You're a marketer. You spend countless hours measuring, analyzing and strategically planning ways to "build a better mousetrap." If you think you know what's going on inside your customers' head, Liz Crawford will challenge you to think again. Liz Crawford, author and analyst, has over twenty years' experience in brand management and consulting with a concentration in strategic innovation. We recently co-hosted a webinar with Liz, examining key concepts from her book The Shopper Economy: The New Way to Achieve Marketplace Success by Turning Behavior into Currency. In this webinar, Liz explains the changing consumer behavior and defines "value transactions" that illustrate your customers' ever-growing role in their relationships with brands.
Marketing used to facilitate a customer transaction with a brand, generally one that occurred before a sale. At the time, marketers 'rewarded' customer relationships by delivering a good or service. Today, it's no longer enough to simply reward your customers for buying your product. Consumers want a reward for their behavior as well.
In the webinar, Liz examines the transformed relationship of buyer and seller, likening it to one of employee / employer. By building marketing strategies with this framework in mind, we can create "value transactions" that effectively reward customers based on their behaviors. As an example, Liz points out that Motorola rewards customers with one minute of additional phone time for watching a one-minute advertisement. In this example, customers are rewarded for a particular behavior: their attention to an asset Motorola considers valuable, hence a "value transaction." She cites multiple instances of companies seeking a certain behavior, such as customer attention, participation, advocacy, commitment, before reciprocating with an appropriate reward like PayPal cash, gift cards, exclusive access to content, earning a desired item, and discounts.
As Liz would advise, customers understand their elevated level of influence and control over brands, citing a Dunkin' Donuts example to illustrate the premise. When Dunkin' Donuts customers were promised a free K-Cup for "Liking" a Facebook page and did not receive one, they voiced their disappointment. They expected a reward for their action and took action to get noticed by commenting on the Dunkin' Donuts Facebook page. This elicited a fast response from Dunkin' Donuts to fix the problem.
I know what you are thinking - rewarding customers for actions other than buying your products can be really costly. As Liz shares, you don't have to break the bank when rewarding your customers for more than their purchases - on the contrary, you can and will make more money if you approach the new Shopper Economy right. For an in-depth examination of how a number of socially savvy brands are effectively targeting behaviors and developing meaningful and measurable relationships with their customers - watch The Shopper Economy webinar recording here. You can also download chapter 1 of The Shopper Economy here.We guarantee you'll learn some great new ideas and ways to identify key behaviors to effectively elevate your sales strategy to encompass these insights. Don't forget to tell us your key takeaways on Twitter at #AwarenessTips.