MackCollier.com

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Two Things You Can Start Doing Today to Immediately Make Your Business Blog More Interesting

Let’s be honest, most of us do not get up every morning ready to read our favorite business blog. I have great sympathy for the writers and content managers who are tasked with creating content for their company’s blog. Drawing people to a business blog, and engaging them so they become regular readers is a very difficult task. Here’s two strategies I use to help clients create more interesting and engaging content for their blogs:

1 – Talk less about your company and more about what’s interesting to your customer. Remember that when you are building a readership for your blog, you are attempting to connect with people that have little or no awareness about who your company is or what it sells. So you have to find a way to interest these readers, and the way to do that is by talking about things that are interesting to them, then relate those things back to your company.

I love marketing. Let me rephrase that; I love GOOD marketing. Good marketing often goes unnoticed, and makes everything better, not worse. When I first started blogging in 2005, my goal was to make marketing interesting to people that didn’t understand marketing or care to read about marketing. I did that by attaching marketing to things that DID interest them. I talked about how music artists use marketing, or how sports teams use marketing. And as I did, I talked about how those same marketing lessons could apply to their businesses.

You should do the same thing with your company blog. Focus on your audience, the people you want to connect with and reach. Figure out what’s interesting to them, and how you can tie that to your company. Think about how what your company sells can impact the lives of your customers and make their lives more meaningful. Blog about that impact, because once they see the impact, they will become interested in your content and in learning more about how your company can help them achieve that impact.

2 – Tell stories. Storytelling is an incredibly powerful way to get the attention of your readers. There’s two main ways you can do this, by telling stories of your customers, or telling stories about your company. By telling stories about your customers, you make the content more relatable to your readers. It’s easiest to see the content from the customer’s point of view many times than it is the company’s point of view.

You can also tell stories about your company. This is a great way to tell the history of your company or to talk about the values that your company holds dear or the causes it supports. This is a great way to connect with your readers by letting them know you support causes and ideas that they hold dear, or by talking about your company’s history, and making the case that your company has a long and successful history.

Here’s a simple example of how a company can use storytelling to tell its history. A couple of years ago I talked about how Maersk, a global B2B shipping company, created an incredibly engaged community on Instagram and Facebook. Maersk’s social manager discovered that the company’s archivist had amassed a collection of roughly 30,000 images associated with the brand over the last century. The images were literally sitting in a cabinet collecting dust for the most part. No one had ever thought to use them, but the social manager decided to use them to tell the story of the Maersk brand and what it does. So the brand started sharing the images on social media. This helped educate others on what the company does (global shipping), but that it has been doing that for a long time! And all it took was using images that the company already had on hand, that it saw no real use for.

As luck would have it, just as I am writing this post this morning, ProBlogger left a great tweet with 14 types of stories you can tell:

 

So hopefully, that gives you plenty of ideas for how to make your business blog content more engaging and interesting. Keep in mind that building a readership for any blog is a marathon, not a sprint. Consistency is the name of the game. I will have a blogging recap of what happened here in October on Monday, to give you an idea of how this blog is doing. Even with a much greater output of posts, it still takes a while to build a readership.

Hope that helps you!

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Depth vs Reach; Why Talking to a Few People Beats Yelling at Everyone

I suspect there will be an update in the next Monday’s Marketing MInute, but the DOJ, along with multiple states, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. The Senate has said it wants the CEOs of both Facebook and Twitter to come before it and explain why their platforms are censoring content. And both presidential candidates, Trump and Biden, have signaled that they will change CDA 230.

Over a year ago, I started talking about how there would be great disruption coming to the social media space over the coming years. Even before this, I began advising clients to lower their dependence on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and focus more on communication channels they control, like their website/blog and email newsletters. Honestly, I don’t think Twitter and Facebook will be here 5 years from now. And I think as the social media landscape changes, I would hope that how we approach social media would change as well.

