The networked markets know more than companies do about their own products, and whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone. The Cluetrain Manifesto book. Funny. Memorable. Manly. The keys for success from the Blend It marketing campaign. And certainly something you’ll want to do for a networked market. Like Blendtec did very successfully.
Blend it.
Will It Blend? is a marketing campaign consisting of a series of infomercials demonstrating the Blendtec line of blenders. In the show, Tom Dickson, the Blendtec founder, attempts to blend various unusual items in order to show off the toughness and power of his blender.
As a little background, George Wright, Blendtec’s vice president of marketing and sales created a YouTube and marketing campaign called “Will it Blend”?
He happened to witness CEO, Tom Dickson feeding a 2×2 inch wooden board into a commercial blender as part of his destructive test and found it fascinating, hence thought others might get a kick out of watching the process, and the idea for creating a video was born.
A recent online video study shows that 82 percent of Internet users watch online video at an average of 5.6 hours a week. And if you have a video that wants to be seen, the best possible platform, according to comScore, is YouTube.
And remember to keep it short and sweet on Youtube, as viewers prefer not to want to sit through lengthy videos. The simple objective … turn marketing into useful, entertaining content, not content into marketing.
Lots of content
The old saying, never put all your eggs in one basket, certainly applies to marketing. Blentec heeded this advice during its video response-heavy social media campaigns.
The approach is definitely quantity over quality. Try to make the best things you can, and as great as you can, but then move on to the next one. It’s more about pumping out many videos than it is about getting five that are absolutely perfect.
If you create quality content, chances are that people will want more. After all, more content for fans to consume means happier fans. Blendtec attacked this idea by producing as many commercial-quality video responses as possible.
Whenever a brand can give back—to give to the consumers more than it asks of them, in terms of entertainment and value—people are going to have a better feeling about that brand. Any brand can do that. Always try to provide more in terms of entertainment and surprise and enjoyment to build that equity with the consumer
Blendtec’s first “Will It Blend?” videos became the 33rd-most-viewed series ever on YouTube and helped drive sales of the company’s $399 high-end consumer blender up 500%.
Build community through engagement
Tom Dickson, is the star of the videos. You see him put different crazy things in the blender and say “Will it blend? That is the question”. While the item is blending he smiles and waits for the process to end. When it does, he empties the contents and the subtitle “Yes! it blends”appears.
Once the videos got rolling, Blendtec engaged their fans seeking ideas for things to Blend. Fans become more fanatical when their favorite brands go out of their way to invite them in on the fun.
Will it blend marbles … link to significant media events
Some episodes were produced to coincide with significant media events. For example, three episodes aired during Super Bowl weekends. The first episode had Dickson blend a smoothie out of salsa, tortilla chips, Buffalo wings, and some Budweiser.
The second and third episodes used two blenders to predict the outcome of the Super Bowl by blending miniature helmets (AFC versus NFC) and foam footballs. Who says a brand can’t have a personality?
To coincide with the release of the film Transformers, Dickson blended the Transformers toys Bumblebee and Swindle before challenging two of his grandchildren to transform the remains. Make things personal.
Will it blend movie … memorable theme and tagline
One of the most surprising, extreme episodes featured Dickson placing six Bic lighters in the blender. In a matter of seconds, the mixture of butane, metal, and plastic ignited into a ball of fire inside the container. The scene was exaggerated by the addition of nuclear explosion film footage before one of the production crew sprayed a fire extinguisher on the still-operating blender.
Will it Blend Marketing Campaign followed good marketing principles
Of course, Dickson and Wright aren’t as crazy as they look. They observe all of the cardinal rules of good marketing strategy. First, they have a very good product. Second, they put it through its paces: if it can blend a video camera, it won’t be troubled by a pile of strawberries. It’s funny and original because it’s so different.
Dickson doesn’t take himself too seriously, so you feel good about the man behind the product too. And of course, if you look at the proper Blendtec website, all the sensible stuff is there too – product information, blending advice and tips about food preparation, how to order a blender and so on.
The company, in other words, has created a personality for itself and its products, invites people to join in the fun (you can suggest things to blend via email), and adopts behavior that is a combination of the deranged and the single-minded. It leaves you wanting more as all great campaign ideas do. What will they blend next?
As of March 21, 2013, the Blendtec series of videos had collected a total of 294,098,738 views on YouTube.
Use Multiple Marketing channels
The videos are such compulsive viewing that the company has spun off a website just to accommodate them( www.willitblend.com ). But let’s start with the cutting edge stuff. The Will it Blend idea is using the web as its main medium.
Its message is spread by people who want their friends to see how bonkers Dickson is and because it makes them laugh. The fact that his blender is so powerful it will blend pretty well anything that can be crammed into it is secondary to the entertainment value of the films. Secondary but not unnoticed. The message could not be clearer: the Blendtec is one tough machine.
Consider all of the channels for advertising, too. Having several ads across many different networks is the best way to attract as many fans as possible to your cause. By marketing all channels at once, the hope is that the multiple discussions on each network converge to create one giant conversation.
The fact that the ads are almost wholly lacking in what agencies call “production values” does not matter a fig to the YouTube user. All of which is a shining exemplar of effective (and cheap) advertising that is being taken up more and more by brands big and small across the globe.
The Blendtec campaign has set the bar for how other companies and agencies can approach viral advertising, by focusing on the fans first. By striking a perfect balance of content and advertising, and some fact of the matter is, other companies can, too. As of March 21, 2013, the Blendtec series of videos had collected a total of 294,098,738 views on YouTube.
The bottom line
Our world is in flux. There is no part of the consumer experience that is untouched. Digital technology is disrupting the marketplace, while changes in our understanding of the psychology of decision making have overturned centuries of conventional wisdom. Even a brief summary such as this one can make the challenges seem overwhelming.
So what to do? First, start somewhere. It can be one place or the other, but at least start. The change will be unfolding for years and everyone else is as confused as you are.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
You just can’t say it. You have to get people to say it to each other. In today’s socially engaged and networked marketplace, word of mouth marketing has moved to the top of the marketing campaign elements at your disposal. And guerrilla marketing campaigns are one of the best ways to get potential customers talking about you.
Guerrilla marketing campaigns take consumers by surprise, make an indelible impression, and pop up where and when people least expect it.
They often have a large targeted audience and often can be accomplished at a reduced cost. By being a little more clever and unpredictable, you challenge consumers who appreciate a little fun in their products.
Guerrilla marketing was made for small business owners. It requires creativity, flexibility and a willingness to take a little risk. We use Guerrilla programs usually when a client says to us, we don’t have much budget but we’d really like to get some media attention. They can be an awesome way to get you noticed, set you apart from your competition and earn you a reputation for being fun and different–all tailored to whatever budget you desire.
A small business should ask themselves, what’s their essence–what’s the core message that can be distilled into a 5-second exchange or in a clever installation?
Have to have a goal in mind and understand who your customer is and what would intrigue and appeal to them.
Using humor is crucial to the success of guerrilla campaigns, especially if they involve online activity. Humor can help break the barriers between the company and the consumer, just as it often does in regular human interaction. Humor also can play a significant role in turning campaigns viral, which means reaching a larger audience. Mixing surprise with humor is also a key strategic element to a successful guerrilla campaign.
In this article, we are going to focus on how to get customers talking about your messages. So how do you craft messages worth your customers talking about?
Consider these 7 tips and several examples of each:
Guerrilla marketing … consider customer needs end state
Focus on customer needs end state and not the means. For a very familiar example, customer’s needs are on a hole, not a drill.
In this first example, customer’s needs are for exciting, thrilling park rides, like roller coasters. So Six Flags Amusement Park has built a simple sign to represent a roller coaster thrill ride.
In the second example, people are focused on collecting shells walking on the beach. So a creative restaurant has strategically placed clamshells, that when opened by curious customers, call out the seafood menu at their restaurant.
Make the message as clean and simple as possible. Simplicity is achieved when nothing more can be removed from the message.
Look at the 3M security class holding all the cash. Simply screams security at you, doesn’t it?
Dual function works well in this example, as the customer uses the watch strap to hold on and gets the simple visual of how good the watch looks on his wrist.
Guerilla marketing ideas … use comparisons
Use comparisons where you can. Even direct with competitors, if you can solidly substantiate the claim.
The simple Scotch tape is better than a nail in many instances.
And the picture of the FedEx delivery truck ahead of the DHL truck, illustrating the FedEx tag line of always first.
Be and do differently.
Guerrilla marketing … be and do different
Be different and avoid normalcy at all costs. Do things different and unexpected.
In the first example, Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurant advertises on a fire hydrant. They also received media publicity because they saved the city the costs of having to paint the hydrants. Two bangs for the buck.
The plumber sitting on the toilet is certainly unexpected, isn’t it? Great way to show that the brand has a humorous personality also.
Be controversial
It’s OK to be controversial. Try and create conversation through the ‘buzz’, things that beg to be talked about.
Here the sign has ‘dropped’ the word drop to emphasize what we hate most in cell calls. That certainly catches your attention.
The bus door represents the shark’s mouth … certainly something you’ll remember?
Picture of value
Paint the picture of value and make the value stand out. A successful guerrilla marketing campaign will take advantage of common human behaviors. Nothing drives human behavior more than the desire to have the best of the best. A clever campaign will leverage this behavior and leverage its power for customer desire.
Two examples here that certainly paint the picture of value. The first is the suction power of the Miele vacuum cleaner and the second is the strength of the glue holding up to bridge structure.
Guerrilla marketing campaigns … use pictures/visuals to surprise
Use pictures/visuals, they are much better than words. If you convey the message with absolutely no words, all the better. Especially if there are surprise and shock involved.
The first example surprises customers through a simulation of a lot of press taking your picture as you pass by.
