MackCollier.com

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How The Container Store’s POP! Customer Loyalty Program is Driving New Business With Data

ContainerStorePOP

A couple of weeks ago Adobe invited me to attend its Summit as part of its Adobe Insiders Program. The Adobe Summit is a user conference primarily for customers of the Adobe Marketing Cloud, and has become a massively-popular and important industry event, reaching an attendance of 10,000 this year. I also did a Live #Blogchat as part of the event and was compensated by Adobe for my involvement before and during the event.

The event itself was heavy on case studies from Adobe clients with a focus on how Adobe’s Marketing Cloud services are helping clients grow their businesses.  This is to be expected from a user conference, and the information shared was very compelling. Over 3 days I learned how Adobe clients like the NFL, ESPN, Comcast, McDonalds and dozens more were leveraging emerging marketing technologies to better connect with their customers.

The use of storytelling and data was a focus of many of these case studies and success stories. One of the case studies that I attended was a closer look at The Container Store’s customer loyalty program called POP! or Perfectly Organized Perks. The POP! program was launched in 2014, and its goal has been to utilize data about the members to customize their perks, whether that is discounts or gifts or just thank yous. The Container Store uses data about its members to track what areas of their company they work for, where they are located, if they are buying online, or offline.  Additionally, it tracks number and type of sales and uses this data to identify its ‘best’ customers, and then further customizes offers and perks based on being part of this group. And perks go beyond simply discounts or birthday gifts, POP! members get early access to new products and free concierge services during in-store visits.

What are the results? The POP! customer loyalty program drives one incremental visit a year per member for The Container Store. I talked to Nicole Coburn, The Container Store’s Director of Customer Engagement and Loyalty after the session, and she clarified to me that the average customer visits a location twice a year, and that POP! members increased their number of visits by an average of 1 a year after joining the program. She did add that POP! members tend to visit a Container Store location more often than the average customer, so the POP! program is driving an increase of one incremental visit versus increasing from 2 to 3 visits a year. I didn’t think to ask Nicole, but I would assume that the average amount spent per year is higher for a POP! member than the average customer.

I did ask Nicole if The Container Store has an existing brand ambassador program and she said it did not, but said with the success of the POP! program, it may be possible in the future. If you’re a customer of The Container Store, it sounds like the POP! program is definitely something you should check out.

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Why You’re Not as Good at Customer Service as You Think You Are

hyh-book-2Note from Mack: This is a guest post by my pal Jay Baer.  Besides being recognized as one of the top experts in digital marketing, Jay also has a new book called Hug Your Haters (check it out on Amazon) and this post is drawn from that book.  Enjoy! 

Whether you work for a mom-and-pop store or a global brand, you do have haters — and you can’t afford to ignore them. By embracing complaints, you put haters to work for you, and turn bad news good.

So few companies hug their haters today that those that make this commitment are almost automatically differentiated and noteworthy when compared to their competitors.

Customer service and customer experience matter. And they’re going to matter even more in the future. The world is inextricably linked now, by transportation and technology that was unthinkable twenty years ago. This global interconnectivity mutes the advantages of price and location that businesses formerly used to create market inefficiencies and gain a disproportionate share of customers.

Why I always order from the same pizza place

Take Bloomington, Indiana, for example. There are more than one dozen banks in this modest-sized college town where I live. All of them offer almost precisely the same core services, at fees that are not appreciably different from one another. From the perspectives of product and price, they are nearly indistinguishable.

There are even more pizza places nearby, and they all offer roughly the same thing at the same cost, partially because they are buying ingredients at the same price from the same global suppliers, and are tapping into the same labor pool, where what you pay a college student to make pizzas is essentially the same for each restaurant. Likewise, my accountant and your accountant and my barber and your barber are doing almost the exact same things for approximately the same fees.

In today’s world, meaningful differences between businesses are rarely rooted in price or product, but instead in customer experience. How does each provider make you feel when you interact with them? It is in the provision of standout, noticeable customer experience (the real-world embodiment of the brand promise) where great companies shine and mediocre companies shrink.

Why do I always order from the same pizza place in Bloomington? Because I live on the outskirts of town, and they cheerfully deliver to my house. Most of the other pizza places give me the terse “outside our service territory” story and refuse to bring me pizza.

Customer experience will be more important than price by 2020

The winning companies of tomorrow will be those that make their customers feel the best, even if those customers are paying more for the privilege. This isn’t just a circumstance that’s true in consumer products, travel, and hospitality either.

The customer intelligence consultancy Walker released a research report that stated that in business-to-business scenarios, customer experience will be more important than price by 2020.

“The B-to-B companies that will win are beginning to prepare now by recognizing the shift that’s taking place, aligning the right resources, and focusing on the right metrics. Enlightened companies must view the customer experience as a strategic initiative. And, in the future, the responsibility of a ‘chief customer champion’ will become more common, serving one purpose-to create an unrelenting focus on the customer,” states the report.

