Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
How well do you know your customers: Mike Birt
72 Plays3 years ago
Marketers will tell you the importance of really knowing their customers but how many marketers actually understand their customers inside out?
Long-time marketer Mike Birt talks about the differnet approaches that marketers can take to gain customer insight.
In this episode of Marketing Spark, we talk about the importance of rewarding and nurturing customers rather than simply focusing on customer acquisition.
And Mike offers some suggestions on how to identify customer intentions and signals.
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:04
Speaker
Hi,
Introduction to Customer-Centric Marketing
00:00:05
Speaker
it's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark. How customer-centric is your marketing and sales? How well do you know your customers, and do you know how they feel and behave? And how often do you talk to your customers? Do you know them inside out? You'd be surprised by how much marketing is educated guesses rather than based on customer insight. It's marketing developed for a distant, fuzzy target rather than being laser-focused.
00:00:34
Speaker
Maybe it's because marketers are busy, lazy, or depending too much on tools and technology. Whatever the reason, it's not a smart way to operate. Your hands are tied behind your back unless you truly know your customers. On
Understanding Customer Intentions with Mike Burt
00:00:50
Speaker
today's podcast, I'm talking with Mike Burt, a longtime marketer who works with clients ranging from e-commerce brands to PR firms and nonprofits.
00:00:59
Speaker
In a recent video on LinkedIn, Mike talks about customer intentions and signals and how marketers need to see and understand what customers want and as important what they don't want. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Mike. Hey, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. First question, customer 101. Do you think that most marketers really know their customers? And if not, why not?
00:01:29
Speaker
I think a lot of marketers know their customers fairly well.
00:01:34
Speaker
So it's hard to make a wide generalization on that, but I think that most people try to and think that that is the way to really get ahead. So do they know them inside and out? Probably not. I see a lot of mistakes out there and we are, I always say it, I'm a customer, you're a customer. We're out there, even though we do marketing, we are also consumers on the web as well.
00:02:00
Speaker
And we get annoyed and irritated by things some of the brands that we interact with do. So clearly people are not knowing their customers inside and out, and they're not listening for intent and signals from people either.
Why Marketing Content Misses the Mark
00:02:13
Speaker
I find it really interesting because if you read LinkedIn posts, listen to podcasts, there's a constant refrain about knowing your customers and being customer centric and really being in touch with the people that matter. And then when it push comes to shove,
00:02:30
Speaker
Content is produced that doesn't resonate and there seems to be disconnect there seems to be a disconnect between this vision of what marketing or how marketing is supposed to operate and and what actually happens and in some cases I believe that many marketers are making educated guesses they Think they know not really Yeah, they are they're gonna throw out a wide fishing net
00:02:55
Speaker
and hope that's something that they made sticks, right? And then we'll see what happens from there. I think that's exactly right what you're saying about content and that doesn't resonate and they make it because they took a guess at what their customers might like or might want.
00:03:13
Speaker
If you go and look on a platform, say like TikTok, for example, now, right, this is where everybody's at and everyone's talking about it. When you see the most successful people there, they are not trying to be all things to everyone and hoping something sticks. They found a niche and they found a thing that they're going to do and they hammer that.
00:03:37
Speaker
and they hammer away at it and they keep hammering that because they found a thing that's working, it's resonating, and they're going to keep doing that. You don't see these people varying outside their niche saying, I've done this type of video too much. I should try something else. They don't.
