MackCollier.com

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The Secret to Spotting Business Opportunities

understand what the customer is saying
Well a Mustang IS a faster horse…

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” – Henry Ford

This quote from the founder of Ford Motor Co is often offered as an example of how the customer doesn’t always know what it wants. I disagree, the customer always knows what it wants, it’s up to the company to listen and understand what the customer is saying.

In the above quote, the customer is really saying that they want a faster and more efficient mode of transportation. Horse = transportation for the customer, because that’s likely the only form of personal transportation that they know.

Smart companies are the ones that can interpret what the customer is really saying, and wanting.  Another example is the iPhone. I remember when the iPhone debuted, a certain well-known branding expert claimed it would be a massive flop. The expert said people were used to having their alarm clock and radio and camera in separate devices. They didn’t want all of them smushed together in one clunky device.

Of course, the ‘expert’ was completely wrong about how successful the iPhone would become. Customers were happy to have all these separate devices smushed into one phone, if it was done in a way that created value for the customer. This ‘expert’ didn’t understand what the customer was saying.

When the customer gives feedback on what products it would like to see, the customer does so in terms of what products are currently available. Let’s go back to cars for a minute.  When the customer says “I wish my car got better gas mileage’, what they are really saying is they wish they didn’t have to spend XX dollars a week on gas.

Maybe that means they simply want the same vehicle they have now, with better gas mileage. Or maybe it means they would be willing to buy a completely new vehicle, if it got better gas mileage. Perhaps it means they would be open to buying a motorcycle, since it requires far less gas.

It’s up to the company to understand the core issue (‘I want to reduce the amount I spend on transportation’) the customer is facing, and offer products that match the customer’s wants and needs. If a company can do that repeatedly, you win the customer’s trust and loyalty. Apple does this, so when the computer company comes out with a music player, people buy it.  When Apple comes out with a phone, people buy it.  Because they trust Apple to give them a product that meets their needs.

One of the first jobs I had out of college was working as a vendor for Lowes. I represented a company that sold lawncare products. I worked Weds-Sunday. On Weds-Friday, I was responsible for stocking the shelves and making sure that my company’s products were correctly displayed in the store and available for purchase. If any customer came by that needed help, I provided assistance. On the weekend, my primary responsibility was to sell directly to the customer. I stayed in the store on the lawncare isle and helped any customer that needed assistance.

One weekday, I was stocking the shelves, when a customer came up and asked me if I could help him figure out what product he needed to get rid of a certain bug that had infested his lawn. After talking to him for a few minutes, it was obvious that he had no idea what product he needed, and what he really wanted was someone he could trust to tell him how to fix his lawn.

So I did the only thing I could do; I told him I couldn’t help him. It turns out that my company didn’t make a product that addressed his particular problem as well as the competitor’s product. So I told the customer that honestly, he needed to buy the competitor’s product, because it would do a better job than ours would. I even walked him to the competitor’s product, and handed to him and told him this was the product he needed to solve his problem. The customer took it from me, and walked away without a word, in a kinda confused state as if to wonder why I had just cost my company a sale!

Two days later, I sold in that same store. So there I was setup on the lawncare isle waiting for customers. As it turns out, a representative from our competitor happened to be standing at the front of the same isle, and like me, he was waiting for a customer to sell to.

Curiously enough, after a few minutes I noticed that same customer I had helped two days previous started walking down the isle. The representative from the competitor immediately pounced “Hello sir, can I help you today?”

The customer, without breaking stride, waved his hand at him and said ‘Nope! I’m here to talk to HIM!’ and he pointed at me. The customer then walked up and thanked me, he said my product recommendation from two days ago had worked perfectly on his lawn. He then asked if I had a suggestion for another lawncare issue. This time, it turns out that my company did offer the superior product for the customer’s issue, which he bought.

The customer always knows what it wants. It’s up to the company to listen and understand what the customer is REALLY asking for.

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You Don’t Need More Customers, You Need the Right Ones

the right customerWhen I was in graduate school, I also spent some time working for a Ford dealership, in the ecommerce department. Specifically, I was tasked with handling online sales for a particular group of products that Ford sold. We sold these products online via both our website, and through eBay. When I came on board, the manager basically handed the online sales off to me, and I was tasked with improving the numbers.

At this time, around 75-90% of the dealership’s online sales came from eBay auctions. Most of the products we sold we did not have on-site, we would purchase the products from a drop-shipper. Most of our competitors on eBay did the same thing.

I quickly discovered a big problem; Our competitors used the same drop-shipper we did, and they had a higher purchase volume. This meant they paid less for the same products that we sold. So it was pointless to try to compete on price. We would drop the price of an item in our eBay auctions, and our competitors would go a dollar lower.

So I started scrambling for ideas on how we could better compete. I began to do some googling trying to figure out how how customers decided who to buy from on eBay. Specifically, I wanted to see if there was already any content or reviews on the internet for both our dealership and our competitors. It was brand reputation monitoring years before social media.

While I didn’t really find anything about our dealership, I did discover multiple forums and message boards devoted to Ford customers. Many of these boards discussed products they were using or that they were considering buying.

A light bulb went off; What if we created an account and started interacting with these Ford customers? We could answer any questions they had about products, and also use it as a way to increase awareness for the products we were selling online on both eBay and our website.

I thought this was a great idea, and took it to my boss. His reaction was basically that he didn’t see the point, we needed to be selling to all customers, not just Ford owners.