Outlove your competition

John Di]ulius, a well-known customer service consultant and adviser and author of The Customer Service Revolution, describes this differentiating factor as “outloving your competition.” As he writes in his book, ‘”Outlove your competition’ is one of my favorite sayings. Think about it. Nearly everything can be copied: the products or services that you sell, your decor, website functionality, menu, and prices. Can you really outwork your competition? Outthink them? Maybe not, but the one way you can get a distinct competitive advantage is by outloving the businesses you compete against. The only way to do that is to stop the typical squawking that goes on about how difficult customers can be, and just start appreciating them.”

Realize, however, that to truly differentiate your business with customer experience, you have to clearly outpace your competition in this regard. Making a commitment to “be better at customer service” isn’t going to get the job done. Instead, as Walker suggests, you need to “create an unrelenting focus on the customer.”

Embrace complaints

There are many elements of a comprehensive customer experience program. The first step in differentiating your business with customer experience should be to be demonstrably better than each of your competitors in how you embrace complaints.

Start there, and if you can successfully hug your haters, you’ll be on your way to a full-scale customer experience advantage that can literally be the difference between a flourishing business in five years, when price and location are no longer deciding factors, and not existing at all.

Customer service is the new marketing

Dan Gingiss, formerly of Discover, says, “We firmly believe here that customer service is the new marketing. Discover put its flag down on customer service since it started in the 80s. Discover was the first credit card company with 24/7 service. It pays attention to service and it’s good at it. It talks about it on TV—the last two main television campaigns have been about service. And to me a complaint online is an opportunity for us to show off amazing customer service in a public setting that can’t be done on TV and can’t be done in any other channel. If somebody is having an issue with their product or their card that I know can be fixed, to me it’s an opportunity.”

 

 

Drawn from Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers, about which Guy Kawasaki says: “This is a landmark book in the history of customer service.” Written by Jay Baer, Hug Your Haters is the first customer service and customer experience book written for the modern, mobile era and is based on proprietary research and more than 70 exclusive interviews.

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What Every Company Should Consider When Working With Influencers

TwitterInfluencers

Last month I wrote a post on the value of measuring engagement vs numbers when selecting an influencer for your company to work with.  That post resonated with a lot of you so I wanted to expand on it and talk about the key considerations for your company when working with influencers.  Working with influencers and ‘sponsored content’ is a very popular option for companies these days, and done correctly, it can be a real benefit for your business.  Here’s some of the things you should consider before working with influencers:

1 – Why does your company want to work with influencers?  Influencers can work well in certain situations, especially if you are trying to draw attention to a new product line or initiative.  It’s best to understand the role that influencers can play to see if they make a good fit for what you are trying to accomplish.  As always, start by asking what your expected outcomes are, then work backwards.  For example, if your goal is to increase sales by 15% in the next quarter, working with influencers alone might not accomplish that.  But if your goal is to increase your brand’s share of the online conversation around certain product lines by 15% in the next quarter, then maybe it makes sense to work with influencers to help accomplish this goal.

2 – Work with influencers that have a history of working with companies.  These influencers are more familiar with the process, and have a better sense of what your expectations will be and how to meet or exceed those expectations.  They will also work with your company to create a specific plan of action based on your expected outcomes.  And for those of you that want to work with companies, this is exactly why you should spell that out on your site or blog.  I am constantly talking to people that want to work with companies, but when I go to their blog, there is no information on what they can offer companies or that they are even interested in working with companies.  You have to let companies know if you are available to work with them in an influencer marketing program.

3 – It’s always better to work with influencers that understand your company, industry and products.  Try to work with influencers that have a history of working with companies in your industry.  Many influencers specialize in working with companies in select industries or product categories.  Ideally, your company would be better served working with influencers that have experience in your industry as they will likely have a better understanding of your space and how to help companies in your industry succeed with their influencer marketing efforts.

Influencers

4 – Numbers alone won’t tell you which influencers you should work with.  I talked about this in January, but the biggest mistake companies make in working with influencers is picking them based on the size of their following.  For example from my own experience I know that Twitter users with 5,000-20,000 followers typically send me more referral traffic than a RT from someone with 20,00-100,000 followers.  Why?  Because a lot of Twitter users with over 50,000 followers use bots and reciprocal or ‘followback’ techniques to pad their follower numbers in an effort to appear more influential than they actually are.  The size of an influencers’ network is important, but also look at how engaged the influencer is with that network.  Engagement is action, and you want to work with influencers that will compel their followers to take action on your behalf.  Look at how many replies, Likes, RTs, comments, etc the influencer gets.  In other words, how often are the actually engaging with their networks?  It matters.

5 – Influencers or fans: Which is more important?  In general, influencers have a larger following, but your fans have a closer and more passionate connection to fewer people.  Ideally, it would be the best of both worlds to work with influencers that are also happy and passionate customers of your brand.  If that’s not possible, then keep in mind that if you are trying to build buzz, typically influencers work better.  But if you are trying to build and sustain passion for your brand, working with your existing fans is better.