Years ago as influencer marketing was taking off, I advised companies interested in this space to invest in working with  the T-Shaped Influencer. A T-Shaped Influencer is one that doesn’t have a large following or reach, but who has a depth of connection with their smaller audience.  It’s the difference between an influencer who has 500,000 followers and no real connection with any of them, and am influencer who has 500 followers, who they know individually, and who all come from the same space.

Depth vs Reach.

One of the great failings of social media has been that it pushed us to pursue reach. Platforms weren’t built around communication (which is where depth occurs), they were built around extending reach. Build a network of followers, even buy them if you have to. Share your content  Track the number of Likes, Favs, ReTweets. If you really want to ramp things up, engage with only ‘Verified’ users or users that have over 100,000 followers!

Doesn’t this all sound like bullshit? How does any of this reflect ‘social’ as in social media? The reality is, social media for years has been far more about the media than it has the social. When Twitter first launched, if you followed someone, you saw ALL their tweets. You may think you do now, but you don’t. If you are following Sarah and Tom, and Sarah replies to Tom, you will see that tweet. But if you are following Sarah and NOT following Tom, you won’t see if Sarah replies to Tom. When Twitter first launched, this wasn’t the case. This allowed you to follow people, then see who they were talking to, and meet new people through their conversations. It was a wonderful way to build your Twitter network organically and make new connections and friends. But Twitter decided this was creating the need for a lot of bandwidth they didn’t want to pay for, so they ended this feature. When Twitter users complained, Twitter clarified that it was never intended to be a communications platform, but rather a broadcast platform.

Think about that for a minute. And then think about the UX at Facebook, is it positioned more as a communication or broadcast platform in your opinion?

I think we will see fundamental changes in social media over the next few years. I think as these changes are happening, we need to be vigilant in pushing for changes that bring the ‘social’ back into social media. We need platforms that allow us to forge deeper connections with fewer people versus having little or no connection with everyone.

Depth vs Reach. If Social Media 1.0 was all about maximizing Reach, let’s make Social Media 2.0 all about maximizing Depth.

 

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Marketing and Movies: Hearts In Atlantis

Hearts In Atlantis is a wonderful drama that, when you finish watching it you will likely say “Wait, that was based on a Stephen King book?” It was, and it features a wonderful performance by the always brilliant Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins plays Ted Brautigan, a man with psychic powers who is being chased by a governmental group that wants to use Ted’s powers. Ted frequently moves to stay one step ahead of the government or ‘low men’ as he calls them.

But as the movie opens, we are in the present day and the studio of Bobby Garfield. Bobby has just received a package from the attorney of his childhood friend ‘Sully’ Sullivan. Bobby, Sully and Carol Gerber were childhood friends, and when they were children, Sully had once promised Bobby that he would leave Bobby his baseball glove in his will. Bobby opens the package to find that baseball glove inside. He soon learns that Sully was killed in a car accident, and travels back to his hometown to attend the funeral. While there, he meets with Sully’s attorney, and mentions that he hadn’t seen Carol yet, and that he was very much looking forward to seeing her during his trip. The attorney then informs Bobby that Carol had actually died a few years earlier. Shocked, Bobby returns to his old childhood home, and the majority of the movie is shown as Bobby remembering what his life was like one summer with Sully and Carol, and then later, when Ted Brautigan came into their lives.

One of the over-arching themes of the movie is the magic of being a child during the summer. So many of us seem to have that one magical summer of our youth where we made special friends, had our ‘summer love’ or just enjoyed being a carefree child enjoying a magical time in our lives. The movie does a great job of making us nostalgic for the summers of our youth. I’ll talk about this more in a minute. When Ted arrives on the scene, he is living next door to Bobby and his mom. Ted soon offers to pay Bobby $1 a week to read the newspaper to him, claiming his eyesight is failing him. Bobby shrewdly suspects that there’s more to the offer, and asks Ted to tell him what the REAL job is. Ted then explains that what he really wants Bobby to do is keep an eye out around town for the government group or ‘low men’ that are chasing him. One of Ted’s psychic abilities includes being able to ‘sense’ when his pursuers are closing in on him. Ted can also read minds, and when Bobby’s mom suddenly arrives home and yells for him, Bobby flinches, but Ted quickly grabs his hand and tells him “She can’t tell what you are thinking. You think she can, and that’s her power over you.”

