CHAPTER 3

Think—and Act—Like Your Consumer

Do you like being disrupted? Do you enjoy when you’re reading something online and a pop-up banner ad gets in the way of the next paragraph? What about when you’re working on a project at the office, the phone rings, and you answer to find a sales guy on the other end of the line trying to pitch his wares?

When I speak at conferences, clubs, and meetings, I often tell my audiences, many of whom are marketers, to place themselves in the role of the consumer. I then ask, “How many of you listen to and enjoy radio commercials?”

No hands.

“How many of you watch and enjoy television commercials?”

A couple of hands usually come up at this point, and normally, upon further review, these people are, in fact, ad guys.

“How many of you use and enjoy Facebook or another social network?”

Here, hands shoot up in the air, anywhere between 50 and 90 percent of the room.

Is this because Facebook, or social media as a whole, is the newest, shiniest product in town? I don’t think so. I believe it’s because people fundamentally want to use media to relax, enjoy themselves, and connect with others—not to be interrupted. Here are a few marketing and advertising tools and methods that are available today. Placing yourself in the role of the consumer, think about how you feel when you receive or experience the following:

  •   Direct mail

  •   Magazine ads

  •   TV ads

  •   Radio ads

  •   Packaging (that is, “Free Toy Inside” on the cereal box)

  •   Flyers handed to you on the street

  •   Billboards off the highway

  •   Automated messages when you’re on hold, telling you to visit the company website

  •   Mobile and/or text-messaging ads

  •   Ten minutes of ads before the trailers even start at the movie theater

  •   E-mails constantly arriving in your inbox from marketing lists you don’t remember signing up for

  •   Telemarketing and cold-calling to your home and office

Advertisements and marketing ploys are found just about everywhere we go. From the television in our living room to the stall in the public bathroom, from a drive down the interstate to a walk through the city’s streets, from your phone line at work to your personal cell number: nowhere is safe from ads! And while some ads are funny, interesting, and even compelling—if you consider the consumer’s viewpoint, you’ll agree that most are simply disruptive and unwanted.

So what’s a marketer to do? How can you possibly avoid joining the endless parade of marketing and advertising disruptions in the quest to find your consumers?

All you have to do is stop thinking like a marketer and start thinking like your consumer.

RULE OF THUMB: WHAT DO YOUR CUSTOMERS REALLY WANT?

Laura Fitton of HubSpot has a saying: “Your entire social media strategy can be summed up in two words: Be useful.” With every Facebook message you send out, with every tweet you post, even with every e-mail or radio and television advertisement you write, ask yourself the following:

  •   Will the recipients of this message truly find it of value, or will they find it annoying and disruptive?

  •   Would I want to receive this message as a consumer?

If you respond that yes, as a consumer, this message is of value and you would indeed want to receive it, then it is a message worth communicating to your customers and the world. On the other hand, if you cannot see any true value to the consumer or you believe the message will be only an annoyance, then it’s simply not worth sending. Why spend money, time, and effort only to contribute to mass advertising, marketing, and information noise that the consumer does not want or need in the first place?

Sure, even a poorly conceived message can generate some Web traffic, phone calls, awareness, or even sales, but it can also erode your brand. In the long run, the organizations that will win are the organizations that engage in positive, useful communications with their customers and prospects. Today, the most effective way to do so is to utilize the tools offered by social media.

The Brilliance of the Facebook News Feed

On Facebook, when you log in as a user, you are brought to a home page that displays your News Feed. The News Feed is a stream of information from your Facebook social connections, including your Facebook friends, Facebook groups you’ve joined, and Facebook pages that you’ve liked. Not every piece of information posted by every one of your friends is included, but since the Top News pops up as the default for users when they log on, that’s one of the first things you see, and it is your main source of information.

