What being member #149 taught me about how Klout Perks could really rock

Every once in a while, I receive a package in the mail that I wasn’t expecting. The doorbell rings, I go to answer, and sitting there on my doorstep is a box. Brown waves at me, drives off, and I walk back into the house with the mysterious package under my arm. I weigh it in my hand. Too heavy for a T-shirt. Too light for a book. Too quiet for an 8lb bag of m&ms. I let Chico sniff it for explosives. Clear. Cholula sniffs for pot, in case it’s from my sister. Clear. Chiquita sniffs for anthrax. Clear. I set the box on the kitchen table, swing my ninja sword at its edges in a blur and a woosh, and voila. Inside the box, I find… stuff like this:

Now, for the sake of disclosure, I should point out that I know Kamran Popkin (@swagclub). We are both members of Social Media Club Greenville and fellow mischief-makers. He had a hand in getting me to the BMW driver school a while back, which was a pretty awesome thing to do. And yes, Kamran and I have become fast friends over the last two years, mostly because he’s a straight-up guy, fun to be with, and he too is a major Steven Pressfield fan (always a good sign). I trust, respect and like him.

When we aren’t drinking really good sake, trading sushi war stories or making soap over on Paper Street, Kamran, being the business samurai that he is, likes to show me, rather than just tell me, what kind of impact good swag and a personal touch can have. That’s why he routinely sends me cool stuff in the mail. My package from Audi/Klout Perks earlier this week reminded of how effective Swag Club’s personal touch really is. It’s the little details that make all the difference: You can treat your relationship with potential customers and “influencers” as merely a numbers game, or you can focus on building lasting relationships with people you want to bring into your cool little business universe.

Let me let you in on one of Kamran’s little secrets: He doesn’t want customers or clients. He just wants to do business with people he likes. His funnel is built to only attract people he can have fun with. His business circle caps off at 149 people. That’s it. If you want in, you have to earn your spot. And trust me, you want in. Being one of the 149 is something none of us takes for granted. We’re part of a tribe of miscreants and instigators. We’re all in on the same inside jokes. We are a real community, bound by the same thread. The free stuff has very little to do with it. It’s a vehicle, nothing more.

The difference between a company that puts its logo on koozies and key chains, and a company that uses perks and swag to build relationships may seem imperceptible to the average person, but it is crystal clear to those of us who find ourselves touched by the latter. Exclusivity is part of it. Feeling valued as a human being is another. Kinship and like-mindedness are never far. These are some of the elements that help build strong communities and word-of-mouth movements. Before sending gifts to “influencers,” remember that the end-game isn’t the mailing of a box. The end-game is the development of a community of influential evangelists. This is a key insight that EVERY advertiser partnering with Klout Perks needs to learn and think about.

And beyond building the kind of internal culture that both fuels this type of thinking and drives effective outreach programs is a basic methodology – a framework, if you will – that can be broken down in five simple lessons. Swag Club follows them with Swiss-like precision, and the results speak for themselves, which makes me wish I could somehow bring Kamran and Klout together to build a playbook for every new Klout Perks partner.

Audi could have sure used a little Swag Club flair this past week. Imagine how cool their promotion would have been if Mr. Popkin had been involved in the project somehow. All 830 of us might be enthusiastically selling Audis to everyone we run into well into 2015. Why not.

Let me give you a taste of what I am talking about:

1. Presentation is important.

You saw the way Swag Club’s package was arranged. Compare that with the box I received from Audi’s Klout Perks promotion this week:

Clearly, one says “I care. I want to start off this relationship on the right foot.” The other says “I don’t care. I’m just doing my job.”

Which do you want to be? Which do you think will yield the results your company is hoping for? Who’s in charge here?

2. Always include a personal note.

Here is the kind of note Kamran sends with every Swag Club package, along with the flip side of his business card. Note to every company sending swag and goodies through Klout Perks rewards programs: Write a personal note. Sign it. Put your Twitter or Facebook thingamajig on it. Don’t just have a guy in a warehouse somewhere pack stuff in a box.

