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Want to Create a Brand Ambassador Program? Here’s 10 Things to Remember When You Do

Brand Ambassador Programs, Social Media

Your family owns 5 bakeries across the northern part of your state. The bakeries have developed a reputation for creating delicious cakes and pastries, speedy deliveries, and exceptional customer service. Which has resulted in a lot of happy customers!

You manage the social media presences for the five bakeries. You are monitoring the Facebook page for your bakeries today, and as usual you have several new comments from customers. These comments are almost always positive, and today’s mentions are consistent with a typical day:

Sarah: “The birthday cake we bought for my son’s 10th birthday party was delicious! It made the party, I had three moms come up later and ask for the recipe, and I was tempted to claim I made it, but gave them your address in the end (ha!). So expect Tina, Jess and Kym to show up soon!”

Tom: “You guys saved our Thanksgiving! As always, we were too ambitious in our dinner-planning and just didn’t have time in the end to bake the pumpkin and pecan pies we needed to finish off desert. You guys came through at the last-minute for us, even delivering on the day before Thanksgiving! As an added bonus, our out-of-town relatives loved both pies and said they would be stopping by as they leave town in a few days to take another home with them!”

Amber: “Have been a happy customer for the last 5 years, your double chocolate cakes and blueberry streusel muffins are my favorites, they always make our meals special. Are you planning on opening a location in Lancaster? All my friends have heard about how delicious your cakes and muffins are, so you have a ready customer base if you do!”

 

In reading these comments, a light bulb goes off: These customers have taken ownership of the sales, customer service, marketing and promotion processes for your bakeries. Without guidance, these customers have taken it upon themselves to help grow your business.

But what if you could give these customers guidance in how to better promote your business and grow your customer base? What if you had a way to work directly with these customers to give them the tools they need and WANT to help share why they love your business with their friends, family, and other customers?

That’s where a Brand Ambassador Program comes in. Over the last few years, companies have begun to realize the benefits of having a way to connect directly with their most passionate customers to drive business growth.  While customers as a whole don’t trust brands, they do trust other customers.  Especially passionate customers that love their favorite brands.  While a marketing message from a brand will likely be ignored, a passionate recommendation from a fellow customer will be taken far more seriously.

This has a lot of companies researching how to create a successful brand ambassador program, and how to work with brand ambassadors. Let’s start with some definitions:

What is a Brand Ambassador? A brand ambassador is a person who works to promote and represent a brand in its marketplace. Brand ambassadors are often current customers who were already advocating for brands before they started working with them, but some brand ambassadors are chosen because they have a large following or are viewed as influencers. Brand ambassadors have a working relationship with the brands they represent, and are given instruction on how to interact with customers in the marketplace, based on the business goals for that brand.

What is a Brand Ambassador Program? A brand ambassador program is a business program that organizes brand ambassadors and creates an ongoing, working relationship between the brand and its ambassadors. A brand ambassador program is used to manage the ongoing, working relationship between the brand and its ambassadors, and provide ongoing training and instruction for its ambassadors, as well as support. Most brand ambassador programs work closely with other areas of the business, such as marketing, sales, customer service, and product design.

So if your company is considering launching a brand ambassador program to connect with your brand advocates and ambassadors, here’s 10 things to remember:

1 – Spread the word internally as well as externally.  Getting internal buy-in is just as important, if not moreso, than getting customers excited about your efforts.  If your brand advocacy program doesn’t have INTERNAL advocates pushing it along, its chances of success are going to be greatly reduced.  Launching a brand ambassador program takes time and energy.  Immediate ROI will be very hard to prove, it’s a long-term process.  Which is why it pays to have a team of people that are pushing for patience.

2 – Research, research, research.  You’ll have to invest a lot of time in discovering WHO your brand advocates are.  You might think you know who they are, but there’s rarely a ‘one-size-fits-all’ view.  You’ll also have to monitor ALL conversations with your customers.  Not just online conversations, not just offline ones either.  Look at both.  Also, make special note of the customers that go the extra mile to connect with you, the ones that write you letters, even if they sound negative.  Companies often confuse passion for the brand with negativity aimed at the brand.

