy than those with brands, right?  So Brand A thinks ‘Hey, if we could get our fans to promote our brand to their friends and family, that would be awesome!’

What most brands are missing is the massive potential that their fans offer as a feedback channel.  Not only for their own experiences with the brand and its competitors, but with other customers.

For example, let’s say you’re a fan of Vizio, and the brand is training you on how to connect with other customers.  If a friend says they are thinking of buying a new 32-inch television, which question should you, as a fan of Vizio, ask?

1 – Have you considered a Vizio?

2 – What features are you looking for in a new television?

Many brands want their fans to ask the first question because they think it will generate more sales, but the second one is far more valuable for the brand.  The first question helps Vizio determine if customers are considering its brand, while the second question helps Vizio determine what customers want from a new television.

Another what-if scenario:  Let’s say Vizio has 100 fans that all meet another customer that’s in the market for a 32″ television.  If after asking these 100 customers what features they are looking for, they find that 64 customers say they want a new television that has 1080P resolution, and 57 say they want a new television with a 120Hz refresh rate.  39 customers want their television to have both these features.

If Vizio is focused on manufacturing 32″ televisions with 720P resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate, this information might could as a bit of a surprise to the brand!

One of the core lessons I cover in Think Like A Rock Star is that your brand cannot truly cultivate fans until you make a sincere effort to understand your customers and they understand you.  Your customers will not advocate on your behalf until they trust you.  And they will not trust you until they understand you.

Your goal as a brand is not to solely leverage your fans as a channel to market on your behalf.  Your goal is to better understand your fans, and to create a relationship with them that benefits your fans and creates value for them.  A wonderful byproduct of such a relationship is that it will lead to sales for your brand.

Oh and in case you were wondering, Think Like A Rock Star shows you exactly how to connect with your fans, as well as how to structure your staff internally and exactly what you need to do to grow a deeper connection with your fans.  As well as how to leverage that connection into growth for your business.  Amazon currently has Think Like A Rock Star on sale for its lowest price so far, only $14.21!

 

by

Startup Needle Seeks to Let Brands Turn Their Fans Into Customer Service Reps

Last week’s post on how brands connect with their fans drew some interesting conversation and a few people that thought that I didn’t ‘get’ that businesses are in business to make money.  I totally get that, what I don’t think some brands and marketers get is that there ARE other profitable ways to work with your fans other than simply turning them into ‘walking billboards’.

I just learned about Needle, a startup that works with brands to help them turn their fans into virtual customer service representatives.  Needle lets brands find and identify their most passionate and knowledgeable fans, so they can bring them on board as virtual extensions of the brand’s customer service team.

This is EXACTLY what I was talking about when I said that brands and marketers need to look beyond simply utilizing their fans to promote the brand.  A model such as this is a win-win-win:  The brand wins because it can provide better customer service.  The customers win because they now have access to better customer service.  The fans win because this lets them connect with other customers and help them make a purchase decision.  Which is what the fans wanted to do anyway.

And oh BTW, a byproduct of this model would be increased sales for the brand.  See, it all works out in the end?  There is huge untapped potential for brands to utilize their fans to provide customer service, one of the companies I profile in Think Like a Rock Star saved over $300,000 in costs from deflected call center calls by simply creating a way for its existing customers to help new and potential customers with their questions.

It’s NOT just about sales when it comes to connecting with your brand’s fans.  It’s about connecting with your fans and helping them do what comes naturally to them.  If your brand can do that, it will reap the rewards.

by

Coke Is the Latest Brand to Totally Misunderstand the True Value of Brand Advocates

Coke’s CMO Joseph Tripodi recently spoke on Facebook and the value of brand advocates at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.  Here’s a quote from Mr. Tripodi:

“When you think of the continuum of a business, you go from local, to multi-country, to international, to global, but the highest order is network and network advantage is about having brand advocates telling stories for us.”

In other words, the scope of Coke’s vision when it comes to placing a value on their fans is that they can be walking billboards for the brand.  

Unbelievable.  And to be fair, almost every brand thinks this same way, Coke is hardly alone in this line of thinking.  The ‘have our customers tell our stories for us’ line is a rallying cry for marketers everywhere to explore the potential of connecting with their brand advocates.

Question:  When is the last time you heard Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga or Coldplay say that they love connecting with their fans because it gives their fans a chance to tell the rock star’s story for them?  Why aren’t the world’s most successful rock stars talking about how awesome it is to use their biggest fans as marketing vehicles?

Because most rock stars have an emotional relationship with their fans, while most brands have a transactional relationship with their customers.