This is where the real gold is. Trust me, nobody cares how big and bad your new koozie is. We’ll grow tired of it after a few minutes. You want to influence an influencer? Become his friend. His brother. Invite him into your tribe, and make him want to extend the same invitation to you.

And no, you can’t outsource this. Invest in a good pen and actually write these yourself. That’s what makes them special. That’s what gives them their magic. There is no corner-cutting here. Remember: You aren’t sending this stuff to 10,000 people. If you get it, you are sending it to just a few dozen.

3. Bespoke your swag.

Nothing says “you’re important to me” like a generic coffee mug trapped inside a plain dusty brown box. Don’t go there.

This is a completely different mechanism from mass marketing. Anyone can score your latest bottle opener with your logo on it by walking by your booth at a trade show or buying it from your website. If it’s already sitting on a shelf in your swag warehouse, it isn’t special. You aren’t really going to “wow” anyone with it. If you want to impress “influencers,” if you want them to sing your praises all on their own for years to come, you have to at least try to make an effort. That means giving the perk itself (not just the packaging and the handshake) a little extra flavor. Customize something for them. Make the gift unique and meaningful. If not, it won’t make a lasting impression. Here are two simple examples from Swag Club that Klout Perks partners might want to draw inspiration from:

Note that bespoke swag doesn’t necessarily have to be drink/glass-oriented. (People just like to give me booze, for some reason.)

See the laser etching? Notice that it isn’t just about the “influencer’s name but that there is more there. The whole “instigator,” “Space Monkey” and “member #149” references have meaning. It’s the inside joke, the secret handshake. Simple stuff, but it works.

What Swag Club manages to do here that Klout doesn’t is create a bond between itself and the person it is trying to build a relationship with. What a bespoke swag/perk says is “not only do I care enough to present this to you with a little finesse, not only do I care enough to throw a little personal note in there for you, but I also care enough to give you something that is just for you. Something with your name on it. Something that will forever be uniquely yours.

The term “talisman of friendship” comes to mind. This isn’t marketing, folks. This is relationship building. It’s evangelist development. This is the sort of thing that requires a little more care than the odd mass mailing. Do it right.

If your budget doesn’t factor in fancy laser etching, custom embroidery or velvet paintings, consider decals. See what happened with this bottle of Brockman’s gin in the image below? It might not last as long, but the swag doesn’t have to be long-lived. It just needs to make a lasting impact.

Yes, that’s a decal of a Twitter avatar, stuck to that bottle. Here is an inexpensive way to turn just about any kind of gift into instant swag, and do it in a memorable way. And like every great signature, it is also an invitation to connect.

The bonus lesson here is that “clever” works on the same parts of the brain as “cool.” Which leads me to my next point…

4. Do the unexpected.

Creating “wow” moments isn’t just about bling, perks and VIP treatment. First, you want to build anticipation and excitement. Then, like any good showman, you want to surprise and delight. There’s a little undercurrent of misdirection here that you need to get good at. Make your new friends pay attention to the left hand while you prepare the surprise with your right. Make them think they know what to expect, then surprise them with something even cooler.

One thing that Kamran likes to do is tell me he is sending me something in the mail ahead of time. Usually, it comes in the form of a quick Tweet or email:

@SwagClub: “Are you in town this week?” Me: “Yep.” @SwagClub: “Good.” That’s it. That’s all it takes. For the next 2-3 days, I watch my mailbox like a hawk. If a FedEx or UPS truck drives within three miles of my house, I somehow hear it. When the package finally comes, I know it could be anything: Some new Space Monkey business cards. Fake tattoos. Project Mayhem decals. A bottle of French liqueur with a bespoke tumbler. A Russian bride. Who knows? Whatever it is, the element of surprise always works in Swag Club’s favor: I am never underwhelmed.

How this applies to Klout Perks promotions: If your campaign discloses that participants will receive a bag of chocolates, don’t just send them a bag of chocolates. Send them something else too, like movie tickets, or a gift card, or a custom sock monkey designed by your creative director. Something. Anything. Surprise them by upping the ante. Overwhelm them with something cool and unexpected. Make an impression.

