MackCollier.com

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Your Complete Guide to Becoming a Rock Star Brand

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Often when I talk to someone about or speak on Think Like a Rock Star, they will say ‘I love the concept, but we’re not Lady Gaga or Katy Perry. They are actual rock stars, we’re just a brand.  We can’t have fans like they do.’

When I started writing the book, I set out to answer that question.  Do actual rock stars simply have some natural advantage that brands do not?  Are actual rock stars able to create fans, passionate customers that literally love them in a way that most brands cannot?

What I discovered, to my delight, was that rock stars do certain things to create fans that are easily replicated by brands.  It’s not that brands can’t do the things that rock stars do to create fans, it’s that most brands aren’t willing to do the things they need to create fans.

But we’re not Taylor Swift, we sell (insert seemingly boring product that no one can see anyone being a fan of HERE)

First, let’s accept that your brand would love to have passionate customers that considered themselves to be fans of your brand.  Rock stars have raving fans that love and support them, and your brand wants that as well.

The problem lies in calling them ‘rock stars’.  Because when you do that, it’s easy to say ‘they are rock stars, we’re a brand, it’s two totally different things’.

Really?  You think Taylor Swift isn’t a brand?  Lady Gaga isn’t a brand?  Katy Perry, Pearl Jam, Blake Shelton, these are some of the biggest and most bankable brands on the planet!

The other trait that’s common to these rock stars? All of them are exceptional marketers.

So if you accept that these performers and bands are also excellent brands and marketers, then that means they are just like you in that regard.  Which means you can learn from how they market themselves and apply it to your own brand-building efforts.

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So if rock stars are really brands, why does The Zac Brown Band have more fans than my brand does?  What is he doing that I’m not? 

Six years ago I got on an airplane for the first time.  And I had the normal fears of a first flight, and was pretty worried.  My anxiety got worse as we prepared for takeoff and then as we rose and I was pushed back in my seat I just knew that I was about to fall out the bottom of the plane and I couldn’t understand WHY NO ONE ELSE WAS UPSET!  Then I looked over and saw an older woman sitting across from me, and she had taken out a magazine and was reading it without a care in the world as the airplane climbed and the ground became harder to see clearly.  At that point I realized that she knew something I didn’t.  So I immediately calmed down, assuming if she wasn’t upset, I shouldn’t be either.

I tell this story to preface the rest of the post.  Rock stars do a lot of things, especially in their marketing efforts, that seem counter-intuitive and even completely scary to most brands.  But the end result cannot be argued, rock stars have raving fans that drive real business growth for their brand.  If you want to have the same, then you need to trust that the rock stars have a valid reason for doing the ‘scary stuff’.

If you want to understand why rock stars have such passionate fans and your brand does not, then you need to understand why the average rock star markets the way she does.  You need to understand The Loyalty Graph:

LoyaltyGraph2Yep, at the end of the day the reason why rock stars have fans comes down to simple marketing.  But the key is that rock stars understand the true value of their most passionate fans, and your brand likely does not.

To the average brand, it’s great to have a fan, a passionate customer that praises the brand to others.  But most brands don’t look to actively engage those fans.  While they are happy to have fans, the average brand leaves their fans alone, with the thinking being let them keep doing what they are doing.

Rock stars literally focus their marketing efforts around their fans.  What’s worth noting about this approach is that rock stars are based their marketing efforts around connecting with less than 5% of their customer base.

This is curious, because the average brand not only all but ignores its fans, it spends millions marketing to the other 95% of its customers.  With a premium placed on marketing to New Customers, customers that have little or no affinity toward their brand.  At the same time, rock stars are all but ignoring New Customers, from a marketing perspective.  Think about that for a minute: Brands are investing the majority of their marketing dollars on connecting with a group of customers that rock stars are literally ignoring.  Again back to the airplane example, what do rock stars know that your brand doesn’t?

Rock stars understand that your fans are the best salespeople your brand has.  And if you take your branding hat off for a moment, you know this to be true as well.  Let’s say you are making a trip to Switzerland this Summer and you want to buy a simple point and shoot camera for under $300 for the trip.  Before making your purchase you’ll do the following:

1 – Get recommendations from friends and family online.

2 – Get recommendations from friends and family offline.

3 – Check online reviews (Amazon as well as photography sites)

Note that your buying decision was influenced not by marketing from any camera brands, but instead by friends, family, and other customers.  Because we trust other customers more than we trust the brands marketing to us.

That’s what rock stars understand about marketing that your brand does not.

So rock stars literally shift their marketing message and put it in the hands of the people that you are most likely to trust.  They connect with their fans and cultivate them as salespeople for their brand.  This is why they don’t have to spend 95% of their marketing budget on trying to acquire new customers.  Instead, they connect with their fans that love them, and those fans then acquire new customers for them.

