B2U Podcast S1E1: Grock your customers
Transcript
Daniel Glickman, Daniel Wass, Rob Balasabas, Mari Smith
Daniel Glickman 00:01
Last August, Dustin, who runs a social media agency in Portland, received a call from an unlikely prospect. A local funeral home wanted to hire him to grow their social influence within the community. Dustin’s challenge was clear. People usually try to avoid any relationships with funeral homes. Unless that is someone they love just died. People just don’t like to be reminded of their mortality. The kind of relationship this funeral home had with their customers focused on servicing the event of death, to have a regular role in the community, they would have to change the very nature of this relationship. If you were in Dustin’s place, how would you go about changing the relationship this business had with their customers? By the way, speaking of customers, I work in tech and in tech, we often use the term user rather than customer to describe anyone who might use our software. Hence this podcasts name be to you or business to user. You You’re listening to the business to user podcast. My name is Daniel Glickman, and I am on a journey to figure out the model for creating the ultimate digital business. Every season, I examine a different aspect of what makes businesses thrive. The season relationships. What does relationship between a business and its users actually mean? Most businesses see the nature of their contact with their customers as transaction. You stopped by a store, pick something up, pay for it. And that’s that. But some businesses have a relationship with their users. That is their users see the business is something that’s part of their life. We all have a relationship with some business or brand. How did those relationships form and what conscious actions to businesses take to form them I know exactly the right person to talk to. Hey, Marie.
02:10
Hi, Daniel.
Daniel Glickman 02:12
This is Mari Smith. Murray is a major social influencer, a shrewd business owner and a good friend. Maria is a master in building relationships. So I call her up to learn from her. So Mario, remember I was talking to you about the business to user podcast?
Mari Smith 02:29
I sure do. I’m excited for you. This is gonna be awesome.
Daniel Glickman 02:31
Whether you’re on it.
02:33
Oh my gosh.
Mari Smith 02:34
Okay, this is perfect. Well, great. I’m looking forward to this chat.
Daniel Glickman 02:39
Yeah. And they wanted to know how do you describe the relationship between yourself and your customers?
Mari Smith 02:46
Oh, my goodness. The first word that came to my mind there Daniel was the word bond. Like I feel like I have a two way bond and bonded with my audience. And that’s my, you know, social media community at large as well as My all the way up to my paying customers. And I just love them. I absolutely love them and they love me right back and I treat them really, with a degree of reverence would be a good word that Yeah, it really is rooted in some of my philosophies over the years. I don’t know, Daniel, if you remember the scoring system called Cloud, right quote with a K. And I just used to get so triggered by that because I was so frustrated and I would see some people figured out how to game the system. And they’d have these massive quote scores and just basically sidebar, it’s, you know, it’s an arbitrary measurement of influence. And so I knew some very, very influential people that weren’t really doing a whole lot on social media. They’re like, authors or speakers or major events, and they have these tiny little quote scores. And this is the way back like, I’m not kidding 2008 or nine, and I would meet people at these events. And sometimes people come up to me and they’re like, Oh my god, and they get all nervous, I was gonna get a selfie. And I’m like, I just my goal is in that split second right there to put people at ease to have them relate to me and me to them as an equal. And I would say to people from the stage and and in person, and you know, one on one conversations, you are important to me, whether you have two followers or 2 million followers, I don’t care what your quote score is, you’re important to me by virtue of being a fellow human being on this planet. And people are like, they can feel that, like it kind of like permeates all that I do and how I show up online and offline. So yeah, I would, I would say that’s the first word that came was the bond and because I just make the relationship component, so important to me, it’s very integral to everything I do.
Daniel Glickman 04:53
So wait, so how do you do that? So how does that manifest itself? Can I use a tactical It was just a touchy feely thing. You, you sense?