The second example is an employee handing out coupons to a restaurant sitting in a spilled milkshake … surprise and shock.
The bottom line
Our world is in flux. There is no part of the consumer experience that is untouched. Digital technology is disrupting the marketplace, while changes in our understanding of the psychology of decision making have overturned centuries of conventional wisdom. Even a brief summary such as this one can make the challenges seem overwhelming.
So what to do? First, start somewhere. It can be one place or the other, but at least start. The change will be unfolding for years and everyone else is as confused as you are.
“You just can’t say it. You have to get people to say it to each other”
James Farley, CMO Ford
When was the last time you employed word of mouth marketing messaging?
We specialize in ideas to create effective word of mouth marketing … give us a call today for a free consultation.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Are you spending enough time with word of mouth marketing? The best marketing words technique in our minds, hands down. The key to its success is using ways to trigger word of mouth by getting people to talk about you and start the buzz.
The first thing you need to know about buzz marketing is this: generating consumers to talk about your business isn’t as random as you think. There’s a science to creating a marketing buzz, and it’s something you can learn to do.
Related: Guinness Marketing Campaign Shows Their Creativity
So what’s the difference between word of mouth marketing and traditional marketing?
The difference is that word of mouth marketing is to get people talking about your brand – not just to make people aware that your brand exists.
There is an interesting story about how Pablo Picasso, the famous Spanish artist, developed the ability to produce remarkable work in just minutes.
As the story goes, Picasso was walking through the market one day when a woman spotted him. She stopped the artist, pulled out a piece of paper, and said, “Mr. Picasso, I am a fan of your work. Please, could you do a little drawing for me?”
Picasso smiled and quickly drew a small, but beautiful piece of art on the paper. Then, he handed the paper back to her saying, “That will be one million dollars.”
“But Mr. Picasso,” the woman said. “It only took you thirty seconds to draw this little masterpiece.”
“My good woman,” Picasso said, “It took me thirty years to draw that masterpiece in thirty seconds.”
Picasso isn’t the only brilliant creative who worked for decades to master his craft. His journey is typical of many creative geniuses. Even people of considerable talent rarely produce incredible work before decades of practice.
To get a better idea, let’s talk more about generating marketing buzz.
Most people think it’s something that happens by chance, but that is certainly not the case in most instances. We will discussing some material from the book Buzzmarketing by author Mark Hughes.
In his book, he talks about how buzz can be generated by following a few basic principles. Businesses that follow these principles are much more successful at getting people talking about their brand than businesses that only use traditional marketing tactics.
So how can you apply these basic principles and generate word of mouth for your business?
A fundamental principle of buzz marketing
A good starting place is learning the fundamental principle of buzz marketing. It is pretty simple. It states if you want to generate buzz, you need to give people something special that they will remember and want to tell their friends about. Sounds simple, but just the opposite is the norm.
To do so, you need to learn the types of topics that get people talking. Yes, people talk about a lot of things, but there are particular conversation starters that get people talking more often than other topics. Let’s discuss those topics.
So how do you apply these principles, and what are some examples of businesses that have used them effectively?
Marketing words … trigger word of mouth with taboo topics
Taboo is a big buzz topic. The basic idea here is that people have a tendency to talk about things they shouldn’t talk about. There’s just something in our nature. As an example consider the parents of toddlers who can’t resist bringing up topics like diapers and “accidents” at a dinner with other parents. It’s a terrible topic for the dinner table, but parents can’t resist talking about it.
In order to apply this principle for internet marketing, you want to do things that are edgy and controversial. You don’t want to cross the line and create enemies, but blog posts and other controversial content will get people talking more than content that’s safe and boring.
Related post: Some Great Story and Storytelling Examples to Study
Marketing words.
Awesome customer service gets attention
Mention.com analyzed 1 billion brand mentions in a recent study. What they found is somewhat surprising: 76% of brand mentions on the web and social media are neither positive nor negative.
What does this mean? On social media, neutral mentions blend into the background. When 76% of brand mentions are basically ignored, the positive and negative mentions stand out.
So how can you turn a neutral into a positive? One way is to provide excellent customer service. Use your website and other platforms to let customers know they can find you on social media when they have customer service needs.
Use the unusual
When it comes to unusual or unique topics, your objective is to create content that is unique to stand out from the crowd. Using sameness won’t stand out, and you won’t get people talking about your product or service. Doing something different will often get noticed and get people talking.
Catchy marketing words … go for the remarkable
Another way to stand out and to get people talking is to do something remarkable. Like Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. Average and ordinary don’t get people talking but remarkably does.
The goal here is to do something extremely well with a very high quality. If everyone else is creating average content, you need to create something above the average. If a hotel gives decent service, no one tells their friends about it, but if a hotel goes beyond what is expected, people will talk.
The obvious online business that comes to mind here is one brand that we write a lot about Zappos.
Their insane “365-day” return policy and stellar customer service is still unmatched in their space. Zappos goes above and beyond status-quo expectations which makes their brand something easy to talk about.
The beauty of this Zappos’ technique is: its marketing built into company culture values that make it work so effectively.
Go ahead and be outrageous.
Marketing words to attract customers … it’s ok to be outrageous
This technique is one of the most difficult to apply in a business context. Outside of business, it’s easy to use them to create buzz, but for businesses, it can be a little tricky.
Note that being outrageousness for the sake of being outrageous doesn’t provide much benefit if there’s no connection made with your business. We’ve all watched commercials that made us laugh, and after we told our friends about it, we couldn’t remember which company the commercial was for.
You may get people talking about you with outrageous marketing, but what benefit will there be if there’s no beneficial connection for consumers to come back to you?
A great example that we have written about is the “Will it blend?” video series by Blendtec. In the series, Blendtec shows how powerful their blenders are by attempting to turn crazy objects like an iPhone, marbles, paintballs, etc., into smoothies.
The videos are outrageous, which draws attention and gets people talking, and there’s a strong connection to the brand by showing how powerful the blenders are.
Are you more likely to go to a new restaurant because the restaurant claims it has good food or because a trusted friend says it’s worth trying? There’s an implicit level of trust in any friendship that can’t be replicated between brand and consumer—this extends to purchasing behavior.
Conversations with friends and family are the most trusted source of information for consumers—and brands know it. eMarketer reports that brands view social sharing as the most effective use of social media.
According to research firm eMarketer, 68% of U.S. social media users ages 18-34 and 53% of those ages 35-44 say they are at least somewhat likely to make a purchase based on a friend’s social media updates.
So the question is, how can you convert customers into evangelists? One sure fire way is to make it easy for them to share their positive experiences and give them public attention.
Make your content entertaining
Here’s the unfortunate truth: No one spends time on social networks for the advertising. However, 82% of consumers do enjoy content from a brand as long as it provides personal value—usually in the form of humor.
In fact, Pew Research shows that 35% of men and 43% of women are on Facebook to see entertaining or funny posts. If you’re not afraid to get creative, you have a huge opportunity right in front of you.
Play up the humor
Once again, this is one of the more difficult to apply in a business context. Hilarious videos and articles get shared like wildfire because people like to laugh and to talk about things that make them laugh. But when it comes to business, being funny isn’t the easiest thing to do.
The bottom line
Word of mouth marketing is the best marketing technique, hands down in our opinion. But is certainly not the easiest, and it takes lots of practice and experimentation to perfect.
So much of marketing is about psychology. The simple exercise of observation has convinced me that observing human behavior is as important as reading books, attending conferences and classes when it comes to learning how to create effective marketing.
Our world is in flux. There is no part of the consumer experience that is untouched. Digital technology is disrupting the marketplace, while changes in our understanding of the psychology of decision making have overturned centuries of conventional wisdom. Even a brief summary such as this one can make the challenges seem overwhelming.
So what to do? First, start somewhere. It can be one place or the other, but at least start. The change will be unfolding for years and everyone else is as confused as you are.
What do you think? Have any word of mouth marketing stories to share?
Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing strategies? Creative ideas to help with word of mouth marketing campaigns?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on social media marketing and advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Remember that consumers engage with people, not brands. Are you a fan of the singer Lady Gaga? I certainly am. And I am even a bigger fan of the innovative Lady Gaga brand and Lady Gaga news.
Normally millions are spent on traditional media. Lady Gaga hyped her latest album by spending millions on bus advertising. She also spent on billboards, 2 pop up stores and performed countless interviews.
But the Lady Gaga brand is also known for focusing on building long-term personal connections with her fans. She puts this action higher than short-term revenue.
She is very aware that consumers like to engage with stars. Even though Lady Gaga could have played bigger venues early in her career, she wanted to play small venues. Her goal was to really connect with the audience.
In her book “Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics” Jackie Huba states:
“Many marketers would kill to have Lady Gaga as their ‘product’ to sell.detergent. Her catchy songs, crazy stage performances, and wacky outfits made her. She was quite unique and buzz-worthy. It is Lady Gaga’s ability to remain singularly focused on maintaining her fan base that made her as successful as she is today. This is what sets her apart from the traditional way of doing business. This is where traditional businesses can learn the most from her success.”
There is an interesting story about how Pablo Picasso, the famous Spanish artist, developed the ability to produce remarkable work in just minutes.
As the story goes, Picasso was walking through the market one day when a woman spotted him.
She stopped the artist, pulled out a piece of paper, and said, “Mr. Picasso, I am a fan of your work. Please, could you do a little drawing for me?”
Picasso smiled and quickly drew a small, but beautiful piece of art on the paper. Then, he handed the paper back to her saying, “That will be one million dollars.”
“But Mr. Picasso,” the woman said. “It only took you thirty seconds to draw this little masterpiece.”
“My good woman,” Picasso said, “It took me thirty years to draw that masterpiece in thirty seconds.”
