How to Create Customer Intimacy with Content

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I started thinking about the idea of creating customer intimacy after reading Kevin Roberts book, Lovemarks six years ago, when it was first published. Roberts described the characteristics of intimacy as commitment, empathy, and passion.

Those are great to have when dealing with people. Companies can demonstrate those qualities by hiring and training people willing to go to the mat for customers, and able to communicate so in real time.

Despite the widespread popularity of using social media for businesses to humanize the purchasing and service experience, Frank Eliason from Comcast continues to be the most widely cited example. That's because he engages at a personal level, demonstrating commitment, empathy and passion.

Not every business can afford a person dedicated to responding and engaging. What do you do then?

How do you affect that KPI?

Customer conversations are still not tracked as closely in a business Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or key part of its measurable objectives. If your objective is to: "Increase average revenue per customer from abc to xyz by date", "average revenue per customer" is the KPI.

Conversation can help you when there is a potential support issue. It can also support customer activation with content.

Mitch Joel has some good ideas about the new marketing conversation. Publishing is pervasive now, and marketing has traditionally been associated with the promotional end of things, which you could consider a type of publishing. Modern marketing is rediscovering the integrated nature of marketing.

Where do marketers go from there? About the last thing most marketers need is putting more hours towards the creation of what amounts to a new product. I wonder, does the post mix tactics with strategy?

Define your strategy

As Shannon Paul wrote recently, strategy is what is behind all tactics.

When I met her as President of IKEA North America, Pernille Lopez said it best -- you can copy what others are doing, without knowing what's behind it, you may not succeed. How can copying give you customer intimacy and engagement, since you're not being yourself?

This is the main reason why while benchmarks, best practices, and case studies are helpful as a framework for thinking, they will never tell you what you should do. You're not them. You don't employ the same people, you don't have the same customers, partners, brand perception, and so on.

Social media is a whisper

Putting in place content automation tools is a great thing for scale and tracking. To achieve customer intimacy, especially if you're not enjoying it at the moment, you may need a bit more activation to engage people.

The Frank Eliason way is one way. He didn't just put out periodical tweets with links to helpful posts on your cable service or to the self service forum. He got out there and responded to messages from customers -- not tomorrow, not when the next service rep was available. He did that in real time, at the moment of need.

What is louder than a shout? You may consider what he did personally, one on one, a mere whisper, given the scale of the company's customer base. Yet, all those actions added up to the company's second shot at reputation in the marketplace. Which made deposits in the engagement and thus KPI department.

Content is your friend

Content is another, viable way. Think of content as a social object. As we've been discussing in our series on writing content for the buyer's decision journey, connections do happen through information, research, ideas, news, and more. There is no market for your message means stop talking about your product.

Instead, start talking about what problems you help solve for customers. Make them the heroes, help them be smarter, better informed, more effective in their work. You may have been working on your blog for a month or two and wondering: what works to attract readers?

From my experience, it's about writing content that addresses their issues, setting and keeping to expectations, and sharing your best tips. Buyers have become more sophisticated thanks to marketers -- you spot promotion over substance in a heartbeat.

Customer intimacy is achievable with content in any medium. However, don't forget its companion -- timely communication. Without it, you may be losing sight of your ultimate strategy, which I'm sure is your flavor of winning in the marketplace.

3 things you can do today

If your customer service is broken, or your product is broken, you need to fix that first. However, many of you are probably just a bit worried that this blogging and social media thing will be a big time suck. The tools are your friend.

1. Determine the kind of problems you help your customers solve

2. Find out what online destinations your customers prefer

3. Make sure your content is relevant to your customers 100% of the time

There are ways to make your content sticky. You can still be all business and achieve customer intimacy with content. Be on target, insist on quality information, and be consistent. And, I almost forgot, you don't need to have dozens of comments to each post for your content to create intimacy.

I was overwhelmed by the kindness of people I had not heard from ever in the comments here while at SxSWi. Your content is top notch, they told me, it helps me think through what to do next. Social media makes me approachable. The main reason why I was approached was the content I offer.

***

Even with Twitter chats, if you ask them, people will tell you they don't really want engagement, it's an outcome, a nice additional benefit, not their main goal. What they want is content they can use to do smarter stuff, better.

Do you think it's participation that creates intimacy? What about engagement? Weigh in!

© 2010 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Comments

[andrew @ TMG]

Great post, first of all.

To your question,"Do you think it's participation that creates intimacy? What about engagement?" I think the answer is undoubtedly "yes."

