GarthBox

I stopped at a Verizon store the other day to handle a billing error. When I walked out of the store, I knew I was out of their minds. They thought they had permission to stop caring.

I exited an Uber vehicle the other day and knew the driver (Uber as a business?) didn’t care about me anymore.

It is no longer okay, no longer good enough for marketers, for sales associates, for artists, for Uber drivers to call it a job done when they get a customer to the establishment. Nor are they done when that customer exits the establishment. Nor are they done post-purchase. Nor are they done post-Amazon review. No.

Infinity marketing; it’s the marketing people want. It’s the caring people deserve. If, as marketers, we’re not doing it, then we’re not holding up our end of the bargain, of the business, of why we’re in this field.

 

Stay Positive & Always Be Caring, Before, After And After After

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When you’re delighted, you’re at a high.

When you open a package and see something amazing in addition to what you ordered, that’s delight. When an author signs a book for you, that’s delight. When you get given a larger tip than expected, that’s delight.

If you’re in the business of delighting customers, then doing this over and over again works, but if you’re in the business of retaining customers, of creating brand loyalists then it pays to note that the feeling which delight ignites is temporary.

Going the extra mile doesn’t make the customers more loyal. What makes them loyal is you live up to the promise you’ve made.

An airline can buy pizza for all the passengers who are stuck in the plane on the tarmac and this will create a lot of delight, but it’s not creating loyalists. The promise made is the airline would get these people to where they needed to go on time, to their families, to their events, to their job interviews. Which is more important? Pizza or keeping a promise? (I know, tough choice, right?)

What about a situation where delight is so easy to do?

A record store puts on a by one get one deal for the weekend. That’s great from a delight standpoint, but not a loyalty one. When people expect crap products, crap service, it’s quite easy to delight.

Then what builds loyalty?

It’s not only keeping your promise; it’s keeping it in the easiest most sincere way possible.

What if Delta, instead of Pizza, owned up to their failed promise and spent money on a fleet of taxis that we’re ready to take every passenger exactly where they needed to go. What if they managed to get a police escort to ensure people got where they needed to go as quickly as possible. Pizza doesn’t help them fulfill their promise.

What if the record store didn’t advertise a buy one get one, but instead asked every customer about a close friend of theirs, what music they liked, and hand-picked a record for the current customer to give to them? It fulfills their promise to spread music, to care, to be knowledgeable.

As a marketer, when you want to put budget toward something special, ask yourself if you’re creating temporary delight or if you’re creating brand loyalty. They look a like, but with totally different results.

 

Stay Positive & Spend More Energy On Fulfilling Your Promise Easier

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I’m not a perfect marketer. I don’t play out to be. I’m all about failing often, failing fast, and holding dear to the trial & error mindset. So when I talk about the marketer’s two clicks of disgrace: copy and paste, it’s not that I never do it; it’s that I try not to and recognize the action as a check in point about the work I’m doing. Is it remarkable? Personal? Human?

When we copy and paste we’re most likely…

Coming off as a robot

Not attributing credit where it’s due

Removing the emotion

Taking a shortcut that gets you ahead but not in the direction of your goal

Not caring

Next time you copy and paste, think about what you’re doing. It’s likely you’re doing (or not doing) more than a couple of clicks.

 

Stay Positive & Original, Caring, Honest

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The worst argument a marketer can make in a meeting about creative, about ads, about marketing is that something won’t work because it doesn’t appeal to them.

Another way to look at it: I don’t use Pinterest, so why would the target use it. Screw Pinterest.

Another way: That ad doesn’t speak to me, show me something different.

Why are these examples so wrong? Because the marketer is considering herself part of the target when she’s not. As marketers (often egotistical ones) the story we tell ourselves is that we know best, so if it’s marketing that moves us, then it will obviously speak to the target.

This story is a lie.

Just because we don’t use a platform doesn’t mean the platform’s not getting used. Look at MySpace. It has more than 50 million (!) active users on it.

Just because it’s a book we didn’t enjoy, doesn’t mean it won’t make the bestsellers list. More than 600 readers of the book Outliers have taken time to give it a low star review on Amazon, yet it’s still on the list.

Just because we don’t have clunky polaroid cameras anymore doesn’t mean Polaroid isn’t still relevant.

 

Stay Positive & You Are Not Your Target

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I love a marketing campaign I’m working on. More so, I love the spreadsheet I’m working with. I love what my team does with it. On a regular basis, the sheet gets ran through and people get highlighted, not so much as top priority to contact (even though they are), rather they get marked as insiders. They are the 20 percent who bring 80 percent of the influence to the event. They are the insiders.

Evaluate your media list, your list of clients, your list of followers.

Where on your spreadsheet are the insiders? The people who you have made feel they matter?

Find them and care for them first.

 

Stay Positive & Let Your Insiders Bring In The Outsiders

We’re thick into the marketing belief that if we get seen by enough people, if our SEO is tweaked regularly, if we push out enough content, if we buy enough ad space, then we’re bound to be successful. The more we’re seen, our product is seen, our service is seen, the more we’ll sell – or so the thinking goes.

Real marketing, however, is about seeing others. It’s about consistently showing and telling someone who you see them, that you are listening to them, that you care about them – you make them feel they’re being seen, not you.

If there’s a way to tweak SEO to show others they’re being seen, if we give content that matters specifically to that one person, if we buy ad space and fill it up with the target instead of the product, then we can say we’re doing marketing the right way, the relevant way, the way that resonates.

Think back to a time you were happy to be seen, to be recognized for who you were. Are you making your customer, client, target feel that way?

 

Stay Positive & You Do See Them, Right?

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