The first thing that pops into most brand’s minds when it comes to their advocates is ‘How can we leverage this connection to result in a sale?’  The first thing that pops into most rock stars’ minds when it comes to their fans is ‘How can I show them that I appreciate them?’  And shockingly, rock stars cultivate fans with ease, fans that ironically go out and promote their favorite rock star and literally do become walking billboards for these artists.  While brands struggle to find customers that are willing to be their fans and promote them to their friends.

Rock stars cultivate an emotional relationship with their fans.  Ones where the rock star typically goes out of their way to communicate to the fan how much they appreciate and even love them.  As a result, this encourages the fan to appreciate the rock star even more, and to go out of their way to promote their favorite rock star to other fans.

So brands, if you truly want to cultivate fans of your brand, stop thinking about ways to leverage those connections into a sale.  Start thinking about ways you can reward and thank your fans for their support.  Treat them not as a new potential marketing channel for your brand, but as the special people that they are.

That’s how you win and cultivate fans for your brand.

PS:  Want more tips for creating fans of your brand?  Check out my new post at Paper.Li’s blog.

by

Two Quick Tips For Building Online Engagement Like a Rockstar

One of the great things about writing Think Like a Rockstar is that it’s giving me an even deeper understanding and appreciation of how Rockstars cultivate their fans.  And it’s no coincidence that Rockstars have made excellent use of Social Media to better connect with their fans.  Here’s two quick lessons you can learn from Rockstars if you want to build more engagement around your Social Media Marketing:

1 – Use the tools in the same way that your audience does.  Rockstars like Amanda Palmer do an excellent job of using social media tools to connect with others and share content.  When we see that our favorite Rockstar uses Twitter and Facebook just like we do, it makes it much easier to relate to them, and connect with them.  And for the Rockstar, this can have real benefits…

Amanda Palmer, Kickstarter, Think Like a Rockstar

Understand who your audience is, and how they use/consume/share social content.  Once you understand their behavior, then you can follow their lead, and create the type of content they are looking for, and share/use it in the same ways they are.  Which will make it that much easier for your audience to engage with you.

2 – Don’t be afraid to be real.  Lady Gaga created a bit of a buzz recently because she tweeted a picture of herself without any makeup.  What’s the big deal?  Gaga did this because she knew it would make her fans more comfortable connecting with her, and it would make her seem ‘more real’ to them.  It’s also a sign of letting her guard down for her fans, and that makes it easier for them to trust her.

Lady Gaga, no makeupMost brands have never really understood this, but your biggest fans WANT to go behind the curtain.  They want special access and to see what happens behind the scenes.  It helps them better connect with you.  When Gaga tweets a picture without makeup, she’s saying to her fans ‘See, I have to go through putting makeup on just like you do’.  Again, it’s all about helping fans feel more connected to their favorite Rockstar.  Years ago when he was at Microsoft, Robert Scoble took a videocamera around and interviewed Microsoft employees as they were doing their jobs.  Sure, sometimes their Windows-based PCs crashed, but you know what?  It worked because it helped to humanize Microsoft.  We got to see the real faces of Microsoft’s employees, and in doing so, Microsoft went from being a huge brand that we can’t connect to, to one that has real people working for it, and once we could attach faces and voices to that brand, it was easier to connect with it.

So there’s two quick tips for helping you build engagement around your brand’s (personal or company) social media efforts.  I’ll be sharing many more tips and lessons like this in Think Like a Rockstar.  If you’d like to join the Think Like a Rockstar Book Tour, here’s details.

by

Google Recruits Nine Businesses as YouTube Marketing Ambassadors, Turns Them Into Teachers and Mentors

There’s no shortage of businesses and organizations that have smartly leveraged YouTube as a channel to grow their business, launch a new product or create brand awareness.  Recently, YouTube identified nine of the best examples of businesses that are using the video-sharing site smartly as a marketing channel, and made them their first ever YouTube Marketing Ambassadors.

The nine businesses were chosen based on their ability to leverage YouTube as a channel to perform one of the following marketing functions: Launch a new product, Spark a conversation, or Find new customers.

From Google’s blog: “To recognize these businesses and their work in fostering a culture of entrepreneurship on YouTube, we’re introducing our first ever YouTube Marketing Ambassadors—a group of outstanding organizations that have used YouTube to drive sales and grow operations. We’ve invited nine businesses from across the country to participate in this program, and last week our YouTube Ambassadors joined us at our headquarters for a two-day summit to meet with executives and learn more about online tools for businesses.”