5. Follow through.

You aren’t done once the “influencer” has received his or her perk. That was just the beginning. Now comes the relationship-building time. Now comes the regular chats on Twitter or by email or by phone. You want to invest in influence? You want to build a small army of highly connected word-of-mouth evangelists? Make it about more than the gift. Trust me. You want to build the kind of good will and mutual respect that will last longer than a week. Otherwise, you’re just another koozie panderer. Your stuff will hit a landfill inside of six months. Where’s the value in that?

You know how we like to talk about best practices in social business and community management? When it comes to the new digital influence game, you don’t really have to look much further than this.

@Klout, if you’re listening (and I know you are), consider reaching out to @SwagClub. If you guys can put together some best practices or guidelines for your Perks partners following this general methodology, both the relevance and longevity of your perks program will be assured. I can almost guarantee it. Think of the possibilities.

Cheers. 🙂

***          ***          ***

 

And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to pre-order Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization (Que Biz-Tech / Pearson). Available for pre-order now on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble, and on the shelves next month at fine book sellers everywhere.

 

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Measuring the R.O.I. of your Social Media Programs

If you have twenty minutes and want to understand the fundamentals of R.O.I., business measurement, Social Media business planning, Vertical vs. Lateral Engagement and F.R.Y., it’s all right here. This might be a good video to send to the CMO, CFO, COO and even the CEO, if you have that kind of relationship with them.

Video courtesy of Andy Sernovitz and GasPedal. Filmed during the 2009 WOM Supergenius Conference in Chicago.

And yes, I had Rocky II hair back then.

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And on the eighth day… (A word-of-mouth primer)

So as it turns out, WOM (word-of-mouth) is at least twice as effective at influencing purchasing decisions as most forms of marketing (from PR to advertising). (Source: Nielsen)

And the beauty of Social(ized) Media platforms like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Seesmic, is that – as connection and conversation engines, they enable, accelarate and amplify WOM.

So a) WOM is important, and b) WOM is also at the core of the crucial lateral action (peer to peer engagement) we discussed a few weeks ago. (Go here to get a recap. It’s worth the five minutes.) So even though it hasn’t been a buzzword in a couple of years, let’s bring back some much needed (and deserved) focus on it now.

Okay, here’s roughly how you create WOM out of thin air:

Step 1: Create or do something great. Not good. GREAT. (Seth Godin would call it remarkable. My kids would call it awesome. Some of my triathlon buddies would call it sick. Fred would call it rad… but he’s… well, Fred. Or Barney. Or something.)

It could be a widget. It could be a dish. It could be a work of art. It could be an act of rebellion or courage… or both. It could be a book or a song or a speech. It could be the way your customer service reps answer the phone, or how quickly your technicians can fix a problem for your customers. It could be new packaging for ketchup or a new all-natural zero-calorie sweetener. It could be a smart and edgy TV show. It could be a completely selfless act. It could be nothing more than a simple, subtle, five second memorable experience at a drive-through or at the checkout or when you walk into a public restroom. It could be a new flavor, or an old, forgotten one. It could be a social program. It could be that extra smile or one percent effort. It could be simply acknowledging customers and conversation participants on Twitter. It could be anything… as long as it is remarkable. Awesome. Sick. Rad.

As long as it is better than anything else that remotely comes close to its category – assuming there is one yet.

As long as anyone who gets to experience it is so amazed, pleasantly surprised, or otherwise affected by what it did for them that they’ll get excited about telling their friends all about it… and the cycle will repeat itself over and over and over again.

The more unique it is, the better. The more iconic, the better. The more revolutionary… um, okay. You get the idea.

People don’t get excited about boring and mundane and same-as-always.

Safe, good enough, okay and not bad don’t live in WOM’s zip code.

Step 2: Oh… wait. That’s it. Never mind. There is no step 2.

