I gave a viral campaign about a 0.0001% chance success to get you earned media in my last post,.
This is not a very good rate but does this discount the idea or value of a viral campaign?
Or is their simply another way to do it that is more effective? Is there a way to create very effective earned media?
Yes, we think there is. But first we need to see the flaw.
Those that are different stand out, attract attention and if the customer experience is authentic - trust.
This is what creates brand leaders. Yet many fail to get this right and the reason is a very simple:
It’s sad but we are taught to comply rather than dare.
Your customer is not asking you for what they can get from someone else or for conformity. They are looking for something different, a customer experience that blows their socks off – all you need to do is dare.
This is why most marketers are no longer marketers. They lost the dream a long time ago and become highly adept marketing technicians. They have assimilated and perfected the traditional marketing models as their own.
They have become adept at buying media space, creating TV commercials, and worrying about the bleed on the front page of the magazine commercial.
It is the marketers who have dared that are great today. They are the rebels of our society and have created brands that are – well – mind-blowing to say the least. The customer experience really rocks. And to get this right they did one of two things really well:
And then they created RaveTopia - a community which they are a member of. These are brands like:
There’s nothing like them in the world. They stand apart. They dared to be different do something that wasn’t taught in business school. Our challenge to you is to create a brand that stands alone because it dared to be different. It fought to overcome mediocrity. To be part a community where your customers are your source of inspiration.
You just need to focus on three things
Go and create a mindblowing customer experience
There is an old saying that is so overused but so true:
If you don’t change what you are doing, you are doing, you will keep getting the same results.
Personally I think that this is the definition of insanity – especially when I look at what most marketers are currently doing.
The problem with marketing is that everything has changed, and most marketers are not even aware of this. They have been trained in a traditional way and become highly effective technicians in applying the cornerstone of traditional marketing. Yet these cornerstones of traditional marketing no longer work very well.
Most marketers won’t believe me when I say that 99 % of traditional media is wasted and most marketing research does not uncover the real reasons why your customers buy. Traditional big budget marketing is no longer the powerhouse solution it used to be.
And these are the reasons for most brand manager’s existence. I guess it is hard to hear that you are no longer relevant – and we have a huge industry with a vested intrest – namely the advertsing, brand and reaserch industries. They are worth billions in any language or currency.
Here are some of the underlying drivers of this change — and why it is important to you:
Most marketing is about taking an idea and pushing it out through as many channels as possible – whether this is through twitter, TV, Outdoor or whatever. And this is the trap and false sense of comfort marketers get.
The simple truth is your customer doesn’t trust you and the attention they gave you in the past is no longer a guarantee – whether its on TV or on Twitter.
So how do you avoid the trap? Well, the first step is to stop broadcasting (which would effectively shut down about 95% of the marketing departments) and start applying some new rule.
Here is a guideline on what I think the top five changes you need to make:
The canned marketing approach has very little impact — and way too expensive.
To make your marketing effective you need to map it around your customers thought process to create an experience that they want to talk about. In fact they must rave about it. You need to create a Customer Utopia – or as we call it RaveTopia :)
Walter Pike makes two very good points in his 2010 Bizcommunity.com trend report about the two assumptions that traditional marketing is built on:
It’s a point well made. As a consumer you know you’re not ignorant, you don’t believe what you are told. But as marketers we forget this and believe we need to build customer loyalty by trying to control the conversation. We believe that our marketing research defined marketing strategy is spot-on. Hogwash — and customer loyalty pays the price.
Here’s the truth about today’s marketing:
I can only wonder how much advertising money has been flushed down the toilet as these marketers attempt to push past the clatter to try and develop brand awareness as opposed to customer loyalty.
I know when I was at university I was taught this product driven approach to marketing. This system belief was supported by the large multinational companies are work for is the brand manager. The truth is the product driven marketing strategies are no longer relevant. Today’s marketing strategies have to be…
One my favourite marketing authors is Seth Godin. Like most people I love his books. His ideas are expressed simply and clearly. If there are two things that I have learned from these books it is this
So what are the implications of this change? I see…
I think the point that I’m making here is that it’s time to turn your business into a marketing department. It’s easy for your customer to see through the bull and they are looking for value for themselves — not you.
After if all you have is a product and no customers, you don’t have a business. And if you do have customer’s that are not stick around and buying more from you, you are far less profitable than you could be.
This year make your marketing goal to create a real customer experience and build customer loyalty.
Picture Credit: httpf://www.flickr.com/photos/torley/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
Not all customers are equal. Some customers will be a lot more loyal and lot more profitable than others and have a far bigger impact on your business growth.
The key for any business is to turn the few into many by understanding and managing your customer loyalty profile. By using loyalty as the benchmark that breaks down your customer profile, you can place your customers down into three categories:
Let me outline why this is so important for you to know:
Promoters define customer loyalty. They love your brand and what it does for them in their life. It becomes an expression of their personal identity and is very important to them.
You create this type of customers loyalty when you exceed their expectations and keep on impressing them. You listen to them and take action on what they need from you. You grow and evolve through them, their needs and desires.
They love you for this and is why they account for 80 to 90% of your positive word-of-mouth.
Promoters are a lot more profitable. They buy more products from you; they stay around longer; and are a lot more forgiving when you make a mistake than other the customer types.
They form a community around you and your brands. They tell their friends about you; they resolve your problem when another customer has a problem; and they stand up for you when you’re being criticised.
The only problem with this type of customer is that they are in the minority amongst your customer base. The easiest way to get more of this type of customers is to convert your passive and hecklers customer into raving fans.
As the name so aptly describes, this type of customers spread any to 90% of your negative word-of-mouth. There is very little customer loyalty and they have the potential to destroy your business.
A detractor is created when the buying experience did not meet up to their expectations. They are unhappy and frustrated with how they are treated; the customer service levels; or your product did not meet expectations.
This unhappiness about is a direct reflection of how you’re doing business. You have the ability to manage a Heckler’s expectations. Often all that is required is your ability to listen and take the correct action.
But as you know this easier said than done and that’s why we have built our customer loyalty model.
Indifferent customers are just satisfied. They are not happy nor are they sad. All they are doing is waiting until something better comes along and then they’ll jump ship.
Being satisfied in today’s market environment is not enough. You need to excite your customers. It is the most cost-effective way of building your business. You just need to know what buttons to press.
Research shows that promoters are twice as profitable as detractors. That means without increasing your customer base you can increase your profitability by understanding your customer loyalty profile.
The best way to do this is to use the Net Promoter Model®.
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