But to me, it made perfect sense. This would give us a competitive advantage versus other sellers on eBay, who worked for generic companies that had no ties to any automaker. The way I saw it, being a Ford dealership was something we needed to focus on, not run from.

So in the spirit of it being better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, I began to alter our branding strategy. In our eBay listings, I played up the fact that we were a Ford dealership. I changed listings that would previously have a ‘works for all makes and models’ approach, to highlight the Ford vehicles that the item would work with. This item went from working on all trucks, to working on all trucks, especially Ford trucks like the F-150.

I also promoted the fact that we had a separate website where customers could shop for more Ford products. This change in strategy had an immediate impact. Over the next few months, online sales increased by almost 50%. Additionally, we began to see more sales for Ford products from our website. This was a welcome change, because it meant we could sell the same or similar items as what was sold on eBay, but by selling it on our own website, we avoided eBay’s seller fees.

All of this goes to show that having the right customers is better than having more customers. My boss thought we needed more customers. Getting more customers would have meant continuing a price war with competitors that had higher profit margins than we did. So we could never win. Our advantage was that we could appeal to Ford customers, better than our competitors could. Ford customers were the RIGHT customers for us, and the increase in sales is testament to this approach.

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Alabama Football Launches ‘The Advantage’ Personal Branding Program For its Student-Athletes

Last month I wrote about how important it is to give your employees the skills they need to succeed. One of the examples I used to illustrate that point was how Alabama football gives both its coaches and players the tools and teaching they need to advance.

Alabama football has just launched another initiative in its effort to equip its players with the skills they need to succeed.  The program is called ‘The Advantage’ and it is being billed as a ‘personal brand’ development program. The Advantage will work with players to develop their communication skills, giving them instruction on how to handle interviews, and how to conduct themselves on social media channels. For those players who pursue a professional career in football, The Advantage will assist with financial literacy, marketing, and agent selection.

https://twitter.com/AlabamaFTBL/status/1389686640390639618
https://twitter.com/AlabamaFTBL/status/1389624085487964165

This is such a smart initiative on so many levels:

  • It becomes yet another recruiting tool for Alabama, providing real benefits to recruits that they can instantly see the value in
  • It helps players manage their social media accounts, which also helps the University with its image and branding as well
  • By helping players with interview coaching, that provides another benefit to both the player, as well as the University, and it enhances the brand of both parties
  • As players become more proficient in using social media, that just means more exposure for them, and for the Alabama football brand as well

I’m honestly surprised more universities haven’t done something similar, and I’m sure we’ll see a lot of schools copy this now that Alabama has unveiled The Advantage.

Think about how you could do something similar at your company or organization. And just as Alabama will use The Advantage as a recruiting tool, so can your company. Your company could offer a program that coaches your current employees on how to better leverage their social media accounts to promote their personal brand, as well as yours. Additionally, you could leverage such a program to help your internal subject matter experts become more comfortable creating content and sharing their expertise. Getting internal subject matter experts to share what they know is often a struggle for companies. So this would be a real benefit that your company could enjoy.

Once such a program is in place, then its existence becomes a recruiting tool for new employees. Your company would get better employees, more content from your subject matter experts, and the social media content created by your employees would be more on brand. A win-win!

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Your Mindset is Everything: The One Mistake I’ve Made That’s Held Me Back For 15 Years

I want to talk about two people, both facing the same challenge in their personal and professional lives.

The first is a friend of mine who I’ve known and worked with for years. We talk often, and almost every time we do, she complains about her job. Most of her complaints are about how her employer can’t seem to get out of its own way. Unforced errors, inefficient management, constant pressure to hit quarterly deadlines. She laments that the company seems to have no long-term strategy in place. She often makes suggestions to her boss and other executives for how the company can turn things around and begin to grow.

Her suggestions are either blown off, or she’s told that the company needs to get on better footing before it thinks about making ‘big’ changes. Every time I talk to her, she laments ‘I really don’t know if I will still have this job in a year’. She worries about the future of the company.

I ask her why she doesn’t consider another job? She is far too qualified to be in such an unhappy role, and her current employer clearly doesn’t appreciate her talents, or know how to leverage them within the company. She always says she doesn’t want to ‘start over’, and she hopes the company will figure out what it needs to do to turn things around.

My friend and her employer are both stuck with a survive mindset. The company doesn’t want to plan for the future, the CEO and her bosses just want to make it through this year. Then when things start to improve, then they can consider making changes

At the same time, my friend is also focused on a survive mindset. She’s unhappy at her job and knows she can do so much more. But at the same time, she doesn’t want to look for another job.  Maybe she fears the process or landing in an even worse position.

When you’re only focused on the short-term, whether you realize it or not, you are simply surviving.

Here’s another example. I have a wonderful network of professional friends that I lean on for support and guidance. I talk to them often about what I’m working on, what I’m focusing on, and where I want to go.

All of them always ask me when I am going to write another book, and when I am going to start podcasting again. I always tell them I appreciate them asking, but I can’t focus on those things right now. Both would take too long to show results, I have to focus on what will work right now.

Without realizing it, I was also adopting a survive mentality. I always dismiss the idea of writing another book or restarting my podcast, simply because those efforts would take months to bear fruit. I need results today! I need income today!

Recently, I did a little exercise. I thought of a number, an amount I’d like to make over the next year from my business. It was a BIG number.  And I asked myself ‘What would I need to do in order to hit that number?”