Whenever I talk to companies who are curious about launching a brand ambassador program, one of the first questions is “How do we find our brand ambassadors?” The good news is, potential brand ambassadors will often find you! Customers who are good candidates to be ambassadors for your brand will often proactively reach out to your company. They will email you with feedback on your brand, they will respond to you on social media, they will call your customer service department with feedback.  Ideally, you can select enough qualified ambassadors for your brand by simply cataloging the customers who are already connecting with your brand proactively.

3 – Start small, grow big.  You don’t have to have a million members in your brand ambassador program.  In fact, I’d rather have 10 truly passionate brand advocates than 10,000 members that are merely ‘meh’ toward the brand.  If you start small and select those that are truly passionate about your brand and its vision, the growth will come organically as these passionate people will help you identify others just like them.

Additionally, it simply makes good business sense to start small with your brand ambassador program, especially if this is your company’s first attempt at such a program. Whenever you take on any new initiative like this, especially when working directly with your customers, there will be mistakes made. This is why I advise my clients that if possible, start with a small group, nail down the process, then you can expand the scope of the program after you’ve worked the kinks out. In other words, start small, nail the process, then grow.

Here’s an example of how this could work. Let’s say your company has fitness centers across the United States, your company has 425 centers and operates in 23 states, but you have the most locations in the Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta markets. Instead of rolling out a comprehensive, nationwide brand ambassador program with 500 members, it might make more business and logistical sense to launch a 10-person brand ambassador program for just the Chicago market. After spending the first year perfecting the program and process for the Chicago market, in the second year you could launch brand ambassador programs for the Los Angeles and Atlanta markets. After nailing down the processes for these markets, your company can then roll out a comprehensive, and nationwide, brand ambassador program.

4 – Make membership exclusive.  This ties into the previous point, but you don’t want ALL your customers to be members of your brand ambassador program.  You want to give them hurdles to jump, obstacles to overcome.  In other words, you want to weed out the customers that aren’t committed to the brand, or the program.  The true advocates for your brand will already be doing much if not all of what you would require of them as members of the program.  It also pays to cap membership, and to give the existing members a huge say in who the future members are.

5 – Connect with your advocates and create ways for them to connect with each other.  Your advocates are special people, you don’t want them on an island, you want them connected.  Create a central ‘homebase’ for the current members of your program, but also stay connected to other advocates that aren’t yet members.  And make your existing ambassadors aware of these advocates, and have them ‘vet’ them for possible membership in your formal ambassador program.

6 – Pay your ambassadors.  This is one of the biggest misconceptions about brand ambassadors.  They DO want to be compensated but most do NOT want to be given money.  Sure, we all love money, but for a true brand advocate they usually want other things.  Like access, empowerment, and acknowledgement.  A few years ago when I worked with Dell on its #DellCAP events, the customers weren’t paid to come (travel was covered), but they were given access.  For example, they got to tour Dell’s Social Media Listening Center, then they got to spend 30 minutes talking to CEO Michael Dell.  That’s pretty heady stuff for a Dell advocate.  When they go back home, their friend might brag about having the latest and greatest Dell laptop, while they can respond with ‘Oh yeah, well Dell invited me to their world headquarters and I got to chat with Michael Dell himself!’  That’s a great example of rewarding your advocates.

Here’s another example: I once worked with a software company to design a brand ambassador program for its users. The majority of the users of this software were small business owners. After surveying its users, the software company discovered that these small business owners were desperate for social media and content marketing advice. So we created a series of webinars just for members of the brand ambassador program that would have a different expert deliver a webinar on a different marketing topic to brand ambassadors. This benefit had nothing to do with the software company, it was completely focused on what would be valuable to brand ambassadors. If you’re brainstorming ideas for possible benefits you could give your brand ambassadors, check out this exhaustive list of benefits that Harley-Davidson offers members of its HOG group.

7 – Give your advocates direct access to the brand.  The members of your brand ambassador program should be given direct contact with multiple key executives within the brand.  In fact, I would suggest making 1 or more of the ‘top’ members of your brand ambassador program part of the team that’s responsible for reporting on the progress of the program to the C-Suite.  The idea here is to make sure that the voice of your brand’s biggest defenders and advocates is always heard at the company, from the top down.

8 – Create a feedback loop between the brand ambassadors, and the brand.  I outlined the process for this loop in this post.  You need to have a way to let your ambassadors have direct access to the brand, as mentioned above.  But at the same time, the brand needs to respond to the brand ambassadors and give them feedback on their feedback.  Additionally, the brand needs to take the feedback from its ambassadors and distribute that feedback internally and not just silo it among the employees that are working directly on the brand ambassador program.

