MackCollier.com

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Understanding the Tool Doesn’t Help If You Don’t Understand Your People

I’ve often been told that I could make a nice career for myself just by advising companies how to start and maintain a blog and social media channels. I sometimes do such consulting, but not that often. One of the reasons why is because too many companies are focused on learning the social media tools moreso than learning to understand the customers they want to reach via social media. They want to talk about what is the best CMS, what’s the best way to schedule and automate content distribution. What’s the best way to tweak a tool’s settings to get more engagement and shares?

It really gets to be depressing sometimes.

Understand yourself, and your audience first, then you can focus on the tools. Too many companies focus on the tools and ignore their customers, which defeats the purpose.

Start by asking and answering these questions:

1 – Who am I creating content for?

2 – What impact will that content make on their daily lives?

3 – What action do I want these people to take after interacting with my content?

 

Notice those questions are focused on the audience for your content and have nothing to do with the tools you could use to reach that audience.

Know your audience first, then that will help you understand which tools you can best use to reach them. THEN you can dig into understanding the tools.  But it makes no sense to learn the nuts and bolts of Twitter, if your audience is on Pinterest.

BONUS: Understand yourself. How do YOU like to communicate with your audience? The content you create has to be interesting to your audience, but it also has to interest you. Granted, this is more of an issue for a solopreneur or maybe an executive versus a team, but the fact remains that if the content creator doesn’t enjoy the process, it will be more difficult for them to create their best content. If you love writing and your audience is reading blog, write a blog. If you think better on the fly and are comfortable in front of a camera, look at shooting videos. Or if you can better explain yourself by talking, but hate being on video, try a podcast.

The point is, understand who your audience is and what you are comfortable doing before you even consider which tool is best. The people decide the tools, not the other way around.

 

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Twitter Will Soon Give Users the Ability to Control Who Can Reply to Tweets

I’ve been pretty critical of Twitter’s recent attempts to ‘manage the health of the conversations‘ on its platform. Too often, these efforts seem to set in place mechanisms that could automatically enhance or suppress content based on whether or not this content contains certain topics. It could lead to giving an artificial impression that some content is actually more popular than it is, or that other content isn’t gaining in popularity, when in fact it is being shared widely.

But I tend to agree with Twitter’s signaling that it will add more user controls into who can and cannot reply to a user’s tweets. In general, I think its better to let the individual user have more control over how it views and creates content, versus having more content consumption decisions made at the platform level where everyone is subject to the same guidelines.

The new settings will let users specify which group they want to be able to reply to their tweets, and they can select for each tweet.  The four groups include:

Global – Any Twitter user can reply

Group – Any Twitter user you follow or mention in your tweet

Panel – Any Twitter user you mention in your tweet

Statement – No Twitter user can reply

 

Oddly, there’s not a planned setting to allow only Twitter users who follow you reply to your tweets. This seems like a no-brainer as it would be an easy way for Twitter users to gain followers; Want to talk to me? Gotta follow me first.

 

At any rate, since it appears these changes are coming, now is a good time to decide how you or your company might utilize these new settings to better connect with others. Each of these settings give you the ability to improve or restrict engagement, based on who can reply. I also think it gives you a chance to revisit your content strategy, at least for Twitter. Each setting gives you the chance to reach a different audience, and as such, gives you the opportunity to accomplish different things.

Global – Any Twitter user can reply. For most companies or individuals using Twitter, this will continued to be the preferred setting.

Group – Any Twitter user you follow or mention in your tweet can reply to you. This is where it begins to get interesting. For instance, let’s say you or your company sells training via a subscription model. You could follow all your members, and then change the settings so only those members can reply to your tweets. Or if you were a popular Twitch streamer or YouTuber, you could tell your subscribers that you will follow all subscribers back on Twitter, so if they want to be able to reply to your tweets, they need to subscribe to your content.

Panel – Any Twitter user you mention in your tweet can reply to that tweet. I could possibly see a use for this with Twitter chats, where the organizer questions the guest, that way you could follow the organizers tweets during the chat if you only want to hear what the guest has to say, and the larger hashtag for the chat if you want to interact with everyone else.

