I spent much of this past week in San Diego at my first Social Media Marketing World conference. Thousands of professionals ranging from entrepreneurs attempting to build a business to executives with the world’s most formidible brands joined together to hear speakers (including me!) and dialog with one another about the future of marketing.
The common theme was a basic and impactful one: connect with customers through emotion and humanity.
If you’ve followed my work, you know I was writing about this over fifteen years ago in my first book, “ALL Business is Show Business!” Any effort in show business succeeds only when it creates the desired emotional connection with the audience. A drama makes you sad, mad, or scared…a comedy makes you laugh and joyful.
I’d strongly suggest to you that the same is true in your business. You’ll succeed when you create the desired emotional connection with your “audience” (in business, we call them “customers” and “prospects”) in a compelling manner.
The significant problem is that few have really examined how they want their customers to FEEL. We know we want them to BUY. We hope they’ll REPEAT their business. We pray they’ll REFER their friends.
However — in most cases — we haven’t really focused specifically on how we want customers to FEEL…which is the major determinating factor in whether or not they’ll BUY, REPEAT, and REFER.
Start today.
Ask yourself — and your team:
how we make our customers feel today,
how we want them to feel,
and how we close the gap between our current reality and our desired outcome.
When you create the emotional bonding that you desire and customers crave, you’ll probably find that everything else will work out just fine for you and your organization.
Still not convinced that ALL business is “show business”?
Indulge me for a moment and think of your business as a movie studio.
Are you Columbia, 21st Century Fox, Warner Bros., or Paramount Pictures?
Do you have a smaller budget and stick to mostly independent movies?
Or are you writing, producing, editing, and directing everything by yourself?
Regardless of whether you’re producing blockbusters that don’t scrimp on CGI — or quirky indie films — there are some incredible lessons to be learned from how show business create their products and why you could adopt the same business model.
Customer Service vs. Customer Experience
Imagine a theatre that has reclining seats and footrests, freshly popped popcorn, and state-of-the-art 3D glasses. Now, what do you think will happen if, despite all the perks and comfort, an absolutely terrible movie is played?
The thing is, audiences are willing to forgive lousy service as long as the movie is awesome. However, they’re not willing to forget how terrible a movie experience was simply because their feet were comfortable and elevated during the screening.
An executive once bragged to me before a recent presentation that they had improved their “service” levels. To prove his point, he stated they were now answering the phone before the third ring and delivered product orders within 48 hours.
So why weren’t his customers becoming more loyal?
Perhaps it’s because it didn’t matter to the customer how quickly their call was answered or how soon they got their order. What mattered was the quality of the actual call and how the product made them feel.
What’s the point of answering the call by the second ring if the person on the other line isn’t able to serve the customer with a memorable, personalized experience?
What’s the point of delivering an order the very next day if the product isn’t all that it was hyped up to be?
Your customer’s measuring stick for efficiency may be entirely different from yours.
And if you’re not aligned with your customer’s expectations, then you’re never going to meet their needs. Customer service and customer experience should not be confused.
Creativity Despite Limited Resources
“The power of ideas can often compensate for the lack of size.”
The 1978 slasher flick Halloween had a $325,000 budget but went on to make $47 million at the box office.
2004’s Saw’s budget was only $1.2 million, and yet it earned $103 million.
Napoleon Dynamite’s budget was only $400,000, and it made an impressive $46 million.
Who could forget the phenomenon that was The Blair Witch Project that had a $60,000 budget but ultimately earned $140.5 million?
It doesn’t matter how large or well-funded your business is, adopting the show business philosophy can impact your future success in a major way.
The point here is that you can go a long way with superior creativity when its matched with strategic execution.
For more information, check out the book, “ALL Business is STILL Show Business!” (also in audiobook format).
