Marketing

How You Measure Client Success

Garth Beyer

Showcasing engagement on Twitter is nice. Reaching 150,000 people with one Facebook post is amazing. Highlighting a Pinterest board that a lot of people are following must mean you’re doing something right… right?

There is meaning in measuring what people are doing for or on behalf of your client. It gives you talking points, it proves you’re stirring the pot for them and getting people to interact with the brand.

I think we can do more. We can go beyond what customers, tribes, fanatics are doing for our client and notice, share, and appreciate what our client is doing for them.

The best way you can measure client success on (and off) social is by recognizing and shining the spotlight on what the brand has done for them. Sometimes this is represented by a gracious tweet or a shoutout on Facebook, but gets lost in all the examples of what the buyer is doing for the brand.

Metrics like click-through rates and subscriber numbers matter, but no one starts a business for the sake of getting engagement on a social platform, they start a business to make a real life impact on someone. Don’t you think we would want to show that’s being done on social?

 

Stay Positive & Let’s Start Measuring Results, Not Impressions

Driven By A Core Tribe

Garth Beyer

All of your idols have a core tribe.

It’s easy to distance yourself from their popularity, their status, their celebrity because they have such a large following. Surely you can’t be like them because they already exist and surely you can’t take away from their tribe, so why try?

It’s an illusion.

The most popular marketers, branders, bloggers, speakers, artists have far less true fans than you realize. They have a core tribe, likely 20 percent of all the people you think are their tribe actually are and provide for 80 percent of their status, income, and drive.

Just because someone views a blog daily, doesn’t put them as part of a person’s core tribe. Most often the core tribe is a collective of friends. You have friends, right? Then it looks like you’ve already started down the path of becoming noticed, appreciated, and respected. You’ve began growing your core tribe.

It’s not as hard as it looks. All it really requires of you is to befriend people (to be nice more than interesting) and to show up every day (give something and embrace vulnerability daily).

 

Stay Positive & 1 Million Followers On Twitter Is The Wrong Goal

More Choice, Easier Choosing

Garth Beyer

There’s a reason Baskin Robins only sells 31 flavors. It seems to be just enough choice to choose what you want. (Truthfully, just enough to choose two scoops. If they wanted you to only buy one scoop of iscream, perhaps they would offer only 16 flavors.)

If Baskin’ Robins were to sell 248 flavors. That would be overwhelming. You wouldn’t feel content without leaving with 8 scoops of different iscream.

The tipping point in making a choice easy is seeing the larger picture. When you notice that you’ve already chosen Baskin Robins over the other nine or so iscream venues in the area, it takes some of the stress away of choosing what’s in front of you.

When you notice you’re having iscream in the town of Rockford when you could be anywhere in the world getting iscream, the pressure of choosing an iscream flavor lessens again.

As it goes with all choices (e.g. to date this girl or not, to buy a new water softener or not, to stress about finding a job or not), when we see the bigger picture, when we take a moment to recognize all the opportunities and options we have instead of just the ones in front of us, choosing becomes easier.

So it goes, the marketer’s intention ought to focus on sharing perspectives, getting people to see all the choices, the angels, and the bigger picture. In doing so, the buyer can understand more, see their choice isn’t as stressful as they thought; in the grand scheme of things, this purchase won’t impact you as much as you’re telling yourself it is.

As Ohara Hale said, “The more you can understand, the more you can love, the more compassion you have, and in a world of compassion, will you find peace.”

Marketers call that brand devotion.

 

Stay Positive & It All Starts With Broadening The View Of Potential Leads

Outside Of Experience

Garth Beyer

Marketing anything outside of your own experience puts you at a disadvantage.

Working with a non-profit? Go on site. Field some calls. Go to the country you’re trying to provide water for.

Working for Chobani? You better have had some, shared some with a friend, and tested all the flavors. Not having done so sets you way back in understanding the buyer persona.

Marketing is as much about experiencing new things yourself as it is getting others to.

One of the most frustrating things growing up is when I would talk about a particular movie with a  friend and that friend would try to converse with me about it without ever seeing it themselves. Is that how you want to fuel your marketing?

 

Stay Positive & Become The Persona

6 Lessons From Contagious (Why Things Catch On)

Garth Beyer

1) The moment you start paying people to share or putting a monetary value to them, then they’ll never do it for free again. Many managers rely on monetary incentives or prizes for good work ethic and behavior. Not only is it costly, but as soon as you do it, people won’t continue the behavior for anything less. Instead, focus on social currency. That’s why promotions and cool new titles work better than a pay raise in terms of employee satisfaction.