The brilliance of Facebook’s News Feed is that it serves you individualized content based on three factors:

1.    How recently the content occurred or was created

2.    The strength of your relationship with the person or organization who shared the content

3.    How much engagement (likes and comments) it received

Most important for marketers to consider is the third factor because it directly affects whether or not a company’s content will be seen in the users’ News Feeds. The more people who are interested in the content, or the more people who have had a positive experience with a product or service relating to the content, the more likes it will receive, and the more prominent it will be in the feed.

Figure 3.1 shows a formula describing the original News Feed Optimization algorithm, also known as EdgeRank, from a presentation given by Facebook engineers Ruchi Sanghvi and Ari Steinberg at Facebook’s 2010 f8 developer conference. In 2013, Facebook abandoned the original EdgeRank formula, but Facebook continues to optimize content based on relevancy, time, focus, quality, and variety.

 

FIGURE 3.1 News Feed Optimization

Want your Facebook posts to be seen? Ask yourself these four key questions:

1.    When and how often should I post content? In order to optimize, you’ll need to determine when your fans, friends, and prospects are most likely to be logged on and using Facebook. If your customers are teenagers, for instance, you shouldn’t share content during weekday mornings and early afternoons when they’re at school. If you are targeting a nine-to-five office crowd, sharing content in the morning may be to your advantage because many Facebook users in this audience are likely to check their pages as they settle in at their desks. Or if your customers are mostly teachers, you’ll want to share updates between 3 and 5 p.m. when they’re likely working but not in front of their classes. In general, however, more users are logged in on weekend days and fewer companies are working then, so weekends are the best time to share content.

2.    Do these users interact with me often? If a user liked your page through a Facebook ad but never actually visited that page and didn’t have friends who interacted with your page, that user is not likely to see any of your content updates. If a user visits your page from time to time, has liked the occasional post, or has even viewed photos from your company, your chances of showing up in his or her News Feed increase dramatically. Keep this setup in mind because this is why getting likes initially on your content is so very important—once you get someone engaged, a dialogue between you and the consumer or prospect is created, one that can be built upon and continued.

3.    How interactive are the engagements with the post? This edge is the simplest and most worth focusing on. Facebook’s algorithm determines the level of interest or relevancy of an object based on the number of comments and likes it receives. The greater the response to the object, the more likely it is to show up in users’ News Feeds. Of course, this is a powerful momentum-gathering, cyclical concept: if a piece of Facebook content receives enough comments and likes, it will rise to the top of users’ News Feeds, where it will be more likely to generate an even greater number of positive responses. If, on the other hand, the content doesn’t quickly catch on, it won’t rise to the top of users’ News Feeds, and it will remain virtually invisible.

4.    Have I boosted the post? One foolproof way to get your content seen is to boost the post (which we’ll talk about in more depth in Chapter 15). At Likeable Local, we’ve found that an investment of even just a few dollars to boost a particular post can result in thousands of people seeing that client’s content. Facebook’s new algorithm makes it more difficult for people to see content organically. The first three factors are still very important, but post boosts are increasingly important.

How to Make the Algorithm Work for You

Facebook’s News Feed algorithm is nothing short of revolutionary. Imagine if television commercials that people didn’t want to watch disappeared or if direct mail that the first few recipients didn’t open stopped being sent out, never making it to anyone else’s door. Consider how much you would pay to have e-mails other people hadn’t responded to positively remain out of your inbox. Facebook has effectively created a system that filters out all the junk the user couldn’t care less about or, worse yet, will respond to negatively. This situation forces companies, and individuals, to think very carefully about the content they share: it’s a great thing for users and a powerful tool for marketers and advertisers who understand what their consumers want and don’t want. Let’s look at an example.

Conglomerate A is a global sneaker brand that has spent millions of dollars in advertising to grow a Facebook fan base of 1 million fans. Your similar, though much smaller, organization has far fewer resources and currently has only 5,000 fans, half of whom happen to also be fans of Conglomerate A.