9 – Give your ambassadors the tools to create something amazing.  Again, you want to start small and grow organically.  And you want that growth to be fueled by your existing advocates.  You want to embrace and empower your existing advocates, thus the creation of the brand ambassador program.  But you also want your existing ambassadors to have the tools to embrace and empower other advocates that aren’t yet members.  And tying back to the earlier points about giving ambassadors direct access to the brand, when your existing ambassadors find other advocates, they can immediately bring them to the brand’s attention.

10 – Transfer ownership of the program from the brand, to its ambassadors.  When you create a brand ambassador program, you need to realize that long-term, this will belong to your advocates.  You’ll always be there, and you’ll always have a voice, but the idea is that you want your most passionate customers to eventually take over this program.  Maybe you’ll start out with a ‘board’ over the program made up of 5 key brand executives, and 5 brand ambassadors.  But over time, as your ambassadors become familiar with the program and its function and goals, you need to let them have control.  Again, you don’t want the voice of your company to dominate this effort, you want the voice of your most passionate customers to have control, because those customers are going to be connecting with other customers.

 

 

But perhaps the most important thing to remember when creating a brand ambassador program is who you will be working with:

Every single day you’ll be working with customers that love you. Customers that love your brand as if it were their own, and who will work with you every day to see it grow and prosper. Let’s be honest, it’s pretty awesome to work every day with people that love you and believe in you. That’s exactly what happens when you create and launch a brand ambassador program.

 

BONUS: When you are ready to pitch your idea for a brand ambassador program to the C-Suite, make a plan that details exactly how the program will benefit the brand, and exactly how it will benefit the ambassadors who participate. Carefully and clearly spell out all the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that will be measured and tracked, as well as an explanation of why it is important to do so. Also, give a thorough timeline of the roll-out of the brand ambassador program, for at least the first 6 months of the program, 12 months is better. Assume that there will be a healthy amount of skepticism from upper management about the success of a brand ambassador program (since your brand has likely never launched one), so the eventual signoff by the CEO or CMO will greatly depend on how well you address these concerns head on.

So there’s some ideas to consider when you get ready to create and launch an official brand ambassador program.  This won’t be easy, and it will take a lot of time, but if you are committed to connecting with your most passionate customers and willing to empower them, the results will make program a huge success.  If you need help getting started, let’s explore how we can work together to create an ambassador program for your brand.

 

DOUBLE BONUS: Want to see a great example of an employee brand ambassador program?

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Don’t Sweat the Technique: The Rock Star’s Guide to Content Creation, Content Marketing and Promotion

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For most of us, we write a new blog post, then maybe we share it on Twitter and Facebook, and hope for the best.  We tell ourselves that ‘good content will find an audience.’

But is that really true?  Can we realistically expect to spend 30 mins writing a blog post that becomes a masterpiece just because we publish it?  Or do we need a more robust strategy to give our content a fighting chance to be seen among all the other millions of pieces of digital content that are being created right now?

I would say that we do, and I think we can take a lot of inspiration from how rock stars create and market their new music.  Let’s look at the creation process and then the promotional process:

Step One: Writing the songs

This is where the rock star gets the basic idea for the song down on paper.  The lyrics, the chorus, the title.  None of this is finalized, it’s sort of a rough draft of what the song could be.  The songwriter is telling a story and while the fine details may need to be ironed out, the basic idea is there. This is very similar to you writing a draft for your blog post.  You might want to revisit that draft and refine it, but you have the general idea down for your post and the point you want to make.  If you need advice on how to write an awesome blog post, here’s my 2,000 word guide on how to do so.

Step Two: Recording and producing the song

Now at this point many bloggers feel their post is finished, and they will publish it.  But rock stars take their song, and give it to a producer.  That producer will then consult with the rock star on the song’s arrangement and musical elements and how they can compliment the lyrics of the song.  This would be very similar to a blogger handing her post over to an editor to review it before publishing.  If the rock star works with a stellar producer, the end result will be a much better song, just as when you let an excellent editor review your post, it will be improved.