6 – Respect the relationship that an influencer has with his or her network.  You want to work with influencers that have developed a level of trust with their network.  So be mindful not to ask influencers to put themselves in a position that would abuse that trust.  Consider the influencer’s point of view, when you approach them about working together, they will be thinking ‘how can this create value for my readers/followers/network?’  You should incorporate this into your expected outcomes as well, think about how working with a particular influencer will help your company AND how it could help the influencer’s network.  Maybe give them special access, a special discount, or something that creates value for them.  If you do that, the influencer will be far more receptive to your pitch.  On the other hand, if you only consider how you want the influencer to promote you and your products with no thought given to how it affects the influencer’s network, that can easily put off the influencer and kill the partnership.

7 – View working with an influencer as a partnership.  Carrying over from the last point, don’t view working with an influencer as they are doing something for you, view it as a situation where both your company and the influencer (as well as the influencer’s network) benefit.  You want to view it as a partnership which encourages the influencer to not only do a better job for you, but it also encourages them to work to work with your company again.

 

These are a few tips I’ve picked up over the last decade while working with clients on influencer marketing initiatives and having companies work with me as an influencer.  But there’s always other perspectives, so I reached out to a few of my influencer friends and asked them each to tell me what is one thing they wish companies knew about working with influencers:

Kerry Gorgone: In last week’s post on how Ford works with influencers, Kerry mentioned that “Engaging digital influencers is a smart way to amplify your reach, but is that where your aspirations end? It shouldn’t be! Give influencers personalized links to landing pages, so you know exactly where your traffic came from. Give them discount codes so you know when people convert because they’ve come across an influencer’s content.”

Jay Baer: “I wish brands would actually do their homework and look closely at the type of content people typically create and either adapt their ask accordingly, or select influencers to work with accordingly. I see way too many brands asking influencers to do stuff that they’ve never done before, with no evidence that they ever would.”

Calvin Lee: “I wish brands would build a better relationship with influencers and continue to work together on future campaigns, instead of just the one shot deal. Approaching real fans, influencers of their product and services. It’s not always about the numbers.

Looking beyond the numbers of followers, likes and reshares influencers have. Brands need to really research influencers they want to use. It’s so easy to buy followers, likes and reshares.  Many brands are clueless of who they have hired. I’ve seen so many fake influencers brands are using in their campaigns.

Adel de Meyer: “I think companies should approach influencers with better offers than free swag or discounted software usage. True influencers worked hard to build their community and should be awarded for their time, expertise and reach accordingly. I am also hoping businesses will do better research in finding true influencers in the different industries. I see too many brands working with influencers that have low engagement rates, or that do not align well with their brand image and values.”

 

Keep these tips and advice in mind when you plan your next, or first, influencer marketing effort.

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Ford’s Philosophy on Influence Marketing: Always Be Nurturing

I don’t know what you’re into, but I’m into cars. Muscle cars, to be specific. Dodge Challengers, Chevy Camaros, Ford Mustangs—any vehicle with some power under the hood really gets my attention.

That’s why I accepted Ford Motor Company’s invitation to attend a 2013 event for women bloggers. (You can read the whole story in my previous post on this blog.)

Little did I know that luncheon would be the start of a partnership that would last for several years, and take me places I never imagined I’d go (like Dearborn, Michigan).

For 2015 and 2016, Ford Motor Company invited me (and more than 100 other “digital influencers”) to Detroit to attend the North American International Auto Show (“NAIAS”), the premier show for car enthusiasts and automotive industry insiders.

For three days, our group got access to Ford’s “Behind the Blue Oval” area at NAIAS, primo seats at Ford press conferences, and special events that brought us behind the scenes at Ford, like the Rouge Factory tour.

You might be wondering what the return on marketing investment is for something like this, and it’s a smart question.

First, let’s talk reach. During the event, Ford racked up thousands of social media mentions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Periscope, etc., and the Twitter coverage alone reached millions of followers.

By inviting a diverse group of influencers, Ford managed to dominate in terms of event coverage. They invite not just auto industry journalists, but parenting bloggers, Periscope personalities, social savvy businesspeople, and car enthusiasts.

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“We are looking for folks who are enthusiastic, who create great content, who really have audiences and know what works best for them,”explains JT. Ramsay, digital media manager at Ford. “When we bring them to something like Detroit Auto Show, we know we’re going to have great content for them to share.”

And beyond NAIAS, Ford keeps in touch with influencers throughout the year, hosting regional events, like “Quality Time with Ford” at the Aveda Institute Orlando (manicures were involved).  Ford also gave attendees tickets to the Central Florida International Auto Show so we could see Ford’s new line of cars up close and personal.

“These are relationships that we maintain all year long,” says Ramsay. “Whether that’s ‘Driving Skills for Life’ or Ford’s Smart Mobility Tour that we did this last summer, there are all kinds of different touch points that we have with our influencers that I think have been profoundly successful for us.” (Check out the full interview I conducted with JT. for MarketingProfs for more about Ford’s approach to influencer marketing and content.)

As a result, Ford maintains buzz about the brand and its line of cars throughout the year, with bloggers posting across social media and on their own sites. For example, check out Lynette Young’s post on Go Further With Ford, and Bess Auer’s post on lessons other brands can learn from the way Ford involves online influencers.

But does it sell cars? Probably some, although it’s difficult to know how many.