And I started brainstorming internally, and one of the first thoughts I had was ‘Well I would need to write another book, and I’d probably need to start podcasting again.”  Without thinking, I went straight to doing the same things that my friends had been pushing me to do.

The light bulb went off. I had been sabotaging my own ability to thrive, by adopting a survive mentality. I was focusing on just getting through this month.  Then next month do it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. I was focusing on getting immediate results, anything that wouldn’t see results for a few months, or longer, was being put on the backburner.

And I’m sure my friends could sense this, that’s why they kept suggesting I do things like write another book, or start podcasting. Because they wanted to see me THRIVE!

 

What’s the Difference Between Surviving and Thriving?

Surviving is what happens this month or this quarter.

Thriving is what happens 5 years from now.

 

Recently, I finally had a chance to read Simon Sinek’s wonderful book Start With Why. In Chapter 6, he talks about the turnaround at Continental Airlines that happened under CEO Gordon Bethune in the 90s. Prior to Bethune’s arrival, the entire working environment at Continental was very toxic. The employees were always stressed and in bad moods, and they treated the customers poorly as a result.  I thought this quote from page 84 really resonates with the Survive vs Thrive mentality:

Some would argue that the reason Continental’s culture was so poisonous was that the company was struggling. They would tell you that it’s hard for executives to focus on anything other than survival when a company is facing hard times. “Once we get profitable again,” the logic went, “then we will take a look at everything else.”

How many of you have heard this at your own company? How many of you have heard it in your own household?

Focusing on today isn’t how you create a happy tomorrow.

And let’s be honest, focusing solely on the present, always adopting a survive mindset, is exhausting. It beats you down, it can steal your hope and your happiness.

But just shifting to a thrive mindset, empowers you. Suddenly you are filled with hope, you have a sense of control over your personal and professional life.

When I wrote that BIG number down, my first thought was to revert back to a survive mindset.

“That number’s too big!”

“There’s no way I could hit that!”

“Let’s be reasonable!”

I told myself. Then I calmed down and thought ‘But what if I could? What would need to happen in order to hit that number? What changes would I need to make?”

Before I knew it, I had a long list of things I could do to hit that BIG number.

Suddenly, that unreasonable number that I could never reach…looked possible. Just sketching out a rough plan made it seem more…real.

It was empowering, I must say.

Think about your job. Hopefully, you love your job and look forward to going to work everyday and changing lives for the better. But for those of you that are dis-satisfied with your job, like my friend above, what needs to change?

Do you need a bigger salary? Do you need to perform different tasks that take better advantage of your skills? Do you need more time off?

Think about what YOU want from your job, then list out what would need to happen in order to make your wants become reality. For instance, maybe you wish you were making 30% more. Ok, then how would you get there? Maybe it’s something as easy as switching jobs if you are underpaid. Or maybe you would need to get a promotion to make 30% more. In that case, think about the changes you would need to make to justify the promotion. Maybe you need to learn new skills, or maybe you need to gain a new certification, etc.

Before you know it, you have a plan in place, and can go to your boss and ask for additional training that can improve your skills.

It’s so empowering! But it starts with accepting you are settling for just surviving, when you really want to thrive. Once you shift your mindset to thrive, then you want so much more for your life, and you become excited about planning out how to achieve more.

When your friends ask you why you don’t apply for a better job or why you don’t pursue this or accomplish that, understand that they are pushing you to thrive. They can see that you are stuck surviving, when you could do so much more. Surround yourself with a support group that pushes you to thrive!

If this last year has taught us anything, it should be that life is too short to be miserable. We are not meant to just survive, we are meant to thrive!

 

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse Signing Content Deals, Twitter’s Growth, Biz Returning to Pre-Pandemic Levels

Happy Monday! Big content week ahead, new posts every day through Friday, hope you enjoy!  Here’s a few marketing and digital stories that caught my eye:

 

Clubhouse signed an exclusive deal with the NFL to provide content during last week’s NFL draft. I think this opens up some interesting possibilities, as we already have some ‘listen only’ rooms on Clubhouse where the host just plays music all day. What if Clubhouse partnered with Sirius to create a Clubhouse Channel that was just on the platform? We’ve been thinking about how another social platform might acquire Clubhouse, what if a different company that’s already creating audio content decided to acquire Clubhouse to supplement what it already offers?

 

Twitter showed modest user growth in Q1. As I’ve said for months, I want to see what the numbers are for Q2 for both Twitter and Facebook. I’m not expecting huge numbers. As most areas of the country are reopening, I think we will see a flood of people getting outside this Summer and into the Fall. Twitter and Facbook spiked while many of us were cooped up in or homes last year, but that won’t be the case in 2021. It will be interesting to see how willing we are to tweet on the go this year.

 

A majority of B2B brands and marketers now expect a return to pre-pandemic business levels by the end of the year. A wonderful sign that the nation is reopening and it’s great to see the optimism. A big component of this will be a return of live, in-person events. I’ll talk more about this on Friday.

 

That’s all for today, hope you have a great week and see you back here tomorrow for an important post!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: The Clubhouse Hype Train Comes to a Halt

Happy Monday! I hope you are ready for a productive week! Normally with Monday’s Marketing Minute I try to highlight 3-4 key stories, but I wanted to do a deeper dive into just one today:

 

If you’re a Clubhouse user, you’ve probably noticed that activity is down a good bit on the platform. You may also have noticed that some of the people you were following are no longer active there.

This one chart tells us why:

The hype train for Clubhouse has officially jumped the tracks. Does this mean Clubhouse is dead, that social audio’s time is over?

