A brand's job used to be easy back in the day: make a product, put some ads on TV, outspend your competitors, increase top-of-mind awareness and increase revenues. Prospects would become customers, rave to all their friends about the cool new product they bought, getting them to try it in turn. Once you got someone to purchase, repurchase happened frequently, as many product categories were less saturated with options. In many (but not all) categories, choosing to purchase a category led to choosing the one well-known incumbent who had the biggest TV budget. This, of course, is a gross oversimplification, but you get the point...

As more and more competitors entered (especially in less defensible product categories), store shelves became more inundated with more choices than you (the consumer) could even process. Making a brand choice became less straightforward, and as more and more brands put out their messaging, the more confusing the noise became. To make matters even more complicated for brands, the advent of digital and social media initiatives meant that getting mindshare no longer involved big TV budgets. Word of mouth, which has always been able to make or break your marketing efforts, now can spread faster and further than before. Moreover, customers trust each other more and brands less, per Edelman's trust barometer, and to really move the needle, you increase awareness via brand advocates, not your own messaging. Although advocacy and loyalty are separate concepts, they are inextricably interrelated: although advocates are sometimes non-users, the loyal users who are also advocates are more credible.

How do you get people to become advocates of your brand? How do you get people to purchase and repurchase? Through great experience, of course! You can't simply buy your way into customer loyalty. How do you provide the right experience, you may ask? It's important to remember that it's not just about any one touchpoint between your company and your customer; rather it's about all of them. Let's examine some of these touchpoints:

Knowledgebase and resources:

Investment in content is paramount, as it's often the way customers find you. Make sure you create lots of content in various formats: blogs, video, photos, forum entries, how-to tutorials, etc. Your content strategy is aimed at answering various information needs of your customers. Make sure your content is also searchable and leverage other customers' and community members' expertise. Just make sure you do it for the right reasons: not because you are too lazy to create content, but rather because your customers' perspectives are just as valuable, if not more. If you can become truly helpful and provide consistently excellent content, customers will follow the virtual breadcrumbs to your product and service.

Marketing:

When the prospect finds your content, how do you create the connection between it and the service you are providing? When the user discovers your excellent blog, and clicks over to your site to learn more, is the website copy clear and concise? Does it truly compel to act? Even though social media has changed the concept of messaging forever, you still need to communicate your value proposition clearly.

Purchase:

It's paradoxical that many companies still have a cumbersome purchasing process. Once the customer decides that she wants to purchase your product, it needs to be easy to do. You have come so far in drumming up interest; don't squander it away by making the purchase onerous. The demo, trial and purchase processes need to be clearly outlined: whether you go through a sales person or via DIY on the web. The customer needs to know how things work, how long it will take to purchase and install, and how much the product costs.

Product:

As the customer purchases and starts using the product, her experience with it is going to dictate repurchase, continued engagement, loyalty and advocacy. If the product performs in the promised and expected fashion, solving the customer need, she will continue to support you and tell her network about you.

Collaboration:

The social customer expects her voice to be heard and her feedback to show up in the product roadmap. What I am speaking of is beyond a simple "thank you for your feedback, we are submitting this to our product team" type of note. Today's social customer needs more transparency, via a more constant feedback loop. This loop is going to keep the customer updated on the status of the request, as well as allow other customers to "flesh out" the suggestion and build on the idea. For expert customers who can provide deeper feedback, a more intimate collaboration is going to be appropriate. Whatever you do, you need to listen, understand and act on the feedback, which is actually harder in practice than in theory.

Support:

Last, and definitely not least, is the support experience. Inevitably, your customers are going to have questions and issues, whether they are demoing the product or have decided to purchase it. Service is the new marketing, and the social channels highlight these service interactions in a very public fashion. They can now become many-to-many vs. one-to-one.

Getting the initial trial or purchase is only half the battle. Repurchase behavior is definitely the more difficult part, and you can only do that successfully if you can get the customer experience right. Let the customer take the lead and tell you where and how she needs you; all you need to do is listen, learn and apply what you learned. Easy enough, right?! :)