Today at lunch, when many of us will go out to grab a sandwich, we'll be more likely to go to the place that remembers our name, asks us sincere questions, and seems to actually care, instead of the place that points to the menu and ushers us through like cattle.

Sure, sometimes we buy lunch based on convenience or impulse, but if given the choice, we'll opt for the place with the personal touch. And when it comes to recommending an establishment to others? It's almost always going to be the place that made us feel like they care.

The same is true for brands on the web. Customers, at the end of the day, have many choices. The key is making them feel good about choosing you. People buy from people they like, and it's tough to like a brick wall with an advertisement on it. It's easier to like a friendly person.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Andrew:

I do the same with restaurants -- hospitality industry overall is high touch, as it should be. What if you don't have a chance to have direct contact with customers though? Can you write content that lets you know you care? I think you can (hence the post :)

We buy from people we like -- Geoffrey Gitomer. He knows a thing or two about sales.

[Peter]

I'm so confused.

Why is it that businesses need to care about the customer as an individual but customer need only care about what's in it for them?

How is that intimate or the basis of a mature relationship.

I think we show we care both as customers and sellers when we help each other to be our best. For example, when someone sells me a bad coffee, I'll tell them not because I had a bad experience but because their future might depend on knowing that.

The funny thing is that I go back not because there coffee has improved but because I have an emotional investment in the place. ( as too in this site). In fact I care less about how they make me feel, what makes me feel really good is that I care about someone else. In my view, this is the untapped well of corporate sustainability.

I guess what I'm saying is that great content can show you care about the customer but it will only lead to "intimacy" and the commercial benefit of it if you help your customers to care for you.

Ironically, the more we feed the customer's selfishness the more likely your business may be unsustainable. Or may be not.

By the way, how do we help you be your best?

[Adrian Swinscoe]

Hi Valeria,
Great post.

Some content promotes engagement and intimacy and some doesn't. I think that you are right that not having lots of comments does not mean that you are not creating intimacy maybe what you are creating is trust and that can be measured by people returning again and again.

Adrian
http://www.adrianswinscoe.com/blog/

[Online Reputation Management]

Great post! Reagarding your question, I think over time loyal engagement brings with it a level of intimacy in the realtionship between customers and brands. It is about how a brand can take advantage of human emotions and manipulate them, how they can make their brand part of someone's life..and that is not by giving them what they want, offering them a unique experience.

[Courtney]

I am a big lover of engagement and participation because I feel like the companies are coming to me. It isn't a sales pitch but help answering a question. For instance, I put on Twitter once that I had some eye trouble and a doctor responded. I DM'd with him for a while. If he had been a general practitioner I would have changed doctors but I still think of him first when I have a health question.
I guess I am a lead for that doctor. He used engagement on social media to find new clients even if he as never asked me to come in it created trust.
I would like to encourage people to use social media not just in B2C but in B2B situations as well.
I know White Horse is doing a webinar on how to use social media as a lead generation tool for B2B. It gives options on how to make the process more effective and easier. If you are interested register here: http://bit.ly/aBa6g3
I think it can show you how that social "whisper" can become a sold product.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Peter - we're bad customers. In fact, as customers we suck. As businesses though we have the increasing challenge of attracting customers amidst a sea of choices. Hence why a whisper -- and not a pitch, even when done with a conversational intro -- may work better. Great content can help you connect with your customers, which is where caring comes in. Helping me? Comments, dialogue, critical thinking. I was made for conversation. Love it!

@Adrian - we generally find fewer things to say when we're busy doing. I love it when people get ideas I share here done. Love hearing about them, of course. That's why we have an "about you" page.

@Online Reputation - "manipulate" is such an exploitative term. Your comment is confusing.

@Courtney - darn, wish I have publicized my own educational Webinar. You beat me to it!

[Peter]

I'm still confused ( but that's a good thing - its a signal that I'm about to learn something).

[Ivan Walsh]

On a similar theme, I read an interview with Stevie Wonder where he said in the 60s white guys would come to Detroit to get the sound of Motown. It never worked.

The sound wasn’t in the studios or the wall or the concrete... it was in the musicians.

< you can copy what others are doing, without knowing what's behind it, you may not succeed.

There’s plenty of people out there hoping to ‘fake it til they make it’ and that’s their life – but who wants to live that life?

Life is short. make the most of it now.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Peter - they do tell me I can be confusing.

@Ivan - unless you let what you learn change the way you think and the way you operate your business.