Absolutely not. What this means is that the people that were driving the hype for Clubhouse have mostly moved onto ‘greener’ fields.

This was far more common from 2008-2012 or so, but every time a new social media site suddenly comes out of no where to be on everyone’s radar, the hype for it is driven by the same group of people. Those would be marketers, coaches, and consultants. We saw the same thing with Clubhouse in January and February. It seemed every room was about selling a course or selling services, or ‘why your brand should be on Clubhouse’ type rooms. You know, rooms with 15 people, and 12 of them are consultants and coaches.

Let’s be honest, the last year or so has been brutal financially for most of us. As a consultant, its easily been my worst year and I’m still struggling. It’s like that for many of my peers, so when something like Clubhouse comes along, I can understand why a lot of coaches and consultants get excited and see it as a way to drive new revenue.

As I said, this always happens with ‘shiny new’ social media sites. The marketers/coaches/consultant rush on in a cyber land-grab, try to push their networks to the new site, and try to make some quick sales. It usually doesn’t work, and usually the fast hype for the site dies just as quickly. We saw it here with Clubhouse, before that we saw it with sites like Friendfeed and Identi.ca and Ello.

This is why I always advise companies to take a wait and see approach toward any new social media site that’s benefiting from massive hype. The first thing you do is decide WHO is hyping the site, and WHY?  What you want to see is hype driven by CORE users that have been on the site for a while.

We did have some of that with Clubhouse and still do, but the majority of the hype was driven by the people that had just discovered the site, and wanted to make some quick sales. The only way those people stay and keep hyping the site is if they keep making money off it. Which doesn’t seem to be happening with Clubhouse.

Now, does that mean Clubhouse is dead? I think the most intelligent question to ask is in regards to social audio. In February I wrote about this topic, and back then, I had been active on Clubhouse for a few weeks, and I honestly loved it. My enthusiasm for the site has definitely waned since then.

Yet in my post, notice I didn’t ask if Clubhouse was the future, I talked about the future of social audio. Social audio has a lot of potential for learning, for discovery, for networking. I think adding a social audio layer of functionality to existing social media sites will be interesting to see. For instance, I think LinkedIn in particular could benefit from adding social audio functionality. And I also think a lot of those coaches and consultants could actually do well utilizing social audio moreso on LinkedIn than they did on Clubhouse.

Can Clubhouse survive now that the hype is dying? That remains to be seen. Normally I would say yes, but the potential problem is, Clubhouse just closed new funding last week based on a $4B valuation. If downloads continue to fall and the Android rollout doesn’t see a massive spike in users, that $4B valuation will seem insanely high.  The investors will be pushing even more for a return on their funds, and that could put the future of Clubhouse in a tough place.

Having said that, social audio’s future is very bright. I think once the functionality gets integrated into existing platforms, and we start letting creators see what they can do, then the potential will be realized. It’s tough for anything social media-related to have instant success when you roll it out and immediately try to find ways to use it to make money. Social media always has and always will best function as a tool to create and share content and conversations. It’s tricky to monetize those, it’s best to use the tools to first create value, then the monetization opportunities will flow.

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Monster Energy is the Red Bull That You’ve Never Heard Of

If you’ve attended a marketing, business or content conference in the last decade, you know how successfully Red Bull uses content marketing. They are experts at content marketing, in fact I used the brand as one of the key case studies in my book Think Like a Rock Star. Red Bull also invests heavily in extreme sporting events, as well as mainstream sports like NASCAR, and even in the thriving E-Sports industry.

Red Bull doesn’t market its product, it markets what happens after you drink it. The brand sets the standard for successful content marketing, and its focus on sponsoring and helping to grow the sporting events that its customers love is absolutely brilliant.

Red Bull does everything right when it comes to marketing, and it’s no surprise that they dominate the energy drink space.

Except…they don’t. In fact, Red Bull may not even be the market leader in the energy drink industry by the end of 2021.

monster energy

Meet Monster Energy, the Red Bull That You’ve Never Heard Of

What makes the energy drink industry so fascinating is that it doesn’t have one brand doing exceptional marketing, it has two. And this exceptional marketing has helped catapult both brands to own the energy drink industry.

Heading into 2021, Red Bull was the energy drink market leader, with just over 40% of the market. Monster Energy was right behind them with just under 40% of the market. However, Coca-Cola acquired a 17% stake in Monster Energy in 2014, and Monster Energy will be benefiting from Coca-Cola’s distribution channels as part of that relationship. This has led to speculation that Monster Energy could actually pass Red Bull to become the energy drink market leader in 2021 or 2022.

But the purpose of this post isn’t to prop up Monster Energy or really Red Bull either. What I wanted to focus on is how both brands have created incredibly effective marketing strategies. And in some ways those strategies are very similar, and in others, they are quite different. I want to examine those strategies in detail here because there are some key lessons that you can take from both brands to improve your own company’s marketing and give you a competitive advantage in your space.

 

Red Bull and Monster Energy Both Market Sporting Events, But in Very Different Ways

Both Red Bull and Monster Energy invest in sponsoring athletes and teams at sporting, extreme and esports events. This is very smart marketing, and it helps both brands show customers that they have ‘skin in the game’. It also communicates to customers that these brands are committed to seeing these events grow.