Technorati Tags: word of mouth, WOMMA, WOMBAT2, marketing, WOM

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Engagement Paradigm: Focus on Lateral Action

So we’ve been chatting about engagement these last few days, and particularly vertical action (essentially brands addressing their communities from the top-down, and creating mechanisms through which their communities can communicate vertically with them using the same channels). When you look at corporate blogs, Twitter accounts and most branded community sites, this is mostly what you see: Vertical engagement between companies and their customers/fans/friends/users.

Likewise, the breadth and depth conversation we had last week also relates to vertical action: Brand managers, Community managers and/or Social Media managers finding ways to engage customers from a brand-to-community perspective. Even when dialog exists, even when the communication channels are truly 2-way, most of what happens is vertical: Brand-to-customer and customer-to-brand. And that’s nice, but it is only half the story: In order to understand the power of the social web, the power of communities and the power of truly engaged fans, you also have to tip your hat to lateral action.

What is lateral action? Simple: Lateral action is simply peer-to-peer engagement that happens within or across communities. A brand or community manager may have planted a seed along the way (a tweet, a blog post, a comment, a promotion, etc.), but once it has hit the community, the message/info/conversation is spread from customer to customer without having to be prompted by any official brand representative.

Another example of lateral action is WOM (word-of-mouth): Peer-to-peer recommendations are classic examples of lateral action. Rumors are examples of lateral action. Community tweetup invitations are examples of lateral action. RT’s on Twitter tend to be examples of lateral action.

Lateral action is what happens when the brand, the company, the official presence of a business gives its community the opportunity to BE a community by taking a step back and letting people share what is important to them with peers.

And lateral action is often the answer to the question raised last week about breadth and depth of engagement: Once a brand has managed to scale its community to several thousand or tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands, even), how can a team of community managers possibly engage so many people properly? It’s impossible, right? (This being the logic behind some Social Media directors’ decision to focus on depth at the cost of breadth.) Truth: Vertical action alone cannot serve the purposes of engagement (breadth mostly, but depth also) in the Social Media space… or even when it comes to fostering vibrant brand-centric communities in the “real” world. Lateral Action is the yin to Vertical Action’s yang. Lateral Action is how community engagement actually scales and transcends any breadth-related engagement limitations.

And though Lateral Action is nothing new, it is not a typical strategic mode of thinking for most Marketing professionals who have spent most of their careers working in traditional media (yes, even in the world of the web). This is why MANY Marketing folks still talk about the challenge of creating “content” even in the Social Media space. This is why advertising, messaging and marketing products are still among the first things marketers try to “plug in” when it comes to leveraging Social Media “channels.” This is all top-down thinking. Vertical Action thinking. And though it has its place here, it cannot succeed in the Social Media space without an equal (and in many cases greater) measure of Lateral Action.

Brand managers, Social Media managers, Community managers – whatever their designation may be – need to understand that their job isn’t just to produce content and constantly stimulate vertical engagement. There is only so much they can accomplish this way. What they must also do is empower their communities to manage themselves to a great extent and generate conversations and motion from within. Community members have to reach out to each other. They have to reach over to other communities. They have to share and discuss and debate and organize themselves. Brand Managers in the Social Media space have to learn how to be good hosts and patrons and supporters without being mother hens 24/7. This lateral action has to be fostered, nurtured, and built into their online and offline communities.

This is a crucial point for all brand managers to understand if they want to be successful in the age of Social Significance and Community Marketing. I hope the video and this post help you understand the difference between vertical and lateral action… and their importance our ongoing discussion of community “engagement.”

Tomorrow, we will bring our engagement discussion to a close with some far less strategic yet much more valuable advice than what we’ve touched on so far. 😉

Have a great day!

Bonus Footage: Oui, en Francais! (For my Francophone readers, a question: Since I can, should I also start shooting videos in French?) And since a few of you have asked me if I would say my name in its original French so you can hear what it sounds like – Two birds, one stone. You ask, I deliver. (And yes, I take requests.) Check it out:

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How Routine Kills Brands

“The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”

– William Pollard.

That’s worth framing and hanging in every meeting room from Portland to Tahiti (via Paris).