Picasso isn’t the only brilliant creative who worked for decades to master his craft. His journey is typical of many creative geniuses. Even people of considerable talent rarely produce incredible work before decades of practice.
Like many fans of Lady Gaga, this doesn’t come as a surprise. She’s been quietly building up to this moment with her career. She has consistently delivered her brand directly to audiences for more than a decade.
Related post: Remarkable Branding Design: Spanish Bank Example
For any digital marketer, there is a lot to Lady Gaga’s approach that can inspire the direction for your brands. Here are eight tips to consider.
Familiarity and trust
Lady Gaga is a master of social media. It’s her engaging style. She feels so real, so authentic to her fans.
Namely, she doesn’t act like the biggest pop star in the world. She acts like your best friend, someone who gets you, someone real who you can talk to.
Marketers need to learn from this style. On social media, your brand needs to feel friendly and approachable. Brand equity is built through familiarity and trust. No brand has more consistently executed this than Lady Gaga.
Uniqueness wins every time.
Lady Gaga brand uniqueness
Establishing a brand identity requires something distinctive. For instance, Apple has become known worldwide for their innovative products and minimalistic, aesthetic appeal.
When it comes to service companies, Domino’s Pizza used to guarantee that their pizza would arrive in 30 minutes or it’d be free.
In terms of a selling point, TOM’s shoes donate a free pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of shoes that are bought.
Creating an identity like Lady Gaga doesn’t demand an extraordinary talent. It simply needs to have one special thing that separates it from the competition.
In reality, it’s possible to be “a one trick pony” as long as that trick is really good. Once a company figures out what that is, it can concentrate on it. It should increase recognition in time.
Lady Gaga news today … competitiveness
Gaining an edge in today’s business or entertainment world isn’t easy. For an entertainment brand to make a name for itself, team members should thrive on competition. They should constantly strive to improve.
When it comes to the major players in any industry, none simply sit back. None just hope that their consumers will do the work for them.
Instead, they tend to be the movers and shakers who work tirelessly toward optimizing their brand. Their goal is going above and beyond consumer expectations. The end result is to be a like the Lady Gaga brand that is continually on the cutting edge.
Understands social media marketing
Lady Gaga’s social media presence is truly incredible. And she’s everywhere. She is on Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Line. She has all the channels covered well.
But what Lady Gaga and her team understand is that these are unique tools. They don’t broadcast the same post through all social media channels. They use each one differently.
Across every social channel she uses, she is astutely aware of how those channels should be used. She recognizes how fans on those channels interact with each other.
Her social media marketing is distinct, relevant, and just plain right in every place. Brands need to start recognizing that their one-size-fits-all social media approach is out of touch.
They need to recognize the importance of fan engagement in this hyper-personalized digital world.
Lady Gaga news … exposure
Another big part of being recognized as a distinctive, successful brand is the ability to reach consumers through multiple channels.
Obviously, larger entertainers have an advantage in gaining exposure. This is because they usually have a bigger marketing budget and more existing connections. They can pay for television commercials and be featured in globally-recognized magazines. And they rank highly in search engine results pages.
However, the Internet and social media have narrowed the gap between small companies and large ones. There are more tools than ever before which offer any company a chance at establishing their brand.
By developing a presence on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc, anyone is able to reach almost any consumer. You just have to know how to work tirelessly.
Lady Gaga news … she knows her brand
Despite Lady Gaga’s presence in almost every conceivable channel, she determined that some channels simply do not add value.
In fact, she has implicitly discovered where her brand is being devalued and has managed it accordingly. She does what any good brand manager does.
In the content advertising era, this is a valuable lesson for digital marketers. We are creating short films, original music, webisode series, and mobile games. We need to employ countless other forms of online entertainment surrounding our brands.
Great content, like our core products, is valuable. We must consider how to amplify that value in our digital marketing.
One thing Lady Gaga understands and consistently delivers on, is maintaining the magic and the mystery in her brand. She knows that audiences today are motivated by the “surprise” in the relationship, as she puts it.
But she also doesn’t show too much. She still keeps an air of mystery about her.
She maintains aspects of her strategy, career, behind the curtain and achieving a balance for her brand.
How are you bringing surprises into your brand relationship with your fans? What do you need to do to make your digital marketing fresh, new and interesting?
What can you add to your audience today? For example consider a tonal shift on social, a new surprising piece of video content, or an unexpected fan contest. Make it magical and inspire your audience, just like Lady Gaga.
It’s certainly possible to build a brand in the short-term without passion. However, it’s almost impossible to sustain it in the long run.
When you examine massively successful people like Lady Gaga, they all have a serious passion. It is that passion that keeps propelling them to work hard and continually deliver greatness.
That passion leads to enthusiasm and genuine joy, which is infectious.
The bottom line
The future of marketing belongs to brands like the Lady Gaga brand. It is important to not only understand their customer advocates but go the extra mile to build personal connections. Building personal connections with their biggest fans for nurturing authentic, long-term relationships.
Remember that consumers engage with people, not brands. Are you a fan of the singer Lady Gaga? I certainly am. And I am even a bigger fan of the innovative Lady Gaga brand and Lady Gaga news.
Normally millions are spent on traditional media. Lady Gaga hyped her latest album by spending millions on bus advertising. She also spent on billboards, 2 pop up stores and performed countless interviews.
But the Lady Gaga brand is also known for focusing on building long-term personal connections with her fans. She puts this action higher than short-term revenue.
She is very aware that consumers like to engage with stars. Even though Lady Gaga could have played bigger venues early in her career, she wanted to play small venues. Her goal was to really connect with the audience.
In her book “Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics” Jackie Huba states:
“Many marketers would kill to have Lady Gaga as their ‘product’ to sell.detergent. Her catchy songs, crazy stage performances, and wacky outfits made her. She was quite unique and buzz-worthy. It is Lady Gaga’s ability to remain singularly focused on maintaining her fan base that made her as successful as she is today. This is what sets her apart from the traditional way of doing business. This is where traditional businesses can learn the most from her success.”
There is an interesting story about how Pablo Picasso, the famous Spanish artist, developed the ability to produce remarkable work in just minutes.
As the story goes, Picasso was walking through the market one day when a woman spotted him.
She stopped the artist, pulled out a piece of paper, and said, “Mr. Picasso, I am a fan of your work. Please, could you do a little drawing for me?”
Picasso smiled and quickly drew a small, but beautiful piece of art on the paper. Then, he handed the paper back to her saying, “That will be one million dollars.”
“But Mr. Picasso,” the woman said. “It only took you thirty seconds to draw this little masterpiece.”
“My good woman,” Picasso said, “It took me thirty years to draw that masterpiece in thirty seconds.”
Picasso isn’t the only brilliant creative who worked for decades to master his craft. His journey is typical of many creative geniuses. Even people of considerable talent rarely produce incredible work before decades of practice.
Like many fans of Lady Gaga, this doesn’t come as a surprise. She’s been quietly building up to this moment with her career. She has consistently delivered her brand directly to audiences for more than a decade.
Related post: Remarkable Branding Design: Spanish Bank Example
For any digital marketer, there is a lot to Lady Gaga’s approach that can inspire the direction for your brands. Here are eight tips to consider.
Familiarity and trust
Lady Gaga is a master of social media. It’s her engaging style. She feels so real, so authentic to her fans.
Namely, she doesn’t act like the biggest pop star in the world. She acts like your best friend, someone who gets you, someone real who you can talk to.
Marketers need to learn from this style. On social media, your brand needs to feel friendly and approachable. Brand equity is built through familiarity and trust. No brand has more consistently executed this than Lady Gaga.
Uniqueness wins every time.
Lady Gaga brand uniqueness
Establishing a brand identity requires something distinctive. For instance, Apple has become known worldwide for their innovative products and minimalistic, aesthetic appeal.
When it comes to service companies, Domino’s Pizza used to guarantee that their pizza would arrive in 30 minutes or it’d be free.
In terms of a selling point, TOM’s shoes donate a free pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of shoes that are bought.
Creating an identity like Lady Gaga doesn’t demand an extraordinary talent. It simply needs to have one special thing that separates it from the competition.
In reality, it’s possible to be “a one trick pony” as long as that trick is really good. Once a company figures out what that is, it can concentrate on it. It should increase recognition in time.
Lady Gaga news today … competitiveness
Gaining an edge in today’s business or entertainment world isn’t easy. For an entertainment brand to make a name for itself, team members should thrive on competition. They should constantly strive to improve.
When it comes to the major players in any industry, none simply sit back. None just hope that their consumers will do the work for them.
Instead, they tend to be the movers and shakers who work tirelessly toward optimizing their brand. Their goal is going above and beyond consumer expectations. The end result is to be a like the Lady Gaga brand that is continually on the cutting edge.
Understands social media marketing
Lady Gaga’s social media presence is truly incredible. And she’s everywhere. She is on Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Line. She has all the channels covered well.
But what Lady Gaga and her team understand is that these are unique tools. They don’t broadcast the same post through all social media channels. They use each one differently.
Across every social channel she uses, she is astutely aware of how those channels should be used. She recognizes how fans on those channels interact with each other.
Her social media marketing is distinct, relevant, and just plain right in every place. Brands need to start recognizing that their one-size-fits-all social media approach is out of touch.
They need to recognize the importance of fan engagement in this hyper-personalized digital world.
Lady Gaga news … exposure
Another big part of being recognized as a distinctive, successful brand is the ability to reach consumers through multiple channels.
Obviously, larger entertainers have an advantage in gaining exposure. This is because they usually have a bigger marketing budget and more existing connections. They can pay for television commercials and be featured in globally-recognized magazines. And they rank highly in search engine results pages.
However, the Internet and social media have narrowed the gap between small companies and large ones. There are more tools than ever before which offer any company a chance at establishing their brand.
