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Case Study: Creating Different Video Content For Different Audiences

I’ve talked before about how you can create different types of content based on the Buyer’s Journey, or where they are in the purchase process.

There are four different stages in general:

1 – Unaware and I don’t care.  This person doesn’t know who you are or why they should care about you. So in order to connect with this person, you don’t talk about your company AT ALL. You talk about the potential customer.  That will get their attention and give you a chance to move to the next stages.

2 – Slightly Aware. At this stage the customer has some idea of who your company is and what it does. At this stage you want to create content that helps the customer understand how your products or services fit into their lives, or relate to them. This will help them understand how your company’s products and services can help them, and will grow their interest in your company.

3 – Interested. At this stage the customer knows who you are, knows why your products or services are valuable to them, and is considering making a purchase. At this stage you want to focus almost completely on the product or service you are selling. You have to keep in mind that at this stage, the customer is doing research in anticipation of making a purchase. So give them detailed information on what you have to offer.

4 – Ready to buy, take my money! Pretty self-explanatory, the customer is ready to make a purchase. At this stage you simply complete the transaction, no need to continue to sell to them, they are ready to buy.

 

To give you an idea of how you can create different types of video content, I wanted to go back to the example of how Twitch content creator @nickmercs is creating content for his YouTube channel. I talked about Nick’s video content before, he will stream several hours a day on Twitch, then condense this gameplay down to 15-20 minutes of his ‘best’ content, and post that to YouTube. Nick monetizes his YouTube channel so he gets paid by views, but if we were thinking about where this content would typically fall in the above categories, it would go under the Aware stage. People that watch Nick’s videos are typically aware of who he is, and want to see his content.

But a few weeks ago, Nick did something a bit different with his content on his YouTube channel. He and two teammates won a $100,000 Call of Duty: Warzone tournament. He then created a video where he walks the audience through exactly what he and his team did in the final game that led to them winning the tournament. He breaks down every movement, why they did what they did (or what the ‘strat’ was, as the kids say), and talks about how viewers can replicate his success as they are playing the game. This type of content is much more in depth than a simple highlight video, and as such is aimed at a slightly different audience:

Now, Nick is monetizing his YouTube channel so the content he creates is all about maximizing views. This particular video was done as a bit of an experiment, it seems, just to see how the audience would react. This video currently has over 600,000 views, which is huge, but many of Nick’s Warzone videos have more views. It makes sense that this video would have fewer views, because it would appeal to a smaller audience than his typical ‘highlight’ video. If you were to place this video into one of the above four categories, it would fall under the Interested category for customers who are in the research phase. Now Nick is making money off his YouTube channel via monetization, but if he wanted to sell personal coaching services where he mentored players to perform well in eSports tournaments like Warzone, a video such as this would be a perfect way to sell such services.

Just keep in mind that the type of content you create at each stage of the Buyer’s Journey transcends the content channel. If they are Unaware and just entering your sales or marketing funnel, you create content focused solely on the customer. When they are near the bottom of the funnel in the Interested stage, you talk about what it is that you are selling. Doesn’t matter if you are creating blog posts, videos, podcasts, whatever.

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Here’s How the Best Customer Loyalty Programs Create Happy Customers

Have you ever heard the saying ‘Money can’t buy you happiness’? It turns out, money CAN buy you happiness, depending on what you buy with it. Science has discovered that money spent on products does give you happiness, but it is short-lived, and decreases over time. For instance, think of how happy you were with your first smartphone purchase. It was likely a revolutionary change in technology from your boring flip-phone! Suddenly, you could browse the internet seamlessly on your phone. And the apps! Also, you could type on a semi-real keyboard, right on the screen of your phone!

It was all so magical, like something out of the movies. Then a few months later, a newer version of your smartphone came out. With new features that your smartphone didn’t have. Suddenly, your smartphone was obsolete. And so was your happiness with the purchase.

If buying products doesn’t give us lasting happiness, then what can we spend money on in order to make us happy?  Again, science has found the answer; If you want to buy happiness, spend your money on experiences. Here’s why this works; Let’s say you and you family have a trip planned to Italy for the Fall of this summer of next year. For all the time up till you leave for that trip, you and your family will plan out all the amazing sights and events you will enjoy while in Italy. Then while on the trip, you and your family will be experiencing Italy and all the wonderful sights and sounds. Then when you come home, and for all the years that follow, you and your family will relive the moments that you created while in Italy. As you and your family retell and relive the trip, your enjoyment of the trip will INCREASE over time. It’s precisely the opposite of when you spend money on products. Whereas your happiness with a product purchase decreases over time, your happiness with experiences such as travel typically increase over time.

So it stands to reason, if you want the members of your customer loyalty program to be happier as members, you should focus your loyalty program on offering members better experiences, as much as you offer products or discounts.

 

What does a customer loyalty program based around experiences look like?