Also, via Tom Asacker:

“Over time, unchanging relationships can turn into shackles that limit an organization’s flexibility and lock it into active inertia. Established relationships with customers can prevent firms from responding effectively to changes in technology, regulations, or consumer preferences.”

– Donald Sull (Revival of the Fittest: Why Good Companies Go Bad an How Great Managers Remake Them.)

Do you see where I’m going with this?

So… your new mission every day is to keep things fresh. That’s it. Whether you’re in the business of designing ads, repairing engines, selling shoes or answering calls from angry customers, don’t ever, ever, ever let routine set in. Try different things. Learn something new from every customer. From every sale. From every design challenge. From every product launch. From every commercial you hear on the radio. From every movie you catch on cable. From the games your kids play. From magazines you’ve never picked up.

Keep things fresh.

And go read Tom Asacker’s post on that very topic. It’s very good.

Have a great Monday, everyone.

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Some fine thinking from the 864.

Brains on Fire‘s Justine Foo (PhD) on the sustainability of value props, innovation, and the courage of looking beyond conventional ROI:

Maybe it’s the idealist in me, but I’m hoping sustainability isn’t just a trend. I’m hoping this is the beginning of a paradigm shift toward more sustainable business practices in general. Not just with respect to the use of renewable vs. non-renewable resources for manufacturing. But also with respect to the kinds of consumer goods we innovate, and how we communicate about products and services to people. I long to see sustainability as a price of entry for doing business, and yes marketing. Wouldn’t it be nice if you actually kept, for example, 80% of the mail you get instead of throwing it straight in the trash?

We spend billions of dollars on communications that are short-lived and sadly waste paper, vinyl, and other things. We know that mass advertising isn’t having the impact it used to, and that we need to look to other venues like word of mouth. But even then we’re still thinking short term; creating buzz, not lasting energy and enduring excitement.

(…)

You’ll think I’m crazy. But I’m hoping that oil prices stay high. That the “crisis” mainstream advertisers are in doesn’t subside. That consumers continue to grow their demand for pesticide-free, natural, organic. Even that food prices rise. It’s instabilities like these that drive REAL change. Why? Because they create the motivation for finding a better way to do things. They force us to innovate and not relax back into the status quo.

Marketing, like manufacturing, stands at the doorstep of a great opportunity. An opportunity to revolutionize how we think about growth, measure return, and exist in relation to the communities that support us. Will we invest in developing better, smarter, more efficient ways to excite people about our products? Or will we continue to play the numbers game and bask in a false sense of security we feel when we’re promised a reach of thousands and millions of people, even when our strategic objectives have moved beyond raising awareness.

It will take courage to look beyond conventional ROI. It will take dedication and creativity to see new ways to measure return. It will also take companies demanding sustainability from their marketing departments and partners. And the recognition that it emerges from passion and excitement, not impressions.

Source post.

If you think that the gas prices comment is harsh, well… yeah. It is. But when we’re too set in our ways to make necessary changes on our own, the universe has a funny way of using the foot-in-ass technique to get us to move. It may not be pleasant, but that’s just how it is. Deal with it.

The same is true about business. Way too many companies are still in denial mode: “We’ve been doing it this way for 50 years and it’s worked fine!” (Yet their business is going down the drain and they can’t figure out why.) Wake up and smell what’s cooking. Numbers don’t lie. Customers don’t lie. Your bottom-line and market share don’t lie. Winners win and losers lose: What is true of athletes, nations, products and even species is also true of marketing campaigns and businesses.

Reality is often too harsh to bear. True leaders accept reality and deal with it. Far too many business executives, however, are not leaders. For them, competition, price pressures and innovation are the cosmic kicks to the rump that force them to cast their “business as usual” mentalities aside and get back in the game, sometimes much too late, when at all

Leaders and the companies they head will survive. Posers will not. I say let natural selection, market forces and user/customer communities sort them out.

Great post, Justine.

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What it means to NOT be talked about.

WOMMA’s Word Of Mouth Marketing Summit is kicking off in Vegas this week, and let me just say that I’m a bit bummed about not being there.