The key is to put your marketing message in the hands of the people that other customers trust the most 

The reason why most brands don’t want to do this is because most brands want complete control over how its marketing messages are shared and spread.  This is exactly why television, newspaper and radio advertising has been so popular for decades.  The brand can communicate directly with many people at one time.

The problem with this approach is that as a result, any communication from the brand is viewed as being ‘marketing’, and as such, less trustworthy to the average customer.  So to make sure that your marketing message is actually heard, it needs to pass through a source that the customer trusts, such as another customer (fan).

But again, we are back to the point that most brands don’t trust their fans enough to give them control of their marketing messages.  And yet, most rock stars do.  This is because most rock stars understand who their fans are and what motivates them.

Fans want to see their favorite brand, rock star or sports team succeed.  So they will act in what they perceive to be that brand/rock star/sport team’s best interest.  But the important point to understand is that since they are fans, they trust their favorite brand or rock star.  So if that brand connects directly with them and asks them to spread their marketing message in a certain way, they will listen.

Which is exactly what rock stars do.  They are constantly connecting with their most passionate fans because they understand that by doing so, their fans will better understand who the rock star is, and the message the rock star wants them to spread.

Your brand’s fear that your fans won’t spread the message that you want is mostly unfounded.  If they don’t spread the message that you want it’s probably because you haven’t communicated to them what message you do want them to spread!  What features of your product do you want them to tell others about?  What are the selling points that you want other customers to know about?

Participating in a conversation changes that conversation

Conduct this simple experiment: For the next 5 customers that mention your brand positively on Twitter, tweet them back and say Thank You.  Then note what happens next.  The odds are that at least one and possibly all five people will respond back saying you are welcome.  One or more of them might try to extend the conversation with you.  The point is that whatever happens after you reply happened because you replied.  By simply interacting with customers that self-identified as being fans of your brand, you gave them a reason to think more positively about your brand, and a reason to create more positive word of mouth about your brand.

Here’s your primer to becoming a rock star brand:

1 – Understand the business value of your fans.  Your fans are your brand’s best salespeople.  They are the real rock stars, treat them as such.

2 – Focus on ways to increase interactions with your biggest fans.  This galvanizes them and validates why they love your brand to begin with.  Plus, it gives them a better understandng of your brand and your brand a better understanding of your fans.

3 – Communicate to your fans how they can help you.  Remember that your fans are different from your average customer.  The average customer has little to no interest in helping you spread your marketing messages but your fans are actively looking for ways to help you grow your brand.  They want to help you, work with them to make that happen.

4 – Ask your fans for feedback.  Ask them what they think about your brand, and ask them what they are hearing from other customers they talk to.  Specifically, ask them what reasons other customers are giving them for why they do not want to buy from your brand.  This is incredibly valuable feedback that you need to seek out.  Once you learn why some customers don’t want to buy from your brand, you can work to correct those issues, and drive more sales.

5 – Remember this is doable.  There’s no reason why your brand, no matter what industry you are in or products you sell, cannot have passionate fans that love you.  It’s not about the product, if it were you would never see companies that create commodity products like scissors and industrial lubricants with passionate fanbases.  It is about how you relate to and understand your customers.  This is exactly why rock stars place a premium on having constant interactions with their fans and being as close to them as possible.

6 – Build the stage for your fans. They are the real rock stars.

Pic via Flickr user LunchboxLP

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Five Signs Your Company is Ready For a Brand Ambassador Program

If this is your idea of a 'Brand Ambassador' then stop reading.
If this is your idea of a ‘Brand Ambassador’ then stop reading.

Just like not every company should be using social media, not every company should or can launch a Brand Ambassador program.  There are certain conditions that need to exist within your company before you can start planning out taking the leap of launching a Brand Ambassador program.  Here’s five things you should look for:

1 – Your company looks for and values direct communication with its customers.  Direct communication is vital for the success of a Brand Ambassador program, so if your company doesn’t value communication and feedback from its customers, that’s a big red flag.  Companies that are primed to launch a successful Brand Ambassador program understand the value of keeping open lines of communication with its customers and seek out their feedback.

2 – Your company already has programs in place that organize its customers.  This could be a referral or loyalty program, or something like a Brand Advisory Panel.  The existence of such programs is another sign that your company is comfortable working with its customers, which is a precursor to launching a full-scale Brand Ambassador program.

3 – Excellent customer service is a point of pride in your organization.  This shows that your company values its customers and their satisfaction.  It also shows that they understand that customers are more than simply a transaction, and that type of mentality is vital to the success of a Brand Ambassador program.

4 – Your company has a robust social media monitoring program in place as well as a structure for responding to customers.  This shows that your company is already used to actively monitoring what its customers are saying online, and is comfortable responding to these customers.  It also shows that your company has a better sense for who its customers are, since it is constantly interacting with them.  This makes it easier for them to identify existing fans and to understand them as well.