While both brands are active in these events via sponsorships, their marketing efforts are slightly different. Red Bull works to associate itself with the athletes. Their marketing message is that they help fuel these amazing athletes and help them accomplish these amazing feats. Red Bull sponsors the athletes and then leverages their accomplishments via content marketing. These athletes give Red Bill access to thousands of hours of amazing content, which is a big reason why Red Bull’s content marketing is viewed as some of the best work by any global brand. But make no mistake, the underlying message from Red Bull’s marketing is that these amazing athletes doing amazing things, are doing it because they drink Red Bull.

Monster Energy takes a slightly different approach. The brand does sponsor teams and athletes at events. But while Red Bull’s branding is more about the athletes and how Red Bull helps fuel them, Monster Energy is wanting to position itself more as a lifestyle brand. Monster not only sponsors events, teams and athletes, but the brand also has a major presence at these events. The brand will offer product sampling at events, goes out of its way to connect directly with fans, and also has the famous (infamous?) Monster Girls at their events. While Red Bull is positioning itself to align more with the athletes, Monster Energy positions itself more to interact directly with their customers via events.

 

Red Bull is All-In on Traditional Marketing, Monster All But Ignores It 

‘Red Bull gives you wiiiiings!’ You’ve probably heard that tagline from Red Bull’s commercials many times over the years. The brand heavily invests in broadcast commercials, and it has created some stunners.

When’s the last time you saw a commercial for Monster Energy?  Have you ever seen one?

Both Red Bull and Monster Energy are attempting to connect with the 18-30 year-old demographic, especially males. This group has a highly tuned bullshit detector when it comes to traditional advertising and marketing. So both brands are mindful of that in their marketing efforts.

Red Bull works with and associates itself with extreme athletes, and then uses them as sort of ‘influencers’ to connect with the end customer. Red Bull’s broadcast and print marketing efforts focus on the athletes and their amazing accomplishments moreso than the brand itself. This approach of letting the athletes lead the marketing and Red Bull takes a backseat has resonated with customers, who don’t see it as marketing, but rather as awesome content.

Monster Energy focuses more on connecting with customers directly. As you might guess, the brand all but avoids traditional marketing in trying to connect with the 18-30 age group it covets.

Marianne Radley, Monster’s Senior VP of Marketing, explains: “We’re very hesitant about doing interviews for no other reason than focusing on building the brand one can at a time with intimate consumer connections. Our marketing has always been very below the line. We’re mindful of that, so we try to keep our time with the press minimal just so it doesn’t look like we’re pushing so much in your face. Everything we do is genuine and sincere, and we try to keep that for all points of communication.”

Notice Ms. Radley’s comment about how Monster doesn’t want to appear to be ‘in your face’ with its marketing. She’s speaking to her customer base. She knows young males hate promotion, so the second one of her customers thinks ‘this smells like marketing’, they will tune out, and Monster has lost a chance to connect with that customer. As you can see from her quote, the brand is very mindful of how it connects with its customers.

red bull

 

Red Bull and Monster Energy Market Differently, But the Result is the Same

While the two brands market and position themselves in slightly different way, there’s one key element that’s the same. Both brands invest in supporting the athletes and events that are important to their customers.

At the end of the day, both brands are courting the coveted 18-30 year-old male category. This age group is very resistant to traditional marketing efforts, as mentioned earlier. So both brands use different tactics to reach their customers. Red Bull does traditional marketing, but it’s not traditional in how it’s structured. The focus isn’t on Red Bull’s products, but on the athletes and celebrities that use those products. That makes the marketing more interesting and palatable to millennials.

Monster Energy all but ignores traditional marketing. Instead, the brand focuses on connecting with their customers personally at events and through non-traditional marketing efforts.

The results speak for themselves. Both brands command roughly 40% of the energy drink market, and they control over 80% of the market space combined.

 

What’s the Key Takeaway For Your Brand?

Focus your marketing efforts on what’s important to your customers. Years ago, Fiskars was looking for a way to revitalize interest in a centuries old brand that made a very boring product; scissors. Fiskars started by doing market research into who its customers were, and how they used its product. What the brand found surprised them; Their customers were actually much younger than they assumed, and Fiskars scissors were quite popular among scrapbookers. Fiskars took what it had learned, and applied that to its marketing. They built a community for scrapbookers, and let some of Fiskars most avid scrapbooking customers, run the community.

The community, which was dubbed The Fiskateers, ended up being quite successful for Fiskars in building sales and brand awareness. The lead members of the Fiskateers community were highly sought after by crafting stores across the country. Crafting stores always enjoyed a boost in sales when a Fiskateer appeared and spoke to the customers. Fiskars’ success with The Fiskateers was because the brand invested in the activities and communities that are important to its customers. Just as Red Bull and Monster Energy invest in sporting events, Fiskars invested in growing the scrapbooking community. In doing so, the brand created something of value for its customers, which in turn, created value for the brand.

Think about how your customers use your products, and for what reasons. How can you incorporate your customers’ behavior into your marketing efforts? What are your customers passionate about and how can you sponsor those passions and help them grow?

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse and Facebook’s New Social Audio Apps, IG Hides Likes, Which Countries Use Social Media the Most

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you’re ready for a great and productive week. Here’a few marketing and digital stories that caught my eye…

 

Clubhouse is inching closer to launching an Android version of its social audio app. This news comes as Facebook began beta testing its own social audio app called Hotline. I think social audio makes more sense as an additional functionality added to current platforms versus a standalone app.  I’m really excited to see what this functionality could look like integrated into LinkedIn, for example. I also think Clubhouse’s ability to build and retain loyalty with its top creators will be a huge factor in its long-term viability.