Statement – No Twitter user can reply to your tweets. I think this setting holds a lot of potential for experimenting with driving engagement OFF Twitter. Think about it, if you say something on Twitter and I want to reply, but can’t, then what are my options? I either forget about it and move on, or I find another way to reply to you, likely through email. When I reply via email, the interaction changes to ONE TO ONE. On Twitter, I can reply then others can chime in and it can quickly become a one to MANY interaction, which for a company can present a LOT of problems, especially in regards to customer complaints. Additionally, it can be much easier to convert a follower into a customer via an email interaction, so I think there’s a lot of potential for companies in regards to the Statement setting.

 

As I said earlier, now would be a good time to revisit your Twitter content strategy with an eye toward these coming changes. Start thinking now about how you could incorporate these changes into how you use Twitter, and to your advantage. Hopefully we will also get a Followers setting so only the people following us can reply to our tweets. That could be the most useful setting of all.

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Over the Hills and Far Away: The Rock Star’s Guide to Building an Online Community

Jessica Northey-Shaw is kind of a big deal in the country music scene. She’s worked with many of the industry’s top artists, and her #CMChat is probably the largest chat on Twitter, she’s had artists such as The Oak Ridge Boys, Charlie Daniels, Clint Black and Alabama as guests. She told me once that one of the first pieces of advice that Taylor Swift got when she started her career was “Shake half a million hands to get a Gold record”.  The message was that Taylor was going to have to connect individually with her fans if she wanted to be successful.

Taylor took that advice to heart and has always embraced her fans. In 2010 Taylor Swift agreed to have a free autograph signing for her fans as part of a CMA event in Nashville. Taylor was scheduled to start signing at 8am, and she agreed to sign for a staggering 13 hours.

Instead, she signed for 15 hours. The only breaks she took during the marathon signing session was to stop signing long enough to perform music for the over 2,000 fans who stood in line for her autograph.

Content creators of all stripes, whether it be a blogger, a Twitch streamer, a YouTuber or a budding Instagram star, want to grow their followings. Most of them are in a race to grow as quickly as possible. Growth is equal to success in their minds, and fast growth equals fast success.

Yet when you look at how most rock stars become successful, the ‘growth’ process typically takes years. There are rarely overnight success stories.

A big part of the reason why is rooted in how rock stars create and cultivate fans versus how the rest of us do.

Growing Slow Trumps Growing Fast

Consider how the average rock star gets their start. Maybe they perform for a local coffeeshop every Thursday, or maybe a local bar every Saturday night. In either case, the rock star performs for a very small crowd. The crowds are typically small enough that afterward, the singers have a chance to talk individually to the people that took the time to listen to their music. They can connect with these people individually. They can get their feedback, and apply it to the next performance.

Connecting individually with these people greatly increases the chance that they will become fans. Which means they will come back next week and when they do, they will likely bring some friends. Those friends will connect with the band after their performance and they will likely become fans as well. As a result, the crowds that the artist performs for each week become a bit larger. Soon, they are too large for the small bar or coffeehouse, and they have to move to a larger club, maybe a local arena.

Eventually, as the singers become more popular, they can tour the state, then the region.  Then the nation. But the growth, the growth started small by connecting with each of those few fans that showed up the first time to hear them sing.  From that point, the growth of the rock stars was fueled by their fans.

Which person are you more likely to listen to:

A – Me when I tell you that my blog is awesome and you should read it every day

B – Your best friend when she tells you that my blog is awesome and you should read it every day

 

Of course, you’re going to listen to your best friend. When I say it, it’s advertising, when your best friend says it, it’s a recommendation from a source you trust.

Rock stars have always understood this.

This is the Loyalty Graph, and it’s one of the most popular features of my book, Think Like a Rock Star: How to Create Social Media and Marketing Strategies That Turn Customers Into Fans. The Loyalty Graph is designed to give you a visual representation of the difference between how most rock stars market themselves, and how most companies do. For the purposes of our discussion, you could consider most companies to be most content creators, and most customers to be readers or followers or viewers.

