As consumers continue to change the ways they make purchases, it’s crucial for brands to be proactive in helping them throughout their decision-making process. What can you do to help close the sale? Provide them with useful and educational information—everywhere.
Today your prospects can easily tune out traditional marketing. But the good news is, there’s a better approach out there: “youtility.” “Youtility is massively useful free information that creates long-term trust and kinship between a company and its customers,” Jay Baer, author of Youtility:Why Smart Marketing Is About Help Not Hype, explains. The even better news is, by sharing helpful personalized content—in every channel—brands can insert themselves into a customer’s purchasing process in way they may not have had the opportunity to before. Pairing the right content with the right channel at the right time in the purchasing process is key: It could mean the difference between a conversion—and an exit. Here are five ways “youtility” can help develop a loyal customer following for vacation ownership brands and build the foundation of a long-term relationship:
1. Sell smarter
Consumers can now research a product online and choose the brand that appeals most to them. When you provide them with helpful content and comprehensive information up-front, it will immediately differentiate your product— and ultimately help you close the sale later. “Consumers are very much in control of the messages to which they are exposed and the companies they choose to support,” Baer says. “The best way to break through is to create marketing that is so useful that people would pay for it if you asked them to do so.”
2. Start helping
Baer outlines three methods for building long-term relationships with customers by helping them.Self-serveinformation, in which they proactively answer questions; radical transparency, in which they are completely open with customers; and real-time relevancy, in which brands use location, circumstance, behavior and other information to provide consumers with the best resource at a given moment. “Create relevant mobile moments for customers based on where they are in their travel life cycle,” says Christine Ciccone, vice president of online marketing at RCI. “Leverage email, SMS and push notifications through geo-location capabilities or iBeacons tied to an app to reach customers with valuable information and foster loyalty.” For example, send a destination’s weather and transit information before an owner leaves for vacation. Later, when the owner arrives at his destination, provide details and reviews of local restaurants and activities.
3. Be social
Social media is a convenient way for consumers to reach brands with their questions. At the same time, social media allows brands to learn about customers by talking to them. “The best way to figure out how to be helpful is to have real interactions with your customers,” Baer says. “Insights don’t come from a spreadsheet; they come from a conversation.” The brands with the most social media success go beyond simply publishing outbound messages and actually interact with consumers. “Driving engagement requires a commitment to listen, foster dialogue and respond to feedback with specific actions,” Ciccone says.
4. See the big picture
When brands first learn about “youtility,” Baer says, they often compartmentalize it as a subset of marketing instead of employ it as an overarching strategy. “Brands need to look at everything they do through the lens of the customer,” Ciccone adds. “All areas of the organization need to align to meet the customer’s needs.” For example, create a tiered loyalty program that consumers can gain access to only through social media and that can drive their behavior. When a fan tweets positively about your brand, Baer says, reward them with special content available only to social media advocates.
5. Focus the message
“Micro content and video is taking off,” Baer says. “It’s not enough to just be useful; now you need to be useful in bite-sized chunks.” Think about how to make quick videos that are easily consumed and shared, even when a customer is traveling with just a smartphone. To shorten content, stay focused on what’s relevant to the message you’re trying to get across. And remember, Baer says, that ultimately social media is a tool and not an objective: “The goal is to be good at business because of social media. Measure business-level outcomes, not social media outcomes. You can’t pay your employees with re-tweets."
Jay Baer is the author of the New York Times best-selling book Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is About Help Not Hype and founder of the digital-marketing advisory firm Convince & Convert. Christine Ciccone is vice president of online marketing at RCI, leading digital strategy and increasing the transparency of
members’ digital experiences.