By developing a presence on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc, anyone is able to reach almost any consumer. You just have to know how to work tirelessly.
Lady Gaga news … she knows her brand
Despite Lady Gaga’s presence in almost every conceivable channel, she determined that some channels simply do not add value.
In fact, she has implicitly discovered where her brand is being devalued and has managed it accordingly. She does what any good brand manager does.
In the content advertising era, this is a valuable lesson for digital marketers. We are creating short films, original music, webisode series, and mobile games. We need to employ countless other forms of online entertainment surrounding our brands.
Great content, like our core products, is valuable. We must consider how to amplify that value in our digital marketing.
Lady Gaga brand is maintaining the mystery.
Maintaining mystery in her brand
One thing Lady Gaga understands and consistently delivers on, is maintaining the magic and the mystery in her brand. She knows that audiences today are motivated by the “surprise” in the relationship, as she puts it.
But she also doesn’t show too much. She still keeps an air of mystery about her.
She maintains aspects of her strategy, career, behind the curtain and achieving a balance for her brand.
How are you bringing surprises into your brand relationship with your fans? What do you need to do to make your digital marketing fresh, new and interesting?
What can you add to your audience today? For example consider a tonal shift on social, a new surprising piece of video content, or an unexpected fan contest. Make it magical and inspire your audience, just like Lady Gaga.
It’s certainly possible to build a brand in the short-term without passion. However, it’s almost impossible to sustain it in the long run.
When you examine massively successful people like Lady Gaga, they all have a serious passion. It is that passion that keeps propelling them to work hard and continually deliver greatness.
That passion leads to enthusiasm and genuine joy, which is infectious.
The bottom line
The future of marketing belongs to brands like the Lady Gaga brand. It is important to not only understand their customer advocates but go the extra mile to build personal connections. Building personal connections with their biggest fans for nurturing authentic, long-term relationships.
Remember that consumers engage with people, not brands. Are you a fan of the singer Lady Gaga? I certainly am. And I am even a bigger fan of the innovative Lady Gaga brand and Lady Gaga news.
Normally millions are spent on traditional media. Lady Gaga hyped her latest album by spending millions on bus advertising. She also spent on billboards, 2 pop up stores and performed countless interviews.
But the Lady Gaga brand is also known for focusing on building long-term personal connections with her fans. She puts this action higher than short-term revenue.
She is very aware that consumers like to engage with stars. Even though Lady Gaga could have played bigger venues early in her career, she wanted to play small venues. Her goal was to really connect with the audience.
In her book “Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics” Jackie Huba states:
“Many marketers would kill to have Lady Gaga as their ‘product’ to sell.detergent. Her catchy songs, crazy stage performances, and wacky outfits made her. She was quite unique and buzz-worthy. It is Lady Gaga’s ability to remain singularly focused on maintaining her fan base that made her as successful as she is today. This is what sets her apart from the traditional way of doing business. This is where traditional businesses can learn the most from her success.”
There is an interesting story about how Pablo Picasso, the famous Spanish artist, developed the ability to produce remarkable work in just minutes.
As the story goes, Picasso was walking through the market one day when a woman spotted him.
She stopped the artist, pulled out a piece of paper, and said, “Mr. Picasso, I am a fan of your work. Please, could you do a little drawing for me?”
Picasso smiled and quickly drew a small, but beautiful piece of art on the paper. Then, he handed the paper back to her saying, “That will be one million dollars.”
“But Mr. Picasso,” the woman said. “It only took you thirty seconds to draw this little masterpiece.”
“My good woman,” Picasso said, “It took me thirty years to draw that masterpiece in thirty seconds.”
Picasso isn’t the only brilliant creative who worked for decades to master his craft. His journey is typical of many creative geniuses. Even people of considerable talent rarely produce incredible work before decades of practice.
Like many fans of Lady Gaga, this doesn’t come as a surprise. She’s been quietly building up to this moment with her career. She has consistently delivered her brand directly to audiences for more than a decade.
Related post: Remarkable Branding Design: Spanish Bank Example
For any digital marketer, there is a lot to Lady Gaga’s approach that can inspire the direction for your brands. Here are eight tips to consider.
Familiarity and trust
Lady Gaga is a master of social media. It’s her engaging style. She feels so real, so authentic to her fans.
Namely, she doesn’t act like the biggest pop star in the world. She acts like your best friend, someone who gets you, someone real who you can talk to.
Marketers need to learn from this style. On social media, your brand needs to feel friendly and approachable. Brand equity is built through familiarity and trust. No brand has more consistently executed this than Lady Gaga.
Uniqueness wins every time.
Lady Gaga brand uniqueness
Establishing a brand identity requires something distinctive. For instance, Apple has become known worldwide for their innovative products and minimalistic, aesthetic appeal.
When it comes to service companies, Domino’s Pizza used to guarantee that their pizza would arrive in 30 minutes or it’d be free.
In terms of a selling point, TOM’s shoes donate a free pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of shoes that are bought.
Creating an identity like Lady Gaga doesn’t demand an extraordinary talent. It simply needs to have one special thing that separates it from the competition.
In reality, it’s possible to be “a one trick pony” as long as that trick is really good. Once a company figures out what that is, it can concentrate on it. It should increase recognition in time.
Lady Gaga news today … competitiveness
Gaining an edge in today’s business or entertainment world isn’t easy. For an entertainment brand to make a name for itself, team members should thrive on competition. They should constantly strive to improve.
When it comes to the major players in any industry, none simply sit back. None just hope that their consumers will do the work for them.
Instead, they tend to be the movers and shakers who work tirelessly toward optimizing their brand. Their goal is going above and beyond consumer expectations. The end result is to be a like the Lady Gaga brand that is continually on the cutting edge.
Understands social media marketing
Lady Gaga’s social media presence is truly incredible. And she’s everywhere. She is on Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Line. She has all the channels covered well.
But what Lady Gaga and her team understand is that these are unique tools. They don’t broadcast the same post through all social media channels. They use each one differently.
Across every social channel she uses, she is astutely aware of how those channels should be used. She recognizes how fans on those channels interact with each other.
Her social media marketing is distinct, relevant, and just plain right in every place. Brands need to start recognizing that their one-size-fits-all social media approach is out of touch.
They need to recognize the importance of fan engagement in this hyper-personalized digital world.
Lady Gaga news … exposure
Another big part of being recognized as a distinctive, successful brand is the ability to reach consumers through multiple channels.
Obviously, larger entertainers have an advantage in gaining exposure. This is because they usually have a bigger marketing budget and more existing connections. They can pay for television commercials and be featured in globally-recognized magazines. And they rank highly in search engine results pages.
However, the Internet and social media have narrowed the gap between small companies and large ones. There are more tools than ever before which offer any company a chance at establishing their brand.
By developing a presence on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc, anyone is able to reach almost any consumer. You just have to know how to work tirelessly.
Lady Gaga news … she knows her brand
Despite Lady Gaga’s presence in almost every conceivable channel, she determined that some channels simply do not add value.
In fact, she has implicitly discovered where her brand is being devalued and has managed it accordingly. She does what any good brand manager does.
In the content advertising era, this is a valuable lesson for digital marketers. We are creating short films, original music, webisode series, and mobile games. We need to employ countless other forms of online entertainment surrounding our brands.
Great content, like our core products, is valuable. We must consider how to amplify that value in our digital marketing.
Lady Gaga brand is maintaining the mystery.
Maintaining mystery in her brand
One thing Lady Gaga understands and consistently delivers on, is maintaining the magic and the mystery in her brand. She knows that audiences today are motivated by the “surprise” in the relationship, as she puts it.
But she also doesn’t show too much. She still keeps an air of mystery about her.
She maintains aspects of her strategy, career, behind the curtain and achieving a balance for her brand.
How are you bringing surprises into your brand relationship with your fans? What do you need to do to make your digital marketing fresh, new and interesting?
What can you add to your audience today? For example consider a tonal shift on social, a new surprising piece of video content, or an unexpected fan contest. Make it magical and inspire your audience, just like Lady Gaga.
It’s certainly possible to build a brand in the short-term without passion. However, it’s almost impossible to sustain it in the long run.
When you examine massively successful people like Lady Gaga, they all have a serious passion. It is that passion that keeps propelling them to work hard and continually deliver greatness.
That passion leads to enthusiasm and genuine joy, which is infectious.
The bottom line
The future of marketing belongs to brands like the Lady Gaga brand. It is important to not only understand their customer advocates but go the extra mile to build personal connections. Building personal connections with their biggest fans for nurturing authentic, long-term relationships.
We all fear failure. At best, this makes us hesitate. At worst, it leads to total stagnation. One of the most common reasons for resistance is fear of the unknown. People will only take active steps toward the unknown if they genuinely believe – and perhaps more importantly, feel – that the risks of standing still are greater than those of moving forward in a new direction.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your branding design strategies? Such as creative branding ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Do you have a lesson about making your brand marketing better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on brands and branding from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your branding design strategies? Such as creative branding ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Do you have a lesson about making your brand marketing better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on brands and branding from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your branding design strategies? Such as creative branding ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Do you have a lesson about making your brand marketing better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on brands and branding from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Be everywhere, do everything, and neverfail to astonish the customer. Have you noticed how customer experience design has grown in importance of brandmarketing? More and more trying to astonish the customer. Certainly a real discriminator, isn’t it? The customer focus at Nordstrom has led to the retail giant having a reputation for an absurdly great customer experience design. In fact, the Nordstrom marketing strategy uses customer experience design as a keydifference maker. The company is perhaps as known as much for its experience design as it is for the merchandise it sells.
Today we will examine 10 different ways the Nordstrom brand has chosen to use their customer experience to stand out above the noise and become a significant contributor to their marketing strategy.