Most rock stars spend almost all of their time interacting and marketing directly with their CURRENT customers, or fans. They do this because they know that their fans will grow their base for them. On the other hand, most companies try to acquire new customers, and all but ignore their current ones. Many bloggers or streamers do the same thing, they create content in a way that will grow their following, but they don’t focus on developing deeper connections with the people that are already consuming their content.

“But Mack, if my following grows, what difference does it make how it happens?”

Here’s the difference: Go to Twitter right now and tweet a link to your latest blog post and ask your followers to RT it for you.

Now email your 5 closest friends and ask them to do the same thing.

I suspect you will get more RTs from your 5 closest friends than you ever would from ALL of your followers on Twitter. Why?  Because the people following you on Twitter aren’t your friends. They aren’t connected to you and don’t have a relationship with you. Sure, some of your friends are also following you on Twitter, but if you’re like most people, you follow an awful lot of people on Twitter that you NEVER interact with.

Case in point: I have about 43,000 followers currently on Twitter. I could grow my Twitter following to 75,000 by the end of the month.  How? By simply following 2,000 people every day.  About half the people I follow would follow me back, and by the end of the month I’d have 75,000 followers. But how many of those additional 30,000 or so followers would answer my call for a RT?  Few, if any. So if I just gained 30,000 followers who I will never interact with and who will never interact with me, what is the point?

If you want to grow your online community, do it slow. Connect deeply with every individual person. Let them drive growth for you. The more you do to drive your growth directly, the less influence you will ultimately have over the people that follow you.

If you are a blogger and you have 5 readers, you have an incredible power. You have the ability to connect directly with EVERY reader of your blog. That’s going to convert them into fans who will grow your readership FOR you.

That’s precisely how rock stars grow their fanbases. One fan at a time.

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Baltimore Orioles Write Handwritten ‘Thank You’ Notes to Season Ticket Holders

Coming off an atrocious 108-loss season, the Baltimore Orioles decided to double-down on thanking the season ticket holders that stood by the team.

The players recently wrote handwritten thank you letters to season ticket holders. Orioles Director of PR Kirsten Hudak talks about pitching the idea to the players:

“I wasn’t sure what the reaction would be. The guys that I spoke to about it were immediately supportive. I saw many of them sit down and start writing right away. It felt like they had something on their minds or something they wanted to say and that was an opportunity for them to do it in a heartfelt way.”

Rewarding season ticket holders for their support is something many sports teams do at all levels. I’ve written before about how the Alabama Crimson Tide’s softball team (one of the top programs in the country), has its players and coaches hand-deliver season tickets to its fans.

As you can see, these two examples cover both ends of the spectrum from a fan support angle. The Orioles are no doubt scrambling for ideas to revitalize interest in a struggling team, and smartly thought of a way to reward their biggest fans with handwritten notes. On the other end, Alabama has been winning big for a while, and no doubt view the personal delivery of season tickets as a way to keep the momentum going with its fan support.

I think the word ‘fan’ has an interesting stigma around it. It seems like a special person who loves a sports team or rock star.

The reality is, a ‘fan’ is simply a customer. A passionate, loyal customer, but a customer nonetheless.

If you look at your customers in this context and overlap the above examples, you can easily see how ‘fans’ would be present in many businesses:

  • Frequent customers to your store that you recognize as soon as they walk in.
  • Loyalty club members
  • Subscribers to your company newsletter

All of these customers have signaled to you that they enjoy interacting with your company.  If you think of fans as being ‘people that love their favorite sports team or rock star’, why can’t you think of the above customers as being ‘fans’ or customers that love you?

In the previous post I talked about how rock stars have fans and companies have customers. Rock stars don’t have fans because they are rock stars, they have fans because they love their fans. They understand that having fans is a mindset, if you love and appreciate your fans, you deepen their love for you, and you act in ways that will encourage other people to become fans as well.