Nicole Sampson and Patrick Rooney sending me emails from the Rio’s pool isn’t helping, by the way. (But keep sending me updates anyway. It’s all good.) ;D

In honor of WOMMA, WOM, and the best conference I won’t be attending in 2007, here is my favorite post on WOM so far this quarter (from Scott Ginsberg’s HELLO, my name is blog):

Oscar Wilde once remarked, “The only thing worse than being talked about is NOT being talked about.”

So, if your customers are not ACTIVELY telling their friends about your business…

1. That means you’re probably selling a dead brand.

2. That means you’re probably different, not unique.

3. That means you’re probably doing something wrong.

4. That means you’re probably perceived as a commodity.

5. That means you’re probably not word of mouth worthy.

6. That means you’re probably creating customers, not FANS.

7. That means you’re probably not getting much new business.

8. That means you’re probably not doing something important.

9. That means you’re probably not as great as you think you are.

10. That means you’re probably boring, unremarkable and normal.

11. That means you’re probably not making the mundane memorable.

12. That means you’re probably spending too much money on marketing.

13. That means you’re probably not expanding your overall customer base.

14. That means you’re probably poorly positioned in their minds, not in the market.

15. That means you’re probably creating customer SATISFACTION, not customer loyalty or insistence.

Look. Word of mouth is everything. And anonymity is your greatest barrier to business success.

SO REMEMBER: businesses that get talked about get more business.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Who’s telling their friends about YOU?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
If you’re clients are not actively telling their friends about you, what (else) does that mean?

That ought to keep you busy for a few hours. Have a great Thursday, everyone. 😉

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How Heely-hatin’ can cost you a whole lot more than a lawsuit.

Prologue: The Heelys Guestapo Incident

Heelys-haters beware: If you would rather spend your energy sniffing out Heelys-wearing kids and reprimanding their parents for letting them wear the devil’s rollershoes in your stores than being cordial and professional, maybe you’re missing the point of what your job is supposed to be in the first place. (Whatever it is, it isn’t playing detective Dickhead from the Heely Police.)

Face it: Heelys are popular. Kids wear them (heck, I wear them whenever I get a chance). And despite what you may have read or heard on the news, they aren’t any more dangerous than 3″ stilettos or 46″ waists – or both. (Perhaps less so.) The point is that they are shoes. Sure, they have a wheel built-in to the heel for when you feel like taking advantage of a slight downhill, but they are shoes first and foremost. You can walk with them without rolling around, and you can easily remove the wheel from its socket in about ten seconds flat if need be.

Now, I understand that Heelys can create some liability issues for retail businesses, and so I don’t have a problem with store managers and personel asking customers with Heelys not to roll down the breakfast cereal aisles like two-wheeled slaloming kamikazes.

I get that.

And I even don’t have a problem with store managers asking shoppers whose kids have Heelys to remove the wheels from their shoes while they are inside the store – as long as it is done gracefully.

A better solution would even be to simply welcome their customers to their store, and politely (that’s with a smile, thank you) ask them to not roll around in the store – for safety reasons: “Hey, cool shoes. You can wear those in here, but please don’t roll around, okay?”

That’s all they have to say.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case in most stores that choose to enforce anti-Heelys guestapo tactics. Case in point: Publix. I was in there last week with the family unit, when a store employee or assistant manager or assistant meat department manager or whatever intercepted us in the middle of our shopping to inform us that Heelys were not allowed in the store and that our children would have to either change their shoes or wait outside.

Excuse me?

This is probably the place in this post where I should make a point to say that my progeny wasn’t rolling down the aisles. They were just walking. They were simply guilty of wearing a particular brand of shoes.

Here’s the thing: It’s bad enough that we have to take our shoes off to go through “security” checkpoints at our nation’s airports, but I sure as hell am not about to take my shoes off to go shopping at Publix. It isn’t like we carry an extra set of shoes for the kids just in case some asshole in a store has nothing better to do than play shoe cop instead of doing his job – which, by the way, essentially consists of being friendly to customers and making sure what I want to buy is waiting for me on the shelf.

