Posts Tagged ‘brand’

Customer Engagement (Part 1)

by on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

Richard Meyer has a typically thought-provoking post about customer engagement on his New Media and Marketing Blog. In the post he tees off on a research report that uses ‘likes” on Facebook as the sole metric of customer engagement. Richard has a big problem with this: “Who the hell cares who ‘likes’ your posts?”

Richard goes on to say that engagement “doesn’t mean a damn thing”. I completely agree that clicking the “like” or “follow” button doesn’t mean that customers are engaged, but I think there is such a thing as engagement. I also think that marketers can and should take steps to encourage engagement, but that ultimately they can’t control it. I also think that we are a long way from effective engagement metrics.

Scuderia Ferrari

(Helena.40proof via Flickr)

I would define an engaged customer as one who acts as if he/she has a stake in the marketer’s business that extends beyond the specific transaction. These are the customers who can provide valuable insights and information both to the marketer and to other consumers. Under this definition, “liking” or “following” is about the weakest possible form of engagement imaginable.

Even in the absence of marketer involvement engaged customers can have a significant impact on sales. Because they may know more than the typical consumer and be more willing to share, they can be effective advocates for the marketer’s brand and products. Even if they point out product flaws or own up to having made a mistake in purchasing the marketer’s product (although Richard disagrees, Yelp and Trip Advisor contain plenty of reviews in which customers take at least some of the responsibility for their negative experience).

If the marketer does involve itself with its cadre of engaged customers it can do more than increase short-term sales. It can increase long-term sales by optimizing its business in areas such as product features, merchandise mix and customer service. By bringing them inside the tent the marketer may make these customers even more engaged and even more vigorous advocates for the brand and its products.

Customers don’t have to become unpaid product testers or spokespeople to be engaged. Engagement can include attending marketer-sponsored events or participating in marketer-endorsed charitable activities. By concretely affiliating oneself with the marketer and — critically — by sharing about it, engaged customers can drive the marketer’s message and build the marketer’s brand. Whether these activities result directly in sales depends in part on how they are structured and how the sales cycle normally works (cars and colas aren’t purchased the same way).

How vital is the marketer’s involvement to customer engagement? The short, if obvious, answer is that it can’t hurt. Perhaps surprisingly, however, some marketers with highly engaged customers have little if any involvement with them. One example, admittedly atypical in terms of both product and customers, is Ferrari. The Italian sports car maker has a passionately engaged base that includes not just current owners but past owners, hope-to-be owners and probably-never-will-be owners. This high level of engagement takes place with virtually no involvement from Ferrari, which pays attention only to the very top tier of its customer base (even for Ferrari, all customers are not created equal).

In the absence of marketer involvement, the Ferrari faithful have turned to enthusiast sites such as Ferrari Chat as well as marque clubs such as the Ferrari Club of America and Ferrari Owners Club (which hear from the marketer mainly when it believes its trademarks are being infringed). They have returned Ferrari’s lack of involvement by creating their own communities, whose benefit to the marketer goes unrecognized and unrewarded, but probably not unnoticed.

If it’s clear that marketers shouldn’t use likes and follows to measure engagement, what are some appropriate metrics? That will be the subject of Part 2 of this post.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Customer engagement exists, but “likes” and “follows” are its most trivial form.
  • Engaged customers can help marketers improve their business, and not just by purchasing more.
  • Marketers can ignore, monitor or facilitate customer engagement, but it isn’t always clear which strategy will have the highest ROI.

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4 Things to Consider About Negative Reviews

by on Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Now that a New York court has dismissed claims against Yelp by a New York dentist based on a (very) negative review and on Yelp’s alleged removal of positive reviews, this might be a good time to think about what makes a review “negative” and what negative reviews mean to – and for – your business. You may think that negative reviews are just angry people taking shots at you. Here are four other ways to look at it:

via Marten Bjork (Creative Commons)

Readers recognize – and discount – outliers. Positive or negative, excessive emotions in a review diminish their credibility. It’s great to get an exceptional review for exceptional service. But if the glowing adjectives are out of proportion to a typical customer experience, readers are likely to apply the old saying: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Same thing with negative reviews. The surest way to lose credibility IS TO WRITE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS WITH LOTS OF PUNCTUATION!!! These are actually the best negative reviews you can get, because even if they are accurate, who will believe them? It’s true that some people write reviews to blow off steam, but readers know that, and respond accordingly.