All three of the childhood friends grow a quick affection for Ted, especially Bobby. Bobby’s father died when he was very young, and one of the subplots of the movie is Bobby recalling his love of his father. And in this scene, we find out that Bobby’s father and Ted were once at the same football game sharing another love, that of former Chicago Bears great Bronco Nagurski:

Nostalgia in marketing is very powerful, and I think it’s even more impactful in volatile times like this when we want to return to a time when things were more…pleasant. More peaceful, more normal. Nostalgia often involves us returning to our youth, and note that Ted made his story far more interesting to Bobby by involving his dad in the telling of the story.

Whenever I talk about creating content that builds awareness, I mention that you (as the content creator) need to remember that you are trying to connect with an audience that doesn’t know who you are. So you create content that focuses on what’s important and relevant to the customer. In the above scene, what if Ted had told Bobby a story about “Jim Thorpe, the greatest football player that ever lived.” Bobby’s first reaction might have been “Well he wasn’t as good as Bronco Nagurski, my dad LOVED Bronco Nagurski!” Bobby likely doesn’t know who Thorpe was, but he knows who Bronco Nagurski was, cause his dad loved him. Ted reaches Bobby by telling a story about a football player that his dad loved.

Nostalgia in marketing can be very powerful. Anytime you can tie your marketing messages to something else that your customer loves and remembers fondly, it’s a good thing. And if you haven’t, do check out Hearts In Atlantis, a wonderful movie. This quote from Ted may tell you where the movie gets it title from “Sometimes when you’re young, you have moments of such happiness, you think you’re living in someplace magical, like Atlantis must have been?”

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Who is More Important; Your Employees or Your Customers?

I saw an interesting question on Twitter recently; Which comes first, you employees or your customers? I think this is an important point because so many companies are focused on better connecting with its customers, but your company also has to engage its employees in this effort. Your employees need to be involved and understand why and how you are engaging your customers. You need to give your employees ownership of the process so that they can be invested in the outcome.

A few years ago I was doing on-site training with a company’s content marketing team. We were discussing their daily workflows and as I talked to the team, it became obvious that they were getting very little feedback from management on their performance. Finally, one content manager lamented “I have no idea if what I am doing is making a difference”.

When helping companies build out brand ambassador programs, I always stress to the company that it should transfer ownership of the program to its ambassadors as much as possible. When the ambassadors have ownership, they have a vested interest in working harder to see the program be a success.

The same logic applies to your employees. They need to be given as much feedback as possible on their efforts so that they can accurately see and understand the impact that their efforts are making toward the larger goals for the program they are working on. A great example of this is how GE utilized its employees to help attract better candidates for open positions. GE’s employees were empowered to play an active role in the process and they understood the value of their contributions. Additionally, they knew that there was a clear benefit for them if they performed well, ie they would have better and more qualified employees to work alongside.

Additionally, the most employees who are invested in a program and who understand the value of that program, the more likely it is to enjoy success. Here’s another example; A few years ago I worked with a senior marketing manager and her team to put together a robust brand ambassador program for her software company. This was something that the product’s users had communicated an interest in having. The manager and team were fully engaged and saw the value in the effort.  Unfortunately, the CEO wasn’t completely sold on the effort. I worked with the team to create the framework for the program, and we presented it t the CEO. The CEO, however, only wanted to use the parts of the program that he saw as immediately and directly impacting sales. This, of course, completely diluted the value of the program, as all the components needed to be in place and working together to realize maximum value. Obviously, this was very deflating to me, as well as the manager and team, who saw this as a sign that the CEO really didn’t understand or appreciate the value that the team could bring to this effort. Needless to say, the CEO’s plan to move forward with a piecemeal approach didn’t work.