Mari Smith 05:05
So there’s a bit of both. I’m really glad that you’re asking this kind of separated out because there’s definitely that the touchy feely sense it’s just kind of an innate Sydney, but it was, like I just said it was influenced by my upbringing. But there’s the tactical aspect of that would look like keeping one’s ego in check. And I learned from a spiritual teacher of my media years ago, probably a decade ago, that this mantra I love this mantra and before you do any thing in public, you press the send button, the update the post, comment, whatever, before you do anything. You ask yourself, what is my deepest intent? What is my deepest intent? So in the early years, and starting in 2007, when I was really immersing myself in the world of Facebook and Twitter at the time, and still use big user of Twitter every day, but you know, social is really just getting off the ground. For it for the masses and for business. And there was a lot of kind of like jockeying for position. I remember this one guy called himself the king of Facebook and but he was really kind of like, competitive and a lot of ego and he tried to like put me down and like he’s the king, how can I be the queen of whatever. But I would catch myself like wanting to dive into the midst of these kinds of conversations. And you know, like, Well, you know, I’m, I’m an expert and like, No, no, no, no, no, what’s my deepest intent? Oh, to make him wrong, to make him look bad to make myself look good? No, you never build someone, excuse me. You never build yourself up by putting others down. And so I would be very strategic. I still am every day and strategic about, like, what conversations I choose to engage in. And I’m mindful about is this going to elevate my brand or is it going to be different Mental I mean, I’ll be seeing, you know, anything too political or too provocative or controversial. I know some of our friends like Mike stelzner. He’s like, he loves controversy. He’s like, all right, you know, just put it out there. Put your thoughts, your opinions out there. And I do, but I’m also extremely inclusive. So wait, so at this point, it’s a conscious decision and your and like, everything you do is about your relationship with your customers. But was it always this way? Did you? Was there a certain point where you realized, Oh, this is what I need to really think about my relationships, and how to do it. So here’s what’s interesting. And if I look back on my entire adult life, I have had two parallel passions. I still do my two parallel lives from age 12 is the world of technology computers, and then eventually the internet and the 90s and People, relationships, behavior. I love things like behavioral analysis, personality assessments, I love to know what makes people tick, and a Myers Briggs or the disc or there’s so many great ones out there, the enneagram I’m not expert on any of them by any means, but I know enough about many of them, some of them desk and my problem most expertise in desk that I’m like, Okay, if somebody’s coming in, and they’re really kind of strong personality and maybe abrupt and they’re short with their sentences, this comes across in written word as well, they’re probably have what’s called a high D, their driver, they, you know, just they’re not they’re not so much into the relationships I will I’m not what’s called a high I, which stands for actually for influence. So I’m absolutely a natural people person. But it’s important to actually cultivate the acceptance or the awareness of other types of personalities. So like, as I say, fleabag, age 12. I remember my dad had I’m really going to date myself here, Daniel. Better My dad was really old computers that had the cassette drive in the side of the keyboard. sinkler see something brother. And my dad wrote music among many talents. And I was like programming this, like five part harmony. And I figured out how to program it, I don’t even know it’s like dos or whatever it was using, and little games and things like that. So I just was fascinated with the tech. So actually, on that disk model, I’m a high I with the C to C is someone who’s really detail oriented, probably like, you know, accountants or people that just love details. So I have that natural blend of the being a people person, and a real penchant for detail. So like, I’ll notice things around people and I’ll compliment or I’ll try to draw them out and you know, things like that. But at the same time, you know, love they’re having this chat about this because there’s aspects of what maybe come naturally to myself and people like Me, people are similar to me that there are aspects that are teachable, you know and then just having that especially when it comes to social media which is why I wrote my book the new relationship marketing 2011 now my goodness I’m do I’m do another book. But the new relationship marketing why my publishers and I chose that title is because the new part is digital. See, relationship market has been around since like the 1980s, where it’s focused on the long term lifetime relationship with your customers, whereas traditional marketing and sales is transactional focus on conversion rates and getting the sales so on, you know, lifetime value of a customer sure, but more focused on the digits and the financial value. But what I think what’s beautiful now with social media is you can nurture and develop relationships with people in your community who may never buy from you or they might buy, you know, in a few years time. So obviously as business people, we want people to like, convert right away, but I’m not kidding. I’ve had people on my email list that said, My I’ve been on your email list for three years and now I really it was time for me to sign up for you know this course that you’re a
Daniel Glickman 11:21
way to have relationships with people who you believe will never buy from you or is everybody a prospect in some form or another?
Mari Smith 11:31
That’s a good distinction, and it’s a little bit of both. I do know that ickiness the nature of social media, right because we all of us were in the business of content. I remember Gary Vaynerchuk saying this maybe like 10 years ago. Everybody’s in the business of content marketing. You have to produce something in order for people to engage with and I just love that saying that as my own saying of content is king but engagement is Queen and she rules out. So It’s like yeah, you have you produce content. And there are people in your online community who will consume that. They’ll listen to your podcast will read your blog posts, they’ll come on your Facebook Lives will join your groups and they’ll finally get enough value and their their tipping point of needing to sign up for what you offer may never come because they’re maybe learning from other people or or whatever the case may be. Now it’s very very different with SAS company or if it’s more like a product as opposed to those of us kind of in the information marketing world. You’re selling a service so
Daniel Glickman 12:40
right but but bringing it back to SAS, which is what this podcast is really about. Yes, yeah. is so the difference between usage of the product and information related to what the product represents has blurred, right? So the relationship is no longer just a Here’s my product you use it. I mean, that’s the kind of relationship you have with a supermarket. Right? I go and I pick up my stuff and I leave, but with a sense product Well, I guess it depends, right? What’s the difference between just having customers who use my product and customers who engage with the information they have around a product?