“Attribution is tricky,” acknowledges Ramsay. “However, I think that with some of our influencers they’ll even tell us, ‘I went to this event, I told a friend, and that friend bought a Ford.”

For what it’s worth, my last three cars have been Fords, and when I’m in the market for another, I’m very likely to choose a C-Max after my experience driving one for several months. (And that’s worth about $30,000!)

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Here are some tips for nurturing influencer relationships (and measuring the contribution these bloggers and social media stars bring to your bottom line):

Don’t forget your influencers in between major events.
As Ramsay observes, “[Ford is] working very closely with our regional teams to keep in touch, and not simply parachute in for a national event or two per year.

”Those smaller events might seem insignificant, but they deepen your relationship with your influencers and keep a baseline of buzz going all year long.

Know what you want out of the influencer relationship.
Engaging digital influencers is a smart way to amplify your reach, but is that where your aspirations end? It shouldn’t be! Give influencers personalized links to landing pages, so you know exactly where your traffic came from. Give them discount codes so you know when people convert because they’ve come across an influencer’s content.

Give them direction in terms of what you’re hoping to achieve: what product lines you’re interested in promoting, what upcoming events you’d like people to attend, what corporate charity initiatives you want people to know about.

If you want influencers to share your story about sustainability (like Ford’s “Farm to Car” initiative) or charitable giving (like how Mullinax Ford dealerships in Central Florida give all employees $250 per year to contribute to any charitable organization they like), you have to tell them so.

Otherwise, influencers will do their best to promote your brand, but might miss the points you’re trying to emphasize. This ties into the next tip.

Give influencers the information they need to share your brand story.
Influencers appreciate gaining an insider’s view of your brand (if they’re truly passionate about what you do), and they’ll want to help you get our brand message out. That’s easier to do if you give them event press kits and real-time press releases as you hold conferences and make announcements.

Remember to build relationships with each individual influencer, not “digital influencers” as a group.In between group events for area influencers, occasionally reach out to individual influencers when you have something going on you know would interest them in particular.

For example, before driving the C-Max, I had expressed interest in hybrid vehicles, so after my successful experience with that car, Ford gave me the chance to test drive a Fusion hybrid. They asked only that I provide them feedback about how the two vehicles compared.

This kind of personalized outreach ensures that influencers feel like partners, rather than shills—a critical difference to people who love your brand, but don’t post product reviews for a living.

Finally, choose your influencers carefully.
You want people who are passionate about your brand (or at least your industry), and who will represent you in a professional manner.

The last thing you want as a brand is to have someone stand up and poke his head out of the sunroof of your roped-off prototype vehicle, then wave away show staff while saying “it’s okay, I’m an influencer.”

I’m a muscle car girl, but I’m also a marketing industry professional—nice fit for an auto brand!

Which brings us full circle: muscle car girl makes friends with Ford, gets to attend NAIAS and see the sexy cars.

Who will your brand’s best friends be?

Sexy @Ford Shelby! #FordNAIAS

A photo posted by Kerry O’Shea Gorgone (@kerrygorgone) on

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The Changing Ways That Retailers Are Leveraging Influencers to Drive Sales

ShoppingI recently saw an interesting article that eMarketer had on how retailers are shifting their strategy for using influencers.  Most companies, regardless of industry, typically use influencers to help raise awareness of their brand or new product, etc.  This is a smart move to ‘get the word out’ about who you are, but over time it makes more sense to empower your existing and developing advocates to help tote that banner for you.

There are two shifts in thinking as it concerns retailers working with influencers that I think are worth mentioning:

1 – Retailers are increasingly repurposing unpaid content that influencers create.  This is just smart marketing, if an influencer gives your brand a positive (and unsolicited) mention, then point that out to others.

2 – Retailers are focusing less on reach and more on relevancy when it comes to working with influencers.  This is very smart, you’re giving up overall reach to instead get more reach with a more defined audience.  It’s the difference between connecting with an influencer with huge reach in the clothing industry, versus working with an influencer that doesn’t have as much reach in clothing, but who does have a nice footprint in clothing for teenage girls.

As with any efforts using influencers, I always advise clients that reach isn’t everything.  In fact, reach is never the first thing I look at, I always start with how engaged and connected they are with their network.  Would you rather work with an influencer with 100,000 followers on Twitter that never gets any engagement, or with an influencer with 25,000 followers that gets 50 replies a day?  I want to work with the influencer that has an engaged network that’s going to listen to what they say.

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The Passion Principle: The Secret to Creating Content and Marketing That Your Customers Will Love

PatagoniaSelling

Patagonia doesn’t market itself like your company does.  Patagonia spends almost no money on traditional advertising, and when it does, it typically does so in a way that makes its competitors shake their heads.  For example, a few years ago Patagonia ran an ad telling its customers not to buy its products.  Last year it sent a truck on a cross-country tour where seamstresses would not only repair your Patagonia clothing for free, they would repair any clothing, even if it was from a competitor.

Patagonia does everything it can to stop you from buying its products.  And its efforts have been a colossal failure.  The privately-held company is not only growing, it’s growing faster than its founder wants it to.

