MackCollier.com

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

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A ‘Like’ Is Not ‘Engagement’ On Facebook

Over the past few months I’ve been spending a lot more time on Facebook, actually I’ve been spending more time there than on Twitter.  As a result, I’ve seen how a lot of different brands and organizations are attempting to build engagement with the people that are following their page.

Typically, brands are trying to get people to Like or Share their posts.  An example of what I’m talking about might be a brand sharing a picture of someone lying on the beach and then saying ‘Its Friday!  Like this if you are ready for the weekend!’

Folks, that is not engagement.  How much effort is involved for me to see that in my News Feed, click Like, and move on?  It takes one mouse click.  That’s all the ‘engagement’ that picture earned you for your brand.

And yes, I understand the impact Likes and Shares can have on your page’s EdgeRank.  But wouldn’t it make more sense to actually create engaging content?  Because engaging content not only engages people, it gets Likes and Shares!

The good news is, it’s a lot easier to create engaging content on Facebook than you might realize, it just requires that you think a bit about how to be more engaging.

For example, how often have you seen a brand or page post a picture of a cute puppy and then ask you to Like if you think this puppy is just impossibly cute.  Seriously, it happens all the time, right?

But check out how a slight tweak in this approach can work wonders:

Aw….impossibly cute puppy alert!!!  But notice what they did, they didn’t simply ask you to Like the picture, they asked you to share a story with others about your dog!  And when you do share your story, you’ll also read all the other stories that other dog owners are sharing in the comments.  You’ll probably laugh, have a few ‘my dog does the same thing!’ moments, and who knows, you might even make a new friend just from interacting via the comments!   And you’ll also have a deeper affinity for this page, because they found a way to actually engage you.

Now, let’s say you are tasked with building engagement on a page about a TV show that hasn’t been on the air in 27 years.  That’s right, you need to build engagement around a TV show that most Facebook users have probably never seen.

So how do you do it?  By appealing to their fans, of course!  Check out how TVLand engages fans of 70s Sitcom classic M*A*S*H:

Every day TVLand posts a picture from one of the episodes of M*A*S*H that it’s airing that night, and asks fans a trivia question about that episode.  I am a huge fan of the series, so I freaking love these.  In the above episode, Frank is wearing a pair of hunting socks, which are heated.  Which is a big deal, because everyone else is freezing and there’s no heat!

So what happens is everyone leaves a comment answering that Frank has hunting socks.  But then something happens, people start answering the question by repeating lines from the episode.  Such as:

1 – Radar tells Colonel Blake “They’re hunting socks, sir!” and Blake replies “At this hour?”

2 – Or when Klinger says they are socks that get warm, and then adds “I have a bra like that!”

And before you know it, we are all laughing and remembering what a hilarious episode this is!  Which means we will probably remember how funny this episode was, and decide to watch it that night on TVLand.  But that happened because TVLand is smart enough to engage its fans, and to create a way for them to interact with each other.  The M*A*S*H updates from TVLand are honestly a highlight of my day on Facebook, and I often Like the update, comment on it, plus Like comments from other fans.

So when you are trying to build engagement on Facebook, think of ways to actually build engagement.  Creating a way for people to share stories, as you see in these two examples, is an incredibly powerful way to build engagement.

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The Power of Embracing Your Fans As A Feedback Channel

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

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

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

1 – Have you considered a Vizio?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Two Quick Tips For Building Online Engagement Like a Rockstar

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

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

Amanda Palmer, Kickstarter, Think Like a Rockstar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Two Keys to Building an Online Community That You Need to Remember

community building, online communityReward the type of behavior you want to encourage and model the type of behavior you want to encourage.

Reward the type of behavior you want to encourage.

Think about what behavior you want from your members.  Maybe you want more comments on your blog or forum?  Then think about how you can reward people that leave comments.  Find ways to put the spotlight on them and make them feel (and look!) special for leaving a comment.  That way, others will look at how you are treating the people that leave comments, and it will encourage them to do the same thing!