13:22
Yeah, because yeah, like
Daniel Glickman 13:24
sue you also have SAS products that you sell.
Mari Smith 13:27
They do have information products and yeah, and then when I’m when I’m a brand ambassador, and I do work with with waves, you know, I have ambassador for for SAS products and HubSpot, a girl policy to lots of great SAS company. So But no, this is this is superb distinction. I love this one too, because, to me, I’m thinking of Apple, right Apple, and that relates to Simon cynics classic boot start with why. And he uses apple and Starbucks in the legs as examples in them. book so if you the brand, the SAS company brand are really, really clear on what is your why, why are we doing this again? What is the end result? It’s simple and it’s clear and you can articulate it and your customers can can sense it and feel it and know it. And so then they become super fans, they become absolute customers for life like they wouldn’t dream of going anywhere else because now you are no longer a commodity. What you’re actually selling is an experience and an experience that taps into that bond that I mentioned at the beginning of our talk, where they feel seen and heard and important. gotten their questions are answered, like customer services is above and beyond is exemplary. Zappos is used, you know throughout the world as a classic example of the most incredible paradigm shifting customer service experience and is having is always close to my heart. I’m like, man, if I can get my team to just like, blow people away was the best customer service. And, you know, they’ll, they’ll they won’t go anywhere else for what I offer, you know. So but yeah, and I think too, if you offer a free version of your sass company, then like you might end up having for users forever, but then they might be a very engaged part of your community and might refer you a bunch of business, maybe they’ll become a really great affiliate or something.
Daniel Glickman 15:33
Right. So you mentioned a few words like seeing her herb garden, right? Yes. So let’s take this down to a bit of a practical level. What can I take from this? What can I learn from this about? Okay, I want my users to feel more seen and heard and gotten and valued, perhaps. Right? How do I do that?
Mari Smith 15:55
So one tip that’s so ridiculously simple that anybody can adopt and you guys are probably already doing this is a person’s first name is the sweetest sounding word in their entire vocabulary, even if they’re not that fond of their their name. And because it’s been, you know, etched into our brains since the day of our birth, maybe even before our birthright, our parents chose our name. So utilizing a person’s first name naturally in conversation, spoken word and also written word. That’s, that’s the first thing, tagging them on Facebook or Instagram or wherever, when it’s natural. I personally love to back out the last name so you can tag the person so I’d be like at Daniel Glickman, but I would hit the backspace one time. So it’s going to say at Daniel, I’m also going to be cognizant of utilizing your name more naturally in a conversation as opposed to just putting it the beginning of the sentence, which is what most people do. And like, let’s say you posted a question on my wall, and I respond by going that’s a great question. Question comma, Daniel, exclamation mark, and then going to answer it. So that’s just one super simple tip. And I’m not kidding. I used to see on Facebook’s own page facebook.com slash Facebook. And initially, they had the most awful community engagement still not that great because it takes a lot of you know, I’m sure a lot of staff to manage almost 3 billion people, but our users, but then about maybe five years ago, they suddenly shifted and they deployed a lot of community managers engaging on that page on Facebook’s own page, and they would use people’s first names and they would sign off with the first name of the person engaging the community manager. So that’s a beautiful thing right there. And then the other thing is like, I would just adopt some things like surprise and delight, I would have an absolutely a list of your top 50 100 200,000 whatever it is best customers and you just rotate through those and sending them I think maybe wave does this and I’ll see some other companies doing this where maybe once a quarter, you give them a courtesy phone call. Even if you don’t get the person leave a voicemail and you’re just like, you know, hey john, Daniel here from wave I’m just checking in how you’re liking the you know how you how you like the product, but just like you know, anything I can do for you or wanted to let you know about this special new feature. We have our new training or just like no agenda, but to check in and nurture that relationship. Now there are great systems by the way, I should say CRM I’m sure you guys use good CRM, but our friend john Ferrara over at nimble so nimble calm or there’s also HubSpot. HubSpot does one that’s great, and it integrates with your emails. I don’t believe it integrates with social media contacts so that you could see at a glance one person’s customer record and see what’s happening on social And I this vision years ago today I thought we have never lived in a time where, where it’s possible to exhibit extraordinary like surprise and delight. Think outside the box type of customer service. Because you let’s say you have one of your top clients or even somebody you’re nurturing. And you happen to see on Facebook that they’ve just posted their daughter graduated high school with, you know, honors wherever, or something like that or somebody’s birthday, somebody’s anniversary, something they’ve posted publicly so doesn’t feel weird and stalker, but you might think I think you’ll get a special gifts and a card, a handwritten card in the mail or a special gift. Think who it was who to credit this to but I remember somebody said that they used to go to a person’s profile and they would look at what their favorite movies where they would go on eBay and they would buy a little piece of paraphernalia from that. movie set, and they would mail it to the person. So those kinds of things, I just I don’t see that much of it. Like we’re all just living our lives out loud. We’re sharing all kinds of stuff. If people follow me really closely, they would see I like really healthy food. Do you like chocolate? I like flowers. You know, I travel a lot. So there’s no and of ways that you can like really deeply Get to know your customer, your audience, your prospects.