“I am faced with this ‘growth’ thing.  We could be a billion-dollar company in a few years, and it’s not something I ever wanted or even want.” – Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard

 

“I’m Fast, and There Ain’t Nothin’ You Can Do About It”

Consider this broadcast commercial from Nike that debuted last month:

This commercial breaks two long-accepted beliefs of what makes successful advertising:

1 – The belief that people don’t like commercials. There’s been an entire cottage industry pop up around helping consumers skip or avoid commercials. Yet this commercial from Nike had over three million views on YouTube within the first week.

2 – The belief that you have to sell something. This commercial never advertises a product or service, and there’s no call-to-action at any time to buy either. Strip out a few quick and almost subliminal appearances by the Nike Swoosh logo, and you would have no idea what company was responsible for this ad.

 

But something is being sold here.  Maybe it’s the dream that every child has when they play mini-midget or pee-wee football that one day they will be the next Peyton Manning or Julio Jones.  Maybe it’s the dream that a mother or father has for their child to see them one day become an NFL success.

Nike understands that every child has those dreams, and what it is selling is how its products can help make that dream a reality.

Nike’s marketing focus for this commercial isn’t its products, it’s what its customers are passionate about. That instantly makes its message more interesting and appealing to its audience.

 

“The Challenge of My Life Is…To Find Out How Far I Can Take It”

RedBull

And then there’s Red Bull.  Long heralded as the poster-child for successful content marketing, Red Bull does little to promote its actual product.  Instead, it promotes the activities its customers are passionate about.  Even to the point of sponsoring ‘extreme sporting’ events and teams, helping to push forward an entire industry.  Red Bull’s customers can see that the brand is just as devoted to the sports and events as they are, and this makes it easier for these customers to become more devoted to Red Bull as a result. Red Bull understands that it’s not about selling its energy drink, it’s about selling what happens after you drink it.

 

Most of us view marketing in the same context. As being boring, repetitive, and a nuisance to be avoided.  Yet in the hands of brands like Patagonia, Nike and Red Bull, marketing becomes something else entirely.  Interesting, engaging, and even inspirational.  Great marketing doesn’t sell a product or service, it inspires us to change ourselves, to even change the world.

Why the Disconnect?  What Are These Brands Doing Differently?  

One of the main reasons why I wanted to write Think Like a Rock Star was because I was enamored with how easily rock stars can create and cultivate fans.  And when I say ‘fans’, I am talking customers that literally are in love with their favorite rock star.  I wanted to write that book to determine if brands could create fans using the same methodology as rock stars.  I was thrilled and delighted to discover the exact process that rock stars use to create fans, and how brands can do the same.  It’s all in the book.

On the same note, for the last few months I’ve been fascinated with how brands like Patagonia, Red Bull, Nike and Pedigree simply create better marketing than most other brands.  I wanted to deconstruct what these brands are doing differently to determine if there’s a pattern and a process that your brand can use to improve its own marketing efforts.

Recall the AIDA model of measuring advertising effectiveness that we all learned in college.  The ‘A’ stands for Awareness.  It’s the starting point, a potential customer has to be aware before they can have Interest and the Desire to Act, ie purchase your product.

This is where most brands deviate from those that create truly effective marketing like Nike, Red Bull, Patagonia and Pedigree.  Most brands begin at the starting point of making sure that they make potential customers aware of its product.  They sell potential customers on what the product does, and use that as the basis for making the case for why you should buy it.

Brands like Red Bull, Nike, Patagonia and Pedigree do something radically different.  They don’t start by trying to make you aware of their products, instead they try to make you aware of how their products will fit into your life and make it better.  The focus isn’t their products, it’s your passions.

Patagonia isn’t selling clothing, it’s selling what you will do while wearing its clothing.

Red Bull isn’t selling an energy drink, it’s selling what happens after you drink it.

Nike isn’t selling shoes, it’s selling how you will be better at the sports you play while wearing its shoes.

Pedigree isn’t selling dog food, it’s selling happier and healthier dogs.

Pedigree

You don’t market your product, you market how your product fits into your customers’ lives.  Too many companies market their product and assume that the customer can make the connection for themselves as to how that product would be relevant to the customer.  Quite frankly, this is incredibly lazy and ineffective marketing.  The smart companies are the ones that understand their customers enough to understand their passions, what stirs their souls.  And they take this knowledge and create marketing messages that tap into these passions, and that make the connection for the customer between their passions, and the company’s product.

If you focus on the things that your customers are passionate about, by extension your customers will become more passionate about your brand.  The key is to market things that your customers are passionate about, that also relate to your product.  Nike promotes being active in sports because it sells the equipment you’ll need to perform those activities.  Pedigree promotes happier and healthier dogs because it sells the dog food that’s going to help your dog live a happier and healthier life.  But customers are more passionate about being active than they are about a running shoe.  They are more passionate about creating a better life for their golden retriever than they are about your dog food.  Nike and Pedigree understand this, so they focus on their customers’ passions first, and the connection between those passions and the product, second.

In fact, most brands prioritize its marketing communications in this order:

1 – Sell the product, what it does and why it works.

2 – Sell how the product fits into the customer’s life.