But again, most bloggers skip this step and never let their posts be edited or reviewed.  This might not be as big of a deal for a seasoned blogger that can self-edit, but for the new blogger especially, it helps to have a trained set of eyes reviewing your content.  One of the key areas where bloggers short-change themselves is on the post’s headline.  Headlines are an art for bloggers and songwriters.  John Denver’s iconic song Leavin’ on a Jet Plane was originally released as ‘Babe I Hate to Go’.  His new manager listened to the song and recommended the change based on what the song was actually about. Many bloggers have the same issue, they summarize the post with the headline instead of actually telling readers what its about.  Here’s some tips on improving your headline writing.  Headlines are insanely important, so are the visual elements of your post; the picture you use to accompany the post, any videos you choose.  Sweat the details.

Step Three: Promoting the song and helping it find an audience

Now for the average blogger, this means sending out a tweet on Twitter, an update on Facebook, and hoping for the best  Rock stars do this as well, but they also actively court radio stations to play their songs.  Rock stars know that radio play is wonderful exposure for their music.  You can do the same thing by actively courting friends and fellow bloggers to promote your content.  You can also greatly improve your chance of having other bloggers promote your content if you do two things:  First is actively promote their content.  If you are already promoting my content and you ask me to promote yours, odds are I will unless your content is a complete mis-match for my brand.  Second, selectively ask bloggers to promote content that they would be interested in.  Don’t ask me to promote your new blog post on how to grow an organic garden.  But do ask me to promote your new post on launching a brand advocacy effort at your company.

BONUS: Social media isn’t just Twitter and Facebook anymore.  Social media savvy artists are leveraging multiple tools online, a blog, Twitter Facebook but also Instagram (big hit with artists and fans) and YouTube.  The point is to hustle.

Step Four: Promotion leads to hit songs and that leads to concerts and appearances

As a rock stars’ new music is promoted, some of those songs will find a large audience and become popular.  One hit song can take a band playing local clubs and turn them into an international star.  As rock stars start to create hit songs, their fanbases grow and spread.  So connecting directly with them via concerts and appearances makes good sense.

You can do the same thing with your blog posts that become popular.  Let’s say you write a blog post “5 Tips For Marketers That Want to Crush It On YouTube Today”, that ends up being incredibly popular.  The popularity of that post makes you more marketable.  You can reach out to twitter chats and ask to co-host, I bet the #YouTubeMarketing twitter chat (if such a thing exists) would love to have you co-host to discuss the tips from your post.  Also, reach out to bloggers and ask to write a guest post on YouTube marketing tips.  Remind them of how popular your post was and they will probably be interested as you have already proven that your topic resonates with readers. All of this means more exposure for you and your content.

Step Five: Rock stars take their biggest hits and create a Greatest Hits album

There’s a lot of talk about ‘re-imaging’ content these days, but rock stars have always done this.  They take their most popular music and use it in as many ways as possible.  One example is how rock stars that have had a successful career will sell a Greatest Hits album.  This gives fans new and old a way to get most of the rock star’s biggest hits and most popular songs, all on one album.

Now at this point, it’s time to take a step back for a second.  A week or so ago I was watching a PBS documentary on John Denver.  Denver had a pretty long musical career, from about 1969 to 1984 or so.  About 15 years, and for the majority of the 1970s, he was one of the biggest musical stars on the planet.

But as I was watching this documentary, I realized that I could only really recall 2-3 hit songs of Denver’s.  Rocky Mountain High, Take Me Home Country Roads, and maybe Leavin’ on a Jet Plane.  Sure, there were a few others and diehard John Denver fans are already rattling off several other songs, but for the casual John Denver fan, that 15 year career resulted in maybe 3-5 songs that were memorable.

Think about that for a minute.  Even truly successful rock stars only have a handful of big hits over their entire careers.  Now think about your favorite blogger.  Name your favorite 3-5 posts from your favorite blogger.  Hard to do, isn’t it?  The point is that you are NOT going to have many posts go ‘viral’ and it is often hard to predict which ones will.  You can improve your changes through simple trial and error, but for most of us, even if you blog for years you will be lucky to have even 2-3 posts that truly spread like wildfire.

So as a blogger, you want to make it as easy as possible for other people to find your best content.  Look at the top right of this blog.  Notice I have created a Most Popular Posts section.  These are hand-picked posts that I want you to check out.  These are some of my ‘greatest hits’.  Also, when I share posts on social media sites, I focus on about 10 posts that cover topics I want to be known for.  Community-building, brand advocacy, content marketing.  It helps brand me, plus it gives more exposure to posts that cover topics that I want to see be more popular.