Daniel Glickman 20:27
But it’s interesting, you mentioned that, you know, I think, I think one of two thoughts about that immediately as excited one is the word CRM, really even though it includes the weather, our for relationship really is the anti relationship platform, the way we use it, because because of one simple thing, which is scoring, the second we stopped scoring, our, the people we work with, we are not developing a relationship with them anymore, right? And we just don’t it’s all about efficient And getting to the right person getting to the right, you know, getting it on time and moving on to the next. And it’s not about, oh, here’s somebody I value as a human being or a value, how they interact with us and our company. Yes. Oftentimes I find myself in this strange situations where the right thing to do sometimes just give somebody advice, which is, you know, maybe you shouldn’t use our software. That’s right,
21:28
I would be amazing.
Daniel Glickman 21:30
And there are ways to say it in a way that doesn’t, that doesn’t really destroy your business, but there are ways to split their way but what I find is in many times, and a lot of times I when we sell at the trade shows, I’m always telling everybody Our job is not to sell. Our job is to help people make informed decisions. And this comes back to the pendulum the pendulum theory. If you push against them, they will push back like a pendulum. Back and forth, right? And so if you put back from selling at the right moment, they would actually follow you in and want to buy. And so if they’re expecting you to sell actually don’t actually just treat them as a human being and say, Oh, well, actually, maybe what you need is something of a different. Let me show you what I have. And you can decide.
Mari Smith 22:22
Yeah, just remember something. One of my mentors oh my god back in 2003. That was 16 years ago. He said to me, you know, there are two types of marketers. There are the numbers based marketers, they look out onto their marketplace, and all they see are numbers, size of audience email lists, conversion rate stats, you know, it’s all about numbers,
22:46
not scale,
Mari Smith 22:48
scale, yet scales and part of it for sure. It’s all related to the numbers and then the second type of marketer is what he called the heart based marketer and they look out on their marketplace or audience and they see real people struggles with challenges with things that keep them up at night with needs and wants. Now, the truth is, it’s not that one’s right one’s wrong, you actually need the perfect blend of both. Because the numbers are important, you gotta track your numbers, you need to be watching those numbers. But man, you got to do it with heart. And people can feel that they can feel the genuine I use this word authentic for like a decade now, I think in some ways authentic is is almost diluted and watered down, you know, but it’s the true meaning of authenticity that people can feel. This person genuinely cared about me. I said earlier about her to seem important and gotten and there’s an there’s a word that kind of encompasses all of that and it’s called grok. gr. Okay, and grok is one of my favorite words. It’s not that used that often, kind of using the personal development world, that when you grok a person you like you get them on a cellular level, it’s almost like you have empathy. You have empathy for them, you can be in their shoes, beat up their customers, you can really grok your customers. Oh my gosh, you know, and there are some there’s major organizations out there that do that, you know, I’ve been to Starbucks is one of them.
Daniel Glickman 24:18
You know, it’s really, really interesting what you’re saying here and I think a lot of what you say is very easy to understand when you’re an individual and a brand right? personal brand and a business. Most of us are not like that most of us I business and so you stop thinking about can we do all of this that you said have these personal relationships and know people and make sure that they feel like we know them? We’re brand, for instance, wave of video with Can we go ahead and tag people personally? Would they feel the same way about us as they feel about Mari Smith? And opposed, right because Mike is a person, not an answer. strict concept. How does that work?