You’re grocery shopping, and it’s time to buy cereal for your kids. They like Apple Circles and Honey Nut Loopies equally, so you typically grab whichever one is on sale.  But not today. Because you just joined the ‘loyalty’ club for Apple Circles, and they sent you a $1.00 off coupon, so today is an Apple Circles day! For most brands that offer a customer loyalty program, this is typically what it looks like. Members sign up, get some coupons, and go on their way.

Unfortunately, simply handing out coupons or giving a price reduction doesn’t build loyalty to the brand, it builds loyalty to the offer. The problem with competing on price is that as soon as another brand offers a cheaper product, you lose business.

But for many products, offering a lower price can actually hurt business. Let’s apply this same ‘coupon’ mentality toward loyalty programs for say…..a luxury brand.  Let’s say you just bought a new Ferrari for $400,000.  Next year when the new models come out, you are personally invited to join Ferrari’s Loyalty Program. Which offer do you think a Ferrari owner would be more interested in:

1 – A 10% discount on new models.

2 – A chance to buy one Ferrari from a limited production run of 50 cars that’s being offered strictly to members of the Ferrari loyalty program. Each of the 50 Ferraris will be signed on the dashboard by Piero Ferrari, son of Ferrari founder Enzo Ferrari. In addition, the owner will be flown to Italy to tour the Ferrari production plant and view his Ferrari as it is being assembled, then join other members of the Ferrari loyalty program for a private dinner at the Ferrari Estate.  The cost is one million.

If you’re buying a Ferrari, a lower price is likely a deterrent to purchasing the vehicle. Given this, Option B, even though it is almost three times as expensive than Option A, would likely be far more popular to Ferrari customers. Also note that with Option B, the experience is what’s so important.  You’re not just buying a Ferrari, you’re buying a Ferrari that only 49 other people in the world will own. In addition, you’ll get to go to Italy and personally watch your vehicle being assembled, then you’ll have dinner with the Ferrari family at their estate. If you have enough money to buy a Ferrari, the added experience of such a trip would be well worth the additional money to you.

But this extreme example also illustrates why it is so important to focus your customer loyalty program on offering a better experience than it is a better price. Let’s go back to the Ferrari example for a minute. Let’s say you wanted Option A, the 10% discount on a new Ferrari. That would likely save you $25k-$40k. A huge amount of money! But would even this massive savings really make you any more loyal to the Ferrari brand? On the other hand, if you took Option B, you would get a trip to Italy to Ferrari’s production plant. You’d get to talk personally to the engineers and craftsmen that were assembling your vehicle for you. Then you’d get to go to the Ferrari Estate and talk personally to the members of the Ferrari family, learning more about them and the brand all along the way.

Option B would give you a much better experience with the Ferrari brand, and as a result, it would do a much better job of making you more loyal to the Ferrari brand. Even if you took the 10% discount off a Ferrari in Option A, that wouldn’t make you more loyal to the Ferrari brand, it would only make you more loyal to the OFFER.  If Lamborghini came out with a loyalty program and offered a 20% discount on new models, well guess what you would do?

But when your brand creates a customer loyalty program based on giving members a better experience, it actually deepens loyalty to the brand. Let’s apply this thinking to our first example of shopping for breakfast cereal:

It’s a week later, and you and a friend are shopping together, and you’re on the cereal aisle. Since you are a member of the Apple Circles loyalty program, you have your $1.00 off coupon for Apple Circles in hand. You grab a box and smile to yourself, knowing that with this coupon, you’ll only be paying $1.86 for this box of Apple Circles. As you go to put the cereal in your buggy, you look over at your friend and notice she is buying a box of cereal that costs $4.57!  What is she thinking?!?  You decide it’s time to educate her.

“Why are you paying so much for that cereal?” You ask. “That’s almost $5, I’m paying less than $2 for mine!”

Your friend leans over and looks at what cereal you bought. “Honey, you couldn’t pay me to buy that stuff”.  “What?!?  Why not?”, you ask. Your friend then takes your box of Apple Circles and starts walking you through the ingredients, and how bad they are for your kids.  Artificial sweetener this, high-fructose corn syrup that, too much sugars, too much carbs, not enough vitamins, etc etc.  You can feel your face dropping as you learn that you were about to feed your children poison in a box.

“Wait a minute!”, you exclaim, “How do you KNOW all this!?!?”

You friend then tells you about her loyalty program. The one she’s involved with didn’t give her a coupon off that $5 cereal, instead, it gave her access to her own nutritional expert as well as a community of dietitians and online resources that educate her on what exactly goes into the foods she and her family eat. She receives education about ingredients and the effects they have on her health, so she can make more informed opinions when grocery shopping.

She points at two ingredients in your Apple Circles. “Just FYI, these have been shown to produce irritability and drowsiness in children under 10”.  On cue, your 9 year-old grabs your pants leg and starts tugging “Mooooommmmmm! We’ve been in here ALL DAY! I want to go home now now NOW!!!!!”  You look down at your watch, you’ve been in this store for 6 minutes. Your friend raises her eyebrows at you in a very “I told you so” way.

