MackCollier.com

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Brands With Happy Customers Have One Thing in Common

They value their customers and communicate this through their actions.

When I talk to companies and clients and how to create passionate customers that love your brand, I typically talk about how rock stars have fans or how sports teams have fans. I talk to companies about how much of an impact it would make to their business to have customers that loved them and who were actual fans of their brand.

Almost always, the company will push back. “We aren’t Taylor Swift! We aren’t the Alabama Crimson Tide! We sell boring widgets, we aren’t rock stars and never will be!”

Rock stars don’t have fans because they are rock stars. They have fans because they put in the work to cultivate fans. Rock stars understand that they can create fans by engaging with their customers and communicating to their customers that they appreciate them, and love them.

Your company can and SHOULD be doing the very same thing. Here’s a couple of examples I have come across recently to give you inspiration:

Lego’s wonderful letters to customers

Lego has a long history of sending compassionate, humorous and thoughtful letters to customers who contact them with questions, praises and complaints. Often, these personal responses are to children who have perhaps lost a lego toy or have a question about one.

Here’s a recent example:

In this example, a customer named John bought a $350 Lego Star Wars set from Target. The set is apparently fairly hard to find. He took the set home and began assembling it. Toward the end of the process, he discovered that a bag of pieces he needed to finish the set was missing! He didn’t really have the option of returning it to Target, since he had already started assembling it, and since the store likely wouldn’t have a replacement in stock anyway.

So he contacted Lego directly.  Here was Lego’s response:

Dear John,
Thanks for getting in touch with us and providing that information! I am so sorry that you are missing bag 14 from your Mos Eisley Cantina! This must be the work of Lord Vader.

Fear not, for I have hired Han to get that bag right out to you.

Have a bricktastic day and may the force be with you.

 

The response is compassionate, humorous, and above all communicates to the customer that they heard them. It then tells them what will happen next to resolve the issue.  Perfect!

Not only will this delight John and give him a reason to buy more Lego sets, but it’s also a big source of positive PR for Lego. If you do a simple search on Google or Twitter you can easily find many mentions of Lego sending similar delightful letters to customers. All of these stories enhance the Lego brand and give more people a reason to buy from Lego.

 

The massive BBQ one streamer is holding for his Twitch subscribers

I’ve talked before about the amazing job streamer/content creator NickMercs does in creating and cultivating his community of Twitch subscribers, called MFAM. Nick is very loyal to his followers and goes out of his way to communicate this to them. Often, when he adds new brand sponsors, part of the deal will be that the brand has to give money or prizes to his subscribers. On a recent stream, he claimed that during the Holiday season of 2020, he gave close to $250k in prizes and cash to his MFAM community.

Nick goes out of his way to show his followers that he loves them, and they love him right back. To close out Summer, next weekend he is throwing a special BBQ for MFAM, all for free:

I follow a lot of streamers on Twitch and YouTube. Very few of them make the effort that Nick does to connect with his subscribers, and to communicate to them how much he appreciates them. As a result, they appreciate him even more, and the snowball just keeps rolling downhill.

 

Build a culture of customer appreciation

Most companies are dead set on acquiring new customers, but then when they make the first purchase, then they become a ‘current’ customer and it’s as if they enter this dark void and the company no longer cares. Smart companies, the ones that excel at creating happy and loyal customer, focus on customer retention as much if not more than customer acquisition.

You retain customers when customers feel happy and satisfied with your brand. By constantly listening to your customers, communicating with them and showing your appreciation, you keep them as customers. What’s more, those customers you keep go out and recruit new customers for you. Which greatly reduces your customer acquisition costs.

Having passionate fans doesn’t happen by accident. Taylor Swift doesn’t have fans because she is a rock star anymore than Nick Mercs has fans because he’s a Twitch streamer. There are plenty of rock stars and plenty of Twitch streamers who have almost no fans.

Happy customers don’t happen by accident, they are earned. Put in the work, show your customers that you love them, and mean it. That’s how you create happy and loyal customers.

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Alabama Football Launches ‘The Advantage’ Personal Branding Program For its Student-Athletes

Last month I wrote about how important it is to give your employees the skills they need to succeed. One of the examples I used to illustrate that point was how Alabama football gives both its coaches and players the tools and teaching they need to advance.

Alabama football has just launched another initiative in its effort to equip its players with the skills they need to succeed.  The program is called ‘The Advantage’ and it is being billed as a ‘personal brand’ development program. The Advantage will work with players to develop their communication skills, giving them instruction on how to handle interviews, and how to conduct themselves on social media channels. For those players who pursue a professional career in football, The Advantage will assist with financial literacy, marketing, and agent selection.

https://twitter.com/AlabamaFTBL/status/1389686640390639618
https://twitter.com/AlabamaFTBL/status/1389624085487964165

This is such a smart initiative on so many levels:

  • It becomes yet another recruiting tool for Alabama, providing real benefits to recruits that they can instantly see the value in
  • It helps players manage their social media accounts, which also helps the University with its image and branding as well
  • By helping players with interview coaching, that provides another benefit to both the player, as well as the University, and it enhances the brand of both parties
  • As players become more proficient in using social media, that just means more exposure for them, and for the Alabama football brand as well

I’m honestly surprised more universities haven’t done something similar, and I’m sure we’ll see a lot of schools copy this now that Alabama has unveiled The Advantage.