00:03:52
Speaker
They
The Power of Customer Feedback
00:03:53
Speaker
will hammer hammer hammer until engagement disappears and their customers and fans start telling them, we don't like what you're doing anymore. Then they'll switch, but not before that. They listen to their fans and when their fans want more of it, they give them more of it. When their fans tell them we don't like it, they stop and they switch to something else. So you find the most successful people are the ones really out there listening and engaging. Yeah, and I think listening is a
00:04:21
Speaker
underrated skill. A lot of marketers like to talk, we like to hear ourselves talk, but listening sometimes is something they don't do because it takes discipline and it takes being very customer-centric. And one of the questions I wanted to ask you is if a company wants to be customer-centric, and that term is thrown around a lot, where and how do they start? What are the key building blocks so customer intelligence, customer insight becomes an integral part
00:04:50
Speaker
of a company's operational DNA? Well, the first thing you can look at, especially if you're an online brand, is you're looking at your customer reviews. Customers are giving you feedback. And I often hear brands and people who will say, those are the only the angry people who are going to make those comments, right? So they try to discount feedback that they don't like. And it hurts our feelings like, you know, we're all human, we don't like
00:05:16
Speaker
someone going out, you've worked your butt off for this product, and you put it out, you thought it was great. And then you get customers like, you suck, you know, that hurts, right? We don't like to hear it. But you have to hear it. And you have to have a thick skin. And and you have to listen to that stuff, right? That's a good place to start, right on your customer reviews, on your social media, what kind of comments are you getting? I used to have a brand when when I was a CMO, and we had over over a million fans on social media. So we had
00:05:45
Speaker
comments constantly. And I kind of color coded or we had kind of a heat map for how comments were going. And you can know if things were going well across the rest of your operation just by how people were commenting on whatever you're posting. So even if we were not posting something content or product related, if people were mad at us and if we were late with shipping or we had missed a deadline or something, they're going to tell us.
00:06:14
Speaker
and even this funny video that had nothing to do with what they're mad at. You can look and see people are out there giving you feedback all the time. That's passive. You can get active and just ask, how did we do today? Send them something. We all have e-mail drip campaigns. It's one of your drips, a customer satisfaction or a customer feedback e-mail. We all have post-purchase flows or processes that we're doing.
00:06:43
Speaker
Ask people for feedback. People will give you feedback. There's lots of ways to do it, but really it comes from, you have to closely monitor what people are saying about you online, and then just go and directly ask people. They've already bought from you, so they have the experience. Ask them what's happening. One of the interesting things that I find, especially when I'm doing positioning engagements, is that I'll ask an entrepreneur or CEO if I can talk to four or five, 10 of their customers. I want to find out
00:07:12
Speaker
what customers think because obviously an entrepreneur has particular bias and perspective, but you'll get something completely different from customers. And what's interesting when I do that is that many of them, well, some of them will balk because they don't want a third party consultant like myself to be talking to their customers. And then when they eventually agree because it's an integral part of how positioning happens,
00:07:39
Speaker
I'll do the interviews and then report back to the CEO. And some of the things I tell them, it's things that they'd never heard before. It's things that surprise them and sometimes trouble them because they've never taken the time to actually talk to their customers. And I find it really interesting that a company can take its customers for granted. Once
Retention vs. Acquisition Debate
00:07:57
Speaker
you've spent all that time and energy to attract them, onboard them, get them into the fold, then you assume that they're fat and happy. They don't need any tending. They don't need to be nurtured.
00:08:09
Speaker
or you don't have to market to them. Why is that? Why do companies seemingly ignore their customers? A lot of short-sightedness and there's a lot of focus on customer acquisition costs, right? There are some brands, maybe a SaaS B2B brand might talk about churn.
00:08:27
Speaker
or subscription-based companies might talk about their churn. But for the most part, everyone's on the front side of marketing, right? Because that's the sexy, that's the fun, that's where all the magic happens, right? On the front side, the acquisition side, we're out there acquiring new people, we're growing sales, aren't we awesome? And they spend a lot of time on that and they worry about their customer acquisition costs. And then they forget about lifetime value and they forget about churn.
00:08:55
Speaker
Right. It's way harder. I've always found it's far harder to acquire a new customer than it is to keep one you've already acquired. So yeah, I don't know. I see that mistake in a lot of companies too. Like you have all these customers. Why aren't.
