[00:00:00] Jeff Sieh: Welcome to Social Media News Live. I’m Jeff Sieh and you’re not

[00:00:03] Grace Duffy: I’m Grace Duffy. And this is the show that keeps you up-to-date on what’s happening in the world of social.

[00:00:10] Jeff Sieh: And today we are joined by my friend and he’s amazing cause he’s always here every week. Gary Stockton from Experian.com and we’re going to be talking all about customer experience his ideas and thoughts about all this because he’s super knowledgeable and I’m so excited that he was able at the last minute.

[00:00:29] Seriously, the last minute to join the show with us, Gary, thank you so much for being here to.

[00:00:34] Gary Stockton: Oh, it’s a pleasure to be here. I love watching the show every week and I think you got a really good thing going here. Grace and Jeff. So I’m a big fan.

[00:00:42] Jeff Sieh: Thank you. So let’s talk about this. We’re all customers in some way or another, but more and more this customer experience we talked about with Brooke last week, we’re talking about it today in even more depth, how important it is for marketing and businesses for small and big how important this is moving forward in this year and growing as the metaverse, we’re gonna be talking about that today.

[00:01:09] All sorts of things. So Grace, why don’t we just jump right into it? And you take us away with some of the news and articles that you’ve read.

[00:01:17] Grace Duffy: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Gary, thank you so much for joining us today. We are going to talk about debt, customer experience beyond social media and beyond customer support.

[00:01:25] We tackled that topic last week with the wonderful book sellers. So if you weren’t able to catch that live or watch a replay, please go back, watch the video, listen to the podcast. It was a great show on customer support and customer care and how to manage that using social media. However, Customer support is only one part of that pillar of that customer experience.

[00:01:47] And we’re here today with Gary to talk about what is it, it gets thrown a lot. It gets thrown around a lot like customer experience CX. We’re excited to have you on the show, Gary, to talk about what is it and what does it mean? So can you tell us everything that, especially you with your experience and experience with the B2B side, like what do you think that customer experience encompasses?

[00:02:10] Like what do marketers really need to know and understand about customer experience? It’s been a buzzword for awhile, but break it down for us.

What Makes Good Customer Experience?

[00:02:19] Gary Stockton: I think it’s creating those moments of magic with your customers, where they think of you maybe more in it than just a brand or a logo, but that company that really made a difference, at important times. My own company that I work for Experian, we’re the custodians of the world’s credit information.

[00:02:45] We help vendors make decisions on small business, but we all also help small businesses build and maintain strong credit so they can get access to affordable financing. But my own view is, you have to be responsive to customers. You have to be a good listener and really understand what their challenges are, what their problems are and try and build products and solutions and services that really address the challenges that they have in their everyday lives.

[00:03:18] Jeff Sieh: Gary, I just wanted to, and we’re pulling all sorts of audibles today because I’ve got to pick your brain because you work for this big company in the marketing department, but you probably see, for a credit, company, you probably get a lot of. Having to deal with customer service and negative comments because it’s finances is one of those touchy subjects and credit is another super touchy subject.

[00:03:41] So you’re hitting two of the really big ones right away. How is there a whole process that your customer service goes through to move the customer, and trying to make them happy. A lot of times you can’t with finances, but can you just walk us through a little bit how that happens?

The Customer Journey In A Large Company

[00:03:59] Gary Stockton: Yeah. Sure. So on the consumer side, that there’s regulation around that and being timely and responsive to complaints or disputes about credit. I don’t work on that side of the business. I’m more on the B2B side but even if there are mistakes or errors on credit reports, we have to have a process to investigate those.

[00:04:24] All the information that comes in on the finance side of things. And the credit history side of things is sourced from third parties. So we have to investigate those diligently and determine if it was indeed a mistake and get that corrected. And sometimes that can take, 30 to 45 days. And people really, when they’re in the moment trying to get financing, they want it corrected in forty-five minutes.

[00:04:48] And so a lot of the time you really have to get people to set their expectations correctly, and really explain to them, it could take a little time to investigate, but we will get to the bottom of it. And yeah, I think the internet, I think Amazon, I think the immediacy of commerce, the immediacy of response, it’s, it’s seconds, it’s milliseconds.

[00:05:13] That’s really raised the expectation on the part of consumers now across the board, not just on consumer websites and e-commerce, but for everybody.

[00:05:23] Jeff Sieh: Very true. So one of the things that went grace had pulled together for this show was that in sales, there’s an article in Salesforce in it. And they said, really confidently.

[00:05:35] In fact that customers are willing to pray. A customers are willing to pay a premium for a great experience and not just great products and services. So this means that businesses have an opportunity to increase their revenue by delighting their customers in a way that no one else does. So that’s great news.

[00:05:55] But if I think I was to ask a customer, if they would rather have a good buying experience or the best value, they probably gonna say we want both. So what are your thoughts, Gary, on how business can balance like providing a consistently good buying experience and in the best customer value they can get, I know that’s a tough things for companies, but you working for the, the B2B side, I know a lot of your customers are dealing with this.

How to Provide a Consistently Good Experience with Value?

[00:06:21] Gary Stockton: Yeah. I think you really have to pick where you can make the biggest impact where you can move the needle the most. Right now, Experian is very focused on underbanked or unbanked people that don’t have credit scores and they’re around 28 million. I think 28 million was the number that I read 28 million people that don’t have credit scores.

[00:06:46] So we just released something called Experian go, which is if you’re an unscored person, when you go to the website, you can start and create your own credit profile. Now that’s going to make a huge difference for people who couldn’t get a credit card. Couldn’t get established there with with loans.

