Marketing For Dummies. McMurtry Jeanette

who chose the same product or brand they did, post decision on social media to get more validation, and so on.

      ❯❯ Assignment of loyalty: A brand experience doesn’t stop after the purchase. It continues as consumers use the product and access the resources available, such as customer service and technical support.

      You must address all these decision steps in your marketing plan and customer experience strategy. The following sections walk you through how you can integrate each one into a concerted, mapped‐out marketing plan.

       Guiding the decision process with customer experience planning

      Charles Graves, mentor of author Jeanette McMurtry, offered this great piece of marketing advice: “Consumers don’t want to be sold; they want to be told.” In other words, they want to be told what is in their best interests so that they can make informed decisions. When marketers educate rather than sell, they become trusted partners, not just suppliers and vendors, which often leads to lifetime value and loyalty (discussed in detail in Chapter 16).

      Education‐based marketing is not only a strong marketing communications strategy, but it is also a sound customer experience strategy. Providing guidance, decision support, and information for each step of a customer’s experience with your product and brand can help set you apart from the competition. Here are some customer experience activities that can help you succeed at this important task.

      ❯❯ Problem or need identification: If you’re selling computers, your plan may include white papers and educational materials for a content marketing plan that you execute online via social and digital channels. You can read more about this in Chapters 7 and 8.

      ❯❯ Discovery: If you’ve done your customer research as mapped out in Chapter 4, you know what matters most to consumers shopping for home computers today, and you likely know how involved the decision process is. You can tap into this stage of the decision process by creating how‐to guides or checklists to help consumers make wise choices and posting links to those guides on social media ads (discussed in Chapter 8) and direct marketing initiatives (outlined in Chapter 10).

      ❯❯ Evaluation: You can increase support for your brand and product line by engaging influencer marketing so that others are endorsing your products and validating your claims. We cover tips for content that you can share via influencers, such as bloggers and media writers, in Chapter 7. You can also engage in emotional selling practices to get prospective buyers to recognize the emotional or personal outcomes you offer, which are known to secure sales for both B2B and B2C. Tactics for emotional selling propositions (ESPs) are outlined in Chapter 16.

      ❯❯ Purchase: After you’ve secured a purchase, your job isn’t done. You need to continue to communicate your emotional and functional value and invite customers to engage with you on a great journey through the communities you build and causes you support. You’ve read about this already in this chapter and can get more information on how to do this in Chapter 5 on marketing plans and Chapter 12 on building brand communities and hives to which customers want to align.

      ❯❯ Confirmation, reassurance, and loyalty: Again, building hives or communities is critical here as well. Sending customers thank‐you notes, inviting them to join VIP programs for rewards, and sending them digital games to play that reward them as well are all key marketing tactics to create loyalty and capture lifetime value. We discuss these programs in Chapter 8.

       Creating powerful experiences beyond the sales process

      Customer experiences clearly start with the sales process, as outlined earlier in this chapter, but your marketing plan must address a bigger journey after you close the sale that builds loyalty, referrals, and of course captures lifetime value. As part of your customer experience strategy, you need to map out your customer’s journey or the steps necessary from first sale to lifetime value that you need to address.

      Again, a customer’s journey encompasses the steps you must take and deliver upon at every touch point. For example:

      ❯❯ How do you thank or recognize customers for their purchases?

      ❯❯ How do you resolve conflict when you’re right or wrong?

      ❯❯ How do you validate customers’ decisions to continue purchasing from you?

      ❯❯ How do you reward them for loyalty and referrals?

      ❯❯ How do you engage them in meaningful activities, causes, and so on?

      The purpose of a customer journey is to build and maintain emotional bonds with your brand and get customers to refer others. To do this most effectively for your brand, it helps to look at the most powerful affiliations people have in their lives that aren’t associated with purchase of products or services. Not to be politically incorrect or controversial, but these are your political and religious affiliations. In many cases, people don’t know why they believe what they believe or take the stand they do on social issues other than somewhere, someone taught them to believe a certain way or embrace certain values. Right or wrong is not the issue.

      The issue is that people hold powerful beliefs that guide them, and they make life‐lasting choices and decisions based on these values and beliefs. People’s commitment to their chosen organization is so strong that they commit their time and even money to organizations that don’t give anything in return but intangibles, such as hope, faith, and anticipations of rewards if they stay the course and further the cause.

      Experiences that keep people faithful to belief structures and value systems are present in all religious and political organizations despite how different they may be. For example, the same tenets are present in Christianity and all the various churches within this genre, Buddhism, Judaism, Islamism, and so on. These tenets exist in political organizations, too. These include symbolism, sensory appeal, promises, community, and rituals.

      Successful brands integrate these same tenets. Think of your favorite brands. Note how they embrace these tenets. Apple is a great example of a brand using these cornerstones of religion to create a faithful following. Here’s how:

      ❯❯ Symbolism: The simple Apple icon recognizable by most consumers worldwide represents creativity, innovation, and personal power to communicate, self‐express, create, and enjoy music and other forms of entertainment.

      ❯❯ Sensory appeal: Apple’s products appeal to people’s senses by delivering music and videos with ease and giving them the chance to create their own creative and media events, which appeal to even more senses.

      ❯❯ Promises: People believe and experience the promise of quality and innovation and novelty as Apple releases new applications and capabilities.

      ❯❯ Community: Apple has many communities you can join online, such as iTunes, and has become a community itself through market penetration. Many people you know own Apple devices, and you can easily exchange ideas, tips, and enthusiasm.

      ❯❯ Ritual: Shopping at an Apple Store is a fun ritual. You have a cool setting to explore products; you’re assigned your own personal assistant when you walk in the door; your transactions are done causally via a hand scanner, not at a sterile divisive counter, so you feel more engaged with your assistant; and you can sign up for the Genius Bar and get one‐to‐one attention.

      How can you create religious‐like events and thus loyalty for your brand? This book is full of ideas for doing