The endstate quality of the product or service the customer receives is what counts. However, this includes the experience the customer remembered while he purchased the item. Often that is what is remembered the most.
So what constitutes a great customer experience?
The quality of your company’s customer experience is ultimately determined by the way customers feel after their last interaction. If the customer is unhappy, your company’s customer experience is bad. If the customer doesn’t have a feeling one way or the other, your company’s customer experience is mediocre (and some would argue bad). If the customer feels good, your company’s customer experience is satisfactory, but it does not stand out. But if the customer feels delighted, your company’s customer experience is a substantial competitive advantage. That is the only one that really matters to success. It is the one everyone is attempting to find the magic for.
Consider the invention cycle:
Imagination is envisioning things that do not exist.
Entrepreneurship is applying innovation, to bring unique ideas to fruition, inspiring others’ imagination.
This framework is relevant to start-ups and established firms, as well as innovators of all types where the realization of a new idea — whether a product, service, or work of art — results in a collective increase in imagination. An entrepreneurial spirit infects others, leading to wave upon wave of imagination, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Let’s examine 10 smashing examples that Nordstrom uses to delight customers:
Customer care
Feelings and emotions certainly have a significant role in the way customers influenced in the marketing process. Some are saying that all customers are concerned about right now is price. I challenge that. It takes no special skill to follow the leader or be the (momentary) leader with the lowest price. Companies that are thriving (yes, thriving) do more. They have made deliberate decisions about how they would run their business, and they live out those decisions every day. The most important of those decisions is the one that determines that taking great care of their customers is the highest priority.
Nordstrom marketing strategy … hire nurturers
Hiring nurturers to take care of customers is the best place to start the process.You can identify this natural ability in employees during the interview process.
As much as there is a tendency to move customers quickly in and out your doors in the name of efficiency, resist this approach. Today’s customer wants and expects to be cared for as an individual. For example; on “Black Friday,” as customers were standing in cold lines to get into stores in the middle of the night, one intern at a local store decided to pass out coffee, hot chocolate, and doughnuts to keep the crowds calm. A great small touch that had remarkable long term results via word of mouth marketing because of that “nurturing” gesture.
In Nordstrom’s salespeople can offer to ring up your purchase without you ever having to stand in line. A great small touch that had remarkable long term results via word of mouth marketing because of that “nurturing” gesture.
Focus on product presentation.
Product presentation
Have you ever been in a Nordstrom store? If you have you will remember the emphasis of the visual presentation of their products. Draws your eyes to many, even if you are not looking for them. Helping customers visualize and sometimes try on the products.
Customers don’t want to be treated like a number. They want to feel valued and understood. Their belief? That the money they spend with your company entitles them to such treatment. The differentiation of the experience your company delivers will therefore be at least in part contingent on your ability to personalize your interactions with customers across all channels. That means knowing their name, their previously expressed preferences, or the particulars of their current situation. Lots of small ways to create customer personalization.
A Nordstrom salesperson rarely points. If you have a question about where something is located, they walk you there. The personal touch is remembered.
Care
Customers like knowing that you care. Great service is the top reason customers keep giving their business to companies and the top reason they recommend those companies to others. On the flipside, 80 percent of customers say that they have stopped doing business with a company because of a bad service experience. More often than not, they will never do business with such a company ever again. For these reasons and others, it is critical to ensure that your company delivers great service care. Care that results in great experiences that are remembered and talked about.
Separate checkout bays by department, unlike many other retail department stores that have central checkout bays that can feel like a cattle call.
You can’t over prepare on your customer experience if you want customers to select or stay with your company.
Empower employees
Be relentless about cutting out those rules that make your frontline folks have to bounce back and forth between themselves and a manager to take care of a customer or extend a special gesture they feel is warranted.
Take another page from Nordstrom’s that gets rid of the rule book for customers, or minimizes the rule book for employees, telling employees that the major rule they all live by is “No Customer Can Leave Unhappy.”
Differentiated value
This example, while being traditional, will surprise you in the best brand in this discrimination category. Ever shopped Nordstrom? Our favorite retail store because of its great, unique discriminators. Consider its high touch service, its spacious look and feel, and top quality products. One-to-one service. In most departments, if you indicate the desire to shop, there is a salesperson designated to helping you find sizes, etc. They are number 1 in our minds.
Get away from the desk
Be where your customers and the folks who serve your customers are.
Be agile, be on the lookout for what people are asking for, and then be responsive. If you do something for one customer in need, spread the idea through your employees to extend the gesture, too. Being responsive and empathetic and adjusting how you do business for your customers now will pay off as the memory of your kindness stays with them.
Let your customers know
Let the marketplace know about who you are and what you value in your decisions and actions. Be authentic at all costs.
More to know: 19 Top Marketing Initiatives We Should Be Discussing
When you make a decision, it results in action. And the accumulation of those decisions and actions becomes how people describe you and think of you. It becomes your story. So decide what story you want told about your company and your people. Your “storefront” is the accumulation of your decisions and actions.
So what story is emerging about who you are and what you value? Having customers who love you tell your story will make your business grow. Make decisions that will earn you the kind of story you want told. No wonder the only rule at Nordstrom to this day is “Use good judgment in all situations.”
The bottom line
Here’s the thing, social and customer experience isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s really a new way of running a business. Many businesses certainly have figured this out and are using social marketing and improved customer experience to rapidly grow their business.
Remember, don’t talk about how great you are. Tell your customers a story about what you do well will make them and feel awesome. Make customer experience the centerpiece of your marketing success strategy. Learn from Nordstrom’s, one of the best.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your customer attention and focus. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Do you have a lesson about making your customer focus better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on social media marketing and advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Can you think of a more competitive market than fast food or fast casual restaurants? I have not been able to come up with one. This blog will show how Five Guys social media marketing effectively generates success in a very competitive market segment.
Five Guys has been a Washington, DC favorite since 1986. It was then that the parents offered the brothers the option of college or starting a family run business.
As the story goes, the business option won. And so the carry out burger business was launched in Alexandria, Virginia.
Five Guys opened its first location in Arlington, Virginia as a family-run restaurant named after, you guessed it, five brothers. During the 1980’s and 1990’s they perfected their trade with expansion in the area and adding the eat-in the restaurant feature.
In 2003, they were finally convinced to franchise. Their business has continued to grow on the national scale.
Renowned for their fresh, high-quality food, Five Guys expanded quickly and now have more than 1,200 franchises across the US, Canada, England, and Scotland. Their plans were to move into Europe and the Middle East.
With over 30,000 employees (of which 250 work for the corporate office), the company wanted to reconcile a potential disconnect. A disconnect between its multinational brand power and the family-owned persona. A persona that resonates with its loyal local customers.
What is the secret of this small business’ growth, you may be wondering?
It is not rocket science, but it is a hard lesson for many businesses to learn. This is especially true for small businesses. The question businesses in highly competitive markets need to answer is the following:
How do you make a difference to someone who has an infinite choice?
Five guys … just another fast food restaurant? Not so fast … consider their value discrimination:
Always fresh beef, never frozen
Fresh cut (from real potatoes) french fries
If you have visited a restaurant, you noticed the bags of potatoes in a visible portion of the establishment.
Burgers are cooked by hand, not a machine
Many options for burger fixings and potatoes
Still fast service
The Five Guys marketing strategy focused primarily on social media for the bulk of their strategy activities. This included customer service and public relations, rather than traditional print, radio, and TV advertising.
They engaged directly with customers instead of talking at them. By doing this, the marketing team hoped to keep the unique Five Guys voice as fresh, authentic, and relevant. Worked well to build and keep their customer base.
I believe there are four secrets to the Five Guys social media marketing:
The social media centerpiece.
Making customer service the social media centerpiece
Five Guys gets the concept of customer service, as well as customer experience. They have become the foundation of their marketing.
They realized that word of mouth was the best type of marketing. They knew people would spread the word fastest with outstanding service.
They stay very tuned into the customer feedback on all social networks. The streams layout in their customer dashboard show social posts related to brand and services keywords.
This makes it easy for the team to share any inbound comments or questions with the right Five Guys corporate team member.
“The customers are who we value most. It’s absolutely necessary to provide the type of customer service they have come to expect.
By monitoring a variety of different hashtags it gives us the opportunity to react quickly to negative experiences. It also giveso the opportunity to reach out to those individuals who are trying us out for the first time.
Or perhaps simply telling us they enjoy our food. These are things we love to hear. We love having the opportunity to engage with these customers on a more personal level.”
— Kenneth Westling, Online Marketing Specialist, Five Guys
Marketing liaises daily with Five Guys’ customer service to exchange client feedback and get a sense of the overall feeling towards the brand.
This information gives them a deeper understanding of the Five Guys’ audience. Therefore they can create content that directly addresses feedback. Feedback that will nurture customer relationships
The bottom line
Social media can give you a wealth of information not available through other traditional communication channels.
Information such as how people feel about your brand and which products are the most popular. Information that includes the geographic and/or demographic distribution of buyers.
What customers REALLY think
As the Five Guys franchise has expanded, their menu and services have evolved to cater to their customers’ needs on a local level. Their social media’s geo-targeting functionality has allowed them to monitor specific conversation topics. Monitoring them as they happen, in specific areas of interest.
They first set up a good listening strategy. They then breaking it down by location. The Five Guys team has been able to gain deeper understanding into what is working and what’s missing. They pay attention to sentiment around individual campaigns or initiatives.
Takeaway tip:
Make listening on-line and off is one of the most critical efforts a business can do. Seek to gain and act on customer insights.
Employee delegation for social media
The Five Guys main Twitter account, @Five_Guys , is used for engaging with customers. Also for answering queries, and providing information about the brand and new store openings.