Mari Smith 25:02
Well, first of all, always, always, always sign off at the person’s name. Social Media Examiner do quite a good job with that today will, whether it’s a post or comment on across any of their social channels, you’ll find that the person making the post or comment will sign off with our first name, because it immediately humanizes the brand. That’s another term that’s been around for a long time it’s gotten a little watered down is people don’t really understand what it means. But, you know, humanizing your brand is like, Okay, I’m a customer, our user of wave, but there’s people behind way there’s people behind this brand, there’s people that you know, are making this product work and so on, so forth. But you know, I see where I would go with this as we use Zappos again, because what really sets us apart was Tony Shea, just a wonderful, wonderful guy. I’ve met him many, many times back in the day, he and I were on the speaking circuit together a lot, just the most humble person you’ll ever meet. And what he really instilled in the company was these 10 questions. values. So I think a big takeaway if you’re a SaaS company or any company really, but but definitely as you say how to humanize more, you can do 10 core values, you could do three, five, whatever it might be, I would literally even just start with one and quois that if you haven’t already company wide, right? But if you are so clear that why are we doing this right? Giving people this extraordinary experience through video, whatever it might be. And then you’ve got your core values. It doesn’t have to be 10 however many it is, you train you train and you instill those 10 core values and every one of your employees and contractors so that when your brand is being represented, people have this congruent and cohesive experience and that’s where you keep it you can keep it you can you can be more kind of in control of it, if you will, but it’s funny because even when I think of Apple’s was their very thing that made them successful was like almost like the lack of control. Giving people this beautiful freedom. You know, another person that does does that a person or company is a virgin is Richard Branson always been a big fan of his he’s just extraordinary. And like people development, investing in people is one of the best things you can do for a brand. But this is a great time to mention that the external experience of a brand with its customers is always a reflection of the internal culture. So if you have an internal culture where it’s fun, and you’re bonding, you’re connected, and you you you have a really keen sense of one another. As opposed to some companies to punch a clock, they go home, they have no idea what their colleagues are up to or doing doesn’t mean you have to all hang out bbfs wherever. But whatever your core values are, they’re then going to shape your culture that then shapes your relationship with your customers.
Daniel Glickman 27:58
Right, right. Right. Right. So I guess the question is what in my core culture do I want people to see in me, me as a brand, right? As a brand, and make sure that we always always deliver on that and every interaction? I guess that’s kind of the, the main thing we can take from this. And that’ll build relationships and trust over time, because people will know to expect that from us, right?
Mari Smith 28:28
Yeah. Another thing you can do as a brand, it’s certainly bringing in wave does this pretty well is is bringing a lot of your team members into the front, the front public facing where they’re on videos or they’re doing lives. But as you as you know, people love to have their like their five minutes of fame and be edified in public and congratulated so utilizing some of your customers as case studies and really showcasing them on your blog. Or of course, any of your social channels may be, you know, doing interviews with them, but just really featuring featuring people on a regular basis is a beautiful way to humanize your brand because then people see that person. Oh my gosh, I’m just like that realtor on just like that. Whatever it might be, you know, photographer.
Daniel Glickman 29:21
Okay, awesome. This was really fantastic. It seems like I’ve got a little more digging to do when it comes to brands that don’t really have a face to them. And I think I know who I need to call next. Yeah, thanks, Mari. This was fantastic. I’ll talk to you later.
29:36
My pleasure. Take care. Bye Bye.
Daniel Glickman 29:46
Hello. Oh, hi, Daniel. It’s Daniel. Daniel, Daniel Foster’s, the Director of Product Marketing the go to webinar. So I was just talking to Mari we were thinking about how to humanize brands and we’re just having a chat about it and Wondering what it’s like for Go To Webinar? Because you’re not a human brand, you’re an abstract brand. How do you go about developing relationships with your users?
Daniel Wass 30:09
Right? You know, this is actually a great topic because like, I talked to our customers about this all the time. So we’re in b2b, and like most of our customers are in b2b. And I feel like corporate brands are often so dry, boring, right? And it’s hard to build a relationship with them. And so that’s what I do for GoToWebinar. And that’s also what I try to educate our customers on is get your face out there. People want to know who the people are behind the scenes and so, so give them give them an opportunity to get to know you as the people and that can be video, right? Like, it can be webinars, it can be live video streams, but just a way to connect to the people behind the brand. It is what it is for me.
Daniel Glickman 30:53
Wait, so you’re saying are you all encouraged to like get out there on video Show your personal selves to the world as human beings working for the brand, is that is that what you’re saying?