Think about how you could do something similar at your company or organization. And just as Alabama will use The Advantage as a recruiting tool, so can your company. Your company could offer a program that coaches your current employees on how to better leverage their social media accounts to promote their personal brand, as well as yours. Additionally, you could leverage such a program to help your internal subject matter experts become more comfortable creating content and sharing their expertise. Getting internal subject matter experts to share what they know is often a struggle for companies. So this would be a real benefit that your company could enjoy.

Once such a program is in place, then its existence becomes a recruiting tool for new employees. Your company would get better employees, more content from your subject matter experts, and the social media content created by your employees would be more on brand. A win-win!

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How to Be a Better Marketer

Marketers, as a profession, are one of the least-trusted groups around. They are the guy at the party that everyone dreads seeing. You are with your friends having a perfectly delightful conversation, then here comes the marketer. He steers the conversation to himself, and brags incessantly about his accomplishments. When someone in your group attempts to change the subject to something more interesting, he immediately dismisses the introduced topic, and moves the focus back where it belongs. On him.

This is how most people view the average marketer. And often, this illustration isn’t that absurd. Yet, most marketers aren’t bad people, they simply fall prey to human nature far too easily.

The reality is, we all act in our own best interests. Period. Yet, good marketers understand how to make human nature work for them, and not against them. They understand that in order to reach their desired goals, they have to also provide equal or greater value to someone else.

 

TLDR: How to Be a Better Marketer

  • Respect your customers, market to them as you would your friends and family.
  • Your marketing communications should focus on and create value for your customers.
  • If your marketing isn’t relevant to your audience, then it will be ignored.
  • Understand who your customer is before you market to them.
  • Don’t sell your product, sell what your product allows the customer to do.

 

Why are marketers so distrusted?

Let’s back up for a minute and talk about how one brand figured out how to be better marketers. As with most good stories, alcohol is involved.

Bill Samuels Sr founded Maker’s Mark in 1953. Senior was the epitome of a craftsman. He loved crafting bourbon and prided himself on his ability to do so. His son, Bill Samuels Jr, took over as President of Maker’s Mark in the 1970s with one clear directive from his dad: “Don’t screw up the whisky.”

Father and son were diametrically opposed when it came to the topic of marketing. Junior was a showman. He loved marketing and appreciated the power of promotion and sales.

His father absolutely hated marketing and distrusted most marketers just as much as the rest of us do. Senior hated marketing so much so that often when junior would attempt to have a marketing discussion with his father, Bill Samuels Sr would simply stand up and walk out of the meeting.

So Bill Samuels Jr was at an impasse. He knew that Maker’s Mark needed to do SOME marketing in order to grow, but he also knew that his father would simply continue to shoot down any attempts the son made at adding marketing communications to the mix.

Finally, Bill Samuels Jr decided that it would probably be a good idea to better understand why his father was so opposed to marketing. The son figured that if he understood why his father didn’t want to invest in marketing, then maybe he could come up with a compromise that would be palatable to his father. Bascially, Bill Samuels Jr was marketing the idea of investing in marketing, to his father. So his father was his customer, and the son was learning how to better understand his objections to marketing, so he could factor that into his efforts. Which is what all good marketers do.

Bill Samuels Sr didn’t view the people who bought his bourbon as being customers, he viewed them as being friends and family. And he viewed marketing as selling, and in his mind, you didn’t sell to your friends and family.

So this prompted Bill Samuels Jr to completely shift his mindset toward who the Maker’s Mark customer was, and in turn, how to communicate with them. Samuels Jr went back to his father and said they would define the Maker’s Mark customer as being someone who they would like to invite over to their house for drinks. Bill Samuels Sr signed off on this, and Jr got to work on building a marketing strategy based on communicating with friends and family, instead of selling to strangers.

As an aside, this shift in marketing strategy opened the door for Maker’s Mark to launch one of the most successful brand ambassador programs of all time. In the early 1980s, Maker’s Mark was the recipient of some wonderful exposure in national publications like The Wall Street Journal. That surge of PR catapulted demand for the brand’s products, which actually created a massive distribution problem for Maker’s Mark. Prior to this, Maker’s Mark was essentially a regional, Kentucky brand, and its distribution channels were regional as well. But thanks to the exposure in the WSJ and other publications, there was suddenly national demand for a brand that not only didn’t have the distribution channels to handle a national supply, but the product itself took years to make.