[00:07:06] That’s going to move the needle significantly in society for experience and for billions of consumers enhancing the. Mobile app, so it loads faster, you can see where that may come down in scale, where can you make the biggest impact for the greatest number of.

[00:07:29] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, those are all good points. Grace, did you have a follow up question really quick?

[00:07:33] Grace Duffy: Yeah. So building on this point of that opportunity to really bank on serving excellent customer experience, do you think it’s true that customers really would be willing to pay a premium or are willing to pay a premium for good customer experience?

[00:07:49] Also given all of these tech advances and broader access to more choices. And as you mentioned, the immediacy of commerce, like for example, if you’re not happy buying expensive Fraser’s which people were happy to do for decades, right? And then along comes all these other inexpensive, monthly delivery services to solve that problem for you.

[00:08:10] And you don’t even have to go out and look for it. It just gets set to you once a month whatever the cadence is, or if you’re fed up with mediocre hotel chains are not getting what you want, then they don’t offer value. Then why not try Airbnb or, and we could fill in a million.

[00:08:26] New companies are emerging companies out of this space. Like you don’t want to go to the gym, here’s, here’s a service that you can do at home. So do you think customers really are willing to pay a premium when there’s so many value options or value based options out there?

Will Customers Pay A Premium for a Good Customer Experience?

[00:08:41] Gary Stockton: Yeah, definitely.

[00:08:42] Yeah. I mean myself. I’ve got several subscriptions that I pay for. I pay for YouTube, because for me, time is more valuable, and that those, five, 10, second ads, they all add up to minutes, sometimes hours. So the way I look at it is I want to see the content immediately.

[00:09:02] Also streaming music. I listened to apple, and I don’t have to take chances on buying records. I can stream the records and then add them to my collection if I want to buy them. So absolutely people will pay a premium, What’s really great about living in this era this time, this moment in time, there’s so much innovation going around, art going on around the customer experience.

[00:09:25] And we’ve got AI, really predicting what people’s needs are going to be their preferences in viewing things, your algorithm, you could, you would see a different feed of movie suggestions based on what you’ve been watching. So there’s just a lot to get excited about there in terms of signing up for services and paying.

[00:09:48] Jeff Sieh: Yeah one of the things I want, and this is a great question from Jonathan Perez, who’s watching over on LinkedIn and he goes, I would think retention is critical. If you only focus on customer acquisition, then you’ll work twice as hard. And I think that’s a great point, Jonathan. What do you, what are your thoughts on that Gary on, on, on retaining those customers?

[00:10:08] Because it’s not just, it’s not just, providing a great, like we’re onboarding you really easy. We make you have all these choices and we’re sending you something in the mail every month, but it’s like, how do you keep those customers? Which a lot of times, and I know a lot of companies forget about they get ’em and they’re like, oh great.

[00:10:26] So what are your thoughts on this?

How Can You Retain Customers in 2022?

[00:10:28] Gary Stockton: I saw a great, this reminds me of a great keynote that I saw at Social Media Marketing World. A couple of years ago, the gentleman’s named Joey isn’t that his second name escapes me, but his whole mantra was creating an unforgettable experience for your customer in the first hundred.

[00:10:47] The examples that he gave there was , I think it was a, an industrial towel supplier. They supply towels to gyms. But the part of their onboarding was when you sign up to get supplied by them, you get a personal video with your first name, welcoming you to XOJET. And it really, as a personal onboarding and he gave a whole bunch of examples in the speech and it just really thinking about making it so that your customers never want to leave.

[00:11:23] You’ve created such a great experience for them early on in the relationship, and that really will sustain you, but also looking for those signals. When you think that your customers may be becoming disengaged, maybe using your services less, having your systems your analytics tuned so that you can be listening for those signs of that.

[00:11:46] Maybe a leaving or going to a competitor.

[00:11:49] Jeff Sieh: I think that’s really key. So Gary I before, so we’ve got Mark came in and so I wanted to get before. We moved to to his thoughts is where can people find, you have a podcast and you do this B2B stuff over on experian. Tell us about that and how people can find you.

[00:12:12] Gary Stockton: Jeff’s going to be on the podcast. You guys don’t know this, but it’s w we talked to Jeff and his episodes coming up, it’s called the small business matters. I love talking to small businesses and Jeff came on to talk about Pinterest manly Pinterest tips.

[00:12:29] This week, our episode focuses on fourth generation fourth generation business owner and black entrepreneur of the year key winner ruler. Her great grandfather ffled the Tulsa massacre for Chicago. And there was a long line of four generations of small business owners out of that family.

[00:12:50] And she just has a wonderful tale. So I love doing that podcast, talking with small business owners, small business matters, and we drop it in an episode once every

[00:12:59] Jeff Sieh: couple. Yeah, so go check it out because Gary, as you can tell he’s super smart, super cool guy popping in like this, giving us his advice.

[00:13:09] Gary, you are a true fan. You are a true friend. Thank you so much for doing this for us. And I want to make sure we wanna, we want to push this out and make sure you can do it. Do us a favor and go and subscribe to Gary’s podcasts. Give him a rating and review because it really does help out broadcasters and Gary, please drop in your your your podcast link in the comments below, because I wanna make sure everybody finds out about that.

[00:13:36] Gary, thank you. My friend for being here. Thank you very much, guys. See you later, Gary. Okay. Thanks Gary. All right, man. Gary came through for us in the end,

[00:13:47] Grace Duffy: right? So like it’s I, but you know what, all of those answers completely off the cuff, completely honest, completely, just that, that is what a great rock star he is.