Daniel Wass 31:08
Well, I don’t know. I don’t, we don’t necessarily have a formal policy on it. But like, I mean, if you if you think of what we do on the webinars, right, like so, obviously, since we are a brand that owns GoToWebinar, right, like we’re part of LogMeIn, all of our marketing teams use webinars as part of their marketing mix, right. And all of our teams get out there and speak on the webinars, because I mean, there’s no way not to speak on a webinar, otherwise, it’s not a webinar. And so in that sense, of course, we want the people we want the people out there now, I don’t think we have a formal policy to say, Hey, this is this is how everybody should get on video. But we just recently and so we’ve just relaunched goto meeting, right, got some got a new interface and so on. And it’s video based, right. So one thing that our internal team asked us to do was like, hey, as you’re using goto meeting, you know Take a selfie, and just show what are the environments that you’re working in and then share that on social and tag it up with with the hashtag work from here. And so in that sense, yes, it does encourage that, you know, you show who you are You show who the people are behind the brand. And, again, I don’t think we have Mr. A formal policy. But I actually the other thing, it’s interesting that you mentioned that because we also have, like this huge employee campaign where we show who the people are that that work at LogMeIn, we have these new tag lines, right, like on your business card, I know what does your business card say, but my, our business cards, they used to have like this long sentence that was kind of fun, and that you could customize, and now we have a new one where you basically you can say who you are as people so people would have like, I’m a dog lover, or I’m a cupcake Baker and stuff like that in their sub line on the business on the business card. And so in a sense, I feel like yes, we are encouraged as people behind the brand to you know, go out And speak on behalf of the company. Yeah.
Daniel Glickman 33:02
Interesting. So you said you don’t have a formal policy about this. So is it just encouraged? So right now, is it the Wild West? link? Is everybody going out people doing weird stuff? Like they have embrace going out? Like, an hour on social media and hashtag and you’re like, no, take it down, take it down. Is that is that happening? or somehow Does everybody know how to stay on brand?
Daniel Wass 33:23
I can’t think of an example where like, something exploded or had to be taken down. I think, you know, like, if you that, that that work from work from here, everybody was encouraged. Jesse got some direction of like, you know, just post yourself in a in a work environment, but like the winning thing was a girl that was at the Louvre and she was using GoToMeeting on the phone. And and and her tagline was I louver. GoToMeeting, right. I love GoToMeeting, and which I thought was funny. So she won an internal award, but I don’t think anything’s ever blown up and I think you know, the other
Daniel Glickman 33:58
thing contest You had a
Daniel Wass 34:00
Yeah, we had a contest on like, Hey, you know, like people were encouraged to actually go go do that and post it. And I don’t know what the what the winning thing was. But we had five people internally that were like the finalists, and they all had some really cool stuff like when they had their, their baby son in the in the picture. I think another one was at Niagara Falls, like they had all sorts of fun stuff. So you see so much user generated content out there on the web, right. And most of it has like a gritty kind of selfmade feel, I think there’s been there’s been like the Instagram area era of like, hey, make your food really pretty, and you only want to publish something that’s really polished. And I feel like wow, there’s some kind of counter movement to a wall. All of that is kind of fake. And so let’s just get real and and I think there’s value in embracing that. So I haven’t heard about a case that’s blown up by like this. There’s another thing where I, there’s Snapchat, right, so so one of the things, I have a webinar coming up and the webinars called webinar walls, and it’s about how to create unicorn content. And so I thought one thing that would be fun was if like, I recommend to our customers always get on webcam in the webinars so that people can start building that relationship with you. So I thought it would be fun to make it a little different to have like a filter that gives me like an all wall or a unicorn horn. And so I looked, I looked around and you can actually get an the Snapchat has an app for your desktop, so you can install it on a PC or a Mac, and you get all the Snapchat filters for your webcam. And so there is a snap cam filter, obviously for unicorn horns. And so I actually I tried that out in goto meeting and I had my unicorn horn that was automatically put in as a filter and I posted that to LinkedIn. I got a ton of people sharing it and it was kind of silly, but I’m going to actually do that on the webinar. And now I’ve talked to our internal team for the blog to say, Hey, is that it’s kind of silly. But is that something that we would want to pick up as a blog post? Because on the other hand, like, I mean, that kind of stuff, I think is just fun in and makes people like see you as people behind the brand and real people, which I think is beneficial to to brands these days.