 

I am always in favor of hiding vanity metrics from social media sites. This post perfectly explains why. Years ago, a study was done into what determines popularity. Thousands of teens were selected and they listened to dozens of songs by new artists. These were songs that none of the respondents had heard before. The teens were broken into multiple groups. The first group listened to each song, then at the end they were asked to rate the song, and they were given an option to download the song if they liked it.

Another group was asked to listen to the same songs and rate them, but this group had the ratings and number of downloads shown from the first group. What the researchers found was that the songs that were rated the highest with the most downloads, were more popular.  Then for the third group, the ratings and number of downloads were not only shown, but the songs were also ranked according to both rating and number of downloads. Researchers found that when the ratings and download numbers were added, the most popular songs were downloaded at an even higher clip.

What this shows, in my mind, is that we are lazy. We let other people decide what’s interesting or worth our time, rather than judging a piece of content on its own merits. We scan for number of Likes or comments or RTs and use those numbers to quickly judge the value of content. This is why I am in favor of any move to hide such vanity metrics on social media.

 

Think the United States is the top country in the world for time spent on social media?  You would be wrong, the US doesn’t even crack the Top 10!  People in the Philippines spend just over 4 hours (yikes!) a day on social media. The average American spends about half that time on social media.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday Marketing Minute! Are you subscribed to my newsletter Backstage Pass? Every Friday, I give you tips and advice on how you can create happy customers that drive real business growth. I also profile how brands are doing just that. Add your email to the banner below and click Subscribe!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Clubhouse is Big in Japan, Canva and Reddit Keep Growing

Happy Monday, y’all! I hope you are ready for another amazing week! Here’s some stories that caught my eye over the last few days:

 

So we all know Clubhouse is growing like gangbusters here in the US, but I was surprised to learn it is also pretty big in Japan. Without checking, I would guess that means Japan is likely the 2nd biggest market for the iPhone as well. The social audio space is going to be fascinating to watch, as now both LinkedIn and Reddit are saying they are also investigating adding social audio functionality to their platforms.

 

There will always be a market for any tool that simplifies the content creation process. There’s no better example of this than Canva. So many people in business and marketing are so bad at graphic design, and so many of us wish we weren’t.  Canva slots in to fill that need perfectly. It’s definitely not Photoshop, but most of us don’t need to be an expert at PS, we just need to be able to easily create basic visuals and infographics, and Canva fills that need for us. I love it and use it all the time, and am not surprised to see that it continues to grow like a weed in the summertime.

 

Reddit is another site that continues to grow quickly. Sure, some of the communities can be pretty toxic, but the site really does offer a unique experience versus the other established social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Lately, when I google an issue, I am finding that a Reddit community is one of the top 2-3 results for that search term. If you want to start learning about Reddit, just google one of your favorite hobbies or shows or artists and add Reddit to the search term. There’s probably already a community set up on Reddit for that topic.

 

So that’s it for this week, I hope yours is wonderful, I’ll have at least one more post up here this week. And check out #ContentCircus tomorrow night, we will be discussing how to share the same content on different platforms. For instance, what’s the best way to share a blog post like this on Facebook?  On Instagram?  Twitter?  We will talk about that tomorrow night on Twitter at #ContentCircus starting at 7pm Central!

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How to Be a Better Marketer

Marketers, as a profession, are one of the least-trusted groups around. They are the guy at the party that everyone dreads seeing. You are with your friends having a perfectly delightful conversation, then here comes the marketer. He steers the conversation to himself, and brags incessantly about his accomplishments. When someone in your group attempts to change the subject to something more interesting, he immediately dismisses the introduced topic, and moves the focus back where it belongs. On him.

This is how most people view the average marketer. And often, this illustration isn’t that absurd. Yet, most marketers aren’t bad people, they simply fall prey to human nature far too easily.

The reality is, we all act in our own best interests. Period. Yet, good marketers understand how to make human nature work for them, and not against them. They understand that in order to reach their desired goals, they have to also provide equal or greater value to someone else.

 

TLDR: How to Be a Better Marketer

  • Respect your customers, market to them as you would your friends and family.
  • Your marketing communications should focus on and create value for your customers.
  • If your marketing isn’t relevant to your audience, then it will be ignored.
  • Understand who your customer is before you market to them.
  • Don’t sell your product, sell what your product allows the customer to do.

 

Why are marketers so distrusted?

Let’s back up for a minute and talk about how one brand figured out how to be better marketers. As with most good stories, alcohol is involved.

Bill Samuels Sr founded Maker’s Mark in 1953. Senior was the epitome of a craftsman. He loved crafting bourbon and prided himself on his ability to do so. His son, Bill Samuels Jr, took over as President of Maker’s Mark in the 1970s with one clear directive from his dad: “Don’t screw up the whisky.”

Father and son were diametrically opposed when it came to the topic of marketing. Junior was a showman. He loved marketing and appreciated the power of promotion and sales.

His father absolutely hated marketing and distrusted most marketers just as much as the rest of us do. Senior hated marketing so much so that often when junior would attempt to have a marketing discussion with his father, Bill Samuels Sr would simply stand up and walk out of the meeting.

So Bill Samuels Jr was at an impasse. He knew that Maker’s Mark needed to do SOME marketing in order to grow, but he also knew that his father would simply continue to shoot down any attempts the son made at adding marketing communications to the mix.

