Fulfilling “ONLY” customer needs, won’t get you anywhere!

Awesoooooome … !!! … simply stunning, would recommend it any time. I love it!! That’s what we want our customers to say about our company. To make that happen, customers need to be taken on a journey way beyond product features and advertising. The bad news is that spending agency dollars to make that happen doesn’t work anymore! Your brand is what your customers say it is. Nowadays a brand is not created from outside entities — but from the inside; from the company’s culture. In other terms, it’s not “customers” that organizations serve anymore — but “Fans” they hang out with! Hence, it’s not about fulfilling the needs customers want — but raving a customer love culture from within — that overflows the company’s vibe. Seems like I hear you asking: but what to consider to make that happen?

An advisor of ours brought up this year an article about Xiomi and its go to market. Xiomi is not just “another” hardware manufacturer — but the latest arrival, which is taking both the Asian and Indian markets by storm. Whaaaaat? In the age of iPhone 6 & epic Android devices, there’s a new player coming up the left lane without considering any speed limits and getting bigger and bigger in the rearview mirror!! This must draw everybody’s attention who’s interested in growth and raise the legit question — how are they doing it? How can a brand selling a commodity device like a smartphone, where market penetration is fought by two / three major brands — make such an impact on the market?

What surprised me most was a picture of Xiomi customers, where a big group of clients were lifting hands and sharing a stunning vibe. WTF?! Really? Why?!! What is it we are not seeing — that makes this product so sexy? It took me a while, but after a couple conversations with them and an intense observation of how they behave — I finally understood it. Because they LOVE their clients — and are NOT selling a product, but the way their customers EXPERIENCE the Xiomi brand! I broke down the definition of love from an economical perspective and got to the appealing conclusion that in the age of millennials, love is a give and get of emotions around a brand, whereas the product is only a tool surrounded by an authentic, tangible, fun brand experience. That’s what makes the impact!

“Fall in love with your customers and not with your company” — Tommaso db

Swag Times — Meet new friends, share the vibe and have fun!

In a meeting shortly after this Xiaomi article we were reviewing growth hacking KPIs for our MVP, to analyze what worked and what did not. As you may know, I’m founder and CEO at swaaag … and to get a better picture of our brand experience strategy below, here is some context:

We developed swaaag targeting teens, because social media the way we (adults) know it, was not built for today’s kids. Digital Natives (8–18 yrs) feel bored with the traditional Social behavior of just being “connected”. Swaaag makes it fun for digital natives to capture and share their thrilling times in 18 second clips — called swags. Friends can express excitement, moods and love by using fun, meaningful stickers. The stickers have a quantified value — so users can upvote friend’s swags and convey how much they liked what they saw — without the boring typing or liking. A leaderboard gives users visibility for who collected the most stickers.

Hence at swaaag, we augment real-life emotions for teens!

Targeting teenagers is not just challenging ’cause they are not using traditional channels such as Facebook or emails, but also because Gen-Z “knows it all” — this means, they are highly opinionated about whatever they get in touch with (whoever has teens at home knows what I’m talking about ;-)) . Their average attention span is 8sec — and they react very poorly to any form of obvious advertisement.

Inspired by Xiomi’s “brand experience” — we started asking ourselves how we can start taking our target audience beyond “our product” and came up with the idea to start running local offline competitions, that were primarily encouraging our target group to have FUUUUUN!

swagtime, August 2015, San Francisco, California. Top 3 swagr group winners!

Time to spread the vibe

The event tour is titled “swagtimes” and brings together 30–50 teenagers from the area near the location it takes place. This alone created an AMAZING vibe! Can you imagine?

• The competition consists of putting the teens together in smaller groups for them to capture and share authentic videos (our users call our videos “swags”) around topics such as sports, music, entertainment, hanging out, etc. By doing so — we made it possible for kids to meet new peers and have fun right away by doing things they like.
• Once they shared their very creative swags they captured at this cool location we chose, they were inviting their friends into swaaag to upvote their videos to become TOP swagr on swaaag’s leaderboard. Wooooow! This means popularity … getting visibility and being socially rewarded for an activity they did! Sooooo much fun!
• TOP 3 swagr groups — based on our leaderboard, were winning swaaag T-shirts … which was not about the “shirt” … but the remembering of an experience our target group wants to be part of.

SWAGTIMES AFTERMATH

• Our target audience / users attending the event fell in love with the experience and ANCHORED that to the swaaag brand. Anchored what they lived and experienced with swaaag.
• Each participant invited an average of four new users … that engaged right away with the app — in a fun way … as referred from friends.
• The event got so hyped afterwards, that we are getting inquiries asking where the next one will take place.
• Our swaaag app was NEVER the center of attention — but a tool that allowed them to have the unique experience they had!

I could go on breaking down more details — but let me share an overall perspective.

“People DON’T buy stuff — they buy what stuff DOES WITH them” — Tommaso db

Brand Experience

Unlike “brand awareness” created primarily via traditional — linear thinking campaigns on how to reach the customer, brand experience is about what the customer feels — how much the customer can be part of the brand itself … by getting goosebumps when talking about the brand. While “branding” was about corporations “pushing” what customers need to understand what the brand is, brand experience is what your customers say you are.

So rather than “targeting” an audience — you have to make your target group part of your brand. You have to build a series of e-x-p-e-r-i-e-n-c-e-s that make your product become more than just “another” tool that is serving customers’ needs.

People — Culture — Metrics

Graham Brown spent 18 months working with global CEOs and VPs of marketing, retail and brand insight to develop case studies around the question, “what makes this company’s Brand Experience exceptional?” and it’s these insights based on his 15 years of working as a marketing analyst that he shares in the “brand leadership manual”. He did a great job picturing the “brand experience” in a “magic triangle”, breaking down three key areas where brand experience starts: People, Culture & Metrics!

