“Contagious” Customer Engagement Happens through Awareness and Advocacy

IBM Amplify sheds light on customer engagementDr. Jonah Berger took the stage to a round of applause during the recent IBM Amplify 2015 Conference in San Diego, where he discussed a number of pressing issues that consume the minds of marketers. Before the echoing ovation even began to soften, he started talking about how brands can better understand customer engagement.

To illustrate his point, Dr. Berger launched into an analogy game where he flashed pictures of broccoli and a cheeseburger on the screen and asked: “Which is tastier?”

Not what the audience wished was tastier, or what should be tastier, but which was more delicious? And after a vote of applause, the winner, and the point of the exercise, was clear. 

“How tasty are our messages?” Berger asked attendees. “How tasty is the way we market our products? Just like certain things are tastier to people’s stomachs, some things are tastier to people’s minds. If we understand the underlining science of consumer behavior, we can build things that are going to be more effective.”

A New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author of the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Dr. Berger is a Wharton School of Business professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition teaching and consulting, Dr. Berger specializes in a wide range of research that covers decision making, social influence, consumer behavior, and trend-setting business practices.

During his presentation, Berger spoke about how brands can generate customer loyalty and advocacy by designing better messages that utilize the power of association and face-to-face social communication. To do this, Berger stressed the need for brands to understand the science behind customer behaviors, the “why” of what works and doesn’t.

Berger’s talk centered on the importance of emotionally connecting with customers through stories.John Berger spoke about customer loyalty and advocacy

“There are two key reasons why word-of-mouth is more effective, and one is trust,” said Berger. “Whether we are talking about television ads, radio spots, print ads, even web design, people don’t trust ads as much as they trust their friends.”

This will hopefully come as no surprise to most marketers. Brands always showcase themselves in the best light possible, and consumers obviously know this.

The second major benefit of word-of-mouth advocacy marketing is more nuanced, which is the targeting benefit.

Because brands don’t initially know enough about them, finding where all the new B2B or B2C customers are is very challenging. But if brands could rely on someone else, such as the friends and family members of these elusive customers, this discovery process would become much more manageable.

“That’s what word-of-mouth does,” said Berger. “It goes through social networks like a searchlight to find the people who will find that information most relevant.”

Berger highlights a great example from Uber. The innovative mobile app and ride-sharing company recently sent out emails that offered free rides to not only current customers, but also gave them permission to pass along that same free ride offer to anybody in their social circle. This effectively turned their customers into advocates.

Berger, a data driven quantitative behavioral researcher and scientist by day, noted that, on average, referred customers demonstrate a 20% higher lifetime value than business that comes in off the street.

By turning them into advocates, brands can get their customers to do the work for them. Of course, the big question is exactly how to do that, and Berger cautions marketers from immediately looking toward the Internet as the answer. Currently, only 7% of word-of-mouth customer referrals come from online or social media sources. Social media is a very useful tool, but it is still only one tool. Most referrals still happen in person.

“As we have gone from technology bandwagon to technology bandwagon, we have forgotten about something much more important,” said Berger. “The psychology. Why are people talking?

For more than 10 years, Berger has asked this very question. By studying thousands of pieces of content and tens of thousands of brands, Berger reveals the process in six parts, which were called S.T.E.P.P.S. This acronym stands for social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical value, and stories. These considerations come together to help brands become top-of mind, which, for Berger, is even more crucial than being liked.

“Too often markers are overly concerned with how much they are liked, thinking being liked is enough to drive a purchase,” Berger said. “We measure things like NPS and we think it is all about liking, but NPS is not a measure of word-of-mouth. It’s only a measure of how much people like you. It is not a measure of whether they actually talk about you or not.”

While many may see these concepts as intertwined, Berger notes the crucial difference.

“To actually promote somebody to talk about a brand and to make a purchase, people have to first be thinking about the brand,” said Berger. “Otherwise it doesn’t matter.”

If a customer is not thinking about something, they are not going to take an action. To make sure brands come to mind, Berger offered a bit of advice that comes from the underlying psychology of consumer behavior. He wants brands to find and latch onto the associations that people can naturally draw with brands.

He offers the timeless example of peanut butter. When most people think of peanut butter, even with no further prompting, the second thing that immediately jumps to mind is jelly.

“Psychology is beneath that association,” Berger said. “It is not random or luck. Peanut butter is jelly’s trigger. And so I ask you, very simply, to find your ‘peanut butter?’ What is that thing in the environment that will remind people of you, even when you are not around? If your brand can come to mind every time that ‘peanut butter’ is around, the brand will be thought of more often.”

Brands need to find these links. When they do, it will enable more top-of-mind frequency, increased word-of-mouth consumer behavior, and, ultimately, greater customer engagement.

About the Author: Mark Johnson

Mark is CEO & CMO of Loyalty360. He has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs.

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