We love to see them cry with joy.
One thing that almost every entrepreneur I speak with has in common is we absolutely love to delight our customers. We like to go the extra mile. We absolutely adore and the connection and the experience that we have by making people feel great through our business and brand. And this is kind of a universal human thing.
We all really like connecting with people and making them feel good and there is no better way to do that when you’re trying to build a business or brand.
Then by trying to create experiences for your customers that will make them feel great. It’s such a fun way to kind of put your time and energy into something that is multi beneficial for you and for them. So the last couple of episodes here we’ve been looking at a concept I call brand cool, which is what makes brands magnetic and partly what separates them from businesses.
So when we are looking at brand cool, there are four pieces:
- Words
- Visuals
- Experiences
- Artefacts
Today I want to take us through this idea of experience and how to purposely actively create experiences for our customers that are going to delight them, which of course has the wonderful impact of delighting us as well.
Now one of the things to really think about is this is a key part of one of the most important parts of marketing that often gets overlooked, which is the idea of word of mouth.
There are several marketing experts who have said that word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing and sometimes kind of tricky to actually know how to wield.
Many of us try and create referral programs and other sort of tactics which can work and sometimes not work in order to encourage people to talk about us. But one of the best ways you can do it without asking is by giving someone an amazing experience. So let’s have a look at how to do that and where to start and really being able to craft something that thrills and delights our customers and makes us feel great too.
As I’ve already mentioned, one of the most powerful forms of marketing that you can leverage in your business is word of mouth is getting other people to do the marketing for you.
And this kind of a tricky one to create because well you can’t really force people to talk about you. And when they do, you can’t really control or predict what they’re going to say. Many people will define a brand actually as it’s what your customers say about you.
So this is particularly appropriate for what we’re talking about today. One resource I want to flag up right away just because it’s absolutely brilliant is the book Talk Triggers by Jay Bear. So this if you’re interested in this topic, that is a great book to go and grab because he gives some amazing formulas and examples for how to do exactly what we’re talking about today.
But we’re going to look at it from a slightly more broad level. So when we’re thinking about the experiences that we want to create for our customers, we want to really keep two things in mind.
- creating and sustaining desire
- reducing friction
What we want to be aiming for here is for them to be absolutely thrilled and delighted with the experience that they have with us. And one of the reasons that this is so important to brands instead of just businesses is because brands invest in relationships.
Now, relationships is one of those really controversial things and when I did my master’s in marketing, there was some really interesting controversy about whether to have a relationship driven marketing plan or not because a lot of brands and businesses will tell you that there isn’t an ROI, that you can’t measure the return on investment of building relationships and so it’s not worth doing and I just think that’s total bullshit.
I think at the end of the day, what is the harm and putting a little more time and energy in creating real relationships because as a brand that is one of your greatest opportunities to set yourself apart from the competition. Now before we go any further into this conversation, it’s really important for me to say that you also need to have boundaries, that you’re not just going to give and give and give and bend over backwards.
You need to understand where your sort of costs are, what you can afford, what you are willing to allocate in terms of time.
And you know, there are some people who will take advantage. The key here is to, to enter into this thought and conversation with an air of generosity, but also to make sure that the only way that we can really truly be generous is to have boundaries.
So I need to say that right away. I’m not expecting you to just give and give which I know is the tendency for a lot of big hearted entrepreneurs like you.
So let’s talk about this relationship building thing as a marketing strategy. Again, it can be a thing that’s hard to measure, hard to quantify, which is why a lot of the big, big, big brands really struggle to do it because of their scale, we know they’re not human beings and most of us don’t really want a relationship with, you know, the big multilevel marketing companies or international brands because we know that they’re not human and we’re skeptical about their intentions.
But as an entrepreneur or a solopreneur, you have this amazing opportunity where you are human and other humans want to connect and engage with you and you can lean into that in your business to try and create experiences where that is easy and possible. So one little tactic I want to give you right off the bat is to think about how in your business or brand you can build a sense of community.
So one option could be as simple as having a Facebook group and that Facebook group isn’t necessarily about what you sell or about your product or service. It’s not even necessarily about your niche. But one example could be, if you have a local service based pet business, you could have a Facebook group for dog owners in that local area..
If you sell a physical product that’s related to kids, let’s say you could have a certain sort of flavor of mothers Facebook group. So, you know, these are pretty simple examples, but the idea is to create a community of people who could potentially be your customers.
You want to make sure it’s targeted enough that they could eventually buy from you, but the core of the group is not about you. It’s about a particular topic or a particular interest that you all have in common. And that can be a way to actually start to create community, to actually start to build relationships that you can leverage later from a marketing or sales standpoint.
But that’s not the whole, that’s not the intention of creating the community in the first place. And this is a great way potentially to create tiny, tiny little positive experiences over and over that actually lead people to bring themselves over to your business or website because they’ve so enjoyed getting to know you or the value that you’ve provided for free.
So that’s one option. Another option I’m looking at sort of the tactics from Talk Triggers is to create some sort of, Jay Baer wouldn’t call them surprise and delight, but that’s what most of us are used to calling them. These ideas of these sort of either random or planned events that absolutely thrill people, so sending people a free gift when they’re not expecting it or doing above and beyond what they’re expecting, telling them one date and then delivering a week early.
These are the kinds of things that absolutely thrill people. Now there is a lot of research that supports the fact that people are willing to pay a lot more money to actually get a great service and that I think is such a sad statistic to show just how bad it is to be a consumer these days where we’re basically just expecting to be disappointed.
We expect to call up our phone company and end up on hold for an hour and be super frustrated about it. We expect people to not give us a refund when we want one. We are kind of defensive and moving through our lives as consumers expecting to be screwed because it happens so often, but most of the entrepreneurs in solar printers that I work with, would you never, ever, ever do that.
In fact, we’re way on the opposite side of the spectrum of being too generous. So that’s something you need to understand and acknowledge is really important and special and it’s something that is a delight and a surprise to people because everywhere else, everywhere else in their lives, they’re not getting it. So really critically going through and having a look at your business and the flow of the way people move through it from you know, getting to know you to getting in touch with you, to buying from you to receiving product or service from you to the follow up and look for opportunities where you can actually really, really thrill people without a lot of extra effort or costs on your part.
And that is going to be a huge, huge part of what gets people talking. It’s also going to be an important part of another really, really critical opportunity that you have as a business owner, which is to get a repeat purchase. Many of us really don’t acknowledge or utilize just how easy and valuable it is to get someone to buy for a second time. Because we’re out there trying to find first time buyers and that second, third time buyer. Not only are they 60% easier to convert, but they often spend more as well. So don’t forget that you know, the relationship doesn’t end as soon as you get that first transaction. And looking at the experiences that you’re creating and being willing to invest a bit in those experiences has massive, long-term positive impact.
Hop over to our free group, facebook.com/groups/magicmakersHQ, which is where we are having conversations all the time and brainstorming ideas and coming together as enchanted rebels to try and really surprise and delight our customers and to have and create experiences like this. So come on over and join us.