Conglomerate A shares a traditional marketing message with its fans: “Check out our new running shoes on our website and buy them now!” Only a handful of people click the Like button or comment on the content. Since the company has failed to engage its audience, only a few hundred people will end up seeing the update because it will not be moved up into users’ Top News.

Your company, however, posts a link to your website with the following update at the same time as Conglomerate A’s: “Click ‘Like’ if you’re excited about going running this weekend! Anybody going running?” with a beautiful picture. Here, you attempt to engage the users with a more personalized, friendly, and less demanding message. You are not just telling them to “go buy shoes.” Your update then generates comments and likes, enough to stay at the top of thousands of people’s News Feeds for a day. This placement, in turn, generates greater clicks and higher sales. More important, the comments left lead to a conversation that will aid your success in the next update you share. You’ve outdone Conglomerate A. While it was busy marketing, you were thinking like your consumers. You were engaging them and building an invaluable audience.

WHAT DO YOUR CONSUMERS LIKE?

The important question is, What do your consumers truly like? Consider what they care about. What do they value? What content will get them to authentically click Like and increase your visibility among users? Keep in mind that you can’t just keep sharing updates that ask people to like the content because that would quickly get as annoying and disruptive as many of the traditional marketing tactics you’ve grown to know and hate.

For the answers, look to what you already know about your consumers—and if you don’t know something, ask!

For instance, say you have a male-focused customer base. You suspect these consumers are big sports fans, but you’re not sure what sports or teams they are most interested in. You could simply ask on Facebook, “What’s your favorite major sporting event of the year? Who did you root for this past season?” If your fans overwhelmingly say the Super Bowl and provide their favorite football teams, you’ll want to share content about that sport in the future, even if your product has nothing to do with football.

If you were your consumer, what would make you click Like or leave a comment? An appetizing photo? A funny video? A fact nobody knew about you?

One thing users are sure not to respond to positively is a press release about your latest earnings statement, new hire, or new product. There may be an audience who cares enough about this information to warrant sharing it elsewhere, but that audience is not the group to target on Facebook. The Facebook audience doesn’t care. Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are not broadcast media. I can’t stress this enough. Engage. Don’t broadcast!

IT’S ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMERS, NOT YOUR BRAND

In the past, traditional marketers didn’t have the luxury of having a two-way conversation with customers, but they did have a captive audience. Consequently, traditional marketers pounded consumers over the head with marketing messages until the public bought from them. If you’re over the age of 40, for example, you probably know the Jolly Green Giant jingle—not because it’s a great song but because you were exposed to it so many times through television and radio ads that you couldn’t help but learn it.

In a crowded marketing and advertising world, mindshare is how much your customers are thinking about your product or service. In order to win your customers’ mindshare now, your marketing can’t be solely about your brand, or products, or features and benefits anymore. More than anything, you have to get your customers talking, or you have to get involved in their already ongoing conversation. If they’re talking and you’re at the top of their News Feeds on Facebook, you’ve got some mindshare—and that’s more valuable than paid advertising, which customers can readily choose to ignore. Messaging has to be about your customers. What are their hopes and dreams? What do they want to do, hear about, talk about, and share? What’s actually relevant to them?

This lesson is a hard one for companies to learn because it involves unlearning much of what they know about marketing, promotion, and publicity. They’ll ask, “What about our brand? How can we spend precious marketing dollars and time on messaging that has nothing to do with our brand or company?”

It’s the results that matter, so remind yourself about the News Feed, for example. If the message is all about your brand and people don’t find that message interesting or relevant, then they won’t even see it. On the bright side, even if the message isn’t about your brand at all, if it’s being commented on and liked, your Facebook page name will still be seen by your fans, and it will garner attention from others. Your brand will not only be at the top of people’s News Feeds but also at the top of their minds. Let’s take a look at a couple of real-life examples of the power of thinking like your customers and appropriately using social media to engage them.

