As much as they’d like to believe otherwise, brands don’t interact with people the way likable people interact with people. Brands act like egomaniacs who fixate on themselves, share little and never get too personal. On social media, as in life, that doesn’t attract people — friends or customers.
Like spoiled rich kids with more money than friends, they buy people presents. Sure, I’d follow someone for a quick buck. But coupons and discounts are not the basis for meaningful, lasting relationships. The foundation for those is mutual respect, shared interests… you know, stuff like that.
Brands talk a good game about monogamy (one-to-one customer relationships) and (social) listening. In reality, brands tell their story repeatedly and listen rarely. Precious little dialogue takes place between brands and their customers. And on the odd occasion when a customer makes an especially good or bad comment, the brand rushes to amplify it or squash it.
The relationship gets even more one-sided when the customer visits the brand. So how should a brand act more like a likable person?
Keep in mind that relationships aren’t just about you
It’s easy for brands to sound cool, smart and interesting when the social media platform relates their me, me, me stuff to the customer. That’s one reason brands successfully derive traffic and build customer loyalty from social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. Social media is a great wingman.
Back at the retail site, absent the context provided by a social media partner, a brand’s stories devolve to self-centered noise. Without context, a brand becomes central – not the customer. And customers tune out monologues.
Don’t expect your customers to sift through your stuff. Wrap your brand around each customer when he or she arrives at your site. That turns monologues into dialogues. And that makes a brand’s story much more interesting and relevant to the consumer.
Context is the key. Adding context at the store level can be as simple as letting customers select how they want to see products. That would put the brand’s products in context for that customer. That tells a story. A story that makes the relationship about the customer.
Share
This is a universal concept. I tell my four-year-old to share with his friends. But brands, like many four-year-olds, don’t share well.
Gartner and IDC estimate that companies spend more than $100 billion annually scouring big data for insights. They call that business intelligence,. Marketers use business intelligence to tweak a single story they tell the world.
They don’t share those insights with customers. Brands should probably invest something in consumer intelligence. That way, brands could tell their story as it pertains to you.
Right now, most brands say, “if you like this, you might also like this.” That’s the equivalent of a four-year-old sharing broken toys. Come on, brands. You can do better. You know that this shirt goes well with these pants; tell me that.
Pandora does it. Using consumer intelligence, it guides me through more than one billion songs effortlessly. It’s not always perfect, but it tries, succeeding far more than it fails. And as of June 2014, Pandora had more than 250 million users.
The best retailers apply consumer intelligence: Google Play, Netflix, Amazon and eBay in addition to Pandora. And these five brands will generate $55.2 billion in mobile commerce sales alone in 2014.
Get personal
When Brian Cornell, the new CEO of a giant global retailer Target, announced his company would “deliver a single great customer experience,” I shuddered. Big data and social listening mean never having to say “one size fits all.”
Perhaps he meant his brand would deliver a similarly personal, wonderful and insightful experience for each customer. I hope so. Because that’s what big data is meant to provide.
Big data cancels out unparalleled choice. Brands know what we bought, what we viewed, who our friends are and mountains of other information that helps them understand us. They know me—not some arbitrarily defined customer segment standing in as my proxy.
Retailers talk about A/B testing. That’s excellent in a two-segment world. Data analytics company KISSmetrics doubles and triples conversion by having more than 100 landing pages.
Think how much a brand could increase conversion if it went even beyond that, by creating a landing page and an immersive experience for each customer as he or she arrives. Each page and experience would be built dynamically based on what we know about each visitor and how he or she came to us. The tools are there.
I didn’t make these three tips up. Every cover of Cosmo will tell you that these tips lead to meaningful, lasting relationships. An old girlfriend told me “the little things matter.” In business terms, small changes can have a huge impact on your conversion rate, which is far more cost-effective than doubling your ad spend.
It just reads better on a Cosmo cover.
Charles Benaiah is CEO of personalization and social shopping technology firm watzan.