00:09:10
Speaker
Remark it to them, get them their new products. You're offering new offers to try to acquire a new customer. What are you doing for your current customer base? You need to really take a close look at those folks, because those are your ambassadors. Those are your influencers. That's your social proof. Anything, any of those other marketing buzzwords, we can say your current customer base is all of those things. Market to them, keep them,
00:09:37
Speaker
You've already acquired them. You've paid that cost for acquisition. Now get repurchases or keep their subscription stretched out. If you had a three month goal, get them out to six. If they were repurchasing in six, can you get it to five? What can you do? There's so much you can do in marketing that's way cheaper, far cheaper to people you already have a relationship with than it is on the acquisition side, going out and reaching people who don't know you.
00:10:04
Speaker
I would highly recommend people really spend much more time than I know they do on their current customers. It's a cheaper group and they've already bought from you once, they'll probably buy again. When you were the chief marketing officer at Grunt Style,
00:10:20
Speaker
You were very, the company was very focused on a specific type of customers. That interests me because many companies have customers across the spectrum, different verticals, different sectors, but you were very niche oriented. What was your approach in terms of discovering what those type of customers wanted and how did you deliver marketing that resonated with them and serve their specific needs and interests?
00:10:46
Speaker
When it first started, and for the first several years there at Grunstyle, the customer was one tiny niche, a marine infantryman or an army infantryman. And that was it. Those were the only people we talked to.
00:11:01
Speaker
And it was that way because that's who all of us were within the company. We were primarily all veterans and mostly had served in either Marine or Army infantry. So it was us. We were speaking to an audience that we knew very well.
00:11:16
Speaker
So we know it was very niche, but then we were in this audience and we knew these customers in a way that other brands who were far bigger than us, who had way more money and could market more, could not speak with that voice that we had because we knew it because we were part of that audience too. So yeah, we were really very hyper focused on a very small niche. It's less than 1% of the military who are in the infantry.
00:11:44
Speaker
We knew we were ignoring a lot of other audiences and customer groups, but we could make a good amount of money, and certainly at the size of the company we were then, by just being very hyper-focused because we couldn't really mess that up because it's who we were.
Grunt Style's Niche Marketing Success
00:12:00
Speaker
We knew how to speak to it and we found that it worked and we just kept capturing more and more of that group. It was really successful for us and really being hyper-focused, it really helped us.
00:12:10
Speaker
learn messaging, audience, how do you talk to them? I mean, it was just, it was great. And it worked out because that's who we were. Again, the rule on our social media team, you had to actually be an infant, had to have been an infantryman. We weren't hiring people who weren't even. So we had three people on social media or four when I first started that they were all infantrymen. One was a Silver Star recipient. That guy, that was great. Nobody with any marketing experience either.
00:12:37
Speaker
No marketing degrees, no experience, but they had experience in the audience we were trying to market to, so it was very authentic. We screwed stuff up, we did stuff wrong, and we probably didn't follow any Leo Burnett rules. But we knew the audience we were trying to sell to, so they connected with us because it was authentic and it worked.
00:13:00
Speaker
I find that really interesting because your marketing team was in the shoes of your customers. They had been there, they had done that, they knew what the experience of being an infantry man was like and so they could talk the talk because they walked the walk and that's really interesting because it goes back to our original premise of really knowing your customers. But if you were the customer,
00:13:23
Speaker
then arguably you can talk to them and you can connect with them a lot easier. And maybe that's the key for many marketers. Maybe marketers have to sort of not only think like a customer, imagine what it's like to be in a customer's shoes, but actually sort of be the customer at the same time if you know what I mean. And I don't think that happens enough. I think marketers just don't have that kind of experience or don't want that kind of experience.
00:13:48
Speaker
It's a shame because I know there's a lot of pressure in marketing, right? Every month, people have metrics they have to hit, so they kind of get focused on their goals and their metrics, and then they lose that feel. I think marketers sometimes forget that they're customers too.
00:14:06
Speaker
So put yourself in those shoes, take off your marketing hat sometimes and just be a customer. Visit your website as a customer and think to yourself, why would somebody buy from us? Why are they buying from us? And if anybody is, why are they doing it? Why are they even visiting us? When they visit us and they leave it, why did they bounce? Why did they click? Why did they not click? Are you asking enough of these whys rather than just saying, oh, that piece didn't work.