By offering a better experience, your friend’s program is able to generate more sales at a higher price-point. The reason why is because your friend’s loyalty program creates an experience for her that actually deepens loyalty toward the brand. Your friend appreciates the fact that her brand is giving her access to educational materials that allow her to better understand how the ingredients found in the foods she buys impacts the health of her family.

Your loyalty program saved you a dollar on a box of cereal.  Your friend’s loyalty program showed her which products to buy in order to have a healthier family. Which approach do you think does a better job of building true brand loyalty?

 

What are some examples of customer loyalty programs built around offering experiences to members?

Those were a couple of hypothetical examples, now let’s look at a couple of real-world examples of customer loyalty programs that offer better experiences for members. The first is Reebok’s Unlocked customer loyalty program, which launched in 2019. Unlocked is a tiered, points-based loyalty program. Meaning as you collect more points, you can move up a tier, and each tier has additional rewards. Starting with level 2, the program offers experiences as rewards, including access to special workouts, online access to personal trainers, access to cooks and recipes, and early access to new products.

Notice that these rewards are experiences, but more importantly, they are experiences that are consistent with the Reebok brand and how its customers would use its products. People that buy Reebok shoes and apparel are likely to be more active and more interested in healthy living and eating. So offering experiences based around activity, exercise, eating and cooking, is a perk that has value for members. Whether its a customer loyalty program, or a brand ambassador program, you should always offer perks that add value to the member. Give members access to advice, materials, even experiences that regular customers do not have. This creates excitement and interest in becoming a member. Which is what you want.

Sephora’s Beauty Insider loyalty program is another that has experiences and events as part of its rewards structure. At introductory levels of the program, perks are centered on shopping discounts, free shipping, etc. But as members accumulate more points, they unlock new benefits such as special events, in-person experiences with brand founders, etc.

Notice too that for both Sephora and Reebok’s loyalty programs, experiences are offered at higher levels, as a premium that members are encouraged to work for. This positioning suggests that in both cases, the brands understand that experiences can create a deeper connection with the brand, and also serve as a way to identify its most passionate customers.

Science tells us that money spent on experiences creates lasting happiness that increases over time. Knowing this, doesn’t it stand to reason that adding relevant experiences to your customer loyalty program will increase member happiness with not only the loyalty program, but with your brand as well?

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How Bear Bryant Cultivated Lifelong Alabama Football Fans in the 1960s

One of my hobbies is collecting autographed footballs from former Alabama teams. Often, former teams will have a 25th anniversary or even 50th anniversary reunion, and I like to attend these when I can and get members from that team to sign a football for me.

I attended one of these reunions for a team from the 1960s one time, and as the players were signing my football, I noticed how neat the signatures were, and how they stacked on top of each other as you see in this picture:

As one former player signed my football, I mentioned how neat and organized the signatures were. The player then told me why that was the case. He said that every summer, Coach Bryant would take the entire team to the cafeteria, and have everyone sit down, and they would spend all day signing footballs. So these players that signed my football so neatly, were simply going back to what they had done years ago when they were in college! Those footballs were then sent to fans who had written to the University requesting autographs!

If you think about it, this was exceptional marketing for the Alabama football program. The media landscape in 1960 was obviously far different than it is today. Many people in the Deep South at that time still didn’t have a television, radio and newspapers were how most people got their news.

Also, think about who would most likely write to the University of Alabama asking for autographs. It seems likely that most of the requests would come from children. The parents probably helped their son or daughter write the letter, and they probably expected a signed photo of Coach Bryant at best, as their reward. Then to receive a football signed by the entire team? It must have been a huge thrill for both the young fan and their parents!

This would have cultivated lifelong fans of the University of Alabama. These footballs and likely the letters accompanying would become display pieces that would spark admiration and the owners would recall how they acquired the football for years to come. Even today, brands do things like give children a small gift on their birthday. The idea is to create a devote to the brand early on, so that these people grow up to become adult customers.

Whenever I talk to companies about how they could better connect with their customers and grow advocacy efforts, I always stress that the WANT to connect with your customers has to be there. The tools and the tactics and programs are great, but you have to want to create and cultivate better relationships with your customers. It needs to be in your brand’s DNA to value your customers and to want to better understand and connect with them.

In the early 1960’s, Coach Bryant was still building the Alabama football program. He’d already had some success, but at the same time, in-state rival Auburn University was enjoying its own level of on-field success. So if we go back to the limited media landscape of the early 1960s, think about how important it was to create fans of your program at an early age. In the state of Alabama, most college football fans pick either Alabama or Auburn at a very early age, and rarely do they switch allegiance later in life. Most people are truly lifelong fans of one school or the other.

Coach Bryant was smart enough to know this, and that’s why he made sure that he surprised and delighted young fans with team-autographed footballs.