5 – Your fans are already proactively contacting your company.  A byproduct of having systems in place that allow direct interaction with your customers is that your most passionate customers (fans) will start reaching out proactively.  They are looking for ways to better connect with you and better help other customers learn about you and discover why they should love your brand as much as your fans do.

 

All of these signs point to a company that is comfortable connecting with its customers and understands the business value of doing so.  With many companies, they hear about the concept of a Brand Ambassador program and think ‘Hey! That would be awesome to have our customers out there selling for us and spreading positive Word of Mouth about us!’  Companies that actively connect with their customers understand that the value of these connections is far more than simply creating new salespeople.  These companies understand that communicating directly with customers and helping them increases customer loyalty.  And feedback from customers, which can be acted on to make marketing, product design and really all areas of the business more effective and efficient.

The companies that are truly ready to create an amazing Brand Ambassador program love their customers and are constantly looking for ways to create more value for them.  The companies that aren’t ready for a Brand Ambassador program are the ones that view their customers as transactions, not people.

Finally, any successful Brand Ambassador program has to have buy-in from the top.  Unless the CEO is on board with creating a Brand Ambassador program, it’s not happening.  A Brand Ambassador program is a long-term investment, and if done correctly, it works wonderfully well by creating value for your customers and at the same time giving your customers the tools and assets they need to create additional value for your company.  A true win-win scenario, but that only happens if your CEO is willing to view your customers as partners, not transactions.

 

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In a Hyper-Connected World, Trust Is More Important Than a Sale

ShoppingYears ago I spent a summer working as a vendor for a company that provided lawn care products to chains such as Lowe’s.  I was very lucky in that my trainer was a professional landscaper.  So instead of telling me how to sell the products, he understood his craft well enough to tell me how to solve problems for customers.  He would tell me which chemical was best for ridding a lawn of a certain insect, and then tell me which products (ours as well as competitors) had that chemical.

Then he taught me something even more important: He taught me that it was ok to tell customers that their best option was a product that we did not sell.  He said that these same customers would be coming back to this store, and if I told them the right product to buy to solve their problem (even if it was a competitor) that they would come back and buy more products from me.

As a vendor, my job through the week was to keep the shelves and displays stocked, then on Saturday I would be in the stores selling.   Basically I would be waiting on the aisle that had our products, helping customers that came by.  Usually, another vendor from our main competitor would be there.  Typically, when a customer would walk up to him the customer would tell them what type of bugs were in their lawn and the vendor would say ‘Well we have a product to get rid of them, here you go!’  When a customer would come up to me, instead I was taught to ask them more about their lawn so I could diagnose their problem.  Then I would educate them on the chemicals they needed and the products that had these chemicals.  And sometimes I convinced them to buy a competitor’s product, but better than that I gave them the product to solve their problem.  I was selling solutions to problems while the other guy was selling his products.  One day a customer came down our isle and the other vendor pounced “Can I help you?”, ‘Nope!”, replied the customer, “I want to talk to him!” and he pointed at me.  He then came over with his wife and explained to her that he had come in last week looking for a product (a competitor’s) and that I had convinced him to buy the product that worked.  He said he had come back cause he wanted to get rid of another type of insect, and this time my company did make the best product for that.

He came back because even though I hadn’t made the first sale, with that first sale I won his trust.  Which is far more important than winning the sale.  Trust creates more positive WOM than pushing a product that doesn’t solve the customers problem, just to make a sale.

You earn a customers’ trust by showing them that you care about them as people, not as a potential transaction.  When you solve a customers’ problem, you win their trust.  When you win their trust, you will have them as a customer for as long as you have their trust.  The huge additional benefit is that trust transfers.  If you win the trust of Betty, she will then go tell her friend Sarah about your brand.  Sarah doesn’t know or trust your brand, but she knows and trusts her friend Betty.  So when Betty suggests to Sarah that she should buy your brand, she buys your brand.  Trust transfers and spreads in a hyper-connected world like the one we live in.

What’s more important today: Making a sale, or winning your customer’s trust?

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What’s the Difference Between a Brand Ambassador Program and an Outreach Program?

Influencer Marketing and working with Brand Ambassadors are two of the hottest areas in marketing today, but they are completely different tactics often aimed at completely different audiences.  So what’s the difference?