00:14:35
Speaker
We'll try something new. Let's get the next thing out and see if that works. And you're just going to start churning stuff out and hope for something that hits. But ask yourself these whys. And put yourself, you're a customer. I always tell my people that work with me, you are a customer too.
00:14:51
Speaker
There are things you like and things you don't when you're out on the internet. So if you don't like something and it annoys you, why would you do that to your own customers then, right? Like a pop-up, exit intent pop-ups, for example, just drive me insane. I think that is something that says, I hate you as a customer when you do an exit intent. And most people hate it, but then they do it on their own website. It's like, why? I don't understand.
00:15:17
Speaker
But I wanted to actually ask you about that because there was that video that you did about customer intention and signals that customers are sending. And what was the inspiration for that? What were you thinking? What triggered that thesis or that idea? Obviously, this is something that obviously has been bugging you for a long time because I suspect you see it over and over again. So maybe you can highlight some of the biggest transgressions when it comes to companies that don't listen to their customers' intentions.
00:15:46
Speaker
I see it a lot now on particularly media websites, right? Because display has changed so much and they're struggling. They used to be able to make money by just having people visit their websites, right? And I'm a marketer and if this upsets people, but I use ad blocker,
00:16:05
Speaker
I don't know if everybody else does, but I use it. I used to believe in karma and I didn't, but I'm like, no, I use it. Okay. And I think that sends an intense signal to people. If I have ad blocker on, I don't, it's like I'm opting out of your marketing. So you shouldn't want to market to me because I'm telling you, I'm not going to do anything you're asking.
00:16:26
Speaker
I found that then just traveling around reading news on websites, you get that pop-up sometimes that says, hey, we support ourselves with marketing or being able to sell ads on our site, please whitelist us so we can keep this free. The more I see it, the more I just thought how funny that was or really just how disingenuous it is because you know I had an ad blocker on when I came to your website just because I turned it off
00:16:53
Speaker
It doesn't mean I'm going to do anything for your advertisers on your website. I'm not now all of a sudden going to become a purchaser. So you're just telling everybody, hey, look, between you and me, just turn off the ad blocker. We need to make our ad revenue. We won't tell anybody. We will tell our advertisers. And I think it's disingenuous and dishonest, honestly.
00:17:16
Speaker
That pop-up that says turn off your ad blocker to me is just something that's missing the whole intent of what a customer is telling you that they're giving you a signal and you're just wasting money. You're wasting your advertisers money by allowing that. So that's where that came from. And then the exit intent one,
00:17:36
Speaker
It just annoys me because my mouse is going over. So then you recognize my mouse was about to hit the back arrow. And now is when you're going to pop up and tell me, oh, are you sure you want to leave? Would you like to sign up for our email? No. No, I'm leaving. And now you're annoying me even more. You didn't capture me. You didn't get me to do anything.
00:18:00
Speaker
And now, just as I'm getting ready to walk out the door, you, oh, hey, stop, stop, stop. I have something cool. I think both of those just really misread people and they miss intent. And then they're advertising to people who don't want to be advertised to. And it's always been my thing as a marketer. Please tell me if you don't want to be advertised to. Please opt out. Please turn on an ad blocker. I only want to reach the people who are open to marketing. I don't want to waste money.
00:18:29
Speaker
on a lot of people who have no intent to ever purchase from an online company ever, right? So that's where that came from in a nutshell. Like I get annoyed by some things marketers do and I tell people the number one rule in marketing is don't be annoying. Let's
The Pitfalls of Over-Reliance on Tech
00:18:47
Speaker
try not to be annoying. That's a new technique. I agree with you and I think part of the problem is that marketers have probably
00:18:56
Speaker
lean too heavily into technology and tools to get them to do their dirty work. Drip marketing, for example, we're all victims of trying to pound away at people's inboxes, so eventually they'll capitulate. You leave a website, you know, an offer for a newsletter or a discount. They're using technology to try to engage, but that's the wrong approach. I mean, if you really know your customers, then you'll figure out the better ways to engage with them rather than using hacks or cheats. And I think you're on the right track there. Definitely on the right track.