Individual franchise locations, however, are also given dedicated accounts. They use them to communicate locally on promotions, new flavors or products, and events that resonate with the community.
Employee interaction is encouraged and is critical to this strategy.
By empowering franchisees to communicate and collaborate across the entire market, individual branches can uncover customer feedback themselves.
They can respond directly and make changes that improve the customer experience.
And because the Five Guys brand is genuine, personal, and interested, they wanted to celebrate franchise employee teams.
They do this by giving the public a “behind-the scenes” peek into their worlds through photos and videos.
Here is an example. The “Pursuit of Perfection Tour” campaign, tracked with the hashtag #HighFive, has proven enormously successful. It is now an ongoing social initiative. A very cool initiative of the creative initiative spirit at Five Guys.
Takeaway tip:
There is no doubt that great customer engagement starts with great employee engagement. It is amazing how well employee delegation improves social media engagement.
Five Guys social media marketing … create engaging content
Just a glance at Five Guys’ well-established Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram networks shows a company that puts the focus on its customers. It shows sharing photos, quotes, and reviews from their clients.
Content is user-generated, whether it comes from social contests or feedback gained through customer service.
Let’s take a look at some of Five Guys’ social campaigns.
#SayCheeseSweeps is one of their successes, with more than 1,000 total mentions on Twitter and Instagram. Customers hashtagged photos of themselves with Five Guys Cheeseburgers for a chance to win prizes. These photos were shared across the Five Guys networks.
Audience participation was even greater than expected, so the team recreated the campaign with milkshakes, using the hashtag #ShareYourShake.
All promotional posts were scheduled and tracked on their customer dashboard.
Engagement is the company’s top priority metric. Therefore, they generate good data on shares, reach, best engagement times, and days of high engagement.
This kind of quantitative data is invaluable for showing the return on investment in social initiatives. It is critical for helping future campaign planning.
Satisfied customers often become brand ambassadors. Social campaigns are a great way to generate buzz and sharable content from audiences. Audiences that best know your products and services—your happy customers.
The bottom line
So what is the answer to the question of the secrets to Five Guys social media marketing success in a highly competitive market?
Build and maintain competitive advantages around what your target customers are looking for.
Social media gives us a great opportunity to listen in on what people are saying. We’ve long known that word of mouth is incredibly powerful, now we can actually track it. Social listening tools are still somewhat primitive, but they are improving quickly and are already being deployed to help monitor conventional marketing efforts in real-time.
What are some of your business’s competitive advantages that you would share?
Need some help in finding ways to improve your social media initiatives and marketing? Such as creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers? Or perhaps finding ways to work with other businesses?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to continually improving your business learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on social media platforms from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Think about the process of developing and managing customers’ individual relationships with your firm.
This should include the Web site, a loyalty program, the contact center, at the point of purchase, or in after-sale service.
All take continuous attention to detail, don’t they? And they all offer ways to engage customers through relationship marketing.
Here is a video you will find useful on this subject.
Let’s dig into this subject a little deeper
What is relationship marketing?
In ‘Relationship Marketing ~ A Consumer Experience Approach’, it suggests that the primary objective of relationship marketing (RM) is to develop and maintain a customer base. A customer base that is committed to the brand and profitable for the business.
RM focuses on not just attracting, but also retaining customers with the development of a long-term relationship.
Here is a definition we like to use:
“Relationship marketingis a strategy designed to foster customer loyalty, interaction and long-term engagement. It is designed to develop strong connections with customers. It does this by providing them with information directly suited to their needs and interests. It also does this by promoting open communication.”
Business is a “people activity”, there is no doubt. People like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. Ones with whom they have relationships are at the top of the desirable business option list.
The stronger the relationships with your customers, the greater will be their trust and loyalty in your business. And the greater their trust and loyalty, the more business they generate for you. It is as simple as that.
Here is a story I like to tell and retell. A landscape gardener ran a business that had been in the family for two or three generations. The staff was happy, and customers loved to visit the store, or to have the staff work on their gardens or make deliveries – anything from bedding plants to ride-on mowers.
For as long as anyone could remember, the current owner and previous generations of owners were extremely positive happy people.
Most folks assumed it was because they ran a successful business.
In fact, it was the other way around…
A tradition in the business was that the owner always wore a big lapel badge, saying Business Is Great!
The business was indeed generally great, although it went through tough times like any other. What never changed however was the owner’s attitude, and the badge saying Business Is Great!
Everyone who saw the badge for the first time invariably asked, “What’s so great about business?” Sometimes people would also comment that their own business was miserable, or even that they personally were miserable or stressed.
Anyhow, the Business Is Great! badge always tended to start a conversation, which typically involved the owner talking about lots of positive aspects of business and work, for example:
the pleasure of meeting and talking with different people every day
the reward that comes from helping staff take on new challenges and experiences
the fun and laughter in a relaxed and healthy work environment
the fascination in the work itself, and in the other people’s work and businesses
the great feeling when you finish a job and do it to the best of your capabilities
the new things you learn every day – even without looking to do so
and the thought that everyone in business is blessed – because there are many millions of people who would swap their own situation to have the same opportunities of doing a productive meaningful job, in a civilized well-fed country, where we have no real worries.
And so the list went on. And no matter how miserable a person was, they’d usually end up feeling a lot happier after just a couple of minutes listening to all this infectious enthusiasm and positivity.
It is impossible to quantify or measure attitude like this, but to one extent or another it’s probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, on which point if asked about the badge in a quiet moment, the business owner would confide:
The badge came first. The great business followed. And that my friends is the best social business strategy that I know of.
Simple ideas on consumer engagement start with a foundation of little things. Little things that, when not done well, can make the more complex customer experience design actions a moot point. We call these the relationship marketing truths.
Relationship marketing truths
Set your relationship marketing course with these simple truths:
Build all of your relationship marketing on these basic truths.
Studies show time and again, your best and most loyal customers are the most apt to tell their friends about your business. This creates strong word of mouth marketing.
Word of mouth marketing is the most important element of any relationship marketing campaign.
When the organization’s culture facilitates open communication and cooperation, consumer concerns can quickly be addressed. By paying careful attention to positive and negative trends, organizations can use this feedback to make appropriate adjustments. Adjustments to product or service offerings, ensuring the best of customer satisfaction.
Consistent Customer Experience
Organizations that are aligned across all touchpoints seamlessly share information. They work together to ensure customer’s needs are addressed with minimum effort.
This is particularly important when the consumer is experiencing challenges with the product or service. Quickly resolving issues builds trust and it can improve customer relationships.
Types of relationship marketing
Customer Advocates
Consumers who are pleased and enjoy a consistent experience, increasingly share this information with each other. Increasingly consumers are turning to each other for suggestions and recommendations. Make it easy for your customers to share their experiences.
However, first make sure they have a consistently good experience.
Relationship marketing strategy … innovation
Organizations, like Starbucks through MyStarbucksIdea.com, invite their customers to provide ideas. Consumers are allowed to share, vote and discuss each other’s ideas. Most important, they are kept apprised of the status of ideas.
Relationship marketing offers powerful benefits. However, it takes discipline, strategy and a supportive environment. What are other benefits that your business receives?
So how are well-known companies putting relationship marketing to use? More importantly, how can you? Let’s take a closer look:
Coca Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign
Coke started the first step of its ‘share a coke’ campaign with product personalization. For the first time in history, 250 of the most popular first names in each country were shortlisted and printed on the iconic red and white Coke labels, instead of the Coke logo.
Coke then used mass media channels like television, outdoors and radio to communicate to users. Their message? Simply that their favorite drink just might have their name on it.
Each bottle also carried a hashtag #ShareACoke to remind users to post pictures. Pictures of their personalized Coke bottles on social media using the hashtag.
The experience of seeing one’s own name on Coke bottles was so novel and addictive that people actually paid premium prices. They wanted to ensure they could lay their hands on their ‘own’ bottles of Coke. They shared their pictures on social media like wildfire.
Images of Coke bottles shared on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the #ShareACoke hashtag were then plastered across across the country.
Sharing a Coke with someone isn’t just about enjoying a drink. To Coke and its customers, it’s about capturing a moment in time and building a friendship. That something all social commerce wants to do.
And while you may not be a giant corporation, you can still add a personalized touch through brand incentives.
Nordstrom’s Pinterest Integration
Catching on to the fact that Pinterest is a fabulous social network, Nordstrom started highlighting its products. The products that were popular on Pinterest were tagged with a “Popular on Pinterest” sign on the physical item in stores.
Launched as a pilot activity in January 2013, the experiment has been so successful that today every Nordstrom outlet across the US showcases its most popular items on Pinterest.
They are included with a ‘Top Pinned’ section inside physical stores. Shop assistants are equipped with an in-house iPad app that shows trending items for the day. It helps them tag these items appropriately in-store.
Ice Bucket Challenge
Much of the viral marketing that happened last year surrounded the Ice Bucket Challenge. This challenge was designed to raise money for ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The virality of tagging pals to participate and video their reaction is what made the challenge so memorable for so many.
Plus, it started in the hottest part of the year, so it was natural that people didn’t mind “cooling off for a cause”.
Of course, you don’t need a major celebrity’s endorsement to start your own viral sharing challenge. Think about something simple, fun and do-able, by just about anyone.
New challenges have already sprung up to piggyback off of the Ice Bucket Challenge’s massive success. Whether or not they’ll have the same incredible success that the ALS Association saw remains to be seen. However the seeds of promotion have a chance. You’ll never know until you try.
The bottom line
These are not things that we do not already know, of course.
Yet these little things list simply reminds us of what we already know but may have forgotten. That is, it is up to us to put these lessons of relationship marketing into daily use through persistence and practice.