Finally, Bill Samuels Jr decided that it would probably be a good idea to better understand why his father was so opposed to marketing. The son figured that if he understood why his father didn’t want to invest in marketing, then maybe he could come up with a compromise that would be palatable to his father. Bascially, Bill Samuels Jr was marketing the idea of investing in marketing, to his father. So his father was his customer, and the son was learning how to better understand his objections to marketing, so he could factor that into his efforts. Which is what all good marketers do.

Bill Samuels Sr didn’t view the people who bought his bourbon as being customers, he viewed them as being friends and family. And he viewed marketing as selling, and in his mind, you didn’t sell to your friends and family.

So this prompted Bill Samuels Jr to completely shift his mindset toward who the Maker’s Mark customer was, and in turn, how to communicate with them. Samuels Jr went back to his father and said they would define the Maker’s Mark customer as being someone who they would like to invite over to their house for drinks. Bill Samuels Sr signed off on this, and Jr got to work on building a marketing strategy based on communicating with friends and family, instead of selling to strangers.

As an aside, this shift in marketing strategy opened the door for Maker’s Mark to launch one of the most successful brand ambassador programs of all time. In the early 1980s, Maker’s Mark was the recipient of some wonderful exposure in national publications like The Wall Street Journal. That surge of PR catapulted demand for the brand’s products, which actually created a massive distribution problem for Maker’s Mark. Prior to this, Maker’s Mark was essentially a regional, Kentucky brand, and its distribution channels were regional as well. But thanks to the exposure in the WSJ and other publications, there was suddenly national demand for a brand that not only didn’t have the distribution channels to handle a national supply, but the product itself took years to make.

While the brand didn’t have a national distribution channel, it did have customers across the United States. More than that, it had customers that loved the brand. So Bill Samuels Jr. decided to embrace those happy customers, and empower them to market for the brand. Maker’s Mark began to mobilize its customers across the country to demand Maker’s Mark be shipped to their corner of the country. The efforts of its customers slowly expanded Maker’s Mark’s distribution from coast to coast. These efforts by Maker’s Mark to empower its customers to market for the brand would eventually be folded into an official brand ambassador program, which still lives on to this day. You can learn more about the program here.

Bill Samuels Sr. distrusted marketers for the same reason most of you do; He found the very idea offensive, as he felt that marketing was selling, and you don’t sell to friends and family. So Maker’s Mark focused on treating its customers as friends and family, and adjusted its marketing strategy accordingly. Bill Samuels Jr would later call it ‘marketing without fingerprints’.

The key takeaway? If you respect your customers, that changes how you sell to them.

 

The power of being second

Let’s go back to human nature for a minute. It is human nature to want to take care of ourselves first, and everyone else later. For instance, if there’s a shortage of a particular product, say gas, do you let everyone else fill up their tank first, then you go get your gas a week later?  Of course not, you will try to fill up your tank of gas today, and you assume everyone else will do the same. That doesn’t make you a bad person, it just makes you human. We all think of our wants and needs first, before others. Not all the time, but in general.

It’s no different for most marketers. Most marketers focus first on getting the sale, and pleasing the customer can come later. But smart marketers understand the power of pleasing the customer first, and how that will LEAD to sales.

In 2004, Sarah McLachlan released the single World on Fire. Her record label gave her $150,000 to create a music video to support the song. Just as she was preparing to begin filming the video, she came across a letter written by a volunteer with the group Engineers Without Borders. This letter detailed the work that the group was doing to help impoverished people around the world. Sarah was so moved by the work Engineers Without Borders was doing, that she decided to take all but $15 of the $150,000 her record label had given her to create a music video, and she instead donated it to 11 charitable organizations, including Engineers Without Borders.

Now, this was a very generous act on Sarah’s behalf, but her record label still wanted her to create a music video. So Sarah took the last $15 from her budget, and bought a video tape. She then, working with a few friends, created a very low-tech video for World on Fire.

But the video told an incredibly compelling story. What Sarah did with her video was explain to the viewer all the normal expenses associated with creating a music video, and how much each item normally costs. Then, Sarah detailed what the money was actually spend on, via her charitable donations. What resulted was, and absolutely amazing music video, created for just $15:

This video received a Grammy nomination for best music video, the only such nomination of Sarah’s 34-year career as a recording artist.

So let’s break this down: Sarah received $150k to record a music video for World on Fire. Instead, she donated almost all of that money to 11 charitable organizations around the world, impacting the lives of millions of people. And she still got to create a music video for World on Fire, which received a Grammy nomination.

All because Sarah didn’t use her video as a way to ‘sell’ her song, but instead she used it as a tool to help others, to advance causes she is passionate about, and to tell a compelling story. She got the sales she (and her label) wanted, but she got so much more than that.

The key takeaway? Good marketing isn’t about the person sending the message, it’s about the person who hears it. If you create a compelling marketing message, the sales will take care of itself.

 

The best marketing is invisible. The worst marketing BECOMES invisible. 


This is Times Square, in NYC. Look at this picture, but really it’s the same with any picture you see of Times Square.

You always see marketing and advertising messages everywhere. Flashing billboards, and blinking lights as far as the eye can see.

So. Much. Marketing.

Now look at the people. Every single person in this image has one thing in common. Can you spot it?

Every single person is totally ignoring every marketing message.

Everyone in this picture is completely ignoring these hundreds of marketing messages that are all around them. The reason why is because these messages lack relevance. If a marketing message is irrelevant to you, then it is worthless to you.

It becomes invisible to you.