The Pampered Chef: Cooking Up Content Their Fans Like

The Pampered Chef (TPC) is one of the largest and best-known direct sales organizations in the country. Based in Chicago, it has a huge sales force of independent consultants who sell cooking and dining products through house parties and other events. The Pampered Chef joined Facebook as an organization after most of its direct-selling competition had already established their own pages and generated thousands of fans. TPC wanted to build an effective Facebook presence quickly for its overall brand and salespeople. It didn’t have a budget for Facebook ads, which its competitors, and many other companies, were using to drive initial likes to their fan pages.

The Pampered Chef’s team members thought carefully about the kinds of content TPC’s customers would like, and what they wouldn’t like, and they worked together to build a fan page, applications, and a daily content calendar that would be about neither the brand nor selling but instead all about the consumers. The result was that the team now shares useful content such as recipes and recipe contests, and they encourage visitors to their fan page to share their stories about their own great meals and pictures of their own culinary masterpieces. A virtual gift application allows fans to share a picture of a scrumptious cake on their friends’ Facebook walls on their birthdays or to celebrate other occasions. All of this content is loosely related to the brand and its mission, of course, but it isn’t about the brand. It’s about the consumers, and it is designed to be as intriguing as possible. By generating hundreds of comments and likes through consumer interaction (see Figure 3.2), the Pampered Chef remains at the top of its fans’ News Feeds for as long as possible, generating more eyeballs, mindshare, clicks, and sales.

 

FIGURE 3.2 A Facebook Post from the Pampered Chef

More than a hundred thousand people liked the page in the first two months, without any paid advertising, and hundreds of people comment on every daily update. The rich content shared by the Pampered Chef each day generates not only likes but lots of sharing as well, which in turn drives more and more people back to the page. While the company did not reveal revenue numbers generated by the initial Facebook engagement, rest assured that sales figures were very likeable too.

Century 21 Real Estate

It’s safe to say most people are familiar with Century 21 Real Estate, the brand behind the ubiquitous black and gold property signs. On its website, Century 21 describes itself this way:

       Century 21 Real Estate LLC (century21.com) is the franchisor of the world’s largest residential real estate franchise sales organization, providing brand marks, comprehensive training and marketing support for the CENTURY 21^® System. The System is comprised of more than 102,000 affiliated sales professionals in approximately 6,900 offices in 75 countries and territories worldwide.

You’ll notice that “homeowners” and “home buyers” are not mentioned in that description. That’s because the brand’s primary goal and focus is on franchise growth and agent acquisition. A brand whose business focus is on franchise acquisition would seemingly not place a marketing focus on all homeowners, right? Maybe for a brand that isn’t Century 21.

Instead of creating social media properties that are solely focused on acquiring future franchise owners or real estate agents, Century 21 decided to appeal to the masses. With regular social media postings and blog entries tying real estate themes to DIY, pop culture, and current events, Century 21 has positioned itself as one of the most engaging real estate brands, generating more website traffic than its competitors and appealing to prospects as people first. While tips for how to zombie-proof your home (posted in honor of a season premiere of AMC’s hit show The Walking Dead) might not scream “Be a franchise owner!” it does let Century 21’s customers know that they’re a real brand, with a sense of humor, and they are different from the competition (Figure 3.3).

 

FIGURE 3.3 A Facebook Post from Century 21 Real Estate

BE LIKEABLE, NOT DISRUPTIVE

We are all bombarded by more marketing messages every day than we can even count. You have an opportunity to rise to the top of the clutter, not by coming up with a more creative disruption but by producing content that people actually want to receive. Facebook’s News Feed forces you to think like a consumer and challenges you to share content that will be truly valued or enjoyed by your consumers. If you don’t want to be invisible, you’ll have to be likeable, at least in social media. Remember, on Facebook, you’re not competing with your competitors for the consumers’ attention. You’re competing with pictures of my best friend’s baby!