Remember … all customer-facing employees need to be engaged in customer relationship building.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word-of-mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Cultivating relationships and social networks are certainly contributors. Using the many new social media tools and social platforms, yes?
Marketing, at its best, is about the future. Unfortunately, we spend most of our time stuck in the past. We research what already happened and extrapolate forward to produce a plan. It’s not that we’re lazy, we simply know a whole lot more about the past than the present or the future.
It’s been nearly half a century since Philip Kotler first published his Principles of Marketing, which has defined the practice of millions of professionals worldwide ever since. It’s no stretch to say that before Kotler, there was no true marketing profession.
What made Kotler different than what came before is that he took insights from other fields, such as economics, social science, and analytics, and applied them to the marketing arena. Although that may seem basic now, it was groundbreaking then.
Today technology is transforming marketing once again. Although up to this point, most of the impact has been tactical, over the next decade or so there will be a major strategic transformation. This, of course, will be a much harder task because we will not only have to change what we do but how we think.
We already know that marketing is becoming more social, local, and mobile, just as we know that big data and new interfaces such as touch, voice, and gesture are becoming increasingly more important. What comes next?
Note that “The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.” —Soren Kierkegaard
History is filled with examples of people who embraced their limitations rather than fought them. Dr. Seuss wrote his most famous book by only using 50 different words.
Our limitations provide us with the greatest opportunity for creativity and inventiveness.
When choosing to learn from other marketing strategies, it is always helpful to choose one of the top dogs. Ones that stand way above the crowd. Zappos is certainly one of those in this category we believe. One that we regularly follow.
Social networking is not about farming followers, it’s a way of cultivating relationships.
– Hubspot
Meet Zappos. They have been successfully executing their marketing strategy with a social focus since the first days of social media. For over 5 years, and their strategies have played a significant role in their growth.
An introduction to Zappos is probably unnecessary.
But let’s examine one of the Zappos top advantages … their company culture. The four dimensions of their culture core values (our favorite company culture):
Mission
Deliver ‘WOW’ through service
Do more with less
Adaptability
Embrace and drive change
Pursue growth and learning
Involvement
Create fun and a little weirdness
Be adventurous, creative, and open minded
Be passionate and determined
Consistency
Build open and honest relationships with communication
Build a positive team and family spirit
In our opinion, the company has inserted itself into the American e-commerce landscape more quickly and craftily than any retail company in history (even considering its parent Amazon). It has forever changed the way companies market themselves to customers.
Zappos has obviously built their business entirely in the digital realm. With a strong presence on multiple social networks, the brand has set a high bar when it comes to being social and engaging its customers. They are at or near the top of nearly every major brand ranking in customer service and social media.
Zappos’ ability to wear so many hats … corporate success, “local” favorite, and Internet sensation warrants strategic examination.
Why is Zappos’ marketing strategy such a difference-maker? There are key reasons in our minds:
Zappos marketing strategy … going to its customers
When Zappos uses an example of their customer service, it shares it on Google+, posts it to Facebook, tweets it on Twitter, and pins it on Pinterest. It clearly goes to where all its customers like to hang out. Cross-promotion is more valuable as the world becomes more digitally focused.
Each network provides an opportunity to reach their audience in a new channel. Integrating their strategy on each is crucial to increasing visibility and promoting the brand.
Market segmentation
The company has stayed focused exclusively on e-commerce, competing on those who prefer excellent customer service. One could say they set the mark for everyone to target in customer service. And they make it the core of their marketing strategy.
The company continues to focus on its original product bundle that includes shoes and continues to add new products slowly, ensuring it can maintain its quality service. They keep their focus and attention to the details of great execution and service.
Related post: Jaw-Dropping Guerrilla Marketing Lessons and Examples
Zappos marketing strategy … social media
One of the earliest adopters of the use of social media for marketing and social commerce, Zappos has certainly taken a leadership position. Their social media strategy is built around their company web site and 5 additional core social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, G+, and Youtube.
We will review Zappos’ social media strategy in detail below.
Adaptation and Innovation
Zappos’ business innovation via its website, has been a huge success. Why you may ask? Because they have combined the concepts of change, experimentation, social media, customer engagement, and market research.
They made the results key components of both their brand as well as their marketing strategy.
Instead of solely focusing efforts on accumulating new customers, it cultivates its current relationships. This ensures more fans/followers (by word of mouth marketing) in the long run, as well as the continued existence of brand advocates.
This holds particularly true in its emphasizing the importance of customer service.
They believe in letting customer engagement and conversation occur as naturally as possible. What is most important is that they listen carefully, observe, and apply new ideas from what they learn.
Encourages sharing
Happy customers are eager to share good experiences and offers.
For example, the Zappos promotions like “buy 1 get 1″ garner an extraordinary amount of engagement on social media through comments, “likes,” and shares.
Experience customization
Want to know one of the most effective examples that Zappos uses to build its marketing and create reciprocity with its customers?
By surprising them!
People like getting things for free and like them, even more, when they are viewed as ‘favors’. But even more, they love receiving these favors as surprises.
For instance, did you know that Zappos automatically upgrades all purchases to priority shipping … without so much as even a mention on the sales or checkout page?
Why give away this sort of benefit without mentioning it?
Simple …
a company like Zappos (known for their legendary customer service) recognizes the benefits of surprising people with a next day delivery.
That’s not even mentioning the fact that this shipping creates immense goodwill between Zappos and their first-time buyers. (I still remember my first order.)
Lots of ideas here that can be easily replicated … which ones do you feel could benefit your business?
How could you improve the Zappos customer service campaign concept for your business?
The bottom line
At the end of the day, Zappos’ rise to online dominance really just revolves around turning an otherwise complicated shopping experience into one that feels quaint and easy. It accomplished this by setting up a strong behind-the-scenes infrastructure that puts the customer experience at the forefront.
And isn’t that what their new strategy is all about—giving the customer what they want where and when they want it? Unfortunately, it is much easier said than done.
Zappos is one of many businesses we can learn from. Please post your comments below, offering questions or your own great examples of social marketing strategies.
It’s up to you to keep improving attention to your brand.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy in each of these steps to improving attention to your brand?
Do you have a lesson about making your brand better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
More reading on social media marketing and advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
The key is to be part of peoples’ lives. People will always prefer to do business with friends. Has your business ever studied cause marketing and cause marketing examples?
Marketing is often confused with promotion, but it’s more than that. As Peter Drucker put it, “the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” In truth, marketing is about insights more than anything else.
How were the results? In this article we will give you many cause marketing examples to learn from. You can use them to improve your success rate the next go ‘round.
According to cause-marketing consultant Jocelyn Daw, cause-related marketing (CRM) is a mutually beneficial collaboration between a corporation and a nonprofit.
In 1983, the term “cause-related marketing” was coined by American Express in a campaign to restore the Statue of Liberty. It can be argued that cause marketing started in the 1960s or the 1970s. Some say it started in the 1960s with the Jerry Lewis Telethon and Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Note that cause marketing is distinct from corporate philanthropy. This is because the corporate dollars involved are not outright gifts to a nonprofit organization. They are not treated as tax-deductible charitable contributions.
Nonetheless, nonprofits usually benefit from increased fundraising and exposure.
Likewise, corporations that are socially involved potentially benefit from increased brand loyalty and employee morale. Studies have shown that for products of similar quality, consumers will consider the company’s image and reputation when choosing a brand.
Causes brings over 140 million people together to form the world’s largest giving community. The belief that everyone has something to give is at the core of what we do. People just need a little inspiration, and to know that whoever they are, there is something meaningful they can do.
-Joe Green, Causes.com
In the increasingly competitive market for consumer attention, brands have to work harder than ever to break through the clutter. They must strike a chord with their audiences.
But in an environment where consumers are constantly bombarded with advertising, why work harder? Our answer? Because you can work smarter to make your marketing message stand out?
Take your marketing message a step further by aligning your brand in an authentic way with a nonprofit. A nonprofit that your consumers can relate to.
Cause marketing or cause related marketing involves the cooperative efforts of a for-profit business and a nonprofit organization for mutual benefit.
Here are useful cause marketing strategy elements to bring donors, a company or organization, and a cause together.
Cause marketing examples … point-of-sale
This occurs when a cashier asks you for a donation or encouraging advertisements are displayed at the register.
March of Dimes and Kmart have a successful point-of-sale campaign by asking customers to donate during checking out.
Purchase or action triggered donation
A consumer buys a product and a donation is made to a cause. On World AIDS day, Starbucks donates 5 cents for every beverage purchased.
Licensing
A company pays to use a nonprofit’s brand on its product. (RED)™ is an example that works with iconic brands and organizations.
Here developed (RED)-branded products and services, when purchased, trigger corporate giving to the Global Fund.
Message promotion
In this case, a company puts its resource to promoting a cause-forward message.
Ben & Jerry’s Scoop it Forward campaign created a partnership with Target and VolunteerMatch. Using a tasty way to raise funds and awareness, Ben and Jerrys is thanking volunteers.
It is letting people know where they can sign up to volunteer.
Employee engagement
This is a case where a company uses employee volunteers for social good.
When Home Depot’s employees volunteer for local Habitat for Humanity projects, they are participating in an employee engagement campaign.
Digital programs
Using the web and social media based services to promote and collect donations.
During a three-month period, American Express offered to contribute 1 cent for each card transaction and $1 for each new card issued.
They backed the offer with a substantial media campaign. The effort raised $1.7 million to restore the Statue of Libertyand Ellis Island. The results?
They moved the needle for Amex’s business and gave birth to the field of cause marketing. As a result, the number of new cardholders grew by 45 percent, and card usage increased by 28 percent.