Here’s the part I absolutely love about this program: Inclusion in the program means the ambassadors will now begin teaching other businesses and organizations how to use the same strategies on YouTube that they did.  Upon joining the program, each of the nine businesses picks a non-profit and immediately begins mentoring them on how to get set up on YouTube.  Throughout the year, the ambassadors will contribute to a special YouTube for Marketers page on Google Plus, as well as participate in Hangouts designed to teach other businesses and organizations how to correctly use YouTube to reach their business goals.

This is why it is such a smart move for companies to embrace and empower their advocates.  Everyone wins here:  Nine deserving non-profits now will learn how to use YouTube from a business that already has a proven track record of using the site to grow its business. The YouTube Marketing Ambassadors besides feeling awesome about being able to Pay It Forward, get a ton of additional exposure from their involvement in this program.  YouTube not only gets a lot of additional exposure for the program, but it also gets to better identify some of its members that are best using the site, which means it can better encourage other businesses to join the site.  Plus, it now has a way to bring future members of the YouTube Marketing Ambassador program into the fold, so the program becomes self-sustaining.

Everyone wins.  Which typically happens when businesses and organizations Think Like a Rockstar and reach out to their biggest fans.

by

5 Reasons Why You Need to Stop Marketing and Start Teaching

Another gem from Kathy Sierra, click image for post

I think many companies are completely misusing Social Media as a marketing channel. These content-creation tools are the perfect outlet for companies to create content that teaches their customers how to solve their own problems, how to be better at something they love, how to kick-ass.  Teaching and empowering your customers creates a level of loyalty that regular marketing could never hope for.  Here’s 5 reasons why your company should stop marketing to your customers, and start teaching them:

1 – Teaching gives you a competitive edge.  Let’s be honest, most of us in the business world are operating in a crowded marketplace.  There’s no shortage of competition, and many of your peers may have deeper marketing budgets than you do.  But the funny thing is, a lot of businesses don’t like to pull back the curtain and actually teach their customers about their products and how to properly use them.

Years ago I spent a Summer selling pesticides and lawn care products at Lowes throughout Northwest Alabama.  I had never sold before in a retail environment, and being an introvert, the idea of stopping people and selling to them as they walked up and down the isles at Lowes scared the hell out of me.  Luckily, I had a great mentor that was also a professional landscaper.  As such, he understood all the products we were selling as well as the competitors’.  So I learned about all the products so that I wasn’t selling the products, I was selling solutions to problems.

So when a customer walked up and started looking at the pesticides, I didn’t try to push them toward a particular product, I asked them what problems they were having.  Once they told me what problems they were having, I explained to them what was causing the problem, and how to fix it.  Then I showed them which products would work best for them.  And sometimes (and this is key) the product I was selling wasn’t the best option.  If that’s the case, I told the customer and pointed them toward the competitor.

The end result was that I made more on commissions from sales than I did on my actual salary as a vendor.  In fact the area I serviced led the nation in sales for multiple product lines.  I think a big reason why was because we were focused on trying to teach our customers how to solve their lawn-care problems versus trying to simply sell them our products.

2 – Teaching creates value.  If I’m in the market for a digital camera, what I’m really looking to buy is a way to take better pictures.  So if you are trying to get my business, don’t throw a lot of techno-babble at me that I won’t understand anyway, teach me how to take better pictures.  By teaching me how to take better pictures with a digital camera, you’ve already solved my core problem.  So by creating that value for me, I feel on some level like I ‘owe’ you my business when it comes time for me to buy a digital camera.  I want to reward you for the value you gave me, free of charge.  Now granted, the product still has to do the job, but creating value for me via teaching makes me feel much better about committing to the purchase.

3 – If you teach me, that helps earn my trust, and loyalty.  I am used to marketing.  I am used to companies trying to ‘trick’ me into buying their product.  I’m not used to companies teaching me how to be better at something.  That’s unexpected, and that gets my attention.  If your company can create value for me without asking for anything in return, that makes it far more likely that I will listen to your message, and share it with others.  Plus, it greatly increases the chance that I will trust you, and buy from you.

And don’t be afraid to spotlight the competition, if they have a better product.  Recall in the first step how I mentioned selling lawn-care products in Lowes.  Often, I would encourage a customer to buy a competitor’s product if I really thought it was the best solution for their particular problem.  You wouldn’t believe how many times I had a customer come back a week or two later and tell me that I was right about the competitor’s product working on their ant problem, now did I have a suggestion for getting rid of wasps?  I sure did and this time, my company’s product was better.  Since my first suggestion had worked for them, they trusted that this one would as well.

4 – Valuable content get shared.  During this week’s #Blogchat a few of us were discussing how Twitter has become our source for information.  We know that the people we are following will be sharing valuable information, so they send it our way, and then we pass it on.  Why?  Because we want to create value for others.  If someone sends me a really useful article, the first thing I want to do is RT it so others can get value from the article as well.  If your content teaches, that creates value, and greatly increases the chance that it will be shared.