[00:14:01] Jeff Sieh: Thanks Gary so much. You are. You’re the man. So I want to bring on our guests to is the amazing Mark Schaefer. Okay. We thought maybe that it was our fault. So I’m just, I got your email right before he came on. How you doing Mark?

[00:14:17] Mark Schaefer: I’m so embarrassed. I just, I’m doing a million things and I got the time wrong and I apologize.

[00:14:27] I had it. I just had it on my calendar wrong. And so anyway, but here I am. Thank you for being gracious. And I hate that. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been late for anything and especially love coming to see you because you’re such great pros and as such great questions. And you’ve supported me so immensely over the years.

[00:14:50] So thank you. I’m sorry. And now on with the show.

[00:14:56] Grace Duffy: Mark, we absolve you of your guilt. So please don’t ever think about this again. Don’t worry about it. This stuff happens. And if you’ve seen the last few episodes of the show, everything has happened, so it’s fine. We’re doing it. This is great. This is the magic of live video.

[00:15:10] We get the showcase, we get to showcase, Hey, we got to showcase in inaction today. How you can quickly switch these lower thirds and quick slop, bring people in and out. And just I cannot think of a better way to showcase the power of live video other than things like this happening in life happening.

[00:15:29] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And you gotta remember our, but our fans are amazing in our community. Gary stepped in two seconds before we went live and was able to talk and share his stuff. So Gary, once again, you the man, so I’m going to actually, while we are talking fix this. Grace, can you introduce our our guest that’s I fixed the lower.

[00:15:57] Grace Duffy: Yes, absolutely. We have Mark Schaefer joining us here today. We brought him on to talk about designing customer experience beyond social media and customer support. As he mentioned last week, we had his marketing companion podcast. Co-host Brooke Sellas on to talking about, to talk about customer care through social.

[00:16:17] We wanted to bring mark on to talk about that full customer experience because again, customer support, customer care. It’s just one part of it. We were talking about how hard people companies work for that acquisition, but they don’t really work to continue to keep that company and their customer.

[00:16:32] And there are so many ways that people encounter companies these days. And part of that is building trust. With customers having so many ways to, encounter customers, we wanted to talk about creating this seamless experience for them throughout all the channels throughout the touch points.

[00:16:50] And we also want to dive into the future of marketing with the world of web 3.0. And then of course the metaverse, but just a little bit, not going to go deep into it. We’re not gonna get lost in it, but Hey, we are

[00:17:01] Mark Schaefer: okay.

[00:17:01] Jeff Sieh: I want to see your avatar is what I

[00:17:04] Mark Schaefer: want to see. Nobody can go deep into the Metta versus right.

[00:17:08] Grace Duffy: We are joined today by Mark Schaefer. He is the executive director at Schaefer marketing solutions. He is a globally recognized keynote speaker, educator and business consultant. And if you haven’t had a chance to hear Mark speak, here’s your chance. He is amazing. I love him. He is the author of several books.

[00:17:28] We talked to him a few months ago about his latest book, cumulative advantage, which is also one of our favorites. He’s also known for node and marketing rebellion, which I actually referenced a lot of as I was preparing for the show, which is the most human company wins. And then you can also catch them on his blog, grow one of the top marketing blogs in the world.

[00:17:50] And of course, again, he co-hosts the marketing companion with Brooke Sellas. So Mark, welcome to the show. I’m so glad you could make it today.

[00:18:00] Jeff Sieh: So I want to do a shout out. Also, if you guys are watching on Amazon live, I have all of Mark’s books and in the carousel. So make sure you guys check those out.

[00:18:09] They are well worth the amount you spend on them. I still referenced them today. I have them all on Kindle. I have some physical copies. So if you’re interested in what Mark has to say, make sure you guys check those out in the carousel down below. All right. Let’s move on to building brand trust because Mark talks a lot about this, and there’s a really great article that grace, that you found that you talked about customer experience.

[00:18:33] So why don’t you just go ahead and get.

[00:18:36] Grace Duffy: Yeah. So Forbes published this article recently, and the title is brand trust emerges as a single best contributor to customer experience and the research in your sites that they examined. Customer service across these five categories of brand image, the purchasing experience, the experience of using the product or the service, the relationship, and then customer service and among these five customer urban, excuse me, brand image emerged as the most significant contributor to this.

[00:19:06] X-Factor going across all countries surveyed brand image in this case is assessed by how much customer say they trust a brand, their perception of how much the brand stays true to its commitments, and then surprisingly how it treats its frontline employees. So of course, we’ve been hearing a lot about how employees are being treated at different companies, and that does color the way that people look and trust and feel about the companies that they purchase, things or support or whatever.

[00:19:35] So how can companies measure this? Experienced metric for themselves because this was a research. This was a research along with a company. I think it was have S com customer extreme. Anyway, I would love to know how companies can measure and assess this metric for themselves and see how they’re doing

How Can Companies Measure Customer Experience?

[00:19:56] Mark Schaefer: Well I think the key idea is one of the trends I see is that increasingly the title of chief marketing officer is becoming chief experience officer. And it’s, it certainly makes sense. And it’s probably overdue because everything we do and everything we don’t do impacts the brand. I wrote a blog post this week talking about how in my early days of marketing I was in a big B2B company and I spent most of my time in the transportation department.

[00:20:38] Why? Because transportation was key to our customers. We worked in this manufacturing environment. We needed to have the product be there on time. We needed to have it arrived just in time. We had to reduce their inventory levels. And this was really the most important part of the customer experience. So that’s where I dwelled.

[00:21:02] Now the interesting thing about this is that I think most people listening today probably don’t think about transportation as a part of trust or a part of marketing. But in that example, it was the most important part. And I think the The challenge is that most people are one dimensional these days when it comes to marketing.