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I think marketing has really been taken over by tech. I see this in job posts for marketers now, some of the coding skills they want. I'm like, you're asking for a marketer, right? I'm not an IT person. I'm like, am I out of touch? Have I learned something? But yeah, I think
00:19:46
Speaker
Tech should be a tool that helps amplify your message. It should not be a tool that helps you avoid having to do the work. It's not just a set and forget thing that now we can just, we'll make money. So if you use tech correctly, it's great, but if you don't, you're gonna lose out on a lot of insights and you won't even know why people aren't buying from you or why they're running from you.
00:20:15
Speaker
Many of the guests on this podcast come from relationships that I've developed on LinkedIn and you're one of them. Mike has
Authenticity on LinkedIn with Mike Burt
00:20:22
Speaker
been an active commenter on my posts and it's interesting to look at people's different approaches to LinkedIn. Some people are super serious. Some people are super engaged. I would say that your approach is a little off beat.
00:20:38
Speaker
it probably reflects your personality and it's a slightly irreverent. I mean, just looking at your, your title, for example, you describe yourself as two times former Google applicant and three time winner of the Mike Burke is awesome award for awesomeness. First, I want to congratulate you for, for your willingness to take a different approach to LinkedIn. And the second, I just want to ask you about the way that you think about LinkedIn and social media for that matter, how it,
00:21:06
Speaker
relates to this overall obsession with personal branding these days? I just want to have fun with it and not take it too seriously. It's social media. I view it the same. I know people say, you know, LinkedIn is not Facebook. It's a business version of Facebook. So like on Facebook, you always see people always, it's a highlight reel, right? So it's their personal highlight reel on Facebook. And that's what I think LinkedIn has become. It's just your business highlight reel.
00:21:36
Speaker
Very little of it feels real to me either when you know, it's famous now like for people to joke about the we hired a homeless person thing, right? You know that that went around everybody was talking and and you see how fake it can be because all of a sudden everybody all of a sudden was hiring the homeless person but
00:21:56
Speaker
that they wrote that story to engage the algorithm, right? So everybody talks about that. I just don't worry about it. If people like me, they like me. If they don't, they don't. If they want to engage, great. I just like to have fun with it and talk about the things that I like. And I'm going to be real about it. I'm not going to be fake or try to do things on purpose to engage in the algorithm. I'll test out and do some different things for sure.
00:22:24
Speaker
Still, I just want to remind people to have fun with it and not take it so seriously. The algorithm, whatever it is, will change next week and whatever was working for you this week that you spent all that time on, LinkedIn will change it. Now you're back to square one. Just be real from the start and don't worry about it and see what happens.
00:22:48
Speaker
Before, obviously, I'm going to probably upset some of the more ardent LinkedIn engagement folks out there. But when you think about it in the same place for social media in general, it's a game like we're playing a game with LinkedIn. You know, we play against the algorithm. We play against other people who are.
00:23:05
Speaker
Saying the thing same things we're doing competing for this spotlight like we're doing and I think that's probably Especially for independent marketers like you and I it's probably a healthy approach because you take the platform too Seriously, if you lean on it too heavily to be the place where you engage prospects where you attract business Eventually won't be fun anymore. You know, it'll be it'll be make or break do or die and if the platform stops working for you then your
00:23:34
Speaker
arguably dead in the water. So I think my advice, and I think you would probably say the same thing, is that to use it, to have fun using it. We're also pulling the different levers every day and hoping they work. And there's really not a lot we can do. So you just got to go along for the ride. That's pretty much it, right? And just make the stuff. Keep practicing at it. Make your content. You're going to get better at it. And anything that you're doing then, even if it doesn't
00:24:01
Speaker
do well for LinkedIn, you're getting better at something that'll benefit a client.