When you are designing your customer engagement programs, remember to engage your employees as well. Keeping your employees engaged and aware of what’s expected of them and how their contributions are making a difference, is vital to the program’s success. Your company should do everything it can to equip your employees with all the information and feedback they need to evaluate and improve their efforts. And perhaps most important, your employees need to be able to clearly understand how their efforts are making a difference and impact in the execution of the program. We all want to know that our work is valued and appreciated. By communicating to your employees and recognizing the value they create, you are giving them the incentive to become more invested in the success of your programs. And the more invested your employees are, the more likely that they will work harder and smarter to see your programs be successful.

So engage your employees first so that you can better engage your customers.

 

PS: Apologies for not having a post up yesterday. I have been dealing with a cold the last few days and decided to take yesterday off and rest. I’m feeling much better today! See you tomorrow!

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Marketers Now Prioritizing Customer Retention over Customer Acquisition

I started to include this story in yesterday’s Marketing Minute post, but it’s so important that I wanted to expand on it a bit. Research is showing that marketers are shifting from focusing on customer acquisition to focusing on customer retention. Some of this is attributed as a reaction to the pandemic, as marketers believe customer acquisition will be easier as buyers are seeking out sellers, especially online. But also, most of us are wanting a return to normalcy and are more likely to stick with brands we know and trust. This just stands to reason.

But the debate over customer acquisition vs customer retention is one of my favorite topics, because so many companies completely mismanage the acquisition of new customers. One of the key teachings in my book Think Like a Rock Star was the difference between how rock stars acquire new customers, and how most companies do.

In short, most companies attempt to acquire new customers via advertising, while most rock stars acquire new customers via their current customers.

Now would be a good time to review The Loyalty Graph:

For The Loyalty Graph, the x-axis is Brand Loyalty. At the left there is 0 Brand Loyalty, as you move all the way to the right, Brand Loyalty is at its highest levels. These would be your ‘Fans’.  The y-axis is Size of Market. At the bottom there is no market, at the top there is a massive market. Let’s look at each customer segment:

New Customers – These are customers that have bought from your company for the first time, or potential customers.  Their Size of Market is massive, but they also have little or no Loyalty toward your brand.

Existing Customers – These are customers that are currently buying from your company. Note that the size of this group is much smaller, but levels of Brand Loyalty have gone up slightly.

Some Brand Affinity – These are regular customers, who have some affinity for your brand. They buy regularly, they probably like your products enough to endorse them to other customers, even if infrequently. The size of this market again shrinks dramatically, but loyalty levels also rise.

Brand Advocates – These are your ‘fans’. The customers that love your brand, that buy your products constantly, that promote those products endlessly to other customers. The size of this market is very tiny, but their loyalty levels are at maximum.

 

What’s fascinating about this graph is to note that companies and rock stars focus on opposite ends of the Brand Loyalty axis.  Companies focus almost all their attention on marketing to New Customers, while rock stars focus almost all of their attention on Brand Advocates.

Why is this important? When you see that New Customers are by far the largest market, it’s easy to see why most companies focus on this group. But while the size of this group is massive, notice that New Customers have almost no loyalty toward your company. So most companies are literally marketing to a group that has no interest in hearing their message. This is why advertising is so expensive, because you are paying for the fact that your message is interrupting people that don’t want to hear that message. Also note that most companies spend little or no attention to their current customers and fans, who actually have an interest in hearing their marketing messages.

Now notice that rock stars focus almost exclusively on their Brand Advocates. Brand Advocates are by far the smallest market, but notice they have the highest levels of loyalty toward the brands they buy from. Also, think about what brand advocates do: They advocate for your brand. Brand Advocates acquire other customers for you! They promote your brand to other customers and encourage them to buy from your brand. And unlike New Customers, Brand Advocates WANT you to market to them! They are desperate to hear from your brand and have more contact with that brand.

