Getting consumers to fall in love with your brand Richard Meyer

It’s a new consumer world out there

Are brands and branding in trouble ?

Not necessarily but they need to do a better job listening

Brands need to connect more to consumers and earn their trust

Establishing a relationship with customers is not easy

But it’s important to get your customers to love your brand

Why is it important to have consumers fall in love with your brand ?

  Price becomes much less of a deciding factor when choosing between your brand and competitors.

  Happy customers will tell their story to others becoming ambassadors for your brand. You can’t put a price on word of mouth advertising like that.

  Today market share does not necessarily mean a profitable brand. Apple does not have the number one market share in PC’s but they are extremely profitable and are worth more than Dell.

  Consumers want brands who listen and hold brand accountable for not listening to their concerns/issues.

How do I get consumers to love my brand ?

1.  Trust your customers and trust those people who come in contact with your customers everyday by empowering them to make customers happy.

2.  Listen to what consumers are saying about you, your brand, your company and competitors.

3.  Put your customers at the center of everything you do and ensure that you communicate this promise to them in action and words.

4.  Become “real” in your relationship with your customers.

5.  Earn the right to have a relationship with your customers and understand that earning this right has to be done by every employee everyday.

6.  When things go wrong apologize and do whatever it takes to earn back your customers respect and business.

A good start is by listening to customers and employees

Because listening drives brand credibility

  The process of of gathering open, honest feedback humanizes companies at a time when most consumers distrust big business.

  Listening drives forms the foundation of any relationship & is the first step in loyalty building.

  The process of listening shapes external conversations

Find the time to listen

Juggle the clock but find time to listen to employees and customers because nothing you do is more important right now.

Don’t have meetings to solve all customer problems

If your meeting aren’t adding value to your customers then why have them ? Empower employees to make decisions without “having to

get on people’s calendars”

Because instant gratification takes too long

And please decide “who is the voice of our brand to customers” ?

If you don’t listen and respond quickly small problems become big problems

Because consumers want to be heard

and when they are ignored their

dissatisfaction can be amplified on

social media.

United Airlines found that out the hard way via YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

After his song made its way across the Internet, Carroll received a call from United offering to pay for his beloved guitar

United Breaks Guitars spread to over 7 million people via social media

Listening to customers is important but so is listening to employees

Your front line employees like,

customer service & sales can alert you

to possible problems before you hear

about it via an angry customer.

The price of not listening to employees can also cost a lot

  Toyota didn’t know how to respond to weak signals before they became big problems.

  Lower level managers within Toyota found it hard to deliver bad news to management.

  There was no system in place to listen to concerns of employees because of the company culture.

  Toyota managers didn’t understand how sensitive the American public is to auto safety issues.

The reputation for quality that took decades to build has come down

in just a few months.

Amazon listens to their customers and backs it up with quick action

  If a customer has a problem with a shipment the customer service people are authorized to replace the shipment immediately.

  Amazon will routinely send gift certificates for delayed product deliveries even if the delay is not their fault.

By empowering employees to solve problems on the spot

Wegman’s has also embraced empowered employees

  Employees are free to do whatever it takes to satisfy customers without checking with managers.

  “No customer is allowed to leave unhappy”

  Over 40 hours of training per year for each employee.

  Result: low employee turnover operating margins are double of competitors sales are 50% higher per square foot per than competitors.

You should also make employees feel like equal partners

As the Container Store does

  One great passionate person equals three good people.

  One employee is hired they are considered a “partner”.

  Each partner has absolute trust of the organization and sees as much information as executives.

  Two or three times a year a full-profit and loss status is shared with every employee along with briefing.

  Only 15% turnover in workforce and they have double digit growth.

Where can you listen to what people are saying about your brand ?

The best places to listen

Is it important to

our customers?

What should we do to earn their business?

OK, I am listening, Now what ?

Step1: Develop a process for listening

  Develop a system within your organization to get issues on the radar.

  Empower employees to raise their hand and say “I think you should know about this!”

  Revise and optimize the process to ensure that all data is actionable and acted upon quickly.

Step 2: Prioritize issues

  Identify which issues are the most serious threat to your brand.   If it’s important to your

customers it’s important to you !

Step 3: Empower employees to solve customer problems

Allow your employees to solve customer

problems without having to resort to days of meetings or endless

approvals from senior managers.

Step 4: Measure and optimize

Did we earn our customers respect and give them a reason to continue to do business with us?

Step 5: Remember speed is essential

On the Internet one day is like a month in real time. Nothing upsets a consumer more than thinking that nobody cares or

is listening to them.

Social Media is a great channel for listening to consumers

Tools for listening via social media

Google Alerts

  Google Alerts is the steady rock in the sometimes white-water world of monitoring. You can easily target keywords that are important to your brand and receive streaming or batched reports—choose your own adventure.

Jodange

  Tracking your brand or a product is one thing, but turning that tracking into a measure of consumer sentiment about your brand or product is something completely different. For that, Jodange has TOM (Top of Mind), which tracks consumer sentiment about your brand or product across the Web.

Trendrr

  Want to know how your brand or product is trending compared with others? Trendrr uses comparison graphing to show relationships and discover trends in real time. Use the free account, or bump it up to the Enterprise level for more functionality

Tools for listening via social media

Twitalyzer

Twitalyzer is the market leading social media analytics application focusing on short-messaging media.

Tweetriver

  Find every tweet to and about your business, route it to the appropriate resource, and respond or republish to the web..

Nielsen Buzz Metrics

  Nielsen BuzzMetrics services and solutions uncover and integrate data-driven insights culled from nearly 100 million blogs, social networks, groups, boards and other CGM platforms. 

Of course the best tools aren’t any good in the hands of the unskilled

That’s why you need to innovate and execute around what you hear

Align your marketing around consumer touch points

Because your marketing is ALL your company/brand touch points

Reward employees who take risks to solve customer problems

Like…

  Treating customer service people to a pizza party and asking “what do you hear from the field and customers?”

Or…

  Establishing a “hot line” directly to the CEO from salespeople who have important issues they feel need to be addressed quickly

Don’t forget incentives

Remember

  At the end of the day how you treat customers and make decisions will say a lot about you and your company.

About me

  Richard Meyer

  My CV http://www.richardameyer.com

  My marketing BLOG http://www.richsblog.com

  MY DTC BLOG http://www.worldofdtcmarketing.com

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