2) Social currency can be accomplished in three ways. First, sharing something amazing. Snapple facts are remarkable, as in, worth remarking to others about. Second, turn it into a game. Metrics that show people where they are in comparison to others (think Insurance provider rates and frequent flier miles) gives them status, which they’re happy to talk about. Third, make people feel like insiders by giving them something that’s scarce like Cadbury is or exclusive like a speakeasy.

3) Accessible thoughts lead to action. Music you play in a bar can sway people to order more French wine (if French music is playing) or German wine (if German music is playing). Essentially, we have to leverage triggers, but I’ve noticed when we’re so focused on making something out of this world, we forget about making it also top of mind.

4) For as much as I bash the lizard brain and encourage you to ignore the little voice inside your head saying you’re not good enough, any marketer can use the lizard brain to their advantage in a good way. Quite plainly, people share articles, stories, products that get the lizard brain going (excitement, amusement, anger, anxiety, etc,.). The sad insurance Superbowl ads didn’t get shared as much because sadness doesn’t spark the lizard brain.

5) Interesting, surprising and novel doesn’t lead to more buzz than average, uninteresting, and “meh” products because the latter is often ongoing and the former is more immediate.

6)If promoted, telling others helps us celebrate. If fired, telling others helps us vent. Sharing emotions helps us connect.

Book by Jonah Berger. Worth the read.

 

Stay Positive & Marketing Is About Spreading Love

Wassupp And How Do You Happy?

Garth Beyer

The Heinz ketchup bottle I used over the weekend has a “How Do You Happy?” label on it. Heinz wants you to interact, to share what makes you happy or so I think that’s what it wants you to do, it wasn’t very clear.

Heinz, rather, whatever agency behind the not-so-creative idea is appealing to the mass that uses ketchup, but it doesn’t transfer over well. Not every ketchup user is happy, wants to be happy or cares to share what makes them happy – they just want some ketchup with their fries.

Budweiser has made some wacky commercials. The ones that stand out to me are the Wassup commercials. At the time of the commercials, the phrase “Wasssuppp” was the most popular term Budweiser drinkers used, not all, but enough to make a commercial about it. “Wasssupp” became a trigger for drinking Bud.

Heinz is attempting to turn what makes you happy into a trigger for wanting to use Heinz ketchup. While you can’t argue happiness isn’t universal, trying to get millions of people to associate a bottle of ketchup with their own happiness isn’t logical because everyone’s answer to what their happy is is different.

What’s the difference between “Wasssupp” and “How Do you Happy?” – a shared experience. Budweiser took a common phrase said by Budweiser drinkers (and beer drinkers in general) and turned it into a trigger. When someone says “Wassupp,” you think of Budweiser. When I say what’s your happy? Ketchup isn’t up there.

The guideline: treat different customers differently. Understand what they value, not in terms of personal happiness, but in terms of their desired experience. Bud is better to drink with your buddies. Ketchup isn’t better to eat when you’re doing what makes you happy, unless of course, eating fries is your life’s purpose.

 

Stay Positive & Shared Experiences Was Everything (And Still Is)

Using Facts To Sell

Using Facts To Sell

Garth Beyer

Some businesses are still stuck on facts.

They think if they throw more facts at their target audience, they’ll see more profit. They believe few are buying their product because they don’t understand the facts about things like filtered water.

These businesses are leaders of power point. They want their bullet points. They believe stats are the most persuasive form of proof, of conversion.

All these folks are really story killers. They’re producers of analysis paralysis.

They strip the voice, the passion, and the emotions of a campaign because that content covers up the facts. For them, it’s rational over intuition.

The solution to working with them isn’t to get upset because they don’t understand marketing. Nor is the solution to just do it the way they want. (That degrades the credibility of marketing.)

Better to work on a second story: the one your telling the business for the target audience.

It’s more work. It’s harder to convince a business to change their mindset about their product than it is to convert a stranger into a friend who buys. Ultimately worth it to be part of a business that begins using marketing to its full potential and a real highlight to be part of the reason people listen to the business.

 

Stay Positive & Rest Easy Knowing You Upped The Marketing Bar In The World