Oh, and make sure his green apron isn’t streaked with greasy Dorito crumbs. That would be nice.

So here we are, in the frozen foods aisle, with this jackass standing in front of my wife – blocking us from going any further, telling us that our kids (who were just walking, mind you) aren’t welcome in the store because of the shoes they are wearing.

He isn’t saying this with a smile. This moron has a frown on his face and a fist on his hip, and a finger shaking at our kids’ feet.

“But they aren’t rolling,” we answer.

“It doesn’t matter,” replies jackass.

Well, okay then. We handed him the contents of out shopping cart (literally), and informed him that we would be going across the street to their competitor’s store… which we did.

Discovering that the grass is greener elsewhere

I wasn’t happy about this, because until then, I enjoyed shopping at Publix (clean aisles, friendly cashiers, nice layout, etc.) To make matters worse, I wasn’t a big fan of the shopping experience at the competitor’s store across the street. But whatever. We needed to buy some vittles, and anywhere was better than Publix – so across the street we went.

And that’s when I realized the full scope of Publix’s error of judgement.

Until our encounter with the Heelys Nazi, I had no reason to look for alternatives to Publix. In my little grocery shopping universe, it sat squarely at the top of the heap, save perhaps the Whole Foods and Fresh Markets and other “premium” grocery store brands in my general area. Other local chains like Bi-Lo, Super Walmart and Ingles were – at least in my mind – dirty, gloomy, unfriendly places where I hated to shop.

Yes, hated: I would rather pay 30% more for my gallon of skim milk at the posh and happy Publix than have to suffer the long checkout lines, unfriendly cashiers, and sorry-looking produce sections at the other stores.

But guess what: The Ingles across the street from Zig-Heil Publix had enjoyed a makeover since the last time I visited its tired, gloomy aisles, and what I saw shocked me: The gloom was gone. The produce section was twice as big as Publix and much nicer. (The produce was super fresh and bountiful too, which I didn’t expect.) Everything I could get at Publix was there as well, and then some. Ingles’ bread selection was broader. Their deli section had some stuff that Publix didn’t offer, which was a nice surprise.

But best of all, the prices were unbelievably low compared to Die Shiltzenfuhrer Publix.

$1.59 for a couple of hot, juicy, delicious giant chili dogs? $2.59 for a humongous chef salad? $4.99 for a whole rotisserie chicken? Is this possible?

It wasn’t until we got home that we realized that not only was Ingles’ store-made stuff cheaper, it also tasted better than anything made by Publix. We’ve been shopping there for the last week, and so far, haven’t missed Publix one bit.

I have come to the conclusion that I am an idiot for having been such a snob about Ingles over the last few years. I should have given it another chance a lot sooner. We could have saved a crapload of money in the process.

Autopilot purchasing habits vs. habit-busting triggers

The point of this post isn’t to sing Ingles’ praises or rub Publix’ nose in it, or even defend shoppers’ rights to wear Heelys inside stores and malls and other places of business.

Nope, the purpose of this post is to remind businesses that their customers choose to shop at their stores. They don’t have to. They choose to. If customers have a pleasant experience, they come back. If customers have a bad experience, they go somewhere else. It is that simple.

Whenever a business does something to make a customer feel disenfranchised, that customer is going to find an alternative to that business before you can even say “refund”. Bad service at Jiffy Lube? Hello Grease Monkey! Sprint dropping calls and screwing up your bill every month? Hello Verizon! Someone giving you attitude at Office Max? Hello Staples! Welcome to the wonderful world of competition and free markets: If you don’t value a customer’s greenbacks, someone near you will be more than happy to do so.

Maybe in the grand scheme of things, losing one customer’s business isn’t all that important to a company with hundreds of stores across a large portion of the US. But hey, one family is easily worth $5,000-$6,000 in revenue per year, which is nothing to sneeze at for any single store. To make matters worse, Publix can probably expect to lose a few more households to their across-the-street neighbor over the next few months, thanks to our opnion’s impact on many of our peers’ purchasing habits. By next spring, we’ll probably have moved close to a dozen families from Publix to Ingles. Hopefully more.