While the brand didn’t have a national distribution channel, it did have customers across the United States. More than that, it had customers that loved the brand. So Bill Samuels Jr. decided to embrace those happy customers, and empower them to market for the brand. Maker’s Mark began to mobilize its customers across the country to demand Maker’s Mark be shipped to their corner of the country. The efforts of its customers slowly expanded Maker’s Mark’s distribution from coast to coast. These efforts by Maker’s Mark to empower its customers to market for the brand would eventually be folded into an official brand ambassador program, which still lives on to this day. You can learn more about the program here.

Bill Samuels Sr. distrusted marketers for the same reason most of you do; He found the very idea offensive, as he felt that marketing was selling, and you don’t sell to friends and family. So Maker’s Mark focused on treating its customers as friends and family, and adjusted its marketing strategy accordingly. Bill Samuels Jr would later call it ‘marketing without fingerprints’.

The key takeaway? If you respect your customers, that changes how you sell to them.

 

The power of being second

Let’s go back to human nature for a minute. It is human nature to want to take care of ourselves first, and everyone else later. For instance, if there’s a shortage of a particular product, say gas, do you let everyone else fill up their tank first, then you go get your gas a week later?  Of course not, you will try to fill up your tank of gas today, and you assume everyone else will do the same. That doesn’t make you a bad person, it just makes you human. We all think of our wants and needs first, before others. Not all the time, but in general.

It’s no different for most marketers. Most marketers focus first on getting the sale, and pleasing the customer can come later. But smart marketers understand the power of pleasing the customer first, and how that will LEAD to sales.

In 2004, Sarah McLachlan released the single World on Fire. Her record label gave her $150,000 to create a music video to support the song. Just as she was preparing to begin filming the video, she came across a letter written by a volunteer with the group Engineers Without Borders. This letter detailed the work that the group was doing to help impoverished people around the world. Sarah was so moved by the work Engineers Without Borders was doing, that she decided to take all but $15 of the $150,000 her record label had given her to create a music video, and she instead donated it to 11 charitable organizations, including Engineers Without Borders.

Now, this was a very generous act on Sarah’s behalf, but her record label still wanted her to create a music video. So Sarah took the last $15 from her budget, and bought a video tape. She then, working with a few friends, created a very low-tech video for World on Fire.

But the video told an incredibly compelling story. What Sarah did with her video was explain to the viewer all the normal expenses associated with creating a music video, and how much each item normally costs. Then, Sarah detailed what the money was actually spend on, via her charitable donations. What resulted was, and absolutely amazing music video, created for just $15:

This video received a Grammy nomination for best music video, the only such nomination of Sarah’s 34-year career as a recording artist.

So let’s break this down: Sarah received $150k to record a music video for World on Fire. Instead, she donated almost all of that money to 11 charitable organizations around the world, impacting the lives of millions of people. And she still got to create a music video for World on Fire, which received a Grammy nomination.

All because Sarah didn’t use her video as a way to ‘sell’ her song, but instead she used it as a tool to help others, to advance causes she is passionate about, and to tell a compelling story. She got the sales she (and her label) wanted, but she got so much more than that.

The key takeaway? Good marketing isn’t about the person sending the message, it’s about the person who hears it. If you create a compelling marketing message, the sales will take care of itself.

 

The best marketing is invisible. The worst marketing BECOMES invisible. 


This is Times Square, in NYC. Look at this picture, but really it’s the same with any picture you see of Times Square.

You always see marketing and advertising messages everywhere. Flashing billboards, and blinking lights as far as the eye can see.

So. Much. Marketing.

Now look at the people. Every single person in this image has one thing in common. Can you spot it?

Every single person is totally ignoring every marketing message.

Everyone in this picture is completely ignoring these hundreds of marketing messages that are all around them. The reason why is because these messages lack relevance. If a marketing message is irrelevant to you, then it is worthless to you.

It becomes invisible to you.

Now let’s go back to the Maker’s Mark brand ambassador program for a minute. We’ve already talked about how long-running it is, and how successful it has been. In order to join the brand ambassador program, you have to apply. In other words, you have to raise your hand and offer to perform the duties that Maker’s Mark asks from its ambassadors. So when Maker’s Mark delivers marketing messages to you, those are marketing messages that you asked to receive. Those messages have relevance for you, so you don’t perceive them as being marketing.

Let’s be clear: If a marketing message has relevance for you, you don’t view it as being marketing.

On the other hand, if a marketing message has NO relevance for you, you ignore it.

The best marketing is invisible. Meaning you don’t SEE it as marketing. You see it as something that has relevance for you.

The worst marketing BECOMES invisible. Meaning, if the marketing message is totally irrelevant to you. then you totally ignore it. It BECOMES invisible to you.

We’ve trained ourselves to view marketing as something bad, as a distraction, an irritant. Actually, that’s not fair, we have simply been exposed to so much BAD marketing, that we tend to view ALL marketing as bad.

Good marketing is relevant to us. It creates value for us, and respects us. As a result, we don’t view it as marketing.

