Consumer (re)connect: online marketing communications for Instima

Consumer
(re)connect.
Why brands should commit acts,
not ads and design conversation-
worthy engagement.
(and some other things that don‟t sound like
I took it from the marketing bullsh*tbingo
dictionary)

Photo: Skittles
© InSites Consulting

Polle de Maagt (Insites Consulting) for Instima

Conversation readiness 1

Hello. I am Polle de Maagt.
I failed in most things during my
life (including being a rock star) but am
still trying to reach #worlddomination.
This time by helping companies change
to be more about acts and
conversations, less about ads.
Guess that makes me a change agent.


Read the manual.
Seriously.
Read it.

Let’s discuss
Waaay waaaaaaay back …
And the people?
Reconnecting with consumers.
Acting like a change agent.
Designing for engagement.
Designing for sales.

Waaay waaaaaaay back …
… we started out trading goods and services for goods and services. One
person helps another one with goods or service and gets rewarded for that.
Happy people would tell others about it and that’s pretty much the way you grew
your business.
But businesses changed.


Some businesses started departments and different layers.
Some people within these business didn’t even speak or see their
customers anymore on a regular basis.

Some businesses started to talk like a company, not like people.
They installed fancy corporate communication policies.
Some businesses changed personal contacts for marketing (even more: militairy) speak like
„contact-strategy‟, “target” and “target-audience”.

Some businesses felt personal contact cost them money and
started callcenters and made it more difficult to contact them.
Some businesses started to reward their employees for speed, share of wallet and upselling, not
for service quality or service.

Some businesses started to think about how much money they
could make from different services, instead of supplying service.

Some businesses
adopted fancy
technology to deal
with people.
Zappos does an amazing job in making
technology invisible and really
understanding consumers.
(Thanks Steven Verbruggen for the tip!)

Some businesses felt that helping indivi-
duals didn’t make that much sense.
You might be surprised that 11% of all organizations doesn’t answer
customer emails. Even more when you know that exceeding customer
expectations builds loyalty (81% repeats, 63% recommends) and falling
below customer expectations erodes loyalty (5%/71%).
So start helping.

Some business started to stress their technical benefits, instead
of investing in real connections.

Some businesses thought getting new customers was cooler
than keeping your current ones.

Some businesses thought that if people don’t listen you just
have to scream louder.

Some businesses over-rationalized and forgot about the power of
random kindness.

Some businesses forgot that everything you do is
communication. That employees talk and even more, acts talk
loudest.

And some businesses … well, you get the idea.

And the people?
They pretty much kept doing what they were already doing.
They kept buying stuff.
They kept talking about businesses and products.

But somewhere, slowly they started to change.
Because of the way businesses treated them, but also because of new
technology that had emerged.


They started to be 24/7 and realtime.
KLM helps customers Monday to Sunday from 8AM to 11PM. That
is almost a 24/7/365 realtime customer support center. Imagine the
implications for your organization.

They started to have a lower tolerance for bad customer service.

They started orienting and buying online.

They started expressing their love for brands and businesses in
unprecedented ways.

They used tools to make their own ideas happen.

They started buying things together.
What do you want your consumers to talk about? About pricing or something else?
However, recognize the lead-potential and social buying mechanics.

And while businesses and people kept evolving, the gap widened and widened.
And now we got to the point where companies should change. To reconnect
again.


And it’s not about being on Facebook. Or Twitter.
Yes, Twitter is huge. And Facebook even bigger. But they are both platforms, not end
goals. So it really is about if and how both can help you reach your end goal. Which is
most likely not about having a Facebook fan page and more about driving
conversations, customer retention, sales or brand value.

It’s not about being a big brand.
With big brands come big problems. Never look
for an excuse in just being a small company with
little budgets. When it comes to connecting with
consumers, real relationships work. And size, for
once, doesn’t matter.

And it certainly isn‟t
about being the first
mover in adopting new
technology.
Mobile, augmented reality, location
based services are all just awesome.
And yes, there is PR-value in being the
first Augmented Reality bakery in your
neighborhood. But is that really what
you want your consumers to talk
about?

We’ve grown so far apart, that we do not need small change, but radical change
to reconnect.
Change that finally brings consumers back in the boardroom.
Change that embraces people, not targets consumers.


Over-the-top-delivery
Makes negative conversations

Over-delivery
Makes positive conversations

Expectation Delivery
Gives no reason to talk

Under-delivery
Makes negative conversations

Be maniacal about managing expectations.
Under-promise, over-deliver in everything you do. Not only towards customers but
also to your colleagues.


Really do something for your consumers.

KLM showed they were really recognizing
the person behind every customer.
With the KLM Surprise campaign, they surprised customers based on their
Foursquare and Twitter checkins. Talking about remarkable customer service …

From ads to acts: Nike
changed the way
people run.
Nike could have done another
advertising campaign. Instead, they
did everything to create the coolest
running club ever, the Nike
RunHouse.
And they went even further, they
used smart technology to make
people run different routes and
longer distances: the Nike+ Graffiti
Challenge.


Embed new ways of
measuring success.
Try measuring the Net Promoter
Score to see how likely it is that your
colleagues will recommend your
company.

Isn‟t she cute? It helped Antwerp Zoo to capitalize on
their unused potential: their animals and employees.
It brought them 300.000 extra visitors, a nomination for product of the year and the
best thing … the number one carnival suit of that year.

Act on your pot of gold.
Recognize both monetary and conversation value.


Bring your sales where the customers are.
Bring the sales where your clients are.


Embrace co-creation.
More than 60% of all consumers and employees want to help to make your
product or organization really better. Facilitate them to do so.

Advocacy is the new retention is the new acquisition.

Embrace company culture and identity instead of marketing façade.

