Stop thinking in campaigns. Think in experiences.
How does an organization differentiate itself in an increasingly competitive and noisy landscape?
The same question has been asked since I’ve entered the marketing world over a decade ago.
The answer is the experience.
Experience here is not the customer journey from interest to action, whether buy or donate. It’s also not the servicing experience for an issue or complaint.
The experience is taking the customer and placing them directly into the brand.
I know I’m getting philosophical but bear with me.
Let’s brainstorm together for a second. If a brand was a physical location what would that location look like? How would an architect design the building? How would an interior designer decorate the inside? How would visitors enter the building, interact inside, and then exit?
Before I continue on this philosophical journey, allow me to explain a real world manifestation of a brand that places the customer inside.
Last year, I visited Atlanta, and home of Coca-Cola. I was able to visit The World of Coca-Cola. The World of Coca-Cola is a marketers dream. It is an entire museum dedicated to the brand of Coke. You are given a bottle of coke as soon as you enter, where you are able to take self-guided tours exploring different aspects of the Coke brand, from the history and inception, to a mock factory, to the importance of Coke in culture. Then you are taken to the tasting room where you are able to taste different Coke drinks from across the globe. Finally, as you exit the museum, you walk through the store where you can buy all things Coke.
There are numerous examples of brand experiences like this especially in industries like retail, think the Nike Store or Nordstrom’s, or restaurants where every location is a manifestation of the brand. (Another great example is Lego).
It’s 2017. Everyone is on digital. Everyone employs the same tactics. Everyone understands importance of analytics and data. Everyone is at the table but the chips are not evenly distributed.
What truly sets brands and organizations apart are the experiences they create for their customers.
I’m in a unique place in my career. During the day, I run social customer service for a publicly traded company. By night, I’m a partner in a marketing agency geared towards the non-profit sector. I previously wrote about this change in perspective as result of my change in career.
These two parts of my professional career are completely different, yet the same when considering the overall goal– creating a great customer experience.
In my day job, I get front row seats to our customer’s experience. We’ve been able to build an excellent social media customer service team, where we work directly with other functional areas in the business, including the marketing team, that directly impact the customer experience. Through these social media customer service interactions, we are able to identify issues our customers face and recommend and implement improvements in business processes. These improvements drastically enhance experiences and not just those on social. We’ve already seen improvements in the overall brand sentiment on social media.
When I put my agency hat on, my approach is slightly different. Since we mainly work with non-profits, our marketing KPIs are usually things like donations and event attendance. Our clients expect us to create marketing systems that drive these KPIs.
The problem I perceive as both a customer experience professional and as an agency partner is it’s all the same. The tactics are the same. The campaigns are the same, in strategy and execution. Sure, you have new messaging and creative supporting the different campaigns but the tactics are the same tried and true methods used in both non-profit and for-profit sectors.
The problem with campaigns is by definition it implies finite resources allocated for a finite period of time.
The question remains — how does an organization differentiate itself in an increasingly competitive and noisy landscape?
Now that you have an idea of what I mean by placing the customer inside the brand, let’s get philosophical again.
When considering brands as experiences, the landscape is not as competitive or noisy because not many brands, especially smaller ones, approach marketing in an experiential . Sure the big brands have this down. They have the brand awareness, online following, and the resources to create these experiences on a grand scale.
How do marketers create experiences that place the customers inside the brand for smaller brands? For startups? For non-profits?
Creating an experience like these is not easy or fast. These experiences require planning, time, resources, and most importantly, buy-in by stakeholders. The good thing is marketers are savvy and we can make things work with bare minimums to drive results. All that’s needed is to change the marketing approach and focus on a bigger experience for the organization.