3 – Sell ideas, beliefs and causes that customers are passionate about, that also relate to the product.

Most brands focus almost all of their marketing efforts on #1, with a bit of #2, and almost none of #3.

But the brands that truly create memorable marketing communications flip the order:

1 – Sell ideas, beliefs and causes that customers are passionate about, that also relate to the product.

2 – Sell how the product fits into the customer’s life

3 – Sell the product, what it does and why it works.

There’s two important point to realize about both these approaches.  If you focus mostly on the product itself, many people will immediately tune your marketing messages out because you haven’t yet made the case to them for what your product is relevant to them.  Also, your message will immediately be classified as being a ‘marketing’ message, and most of us immediately ignore any message that we view as being ‘marketing’.

Second, if you focus instead on the ideas, beliefs and causes that your customers are passionate about, that instantly makes your ‘marketing’ message relevant to your customers.  You immediately perk their ears up and they will listen to what you have to say.  Also, you are creating that Desire to learn more about your product so your customers will be motivated to do their own research on your product.  And let’s be honest, we all want to support and advocate for companies we believe in.  If your brand shows me that it can connect with me around the ideas, causes and beliefs that I hold dear, I will feel better about doing business with your brand.

 

So what’s the formula?  What’s The Passion Principle for your brand?

First, you have to know your customers well enough to know who they are, and what’s important to them.  What you want to do is find the connections between your product, and your customer’s passions.  This isn’t always obvious, and typically requires research on the part of your brand.  For example, Fiskars didn’t realize how popular its orange-handle scissors were with its customers in the scrapbooking community until they started talking to those customers.  This knowledge caused the brand to shift its marketing focus away from the scissors (product), and instead focus on scrapbooking (customer’s passion).  By shifting its marketing to focus on the passion of its customers (scrapbooking), the brand became more interesting and relevant to its customers.  BTW, Fiskars just reported that net sales increased by 62% in Q3 for 2015.

So in order to create marketing and content that your customers will love, start by asking (and answering) these questions:

1 – What are our customers passionate about?

2 – What are they trying to accomplish?

3 – What problems do they need to solve?

4 – What roadblocks are in their way?

5 – How does our product relate to any or all of the previous points?

The fifth point is probably the most important because it’s not enough to simply understand what your customers are passionate about or what their problems are, you also need to understand how your product is the solution to that problem.  Otherwise, you’ll be focused on ideas, passions and beliefs that might be relevant to your customers, but that aren’t relevant to your product.  Which means your content and marketing won’t be as memorable or relevant to your customers.

Case in point: Name your 5 favorite Super Bowl commercials from last year.  It’s tough, isn’t it?  I bet you’re struggling to remember even one, aren’t you?  Yet every year we’ll see Super Bowl ads that make us laugh or tug at our heartstrings, but unless the message is relevant to the brand, it’s difficult to remember.

Now here’s another test: What brand did the ‘So God made a farmer…’ Super Bowl commercial from a couple of years ago?  I bet its easier for you to remember that Dodge was behind this commercial, right?  Why?  Because a Dodge truck fits into the life of a farmer.  It makes sense because farmers need trucks to get their work done, so there’s a connection there that works.

If the connection makes sense, then the content or marketing message will resonate and be more effective.  Remember, you don’t market your product, you market how your product fits into your customers’ lives.

Pic via Flickr user Sheila_Sund

Pic via Flickr user Kevin Cole

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Leveraging Social Media to Drive Greater Customer Insights

For the last 10 years, marketers have been trying to leverage social media as a sales channel.  It’s been a messy proposition at best, due to how people use these social tools.  Social media tools are used by people to create and share content about themselves.

But for smart companies, this creates an enormous sales opportunity.  The key isn’t to leverage social media as a sales channel, but to instead leverage social media as a listening channel that can better inform brands about who their customers are and what they want.  This has always been the case.  Granted, I’m no fan of how we are getting away from having truly social interactions with these tools and instead are becoming an army of social narcissists, but even that does create an opportunity for smart brands to learn more about their customers.  As customers are creating content about who they are and what they want, that content can be analyzed, and insights can be gained into those same customers and how to better market to them.

The great promise that social media offers for brands has never been about leveraging the tools as a way to sell directly to customers.  It’s always been about better understanding those customers so you can create more effective and efficient marketing…that increases sales.

Some companies have been proactively analyzing the content their customers create online and are adjusting their marketing to make it more inline with who their customers are and what they want.  The result are broadcast commercials like this from The North Face:

And this from Red Bull:

Notice in both commercials (both of which currently have over 7 Million views on YouTube), the product itself takes a secondary role to the customers themselves.  The North Face isn’t selling its clothing, it is selling the activities you engage in after you put on its clothing.  Red Bull isn’t selling an energy drink, it’s selling what you do after you drink it.  In both cases, the marketing isn’t about the product, it’s about the customers and the activities that they love engaging in.  This makes the marketing message more interesting and relevant to those customers.  And by extension, the brand bringing you that marketing becomes more interesting and relevant as a result.