[00:21:30] It’s about digital. It’s about social media without really considering everything that goes into the customer experience. Last show Brooke was talking about customer experiences and some of the problems with customer experience right now. You know what largely it’s not a marketing problem.

[00:21:53] It’s an HR problem. We can’t get enough people to be reliable customer service agents, right? The world has shifted to e-commerce the orders on e-commerce have surged the complaints on online channels have surged. We’ve seen research that when customer service people are working at home.

[00:22:18] They’re not as effective than they were working in a call center. So this is a crucial customer touch point. If your customers are angry or disappointed on average, they’re going to tell seven people, right? If they’re happy, they’re going to tell two marketing becomes an HR problem. So there’s not really one measure.

[00:22:41] You need to look at the total experience you might need to see. I worked with one company and what we found was their customers were spending too much time on the phone when they’re trying to place orders, right? So that became our number one marketing metric. And it wasn’t forever, right?

[00:23:04] We had to solve that, but we need to look at the entire customer experience and start knocking down every touch point that might be causing a problem.

[00:23:15] Jeff Sieh: So you mentioned. That you with that company, you had to find that metric. So is that metric going to change depending on the customer or is there a certain metric that all businesses should be paying to paying attention to is because it sounds you’ve talked about that things are changing so fast and that there’s, it’s multifaceted now with social media.

[00:23:36] Is there one thing that, that companies can look to or is it you’re going to have to figure it out and that’s going to depend on the company?

Is There One Metric to Measure for Customer Experience?

[00:23:43] Mark Schaefer: Yeah, it’s, it’s almost never the same thing. This is one of the biggest problems I see with marketing consulting, especially if you’re a busy. People go in with cookie cutter plans, cookie cutter metrics.

[00:23:59] And that almost never works because we have to look at the distinct and unique competitive landscape for every company. We have to look at, where are the customers and what are their expectations? Where can we maneuver? What are our strengths that we can leverage? And increasingly with the speed of change in business, it’s not just about a strategy to leverage our strengths, over time.

[00:24:30] It’s about how do we leverage our strengths right now, especially we’re in this still in the grip in many ways, in many places of the pandemic. I’ve talked about this idea that we’re in an era of unintended consequences. Our customers are changing in so many ways. They’re coming out of this pandemic different.

[00:24:53] Then how they were two years ago or now, almost three years ago, but their habits have changed the way they buy changed everything about their life is being renegotiated, how they work, where they work, when they work, how they learn, how they educate, how they connect, how they commune, how they date.

[00:25:20] I was talking to a brand manager at Adidas, and he said that the pandemic has redefined sport, right? So this is profound. And a lot of those habits. I think I saw a statistic. 88% of Americans said their buying habits have changed during the pandemic. And 92% of them said those habits are going to stay that way.

[00:25:48] So now’s a time to be humble and reconnect with our customers. I’m not sure in many cases, we really know what the most important things are right now, what the most important expectations are. And maybe even we need to reconsider what our metrics are.

[00:26:08] Grace Duffy: Great. Great. I wanted to bring up this question from our listener, Jonathan Perez, he’s saying, are you building hassle maps for the buyer journey to help identify these pinch points? That’s a good question.

[00:26:20] Mark Schaefer: Yeah. I don’t know what a hassle map is. Okay.

[00:26:25] Jeff Sieh: I’m glad I didn’t either.

The Importance Of Looking At The Right Research

[00:26:27] Mark Schaefer: And I was like maybe Jonathan is in the hassle map business, but.

[00:26:35] I don’t know. I just think, look this is marketing 1 0 1, right? Marketing is about building demand for whatever you do to respond to your customers in a rapid and meaningful way, hopefully better than your competitors. And that’s exactly what I’m talking about right now.

[00:27:02] I don’t look at any research right now. Started before of March of 20, 20. That’s. That’s what I mean by being humble. And I don’t know if we know all of our customer pinch points right now. If we’ve got a whole workforce working remotely, they’ve got entirely new pinch points, right? They may new types of it support new types of childcare, new types of healthcare, new ways to.

[00:27:35] Communicate a new way. Meaning maybe they need to work out, 24 7, have access to that, to health clubs and healthcare and childcare and food. I think there’s going to be an emerging model of remote working hubs of maybe specialized apartment complexes or condominium Fest, areas that are really specialized focusing on remote workers.

[00:28:03] There’s going to be entirely new business models emerging over the next two year. You look at the, the housing shortages. You look at inflation, you look at co shortages. And so you’ve been hard to get a car these days. Those are all opportunities by the way, for new business models.

[00:28:22] And there they all represent potential customer pinch points, unmet and underserved customer need.

[00:28:29] Jeff Sieh: So here he goes, a hassle map is his Saturday to do list, which I don’t think we’re, that we’re really talking about, but I feel your pain, Carrie. But Jonathan says it’s a blueprint. He came back over on LinkedIn and said, it’s a blueprint to identify any issues and obstacles that a buyer encounters through their journey.

[00:28:46] So that’s a new term, but I, yeah, so I think you answered that, but one of the questions was one of the things that Grace had put together for us is Forbes also mentioned that the latest Edelman trust barometer found that around half of all respondents worldwide want to do business to do more, to tackle these societal problems like climate change and economic inequality concluding that social societal leadership is now a core function of the business.

[00:29:13] Now you’ve talked about this before. I know quite a bit. And and we talked about at the very beginning with Gary is the shaping brand the customer experiences and. In this article, they said to succeed, brands need to think, not just about how well they understand customers and how will they engage with them, but also how they do things, how they treat their employees and their impact on the world, all that stuff.