The Secret Bonus Tip: 

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Hopefully you’ve picked up on something while reading this post.  There is a LOT of work involved in creating successful content.  It’s not just about writing a masterpiece in 15 mins and then waiting for fame and fortune.  You have to work hard on writing great content, and even harder promoting the content after its done.  Now all of this process becomes easier as you become more experienced, but there’s no shortcuts.  You need to have a robust strategy in place for creating your content, for polishing it, and then for promoting it.

I’m guilty of this too.  Too often I whip out a post in 30 mins, then tweet it on Twitter and that’s it.  Professional bloggers don’t do this.  They invest hours in each post.  They research, they agonize over the perfect headline, the perfect accompanying picture.  They sweat every detail.  Which is exactly why their content has an audience that hungrily devours everything they write.

I love the tweet from Jessica above.  She’s killed it with #CMChat as she’s turned it from being a Twitter chat to a literal online empire.  But it took hard work and harder sacrifices.  Following your dreams and creating something amazing usually does.

So change the focus of your content creation.  Stop thinking of each post and throw-away, but instead view every piece of content you create as a potential mega-hit that you are releasing to the public.  Focus on the creation, the post-writing editing, and the publishing and promotion.  And if you need help, I’ve created this graph to keep you straight rockin’ your content from now on:

$300 BILLION (4)

PS: It took about 10 hours to write this post, including research, visual elements and creating a custom graphical checklist.  And now the real work begins..and all I’ve done is increase the chances that the content will be more popular.

Pic via the amazing Kmeron

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Your Complete Guide to Becoming a Rock Star Brand

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Often when I talk to someone about or speak on Think Like a Rock Star, they will say ‘I love the concept, but we’re not Lady Gaga or Katy Perry. They are actual rock stars, we’re just a brand.  We can’t have fans like they do.’

When I started writing the book, I set out to answer that question.  Do actual rock stars simply have some natural advantage that brands do not?  Are actual rock stars able to create fans, passionate customers that literally love them in a way that most brands cannot?

What I discovered, to my delight, was that rock stars do certain things to create fans that are easily replicated by brands.  It’s not that brands can’t do the things that rock stars do to create fans, it’s that most brands aren’t willing to do the things they need to create fans.

But we’re not Taylor Swift, we sell (insert seemingly boring product that no one can see anyone being a fan of HERE)

First, let’s accept that your brand would love to have passionate customers that considered themselves to be fans of your brand.  Rock stars have raving fans that love and support them, and your brand wants that as well.

The problem lies in calling them ‘rock stars’.  Because when you do that, it’s easy to say ‘they are rock stars, we’re a brand, it’s two totally different things’.

Really?  You think Taylor Swift isn’t a brand?  Lady Gaga isn’t a brand?  Katy Perry, Pearl Jam, Blake Shelton, these are some of the biggest and most bankable brands on the planet!

The other trait that’s common to these rock stars? All of them are exceptional marketers.

So if you accept that these performers and bands are also excellent brands and marketers, then that means they are just like you in that regard.  Which means you can learn from how they market themselves and apply it to your own brand-building efforts.

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So if rock stars are really brands, why does The Zac Brown Band have more fans than my brand does?  What is he doing that I’m not? 

Six years ago I got on an airplane for the first time.  And I had the normal fears of a first flight, and was pretty worried.  My anxiety got worse as we prepared for takeoff and then as we rose and I was pushed back in my seat I just knew that I was about to fall out the bottom of the plane and I couldn’t understand WHY NO ONE ELSE WAS UPSET!  Then I looked over and saw an older woman sitting across from me, and she had taken out a magazine and was reading it without a care in the world as the airplane climbed and the ground became harder to see clearly.  At that point I realized that she knew something I didn’t.  So I immediately calmed down, assuming if she wasn’t upset, I shouldn’t be either.

I tell this story to preface the rest of the post.  Rock stars do a lot of things, especially in their marketing efforts, that seem counter-intuitive and even completely scary to most brands.  But the end result cannot be argued, rock stars have raving fans that drive real business growth for their brand.  If you want to have the same, then you need to trust that the rock stars have a valid reason for doing the ‘scary stuff’.