So think of the contrast: Companies spend billions to market to a group (New Customers) who does not want to be marketed to. On the other hand, rock stars only attempt to connect with the group (Brand Advocates) that wants to hear from them!

Companies spend billions on advertising to acquire New Customers, rock stars market to their fans and let their fans acquire customers for them.

Which method is less expensive?  Which method is more effective?  Obviously, letting your current customers acquire new customers for you the better and smarter play.

So why don’t more companies do this? Because by acquiring new customers via advertising, companies have far more control over its marketing messages. This need for control over marketing messages shows that most companies don’t trust their customers to market to other customers. Rock stars completely trust their fans, and empower them to market for their favorite rock stars.

Interaction leads to understand, leads to trust, which leads to advocacy. Rock stars constantly interact with their fans, so they understand them, and trust them. Most companies have little to no interaction with their customers, so they don’t understand them, and don’t trust them.

Your current customers are your best available tool to acquire new customers.

 

PS: I want to thank everyone who is reading and subscribing and I appreciate all the kind emails as well! Yesterday’s traffic was up 32% versus last Monday, so thank you for your support!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Driving Customer Loyalty, Consumers Trust Ads Alongside Content

Happy Monday, y’all! Ready for another great week, if you missed it check out my blogging recap for September, traffic up 21%!

 

Interesting data from XM Institute on how customer loyalty is impacted by CX. In short, they found that a very good customer experience greatly impacts how likely that customer is to purchase from and recommend a company. “The vast majority of consumers surveyed who rated their experiences with 319 companies tracked as very good indicated that they would purchase more from the company (94%) or would recommend the company (94%). Some 9 in 10 (89%) would trust the company after very good CX performance, while more than three-quarters (77%) would forgive a bad experience after such an experience. On the other hand, just 13% of those studied who reported a very bad experience with a company would recommend it.”

 

 

More than a third of consumers say their trust in brands grows after seeing its content alongside news. Additionally, the study from IAB found that 84% of consumer said their trust in brands grew or was unaffected when viewing this content. The larger question I would have is how is trust in the regular news content affected by seeing ads inserted alongside the news content? Personally, I tend to view sites as less credible if they are constantly mixing in ads alongside news.

 

Great recap of shopping trends for the Holiday season from Adobe and Avantis. I agree that shoppers are desperate for a return to normalcy, but also will be looking for deals and want an order online/pickup in stores option. Covid is absolutely changing shopper and consumer behavior, and smart companies are tracking these changes and adapting their service, support and offerings.

There’s your Monday Marketing Minute, hope your week is off to a fantabulous start, see you tomorrow!

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I Never Saw Jack Horkheimer in Circus World, But I Would Always Remember It If I Did

Toys form so many of my childhood memories, I’m sure they do for you as well. When I was a kid I loved going shopping with my parents because it meant that whether we went to a department or grocery store, I could probably find some toys to ogle over. And if I struck out and we only went to a grocery store, well they would at least have comic books, where I could look at the ads for toys.

But once, maybe twice a year, my family would go shopping in the ‘big city’. And in the big city, was this magical store called Circus World. When I went to a TG&Y or Walmart, at best I might find two or three isles of toys to drool over.  But Circus World was an ENTIRE STORE FULL OF TOYS! It was a magical place for an 8 or 9 year old to be. There was an entire isle of Star Wars toys, then one for Six Million Dollar Man toys. And for some reason they had a section for board games (gross!). Oh and Hot Wheels and and and…well I better calm down!

I will always remember Circus World because it was completely different. It was a unique experience that’s never left me.

Around this same time, I lived in a very rural area with very limited options for television viewing. We are talking like 3-4 channels picked up by antenna. This is waaaaay before the days of satellite or cable TV. One of my few options for television viewing was PBS, which I generally thought was meh, other than Seasame Street and then later The Electric Company.