This is the great promise of social media for brands: Gaining a better understanding of your customers.  By first investing the time to learn who your customers are and why they use these tools, you can then have an intelligent conversation with them that comes from a place of understanding, not ignorance.  Listen first, learn, adjust, and move forward with better marketing.  This is why I’ve always been so excited about social media from a business standpoint, the potential for better understanding customers and creating more interesting and relevant marketing communications as a result.  For decades, most marketing has devolved into nothing more than a nuisance and irritant.  This is to a great extent simply because the brands creating that marketing don’t understand their customers well enough to create an interesting marketing message for them.

Now, thanks to social media, companies finally have a way to get a better understanding of what their customers want and who they are on a grand scale.  Commercials like those above only begin to scratch the surface of what marketing could look like when it’s created from a customers’ point-of-view.

Listen. Engage. Improve.  Do those things in that order, and your marketing communications will become more effective, and the sales will come.  There’s never been a time to be more excited about the future of marketing than right now.

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Patagonia’s Marketing Plan to Keep You From Buying Their Products

For Black Friday in 2011, Patagonia ran an interesting ‘Don’t Buy This Jacket’ ad in the New York Times.  The ad kicked off a campaign by Patagonia to attack ‘consumerism’ head-on, and the brand asked its customers to strongly consider whether or not it was necessary to buy a new piece of clothing, or if an existing article they already owned was still useful enough.  Additionally, Patagonia wanted customers to think about the idea of owning things that have a purpose versus just owning something because you wanted it.

Surprisingly, the campaign actually sparked sales growth for the brand, to the tune of a whopping 33% increase in 2012.  The campaign is part of a consistent message that Patagonia has delivered to its customers:    Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Patagonia’s marketing works because it’s not focused on its products, but rather the ideals and beliefs that the company holds that its customers identify with.  I’ve written repeatedly about Patagonia’s marketing efforts and even included the brand as a prominent case study in Think Like a Rock Star.

And keep in mind when you read this that I don’t own a stitch of Patagonia clothing.  I just recognize amazing marketing when I see it, and want to celebrate it as such.

Another initiative Patagonia pushes is its Worn Wear program.  Patagonia will take your damaged clothing, and for a ‘reasonable’ fee, repair it for you.  The idea here is to extend the life of an existing garment versus buying a new one.

But this year, Patagonia is kicking it up another notch, and taking the Worn Wear program on the road, literally.  Throughout the year, a specially built Worn Wear wagon has been making its way across the country.  This vehicle is making stops and not only repairing Patagonia clothing for free, but other brands as well.  Additionally, Patagonia is teaching customers at every stop how to repair their own garments.

And if all this hasn’t thoroughly impressed the hell out of you, Patagonia has one more trick up its brand advocacy sleeve.  It has partnered with DIY repair site IFixIt to create a series of custom manuals and even a section for asking questions on how to repair and care for individual garments.

So this begs the question: If such customer-centric marketing and business processes work so well, why aren’t more companies copying what Patagonia is doing? There’s a couple of very important distinctions with Patagonia:

1 – Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, is an avid outdoorsman and very concerned about the environment.  That means there is literally buy-in from the top down for Patagonia’s marketing approach to focus on the passions of the customers over the products.  Because Patagonia’s founder shares the same passions as his brand’s customers.

2 – Patagonia is a private company.  In this PBS Newshour feature on Patagonia, PBS played a snippet of a talk that Chouinard gave where he explained that “The problem with a lot of public companies is that they’re forced to grow 15 percent a year. They’re forced to show profits every quarter.”  Chouinard’s implication is that by being private, Patagonia can pursue a marketing strategy that perhaps would be far more difficult or even unattainable if the company was public.

Regardless, the idea of focusing your marketing communications on the larger context that your brand lives in, works.  Apple does it.  Red Bull does it.  Patagonia does it.  More companies should be doing it.

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

Welcome back to the 4th week of the SEC Social Media Fan Experience.  Each week leading up to the start of the college football season, I’ll be looking at how the SEC teams are leveraging social media to connect with their fans.  After today we’ll be over halfway through the SEC, with 2 more installments coming next Thursday, and then we’ll wrap up the SEC on September 1st and 3rd, as the season starts that night.  You can catch up on former entries in the SEC Social Media Fan Experience here.

Here’s the schedule for the series:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

Today: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

September 3rd: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

How The Texas A&M Aggies Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

The Aggies, like most other SEC teams, has dedicated football social media accounts on The Big Three; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  As we’ve been discussing, visual content: photos and videos, are a big hit with SEC fans, and most teams are smartly using Instagram to distribute visual content, then seeding that content through other main channels like Facebook and Twitter.  And the Aggies also have a YouTube account for the football program that’s giving a lot of video content around Fall camp, scrimmages, interviews with coaches, etc.  Fall camp is tailor made for diehard fans.  The average football fan may only follow his or her favorite team on Saturdays when they play, maybe they’ll read a few updates in the paper, but that’s about it.  But true Aggie fans want more access.  They want to delve into Fall camp, they want content that gives them daily updates on how each practice goes, which players are doing well, etc.  So the Aggies are doing a great job of giving their hardcore fans that Backstage Pass they want.