5 – Sharing what you know means sharing your passion, and that inspires people.  Don’t we all love hearing someone talk that truly loves what they are doing?  Because they aren’t talking from a script, they are sharing what’s in their heart.  Teach what you know and share with us why you love what it is you do, and who knows, you may convince us to love it just as much.

 

So when you are trying to sell your products, again think about selling solutions to problems instead.  Think about how you can teach your customers to solve the problems they are encountering, or simply how to kick-ass at whatever it is they love doing.  Oh and BTW, blogs are excellent tools for this 😉

Besides, helping someone kick-ass at something is often the best marketing you can create for your products.  Here’s a bonus video from Jason Fried on the value of teaching as marketing: (HT @Copyblogger) –

by

What’s the Difference Between a Brand Advocate and a Brand Ambassador?

ManWMegaphoneLet’s say Stacey, Jennifer and Tara are on lunch break at the mall, and are headed to the food court.  Jennifer asks where they should eat, when Stacey points out that Olive Garden has their unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks lunch, it’s delicious, and well under $10.  Jennifer agrees, that does sound pretty good!

Stacey is a brand advocate for Olive Garden.  She loves the restaurant and eats there at least once a week.

But right when they are set to go to Olive Garden, Tara says “Well I think I will go to Chick Fil-A.  I tried their new spicy chicken sandwich combo and it was delicious!  It comes with fries and a drink for only $5.89.  Plus, I have three $2 off coupons, so we could eat at Chick-Fil-A for about half what it would cost at Olive Garden!  Y’all want to come?”

Tara is a brand advocate for Chick Fil-A but she is also a brand ambassador for the chain.  The difference in this example is that Chick Fil-A has reached out to Tara and is working with her to help her get the word out about the chain.  By doing things like giving her coupons on products that she can share with friends.

So you could say that Stacey is a brand advocate for Olive Garden that the franchise hasn’t connected with in order to see if she wants to become a brand ambassador.

The basic difference between a brand advocate and an ambassador is that a brand ambassador has a formal relationship with the brand.  The brand has connected with them and is in regular contact with them.  Typically, the brand does this in order to help the ambassador better promote the brand and educate their friends and people they come in contact with about the brand.  This can be very powerful because as we all know, we trust our friends and other customers more than we do brands.  It’s just human nature.

However, there’s a big caveat to this approach.  Notice I said that most brands want to leverage ambassadors as a way to promote their brand.  What many brands don’t spend enough time on is focusing on the feedback that their ambassadors can collect about the brand.  Since their ambassadors are constantly talking to customers about the brand, it’s a wonderful way for the brand to get real feedback from customers on the brand, what they like, and dislike.

So if your brand is considering launching a brand ambassador program, think about how you can empower your ambassadors to promote your brand, but also think about how you can encourage your ambassadors to get feedback from customers on the brand.  Then make sure you find a way to collect that feedback from all your ambassadors, so you can act on it.

If your brand wants to launch a brand ambassador program, here’s 10 things to remember.

by

Think Like a Rockstar: How Taylor Swift Connects With Her Fans At Concerts

Let’s say you’ve taken your two daughters to a Taylor Swift concert and your seats are in the infamous ‘nosebleed’ section, and it seems the stage is a mile away.  The seats still cost you a small fortune, but your girls are loving the show anyway as the concert goes to intermission.  After a few minutes in the darkness suddenly the fans in your section start cheering and you turn around to see a spotlight guiding Taylor herself walking down the stairs just a few feet away, as she takes her guitar and begins performing!  Just like that the worst seats in the house have become front row, and what was already a great concert for your little girls, just became a night they will remember for the rest of their lives.

Because Taylor Swift just created something amazing for the people that love her.

I was reading about this yesterday in a great post by Jennifer Blanchard over at ProBlogger’s place on how Taylor goes out of her way to connect with her fans.  During her Fearless tour, Taylor was known to leave the stage during intermission, only to reappear at the back of the arena, where she began playing for fans in those seats farthest from the stage.

Another way that Taylor creates something special for her biggest fans that come to her concerts is with the T-Party.  The T-Party is a place where Taylor and her band like to crash before the concert, where they can hangout, play video games, etc somewhere in the arena.  But during the concert, Taylor’s family and helpers will be scanning the crowd looking for the fans with the most ‘spirit’.  The ones that are the most excited, the ones with the crazy outfits, or sometimes it will be the quiet girl that came by herself.  They pick a couple dozen of these fans, and invite them back to the T-Party after the concert!  Then Taylor and her band come back to the T-Party and hang out with the fans for a few hours, signing autographs, playing video games with them, and just hanging out.

