The positive experience of our clients is something basic to know how to differentiate ourselves from the competition. We have to find a way to say: "here I am", differentiating ourselves by value and setting the price that turns your project or idea into a viable and empathic business.
Daniel Marote, director of Hydra Digital, joined us on April 6, 2019, at ProMarketing Day to tell us how to do it. In this annual event, we bring together marketing professionals to talk about Digital Marketing, Branding, social media strategies, sales campaigns, SEO, and Online Advertising.
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The secret to a good user experience
Daniel began his presentation by presenting the case of this well-known coffee brand, which began, like most successful brands, "from the bottom up" and started with a simple idea: sell coffee in bulk.
The year 1971. Three friends passionate about coffee decided to open a store to sell in bulk. They admired and respected the origin of each grain. The ground and roasted it so that their clients could prepare a delicious coffee to their liking at home.
Business was good… Until a fourth man arrived. This man revolutionized the business by "taking coffee to the streets," and making them the world's largest coffee company through differentiation.
Howard Schultz was that fourth man who wanted to sell ready-to-drink coffee, in addition to bulk. He dared to break the mold, betting on growing and differentiating himself.
The founders did not approve of the idea at first. However, when the company focused on offering a complete customer experience around the world of coffee… then, yes: it succeeded.
It is likely that, like many of us, you have also tried one of its famous coffees. Daniel alluded to the Starbucks brand, a great success story thanks to the customer experience it offers its users.
The importance of respecting your brand values
30 years after this refocus, the coffee chain became the largest in the world, with approximately 29,000 coffee shops in 70 countries.
Despite this, the path was not without difficulties, as you can imagine, in fact, in 2007 the chain collapsed tremendously in the stock market.
According to Howard, the downfall was because they forgot about their two most important values:
Empathy with your employees.
Empathy with your customers.
To recover what was lost, Howard dedicated himself to visiting, every week and for more than 30 years, 25 stores of the chain. He wanted to talk with the employees and gain a close understanding of the entire process of service, purchase, and enjoyment of the product. And that was the key to designing the customer experience that would be the basis for its recovery, growth, and expansion.
How to grow in the market without lowering prices
Daniel was part of the team that launched the brand in Spain and Portugal on a digital level in 2010. And he told us that they found themselves with a strong barrier to overcome.
When it landed in Spain, the brand sold coffee 3 times more expensive than the average in the country.
However, instead of choosing the price variable and attacking it—something that was not only counterproductive but also unfeasible—they aimed at an opposite strategy.
Through the customer experience and through a strategy that aimed to pay for the value received —and not for the cost—, the brand became a coffee reference in Spain and Portugal just one year later.
[Tweet “It wasn't about selling coffee. It was about selling the experience around the world of coffee -@daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY»]
But, to better understand the situation, let's take a closer look at what the price, value, and differentiation variables are all about.
Price and cost VS value and differentiation
If 78% of brands disappeared tomorrow, no one would likely miss them.
But if a brand as famous as the one Daniel told us about disappeared, many people would cry. And I would cry because I would no longer have access to the brand experience it offers.
[Tweet “Be different and relevant through the experience you offer to your client – @daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY”]
You can reach people and draw their attention through what they perceive, what they experience, and, above all, what you transmit. In other words, it's not just about the price: it's about offering different and relevant experiences.
How to choose the best strategy for your brand
If you look at the history of the coffee brand, the "fourth man" never thought about cost, nor was he limited by the price that already existed in the market. He focused on the value he brought through the user experience. And, most importantly, he knew how to find and communicate why he was different from his competitors.
The pricing strategy is that a competitor begins to lower prices so that they buy from him. Then someone else does the same thing. The competition responds by lowering its prices, and so on…until no one wins and all competitors are “up in the water”.
On the other hand, the differentiation strategy is explained by a statistic that says that 87% of consumers say they are willing to pay more money for a better experience.
And the interesting thing is to see that 92% of users are willing to pay more money —in fact, up to 40% more— for a product that generates a positive impact on society.
This shows that the important thing is not only the product but the "everything" that it implies for the client.
But what is a customer experience?
An experience is absolutely everything that makes your client feel or think.