PEOPLE
Graham starts at the top of the triangle, and describes the “people” as the ones who make the brand. Now, “people” are:

1. The core team
2. The frontline employees in contact with the market (sales, marketing, customer success, finance)
3. The “fans” (your hooked customers)

These are the new extended marketing team members responsible for creating the brand experience!

While in the past “brand was key to recruitment”, for an organization today aiming to transform their “customers” into “fans” by letting them experience your brand, “recruitment is KEY to brand”.

CULTURE
Brand experience reflects inside out from the company’s culture. Unlike in big corporations, the culture is something that is not static — but is living and breathing top down and throughout the organization. Hence the brand experience is a living manifestation of the company’s mindset.

Graham describes why culture is so important in three major points:

• Social proof: this works, look at all these other people just like you who buy into the culture.
• Motivation: culture isn’t a stick for HR or something management can police the employees with, but an expression of your people’s own voice.
• Expectation: you have a role to play; you too can shape culture. It’s a malleable, own-able concept.

That’s why it is more likely to perceive brand experiences from startups — than from multinationals’ rigid approaches.

METRICS
Last but not least, Graham suggests that if you want to create an exceptional brand and get the best out of people, keep it simple, keep it focused. Simplicity starts in your choice of Metrics — the key figures that you’ll use to measure the success of your people. Don’t expect employees to juggle countless metrics; give them a small number they can work with on a daily basis.

“People build relationships; organizations build walls.”

6 Patterns to Create a Customer Brand Experience

While Graham’s Brand Leadership Manual is a great read to start creating the brand experience from within, let me breakdown my entrepreneurial lessons learned in the form of a framework for you to start applying today on your journey to make your target audience feel your brand.

1. Roll out core values you impact your customer with

Set your company values you want your company to build on. They must be simple and because everybody must them know and live them by heart … I suggest not more than three. But in any case, consider the following essence (!!) of what makes a difference in today’s business world!

• Give and you’ll receive In order to transform customers into fans — you’ll win their feelings by giving more than what others do.
• Make your customer joy Business is done with people — never forget that. You’ll make an impact in your customer’s life — if you know how to make that person you are talking to smile.
• I care about what’s on your plate Aligning interests is key. If you want a relationship to flourish — then you have to understand what your customer cares about.

FYI: While I found Zappos’ core values way too many to realistically keep them all up — they all are really awesome!

1.Deliver WOW through customer service

2.Embrace and drive change

3.Create fun and a little weirdness

4.Be adventurous, creative and open-minded

5.Pursue growth and learning

6.Build open and honest relationships with communication

7.Build a positive team and family spirit

8.Do more with less

9.Be passionate and determined

10.Be humble

2. The way you communicate makes the music

Millennials are the ones who have embraced technology, therefore reset the way that communication 2020 is expected to be conducted. This means — to create your brand experience make sure you communicate:

• in real time
• not to create only awareness — but to capture attention (!!)
• empowering your customer to “SHARE” the experience you provide with an ease of connecting, especially on mobiles
• totally transparent — with no BS, while being authentic and no made up things
• put videos in the center of the communication
• convey the ROI visually … rather than by calculating it
• stop selling products via features — but tell stories (!!)

3. Make your customer part of your company

Still way too many companies see their customers at the very end of the value chain as the one who receives the product or the service. Well, in order to make your customers live your brand via impulses, treat your client as your colleague and make your target audience part of it via collaboration:

• do things together
• roll out an ambassador program where key customers represent you
• meet fan groups regularly
• make them not only part of the product development phase, but marketing, in sales, customer support and finance.

PS: be creative — make a difference … it’s about emotions and feelings!

4. The face to the customer can’t have scars

Design, User Interfaces and product experience is NOT an option (!!). Having a product with a GREAT UI/UX is an expectation that is expectation number one! Just being functional or having something that works … doesn’t connect at all. Doesn’t make the user feel any difference.

It’s the cherry on top of the whipped cream. If you want to make your customer have a great overall experience — make sure you don’t neglect this — while concentrating only on “what’s inside”. The UI/UX “IS” the product — that’s what customers buy. Millennials especially are visual — and have also reset the default for product experience in 2020. If what you finally offer has just an “ok design” … well, than there are no additional impulses that might create an overall brand experience. This means, “scars” are not accepted!

5. Be as close as one can get

The higher the walls, the more distant your client. It’s about acting as if your brand would be right within your target group. In order to make your target audience feel your brand, take them daily into your business. Create impulses such as streaming videos or company story time lines with pictures to give a sense of culture or fun moments; hence conveying what’s going on from the inside.

The closer you can get, the more your target audience feels part of what you are doing. Reward your target group with any kind of swags, in order to represent you, in order to spread the voice about what you guys do for them. Make your company, yourself, the team and finally the brand as tangible as possible. The closer you can get, the more your customer feels the brand.

6. Be brave

And last but not least, make sure that you think out of the box when it comes down to presenting your brand to your customer. For sure you don’t want to be boring, you don’t want to be overseen by using a traditional approach like everybody is doing. Put yourself in a customer’s situation and remember what drew your attention recently. Ask yourself if it was something very normal or common, or was it different, unique and maybe a bit weird. Be bold, be brave and yes, be a bit weird in what you do in order to get a smile from your customer face.

• create a fun video
• launch weekly memes
• send fun slogans
• create competitions

How you make your customer feel, is what creates the brand experience! Features are also given with your competitors! — Tommaso db

TAKEAWAY

• Build a brand worth talking about
• Create a customer experience people anchor to your product
• Recruitment is KEY to brand
• How you make your customer feel, is what matters!
• It’s better to have 100 fans, than 1000 customers

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Originally published at whatittak.es.