[00:29:35] So these topics, Mark like eco economic equality, climate controversies, and societal issues that a lot of brands run away from not towards. So can you talk to us about how business should really dive into some of these complicated and tough topics like these,

The Rise of Purpose-Driven Marketing

[00:29:51] Mark Schaefer: It is, it really is such a complicated topic.

[00:29:56] And it’s really, in some ways, Jeff, it’s an existential topic. Here’s the thing that is so strange to. An old school sort of business model or marketing view of the world. So a marketing strategy in the past was determined basically by economic factors. It was determined by how well you can compete, how well you can bring a product to market.

[00:30:27] What are the activities of your customers? What are the activities of your competitors? The weird thing that’s happening is civic activity is starting now to press in on marketing. I think it’s so it’s a new day. It really is. It’s a new day. And as I reflect on my career and I think about, what I was doing and what marketing was like 20 or 30 years ago to think about companies would be moving in this direction really was quite unthinkable.

[00:31:04] I think. The two main points I would make about this is that purpose driven marketing. Isn’t a tactic. It has to be part of your company from the top to the bottom. Purpose-driven marketing cannot be a reaction to something. It kid there’s a protest in the street. Oh, now we stand for this, it has to be part of the DNA of the company.

[00:31:39] So what I mean by that is, let’s say Patagonia. If Patagonia comes out and says something about an environmental issue, you believe it because that’s the way they were built and that’s what they stand for. So they’re not blowing in the wind. It’s not a reaction. It’s part of their DNA from the top of the company to the bottom of the company.

[00:32:07] The second thing that I would say is that. It’s not necessarily for everyone. A lot of the biggest brands will have to respond this way. But one of the little exercises I do with within my workshops or with my students is I’ll say, think about all the products you bought in the last two weeks.

[00:32:35] It could be a jacket because it’s cold. It could be gasoline for your car. It could be a, a plant for your office. And so maybe dozens or even hundreds of products. On a day-to-day basis. Now name those products you bought because they stood for something. And generally speaking, it’s almost none.

[00:32:59] We buy a sandwich because we’re hungry. We buy a coat because we’re cold. We buy breakfast cereal because that’s what we’ve always eaten since we were a kid. And so we have hundreds and hundreds of products that aren’t being purchased because they stand for something. So I don’t. So number one, it has to be something that’s organic.

[00:33:26] It’s not a reaction. It has to be really part of the company’s culture from the top to the bottom. Number two. Look at the strategy. Look at the reality very carefully. Don’t think that you need to embark on purpose-driven marketing because everybody else is really look at what are you doing in the world?

[00:33:49] What problem are you solving in the world? If you just want to be entered, if you’re an entertainer and you just want to entertain and make people laugh or make music, or, or just give somebody a sandwich cause they’re hungry, right? You think very carefully about, about what you’re doing.

[00:34:09] I had one example of someone I was talking. I won’t go into the details, but he had a know a music store and he was just selling instruments. And this is something that really didn’t have to be politicized necessarily. And people really aren’t thinking, I wonder what you, how you stand on the environment or black lives matter.

[00:34:32] Everybody loves music and everybody buys musical instruments, but he chose to take a very harsh and in your face, stand on a subject. And soon he had protestors. Now all around us is his business. And he’s complaining to me about, oh, this is cancel culture. And I said, no, this was just a bad business decision.

[00:34:57] You put your own ideas and your own dogma ahead of business. You have every right to do that. It’s your life, it’s your world, it’s your business. But you’ve got to, you’ve got to know that if, if people just want a musical instrument, they don’t want your dogma. Then you might have to face the consequences.

[00:35:22] It’s not necessarily for everybody.

[00:35:25] Jeff Sieh: So I wanted to bring up some, I also bring up some.

[00:35:37] Grace Duffy: No, this is a really good point because it just brought up. There’s a local sandwich shop near where I live and they decided to take a really hard political stance. And now it’s just I was just trying to choose whether or not I have a sandwich, whether or not I want to have a sandwich today.

[00:35:54] Now I have to choose like my political ideology and what sandwich I want. I’m not going to go there. It’s it just, it ended up having a negative re for the people that it was for, they loved it for the people. It alienated so many other people. It’s hard to say, but I was like, I really it was hard enough to choose whether, what sandwich I wanted and I have to choose like what side of the political divide I’m on with the sandwich

[00:36:17] Mark Schaefer: for 10 seconds, because my alarm is going off to tell me it’s time to go on your show.

[00:36:29] Jeff Sieh: So important. We need to do a go-fund me for a alarm.

[00:36:35] Mark Schaefer: I wasn’t kidding. Yeah. I had the whole two wrong on my calendar, but I was ready. I had an alarm and it’s time for Jeff and Grace. Yeah,

[00:36:45] Jeff Sieh: that’s funny, but okay. Let’s go back to back. So I would bring up a comment from Jonathan. He goes, it has, and this is your point to Mark, is it has to be a genuine behavior in order to build rapport.

Does Shared Values Drive Sales?

[00:36:54] Jeff Sieh: And one of the things, and I wanted to ask you, do you think a lot of it is almost like icing on the cake for for me, I love my Allbirds shoes because they’re super comfortable. But they also have a zero carbon footprint and all this stuff, but to be honest, they’re so comfortable if they were made from like the tears and whiskers of a kitten, I would probably still wear them, and this other thing is like an added bonus that, oh, it makes me feel good. Do you think that’s most of this kind of marketing or do you think there really is a huge market that people buy because of Patagonia’s stance?

