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How Rock Stars Will Save Your Marketing and Your Business

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Most companies have completely missed the enormous business potential of the marriage of social media and mobile devices.  As smartphone ownership continues to approach ubiquitous levels, marketers are salivating at the opportunity to market to customers at home or on the go.

This is where most marketers tripped over the starting line.  “How can WE use social media to push OUR marketing messages to customers?”

Simply asking this question shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how its customers are using social media, and of its customers as a group.  No one joins Facebook to be marketed to.  We aren’t using social media tools so brands will have another way to pimp their shit to us.

We are using social media tools because we long for human connection.  We want a way to share our voice and make an impact on the world and on others.  We want to interact with friends and to make new ones.  We want to have personal communications with people, not business relationships with brands.

Now if you’re a self-centered marketer, you’ll read that and think that social media can’t help you because you are only interested in leveraging personal communication tools in order to drive direct sales.

But if you’re the smart marketer, you can read between the lines and see that the intersection of social media and mobile marketing could be the most fundamental change in how you market successfully since the invention of  the television.

Think about this for a minute: If we accept that most people use social media tools for personal communications, then we also can assume that most of the same conversations that these people would have offline, they can now have online via social media, and with social media sites and tools on mobile devices.

In other words, Word of Mouth just moved online.  What form of communications is universally accepted as the most trustworthy when it comes to convincing customers to buy from a brand?  A recommendation from another customer.  Thanks to social media sites and tools, those recommendations that were formerly trapped in an offline world where they might only impact 1 person at a time, can now be shared ONline, where its impact could literally reach millions.

This is where the Rock Stars come in.

Rock stars have always understood the business power of Word of Mouth.  As a result, almost all of a rock stars’s marketing efforts are geared toward connecting with its fans.  Because those fans are driving sales via word of mouth.  Rock stars don’t try to ‘acquire’ new customers because rock stars understand that by connecting with its existing fans today, that it will acquire new customers tomorrow.

So now that social media has brought the power of Word of Mouth into an online world, its created an enormous marketing opportunity for your brand if it is willing to embrace and empower its biggest fans to market for you.

In Think Like a Rock Star, I close the book with this passage:

“Because your fans are the real rock stars.  Your job is to build them a stage, give them a microphone, and listen to the beautiful music that they create.”

Your fans are the rock stars that will save your marketing, and your business.

Pic via Flickr

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Your Job as a Content Marketer is to Create Superheroes

KathyQuote2Content marketing has been all the rage for a couple of years now.  Most companies are allured by the idea of using content marketing as a way of generating inbound leads.  The problem is that too many companies take the term literally and think of it as content that markets, that promotes your brand and drives business.

That’s the indirect result of effective content marketing.  Your job as a content marketer is to create superheroes.

“What the hell does that mean?”

It means that you ask yourself “What superpower would I give my readers?”  What new skill would you teach them, how would you make them more amazing?

THAT is the goal of your content.  Your content should make the people you are trying to connect with better.  Better at some core competence that is important to them.  For example, if you sell cameras, your job isn’t to create content that sells more cameras, your job is to create content that teaches your customers how to take better pictures.  If you can connect with a grandmother that has never used a digital camera and with one blog post teach her how to use a digital camera to take great pictures of her granddaughter’s wedding then you have indeed given her a superpower.

And you’ve created a new fan that will tell everyone about your site and your cameras.  Because fans generate sales.

So when you are crafting your content marketing strategy, do this:

1 – Figure out who you are trying to connect with, who your audience is. (For me I am trying to connect with companies that want to learn how to better use and understand social media marketing)

2 – Figure out what skills this group  needs, or what information has value to them.  (This group needs to understand not only how to use social media tools effectively, but how to use these tools to drive business growth)

3 – Decide on the focus of your blog/social media content , ie the ‘superpower’ you will give your readers (I am focused on teaching companies how to better use social media marketing to connect with customers and to create fans)

So when you are crafting our your content strategy, think about what’s important to your audience, whether it’s new skills, the latest information, or whatever.  Once you’ve decided what that audience needs, create content that helps give them these new superpowers that will make them more successful and more awesome.

Besides, creating superheroes is a pretty sweet gig to have!

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Skype’s Focus on The Bigger Idea (It’s Not the Technology, It’s What The Technology Allows You to Do)

In Think Like a Rock Star I talk about the four ways that rock stars create fans and one of these ways is be tapping into The Bigger Idea behind their music.  Instead of focusing strictly on themselves, rock stars focus on bigger ideas and themes that resonate with fans.

Brands can do this by focusing less on its product and more on how and why customers are using its product.  What are they trying to accomplish, and what does the product allow them to do?

A perfect example of this is Skype’s new video Born Friends, embedded here:

This video already has close to a million views in its first week up.  It resonates with us because it tells a human story, not a product story.  The key to creating marketing that resonates with customers is to focus on how the customer will use the product and why they would use the product.  This video doesn’t focus on Skype, it focuses on an amazing friendship that Skype helped make possible.