It encompasses any point of contact, moment, or relationship between the user and our brand, from contact in search engines through SEO to face-to-face contact with a company worker.
[Tweet “Experience is anything we make the customer feel or think – @daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY”]
If that experience is positive, we will be getting closer to him and his life. But if it is negative, he will look for another option.
The customer experience cycle
Daniel then went on to list the stages of a customer's experience with a brand. Which could be summarized in 7 steps.
Below we will get to know these phases in-depth and how to approach them.
1. Discovery
Discovering a product is equivalent to generating that first contact that catches a potential customer. It is the moment when your audience realizes that you exist, and you have achieved the first goal: to draw their attention and make them notice you.
For this reason, Daniel stressed that it is the perfect time to capture your client's curiosity and get him to listen to you.
2. Learning
After discovering you as a brand, they need to know more before trusting you. He will investigate you and open his own "satellite dish" to understand what he can achieve with you.
[Tweet "The user is concerned about being able to identify with a brand @daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY"]
It is vital that, in this phase, you transmit the message in a clear, concise, and differentiating way, through a powerful value proposition.
3. Consideration
When he has learned what is necessary to understand the value of your offer, the client thinks if it is what he wants, what he is interested in, or what he needs.
At this point, your decision-making process begins.
4. Comparison
Here begins the first screening and the comparison with the rest of the available options. At this time you should ask yourself a series of questions: What do you offer compared to what the rest of the market offers? What do you have that your competition doesn't?
[Tweet «Any relational moment we can have with a user is part of the experience – @daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY»]
You must bear in mind that you will position yourself in the mind of your audience according to how your value proposition has penetrated in the previous step.
5. Social
As we approach the moment of consumption, the filter becomes more definitive. Once he decides that he is interested in you, he seeks to respond to what his trusted people say about you and your brand.
Word of mouth, recommendations, and the opinions of friends and family. At this stage, there is little you can do. It is your past deeds that speak for you.
6. Time of consumption
Here you have the critical moment, so forgotten in business: the transaction, the experience, the exchange. If you fail here, all of the above will have been for nothing.
EXAMPLE
At this point, Daniel cited an example so that the attendees could better understand the process.
Imagine that you get one of your ideal clients to complete the previous cycle thanks to your investment in marketing, and he enters your store, ready to buy from you.
Everything seems to be going well... until the person serving him makes a bad face, doesn't listen to him, or isn't nice to him. As a consequence, the customer decides that he better not buy, walks out the door empty-handed and you are left with a poker face.
You've lost a sale—and all the previous investment that would have generated it—by neglecting a critical moment.
That is, we must take advantage of the critical moment of consumption. Take care of every detail from the moment the customer walks through the door, directly to buy the product until they leave, happy and with their purchase made.
7. Expression
After the moment of consumption, the customer will generate their own opinion of the experience. And be careful: it is the one you will share with more people who may not know anything about you.
Again, here is your experience that will speak for you. And you know what happens with negative opinions.
[Tweet “When an experience is negative, we are four times more likely to share it than if it is positive – @daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY”]
And this is dangerous ground because if another customer discovers the brand through a negative experience, they will probably freak out and not look for you.
Expert brands in User Experience
All this customer experience has a human meaning, a psychological order, and a logical connection. However, when designing ours, it is not so easy to take references.
It is not realistic to look at your navel and only focus on what matters to you, as a manager. It is also not reliable to think about what your competition starts, because it can be wrong in the same way as you.
To eliminate this bias, Daniel invited us to learn from one of his favorite brands: Apple.
When the apple brand launched it's famous "Think Different", it divided the world into two: those who thought differently and those who continued to think as usual.
Apple's magic question was: "Which side do you want to be on?" It turned out to be a brilliant strategy.
Like Apple, Uber, Cabify, Airbnb, or Google itself, they have been able to find the secret to adding value to their customers.
Take a look at the experience they design for their users:
Apple presents a clean, simple, clean, and white screen. It places a button in the center, and it says touch me.
Google repeats strategy, and on its wonderful clear, simple, and easy screen it tells us "search here".
How to generate a good user experience?
Like emotional marketing, empathy works between people, not between machines. And empathy with the client is worked for hand in hand with the employees.