A Brand Ambassador program is where the company and its customers (fans) have a sort of informal and ongoing relationship.  Typically, the participants in a Brand Ambassador program have signed up with the company, so they are raising their hands and telling the brand that they want to work directly with them.  Most Brand Ambassadors are compensated for their involvement.  That compensation could be in the form of cash, or products, or discounts on products, or greater access to the brand, or possibly all of the above.  The benefit to the brand is that it gives them a way to stay connected with its most passionate fans, so they can work with those fans to help them better promote the brand’s products to others, but also the brand can get valuable feedback from its ambassadors and apply that feedback to the business and product cycle.  The Brand Ambassador benefits by having a closer connection to a brand it loves and supports.  Often, Brand Ambassadors will get advance access to upcoming products or projects, and get to go ‘behind the scenes’ at the brand, and are given a level of access that the average customer could never gain.  If the Brand Ambassador program is organized and executed properly, there are clear and obvious benefits to both the brand and its Brand Ambassadors.

For example, Chick-Fil-A has a program where it works with moms, #ChickFilAMoms. It will send them coupons for certain items and also promote certain items to them (especially new menu items). CFA tries to get the moms to try the items, but they also want the moms to tell other moms about the products so they’ll give them coupons but also instructions on messaging, how to promote the items to other people, etc. The customers will also give feedback on the items and brand experience, and Chick Fil-A can then leverage that feedback for change (see Chick Fil-A launching a Mom’s Valet service for moms that bring kids to Chick Fil-A). Customers opt-in to be a part of the program, it’s all about having an ongoing relationship with fans that have raised their hands and told the brand that they want to help them.

Outreach programs are a bit different.  Typically, these inititiatives are designed to raise awareness among a particular group, often a group of influencers.  For example, if Chick-Fil-A wanted to work with influencers, what they might do was identify say 25 moms that were also ‘influencers’, and fly them into Atlanta and let them spend the day with their chefs, see how the food is prepared, maybe learn more about how CFA works with moms, etc.  As Janice Person explained in a recent MarketingSmarts podcast with Kerry Gorgone (Click to listen), Monsanto brings in foodie bloggers to its partner farms to give them a complete look at the process in bringing food from the field to the table, and along the way they also learn more about Monsanto’s role in helping to facilitate that process.  In both examples, the idea of the outreach is to educate the influencers with the hopes that they will then go and tell others about their experience.

And in that regard, both a Brand Ambassador program and an Outreach program are tactics to drive Word of Mouth.  The tactics are simply aimed at different audiences.  With a Brand Ambassador program, you’re working with an audience (your existing customers) that loves your brand and who is already spreading Word of Mouth about your brand.  You want to work with these customers to help them do a better job of this as well as working with them to gain better product feedback from customers they interact with.  With an Outreach program, you’re dealing with an Influencer that has often built a large and (ideally) engaged online following, and you want to expose them to your brand so that they can share their experiences with their networks.  So the Outreach program is a brand awareness tool as well.

Another way to think of the difference is, an Outreach program is a good way to build awareness for a new product line or initiative, whereas a Brand Ambassador program is a good way to increase the marketing efforts of your customers around an established brand.

Is your company looking for a kick-ass Content Marketing Manager? I’m in the market!  Here’s my details, please email me if you have a remote opening! 

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The Secret to Doing Real-Time Content Marketing Well: Catch Opportunity When it Falls in Your Lap

If you’re a sports fan, you owe it to yourself to go back and watch the 2012 Daytona 500.  The February race is NASCAR’s biggest event, and it annually kicks off the new season.  In 2012, the Daytona 500 saw multiple rain delays that pushed it to primetime for the first time ever.  NASCAR was actually thrilled with this development as it meant a large audience was going to be exposed to the sport for the first time.  And that audience saw quite the spectacle, indeed.

With 40 laps left in the race, there was a caution that happened when a car on the track had an issue.  As usually happens, trucks were sent out on the track to clean up debris. As this happened, the race cars continue to circle the track at a much slower ‘pace’ speed.  Basically the cars on the track go into a sort of ‘holding pattern’ until the debris on the track is cleared and NASCAR deems the race can continue.

While under caution, one of the cars on the track suddenly lost control and slammed into one of the trucks on track to clear debris. This led to a huge explosion and resulting fire.  Then things got really interesting.  Driver Brad Keselowski just happened to have his smartphone with him in his car and he snapped a photo of the cars on the track, and sent it to Twitter from the race track.  This was the first time that a NASCAR driver had ever tweeted DURING a race!

Brad Kesolowski, Twitter, Daytona 500, Fire, Tide

The tweet itself became a huge deal and Brad gained over 50,000 followers on Twitter in an hour or so.  It also drove a lot of spontaneous attention on Twitter, to the Daytona 500.  Suddenly everyone on Twitter was talking about how ‘one of them race cars hit a truck and exploded and a driver’s tweeting it!’  Remember this was 4 years ago in 2012, athletes and celebrities using Twitter was still a bit of a novelty.

So back to the race, when the car struck the cleanup truck and caused the explosion, it also created a huge oil and gas leak as it ran out of the truck and down the track.  The stuff was so toxic there was fear that it would literally eat away the finish of the track and potentially cause the race to be postponed.  The solution?  NASCAR and Daytona officials hurry to the scene with a cleaner that would quickly save the day.