Knowing how to better connect with your customers is the easy part. But you have to WANT to do so, as well.

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Case Study: Patagonia’s Brand Ambassador Program Focuses on Product Design and Development Over Sales

Did you know Patagonia has a Brand Ambassador Program? Probably not, but the brand has had an ambassador program since at least 2000. This makes sense when you consider that Patagonia has never made advertising of any kind a priority for the brand. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has often proudly proclaimed that the brand only spends one half of one percent of revenue on advertising.

Patagonia’s effort is a bit different from most brand ambassador programs in a few notable ways. Most brand ambassador programs, much to my disappointment, are structured largely to drive sales. Most brands view their ambassadors as potential promotional channels, with little or no thought given to how else these ambassadors could be leveraged to help the brand.

To be fair, Patagonia does use its ambassadors to promote the brand. But that’s not the only or even most important function that Patagonia’s ambassadors serve.

When you view Patagonia’s ambassador page, you’re immediately struck by how the ambassadors are organized based on the outdoor activities they excel at:

  • Climbing
  • Fly-fishing
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding
  • Surfing
  • Trail-running

These are athletes, and typically athletes that are well-known and respected among their peers. So in that regard, you may consider this as more of an influencer marketing effort than a true brand ambassador program. But Patagonia has an ongoing, working relationship with these ambassadors, and they are paid a salary for their involvement in the program.

So when you consider that Patagonia is working with athletes who are well-known and influential within their respective disciplines, a working relationship based on sales promotion is assumed. Which makes this quote from the brand on the role and responsibilities of its ambassadors very interesting:

"Patagonia's ambassadors are known for not only being athletes, but for being integral to the company's product development and product testing. The company's ambassadors work closely with the design department to test, refine and validate products in the harshest and most remote locations on the planet."


I loved seeing this because as I've often written about here, leveraging brand ambassadors as a product feedback channel is one of the smartest things a brand can do. I'm sure Patagonia's thinking here is to put its products in the hands of elite athletes with the thinking being that they can give better feedback on how the clothing functions in their typical activities. Patagonia then can take this product feedback and leverage it to improve the product's design, durability, and function.

It's really the best of all worlds for Patagonia. They've created a program where the ambassador have real input into the products they use. This means the ambassadors will be far more knowledgeable about the product and how it functions, which also helps them better promote it to other customers. Which is beneficial for Patagonia, since it's ambassadors are elite athletes who are well-respected and who are very influential among their peers.

Now How Do You Apply This to Your Own Brand Ambassador Program?

When it comes to the influencer vs fan debate, I've always said that the best of both worlds is to find an influencer who is also a fan of your brand. In a way, this is what Patagonia has done. They aren't just asking the ambassadors to promote Patagonia's products to their following (as you would with an influencer), they are also stressing that they want the ambassadors to use their products and give them feedback after they have done so. In addition, they've also carefully picked ambassadors who are already engaging in the same type of activities that Patagonia's customers are when those customers buy Patagonia's products. So the products are getting a real-world testing, which results in better feedback.

For your efforts, follow the model that Patagonia uses and focus on ambassadors who either already use your products, or who live a lifestyle similar to that of your current customers. Basically, you want to make sure that the ambassadors you pick are people that will be using your products in the same way that your customers would. This means that your ambassadors can give you better feedback and it means your brand can apply that feedback to improve the product. 

Remember, leveraging your ambassadors to promote your brand is fine, but that's hardly the only way you can work with them in order to grow your brand. 

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Selling Your Passion vs Selling Your Product

The vast majority of companies I work with are using social and digital media to build awareness for their brands. Typically, they contact me because their efforts aren’t getting the results they need. One of the first mistakes I often find is that these companies are selling before the buyer is ready to make a purchase. You can’t sell to someone that isn’t ready to buy, and if you are trying to build awareness with customers, obviously these customers are unaware of who you are and why they should buy from you.

So instead of selling your product or service directly to these customers, you talk about the customers. Think about it, if you see or hear a marketing message, but it’s about something that you can relate to, that interests you, then you pay attention! If you want to grab the attention of unaware customers, then you talk about the customers.

In this post, Tom Martin talks about how he networks at events. He makes a point to talk to the person he’s just met and hone in on any common interests. Why does Tom do this? Because by talking about something that BOTH Tom and the person are passionate about, it helps the person more easily connect with Tom. The other person will let their guard down and be more willing to listen to Tom. On the flipside, if Tom had introduced himself and immediately started talking about him, about his business, the person would have likely lost interest very quickly. So Tom smartly puts the focus on the other person, let’s talk about you, let’s find a common ground, and let’s talk about that something that we are both passionate about. Also note that Tom adds that one of the people at the event later remarked that someone had told her that they appreciated that Tom didn’t sell them immediately, but now that they’ve talked to him for a bit, they want to hear ‘the pitch’.