This campaign represented a creative Partnership betweenIllinois Law Enforcement, Dunkin Donuts & Special Olympics
A key question to discuss in a cause marketing promotion are the influential assets.
What do you have that will make a promotion a success? Well, Dunkin Donuts had 150 busy stores in Illinois. Illinois Law Enforcement had people-power. They had thousands of officers to support a fundraiser.
Both Dunkin and Illinois law officers were committed to finding a way to support the Special Olympics.
Someone had the idea to combine the two and put the cops on roof! Genius!
More creativity is just what we need in cause marketing. They could have just put donation boxes at the store registers and called it a day.
Instead, they chose a creative fundraiser that put the donation box on top of a roof where customers would take notice. The result?
Cop on a Rooftop raised $300k in the most recent year and has endured for 11 years. Donuts and cops really do make an awesome partnership.
Johnson and Johnson Future of Nursing Campaign
The Johnson & Johnson Campaign for Nursing’s Future, a public-awareness campaign was launched by Johnson & Johnson in 2002. Its goal was to address the nursing shortage in the U.S. by recruiting new nurses and nurse faculty.
A secondary goal was to help to retain nurses currently in the profession.
To prepare soon-to-be nurses for the challenges of the workplace, Johnson & Johnson recently developed Your Future in Nursing. This was a training program that combines the interactivity of video computer gaming with real-life nursing scenarios.
New and future nurses can practice responding to scenarios in a risk-free and relaxed virtual environment.
This permitted developing communication skills that are such a critical part of the transition from classroom to bedside.
Boston Strong Tee
This campaign represented PartnersNick Reynolds, Chris Dobens, Ink for the People and One Fund Boston.
There are two reasons this represents an excellent campaign example. First, it raised a boatload of money for the One Fund. This fund was set up for the victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing.
Nick and Chris had hoped to sell a couple hundred shirts. Instead they sold over 59,000 tees and raised nearly one million dollars. Impressive, yes?
Second, what Nick and Chris did with Milwaukee-based Ink for the People is the shape of cause marketing to come.
Do-gooders like Nick and Chris are Halopreneurs. That is, they are small time operators that leverage a business platform — usually temporarily — to raise money for good causes.
Whirlpool transformed its previously little-known commitment to provide a range and refrigerator for each Habitat home built in the U.S.. It helped them be a major driver of brand loyalty by employing a multimedia campaign featuring Reba McEntire.
What’s more, they did all cause marketers a favor by measuring and sharing the impressive results.
1,000 Playgrounds in 1,000 Days
The Home Depot and KaBOOM took employee volunteerism to new heights with this national three-year program.
It build great places for kids to play within walking distance of their homes.
Further cause marketing ideas
Impact-focused alliances
While the one-company-one-nonprofit partnership structure is alive and well, the emergence of wider strategic alliances is of note.
With a focus on creating lasting, quantifiable social impact, prospective partners are inviting more players to the solutions table. The goal was to attack an issue from all sides.
The Safeway Foundation and the Entertainment Industry Foundation launched a joint cause marketing program calledHunger Is.
While the campaign execution was traditional, on the back end, an advisory committee made up of nonprofits like Share Our Strength, Feeding America and Food Research and Action Center.
All are helping this alliance distribute funds raised via projects focused primarily on increasing school breakfasts.
The bottom line
We’ve been speaking about cause marketing in terms of a long commitment. Most successful cause marketing campaigns aren’t one-offs, but rather sustained, mutually-beneficial partnerships.
Collaboration between a business and a non-profit. This will be a less daunting proposition if you’ve done your homework and found a cause that syncs well with your brand image.
It’s possible to run a one-off cause marketing campaign. But you need to be clear what your goal is.
Are you trying to make a difference in the world? Are you trying to sell more product? Are you trying to improve your brand image?
These are each valid goals, but keep in mind that consumers are placing more and more emphasis on a business’ desire to do good, not turn a profit.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing created by remarkable customer service. And put it to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing strategies. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Have you seen the latest JetBlue commercial design? You know, the one with the great use of the analogy using pigeons? And perhaps the best value proposition examples in a commercial I have ever seen.
Quite clever isn’t it, and likely one you will remember and maybe even talk about, right?
Ever written an advertisement, or thought about it? I’ve done marketing for my clients in small businesses for the past 6+ years. Along the way, I’ve learned a few things about making advertising look professional even on a tight budget.
It is a simple concept. People don’t read ads, they read what interests them. So if you are going to generate content marketing campaign designs, you are going to have to create an interesting copy. And, oh, by the way, it must be more interesting than the millions of other advertisements out there. Now that is a daunting task, isn’t it?
The true measure of successful advertising design is having customers remember and talk about the message.
Many small businesses don’t have a lot of time or resources to create ads professionally made. But that may be because they make it too complex.
Remember in marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting, entertaining, and worth talking about and remembering.
Does a commercial have the power to encourage the right sort of conversations? That is the objective, isn’t it? Let’s explore why this is so important.
According to Nielsen, there are 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day.
Statistic Brain says that our average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds. That is one second less than a goldfish!
We check our phones 150 times per day. We check our email up to 30 times an hour. In addition, the amount of information in the world continues to double every 18 months.
All this available information and data is creating a battle for customer attention between brands, publishers, and marketers. That is everyone who creates marketing content.
But more importantly, it’s forcing businesses to think more and more as creative designers. These are designs where they utilize visual analogies to help carry their messages.
Advertising is a key component of your marketing campaign. Campaigns for awareness or consumer education of your value. So your value propositions are a critical element.
If everyone is creating content, how does a business break through the noise? How do we reach our customers in a way that engages them?
And, oh by the way, it must be more interesting than the millions of other advertisements out there. Now that is a daunting task, isn’t it? JetBlue marketing has sought to overcome this dilemma with a powerful analogy to capture your attention.
If you would like to see this brilliant new ad campaign called “Air on the Side of Humanity”, you can check it out here.
Let me explain why I believe this commercial is so successful:
A visual analogy.
Value proposition examples … create a visual analogy
JetBlue ingeniously use pigeons as a transposed metaphor for frequent flyers. Airline passengers who are challenged by business travel and crowded flights.
Believe me, I can relate. The spot shows these crowded skies full of pigeons. This is all the while as an off-camera narrator says “the reality of flying is not very pretty”.
That is an awesome overstatement. It’s a royal headache and a major inconvenience.
Here is a short 3-minute video that will refresh this subject:
They show crowded jostled pigeons on a building ledge lined up single file facing the camera.
As this occurs, the narrator says, “They pack you in there. You hardly have any space for yourself. Hey, I’m a big guy and I need some room to breathe”.
The narrator continues talking about the future situation being bleak. Meanwhile, the camera focuses on a man’s legs sitting on a park bench throwing crumbs to pigeons on the sidewalk.
With humor, the narrator says, “They throw you crumbs and act as if it’s a 5 course meal”.
Next, they show a lonely pigeon on a busy pedestrian sidewalk as people walk around ignoring the confused bird.
Here the narrator says, “I feel completely ignored”.
Then the narrator asks the question, “There’s gotta be a way to fly with a little respect, you know?”
Value proposition examples … connect the dots
Making powerful motivational messages to your target audience, as in this ad, can be very effective. I certainly agree for this ad. It does a great job in getting the viewer to relate to the issue in their own life and to inspire.
So simple that the reader will quickly grasp the motivation. Keep in mind that the analogy is far more valuable than words.
This ad make the desired call to action a part of the story.
A good emotional story provides very good connection between the issue and the company promoting their message. The ad does explain the action in the story for the audience.
And it allows each member of the audience to interpret the story as he or she understands the action and the emotion.
This is why people find good stories so appealing. It is why they find advertising that simply conveys information boring.
Experiences that trigger our emotions are saved and consolidated in lasting memory. Why is that?
Because the emotions generated by the experiences signal our brains that they are important to remember. They create a good reason for you to want to back the JetBlue message, yes?
Message
At the end of the commercial, they cut to a different voiceover announcer who says,
“Enjoy JetBlue’s award-winning service, free unlimited snacks and the most legroom in coach.”
An awesome way to engage customers, isn’t it?
What I love about this engagement approach is that it takes a customer experience perspective. A perspective that no doubt was derived through deep customer insights.
As a frequent flyer myself, I was able to relate to the spot on multiple levels. I can just imagine what the creative brainstorming design session must’ve looked like.
It probably went something like this. Let’s find a metaphor for flying. Like pigeons. Lets put them in crowded lines and jostled frustrating situations
Lets show crowded skies of birds flapping their wings. Demonstrate the food is not very good.
Throw some crumbs on the street for the pigeons. And show how nobody cares about the passenger by showing the birds on a crowded sidewalk alone being ignored.
Then ask the question, there has to be a better way. The answer from JetBlue is simple and effective.
Marketing always has been and always will be about telling stories… stories that influence behavior and convince people to act on value.
Make sure your social media content tells a story and that your story is compelling and relevant–especially your headlines and the value propositions.
Air on the side of humanity! Here is where they simply spell out their 3 point value propositions:
Award-winning customer service
Free unlimited snacks
Most legroom in coach
Simple and easy. And brilliant.
The bottom line
It is a simple concept. People don’t read ads, they read what interests or entertains them. So if you are going to generate advertising and design, you are going to have to create an interesting copy.
JetBlue marketing has sought to overcome this dilemma with an entertaining commercial as its power of persuasion.
If you remember one thing from this article, remember this:
Marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting. Information that you make worth talking about and remembering.
And stand for things that potential customers value.
We believe this JetBlue ad is interesting, entertaining, and stands for things viewers can stand behind. We believe it is persuasive and certainly creates the right kind of conversation.
What do you think?
Heard enough? I rest my case.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your innovation and creativity in ad designs. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your innovation design?
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on brands and branding from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