Boxes of Tide detergent.  That’s right, a national audience watched as Tide detergent got one of the best organic product placements since CBS focused in on the Nike logo on Tiger Woods’ putt as it fell into the hole during The Masters.  Even better, Fox NASCAR announcer Darryl Waltrip was calling the race and Tide was his main sponsor during his racing days.  So as the cleanup is being performed with simple Tide detergent, Darryl is doing what any good NASCAR driver does (even former ones) he was plugging his sponsor and singing the praises of Tide detergent.

It was the real-time content marketing opportunity of a lifetime for Tide, and it fell right in their laps.  Unfortunately, at the time Tide’s Twitter account was asleep and missed capitalizing on any of this.  Ironically, I quickly wrote up a blog post during the delay, published it, and the next morning ESPN interviewed me for a story they did on the race, and I got to discuss how Tide dropped the social media ball here.  So one brand’s loss was another blogger’s gain!

But last week, Kohl’s was a bit smarter. You’ve probably already seen the Happy Chewbacca video but just in case you did not (or want another good laugh):

Note at the start that Candace mentions buying the mask at Kohls. So when your brand gets a positive mention during one of the most popular videos in the history of the internet, what does your brand do? If it’s smart, it goes out of its way to reach the person behind that video and thank them for the kind mention. Kohls was smart enough to do just that, they drove to Candace’s house, gave her and her family loads of Star Wars toys (including Chewbacca masks for everyone in the family), and plenty of gift cards. Candace was clearly moved and thrilled by Kohls’ act.

The cynic will argue that Kohls is just trying to capitalize on the popularity of this video.  Of COURSE that’s what they are doing!  That’s what they SHOULD be doing, but the first thing they should do is communicate to Candace that they appreciate the fact that she shopped at Kohls, and mentioned them.  Think of how much money Kohls would have had to spend to get as much positive publicity as Candace gave the brand in 4 mins?  Millions.  So showing up at her doorstep with a few thousand dollars in merchandise and store credits is a very small price to pay for that publicity.  Plus, that act itself gets Kohls MORE positive publicity, as you see here.

The two most important words in social media are ‘Thank you’.  When a customer does something for you, you thank them.  Don’t overthink this social media stuff, y’all.

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How The Container Store’s POP! Customer Loyalty Program is Driving New Business With Data

ContainerStorePOP

A couple of weeks ago Adobe invited me to attend its Summit as part of its Adobe Insiders Program. The Adobe Summit is a user conference primarily for customers of the Adobe Marketing Cloud, and has become a massively-popular and important industry event, reaching an attendance of 10,000 this year. I also did a Live #Blogchat as part of the event and was compensated by Adobe for my involvement before and during the event.

The event itself was heavy on case studies from Adobe clients with a focus on how Adobe’s Marketing Cloud services are helping clients grow their businesses.  This is to be expected from a user conference, and the information shared was very compelling. Over 3 days I learned how Adobe clients like the NFL, ESPN, Comcast, McDonalds and dozens more were leveraging emerging marketing technologies to better connect with their customers.

The use of storytelling and data was a focus of many of these case studies and success stories. One of the case studies that I attended was a closer look at The Container Store’s customer loyalty program called POP! or Perfectly Organized Perks. The POP! program was launched in 2014, and its goal has been to utilize data about the members to customize their perks, whether that is discounts or gifts or just thank yous. The Container Store uses data about its members to track what areas of their company they work for, where they are located, if they are buying online, or offline.  Additionally, it tracks number and type of sales and uses this data to identify its ‘best’ customers, and then further customizes offers and perks based on being part of this group. And perks go beyond simply discounts or birthday gifts, POP! members get early access to new products and free concierge services during in-store visits.

What are the results? The POP! customer loyalty program drives one incremental visit a year per member for The Container Store. I talked to Nicole Coburn, The Container Store’s Director of Customer Engagement and Loyalty after the session, and she clarified to me that the average customer visits a location twice a year, and that POP! members increased their number of visits by an average of 1 a year after joining the program. She did add that POP! members tend to visit a Container Store location more often than the average customer, so the POP! program is driving an increase of one incremental visit versus increasing from 2 to 3 visits a year. I didn’t think to ask Nicole, but I would assume that the average amount spent per year is higher for a POP! member than the average customer.

I did ask Nicole if The Container Store has an existing brand ambassador program and she said it did not, but said with the success of the POP! program, it may be possible in the future. If you’re a customer of The Container Store, it sounds like the POP! program is definitely something you should check out.

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Why You’re Not as Good at Customer Service as You Think You Are

hyh-book-2Note from Mack: This is a guest post by my pal Jay Baer.  Besides being recognized as one of the top experts in digital marketing, Jay also has a new book called Hug Your Haters (check it out on Amazon) and this post is drawn from that book.  Enjoy! 