Now let’s go back to the Maker’s Mark brand ambassador program for a minute. We’ve already talked about how long-running it is, and how successful it has been. In order to join the brand ambassador program, you have to apply. In other words, you have to raise your hand and offer to perform the duties that Maker’s Mark asks from its ambassadors. So when Maker’s Mark delivers marketing messages to you, those are marketing messages that you asked to receive. Those messages have relevance for you, so you don’t perceive them as being marketing.

Let’s be clear: If a marketing message has relevance for you, you don’t view it as being marketing.

On the other hand, if a marketing message has NO relevance for you, you ignore it.

The best marketing is invisible. Meaning you don’t SEE it as marketing. You see it as something that has relevance for you.

The worst marketing BECOMES invisible. Meaning, if the marketing message is totally irrelevant to you. then you totally ignore it. It BECOMES invisible to you.

We’ve trained ourselves to view marketing as something bad, as a distraction, an irritant. Actually, that’s not fair, we have simply been exposed to so much BAD marketing, that we tend to view ALL marketing as bad.

Good marketing is relevant to us. It creates value for us, and respects us. As a result, we don’t view it as marketing.

What happens when we don’t view a marketing message as being marketing? We open ourselves to LISTENING TO THAT MESSAGE.

Once a marketer has gained our attention, then they have a chance to convert us into a customer.

The key takeaway? If your marketing message is relevant to your audience, then that audience will listen to your message. If your marketing message is irrelevant to your audience, then that audience will ignore it.

 

The best marketing is spoken in the voice of your customer

Let’s say you are a diehard fan of the movie Inception. Your friend Tom hates the movie, and thinks it is completely overblown.

You are trying to convince Jim, who you don’t know, to watch Inception. But at the same time, Tom is going to give the argument for why Jim should NOT watch Inception. And it just so happens that Tom is also Jim’s cousin.

So who do you think will be able to persuade Jim to watch or not watch the movie Inception? You may say that Jim will listen to Tom, because Tom is his cousin and he trusts his opinion. You would  probably be correct. But at the same time, Tom knows and understands what types of movies Jim likes. Tom would explain to Jim that he doesn’t like movies like Inception, why he doesn’t like them, and Jim would probably ultimately agree and not see the movie.

In the end, the fact that Tom and Jim were cousins wasn’t the deciding factor for Jim.  It was the fact that Tom understands what type of movie Jim likes to watch. You don’t know what type of movie that Jim likes, so in explaining what you liked about the movie Inception, you were actually making the case to Jim for why he should NOT watch it.

Think of marketing as a tax that your brand has to pay because it doesn’t understand your customer.  If you know precisely who your customer is, and you understand them completely, then you know how to create marketing that appeals to them at every stage of the process from awareness to sale, and beyond. Your marketing costs are significantly lower because you are crafting perfect marketing communications that are relevant to your customers, that create value for them, and which resonate with them.

When you don’t know who your customer is, when you don’t understand your customer, then your marketing costs increase at an exorbitant rate.

The key takeaway? When you understand your customer, you can speak to their wants, needs and desires. You don’t market to them, you talk to them. And they listen.

 

The best marketing doesn’t focus on your product, it focuses on your customer

The most effective marketing doesn’t sell your product, it sells how your product fits into my life.

Watch this Red Bull commercial, and as you do, notice how much time is spent focused on the Red Bull energy drink:

The Red Bull can isn’t shown till the last 2 seconds of the commercial. The logo is shown a few times throughout, but the star of this commercial is clearly the extreme athletes that Red Bull sponsors and supports. Red Bull doesn’t market its product, it markets what happens after you drink it.

Don’t sell your product, sell the change that happens to your customer as a result of your product.

This is one of the most powerful marketing lessons you can learn. When someone isn’t familiar with your product, you sell the benefits of owning it. You sell the changes that owning this product will create for the owner.

Don’t sell me the product, sell what the product allows me to do.

Look at Nike’s iconic marketing campaigns. Just do it. The shoes and clothing is an afterthought, the focus is on the athletes and their accomplishments. Think of Apple’s marketing for the iPhone in recent years. The focus is more on what the iPhone allows you to do, the content it helps you create, moreso than the actual tool itself.

Notice how these examples of how to improve your marketing are focused on understanding your customer and marketing from the customer’s point of view. Customers don’t buy products, they buy solutions to problems, or improvements to their lives. If a particular product can consistently meet or exceed their expectations, then the customer will become loyal to that brand.

 

Your job as a marketer is to create fans.

In 2010 I attended the FIRE Sessions in Greenville, South Carolina. One of the speakers was Steve Knox, who at the time was the CEO of Proctor and Gamble’s Word of Mouth unit, Tremor. He said something that stopped me in my tracks:

“Victory in marketing doesn’t happen when you sell something, but when you cultivate advocates for your brand.”

Think about that quote and what it means. Who are advocates for your brand? They are the customers that LOVE your brand and who are advocating on its behalf. So they are not only buying your products, they are actively selling your brand to other customers.

How would your marketing change, if your goal was to cultivate advocates? To create customers that love you and who will advocate for you.

The amazing part is…you will still be creating sales. But you’ll also be creating so much more.

 

If you want to be a better marketer:

  • Respect your customers
  • Create value for your customers
  • Your marketing MUST be relevant to your customers, or it will be ignored
  • Understand your customers
  • Don’t market your product, market the positive changes in my life that your product will create for me
  • Don’t focus on sales with your marketing, focus on delighting your customers. If you create happy customers, the sales take care of themselves.