If you want to understand why rock stars have such passionate fans and your brand does not, then you need to understand why the average rock star markets the way she does.  You need to understand The Loyalty Graph:

LoyaltyGraph2Yep, at the end of the day the reason why rock stars have fans comes down to simple marketing.  But the key is that rock stars understand the true value of their most passionate fans, and your brand likely does not.

To the average brand, it’s great to have a fan, a passionate customer that praises the brand to others.  But most brands don’t look to actively engage those fans.  While they are happy to have fans, the average brand leaves their fans alone, with the thinking being let them keep doing what they are doing.

Rock stars literally focus their marketing efforts around their fans.  What’s worth noting about this approach is that rock stars are based their marketing efforts around connecting with less than 5% of their customer base.

This is curious, because the average brand not only all but ignores its fans, it spends millions marketing to the other 95% of its customers.  With a premium placed on marketing to New Customers, customers that have little or no affinity toward their brand.  At the same time, rock stars are all but ignoring New Customers, from a marketing perspective.  Think about that for a minute: Brands are investing the majority of their marketing dollars on connecting with a group of customers that rock stars are literally ignoring.  Again back to the airplane example, what do rock stars know that your brand doesn’t?

Rock stars understand that your fans are the best salespeople your brand has.  And if you take your branding hat off for a moment, you know this to be true as well.  Let’s say you are making a trip to Switzerland this Summer and you want to buy a simple point and shoot camera for under $300 for the trip.  Before making your purchase you’ll do the following:

1 – Get recommendations from friends and family online.

2 – Get recommendations from friends and family offline.

3 – Check online reviews (Amazon as well as photography sites)

Note that your buying decision was influenced not by marketing from any camera brands, but instead by friends, family, and other customers.  Because we trust other customers more than we trust the brands marketing to us.

That’s what rock stars understand about marketing that your brand does not.

So rock stars literally shift their marketing message and put it in the hands of the people that you are most likely to trust.  They connect with their fans and cultivate them as salespeople for their brand.  This is why they don’t have to spend 95% of their marketing budget on trying to acquire new customers.  Instead, they connect with their fans that love them, and those fans then acquire new customers for them.

The key is to put your marketing message in the hands of the people that other customers trust the most 

The reason why most brands don’t want to do this is because most brands want complete control over how its marketing messages are shared and spread.  This is exactly why television, newspaper and radio advertising has been so popular for decades.  The brand can communicate directly with many people at one time.

The problem with this approach is that as a result, any communication from the brand is viewed as being ‘marketing’, and as such, less trustworthy to the average customer.  So to make sure that your marketing message is actually heard, it needs to pass through a source that the customer trusts, such as another customer (fan).

But again, we are back to the point that most brands don’t trust their fans enough to give them control of their marketing messages.  And yet, most rock stars do.  This is because most rock stars understand who their fans are and what motivates them.

Fans want to see their favorite brand, rock star or sports team succeed.  So they will act in what they perceive to be that brand/rock star/sport team’s best interest.  But the important point to understand is that since they are fans, they trust their favorite brand or rock star.  So if that brand connects directly with them and asks them to spread their marketing message in a certain way, they will listen.

Which is exactly what rock stars do.  They are constantly connecting with their most passionate fans because they understand that by doing so, their fans will better understand who the rock star is, and the message the rock star wants them to spread.

Your brand’s fear that your fans won’t spread the message that you want is mostly unfounded.  If they don’t spread the message that you want it’s probably because you haven’t communicated to them what message you do want them to spread!  What features of your product do you want them to tell others about?  What are the selling points that you want other customers to know about?

Participating in a conversation changes that conversation

Conduct this simple experiment: For the next 5 customers that mention your brand positively on Twitter, tweet them back and say Thank You.  Then note what happens next.  The odds are that at least one and possibly all five people will respond back saying you are welcome.  One or more of them might try to extend the conversation with you.  The point is that whatever happens after you reply happened because you replied.  By simply interacting with customers that self-identified as being fans of your brand, you gave them a reason to think more positively about your brand, and a reason to create more positive word of mouth about your brand.

Here’s your primer to becoming a rock star brand:

1 – Understand the business value of your fans.  Your fans are your brand’s best salespeople.  They are the real rock stars, treat them as such.

2 – Focus on ways to increase interactions with your biggest fans.  This galvanizes them and validates why they love your brand to begin with.  Plus, it gives them a better understandng of your brand and your brand a better understanding of your fans.