[00:37:28] Mark Schaefer: Yes. I th I think they’re, I think they’re, I think it’s both I think it’s both, you’re talking about, attributes of a product that make you love and you’re loyal to the product and that’s amazing, but I don’t think we can really dismiss this idea that the purpose and values matter.

[00:37:53] And I’ll give you two reasons why number one, I think it was in 2018 Blackstock the big trust the big fund that funds all the businesses. It’s a big holding company for a lot of businesses. I think they have a trillion dollars worth of assets or something like that. They went out to all their companies.

[00:38:21] And they said it’s no longer just about the money you make. We need to see how you make it. And there was an article in the wall street journal about that statement and they said, economics just changed. Because I grew up in the era of Milton Friedman, Milton Freeman said, the purpose of the firm is to, create shareholder value and that’s it.

[00:38:54] No, not anymore. And I think that was the statement that the BlackRock was making is that the times have changed this matters. It was a real shift at a significant milestone, really an economic history. The second thing I’ll talk about is the consumer side of this, that there is research that shows.

[00:39:21] If a product has shared meaning and shared values with a customer, they may switch. They may pay more. They may defend the brand. And, consequently, if there’s a brand that doesn’t share your values, then people are going to leave. It’s one of the few things left that really can lead to loyalty today.

[00:39:47] We’re in a, we’re in a world where loyalty is in decline because we’re in a shop around culture, right? We’re just on our smartphone, flipping flip a flip and finding what we want. We don’t really care, just, oh, okay. We expect the best price and free delivery. It’s going to be here tomorrow. And so we’re in this shop around culture, but the one thing that can change that is shared meaning and shared values.

[00:40:13] So I wouldn’t be completely dismissing. And say it’s still about, it’s icing on the cake. I wouldn’t call it, bring on the cake for some people. I think it’s a core purchasing decision.

[00:40:27] Jeff Sieh: Gotcha. I’m just jaded and old is probably the thing. This is what it is. Somebody, another great company that I got to make sure we talked about and I skipped over at the beginning is our sponsors e-comm and you can find out more about them at Social Media News, Live dot com slash e-com.

[00:40:43] And by the way, you’ve seen how easy it is to switch. On the fly during a live show today. Shout out to our friends and he came in fact, they’re actually getting ready to at social media marketing world have a meetup. Mark is going to be there speaking. He, oh, we’ve had so many comments of people who have said that Mark has changed their business and they heard him at social media marketing world.

[00:41:06] And so Mark is going to be there. Ecamm will be there if you’d like to find out there that some free trainings are doing. So go to ecamm.tv/smmw22meetup And you can find out all about that, but make sure, you’re doing the keynote again this year. I believe.

[00:41:23] Mark Schaefer: No, I’m not doing, I’m not doing the official keynote.

[00:41:27] I’m on a big stage.

[00:41:29] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Which is it’s a keynote if Mark’s talking. It’s always good. So

[00:41:34] Mark Schaefer: I’m excited. I always, I was bringing the thunder at social media marketing world. It’ll be something.

[00:41:41] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. So make sure you go check out Ecamm is going to be there as well. So now our last section is I’m really excited about cause Mark has some interesting things that he’s been doing that I want to talk about the, towards the end, but this whole new iteration of the internet is, all about putting control over data and content.

[00:42:02] There’s even stuff in the news today about Google’s doing stuff increasing privacy and digital trust and offering all these immersive experiences. All this stuff, Mark, how does it translate to business and customer experience? You’ve started to write a lot about it. I’ve seen what you and I want to talk to you a little bit later about your rise coin and all that, but how does that work into customer experiences?

[00:42:28] Do we have to really, do we have to go and create an avatar now to talk to people over on the metaverse and Facebook with our Oculuses, you know what’s happening with this, the future of this customer experience that’s going on?

The Future of Customer Experience in the Metaverse

[00:42:41] Mark Schaefer: I think it’s an easy idea. I want to, I’m working on a blog post that I think here’s an, a way to think about it that might make it easy and accessible to people.

[00:42:59] So the metaverse is already here. It’s not something that Facebook is building. It’s not something that’s two years away. Go play the game. Fortnite. All right, now I’m not a gamer, but I watch kids play it. And Fortnite, you are an avatar. You can change your clothes, you can buy stuff. You can buy the clothes you wear called skins, and you can buy special, things to make you look scary and powerful.

[00:43:33] So there’s e-commerce, you can trade things. You collaborate, you create things together. You are an avatar. That’s in this mystical and exciting 3d world. You can even go and interact with brands and you can enter, you can watch concerts. So if you, if the metaverse scene. Mysterious and like something that’s super futuristic, just either watch a kid play Fortnite or go to Twitch and you can watch people play games.

[00:44:14] And so it’s a way to think about, okay. I see what’s going on here and I see what the possibilities are, what business problems does this solve. So it’s interesting being in a virtual world. You don’t have to travel. You don’t have to go to a store that would have been cut a nice during the pandemic.

[00:44:38] So some of the things, certainly there’s going to be lots of opportunities for education. There’s going to be lots of opportunities for, e-commerce and shopping and gaming. But then you have to start thinking about what does it mean for B2B? I don’t really know right now, you have to think about what’s the problem with zoom.

[00:45:09] Okay. What’s the problem with zoom. What’s the problem with e-comm live or Easter or live streaming? You know what, I’d rather be sitting here with you and I’m showing up as a dragon. That would be a, that would be a gimmick. What if I floated around what if we were doing this in a, in a castle?