Your marketing should follow the same path that Tom does when trying to connect with new customers. First, focus completely on the customer. Then, once you have their attention, focus on that common passion point that relates to both the customer, as well as your brand. After doing this, the customer will be more open to ‘the sell’, so then you start to promote and market your products and services directly.

A key element, perhaps the most important element, of connecting with a customer is establishing trust. Once the customer trusts you, they will lower their guard and give you their full attention. Think about how you interact with your friends. How much of your conversations revolve around common interests? We can relate to our friends, and we trust our friends.

So shouldn’t you talk to your customers as if they were your friends? Remember in the previous post we talked about how Bill Samuels Jr at Maker’s Mark said the brand strove to view his customers as friends, and he called this ‘marketing without fingerprints’.

What’s the common interest or passion point that runs through your brand and your customer? If you’re looking to build awareness with your customers, start there.

 

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How to Segment Your Engagement Strategy Based on Customer Type

Most companies have a customer engagement strategy, but that strategy views customers as one type and structures the strategy accordingly.

Yet your customers are very different people, they might be a part of a larger group, but there are many smaller subsets of the larger group that your company should be aware of.

Let’s review the Buyer’s Journey:

Buyer's Journey, Creating Better Content

In looking at this process, you can see that some customers would be at each of these four stages leading up to a purchase. Let’s quickly review the type of content you should deliver to these customers at each stage, and then talk about how to engage each group:

Unaware: These are customers that don’t know who you are or what you do. The content you create for these customers should be focused heavily on the customer, and light on the brand. When you create content that talks about the customer, it gets their attention, and you will need their attention to move the customer closer to a sale. When you hear companies talk about wanting to ‘build awareness’ via social media and content marketing, these are the customers they are wanting to reach.

Engaging With Unaware Customers: When engaging with these customers, remember that they aren’t ready to buy, so attempting to sell to them will be a waste of time. This stage is about gaining attention, and developing trust. It’s why you want to invest so much time talking to and about the customer. Doing so will get their attention, and it helps them lower their guard and begin to trust you.

Years ago, I worked as a vendor for a company that sells consumer pesticides. Part of the job required that on the weekends, I had to sell the products. My trainer taught me how to sell the products, and he told me to never sell the product until you had talked to the customer, and then always suggest the best product to help them, even if it wasn’t the vendor’s product. I stocked the shelves during the week and on weekends I would be in the store primarily to sell the products, as were the competitor’s vendors.  One weekday I was stocking the shelves and an older gentleman came up and I asked him if he needed help and he started explaining an insect problem he was having in his lawn. After hearing his story, I saw that my company didn’t make a product to treat his particular issue, so I recommended a competitor’s product, which he bought.

That Saturday, myself and another vendor were selling on that same isle. I looked up and noticed the older gentleman I had sold the competitor’s product to walking up. The other vendor stopped him immediately and asked if he could help him. “Nope!”, he replied. “I came to talk to him!”, and he pointed at me. He then told me how the product I had suggested worked for him then asked me to tell him about the products MY company sold! Remember when you craft an engagement and content strategy for Unaware customers, that you want to focus on the customer because you want to get their attention, and you want to build trust with them. A hard sell at this point will turn them off immediately.

 

Slightly Aware: These are customers who are beginning to understand who your brand is, and what it does. Content aimed at these customers should help them understand how your brand’s products and services fit into their lives. So at this stage, you want to shift your content a bit to begin to discuss your product and services, but in the context of ‘Here’s how our stuff can help you”. In that way you are communicating that you know and understand who the customer is, and also that you know how your products and services can help them.

Engaging With Slightly Aware Customers: Here, you want to remind the customers how your products and services fit into their lives and IMPROVE their lives.

A good example of this is using a Twitter chat to talk about the larger topic that’s relevant to both your brand, and your customers.  Marriott has a #ParadiseChat, which is focused on travel, but in the context of the chat, Marriott can help establish the link between traveling, and staying at a Marriott hotel or resort. The Twitter chat also gives Marriott’s social media team a way to engage directly with potential customer before, during and after the chat, giving them more information about the brand’s offerings and how they could fit into the customer’s future travel plans.

 

Interested: Customers at this stage are now considering making a purchase. So your content should shift more toward the product itself. NOW is when you can FINALLY start to sell your brand’s products and services. Customers at this stage are doing research in your products and services and those of your competitors, before making a purchase decision.

How to Engage With Interested Customers: Customers at this stage will be doing research, so you want to engage with them in a way that helps them get the information they need. These customers will be consulting online reviews on sites such as Amazon, so if you have a current brand ambassador or loyalty program, you want to encourage its members to write reviews on sites such as Amazon for any of your products and services that they use.