Daniel Glickman 36:22
Real people so other than contests like the contest is a fantastic idea. I think I’m going to do that wave as well. Do you have like a certain corporate culture that just promotes this kind of behavior regularly was like you have to push it and tell people Oh, now you have to go and be yourselves and social media tagging our company. I
Daniel Wass 36:42
Well, the good thing is, this is the good thing about the culture at LogMeIn. The culture at LogMeIn is is pretty open and, and and friendly and inclusive. I and so people are proud of LogMeIn And you know what like for you know for for Pride Week we had a Pride Week for like it’s all about like inclusion and everybody being part of the team and so I think the contest got a ton of pickup because people had no reservations right like the culture supports being open and and i think log so I know from from like I instantly did it I didn’t even think twice about it and we had a ton of submission side I think is the same and others we had my boss actually like he was at a dinner party and all of his friends were like, what’s going on at LogMeIn? Like I see you guys all over all over your LinkedIn like what’s happening and and I thought that was really cool because when when do you get that that people you know, are like man what’s happening? There’s like there’s stuff going on. So I thought that was that was pretty cool.
Daniel Glickman 37:54
Was that is that when we were together at that dinner that we hosted in Boston was that
Daniel Wass 37:59
it was a little later in the
Daniel Glickman 38:00
So how do you know it works? How do you know this is worth the effort? Well,
Daniel Wass 38:04
a couple of there’s a couple of thoughts on this. So so I don’t have really hard mall, I have a little bit of hard data. So here’s the one bit of hard data that I have so hard data on when we we actually are pulled our webinar audiences to ask a having a presenter interact with you alive on webcam, do you think that’s engaging or distracting and an overwhelming majority? 83% said it’s engaging or very engaging, right? So ever since we’ve been training on our cameras on every webinar, and we, we recommend that to every customer. So all right, but like high data in terms of how does it impact results? I can’t tie it to like dollar value, but what I can say is, so I have a co host, Erica, and Erica and I host a lot of our webinars and sometimes we’ll get feedback from the sales team, where I was like, Hey, you know, we just closed the deal. And the guy said, Hey, You know, I saw Erica or Daniel on a webinar, and I really enjoyed their style and how they did this. And they actually they named drop us, right, like so in the conversation with a sales rep. They named all of us and like to me, you know, yes, it’s not hard data, you can’t tie like bookings to it or anything, but to me, that’s an indication that this kind of stuff works and, and that it makes you more personable as a brand.
Daniel Glickman 39:26
What’s the difference between a webinar where you’re, where you connect personally with people and people connect with you as a representative of the brand and a webinar where it just You don’t? Are you conscious of any things you do to make that personal connection?
Daniel Wass 39:38
So I think this kind of aligns with like content marketing and how people talk and think about content marketing. So one, one thing that I that I tell our customers when I educate them on how to run webinars is you want to give up the goods, right? You want to actually, you know, don’t keep anything back. Don’t make it a sales pitch, like teach people and show them how to do something. And when I get to the nitty gritty of like, this is how I do this, you guys know this, like, we’ve been in touch back in the day because I used wave to create these webinar videos, right? And, and, and I taught people on the webinars how to create these videos because I got excited about it. And I want to teach our customers how to do that stuff, right. And I think that’s the kind of stuff that you want to do, too, or that’s different. Like if you think of like, webinars can be really traditional and boring, right? And there’s like a guy and he reads a script and he has a presentation that moves forward and you don’t he’s not on video and and it can feel like a lecture and and i think good webinars are the opposite of that good webinars are like super actionable, personable, you go deep, you show people like all the insights that you have, and you give them away freely. And that is what furthers the conversation. That is what what kind of builds that trust that Oh, hey, these people are, are real and they have they have real insights and they’re willing to share the insights and be helpful. I feel that that mindset of, of being helpful to people, I think is what makes the difference.
Daniel Glickman 41:09
Interesting. Yeah. So being helpful, he said, but he also mentioned like you have to be, have the insights and kind of be smart, like be perceived as I guess smart and knowledgeable. Like an expert of some sort, right?