Whether you work for a mom-and-pop store or a global brand, you do have haters — and you can’t afford to ignore them. By embracing complaints, you put haters to work for you, and turn bad news good.

So few companies hug their haters today that those that make this commitment are almost automatically differentiated and noteworthy when compared to their competitors.

Customer service and customer experience matter. And they’re going to matter even more in the future. The world is inextricably linked now, by transportation and technology that was unthinkable twenty years ago. This global interconnectivity mutes the advantages of price and location that businesses formerly used to create market inefficiencies and gain a disproportionate share of customers.

Why I always order from the same pizza place

Take Bloomington, Indiana, for example. There are more than one dozen banks in this modest-sized college town where I live. All of them offer almost precisely the same core services, at fees that are not appreciably different from one another. From the perspectives of product and price, they are nearly indistinguishable.

There are even more pizza places nearby, and they all offer roughly the same thing at the same cost, partially because they are buying ingredients at the same price from the same global suppliers, and are tapping into the same labor pool, where what you pay a college student to make pizzas is essentially the same for each restaurant. Likewise, my accountant and your accountant and my barber and your barber are doing almost the exact same things for approximately the same fees.

In today’s world, meaningful differences between businesses are rarely rooted in price or product, but instead in customer experience. How does each provider make you feel when you interact with them? It is in the provision of standout, noticeable customer experience (the real-world embodiment of the brand promise) where great companies shine and mediocre companies shrink.

Why do I always order from the same pizza place in Bloomington? Because I live on the outskirts of town, and they cheerfully deliver to my house. Most of the other pizza places give me the terse “outside our service territory” story and refuse to bring me pizza.

Customer experience will be more important than price by 2020

The winning companies of tomorrow will be those that make their customers feel the best, even if those customers are paying more for the privilege. This isn’t just a circumstance that’s true in consumer products, travel, and hospitality either.

The customer intelligence consultancy Walker released a research report that stated that in business-to-business scenarios, customer experience will be more important than price by 2020.

“The B-to-B companies that will win are beginning to prepare now by recognizing the shift that’s taking place, aligning the right resources, and focusing on the right metrics. Enlightened companies must view the customer experience as a strategic initiative. And, in the future, the responsibility of a ‘chief customer champion’ will become more common, serving one purpose-to create an unrelenting focus on the customer,” states the report.

Outlove your competition

John Di]ulius, a well-known customer service consultant and adviser and author of The Customer Service Revolution, describes this differentiating factor as “outloving your competition.” As he writes in his book, ‘”Outlove your competition’ is one of my favorite sayings. Think about it. Nearly everything can be copied: the products or services that you sell, your decor, website functionality, menu, and prices. Can you really outwork your competition? Outthink them? Maybe not, but the one way you can get a distinct competitive advantage is by outloving the businesses you compete against. The only way to do that is to stop the typical squawking that goes on about how difficult customers can be, and just start appreciating them.”

Realize, however, that to truly differentiate your business with customer experience, you have to clearly outpace your competition in this regard. Making a commitment to “be better at customer service” isn’t going to get the job done. Instead, as Walker suggests, you need to “create an unrelenting focus on the customer.”

Embrace complaints

There are many elements of a comprehensive customer experience program. The first step in differentiating your business with customer experience should be to be demonstrably better than each of your competitors in how you embrace complaints.

Start there, and if you can successfully hug your haters, you’ll be on your way to a full-scale customer experience advantage that can literally be the difference between a flourishing business in five years, when price and location are no longer deciding factors, and not existing at all.

Customer service is the new marketing

Dan Gingiss, formerly of Discover, says, “We firmly believe here that customer service is the new marketing. Discover put its flag down on customer service since it started in the 80s. Discover was the first credit card company with 24/7 service. It pays attention to service and it’s good at it. It talks about it on TV—the last two main television campaigns have been about service. And to me a complaint online is an opportunity for us to show off amazing customer service in a public setting that can’t be done on TV and can’t be done in any other channel. If somebody is having an issue with their product or their card that I know can be fixed, to me it’s an opportunity.”

 

 

Drawn from Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers, about which Guy Kawasaki says: “This is a landmark book in the history of customer service.” Written by Jay Baer, Hug Your Haters is the first customer service and customer experience book written for the modern, mobile era and is based on proprietary research and more than 70 exclusive interviews.

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The Only Graph You Need to Know For Creating More Brand Advocates

InteractionsWhen I started writing Think Like a Rock Star, I began to research how it is that rock stars can so easily create and cultivate fans.  I wanted to know how they do it, but more importantly, I wanted to know if they had a system or methodology that could be applied by brands to create passionate customers and fans.

