When it comes to spending time with their customers, marketers are hiding behind all the other things they need to do rather than picking up the phone or heading out to the brand’s store and it’s impinging on brand loyalty. At least, that’s the view of Pip Stocks, CEO and founder of brand insight agency BrandHook.
“Marketers are scared to spend time with people,” she told B&T at the Global Loyalty Conference in Melbourne on Thursday. “They always find another thing to do.
“They need to spend more time with their customers and watch what they’re doing.”
It could be answering calls in the company’s call centre each week, she said, or working in the check-out counter once a fortnight, or even reading the company’s complaints page. Because if marketers don’t understand their customers, she said, how will they know how to solve their problems?
The need to look at the small data rather than the big data was a key takeaway from the conference, with Stocks reiterating to B&T big data has gotten to people.
“There’s so much data and it’s anchored in rationality,” she said. Marketers are looking at the numbers and not the emotional aspects of their customer base.
“When you ask someone a question, you get a rational response. Spend some time with your consumers and find the reality of what they’re dealing with. Have a look around the living room and you can see what they’re spending their money on and what’s important. Small data is critical to understand the cultural world in which we live, to get the granular data you need to build emotional loyalty.”
Becoming a habitual brand for brand loyalty
There’s no denying personalisation has been a well-documented necessity when it comes to successful marketing – it’s not just spray and pray.
And while admitting it’s not the sexiest term, Stocks noted the desire from companies to become the brand customers don’t think twice about purchasing, like our regular brands from supermarkets.
There are three ways, Stocks said, to become the habitual brand:
Personalisation – not sending out irrelevant information.
Effortlessness – the customer should find your brand easy. The subscription model should be easy to sign up. And if you’re still not convinced, check out this stat on how few seconds people will wait for a company’s page to load online before moving elsewhere.
Brand surprise – the surprise and delight marketing method is nothing new, and yet it continues to deliver. At another loyalty event a year ago, David Posner, CEO of marketing company Directivity that also looks at loyalty, said we need to put more surprise and delight into loyalty programs. Unsure how to do that, check out these brands that have it nailed.