Yep, that’s right: Mr. Dumbassistant manager’s self-righteous bullying has probably cost his store $60K in revenue per year, just by virtue of having turned off one customer.

Imagine his impact on his store if he chases away one customer every day… Or even just two per week, if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt. He could be chasing away millions of dollars of revenue per year, just by being a dick.

The point is that we’re all set in our little shopping habits: We have our favorite gas stations, our favorite restaurants, our favorite dry cleaners, our favorite car washes, our favorite bookstores, our favorite electronics stores, and our favorite grocery stores. We are creatures of habit. It takes a trigger to get us to change our purchasing habits.

A recommendation from a friend or peer is a trigger (Yey to WOM). A special sale is a trigger. A grand opening is a trigger. A clever bit of signeage is a trigger. Effective marketing can be a trigger.

And, as Publix may or may not be aware of, a bad experience can also be a very powerful trigger.

Here’s a tip: Don’t ever let a customer leave your store angry.

Here’s another tip: Don’t ever treat a customer like a criminal when they haven’t broken any laws or caused mayhem in your store.

What the Publix Nazi did went far beyond making me angry. In truth, I would have probly gotten over it in time, and within weeks, I would have been right back at that Publix, settling into my old habits. What he did was give me a reason to go discover what his competition had to offer.

That was his mistake.

That was the outcome of his moronic decision to put aside common sense, politeness, and the values of his store, and choose instead to be a complete asshole.

If you’re a store owner or manager, let this be a warning to you: Prohibiting kids from rolling around in their Heelys inside your stores makes sense. Prohibiting kids from wearing their Heelys inside your stores is ridiculous. Worse yet, treating them and their parents like criminals when they do the latter is both bad form and bad business. They’re shoes, people. Move on. Find something better to do, like taking good care of your customers instead of policing them.

Unless you just want to hand over your best customers to your competitors, free of charge.

For shame.

Judging by how many of my kids’ friends also have Heelys, I hate to think of the volume of business being lost on a daily basis by stores more interested in mindlessly enforcing unnecessary “rules” than handling their customers with a modicum of tact and professionalism.

Kneejerk policies = Bonehead customer experience disasters.

Okay, rant over. Have a great Monday, everyone.

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The value of Social Networking Sites, and some findings on WOM

From Francois Gossieaux’s brilliant Emergence Marketing blog this week:

Reveries.com conducted a survey on the potential of social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace as media for marketing activities (pdf download of survey summary results and analysis are here). The main finding seems to be that marketers are in the very early stages of truly understanding the potential of these new networks – with only 18% of the respondents calling the potential of online social networks as a medium for marketing “huge”.

Other interesting tidbits from the survey include the fact that marketers see “word of mouth” as the most promising aspect of social networking sites, and that many pointed out that marketers should participate in the conversations that take place on those sites without interrupting them.

Unfortunately, the reality is that many spammers have already invaded Facebook, Myspace and other similar sites. Go check the walls of the most popular interest groups in Facebook to see for yourself – many are littered with posts that are total sales pitches or with information that is totally irrelevant to the group’s conversation.

Speaking of Word-of-Mouth, EM has an interesting post on the subject as well:

The latest issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article on how to calculate the value of customer referrals (article not online yet).

They conducted two studies – one in telecom and one in financial services. Some interesting findings from those calculations include:

• People refer way less than they say they do
• The customer referral value is higher than the customer life-cycle value
• The people with the highest customer life-cycle value are not the ones with the highest referral value

The importance of these findings are twofold. First you need to segment your customers along the customer life-cycle value axis, but also along the customer referral value axis. That will enable you to target your incentives to groups to either increase their usage or increase their referrals, or both. Second, this research shows that customers will low customer life-cycle value can in fact have a higher value to your company through referral value than those with high customer life-cycle value.

Read more stuff from Francois here.

Good stuff to chew on. Have a great Tuesday, everyone. 🙂

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