3 – Communicate to your fans how they can help you.  Remember that your fans are different from your average customer.  The average customer has little to no interest in helping you spread your marketing messages but your fans are actively looking for ways to help you grow your brand.  They want to help you, work with them to make that happen.

4 – Ask your fans for feedback.  Ask them what they think about your brand, and ask them what they are hearing from other customers they talk to.  Specifically, ask them what reasons other customers are giving them for why they do not want to buy from your brand.  This is incredibly valuable feedback that you need to seek out.  Once you learn why some customers don’t want to buy from your brand, you can work to correct those issues, and drive more sales.

5 – Remember this is doable.  There’s no reason why your brand, no matter what industry you are in or products you sell, cannot have passionate fans that love you.  It’s not about the product, if it were you would never see companies that create commodity products like scissors and industrial lubricants with passionate fanbases.  It is about how you relate to and understand your customers.  This is exactly why rock stars place a premium on having constant interactions with their fans and being as close to them as possible.

6 – Build the stage for your fans. They are the real rock stars.

Pic via Flickr user LunchboxLP

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#Blogchat Will Be LIVE During the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas!

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I’m thrilled to announce that #Blogchat will be a part of this year’s Adobe Summit in Las Vegas! A special LIVE version of #Blogchat will be a part of the Summit on Tuesday, March 22nd.  This #Blogchat will be held on Twitter and you can follow along with the #Blogchat and #AdobeSummit hashtags starting at 5pm Pacific, 7pm Central.

The topic of the LIVE #Blogchat will be The Future of Content Marketing.  Here’s the questions we’ll be discussing:

Topic: The Future of Content Marketing

Q1-Q3, The Future of Content Creation:

Q1 – How do you decide what type of content you should create?
Q2 – How do you scale your content creation efforts from a small team to company-wide?
Q3 – Whose job should it be create content in an organization?

Q4-Q6, The Future of Content Distribution:

Q4 – When you distribute/promote new content, how do you increase its organic reach?
Q5 – How do you decide what content is worth putting paid dollars behind?
Q6 – With every brand becoming a publisher, how do you stand out from the noise?

We’ll ask a new question every 10 mins.  Remember, this special #Blogchat begins at 5pm Pacific time on Tuesday, March 22nd! Please follow the #Blogchat and #AdobeSummit hashtags!

Additionally, Adobe will feature a special #GetRealChat from Pam Moore and Jay Baer will bring his Social Pros podcast to the event, you can find all the details here. And if you would like to follow along at home, here’s the link for the Live Stream of the Keynotes and other events from Adobe Summit.

I’ll be participating in the Adobe Summit as part of the Adobe Insider Program, along with Adobe’s other insiders. In addition to the Live #Blogchat on March 22nd, I’ll also be live-tweeting sessions during the Summit on Tuesday and Wednesday. Please follow me on Twitter and follow the #AdobeSummit hashtag.

If you want to add a LIVE #Blogchat to your conference or company event, click here to learn more information.

Disclosure: Adobe is compensating me for my involvement in the Adobe Insider Program as well as having #Blogchat be a part of the Adobe Summit.

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The Only Graph You Need to Know For Creating More Brand Advocates

InteractionsWhen I started writing Think Like a Rock Star, I began to research how it is that rock stars can so easily create and cultivate fans.  I wanted to know how they do it, but more importantly, I wanted to know if they had a system or methodology that could be applied by brands to create passionate customers and fans.

The above graph shows the exact steps that need to happen, and in order, to create brand advocates.  The problem is that most brands have little to no interactions with customers in order to start the process.

And to be fair, most customers don’t want to talk to most brands anyway.

But we know that we can’t understand our customers if we aren’t interacting with them and learning from them.  Which also gives them the chance to learn from and understand us.

So how do you learn from customers that don’t care to learn about you?  If customers won’t engage with you, you can at least listen to them.  You can be aware of the online conversation happening about and around your brand.

That will give you a chance to engage with customers that are discussing your brand and the greater context that it plays in.  Which means you can interact with these customers with a higher level of understanding about the customers you are engaging with.  Who they are, what they want.

The more you interact with your customers and they with you, the more willing they are to lower their guard and interact more with you and on a deeper level.  And if you communicate to them that you are willing to go deeper, they will lower their guard even further.

It’s about being committed to learning about your customers.  Not just learning how to sell to them, but learning who they are so you can understand how they want to be sold to.