Another example of how you can engage these customers is by giving them better access to product information. Taylor Guitars began to notice in its retail stores that customers would inspect a guitar in the store, but when they saw the price, they would often put the guitar back and decide to go home to do more research. Taylor Guitars took this customer behavior into account, and incorporated research tools into its smartphone app. This gives customers access to better product information in store, and can help them justify the purchase. Too many companies attempt to change customer behavior, when the smart play is to accept customer behavior and work with it, not against it.

 

Ready to Buy! Customers at this stage are…ready to buy! Your content should do one thing, help them complete the sale.

How to Engage With Customers Who Are Ready to Buy: Sell to them. Don’t ask them to sign up for your newsletter or follow your brand on social media, just help them complete the purchase because that’s all the customer is interested in doing.

 

As you can see, your engagement strategy can’t be ‘one size fits all’, because you don’t have just one type of customer. You have to take into account what type of customer you are attempting to engage with at any touchpoint, and adjust your engagement strategy accordingly.

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Research: How to Create Loyal Customers and Reduce Customer Churn Rate

Yotpo recently surveyed 2,000 American shoppers to learn their views on brands and brand loyalty.  The results gave some interesting insights into brand loyalty in 2018, so I wanted to highlight some of the findings:

Despite the growing importance of customer experience, product is still both the point of entry and departure for brand loyalty. 55.3% of consumers are brand loyal because they love the product, and poor product quality is the number one reason why a brand would lose a loyal customer (51.3%). This echoes the success of modern direct-to-consumer brands that rose to fame thanks to “hero products,” including UNTUCKit, Quip, and Away Travel.

Second to poor product, sub-par customer service will drive away 23.5% of loyal customers, meaning that even for brands with ground-breaking products, the surrounding experience is still paramount.

No big shock here, great products drive higher levels of loyalty. Or put another way, a great social media strategy will not save you if you have a terrible product.

However, I don’t think it can be overlooked that every touchpoint between the brand and customer impacts loyalty. The product may have the most bearing on driving loyalty, but if the customer also receives an exceptional brand experience along every touchpoint, that will also greatly impact how favorable the customer views the product.

88% of Customers Say They Need at Least Three Purchases Before They Feel ‘Loyal’ Toward a Brand

The survey further revealed that the bar for brand loyalty is high — a repeat purchase or two doesn’t mean you have a new brand fan. In fact, 37% of consumers say that it takes five or more purchases for them to consider themselves loyal to a brand.

Bringing back a customer five times is no small feat as consumer demands grow: 67.3% of shoppers expect 24/7 customer service, while 71.0%  anticipate more frequent discounting and 58.4% seek out free shipping in exchange for their loyalty.

Of the respondents:

  • 37% said five or more purchases were necessary before they were loyal to a brand
  • 33% said brand loyaty took three purchases
  • 17.67% said brand loyalty took four purchases

To me, these figures seemed a bit high.  I know from my personal experience, if any brand can get me to buy its product for the third time, I consider myself to be loyal to that product enough to continue buying it. On the other hand, if my first experience with a product is subpar, and very unlikely to buy it again if I have other options.

The Benefits of Loyal Customers

The survey also had three key findings for the value to brands of loyal customers:

1 – 60% of respondents will promote their favorite brands to friends and family (creating additional Word of Mouth)

One of the things I always advise clients to do is to give your advocates the tools and training to better promote your brand. When we find a brand we love, we want to share that love with others.  It’s like discovering something cool and wanting to share it with others, not only to help them, but to feel good about sharing something useful. Happy customers tell other customers about you.  Give them the tools to more easily do so.

2 – 52.3% of loyal customers will join a rewards program

This makes complete sense. Loyal customers want to be rewarded for their loyalty, so it follows that they would be more likely to join a rewards program. However, what most brands don’t realize is that reward programs members are often good candidates for your brand advocacy efforts. Whenever I work with companies who are interested in building a program for advocates, the first thing I ask is if they have a rewards program. That’s because the most active and passionate members of your rewards program are often good candidates to participate in a brand advocacy or customer advisory group that your brand may be considering. This also makes the whole issue of finding and identifying potential advocates much easier. So if you already have a rewards program, start there in your search for your brand advocates.

3 – 39.4% of respondents will continue to buy from brands they are loyal to even if cheaper options are available

Loyal customers are trusting customers. They trust their favorite brands and want to SUPPORT those brands. Price is less important to them, they are willing to pay a bit more for a product from a brand they trust and believe in. This is why it’s so important to create a situation where customers are more likely to become loyal. For instance, combine this with the above data concerning how many purchases are necessary for the customer to consider themselves ‘loyal’ to your brand. If you know that four purchases is the magic number for your brand before loyalty is attained, then you need to think about what you can do to convince the customer during those first three purchases to commit to another one. Think of it as identifying the point at which customers leave The Loyalty Funnel. Find the hole, and plug it!

 

A lot of interesting information and data from the study, which you can find here.