The above graph shows the exact steps that need to happen, and in order, to create brand advocates.  The problem is that most brands have little to no interactions with customers in order to start the process.

And to be fair, most customers don’t want to talk to most brands anyway.

But we know that we can’t understand our customers if we aren’t interacting with them and learning from them.  Which also gives them the chance to learn from and understand us.

So how do you learn from customers that don’t care to learn about you?  If customers won’t engage with you, you can at least listen to them.  You can be aware of the online conversation happening about and around your brand.

That will give you a chance to engage with customers that are discussing your brand and the greater context that it plays in.  Which means you can interact with these customers with a higher level of understanding about the customers you are engaging with.  Who they are, what they want.

The more you interact with your customers and they with you, the more willing they are to lower their guard and interact more with you and on a deeper level.  And if you communicate to them that you are willing to go deeper, they will lower their guard even further.

It’s about being committed to learning about your customers.  Not just learning how to sell to them, but learning who they are so you can understand how they want to be sold to.

It requires you communicating to your customers that you care enough about them to take the first step:

PearlTweetI’m an Alabama fan so I am required to hate all things Auburn.  But I love how Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl has embraced Auburn’s fans since being hired a few months ago.  Bruce has especially gone out of his way to reach out to Auburn’s students.  Pearl knows that it’s vital to the program’s success that he has buy-in from the students.  They will be the most passionate fans at the home games and will bring the most energy.  So he goes out of his way to engage the students, doing everything from handing out t-shirts on campus before games, to buying them lunch.  Call it bribery all you want, but what Pearl is doing is communicating to the students that he appreciates them and understands how valuable they are.  Trust me, a lot of basketball coaches do not do this, and Auburn’s students love Pearl.

Why can’t your company do the same thing?  Why not bring in 10 of your customers to spend the day with you at your headquarters?  Get to know them and let them get to know you.  The insights you’ll gain directly from these customers will more than pay for the travel and associated costs.

Another key takeaway I had from studying how rock stars create and cultivate fans is that rock stars go out of their way to communicate two very important messages to their fans:

1 – I appreciate you.

2 – I love you.

In other words, they don’t have fans because they are rock stars, this is a huge misconception about rock stars.  Rock stars don’t have fans because of who they are, they have fans because of what they do.

Your company has to want fans to have them.  And you definitely want them.

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Ford’s Philosophy on Influence Marketing: Always Be Nurturing

I don’t know what you’re into, but I’m into cars. Muscle cars, to be specific. Dodge Challengers, Chevy Camaros, Ford Mustangs—any vehicle with some power under the hood really gets my attention.

That’s why I accepted Ford Motor Company’s invitation to attend a 2013 event for women bloggers. (You can read the whole story in my previous post on this blog.)

Little did I know that luncheon would be the start of a partnership that would last for several years, and take me places I never imagined I’d go (like Dearborn, Michigan).

For 2015 and 2016, Ford Motor Company invited me (and more than 100 other “digital influencers”) to Detroit to attend the North American International Auto Show (“NAIAS”), the premier show for car enthusiasts and automotive industry insiders.

For three days, our group got access to Ford’s “Behind the Blue Oval” area at NAIAS, primo seats at Ford press conferences, and special events that brought us behind the scenes at Ford, like the Rouge Factory tour.

You might be wondering what the return on marketing investment is for something like this, and it’s a smart question.

First, let’s talk reach. During the event, Ford racked up thousands of social media mentions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Periscope, etc., and the Twitter coverage alone reached millions of followers.

By inviting a diverse group of influencers, Ford managed to dominate in terms of event coverage. They invite not just auto industry journalists, but parenting bloggers, Periscope personalities, social savvy businesspeople, and car enthusiasts.

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“We are looking for folks who are enthusiastic, who create great content, who really have audiences and know what works best for them,”explains JT. Ramsay, digital media manager at Ford. “When we bring them to something like Detroit Auto Show, we know we’re going to have great content for them to share.”

And beyond NAIAS, Ford keeps in touch with influencers throughout the year, hosting regional events, like “Quality Time with Ford” at the Aveda Institute Orlando (manicures were involved).  Ford also gave attendees tickets to the Central Florida International Auto Show so we could see Ford’s new line of cars up close and personal.

“These are relationships that we maintain all year long,” says Ramsay. “Whether that’s ‘Driving Skills for Life’ or Ford’s Smart Mobility Tour that we did this last summer, there are all kinds of different touch points that we have with our influencers that I think have been profoundly successful for us.” (Check out the full interview I conducted with JT. for MarketingProfs for more about Ford’s approach to influencer marketing and content.)

As a result, Ford maintains buzz about the brand and its line of cars throughout the year, with bloggers posting across social media and on their own sites. For example, check out Lynette Young’s post on Go Further With Ford, and Bess Auer’s post on lessons other brands can learn from the way Ford involves online influencers.