What happens when we don’t view a marketing message as being marketing? We open ourselves to LISTENING TO THAT MESSAGE.

Once a marketer has gained our attention, then they have a chance to convert us into a customer.

The key takeaway? If your marketing message is relevant to your audience, then that audience will listen to your message. If your marketing message is irrelevant to your audience, then that audience will ignore it.

 

The best marketing is spoken in the voice of your customer

Let’s say you are a diehard fan of the movie Inception. Your friend Tom hates the movie, and thinks it is completely overblown.

You are trying to convince Jim, who you don’t know, to watch Inception. But at the same time, Tom is going to give the argument for why Jim should NOT watch Inception. And it just so happens that Tom is also Jim’s cousin.

So who do you think will be able to persuade Jim to watch or not watch the movie Inception? You may say that Jim will listen to Tom, because Tom is his cousin and he trusts his opinion. You would  probably be correct. But at the same time, Tom knows and understands what types of movies Jim likes. Tom would explain to Jim that he doesn’t like movies like Inception, why he doesn’t like them, and Jim would probably ultimately agree and not see the movie.

In the end, the fact that Tom and Jim were cousins wasn’t the deciding factor for Jim.  It was the fact that Tom understands what type of movie Jim likes to watch. You don’t know what type of movie that Jim likes, so in explaining what you liked about the movie Inception, you were actually making the case to Jim for why he should NOT watch it.

Think of marketing as a tax that your brand has to pay because it doesn’t understand your customer.  If you know precisely who your customer is, and you understand them completely, then you know how to create marketing that appeals to them at every stage of the process from awareness to sale, and beyond. Your marketing costs are significantly lower because you are crafting perfect marketing communications that are relevant to your customers, that create value for them, and which resonate with them.

When you don’t know who your customer is, when you don’t understand your customer, then your marketing costs increase at an exorbitant rate.

The key takeaway? When you understand your customer, you can speak to their wants, needs and desires. You don’t market to them, you talk to them. And they listen.

 

The best marketing doesn’t focus on your product, it focuses on your customer

The most effective marketing doesn’t sell your product, it sells how your product fits into my life.

Watch this Red Bull commercial, and as you do, notice how much time is spent focused on the Red Bull energy drink:

The Red Bull can isn’t shown till the last 2 seconds of the commercial. The logo is shown a few times throughout, but the star of this commercial is clearly the extreme athletes that Red Bull sponsors and supports. Red Bull doesn’t market its product, it markets what happens after you drink it.

Don’t sell your product, sell the change that happens to your customer as a result of your product.

This is one of the most powerful marketing lessons you can learn. When someone isn’t familiar with your product, you sell the benefits of owning it. You sell the changes that owning this product will create for the owner.

Don’t sell me the product, sell what the product allows me to do.

Look at Nike’s iconic marketing campaigns. Just do it. The shoes and clothing is an afterthought, the focus is on the athletes and their accomplishments. Think of Apple’s marketing for the iPhone in recent years. The focus is more on what the iPhone allows you to do, the content it helps you create, moreso than the actual tool itself.

Notice how these examples of how to improve your marketing are focused on understanding your customer and marketing from the customer’s point of view. Customers don’t buy products, they buy solutions to problems, or improvements to their lives. If a particular product can consistently meet or exceed their expectations, then the customer will become loyal to that brand.

 

Your job as a marketer is to create fans.

In 2010 I attended the FIRE Sessions in Greenville, South Carolina. One of the speakers was Steve Knox, who at the time was the CEO of Proctor and Gamble’s Word of Mouth unit, Tremor. He said something that stopped me in my tracks:

“Victory in marketing doesn’t happen when you sell something, but when you cultivate advocates for your brand.”

Think about that quote and what it means. Who are advocates for your brand? They are the customers that LOVE your brand and who are advocating on its behalf. So they are not only buying your products, they are actively selling your brand to other customers.

How would your marketing change, if your goal was to cultivate advocates? To create customers that love you and who will advocate for you.

The amazing part is…you will still be creating sales. But you’ll also be creating so much more.

 

If you want to be a better marketer:

  • Respect your customers
  • Create value for your customers
  • Your marketing MUST be relevant to your customers, or it will be ignored
  • Understand your customers
  • Don’t market your product, market the positive changes in my life that your product will create for me
  • Don’t focus on sales with your marketing, focus on delighting your customers. If you create happy customers, the sales take care of themselves.

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How to Create Customer Loyalty After the Product Purchase

Let’s say for every product you buy, there are one of three outcomes as far as your satisfaction with the purchase:

1 – Indifferent. The product does what you expected it to do, no more or no less.

2 – Upset. The product doesn’t meet your expectations.

3 – Excited. The product exceeds your expectations.

 

If you are indifferent toward your purchase, the odds are that you aren’t likely to praise or criticize the purchase to other customers. Likely, it was an inexpensive purchase, and you really didn’t have high expectations for it to begin with. For instance, if your purchase cost a dollar and was a complete disappointment, well you are only out a dollar, so you are less likely to be as upset with the quality of the product.