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What’s Next For Blogging? Delivering Personalized Content Based on Visitor Intent

Recently I’ve been discussing how blogging will have a bit of a Renaissance soon as users move away from a centralized experience (social media sites like Twitter and Facebook) and back to a decentralized experience (like blogging). I believe blogging will become popular again as we look for ways to better gain control of the data we share and the content we create. Additionally, the functionality of blogs has continued to increase and improve. Ten years ago, blogs were little more than a writing area and one sidebar. Now, you can completely customize a blog’s layout and functionality so that the line between blog and high-end website is completely blurred.

But one area where blogs have lagged a bit is in providing personalized content to each visitor. Every visitor is different and is looking for different content for different reasons. What blogging platforms and technology need to improve upon is taking visitor signals and translating that into intent and creating the content that the visitor expects. This can be done at a source level such as social media vs search, or based on search terms. Or it could change based on the landing page/post.

This is already happening a bit, I’ve been tinkering with a couple of plugins that attempt to address the content customization issue. The first is Thrive Leads (affiliate link). It lets me control where my newsletter signup popup appears. For example, I wrote a few posts in 2012 on how to write and publish a book. These posts are very popular among aspiring authors, and I get a ton of search traffic to both of them. But most of the people that would read these posts are not the potential clients that I would want subscribing to my newsletter, so Leads lets me turn off the newsletter popup on those pages, so I won’t get subscribers from those posts.

Another plugin I’ve been experimenting with is Clever Widgets (affiliate link). Clever Widgets allows you to customize the widgets that are displayed for every post or page. So if someone visits a particular sales page, you can customize the widget areas on that page to either complete the sale, or give more information about the product, or even include a live chat widget to attempt to close the sale. Or if someone visits your blog’s homepage where your latest posts are, you could serve up widgets that are designed to encourage them to become a subscriber, or view your most popular posts.

As you can see, even these content personalization options are fairly limited, but it’s a start. Definitely check out the two plugins I’m using, but also give more thought to who your visitors are, and what content they are looking for when they visit your blog. For most bloggers, at least 50% of their traffic will be from search engines. People coming from search engines are looking for specific information, and if they don’t immediately find it on the post they land on, they will leave. Check your WordPress dashboard, if you use a plugin like Jetpack (affiliate link) you can see which search terms visitors are using to find your blog. This also gives you a better sense of what information they are looking for when they arrive on your blog.

Besides focusing on visitors arriving via search, also consider that many visitors to your blog will arrive via a mobile device. This adds another layer of complexity as mobile users are far less ‘sticky’ and will quickly leave a site if they don’t get the information or experience they were expecting. It is imperative that your blog displays correctly on mobile devices including tablets and smartphones. For many publishers, mobile traffic has now reached a tipping point where it has passed desktop traffic, so you can no longer ignore mobile users. Make sure that your theme is responsive, and make a point to regularly load and navigate your blog on your smartphone. If you can’t figure out how to properly view and navigate your own blog on your smartphone, the odds are your visitors can’t either.

Soon, CMSs will seamlessly integrate machine learning to create personalized content experiences for visitors on the fly, which we can all use. Until that day arrives, think about what you can start doing now to give every visitor the content experience they are expecting.

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Social Media is Destroying Our Ability to Create Impactful Content and Meaningful Connections

Go scan your timeline on Twitter or your news feed on Facebook.  Look at the articles being shared, and more importantly, look at the headlines.

After a while, you’ll begin to notice something. The headlines are written in a way to attract people that are already on Twitter and Facebook.  This is important, because the content is created in a way to attract people from social media sites, instead of creating content that appeals to your blog’s current readers and subscribers.

Social media has trained us to chase bigger numbers.  We want to go ‘viral’, we want more social shares, we want that flood of visitors from Twitter that gives our analytics a nice hockey stick.

But there’s a trade-off in this approach, and it’s one that a lot of us haven’t really thought about. If you chase new readers, what impact does that have on your current ones?  Because when you chase new readers, you change the way you create content.  You create content that will be more likely to ‘go viral’ on Twitter and Facebook.  When in reality, you should continue to create content that your CURRENT readers love.

We rail on companies for trying to acquire new customers and ignoring their current, loyal customers.  But it could be said that we do the same thing with our own content.  We chase more shares, more visitors, when we should be delighting the people that are ALREADY reading and enjoying our content.

A few months ago I was listening to Rush Limbaugh, and he said that social media has nothing to do with the success of his radio show.  He said he built it before social media, and even now, he’s not on Twitter at all.  He does repost show updates on Facebook, but that’s all designed to drive people off Facebook and back to his website.  He said if social media went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t affect his show in the least. And he has the most popular radio show in the country.

Seth Godin really doesn’t use social media either. He blogs every day, and every one of his pithy posts gets thousands of social shares. For years he wasn’t even on social media. He now does have a Twitter account for his blog, but all it does is repost his daily blog posts.