It requires you communicating to your customers that you care enough about them to take the first step:

PearlTweetI’m an Alabama fan so I am required to hate all things Auburn.  But I love how Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl has embraced Auburn’s fans since being hired a few months ago.  Bruce has especially gone out of his way to reach out to Auburn’s students.  Pearl knows that it’s vital to the program’s success that he has buy-in from the students.  They will be the most passionate fans at the home games and will bring the most energy.  So he goes out of his way to engage the students, doing everything from handing out t-shirts on campus before games, to buying them lunch.  Call it bribery all you want, but what Pearl is doing is communicating to the students that he appreciates them and understands how valuable they are.  Trust me, a lot of basketball coaches do not do this, and Auburn’s students love Pearl.

Why can’t your company do the same thing?  Why not bring in 10 of your customers to spend the day with you at your headquarters?  Get to know them and let them get to know you.  The insights you’ll gain directly from these customers will more than pay for the travel and associated costs.

Another key takeaway I had from studying how rock stars create and cultivate fans is that rock stars go out of their way to communicate two very important messages to their fans:

1 – I appreciate you.

2 – I love you.

In other words, they don’t have fans because they are rock stars, this is a huge misconception about rock stars.  Rock stars don’t have fans because of who they are, they have fans because of what they do.

Your company has to want fans to have them.  And you definitely want them.

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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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Fans Have Gravity: Why Customer Acquisition Isn’t Your Best Marketing Bet

DSCN1197

Marketers are obsessed with size.  Especially size of market, and they often spend billions of dollars chasing the biggest market of all:  New Customers.

And yet, rock stars follow a completely different marketing path.  Instead of marketing to New Customers, they go out of their way to create experiences and engagement with their biggest fans.  Lady Gaga created LittleMonsters.com to cater specifically to her most hardcore fans.  Taylor Swift has T-Parties just for a handful of her biggest fans at each concert.  Amanda Palmer does secret shows where she usually gives away tickets to her biggest fans, even to the point of excluding ‘New Customers’ from the selection process.

Notice the complete difference between how most brands and most rock stars market.  Most brands market completely to New Customers, even to the point of all but ignoring their Brand Advocates or Fans.  While on the flipside, rock stars go out of their way to connect with their biggest fans, even to the point of ignoring New Customers.

What do rock stars know that most brands do not?  Rock stars understand that Fans Have Gravity.

Think about your favorite restaurant.  The one you always take out-of-town guests to when you want them to experience the ‘best’ your city has to offer.

How many people have you encouraged to visit that restaurant in the last year?  Your loyalty and excitement for that restaurant is attractive to other people.  Your friends and the people you talk to about the restaurant are more likely to visit it because of interacting with you.

Why does this happen?  Because…

1 – Fans are more trustworthy than brands.  When a brand runs a commercial saying they are awesome, we don’t believe it, but when a fan says the same thing, we do.

2 – Fans have passion, and passion is sexy.  Fans are genuinely excited about the brands they love, and their passion is infectious.

3 – Fans want others customers to be fans as well.  Fans love their favorite brand for whatever reason and want to share that love with others.

 

So if fans have gravity and pull other customers to them, what happens when multiple fans are in the same place?  Their ability to attract others becomes stronger.  This is why rock stars focus on connecting their biggest fans to each other.  Simply being in the same space with other people that love the same rock star helps validate that love for each fan.  It makes their ability to attract other people to them and the rock star that much stronger.

Rock stars relentlessly focus on connecting with their most rabid fans ONLY, even at the expense of connecting with new customers.  Look at concerts:  Concerts are the lifeblood of every successful musician’s career.  They are cash cows for the music industry, and always have been. Why?  Because they are events designed to appeal to the rock star’s hardcore fans only.  The person that has never heard a U2 song would think you were a fool to pay $100 for a U2 concert ticket, but the U2 fan would not only do so, he’d happily stand in line for 3 days just for the privilege.  For the fans, concerts are a way to get special access to their favorite rock star.  They can be a few feet away from them while they perform.  They can get an autograph after the show.  ‘New Customers’ of the rock star have no interest in any of this, and that’s why the rock star doesn’t market to them.  They connect with their biggest fans and create magical experiences for them.

How much money is your company leaving on the table by not connecting with your biggest fans and creating amazing experiences for them?