Mixed reviews are not necessarily negative. Have you ever used Rotten Tomatoes to decide whether to see a movie? The site’s “Tomatometer” rating is based on whether published reviews were positive or negative. However, a review can only be either “fresh” (i.e., positive) or “rotten” (i.e., negative), no matter how mixed or qualified the review might be. For “Going the Distance” (51% rating), the fresh reviews include “solid but totally forgettable” and “hilarious in many individual scenes [but] less than the sum of its parts”. Rotten reviews included “funny but forgettable” and “The laughs kept me involved … but after I left the theater, it occurred to me that this slight comedy hadn’t gone very far at all.” Hmm. Many reviews – of anything – are mixed enough that it would be hard to give them either a thumbs up or thumbs down rating. So don’t consider every mixed review a thumbs down.

A mixed review is often more thoughtful, detailed and nuanced than an outright rave or pan. A customer who writes a review that contains some negative feedback isn’t venting, she’s helping. These are the reviews your customers will take seriously – and you should do the same. When you respond to reviews like these (easy to do on Zavee) you can use the review as the basis for an ongoing relationship. If you want a second chance at the customer and a more positive review the second time around, being proactive is the only way to get results.

Yes, competitors can try to hurt your business with fake reviews, but there are reasons you don’t hear about it happening very often. If you are running a good business deceitful reviews are unlikely to harm you, especially if you are actively communicating with your customers. Why? First, as discussed above readers will tend to discount rants whether or not they are malicious. Second, users of social shopping sites tend to be very skeptical of reviews that differ greatly from what most (real) customers experience. The unusual experience is another kind of outlier. On the other hand, negative reviews that go into detail about the experience and/or are written by a reviewer who has demonstrated credibility based on other reviews may well be taken seriously, but how many of your competitors are willing to invest that much effort just to undermine your business? If you are actively communicating with your customers you should be able to deflect even the most sophisticated malicious review. Finally, social shopping sites are trying to safeguard against malicious and fraudulent reviews. At Zavee, our system will reject a review unless the author has had a transaction at that merchant within 30 days of the review. Could a competitor jump through all those hoops just to hurt your business? Probably, but how many would bother?

A negative review is a positive experience. On the most basic level, a thoughtful review that recounts a negative experience provides valuable information for your business. You can’t be everywhere, and if a waiter or a sales associate didn’t behave appropriately, or if a product or service fell short of expectations, wouldn’t you want to know? Of course you would prefer to hear it privately, but in our increasingly social world these conversations are being held in the open. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A negative review can be a positive experience because your handling of the situation – again, in public – gives you the chance to move the conversation forward: increasing customer engagement and loyalty, building your reputation and your brand, and even persuading non-customers to give you a try.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Readers are smart, and they are good at recognizing which reviews to take seriously.
  • Negative reviews can hurt your business only if you ignore them or react passively. Especially on Zavee, where we make it so easy for merchants to interact with customers, make sure you respond to every review.
  • Always follow through on anything you promise – and don’t forget to talk about it.

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Employees: Your Brand Evangelists

by on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

One of the drivers of growth in the social shopping space is the recognition that personal recommendations are among the most trusted marketing communications. What many companies in the space, including Zavee, are trying to accomplish is to maximize the timeliness, reach and relevance of those recommendations. This need is most acute for smaller merchants, who don’t have the option of simply buying reach through conventional media.

Word of Mouth

Word of Mouth (via Mo - Creative Commons 2.0)

Smaller merchants do have one significant advantage over larger competitors: because they are close to their customers they should be better able to deliver the kind of customer experience that results in credible, actionable, recommendations. Because they know that word of mouth is so important, and because they are more likely to be competing on service than on price, smaller local merchants are uniquely positioned to provide the Wow! factor that launches word of mouth recommendations.

Smaller merchants also have a related advantage, one they should leverage more fully. Unlike much larger competitors, most small company employees are customer-facing at least part of the time. These employees should be hired, trained and required to promote significant, relevant brand equities at every customer interaction. They also should be encouraged (and empowered) to provide the same Wow! factor as the sales associate or the owner/manager herself.

But just as word of mouth is no longer restricted to face-to-face interactions, the role of employees in promoting the brand can also extend beyond individual encounters. In particular, merchants should require – or at least encourage – all employees to actively promote the company’s brand equities through social media.