But around 1980 or so, I discovered this very odd and very quirky (especially for public television) show that came on every night at 10pm. It was a short program, about 5-minutes long called Jack Horkheimer, Star Hustler! Every week, Jack would tell us what was going to be happening when we looked up at the sky. Which stars would be brightest, which planets would be visible, everything.  I have always loved astronomy so the subject naturally interested even 9 year-old Mack, but the format was so different from the rest of the programming on PBS. It was short, just a few minutes so I could always stay interested. And it was fun, even ‘hip’. Well here, see for yourself:

I could not for the life of me tell you what shows came on before or after Star Hustler, but I will always remember ‘Greetings! Greetings, fellow star gazers!’

The point here is, we tend to remember things that are unique and unexpected. Until I discovered Circus World, my 9 year-old self had no idea that it was possible to have an entire store that ONLY sold toys! I thought toys were the 2-3 isles in TG&Y between sporting goods and housewares. My 9 year-old self thought programming on PBS was pretty boring, until I found Jack Horkheimer, Star Hustler on late one night when I was probably staying up past my bedtime.

When marketing your products and services, think about how you can provide a unique experience for your customers that surprises and delights them. And if you do it right, you may even make a lifetime memory for your customers, which will mean a lifetime of word of mouth about your brand.

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Marketing and Movies: Ford vs Ferrari

A few days ago I noticed a marketer instructed her followers on Twitter to treat their customers as potential ‘mouthpieces’ for their brand. While I cringed at the idea of companies viewing their customers as simply being a ‘mouthpiece’ for the brand, the reality is that such a notion will resonate with a lot of companies. Many companies do view its customers as nothing more than promotional channels. This is an incredibly short-sighted view, and it fails to acknowledge the true value of your customers. And it doesn’t create the relationship that lets their talents and abilities shine the brightest.

This lesson was at the front of my mind as I recently watched the movie Ford vs Ferrari. In the late 1950s, Ford decided that it needed to do a better job of appealing to younger car owners. The marketing department (headed by future Chrysler CEO Lee IIacoca), decided that the way to reach young car buyers was via racing, more specifically, by having Ford win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of the most prestigious auto races in the world. At the time, Ferrari was dominating Le Mans, and Ford approached Ferrari with an offer to buy the automaker, which greatly insulted Ferrari. In the process of refusing the offer, Enzo Ferrari greatly insulted Ford CEO Henry Ford II, which compelled Ford to go all-in on winning the race at Le Mans.

Ferrari had dominated Le Mans because racing was the heartbeat of the brand.  Motorsports and producing impeccable racing cars was at the heart of Ferrari’s culture. This wasn’t the case at Ford. So Ford, not having the love of motorsports and racing that Ferrari did, approached its entry into Le Mans as a business move, moreso than as a move motivated by a love of racing. Ford hired former Le Mans winner Carroll Shelby to create a car and team that could win Le Mans. But Ford tried to impose its culture on the effort, telling Shelby that he cannot have Ken Miles drive for the team, since Ford wanted a brand spokesperson moreso than the best driver to be behind the wheel at Le Mans. The result was a disasterous finish for Ford at its first attempt at Le Mans, which almost resulted in Ford firing Shelby.

Shelby kept his job, and continued working with Ken Miles to build a car that could win Le Mans for Ford. When Le Mans approached the following year, Ford continued to insist that Miles not drive the car, contending he would not be the proper spokesman for the Ford brand. The ongoing negotiations between Shelby and Ford led to this emotional scene from the movie:

Ford was making a mistake with its entry into Le Mans that many companies make today when they approach better connecting with their customers. Many companies approach this as a business proposition, but they fail to realize that it’s a people proposition. Your company cannot inspire its customers to take action on behalf of your brand if your brand is attempting to view your customers simply as potential sales. Forging better and stronger connections with your customers has to be ingrained in your brand. You have to have a culture that seeks out and pushes to forge deeper connections with your customers. Not simply because you want more sales, but also because you honestly care about the people that buy your brand’s product and services.