Many brands can’t make a video like this because many brands can’t see letting its product take a backseat to its customers.  The reality is, your product is already secondary to your customer, so you might as well embrace it and give your customers the spotlight they deserve.

Hat tip to Ann Handley whose amazing post on the video inspired this post.

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Here’s Why Your Loyalty Program Isn’t Working

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A loyalty program is a marketing tactic designed by a company to promote and encourage future purchases from customers.  A very simple example of this is punch cards that many retailers offer.  A local fast food chain offers a punch card and every time you buy a lunch buffet, you get a punch.  When your card has 10 punches, then you get a free buffet.  Effectively, you buy 10 meals to get an 11th one free.

Unfortunately, these type of programs don’t build loyalty to the brand, they build loyalty to the offer.

Here’s why:  what the company views as a reward, the customer views as a purchase incentive.  While the company views each punch of the card as a reward, the customer knows that the reward is actually the free meal that comes after the card has 10 punches.  The customer sees that each punch is an incentive, and each punch brings the customer closer to filling the card, which also makes them more likely to want to eat more meals at this retailer in order to complete the card.

But what happens to that customer’s loyalty level when the card is full?  Then they get their free meal, and a new card.  In other words, they now have to start over.  Which effectively means the customer’s loyalty level toward the offer resets as well, to a much lower level.

In order to build loyalty to the brand you need to offer rewards that come after the purchase but are not dependent on a particular purchase.  And it helps if the reward is unexpected.

For example, let’s say that you ate lunch at the same fast food chain in the above example, but you didn’t have a punch card.  In fact, let’s say you ate there 3 times over the next 2 weeks.  On the 4th visit when you went to pay for the meal the owner says ‘This one’s on the house, thanks for your business!’  That reward was totally unexpected and it helps build loyalty to the brand.  Which means your chances of  eating there more often just increased.

So if you want to create more loyal customers, here’s your cheat sheet:

1 – Don’t offer incentives.  Incentives don’t increase loyalty to the brand they increase loyalty to the offer to which they are attached.

2 – Offer rewards after the purchase that the customer does not expect.  The customer views this as your brand showing its appreciation for the customer’s business.

3 – Recognize the people that are helping to build your business and say thank you.  These people don’t need incentives because they are already loyal to your brand.  Say ‘Thank you!’ (and mean it) and you’ll create more loyal customers.

 

PS: Kathy has a fabulous comment on this topic from earlier this year, it’s worth a read as well.

Pic via Flickr user steve_lodefink

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The Marketing Power of Removing Your Customer’s Fear

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I’m beginning to work on my first set of digital products to offer here, and I’m pretty excited.  It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a couple of years now, but I’ve put off doing it because I was scared of getting started.  I wasn’t sure how to get started, wasn’t sure how to sell the products here, wasn’t sure how complicated it would be to get everything set up, etc.

The fear of getting started was due to my not being sure what would happen and that I wasn’t sure how to get started.  But recently I discovered a way to get started that simplified the process.  Awesome, but I still wasn’t sure what to do from a technical side to get everything set up here.  I assumed it was a pretty difficult process and that I would need to bring in someone to help me.

I asked a friend about this (someone that sells similar products on her site) and she told me an easy way to do it myself that I hadn’t thought of.  BAM, promise solved!  The fear was gone, and I’m moving forward!

You can empower your customers by reducing their fear.

Often I’ve talked about how you should view your blogging as a way to empower your readers.  You are giving them a new skill, a new ‘superpower’.  Maybe you are teaching them how to solve their problems, or how to simply be better at whatever it is they are trying to accomplish.  But often, potential customers won’t by from you because there is a fear factor involved.  Maybe it’s a fear of the unknown, a fear of something going wrong, etc.  In these cases you should still educate your customers, but if their fear is mostly or completely unfounded, you need to help them realize that.

For example in the tweets above, Annie mentions how her customers want to learn how to ride a horse, but are afraid to get started.  I immediately thought that she should show her adult customers how children can pick up riding a horse.  With the idea being ‘if your daughter can do this, there’s no reason for you to be afraid’.

Think about what it is that keeps your customers from buying from you, and remove that obstacle from their path.  When you walk into my dentist’s office, you are greeted by a warm and friendly receptionist.  Then you have a seat on nice and plush couches that are so comfortable that you’ll fall asleep if you aren’t careful.  There is a play area downstairs for children and you can hear sounds of Pac-Man being played.  And you can smell delicious fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies that each customer gets when they leave.  Because this dentist has gone out of his way to create a peaceful and relaxing atmosphere in his office that makes the customer comfortable.  Which helps reduce their fear of being there.

Because if you think about it, removing someone’s fear is a pretty awesome thing to do for them!