00:24:05
Speaker
You're getting knowledge and understanding, and you're practicing what you preach when you put yourself out there to do these things. Because a lot of us, when we are engaged with a client, one of the first things we're going to tell, or I do anyway, is tell the CEO or the senior leaders, where's your social media presence at? Why aren't you doing it? Most of us are probably going to tell senior leaders, if you're not out there as an evangelist for your company, why should anyone listen to you?
00:24:35
Speaker
If I'm not out there at least willing to put myself on camera and
00:24:38
Speaker
I got to put myself out there too. I think that's what we're all doing. Um, at least it shows we're going to practice what we preach and we can still help people, you know, it, it'll still help. It's, it'll benefit clients one way or another, even if you don't get a thousand likes on something. If you look at the numbers, I think the last numbers or research I saw about LinkedIn is that over 90% of the content is made than less than by less than 10%.
Video Creation Journey on TikTok and LinkedIn
00:25:05
Speaker
of LinkedIn people. So there's a huge dark market out there watching you that you're unaware of. And just because somebody might not have liked or commented or shared on one of your posts, it doesn't mean that people aren't aware of you or that your potential clients aren't keeping an eyeball on you. I've gotten clients off of LinkedIn who never had engaged with any of my stuff. I just get a message and say, I saw you doing X
00:25:35
Speaker
And I'm like, you did? I had no idea. Even if you feel like you're speaking to the void, keep speaking, people are watching you. Speaking of speaking into the void, I noticed recently that you started making videos. How's that going for you? Because I think if you're trying to make a video every day, is that the way that you're approaching video? I'm trying to.
00:25:56
Speaker
I'm very contrarian and very anti-authoritarian even to myself. So when I set out rules for myself like that, I will inevitably break them because nobody's going to hold me to anything, right? So I am trying and it's going okay. I went back and I'm working on TV writing again. I used to be 10 years ago, I started a website as a hobby.
00:26:23
Speaker
where I wrote about TV just because I love watching TV. And that was actually my journey into marketing. I grew that to about a million visitors a month on a website. And then I stopped it when I got into grunt style because I just got too busy to be able to have any hobbies. And so I'm back to that. And I'm actually doing on TikTok.
00:26:45
Speaker
more so, and having fun. And again, talking about things that I like. Finding a niche, I'm growing a little bit there. So it's fun. And it's worked on LinkedIn. Here's the biggest thing, I think, the benefit to do it. And it's maybe even at my level, your level, guys like us who we've been doing this a while. It gets me back into, when was the last time you actually spent a little time working with a video editing tool? Because as a CMO,
00:27:14
Speaker
I wasn't doing any of that. I was managing people doing those things. So it's really, it's been nice to get back into the weeds of, of that kind of production where you're like, well, I'm, I'm back to being a rookie at this again. And I look at, I hate my videos sometimes cause I look at them. I'm like, oh man, your production values are just.
00:27:36
Speaker
You're awful. You would never approve this if somebody brought you. If one of your people brought you this video, you would tell them to go back and do it again. But I'm having fun with it and just trying to be less rigid about how often. And when I have an idea for something, I will make a video and put one up.
00:27:53
Speaker
One final question, where can people learn more about you? Where can they find you on LinkedIn? Where can they find you on TikTok if they're interested in your musings about television? Oh, gosh, if they want to follow me on TikTok, please get me to the thousand followers, folks, because you need me live.
00:28:09
Speaker
What's your name on TikTok? I am the TV genius on TikTok. I know. I got the website. So there's the TV genius website. I'm just getting it going now. But please, yeah, there's followers. If you guys like TV, please. I just love it. And then on LinkedIn, you can find me there. That's where I do really most of my business talk.
00:28:33
Speaker
I don't take people off of there. I don't have my own personal website or anything. You can message me. I'm not trying to be super fancy. I'm just like everybody else. Mike, this has been a great conversation.
Podcast Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:28:43
Speaker
I really enjoyed talking to you about marketing and obviously about the importance of knowing your customers.
00:28:48
Speaker
Thanks everybody for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review, subscribe by Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. To learn more about how to help B2B SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic advisor, coach, send an email to mark at markevans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.