As companies consider how to implement a social media program, the role of employees should be an integral element of the strategy rather than an afterthought. What role might employees play in a social media program? Here are some suggestions:

  • Create a group blog for employees. It’s easy to do, you can link from your web site and blog posts are indexed by search engines. Some content could be expressly about the company (e.g., as a workplace, if that is a key equity) but most of the content could be about what interests the bloggers. Here the message is more subtle but potentially very effective: You should shop here because this company hires people like us. Amazon now has numerous blogs with this subtext – even a car blog – something they may have learned from having acquired Zappos, which pioneered the concept.
  • Let your employees run your Facebook page. Facebook is now so flexible that a company’s fan page easily can accommodate both “official” content from the company and less structured content from employees. Employees can leverage their own social graph to expand the company’s reach. One objective should be to pierce the wall between the company and its customers. Here’s a simple example: instead of the company simply announcing its “Employee of the Month,” why not post nominations (perhaps including video clips of the employees in action) on Facebook and let the community vote?
  • Get your employees Tweeting. There are many ways in which employees can use Twitter to benefit their company. One is simply to tweet actively about topics that relate to the company’s business. This does not necessarily mean promoting specific products or deals, although (with disclosure) there is nothing wrong with that. But the employees of, say, a fashion boutique should be on Twitter constantly providing value-added content about fashion, art, music or anything else the clientele would find interesting (and bringing useful information back to the company). Employees also can be the “canary in the coal mine” for their company. By setting up keyword and hashtag searches on Twitter they can see and respond to mentions of the company, its products, suppliers, etc. and respond appropriately. The scope of this task will vary by company and it needs to be handled carefully, but any established company that isn’t using Twitter in this way simply has its hands over its ears.

One final note about empowering employees to use social media on behalf of the company. It’s in everyone’s interest to clearly specify what employees must, can and may not do. Transparency and disclosure are vital to every social media plan, and it’s important to have someone in charge of ensuring compliance. Mistakes are inevitable but they need to be addressed promptly, lest your lawyers come in and advise you to prohibit employees from using social media altogether (note: pdf download req’d).

The Zavee takeaway:

  • Your employees can help provide the kind of experience that produces word of mouth recommendations.
  • They also can help you increase the reach and impact of your word of mouth marketing if you integrate them into your social media strategy.
  • There are countless ways to leverage employee involvement in social media – be creative!

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You Can’t Buy Customers. You’re Lucky If You Can Rent Them.

by on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

In a recent post on his “positive disruption” blog, Tom Martin makes the point that “You Can’t Buy Customers. You Have to Earn Them” and asks for reactions.

His basic point is that with few exceptions marketers who deliver a substandard experience are no longer able to hold consumers captive. One reason is that new and better products are easier and cheaper to develop than ever. The other reason is that it’s now so easy for consumers to inform and influence each other that bad experiences have nowhere to hide.

My list of exceptions may be longer than Tom’s. His example is AT&T and the iPhone but it’s easy to think of others: How many cable providers can you choose from? How many electrical utilities? How many airlines fly the route you want to travel?

I’m also not completely sold on the notion that good, new products can rapidly drive out bad, old ones. I think that probably depends a lot on the category. The barriers to creating, say, a new social network application, which we have done at Zavee, are not the same as the barriers to creating a new car.

Where we agree completely, however, is on the importance of access to information. It isn’t just that media companies are no longer the gatekeepers and large marketers are no longer the only ones who could pay the price of access. It’s that the web is finally sorting itself out as a communications medium, with public micro-messaging streams (a la Twitter) as the primary focus for disseminating and accessing information such as links.

So, does an environment in which consumers have lots of information and lots of options mean that they are hopelessly fickle and not worth talking to? Does it make sense to invest in a brand if consumers are making purchase decisions based on information and reviews from each other rather than messages from the marketer? What are marketers actually paying for?

I think that a strong brand is more important than ever in today’s environment. First, consumers who maintain for themselves a highly efficient information market are being rational, not fickle. Marketers need to participate in that market, not resist it. Second, consistency with the brand promise is one of the things that consumers will test for themselves and tell each other about. This favors brands whose promise is clearly defined and well communicated, something that still requires investment. Third, consumers want – and now can demand – relevance.  This, too, favors brands that are strong and highly differentiated. Finally, as Tom himself has persuasively argued, there is always a place for brands that inspire passion.

Bill Hanifin recently wrote about Chick-fil-A, a brand in a highly competitive category (fast food) that uses a mix of quirky advertising and old-fashioned promotion to build passionate loyalty. And while Bill refers to Chick-fil-A as an offline brand, the company’s  Facebook page, which isn’t updated very often (the Events section doesn’t list the opening Bill attended) has more than 1.23 million fans.  It would not take much for Chick-fil-A to leverage these fans into a powerful online community.

Marketers never “bought” customers. At best they took advantage of inefficiencies in the information marketplace, inefficiencies that are rapidly disappearing. Marketers now should look to “rent” customers long enough to prove their relevance, demonstrate their value, inspire loyalty and deserve passion. It’s a tall order, but as Chick-fil-A shows, it’s possible – and worth it.

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