2011 E-NEWS
from Steven Donaldson and Michael Zinke, the Brand Guys
Shaping customer experience in a multi-channel world — strategy, marketing, creative, interactive. Radiant sends these brand insights to help you build value, uniqueness and loyalty for your brand. In business, your brand's critical differentiation helps your customers find you, remember you and come back to you.
In this issue:
- Brand Strategy: Cultivate Your Brand Advocates: In today's world, whether you're a technology-driven B2B company or a retail company with the latest, unique and great organic, all-natural chips, you are consistently fighting to be recognized for what you are, for what your brand is. You want advocates and customers to fight for you and seek out your products.…
- RadiantBrands Blog: Netflix Creates Qwikster and Sorry Too Late In my original blog back on July 14, "Don't Mess with Customer Loyalty, Netflix!", I stated that this is the one asset Netflix has that they should not mess with — passionate customer loyalty. No matter what "pricing model" or form of business they operate for financial reasons, they needed to keep the customers happy, loving them and eager for more. It's branding 101.
- Radiant Work: iPaw — A New Use of the iPad by Pet Food Express: In the always-on world of the web and online marketing, it's now a whole new ballgame when it comes to building brand awareness. How do you do it? Now that we are firmly entrenched in a world of always-on media, we have growing opportunities for ongoing engagement. Advertising is now only part of your engagement strategy. You need to explore other channels, such as building a custom app for your customers.
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Cultivate Your Brand Advocates and You Won't Be A Commodity
In today's world, whether you're a technology-driven B2B company or a retail company with the latest, unique and great organic, all-natural chips, you are consistently fighting to be recognized for what you are, for what your brand is. You want advocates and customers to fight for you and seek out your products.
The consummate loyalist brand is, of course, Apple. Between innovative and groundbreaking technologies (although not necessarily the best), a highly connected product line and an amazing obsession with customer service and need, Apple has built an almost religious following that's coveted by hundreds of competitors and wannabe companies. How did they do this? How do companies build this type of loyalty and stay ahead of the game, keeping their customers recommending, loving and tweeting about their products and services?
From a brand perspective, this is not magic. It's really thinking out who your customers are and what problems you are solving or experiences you are enhancing for them. There are some basics that go into planning and launching products and brands that can give folks real insight into how to view their launch and cultivate customers, not sales. Yes, that's the key. Sales can come from discounting, promotions, and big ad campaigns, but how do you keep customers, grow market share and promote loyalty?
So how do you approach building loyal, brand advocates through your product or service experience?
Find Your Brand Advocates
Overall it's essential to find, build and cultivate those who love your company or products, and who have the ability and willingness to share the value of your brand. The keys to creating these brand advocates is their sense of being there first, having the best in a given product category and being the expert. Wrap this around their status or their ability to promote your products as a super connector, and they become the voice of your brand. This can work in a powerful and positive way for brands as diverse as Trader Joe's to Roku (the set-top box that allows you to access HDTV programming through the internet). Give these brand advocates a voice through your Facebook page, blogs and forums to build an enormous "insiders" group of loyalists who always want to be in the know.
Keep Them Loyal
Finding your brand advocates and using social media to support them also can help you uncover what what customers want, what they care about and how you can continue to develop a brand strategy that builds connection and value. When this trust is broken, however, look out; you may lose all credibility with your customers. Look at Netflix and the debacle of doubling their price, then splitting the company; it was such a turn off to loyal customers that the company lost thousands of subscribers, had over 30,000 negative comments on their website and lost overall market share. This could have all been managed differently with a much more positive result.
Support and Reward Them
Just remember, if you maintain your brand value with your advocates you'll learn from them and can build on their perception of your brand value as an extension of your marketing efforts. After all, the recommendations of others have far more weight than any promotion or marketing you can do.
How to Support Your Brand Advocates
- Discover your most loyal users;
- Empower them as Brand Advocates;
- Find the Brand Advocates who are "super connectors";
- Discover the power sharers; and
- Continually support the Brand Advocates that already love you.
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Radiant Work:
iPaw, A New Use of the iPad by Pet Food Express
In the always-on world of the web and online marketing, it's now a whole new ballgame when it comes to building brand awareness. How do you do it? Now that we are firmly entrenched in a world of always-on media, we have growing opportunities for ongoing engagement. Advertising is now only part of your engagement strategy. You need to explore other channels, such as building a custom app for your customers.
RadiantBrands recently worked with Pet Food Express, a locally owned natural and holistic pet products company based in the San Francisco Bay Area with 40 regional stores, to develop a user interface and background graphics called iPaw, which will allow you to review food, find local spots to take your dog or pet, or discover animals to adopt with local shelters, The interface is now being placed on iPads attached to purpose-built stations in stores through out the Bay Area. to help customers find items directly related to their needs while they're in the store. The simple, user-friendly design fits within the look of the Pet Food Express brand created by RadiantBrands.
You can find the iPaw currently in the San Francisco stores and at Blossom Hill in San Jose.
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