[Tweet "The machines will never be able to supplant empathy – @daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY"]
Employees materialize the ideas, values , and mission of the business, connecting humanly with customers.
How to attract new customers
You will agree with me that an employee who treats you with empathy inspires you with positive energy, which feeds and improves your experience as a customer. It is something that is felt, perceived, and appreciated.
Well, the secret behind empathic and positive employees lies in who leads them. As Daniel said, we must bear in mind that happy employees generate happy customers.
[Tweet "If you're working on a site as an employee, and you don't feel like being on that site, you'd better go and find a place where you can feel like it – @daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY"]
A leader does not motivate people, because motivation is intrinsic and must be brought within. A leader's job is to "get out in front and pull the cart" so that employees feel they are being guided toward a common goal.
The role of companies in this cycle of customer experience is to be facilitators of the exchange and empathic experience that is generated between employees and customers. Almost nothing, right?
The 4 pillars of GIP companies (Positive Impact Generators)
Happy employees with leaders to guide them often make a positive impact on the world through the customer experience they achieve for their companies.
Daniel called these companies GIP, or Positive Impact Generators and they have a series of common pillars that we will see below.
1. Have a purpose
The purpose of a company is like the purpose of a person. Getting up every day with a purpose in mind is creating a path that has no end, that you will never get bored of and that will always keep you going with continuity, motivation, and consistency.
[Tweet “You have to know why you were born, why you came, or what you are going to contribute while you are here – @daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY”]
Find your purpose as a company to connect with people in a transcendental way and generate a positive, true impact that keeps you on the path with your employees and your clients in a sustainable way.
Don't expect them to give it to you. Your purpose —and that of your company, of course— you have to create.
2. Be a "centric person"
Being person-centric means thinking about people before the product. That is why, a few decades ago, a product was invented and, once invented, someone was looking for someone to “put it on”. Today we are looking for a problem in a niche of people and, based on that, we find a product that provides a solution. No or vice versa.
Be central to you too. Put people at the center of your company and detect what they need to find a useful, profitable, and effective product that helps them improve their lives.
3. Conscious leadership
Conscious leadership breaks with the traditional image of the boss sitting behind a table, with the whip in his hand and goading his employees.
Gone is the image of the unbearable boss whom workers fear, respect, and avoid in equal measure. Being a good boss implies being a good leader, that your employees trust you and share the same purpose with you.
[Tweet «The conscious leader is to serve, and not to be served – @daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY»]
As we mentioned before, the good leader —the conscientious one, not the dictator with a whip— does not need to motivate people or be behind them so that they work. The good leader goes ahead, grabs the rope, and pulls the car with the whole team so that the focus does not go out and the rhythm continues towards a goal that is completed by walking every day.
4. Conscious company culture
The conscious company culture implies taking care of the emotional part of a company. Think of your company as a system divided into interconnected subsystems: all systems must hook up well for the overall system to work.
If you ignore the emotional part, you will make it difficult for your team to flow when someone makes a mistake, hesitates, or does not achieve the objectives at first.
On the other hand, if you take it into account, you will make the people who work with you feel loved, protected, and safe, because people are made of emotions.
This can be difficult because most of us have been raised not to tolerate error. We have been told that making mistakes “is wrong”. And this suddenly stops any possibility of innovation, creativity, and progress.
The truth about customer experience
As an example, the expert alluded to Steve Jobs. He indicated that he also had his own idea of innovation which was summed up as:
"Fix what they don't like. Learn about what they love. Give them something they didn't expect and they won't be able to live without it." Steve Jobs.
The plague of SPAM
Daniel did not leave a puppet with a head. And SPAM could not be less. Most people think this is an Internet-only thing, because the concept started with an email.
The term SPAM refers to all those messages not requested by a user that interrupt or annoy him.
SPAM is annoying everywhere, and includes all possible situations, from companies getting into your mailbox without your request, to those that call you at 10:00 p.m. and ask if you are the line holder.
[Tweet “Spam drives you away from the user. Change the chip with your business and transmit in another way – @daniel_marote #PROmarketingDAY »]
Think of a new format: do not dedicate yourself to selling soft drinks, selling clothes, or selling mobile phones.
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