If you are upset or excited with your purchase, then that means you want to talk about it.  You want to share your experience with others. Interestingly, Guy Winch has found that 95% of the time when a customer is upset with a purchase, they will tell other customers, and won’t tell the company that made the product! According to Winch:

“Research has found that 95% of consumers who have a problem with a product don’t complain to the company, but they will tell their tale to eight to 16 people,” he says. “It’s unproductive because we’re not complaining to the people who can resolve our issue.”

Venting also floods the bloodstream with cortisol, the stress hormone. “We tell ourselves that we need to get it off our chest, but each time we do, we get upset all over again,” he adds. “We end up 10 to 12 times more aggravated.”

Isn’t that fascinating, in a depressing sort of way? But it makes complete sense that retelling a negative experience with a product to other customers would make us more upset with the purchase. And the customers we are talking to would likely want to be supportive and sympathetic toward our anger, so they may say they agree that the company was in the wrong, which would make us even MORE upset with the purchase!

Which is honestly a bit unfair to the company, when you think about it. Because we didn’t reach out to them and give them a chance to help us with our problem.

Let’s come back to this in a moment and talk about what happens when you are excited with a purchase. You tell other customers, right? We know this is true from our own experiences for many reasons. We want to share with others what worked for us. Also, we probably want to ‘brag’ on ourselves to a degree by sharing what a ‘smart’ purchase we made.

The point is, we talk to others about our purchase in either scenario. But if you think about it, even when we have a positive experience with a purchase, are we really that likely to reach out to the company and communicate that to them?  Probably not.

So the onus, rightly or wrongly, is on the company to do everything it can to encourage the customer to give feedback on the purchase. If the customer is indifferent toward the purchase, they will likely ignore the request.

But if the customer is either very upset or very excited with the purchase, an invitation to give feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Now, many companies aren’t thrilled with the prospect of hearing from angry customers. It’s just human nature. But, if you can give a customer the support they need post-purchase, you greatly increase your chances of converting the upset customer into a happy one.

And remember, happy customers are your best salespeople. They acquire new customers for you!

So think about how you can better connect with your customers after the purchase. This will only improve and enhance your customer loyalty efforts. And if you want to learn more, we will be discussing this topic tonight during #ContentCircus on Twitter, starting at 7pm Central. Follow me on Twitter, and watch my tweets, the topic will be How to Create Content For Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Tracking Sales to Social Media, Conducting Sweepstakes and Contests

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you had a fantastic Holiday weekend, and are easing into the workweek slowly. Here’s some useful links to help you start the week smarter:

 

I always chuckle at how companies lament that they are having difficulty tying sales directly to its social media efforts. The reality is, social media as a channel is not the best channel to drive sales directly. First, most companies struggle to correctly attribute revenue to any channels, much less social media. The study in the tweet below found this as well. Social media has certain strengths and weaknesses for businesses. It does a great job at things like building brand awareness, a good job at things like customer service, and not that great at things like direct sales. All channels have strengths and weaknesses. Most companies are also having trouble attributing customer service success to billboards. The point is, focus on the strengths and weaknesses for each channel and don’t waste time and money trying to force a square block into a round hole.

 

One of the most misunderstood areas of social media is how to effectively and legally run sweepstakes and contests via social media. This great share from Mari gives you wonderful pointers on how to run either via social media channels.

 

I constantly talk to companies that want to build a fanbase of passionate customers, who have no idea how to get started. I always tell them to do the same thing; say ‘Thank you’. LA Chipper (and former Alabama Crimson Tide great) JaMycal Green recently left the LA Chippers, and when he did, he posted goodbye and said thank you to Clippers fans on Instagram. Then he went through and thanked every fan that replied. This is how you build a fanbase, by simply showing your current fans that you appreciate them. Look at your company’s Facebook page, or your Twitter replies. How many customers are commenting that they enjoy your products or services? Are you replying and thanking every one?  You should be. Don’t over complicate things, saying ‘Thank you’ still works.

 

I hope you have a great Monday! Speaking of news, I’ll have some news of my own to share here tomorrow. I think you’ll enjoy it!

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The Business Link Between Customer Empathy and Brand Loyalty

The other day I was talking about mapping content and marketing to the buyer’s journey with Alexandra. Alexandra mentioned what comes after the purchase, and that’s when we began to discuss the role of creating and cultivating brand loyalty. We then had a fascinating discussion about the role that empathy for the customer plays in creating and cultivating loyal customers. I started doing some research into empathy and I wanted to do a deeper dive into the topic here.

Let’s first examine some of the drivers of brand loyalty:

  • We trust the brand. This trust can be established via a consistent experience, customer support, following through on brand promises, etc.
  • We relate to the brand. Here we feel we have common interests and values as the brand We feel as if what’s important to us is also important to the brand.
  • We feel that the brand acknowledges us and appreciates us. They listen to us, they communicate they hear our feedback and act on it. This also leads to us feeling a vested interest in what happens to the brand. We will promote it to other customers, we will defend it against criticism.