[00:45:30] Okay. That might be interesting once, but I think that’s going to get old. I, it doesn’t really solve. A lot of business problems. So we have to say, okay, we already have a glimpse of what’s possible with the metaverse just go to fortnight and then start thinking about, okay, how, what are some of the inventive and amazing things that human beings are going to do to use this in new ways?

[00:45:58] Could this solve problems for me? And I think that’s a template to think about the metaverse in a practical way.

[00:46:08] Jeff Sieh: So to follow up with that, do you think the metaverse and web three PO 3.0 is like radio going to television and we have a new channel to go to? Or is it something totally shattering that, this is going to change everything like the internet?

The Difference Between the Metaverse and Web 3.0

[00:46:27] Mark Schaefer: I look at the metaverse and web 3.0 is two different things, really? The metaverse. Honestly, to me, the jury is still out. I think there’s a lot of hype and I reserve the right to be completely wrong. And certainly I can’t anticipate the potential of the metaverse just like nobody at the beginning could anticipate the potential of the internet.

[00:46:57] One of my favorite quotes at the Dawn of the internet, there was a senior vice president at IBM who said, yeah, I predict that there will be something like a search engine, but it is good. It would be so expensive that probably only five companies in the world could afford it. Again that was someone at the cusp of this new technology that simply couldn’t imagine what was going to be possible.

[00:47:28] And I think we need to be open learners right now for all of this new technology. I actually think web three is has probably more opportunity for disruption and more, maybe even more applications to marketing than then even a, the metaverse. I just think the web 3.0, has the opportunity to disrupt things that should have been disrupted a long time ago and the narrow part of web three that I’m experimenting with.

[00:48:07] And part of the way I would encourage everyone. To explore. All right. Don’t just ignore it and hope that it’s going to go away. Just take one step and start learning about these things. I’m using my rise coin and my rise community as a learning community, basically as a big experiment. If you want to be part of this, just drop me an email and let me know, and I’ll get you a couple coins and we can learn on this together.

[00:48:39] Don’t ignore it, in all of these things, just dip your toe in and look around and explore and start to learn. Some of the language in web three is super complicated with a lot of new terms and a lot of new technologies that are very hard to understand. So just take one step web three, we’re on step one of a 1000 step journey.

[00:49:08] But by the end of this year, We might be on step 500, it’s going to move really fast. It, I think this could change certainly any sort of loyalty programs. It could redefine community, which is what I’m really interested in. I th there’s just so many incredible possible applications and so many new use cases.

[00:49:38] And the thing that’s exciting to me is that this is happening so fast that I’m learning something every single day. I would encourage people just to try it, to explore. To learn find some people in the space that you like and you trust and just watch what they’re doing and, look at their content, but don’t ignore it because it, I think web three is going to be transformational.

[00:50:07] And if you look at the amount of money and the amount of development going into this, the use cases are just exploding. And I’m so happy that I’m an early adopter because I don’t know what I’m doing, but at least I’ve got a seat to, to know what I don’t know

[00:50:27] Jeff Sieh: exactly. And a lot of people are talking about this, Jonathan said, I think it’ll help us better conduct virtual meetings.

[00:50:33] Zoom, isn’t cutting it for large groups 3d virtual fit with Peg Fitzpatrick and Guy Kawasaki, who I do their podcast is we did the Oculus rooms. It’s really cool because I can go from. And then go to a whiteboard and stuff. So like

[00:50:47] Mark Schaefer: it’s always a problem. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.

[00:50:50] And so the problem then it’ll happen. And if it doesn’t solve a problem, it’s a gimmick. Yeah.

[00:50:59] Jeff Sieh: Yes. That’s a very good point. And but I think your idea of community, Disney just hired a, like a director of the metaverse, they’re going to be, there’s still an NFTs for Disney already and like it’s going on for $5,000.

[00:51:13] It’s nuts.

[00:51:15] Mark Schaefer: Yeah. It, yeah. If you’re a beloved brand like Disney, Marvel Nike the star wars franchise, the NFL money from NFTs, anything that, that kind of goes in the area of collectibles it’s the money is gonna be. Unbelief it already is. The money is unbelievable.

[00:51:37] Jeff Sieh: I’ve invested in the NBA virtual trading cards just to see what it was just to, like you were saying, put your feet in and see what it’s going to be.

[00:51:45] So great. She had a question, sorry. I’m interrupted.

[00:51:50] Grace Duffy: No, I was just, I was listening to you thinking about, I was thinking about beloved brands, actually, if you want to know

[00:51:58] Jeff Sieh: for our final question Mark, thank you for going a little late for us. And thank you guys for tuning in and because I got so many great questions for Mark is when you get Mark in a room or on it, you want to just hold onto him and not let him go.

[00:52:11] Just clinging to Mark. That should be an NFT. So somebody could come up with that. Me grabbing under Mark will sell it. Talk about, you mentioned this Rise Creator Coin. Why did you do it? And just, you don’t have to, I know it’s a big subject, but just for people who want to go to your blog and I actually did it when you had, when you first launched it.

[00:52:31] And I got a few, I own part of Mark. So talk to, how does that work and why did you decide to do it?

The RI$E Creator Coin

[00:52:41] Mark Schaefer: I saw it happening and at first I resisted it because I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand the use case, the business case for these creator communities, I was seeing people coming on and they were like artists and they were musicians and I didn’t really see how I fit.

[00:53:09] Then I saw more and more. Thought leaders, people who are my peers and colleagues start to get on. So I thought look, I need to start experimenting, I need to take my own medicine. And I, I think too, this is a matter really of being relevant. If you’re going to be relevant in the next 18 months to two years, you’ve got to immerse yourself in what’s happening with web three and specifically with these creator communities.