Rush and Seth are both great marketers and both highly successful.  And neither really uses social media in any meaningful way.  Certainly, neither is creating content that’s tailored to sharing on social media. Now you can easily say that both of them built their following BEFORE Twitter and Facebook, and therefore don’t need either of them. And you’d be right. But the point is, neither is altering their content to leverage social media.

I think there’s a lesson in that for the rest of us. I was looking back at my early blogging from 2006 and 2007, before I joined Twitter or Facebook. I blogged in a completely different style, it was almost like every day I was writing a letter to friends. As a result, I had a devoted community of readers, many of which commented on every post I wrote, and we had wonderful discussions in the comments section. Then, I would go and read their blogs and leave comments as well.

When social media sites came along, the conversations for many of us moved from our blogs to those social media sites. We lament how commenting fell off a cliff on our blogs, as it was ‘just easier’ on everyone to comment on Facebook and Twitter.

But along the way, we also changed the way we created content, and that change in the way we create content had an even bigger impact on dampening the number of comments on our blogs. We stopped writing in a way to elicit conversations. We trust people that we understand, and we understand people we can connect with. Those connections start by creating content that helps us be vulnerable and accessible to our readers. Ironically, this is the very type of content that the ‘experts’ have told us not to create.  Don’t inject too much ‘personality’ into your posts, you don’t want to offend potential customers or clients. Focus solely on business, don’t blog about your passions, that’s being ‘off-topic’.

The reality is, the only true value you get from your blogging is in the connections that you make. It doesn’t matter if you are a personal blogger or if you blog for business. I can tie about 80% of the business I’ve gotten over the last 10 years of consulting to about 10 people. Those are all people that I made connections with over time, via my blog. Maybe once every 6-12 months do I get someone that I don’t know who comes to my blog from a search engine, and we end up doing business. Almost all of my customers know ME first, then trust me, then decide to do business with me.

What if there were no social media sites? What if you could only create content on your blog, and that was the only way you could connect with potential customers and potential friends?

Would that change the way you created content? Would you go from focusing on increasing social shares, to increasing subscribers and readers?

I bet you would. I know I am.

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This is Why a Brand Ambassador Program is Your Best Way to Acquire New Customers

In 2013, Forrester did a study into which forms of content were most trusted by American shoppers. In short, Forrester found that if content originates from a customer or 3rd-party source, it is far more trusted than any content that originates from a brand.

The most trusted form of content was product recommendations from friends and family (70% of shoppers trusted).  Second was professionally written online reviews (55%) and third was consumer reviews (46%).

Communications directly from the brand were far less trusted:

  • Text messages from a brand – 9%
  • Ads on websites – 10%
  • Information on mobile apps from brands – 12%
  • Social media content from brands – 15%
  • Emails from brands – 18%

Clearly, the most trusted forms of content originate from the customer, the least-trusted forms of content originate from the brand. So why do most brands spend billions on creating the least-trusted form of content, while all but ignoring the most trusted form (content from customers)?  Why don’t more brands let their marketing messages flow through their customers?

In my experience, there’s two main reasons why most companies don’t leverage customer to customer communication:

1 – Most brands prefer to advertise for customers because they want total control over messaging. It’s that simple. Even if the messaging is far less effective (driving up costs exponentially), most brands will pay more to have more control over what the message is and how it is delivered.

2 – Most brands don’t understand their customers well enough to trust them to communicate on their behalf. Almost all interactions that the average brand has with its customers flow through customer service, and then it is a numbers game. Get the customer off the line as quickly as possible and move onto the next call. A wonderful chance to better interact with and understand its customers is often lost.

 

So the most trusted content originates from customers, the least-trusted content originates from the brand.  How does your brand manage this disconnect?

By building a brand ambassador program that lets you manage the message that your customers share with other customers. A brand ambassador program is a program that allows you to have an ongoing working relationship with your most passionate customers. This comes in many forms, but one of them includes working with your customers to help them better promote your brand. Your best customers are already promoting your brand naturally, by working with them directly you can give them the tools and guidance to improve their efforts and make them more effective and efficient.

Which also improves your ability to acquire new customers, since customer recommendations are the most trusted form of content, by letting your customers engage with other customers, you gain new customers. And the best part is, the customer acquisition comes at a much lower cost than if your brand invests in traditional advertising. Plus, a brand ambassador program allows your brand to have more control over its marketing messages between customers.

Look at Patagonia’s Worn Wear program that we discussed here yesterday. Think of the positive word of mouth that this program creates for Patagonia. Patagonia has created a way to connect directly with its customers, and during its road trip stops, it also gives Patagonia customers a way to connect with each other and share their love of the Patagonia brand.

This is a great example of why it makes sense to create a customer-centric program like a brand ambassador program.  You bring your customers in touch with the brand, and with each other. Those connections spark understanding, which sparks trust, which sparks advocacy.

And that creates word of mouth. Which means your happy customers are acquiring new customers for you.

Want to create happy customers by optimizing your digital and content strategies? Check out my Digital Optimization Playbook!