 

Now let’s look at empathy. According to Greater Good Magazine, empathy is “used to describe a wide range of experiences. Emotion researchers generally define empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.”  All of this ties into the drivers for brand loyalty; Trust, understanding, being able to relate to the brand.

Empathy for the customer is a paramount skill to have if you are working in customer service. And quite often, customer service is called upon post-purchase, by the customer. Which is also the point at which brand loyalty often is created or enhanced.

A big part of showing empathy to someone is making sure that person understands that you are listening to them, and you are being considerate of their feelings. Whenever I consult with companies on addressing customer complaints, I always stress to them that the company should never apologize unless they actually did something wrong. I tell clients to focus on listening to the customer, and making sure they know that you are listening. That’s far more important than simply saying ‘sorry’. Upset customers want to know that you are listening to them, that you have heard and understood WHY they are upset, and that you give the customer a solution for their complaint.  Starting a customer service interaction by saying “Well I’m sorry that happened to you!’ and then NOT solving their problem, can actually lead to more anger and frustration for the customer. Communicating that you are listening is more important than saying you are sorry.

Taking the time to listen shows that you DO care. It’s critical that your brand listens to its customers, especially when they contact customer service, post-purchase. It’s also important that even though the customer is very likely upset, the main thing the average customer wants when reaching out to customer service, is a rep who will listen and understand why they are upset. This communicates that the brand values that customer and their feelings.

Feeling appreciated is one of the key drivers of brand loyalty. Also keep in mind that everyone, your customers, your employees, we are all under additional pressure and stress right now. Communicating you appreciate others has never been more important. And it will never be more appreciated by others.

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Building Employee and Customer Advocacy Really Is This Simple

Think about a brand that you love. Why do you love that brand? Most people are loyal to brands for many reasons, such as the value they create, the ideas and beliefs they stand for, they feel that the brand actually cares about them.  There are many reasons more, and they are personal.

And that word, ‘personal’ is the key. If you have a personal relationship or view of a brand, then you have affinity for that brand. And affinity leads to advocacy. You want to tell others about that brand, you feel a sense of vested interest in seeing that brand succeed. You want to play some small role in that brand’s success.

This is the simple, 4-step process for creating advocacy. It works for both your employees and your customers. And the reality is, if you don’t have employees that will advocate for your brand, it’s very difficult to create an environment where customers will.

At both the employee and customer level, it starts by initiating interactions that communicate that you care. On the employee side, instead of having 4 weekly meetings a month to discuss how your employees are progressing with their work, what if you made the 3rd meeting of every month instead be focused on helping your employees? What if that meeting was focused on discussing what THE BRAND can do to better help the employees do their job better? Give the employees a chance to discuss what’s holding them back, let them suggest changes that could make their job easier.

“I could be more productive if I could do _____”

“I wish I could devote X amount of time to personal work projects”

“I could get more done if we had fewer meetings like this”

Ok I just threw that last one in there cause I know so many of you were thinking it! But the point is, by interacting and LISTENING to your employees then ACTING on their suggestions, you signal to them that you value their opinions. Also, you are signaling to them that you TRUST your employees to come up with good ideas, and then run with them.

Want to inspire your employees? When they come to you with an idea, give them ownership to get it done. It communicates that you trust the employee, that you value them, and that you know they can do the work without your supervision. That’s incredibly inspiring to the employee.  That’s what creates advocacy.

Also, make sure your employees understand WHY your brand does what it does. As Simon Sinek says “People don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it”. What impact does your brand make on the lives of your customers, and the world? Make sure your employees understand that. We all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We all want a vision to unite us, a larger cause that binds us as a team working toward a common goal. There’s the famous story of the time President Kennedy was touring NASA, and he was stopping employees as he met them and asking them to explain what they did at NASA. He eventually found a janitor, and asked him what he did at NASA.  The janitor replied “I”m helping send man to the moon!”  That was the vision and the ‘why’ that inspired him to do his job.

The same things apply to your customers. Interact and engage with your customers. Ask them for feedback on your brand.  What can be improved, what do they like.  Take their suggestions to heart, and follow up with them on what your brand is doing to implement the changes they want to see. This helps your customers become more invested in your brand and helps create higher levels of customer advocacy.

Interaction leads to Understanding leads to Trust leads to Advocacy. When both your employees and customers advocate for your brand, that leads to higher sales and profits.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Online Holiday Sales Spike, Top Brands For Loyalty, Turn Blog Posts Into Tweet Threads

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you have a wonderful week planned, cooler weather is here, and Halloween is right around the corner. One of my favorite times of the year!

