Being likeable is not about being liked by everyone. Likeable brands actually need to be very clear about who likes them and why and how they need to behave in order to continue to appeal to their community. 10 ways to build a truly likeable brand states the principles of likeability and is one of my most popular posts. As a companion piece, here’s my 30 point action list on how brands should systematically accumulate likeability. Order can vary.
By Mark Di Somma It’s easy to underestimate the huge changes that have taken place in the dynamics of the brand-customer relationship in recent years. Brands and consumers are now engaged at whole new levels of familiarity. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn et al haven’t just brought people closer, they have enabled entirely new types of brand community to evolve and develop. But as we shall see, they have also expanded expectations in terms of responsiveness. I’ve dubbed this heightened connection Familiarity 2.0 (because to me it really does equate to a new era of acquaintance). Research shows consumers increasingly valuing brands that they feel fundamentally understand them and that interact with them as human beings. According to the Brandfog CEO, Social Media and Leadership Survey 2012, customers now expect to have direct access to brands and brand leaders. What’s more, the survey shows, there is a direct connection between social media participation, purchase intent and increased brand loyalty. The days of the brand being on one side of the counter and the customer being on the …
Christine sends me this image of a VW with eyelashes attached to its front headlights. And all I can think is “There’s just no way on God’s good earth that big data can predict this.” It’s flirty. It’s girly. It’s extraordinarily popular. And I don’t get it. Thing is – I don’t have to. It’s not for me. I’m the first to admit I’d probably never have thought of this. But clearly someone else did – and they made it fly (probably with every man in the vicinity snorting in disbelief). Read eyelashes on a car in a number of ways. The power of the woman consumer in the car market for starters. The wish by consumers to distinctualise a brand by adding a form of self expression. The opportunity to build a short-term brand on the success of another brand. What you can’t read into it is this. There is no way that a spreadsheet could have predicted this would take hold. In much the same way as no-one would have foretold that putting …
The flipside of a marketplace where brands encourage people to buy for emotive reasons is that brands also need to counter consumers’ personal reasons not to buy. Some of these reasons may be legacy. Some may seem to be convenient self-interest. Others may look like they’re based on ignorance, bias, selfishness. They probably don’t make sense to you. That’s important because … actually, it’s not. It’s not important at all The problem that matters is not your opinion of why your buyer won’t buy – it’s the fact that they have this opinion, that it’s rational to them and they have every reason to keep thinking it until they don’t want to anymore. Chances are you won’t talk people into liking your brand. The most effective way to deal with an “unreasonable” objection is to counter with a riveting motive. Most people think that means price. But simply dropping your price is no silver bullet. It doesn’t make you a more likeable brand. It may make you a more attractive brand – in the short …
Likeability has both a top-line and a bottom-line. Social monitoring tends to focus on the top-line: mentions; retweets; likes; comments. Top-line likeability is important because it monitors partiality towards your brand – the prevailing emotion at that moment. But it can be easily swayed, by offers, for example, or news. Bottom-line likeability is the measure of how much and/or how often consumers buy. It’s the money that drips or floods out the bottom of the sales funnel. The other p – profitability. But just as you can be famous and broke, so your brand can have strong top-line likeability without proportionally strong financial returns. And indeed, vice versa. Part of the problem, as Brian Solis has astutely observed in this recent post, is that chasing the “soft metrics” of top-line likeability has become as addictive to organisations as chasing top-line revenue can be for sales teams. It provides numbers, sometimes giddy numbers, but not “the insights necessary to glean ROI or deep understanding of what people do and do not want, need or value.” And …
The insurance company wrote to me again. That can only mean it’s a bill or a change in policy. Either way it’s more expensive – literally, because I’m paying more, or metaphorically because I’m getting less for the money I do pay.
If brand owners are buying Likes on Facebook, what are they actually worth?, asks Alexis Dormandy in this recent article in The Telegraph. “Can we really value a ‘Like’ or a ‘Follow’ when so many of them are bought rather than earned?” Dormandy’s question goes to the heart of the marketing community’s ongoing fixation with volume and to the business world’s fascination with social metrics. With marketing managers under huge pressure to build and participate in scaled brand communities, perhaps it’s inevitable that fast-track approaches to ramp up fan bases have become more popular. There’s good, bad and ironical news in this. Let’s start with the good. Slowly a real value case for using social media seems to be emerging. In a recent post on the RICG blog, comScore’s Linda Abraham and Buddy Media’s Mike Lazerow reference research showing that a “share” on Facebook can lead to $2.10 in incremental sales, and drive up the average conversion rate to 10.2 percent per share. A key reason Abraham and Lazerow give to factor social media into …
This highly informative post from James D. Roumeliotis on Customer Devotion introduces to me the expression “human marketing” which I am much taken with. Not only does it speak to the necessity for everyone within the organisation to think and act like a marketer, it’s also a reminder that, ultimately, people deliver some of our most powerful and memorable consumer experiences – and insights. People have an instinct for people that simply cannot be duplicated any other way. In the rush to mechanise and socialise, it’s easy to overlook the need for brands to continue to humanise their offering – to make it easier, more enjoyable, more fun etc for people to interact with. Powerful brands feel human. There is a real sense of people behind what’s on offer. And that I think is Roumeliotis’ key point: you can’t build and run a great brand if you don’t have a culture that loves people – as staff, as suppliers and as customers. In that regard, while much is made of the need to monitor and …
This thought-provoking article from McKinsey looks at what really drives value in corporate responsibility. As the authors point out, CSR continues to influence how companies and brands go about their business: carbon footprint, ethical and greener supply chains, volunteer programmes and philanthropy are now all par for the course. We all know that not being involved in such investments can have a negative effect on consumer perceptions, but do the activities themselves add value and if so what are the best ways for companies to make the most of that potential? “Some investments, of course, produce immediate and quantifiable gains, such as those from recycling or from manufacturing processes that save energy. But often, social investments are expected to yield longer-term benefits as engaged consumers step up their purchases, a broader investor base develops, or new talent flocks to a company’s recruiters … In these more ambiguous cases, how is a manager to know whether stakeholders will indeed respond positively?” Great question. Personally I’m always suspiscious when someone tells me that there are long term …
Conflict resolution is one of those huge opportunities that so often goes begging. Ask yourself how many times you’ve been in, or watched, this scenario unfold. A client is upset with something that’s happened or has voiced concerns about a brand or some element of the service. The immediate, almost instinctive, reaction is to jump to your own defense; to justify in your own mind why things have happened, and to look to foist that justification on the complainant. You want to clear your name. Of course. No-one wants to be, or even to feel, like they are in the wrong. Here’s the thing. As my colleague Janelle Barlow puts it so well in her book, “Complaint is a Gift”, if someone bothers to complain, they do so because they feel emotionally engaged enough with what is going on to interact. The opportunity here is that they are giving you feedback and they are looking for, and judging you by, your response. Every complaint is a test – a test of your commitment to the …