I shop a lot at WalMart and Publix. So much so that many of the employees at both stores will recognize me as soon as I walk in. Yet when I shop at Publix, the employees will always greet me with “It’s good to see you AGAIN’. They are communicating to me that they notice and appreciate my frequent visits. That’s one reason why I prefer to shop at Publix, because WalMart’s employees don’t bother to notice me, except for one cashier who always says “It’s good to see you AGAIN”. Guess whose line I prefer to go through at WalMart?

Creating and cultivating fans is about creating and cultivating a mindset that recognizes your fans and that communicates your appreciation to those fans.

Every business has loyal customers who are ‘fans’. The smart companies are the ones that reach out to their fans and let them know that they love them right back.

 

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Why Do Rock Stars Have Fans, While Companies Have Customers?

Gene Autry was a rock star decades before there was such a term. From the 1930s to the 1950s, “The Singing Cowboy” was one of the nation’s brightest film, radio and television stars. He died in 1998 as one of the richest 400 Americans, and the only entertainer in that group.

I was recently watching Ken Burns’ documentary series Country Music when they told a fascinating Gene Autry anecdote. Gene Autry often toured the country and at the same time he was receiving hundreds, sometimes thousands of fan letters every week. His wife would take the fan letters and cross-reference them against his touring schedule, and give him a list of every fan that had written him who lived in the next town that Autry was to perform in.  Autry would then take the list upon arriving in that city, and find the nearest phone book and look up the name of each fan who had written him, and he would call that fan and thank them for writing him.

Another story shared involved Garth Brooks. Every year Nashville has a country music Fan Fest, where artists sign autographs for their fans. One year, during the height of his popularity, Garth Brooks showed up, unannounced, at Fan Fest.  He picked an unmarked tent, and started signing. He pledged to sign for everyone there.  Organizers repeatedly attempted to stop the line so Garth could leave, but he was determined to stay until everyone had an autograph.

He signed for over 20 hours.

When I started writing Think Like a Rock Star and I began to research how rock stars create and cultivate fans, the key question I wanted to answer was “Why do rock stars have fans, while companies have customers?” I wanted to figure out what the secret formula was that rock stars used to cultivate fans, and find out if it was possible for companies to replicate that success.

The answer was surprisingly simple: Rock stars have fans because they WANT fans. Gene Autry didn’t have to go to the time and trouble of calling up every fan who wrote him a letter, he wanted to. Garth Brooks didn’t have to show up unscheduled at Fan Fest and sign for over 20 hours, he wanted to.

The reality is, you have earned the relationship you have with the people that buy your products and services. If you have fans, then you have earned them. If you just have customers, well you’ve earned them as well. If you want to have passionate customers who consider themselves to be ‘fans’ of your company, then you have to put forward the effort to make that happen.

“But Mack, you’re talking about actual rock stars, we’re just a boring company making boring products!”

Why can’t your company have the CEO personally reply to a positive comment from a customer left on Twitter? Why can’t you send a small ‘thank you’ gift box to a customer who emails you and thanks you for great customer service? When you have a culture that appreciates and values your customers, you create and cultivate fans.

A few years ago I was working with Dell on a customer advocacy event. We had a group of about 20 customers that had been flown in to Austin and we were meeting with them all day, having roundtable discussions, product demos, etc. We had just finished lunch and we were about to go onto another event when one of Dell’s PR team pulled me aside and told me to have everyone go into the conference room, that Dell had a surprise for them. The group filed in and quietly chatted, after a few minutes they began to wonder what was happening next.

In walked CEO Michael Dell. For this group of passionate Dell customers, it was as if a rock star had entered the room. Cameras immediately started flashing and everyone suddenly sat at attention, smiling and on the edges of their seats. Dell already had a full day planned for the group, this was obviously a ‘bonus’ they had wanted to add in at the last minute, since I had been involved in the prior planning and didn’t know about it until 5 mins before he arrived. Dell wanted to communicate to these passionate customers that they appreciated them so much that one of the busiest CEOs in the world was going to make time to come talk with them.

Introducing CEO Michael Dell to the DellCAP group

Former Maker’s Mark CEO Bill Samuels Jr often said that the brand viewed its customers as ‘friends’, and as such, that shaped all its communications with the people that buy its bourbon. You don’t pitch your friends, you don’t market to your friends, so Maker’s Mark changed how it communicated with its customers, to shape the type of relationships it wanted to cultivate.