 

This is very believable. If you sell products or services online, you need to be auditing your website to make sure the purchase process is as smooth and frictonless as possible. Also keep in mind that even after the country completely reopens, many shoppers will continue to purchase more online, so building your website to handle eCommerce sales should be a priority moving forward.

https://twitter.com/shonali/status/1315746614552801281

 

So there’s two brands that I wanted to focus on for this list of top brands customers are loyal towards; Amazon and Dominos. First, I wonder how much of the loyalty people have for Amazon is associated with the brand itself, and how much is loyalty for the fact that it offers a level of price and convenience that its competitors cannot. I ask because I am constantly hearing from Prime users that lament they dislike the Amazon brand, but keep buying from it simply because it’s faster and cheaper.

As for Dominos, we all suspected that the covid-related slowdowns and more people staying at home would create opportunities for fast food brands in particular to win big business. It seems Dominos is one of the big winners in scoring loyalty from customers.

 

This is a feature that raised some eyebrows in the blogging community. WordPress has added the ability to turn blog posts into tweet threads. Honestly, I’m not a fan of this feature. As the author of this post points out, this seems to do a better job of drawing attention to your tweets than it would the blog post that the tweets are being created from. My advice would be to test ideas for blog posts as tweets on Twitter. For instance, if you have a topic you are thinking about writing a blog post on, bring it up on Twitter first, and see what the reaction is from Twitter users. You very well may find that you can then create a wonderful blog post from the conversation that happened on Twitter.

So there’s a few stories that caught my eye over the last few days! Just a reminder that we are headed into election season, just 15 days away! Be very mindful that there will be a LOT of very unbelievable and inaccurate ‘news’ being shared. Look at everything with a skeptical eye, and if something sounds too crazy to be true, verify the information with sources you trust. Have a wonderful week, see you tomorrow!

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What is a Customer Feedback Loop and Why Should it Be a Part of Your Brand Ambassador Program?

Customer feedback comes in many forms:

  • Surveys the company sends out
  • Calls to customer service
  • Social media responses or complaints from the customer
  • In-person feedback from customers in retail locations

Often, this feedback is used to solve a current issue the customer is having. But what if a customer’s feedback isn’t focused on an immediate need? What if the feedback is an overall criticism or appreciation for the brand? What if the feedback is focused on an ongoing situation the customer encounters when dealing with the brand, either good or bad?

Many brands focus on the ‘customer feedback’ portion of a customer feedback loop, but forget the ‘loop’ part. The idea is to acquire feedback from the customer, then consider that feedback and either act on it, or not. But either way, the customer should also receive feedback from the brand as to next steps.

So when it comes to facilitating a customer feedback loop. the two most important considerations are the most effective ways to collect feedback from the customer, then the most effective way to relay feedback from the brand, back to the customer. Thus, facilitating the ‘loop’ portion of a customer feedback loop.

Feedback solicited from and given to another customer is typically more valuable than customer feedback solicited from and given to the brand. The reason why is because customers trust other customers more than the average brand.

How Do You Integrate a Customer Feedback Loop Into Your Brand Ambassador Program?

Too many brand ambassador programs simply position its ambassadors as a new promotional channel. So before you think about integrating a customer feedback loop into your brand ambassador program, you need to shift your focus into all the different ways that your ambassadors can help your brand

  • As a promotional channel
  • As a customer service channel
  • As a customer feedback loop
  • As a way to educate other customers about and defend the brand

To only think of ambassadors as megaphones for your brand is incredibly short-sighted and honestly unfair to the talents that your ambassadors possess. So your brand needs to think about the value that can be created by your ambassadors if you empower them to solicit and collect feedback from current and potential customers. Think of it as free marketing research that your ambassadors can conduct on behalf of your brand.

So how could this work for your company? Let’s use a simple example. Let’s say your brand launches a brand ambassador program, and creates a smartphone app just for its ambassadors. This app would be a tool to empower ambassadors when they connect with other customers. It would include things product information and reviews in case the ambassador encounters a potential customer who is considering a purchase and needs more information. It could also include functionality that lets the ambassadors give detailed feedback not only on interactions with the brand online and offline, but also, feedback on customer interactions. Ambassadors could file reports on interactions they have with customers, offering suggestions on how the brand should respond, etc. The brand could then notify the ambassador that they received and processed their report.  It could even ‘escalate’ the report to contact the ambassador directly.

The process could look like this:

1 – Ambassador engages a customer either online or offline

2 – Ambassador records feedback from the customer

3 – Ambassador shares customer feedback with the brand

4 – Brand acts on the customer feedback and communicates steps taken to ambassadors

 

That’s it. And the great part is, this is new customer feedback that the brand otherwise would not have access to. This feedback can be incorporated into existing business processes to increase sales and reduce costs. So start thinking about how your ambassadors can perform additional roles for your brand past that of simply being a direct sales channel.