One way I do this sometimes is by ‘spotlighting’ a great comment.  What I’ll do is edit the end of the post, and add something like: “UPDATE: Jim made an amazing point in the comments, and I wanted to make sure everyone saw it….”  Then I would add Jim’s comment, plus add a link to Jim’s blog on his name.  This is a great way to thank Jim for leaving an awesome comment, but it also alerts everyone to the fact that there’s a great conversation happening in the comments!  Which only further increases the chance that there will be MORE comments!

Model the type of behavior you want to encourage.

When I started #Blogchat, I wanted to make sure that the community was helpful and friendly to everyone.  But most importantly, I wanted to make sure we were welcoming to newbies, or people that were just joining for the first time.  Because the chat moves SO fast, it’s easy to become overwhelmed.  So whenever I see someone tweet that they are joining for the first time, I always respond to them and welcome them, and encourage them to ask any questions they have!  I also make a point to constantly remind everyone that if they are new to #Blogchat, that they should feel free to ask any questions they like, because the group will be glad to help them.  By being helpful to others, especially newbies, I am modeling the type of behavior I want to encourage with other #Blogchat members.  And to their credit, the #Blogchat community always steps up and helps out other members!

Hey, all the cool kids are doing it!

The great thing about rewarding and modeling the type of behavior you want is that if you do your job, you’ll begin to see that several members of your community are engaging in the type of behavior you want to see.  This helps encourage even more members to engage in the same type of behavior, because they see that everyone else is!

Now the one problem this can create for you is laziness.  Just because your blog is now getting comments on every post doesn’t mean you can now afford to not respond to readers that are leaving comments.  At some point if you stop rewarding and modeling the type of behavior you want to encourage, your members will pick up on this, and they will also stop engaging in that type of behavior.  This also forces you to prioritize your time and really consider which activities are best for the long-term growth of your community, and how you can encourage that.

So are you rewarding and modeling the type of behavior you want from your readers, on your blog?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Problem With Experts…

Shortly after I started #Blogchat I decided to adopt a ‘no experts allowed’ policy.  I did this because when someone is identified as an expert, it’s the same as saying everyone else is NOT.  Which also implies that their opinion isn’t as valuable as the ‘expert’s’.  So if the ‘expert’ is talking, everyone else needs to shut-up and listen.

The problem with this thinking is that:

1 – Most people in this space that are deemed to be ‘experts’ are not.  We hand out that label way too generously.

2 – More participation by a community means more learning in that community.  That’s shutdown if we put an ‘expert’ in the middle of the ring and hang on their every tweet.

This graph from Kathy Sierra perfectly illustrates this point.  If we only listen to the experts in a community, then there’s no role for anyone to play if they aren’t a newbie or expert, other than that of lurker.  #Blogchat works because everyone feels comfortable (I hope!) asking questions.  The ‘no experts allowed’ rule hopefully puts those users in the middle at ease, and prompts them to be more active and ask and answer more questions.

Because that’s how we learn from each other.  If we only let the people we deem to be the ‘experts’ answer our questions, then we only get the ‘expert’s’ view of the world.  This is a big problem in the ‘social media space’ because I think we often hand out the ‘expert’ label too quickly, and we tend to stop communicating in the presence of an ‘expert’ too quickly as well.

The problem with experts…is really a problem with the rest of us.

If you want your community to thrive, find a way to get everyone involved.  Because people will stay with a community and become active in it if they feel they are invested in it and appreciated.  By default, I am often viewed as the ‘expert’ in #Blogchat.  This often leads to a lot of questions from newbie and intermediate members.  But I try to flip it around and after I have answered their question, I ask them the same question.  Now THEY are the expert educating ME.  That not only increases my learning, but it increases their investment in this community, because they know they are contributing to its value.

If you are attempting to build a community, via a Twitter chat or something else, think about how you can encourage everyone to ask and ANSWER more questions.  And if you need some more ideas, check out Kathy’s wonderful post on getting your user community more involved at all levels.

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Here’s What I Believe…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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