Every company has passionate customers who consider themselves to be fans. The most successful companies are the ones that go out of their way to create, appreciate and reward their fans.

 

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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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The Secret Language of Happy Customers

Let’s say you are a die hard fan of the movie Memento, like I am. Think about the conversation you would have with someone who just saw the movie for the first time last night. Most of their input would likely be along the lines of “WTF did I just watch???”

Now how would that conversation change if you met another fellow die hard fan of Memento?  You would have a COMPLETELY different conversation. You would get into dissecting individual scenes, the plot as a whole, you would question if it was really Teddy who slipped the note under Leonard’s door at the hotel, or was it someone else?

In her wonderful book Badass: Making Users Awesome, Kathy Sierra talks about how your most passionate users/customers have a different conversation than your regular customers. They are the ‘experts’ who hear music differently, the photographers who notice details in a landscape and how to frame a picture perfectly that the rest of us completely miss. They have a more advanced understanding of the things they are passionate about, and as a result, their conversations are more advanced as well.

I was remembering Kathy’s teachings when I recently heard the wonderful episode of the Punch Out podcast with David Meerman Scott as guest. First, David is absolutely brilliant and has some incredibly fascinating hobbies, so the episode is a must-listen purely for the entertainment value.

But David said something fascinating that ties into Kathy’s point about passionate users/customers having a different conversation around the things they love.  David said “It’s a way to form really strong bonds with people, around a shared fandom, a shared emotional connection. At one time I was like ‘this is a frivolous hobby’, but it’s not. It’s something that’s really important for us humans, to be around like minded people.”

Whenever I talk to companies about building a brand ambassador program, one of the key elements I always address is the need to have a way for the members of the program to connect with each other. It’s incredibly important to have people that share a passion around an idea, a belief, or even a brand, connect directly with each other.  I’ve often said that a rock concert is one of the greatest marketing inventions created. Think about what a rock concert is; you take hundreds if not thousands of fans of a rock artist or band, and stick them in the same arena and let them interact with each other. Being that close to so many people that share a similar passion or interest as you makes the entire experience that much better and more rewarding. It also increases your attachment and passion for the rock star.

So it makes sense to find a way to connect these customers to each other. Such customers are often great candidates for Customer Advisory Panels, or any group you create where you regularly solicit and act on feedback from customers. If you have a formal brand ambassador program, one of the important aspects is creating channels or tools that allow ambassadors to connect with each and become more comfortable together. This can easily be done with something as simple as a Facebook group or Slack channel.

Now, how could these special customers fit into your current marketing efforts?

Let’s remember we are talking about customers who are highly knowledgeable about your products and services. So much so that they likely will know more about your products and services than some of your newer employees. In other words, these special customers have the ability to be some of your best salespeople, if you tap into their abilities.

At this point, let’s revisit the buyer’s journey:

Buyer's Journey, Creating Better Content

The best place to utilize these customers would be in helping move potential customers from the Interested to Ready to Buy stage. Potential customers who are already interested are likely doing research on your products and services as the final step before committing to a purchase. Think of these customers as your ‘closers’, the customers that come in and seal the deal/sale for the person who is almost ready to make a purchase.

Let’s remember that customers who are in the Interested stage of the buyer’s journey are doing independent research. They are perusing your company website for specific product information and details. They are also searching for feedback from other customers. Customer reviews on websites such as Amazon are a common choice as its important to hear what people thought about your product or service AFTER buying it. Savvy customers will also search for complaints about your products and services, looking for common issues or problems that customers encountered.

Which is why it pays to engage with your more advanced customers and give them the incentive and structure to engage with customers who are in the ‘Interested’ stage of the buyer’s journey.  Encourage these customers to write reviews, publish blog posts, interact on message boards and forums.

The reality is that your most passionate customers are also your best salespeople.  Research has shown time and time again that we don’t trust brands, but we do trust other customers.

 

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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.