These instances perfectly illustrate how Rockstars don’t have fans because they are Rockstars, they have fans because of how they treat their fans.  Taylor doesn’t have to go out of her way to play for the fans in the nosebleed section, but she does.  She doesn’t have to go to the extra time and expense of setting up the T-Party events for just a couple dozen fans after the concert, but she does.

Because she loves her fans.  And her fans know that, and they love her right back.  We marketers make this brand advocacy stuff a lot harder than it needs to be.

But the skeptical marketer will ask ‘Is connecting with 24 fans really that big of a deal?’

We’ve talked about this before, but companies and Rockstars, for the most part, have completely different approaches to marketing:
brand advocacy

Most companies want new customers, most Rockstars want to connect with their biggest fans.

By having a T-Party, Taylor touched the lives of those 24 fans.  And then they will go home and tell their friends, and tweet about it and Facebook it, and just go crazy.  Taylor understands what most Rockstars do, that she’ll get new customers tomorrow because she delighted her existing fans today.

And that will happen after every concert, watch the above video and note what happens at the 1:46 mark.  When the woman is explaining to the group what’s going to happen, as soon as she says ‘T-Party’, the girls in the front row immediately grab each other cause they knew exactly what the T-Party was!

Year after year, Taylor is looking for ways to connect with and delight her biggest fans.  Even if it’s only 24 at a time.  Her approach has helped make her beloved by millions and one of the most famous people on the planet.

How’s your company’s approach working?

Pic via Flickr user Inez Boldrin

by

Here’s What I Believe…

…that companies need to stop focusing on the tools, and start focusing on the connections that the tools help facilitate.  It’s not about understanding Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, it’s about understanding customer behavior.  Anyone that tries to tell you differently is selling something.

…that companies will get the biggest benefit from emerging digital technologies if they work within the framework of the customer’s existing behavior.  Figure out why you customers are spending their time with these channels and tools, then you can figure out how to connect with them in a way that creates value for them.

…that participating in a conversation changes that conversation.  Don’t like the conversation happening around your brand?  Then start participating in that conversation, and change it.

…that buzzwords are a hurdle to understanding.  Speak in as simple terms as possible to explain your ideas.  If you use too many buzzwords and jargon you risk limiting understanding of your message.  Or worse, you may convince me that YOU don’t understand the concepts you are discussing.

…that customers don’t want to be mouthpieces for brands.  Stop viewing Social Media as a ‘new and exciting way to let customers tell our story!’  Your customers have their own stories to tell via Social Media, and they are far more interesting than yours.

…that Twitter isn’t a Social Media Strategy, it’s a Social Media tactic.  Tactics are what you use to accomplish a strategy.

…that Steve Knox was right, victory in marketing doesn’t happen when you sell something, but when you cultivate advocates for your brand.

…that customers deserve more than companies are giving them.  They deserve brands that understand them and embrace them and give them a reason to fall madly in love with them.

…that Marketing is ultimately a tax that brands pay for not speaking in the voice of their customers.  Understand your customers, speak in their voice, and you’ll win their loyalty and money.

…that we need fewer conversations.  Brands have two distinct conversations happening around them, the internal conversation they have about themselves, and the external one their customers are having.  The further apart these conversations are, the more trouble the brand is in.  The more aligned the conversations are, the stronger the brand.  Hugh was right.

…that the customer’s ability to smell bullshit is greater than your ability to sell it.  So please stop.

…that companies need to stop selling the product, and start selling the benefit.  Make your communications customer-centric.  Think about WHY I would buy your product and how I would use it, and you just might convince me that I need it.

…that companies need to stop worry about ‘acquiring’ new customers, and focus on delighting their existing ones.  New customers cost 6-7 times more to acquire versus retaining an existing customer, while fans spend more than the average customer, and refer business equal to almost half what they spend.  Yet marketers everywhere want ‘new’ customers, even at the expense of their existing ones.  This is madness.

…that Rockstars have figured out that they’ll get new customers tomorrow from delighting their existing fans, today.  And they won’t pay a penny in ‘acquisition’ fees.  I’m amazed that more brands aren’t learning from this approach.

…that if you believe in your customers, they will believe in you.  Stop treating them like anonymous numbers, they are real people living real lives every day.  Just like you.

…that brands need to stop putting the spotlight on themselves.  Put the spotlight on the people that make your brand amazing; Your customers and employees.

…that customers are more connected and empowered than ever before.  So are the brands that embrace them.