[00:53:45] So I went all in and trust me when I say I had no idea what I was doing, but I’m learning I’ve it’s it’s like being, having this community. It’s almost like having a new college education. I’ve learned so much in the. Six months. And really, like you said it would take a lot of time to explain what it is, but basically what you do is you can get tokens.

[00:54:14] There’s plenty of opportunities in my community to get free tokens. I give away free tokens every week. So you don’t have to invest anything. There’s really no risk. There’s no obligation. Because most of the time I’m just giving them away anyway. And if they don’t do anything, then you know, who cares.

[00:54:38] At least I’m still learning. But the tokens are doing something. It’s a cryptocurrency they’re worth real money. It’s increased in value. We’re getting weekly rewards. My community last week got over $10,000 in one week. What the percentage of your, of my coin that you own, that’s the percentage of the $10,000 that you got this week.

[00:55:02] It’s going to be even more than that. So there are, there, there are dividends. There are, I’ve got things on my site. You can buy my books using crypto for five bucks. That’s 80% off. You can go to my classes, you can attend my masterclass. You can buy a ticket for an event. And that’s just the beginning.

[00:55:23] There’s a whole ecosystem is there’s going to be almost like a creator mall that comes out that you’re going to be able to use these tokens for lots of interesting, exciting and exclusive services products. NFTs it’s just, like I said, step one of a thousand steps, but it’s already pretty cool.

[00:55:47] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. I was poopoo on the whole creator coin things until I saw Mark do it. I was like, okay, if Mark’s behind it, then that’s, I’m really interested now in seeing how that could work. I liked the idea of having your currency, that people can buy your product. Yes. Yeah.

[00:56:02] Mark Schaefer: And the best part about this is that I can use these tokens to say thank you.

[00:56:10] I’ve lived in this world where I’ve benefited from so many wonderful people. Like you like, like Grace, like Gary, who was on a few minutes ago, like Brooke, who was on last week. This is an opportunity for me to just give away tokens and say, thank you. You’ve been such as a poorer here.

[00:56:32] Here’s a gift for me. You can be part of this, let’s be in this together. And I love that. That really it’s all of a sudden, like a two way system instead of just people doing nice things for me, that’s the best part about this so far.

[00:56:49] Jeff Sieh: That’s awesome. So thank you, Mark for staying late. And before we wrap up, I want to let you tell people where they can go and find out about creator coins that you have, and also where they can find you and your books.

[00:57:00] By the way, if you’re watching over an Amazon live, all of Mark’s books are listed down below in the carousel. Make sure you check those out. I, lot of the people here in the chat have read them and continue to reread them because they’re that good? So make sure you guys check those out. So Mark.

[00:57:16] Mark Schaefer: First of all, thank you so much.

[00:57:18] I love you both. I appreciate you both. I’m so appreciative of your professionalism and especially your patience with me today. You can find everything about me at businessgrow.com Actually is right there below my name. You can find my blog, my podcast, my books. You can learn a little bit about the rise queen.

[00:57:41] I’d called it RI$E instead of Mark. It has it’s. It’s true for me. It’s about rising above the noise, right? That’s what we all want to do today. We want to be heard. We want to be seen. We want to be discovered and. What this community is about is how do we do that together? So the coin is called rise.

[00:58:02] There’s a little place on my website at then that bar says rise. So you can learn a little about that and learn how to get involved. And if you have any questions or you’re confused, just drop me an email, drop me a DM on social media and I’ll, I’ll help you walk through it because we were all in this together.

[00:58:22] Jeff Sieh: So let us know in the comments, if you think that some sort of creator coin would be something that you’d liked for grace and I to do for this show, because like I said, I like to get my feet wet in this. Carrie even said wonderful, Carrie Ray. I said sh she as well gave it a serious thought when she saw Mark’s newsletter and Ann Haley is doing it.

[00:58:41] The value of their words and recommendations. Chad says Cumlitive Advantage is still my favorite book that he has ever read. The Bible as well. Chad cause come on. That’s really, I just want to get that clear we may have to talk after, but anyway Mark, thank you so much for being on here and coming and just you’re so personable and in the way you want to help people really appreciate you.

[00:59:04] Grace. Thank you for putting this together. Where can people find about the, all about the amazing Grace Duffy.

[00:59:11] Grace Duffy: You can find me over at Restream’s, YouTube channel. We just relaunched our new series of live shows. I launched our creator spotlight this last week, and next week we are doing our product marketing show. So if you want to know anything and everything about restream, please join us over there to Wednesday, noon central, I believe so.

[00:59:31] I’ll just follow us over, subscribe over to our YouTube channel and you’ll get the latest from me. And then I’m here every Friday with Jeff, except when I’m not.

[00:59:40] Jeff Sieh: And don’t forget, we’re also a podcast. You can find us on your favorite podcast player. Make sure you check out mark and Brooks marketing companion podcast is amazing.

[00:59:49] And also Gary Stockton, who was on before about small business, you can drop the link in down below and we’ll push that out as well, but make sure you guys go and subscribe and leave a review because that really does help podcast podcasters. Our next show is Friday, February 25th at 11:00 AM.

[01:00:06] 10:00 AM central. You find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Amazon live. Don’t forget our sponsors, the amazing ECAP. They helped us put the show together today. As you can see, we did things on the fly and it worked amazingly well, but you can find out more about them at Social Media News, Live dot com forward slash e-com.

[01:00:22] And with that, thank you, Gary. Thank you, Chad. Thank you, Carrie. All of you in the audience for your great comments and putting up with us today, we appreciate you and we will see you next time. Bye everybody.