Design to be conversation-worthy on every level.
Design your acts to be worth talking about and worth sharing. Plan for
touchpoints, people and conversion.


Acting like a change agent.
That isn’t easy. That means we need change agents, people who help change
companies and reconnect businesses and people. Actually, reconnect people
within a business and people.
Act like a change agent.


Conversations: Observe, Facilitate, Join.
Watch, make it easy to share and join.


Define a clear goal and scope for your efforts.
Make sure you are clear about goals, internal and external expectations.


Ben & Jerry’s a brand with high potential.
Have a look at your brand/product portfolio and see what works. Ben & Jerry’s has a
clear purpose, fans and an impressive digital infrastructure in place already. A logical
choice to start your efforts.


Have a look at the consumer journey.
What are the touchpoints that influence the consumer?


Proactive versus reactive.
Decide on reactive versus proactive and marketing versus service.


Touchpoints, people and content.
Plan for three different kinds of properties.


Managing change.
Implementing conversations and consumer connect isn’t easy. Use different
change mechanisms to gradually change the organization.


Pilots: Intrinsic, Learning and Change KPI’s.
Make sure pilot projects define clear goals on intrinsic KPI’s, learning KPI’s and
change management KPI’s.


Telenet launched a new product that wasn’t finished:
Telenet Yelo, an application to watch tv anywhere.
Instead of waiting for the product to be completely finished or selling something that
didn’t work, they asked their customers to help to make the product better.


Designing for engagement.
The difference between online marketing, online marketing campaigns and
gradual engagement.


Facebook forces
engagement.
A lot of campaigns are designed to
collect Facebook likes. To be able
to tap into the consumer news
feed, however, a consumer had to
have a recent interaction with a
brand.
"News Feed (…) is a constantly
updating list of stories from people
and Pages that you follow (…)
bases this on a few factors: how
many friends are commenting on
a certain piece of content, who
posted the content, and what type
of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or
status update)".


Gradual engagement.
Gradual engagement starts from small interactions between brands and consumers.
Interactions, to engage consumers by little baby steps. Small steps that, all together,
make a giant leap. But more importantly, people are engaged 24/7/365, not just
during campaigning season.


Example? Skittles’ smart triggers.
Using great copy and teasing visuals Skittles engages thousands of consumers every
single time they post a wallpost on Facebook. It creates a continuous stream of small
but extremely pleasant interactions.


Engagement funnel.
Engagement isn’t just for fun. We’re working to build a brand here. Interactions
should be designed to engage consumers, not to spam them or yelling louder
and actually take them further into brand engagement.


Engagement funnel: campaigns versus programs.
Campaigns are large adhoc efforts to force reach. Programs are constant small
interactions to activate consumers to stay engaged or (preferably) move further into the
engagement funnel.
Thanks to my buddy Jourik Migom for highlighting the difference between campaigns and programs.

Large
campaign to
gather
followers

Compelling
copy

Adwords
campaign


Il Giglio d’Oro, a simple bed & breakfast in
Firenze turned every customer > advocate.
It helped them to become the #1 bed & breakfast in Italy and #8 bed & breakfast in
Europe. Conversion between stumbling and endorsing.


Turkcell created continuous live interaction.
To promote it’s mobile offering, Turkcell created a live twitter-based
game. Based on twitter interactions, post-its would be removed or
changed. Conversion from stumbling to folllowing / endorsing.


The spotlight tactic.
See KLM Surprise, Volkswagen Fun Theory, the Coca Cola Happiness machine and
this one. A small thing worth sharing and putting a spotlight via media.


InSites Consulting Social sales.
At the end of the day, we want to make money. The most obvious social sales is direct sales: convert
people from your touchpoint to sales. However, a large part of eventual sales is consumer-initiated (e.g.
they talk about products) or indirect (e.g. people see a facebook fanpage and go to the .com later).
So, what can brands do to stimulate direct and indirect sales?

Consumer initiated

Giftwrap
offering Affiliate
Engage- ENGAGING ACTIVATING
ment Stimulate consumer to talk so that Make it easy for consumers to
program they activate their peers to buy. directly influence others to buy.
Indirect

Direct
Social as
PRIMING relevant
Consumers have seen a social SOCIAL OFFERING
brand presence but act later. Design the offering to be social.
Source- Stimulate to act.
Social as
mapping Social as
sales
reach

Brand initiated

Polle de Maagt for InSites Consulting

1) Social as reach.
It’s the 2011 equivalent of a mailinglist or bannering: just use social media
for reach purposes.

2) Leverage social sales: buying together.
Be smart in offering deals: make it social.

3) Have a conversation-worthy sales offering.
Make sure people can talk about your offering.

4) Recognizing personal conversation value.
Recognize both monetary and conversation value.

You can forget most of the things I told you today.
But please, remember these 5 things.

1) Businesses got
out of touch with
people without
even realizing it.
Be honest. Where did you get
out of touch with the people
who buy your products and
services?


2) Nothing changed. Everything changed.
Recognize you have to change the way you communicate. Commit acts, not ads.

3) Observe, Facilitate, Join.
Watch, make it easy to share and join. Repeat.

4) Design to be conversation-worthy on every level.
Design your acts to be worth talking about and worth sharing. Plan for
touchpoints, people and conversion.


5) Plan for engagement.
Engagement isn’t just for fun. We’re working to build a brand here. Interactions
should be designed to engage consumers, not to spam them or yelling louder
and actually take them further into brand engagement.


I hope I was conversation-worthy.
If so: spread the word.
Find me on twitter (@polledemaagt) or
just send me an email at
polle@insites.eu.

Download the presentation at
http://polle.me/instima2011


Consumer (re)connect: online marketing communications for Instima

Consumer (re)connect: online marketing communications for Instima

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