Now so far, there’s nothing earth-shattering about the social media mix that Texas A&M is utilizing.  It’s smart, but it’s also expected.  But the Aggies aren’t done.  Not only are they active on Periscope, it turns out the Aggies have been utilizing Periscope since at least March.  I would think that would have to make Texas A&M one of the first football programs in the country to utilize Periscope, and since they are in Texas I have to wonder if their social team found out about Periscope at SXSW.

Also, Texas A&M has a pretty cool smartphone app that does a nice job of being a sort of content dashboard for football fans:

AggiesApp

This is perfect for an Aggie fan as you have not only news but the latest social media content from Texas A&M right on your smartphone.  I do wish the app integrated Texas A&M’s Periscope feed, but that may not be possible with a smartphone app since Periscope is live-streamed content with a 24-hour lifespan.

But from a marketing/brand advocacy standpoint, consider this: What if your company had a smartphone app like this for your Brand Ambassador Program?  Perhaps the functionality could include options for you to create and share content directly with the brand, and also have options to contact the brand directly.  It would be possible to snap a photo of something happening in a retail location (good or bad) and share it directly with your brand contact.  Or your fans could even do an audio interview with a customer on the fly, then send you that video or audio content.  The possibilities are endless and a smartphone app for your brand ambassadors could be a wonderful idea.  Speaking of which, if you are involved in a brand ambassador program and the brand you work with utilizes a smartphone app for its ambassadors, please mention it in the comments!

Overall, I like what Texas A&M is doing with social media, they have a nice mix of content across several channels and I’m very impressed that they have been using Periscope for so long.  Plus the Aggie smartphone app is pretty cool, although to be fair I believe a few other SEC teams have similar apps.  Still, I think Texas A&M is probably making the best use of social media to give the fans the content they want than any of the SEC schools I’ve profiled so far, just ahead of Miss State and Tennessee.

How The Kentucky Wildcats Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

Once again, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are the main social media workhorses for distributing content to fans.  One of the almost disadvantages that a team like UK has now that we’re halfway through examining how the SEC teams use social media, is that by now I’m not looking at how each team uses social media as much as I’m looking for how they are using social media better than the other schools.  I’m looking for something that stands out, like with A&M it was the long history of Periscope usage and the smartphone app.  Given that, I’m not seeing a lot of ‘wow’ in UK’s social media efforts for its football program.  Which isn’t a bad thing, the Wildcats seem to be utilizing all the main channels which is what you want to see.  I did think the Wildcats Instagram content was a bit weak, I would have liked to have seen a few more videos and photos that highlighted individual star players.  For reference, I thought Miss State has an amazing IG page.

One thing that I thought was interesting is that UK promotes Head Coach Mark Stoops as its Twitter account for the football program.  Interesting approach to have the head coach be the face of the football program on Twitter, but it does make some sense.  Also, I noticed on Facebook that UK was sharing content and pointing fans back to its main website for detailed practice updates.  I like this approach, South Carolina does the same thing.  It’s always a good idea to move fans off of social media channels you don’t own and point them back to site that your school DOES own.

Also, UK posts video updates to YouTube on a regular basis, I think this is smart as well.  While Periscope is the hot new tool and likely more popular with younger fans, it is live-streaming, which means it’s gone after 24 hours.  YouTube videos stay up, so it makes sense to utilize both as well as Instagram for video content.

So that’s it for this week’s look at how the Wildcats and the Aggies are leveraging social media to deliver content to their fans.  We’re getting closer to the end of this series, and closer to the start of the college football season!  Next Thursday we’ll wrap up the Eastern Division with a stop in Athens to see how the Georgia Bulldogs are using social media to connect with their fans, then swing west to Columbia, Missouri, for a closer look at the Missouri Tigers’ social media efforts.  See you then!

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 36: Creating a Fan-Worthy Content Strategy

Welcome to the 36th episode of The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show! This week I talk about the five considerations in creating a Fan-Damn-Tastic Content Strategy!

Before I get into the Show Notes, I wanted to say thank y’all for the continued support, last week’s episode on Creating Loyalty to Your Brand vs Your Offer had over 900 downloads in its first week!  I appreciate the support and it looks like August will set the monthly record for the most downloads of #FanDamnShow.  If your company would like to sponsor #FanDamnShow, here’s details including rates.

Show Notes:

1:15 – The difference between a content marketing strategy and a content strategy.

2:10 – Five considerations for creating a content strategy

2:30 – How much bandwidth do you have for content creation?

3:38 – What are your goals for the content you create?

4:59 – Plant your flag when it comes to the content you create, what do you want to be known for?

7:25 – What tools will you use to execute your content strategy?

9:40 – Create your content calendar

 

Here’s where you can download and listen to the episode directly.  And if you can, please subscribe to The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show on iTunes, and I would *love* it if you could review the podcast on iTunes as well.  Also, #FanDamnShow is now available on Stitcher as well!

Also, don’t forget that sponsorships are now available for The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show. This page that has all the information on how your brand can sponsor #FanDamnShow and the rates. Please note that all available sponsor slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so please email me if you are interested in sponsoring #FanDamnShow.

We’ll talk again on Wednesday!