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Red Bull Creates Better Content Than You Do, Here’s How They Do It

Red Bull’s marketing is one of my favorite case studies from Think Like a Rock Star.  In the book I call them this generation’s Nike, and they really are.  What separates Red Bull from most brands is its customer-centric marketing.  Everything about the brand’s content, marketing and communication efforts is about its customers and what’s important to them.  The product itself is secondary to the activities that the customer engages in, and cherishes. Red Bull’s content marketing follows a simple formula; Don’t sell the product, sell what the product allows you to do.

First. watch this Red Bull video:

There’s a couple of things you need to know about that video:

1 – It’s a 30-second broadcast commercial.

2 – It currently has over 2 million views on YouTube.

 

But notice something else; the product (Red Bull energy drinks) is barely shown. Instead, the majority of the commercial focuses on the athletes and the amazing activities they are engaged in.

The product has become secondary to the activities that Red Bull’s customers enjoy.  

Red Bull understands that its customers are young and active.  The brand is targeting the younger end of the highly desirable 18-34 demographic, and they understand that customers in this age range are extremely savvy when it comes to advertising.  So instead of trying to market its product to these customers (which would be a turnoff to them), Red Bull focuses its content on the activities they love.

Red Bull is a Giant on YouTube

In fact, Red Bull does a fabulous job of re-purposing (or as my friend Ann would say ‘re-imaging’) its content.  Red Bull creates long-form content and videos chronicling how these amazing athletes prepare to engage in their activities.  This is for the hardcore extreme sports fans that want to learn more about these athletes and how they train for and perform these amazing jumps, stunts and tricks.

Then Red Bull takes the actual footage from the event and shows it by itself, and also works it into its commercials as well.  Red Bull got a ton of publicity from Felix Baumgartner’s ‘freefall from space’.  The brand divided footage from that amazing event into a highlight video that currently has over 40 MILLION views.  Additionally it posted videos from test jumps Baumgartner made, and of course his successful space freefall closes out the broadcast commercial above.

 Red Bull's YouTube engagement

We’ve got your Facebook engagement right here!

With over 40 Million ‘fans’ on Facebook, Red Bull is one of the most popular brands on the world’s largest social networking site.  And consistent with the content it creates on other online channel, the product itself is almost never promoted or even mentioned.  Instead, the focus is on the athletes and the amazing feats they are engaging in.  Most of the content is delivered via stunning visuals with text to describe what’s happening.  But the brand is promoting the activities and athletes directly, and the brand itself very indirectly.

In 2012, Facebook did a study into how its most popular brands drive engagement via its Pages.  Specifically, Facebook found that brands create three types of content on its brand pages:

Messages about the product or service

  • Travel brand example: Our new resort just opened! Book your trip today.

Messages related to the brand

  • Travel brand example: I decided to go on my first cruise because______.

Messages unrelated to the brand

  • Travel brand example: Hang in there everybody. Monday will be over before we know it!

Of these three, updates related to the brand but not about the brand were the only type of updates that “were the sole universally significant predictor of all types of engagement.”  Those three types of engagement are Likes, Shares and Comments.

This is the exact type of content that Red Bull nails on all its social media channels, but especially on Facebook.  In fact Facebook clarified in the study that if a brand’s goal was to generate Shares that the brand should “Use photos, photos albums and videos”.

RedBullFB

Sponsor the Love

One of the ways that a brand can create passionate fans and brand advocates is to help facilitate and align itself with events, communities and functions that its customers are passionate about. You see this often at conferences and events, where a company will sponsor a ‘recharge’ area where attendees can recharge their smartphones and laptops, and refreshments might be present as well. Or another example could be a crafting company that builds an online community for crafters, the idea being that the brand is creating something of value for its customers and associating itself with events. functions and communities that the customer is already passionate about.

Red Bull does this with extreme sports.  The brand has long been heavily invested in extreme sports, helping to fund the events themselves, then later funding teams for major events such as ESPN’s X-Games.  Red Bull has even been a sponsor in NASCAR for several years.

These sponsorships communicate to its customers that Red Bull loves these events as much as they do.  Which gives its customers another reason to love the brand itself.

 

Telling a Compelling Story and Making the Customer the Hero  

Red Bull’s content marketing is all about telling a story.  It’s about personal achievement, about pushing the envelope and going farther than you thought you could.  These ideals speak to the heart of extreme sports and these special and fearless athletes.

Yet what makes this content marketing so compelling is that Red Bull is telling a story where the customer is the hero.  The content is positioned so that the customer sees these athletes performing these amazing activities yet feels inspired to push themselves to go farther.

Consider the final line of Red Bull’s broadcast commercials:

“If you believe in it, then anything is possible.”

“The only limit, is the one you set yourself.”

“You can dream about it, or you can go out and make it happen.”

The content inspires you to do more and to accomplish more than you thought you could.

Yet the secret is, Red Bull isn’t selling an energy drink, it’s selling what happens after you drink it.

Do you want to learn how Mack can create a world-class content strategy for your company like Red Bull has? Contact Mack with this form and he'll be in touch with you shortly!