Ford went on to let Miles race at Daytona, which he won. He then went on to race at Le Mans, and led the Ford racing team to a 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans. Ford would go on to win 4 straight Le Mans, all driven by cars build by Shelby and Miles. Ford won at Le Mans by learning to trust the drivers who understood the sport of racing on a level which the brand did not. Likewise, if your brand wants to build better relationships with its customers, you will also have to trust those customers and listen to what they have to say.

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Dominos Shows You How to Respond to Trolls on Twitter

It seems everything is political during an election year. There was a great reminder of this recently when a ‘political activist’ dug through the old tweets of Dominoes on Twitter and somehow found a tweet from 2012 where Domino’s was thanking a customer for tweeting a compliment to the brand.

So what? This brand did what every brand should do, right? They acknowledged and THANKED a customer for complimenting them. How many times have I talked about how you ‘reward the behavior you want to encourage’? When a customer leaves you a compliment on ANY platform or via ANY channel, you thank them.

So what’s the problem? The problem is, the Domino’s customer in question who left a compliment to the brand in 2012, happens to be the Press Secretary for the Trump Administration in 2020.

That led to the ‘political activist’ tweeting to Domino’s that ‘you just killed your brand’.

Here’s how Domino’s responded:

Isn’t that the perfect response? They respond to the troll, but in a way that also shows how ridiculous their behavior is.

In my book Think Like a Rock Star, the 6th chapter is devoted to handling negative comments aimed at your brand via social media. In that chapter, I talked about how you need to identify the person leaving the negative comment to your brand, as that will dictate in part, how you respond. For instance, are they an actual customer of your brand, or do they appear to be a troll looking to draw attention to themselves and hassle your brand, as appears to be the case in the Dominoes example.

The problem I see many brands make when responding to trolls, is they treat them as if they were customers.  They engage them, they apologize, and they attempt to diffuse the situation as quickly as possible.  Which often has the opposite affect, trolls want and crave attention, and if they feel the brand is placating them, they will typically double-down on their efforts.

If you’re dealing with an upset customer, that upset customer will typically give you MORE details about SPECIFIC transactions with your business. They will often reference doing business with your brand on a particular date, maybe even at a particular retail location. Trolls tend to be very vague in their criticisms, as we see in the Dominoes example.

I do NOT envy social media managers having to manage brand accounts in 2020. It’s a mostly thankless job to begin with, but in today’s highly political environment, your brand may have to deal with people who are not your customers, leaving you negative comments in an attempt to make a larger political point or to simply troll your brand. It can be VERY upsetting to wake up at 6am and see 200 angry tweets toward the brand account you manage.

Just remember to act quickly, but act smartly. Figure out what happened, who is upset, and why they are upset. If the negative comments are coming from actual customers, absolutely address and do all you can to make it right for the customer. And clearly communicate to the customer what steps you are taking.  This communicates to the customer, and everyone following the exchange, that you take their concerns seriously. That also communicates to them and others that you respect your customers.

If you are dealing with an actual troll, in general, the less you respond, the better. Trolls feed off attention, if you attempt to engage and placate them, they will just double-down and troll you even harder.  And others will pile on once they see your brand is responding from a position of weakness. I know it’s hard to remember sometimes, but the Twitter/Social Media mobs get angry fast, and move on to something else just as fast. So many brands make the mistake of attempting to diffuse trolling by apologizing to the trolls or worse, changing behavior based on their demands. This typically has the opposite affect of what the brand intended, as changing behavior because of trolling will often anger your customers, since the change in behavior will often impact them.

Always keep two questions in mind:

1 – Is this negative comment coming from a troll or an actual customer?

2 – Is it more important that we do what’s best for the troll, or for our customers?

 

If you always do what’s best for your customers, your customers will always have your back when you defend them. Keep that in mind.

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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.