But does it sell cars? Probably some, although it’s difficult to know how many.

“Attribution is tricky,” acknowledges Ramsay. “However, I think that with some of our influencers they’ll even tell us, ‘I went to this event, I told a friend, and that friend bought a Ford.”

For what it’s worth, my last three cars have been Fords, and when I’m in the market for another, I’m very likely to choose a C-Max after my experience driving one for several months. (And that’s worth about $30,000!)

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Here are some tips for nurturing influencer relationships (and measuring the contribution these bloggers and social media stars bring to your bottom line):

Don’t forget your influencers in between major events.
As Ramsay observes, “[Ford is] working very closely with our regional teams to keep in touch, and not simply parachute in for a national event or two per year.

”Those smaller events might seem insignificant, but they deepen your relationship with your influencers and keep a baseline of buzz going all year long.

Know what you want out of the influencer relationship.
Engaging digital influencers is a smart way to amplify your reach, but is that where your aspirations end? It shouldn’t be! Give influencers personalized links to landing pages, so you know exactly where your traffic came from. Give them discount codes so you know when people convert because they’ve come across an influencer’s content.

Give them direction in terms of what you’re hoping to achieve: what product lines you’re interested in promoting, what upcoming events you’d like people to attend, what corporate charity initiatives you want people to know about.

If you want influencers to share your story about sustainability (like Ford’s “Farm to Car” initiative) or charitable giving (like how Mullinax Ford dealerships in Central Florida give all employees $250 per year to contribute to any charitable organization they like), you have to tell them so.

Otherwise, influencers will do their best to promote your brand, but might miss the points you’re trying to emphasize. This ties into the next tip.

Give influencers the information they need to share your brand story.
Influencers appreciate gaining an insider’s view of your brand (if they’re truly passionate about what you do), and they’ll want to help you get our brand message out. That’s easier to do if you give them event press kits and real-time press releases as you hold conferences and make announcements.

Remember to build relationships with each individual influencer, not “digital influencers” as a group.In between group events for area influencers, occasionally reach out to individual influencers when you have something going on you know would interest them in particular.

For example, before driving the C-Max, I had expressed interest in hybrid vehicles, so after my successful experience with that car, Ford gave me the chance to test drive a Fusion hybrid. They asked only that I provide them feedback about how the two vehicles compared.

This kind of personalized outreach ensures that influencers feel like partners, rather than shills—a critical difference to people who love your brand, but don’t post product reviews for a living.

Finally, choose your influencers carefully.
You want people who are passionate about your brand (or at least your industry), and who will represent you in a professional manner.

The last thing you want as a brand is to have someone stand up and poke his head out of the sunroof of your roped-off prototype vehicle, then wave away show staff while saying “it’s okay, I’m an influencer.”

I’m a muscle car girl, but I’m also a marketing industry professional—nice fit for an auto brand!

Which brings us full circle: muscle car girl makes friends with Ford, gets to attend NAIAS and see the sexy cars.

Who will your brand’s best friends be?

Sexy @Ford Shelby! #FordNAIAS

A photo posted by Kerry O’Shea Gorgone (@kerrygorgone) on

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The Biggest Mistake That Brands Make When Working With Influencers

SocialGraphI just came across a quote in an eMarketer interview with an agency CEO that made me stop and shake my head:

“We don’t start to work with an influencer unless they have 50,000 combined followers across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.”

This thinking is soooo backwards and lazy.  Picking an influencer isn’t about the size of their network, it’s the connections they have to that network.  I once wrote a post, and shared it on Twitter.  I had two people RT my link:

1 – An ‘influencer’ with over 80,000 followers on Twitter.

2 – A friend with 15,000 followers on Twitter.

The ‘influencer’ sent a grand total of THREE visitors to my blog.  The friend with 80% fewer followers sent over 300 visitors to my blog.

Why?  Because even though the friend had a far smaller network, her network trusted her and the content she shared.  I’ve been actively tracking referral traffic from Twitter for years, and I find that the people that send me the most referral traffic tend to have between 5,000 and 20,000 followers on Twitter.  At that size they are following fewer people and can develop more relationships and connections with their followers. Influencers with between 20,000 and 100,000 followers typically send LESS traffic to my blog.

So does that mean that number of followers is meaningless when evaluating which influencers to work with?  No, but it’s far less important than the levels of engagement that the influencer has with their audience.  And you have to dig deeper than just looking at RTs or Likes.  Look at how many comments they get.  Also look at how often they reply to followers and engage them.  You want to work with influencers that have a larger following, but who also are engaged with their following.  If I had to chose I’ll take working with the influencer with 15,000 followers that gets a ton of engagement with her network over the other influencer with 75,000 followers that never engages with or gets replies from his network.

Numbers aren’t everything.  Remember the whole point of this social media stuff is to be social.