Daniel Wass 41:25
Like, everybody’s an expert at something, right? Like, it’s like, if you if you go through life, you can’t be an expert, like, you can’t not be an expert. There’s something that you’re going to be an expert in. And, and, I mean, if you’re not an expert, I would also so this is from from when I when I talk in public, so for public speaking, I think one of the key things is I need to talk about something that I feel confident in that I feel I know a lot about so I actually had a big event I was supposed to introduce an influencer. I you know, just come on stage say Hey, this is so and so. And he’s awesome. And he published this book or whatever. And now everybody give it up for name, right? Yeah. And there were 3000 people in the audience and I had read the book from the influencer, and I couldn’t really get behind it and and i actually I pulled out of it. Like, I can’t do it because I don’t feel confident, I don’t feel like I’m aligned with with that content. So when I, when I speak, I want to be extra confident in knowing what I talk about. And so so yes, I think from that perspective, it’s really important that you have that knowledge but you can build that knowledge right like that. And that’s part of like experimentation and having fun, right? Like the, the unicorn horn on the webcam is like, I just have fun experimenting with that. And once you’ve done it, and nobody else has done it, it’s not a big thing, right? Like it’s a tiny thing. Anybody could download the snap camera thing, but it’s fun, and it’s like super quick to teach someone how to do it. And it says something insightful where other people go like, Oh, I had no idea this worked and it looks fun. And I got, I don’t know, 4000 shares on LinkedIn, or 44,000 reach on LinkedIn, which is kind of rare for me. And all because I posted a picture with the with the unicorn in it right so. So I don’t think you need to be like the Super Mega expert and know everything about a single topic to be able to educate people and engage with them.
Daniel Glickman 43:27
You know, it’s really interesting because one of the things I really noticed about you and connected with you on is the fact that you’re young you don’t have an ego you don’t go around pretending and saying oh, this is my title and I’m a director and I’m you know this and I’m that you just, you know, you just connect personally and just want to do whatever you need to do and make it happen if it’s share information, if it’s gets worked on or connect the need, right, you just do what you need to do. And I think it’s it says volumes about you and you obviously with a smile and you do it very personally, but at the same time, you’re also seen as very competent. I think that combination is great. And it kind of comes really nicely with what you were saying. Like, if you if you have too much up there, if you’re the expert, it’s very hard to connect with you. Yeah, you
Daniel Wass 44:10
don’t want to think you don’t want to you don’t want to be on like on a pedestal of like this or, you know, sometimes I have that when I connect with an influencer. And I know Well, this person has like a million followers, right? Like and I’m, I’m just the guy is somewhere on that gives you that gives you some level of like anxiety or imposter syndrome of like, hey, am I am I actually good enough? And I think that limits for the people that have that sending it potentially, yes, that potentially limits their ability to engage and I feel like many, many people that have kind of made it as influences are very approachable and so they go out of their way to help and be available. Right. And I think I think that’s the right seller I like to take take away people’s fears and lower the barriers and be available.
Daniel Glickman 44:59
Yeah. When you gave me some food for thought here, and I find it fascinating that it’s hard to measure and they think they know who to talk to next about how do we measure the impact of our relationships with our customers?
Daniel Wass 45:14
Was that I want to talk to them to
Daniel Glickman 45:15
call them right now. All right, well,
Daniel Wass 45:17
you can report back, because I would really I mean, if I, if I could tie that back to the actual impact that we can demonstrate on like a bottom line, this would make my job.
Daniel Glickman 45:30
I see. Well, I’m gonna hang up and call Rob right now. I’ll talk to you later, Daniel. Awesome. Daniel,
Daniel Wass 45:34
it was great to talk to you
45:40
can remember where I
45:43
am not your son. Oh.
45:49
Hey, Rob. Hey, Daniel. What’s up? Not much, not much just in the office.
Daniel Glickman 45:54
Hey, I’ve got a question for you. I was talking to Daniel Voss over at GoToWebinar. And we We’re wondering how the companies measure relationships. And since you’re both the community manager of I think effect and you have access to all the infinite knowledge of the business world, you obviously know the answer to this.
46:17
Yeah, you know what, this is a really hard question. To be honest relationships is a really hard thing to measure just because it’s very intangible. There’s some basic things that you can do. There’s there’s affiliate traffic, there’s affiliate codes and affiliate links or referral links that you can provide to your customers, right? If they’re excited about you, you can track mentions right on social so we do this we track mentioned something perfect on YouTube and all the different social channels and a lot of the times people are not tagging us, right, their customers of ours are happy. They may be on Twitter or YouTube creating, you know, video on how to create online courses and they use us and they talk about being perfect, yet they’re not tagging us so we do need to kind of look for them. So very important to set up social listening tools so that you can get alerted when those things happen. There’s so much noise and so much activity going on on online that it’s really hard to find those. So you need to set up systems to alert you. Now one of the things that we are now looking to do is to connect our community with our database. Right now, it’s a bit of a disconnect between our community and the the amount of time and energy that we spend, you know, making sure that they are service that their questions are answered that they feel heard that they’re engaged, it’s a bit of a disconnect. And so this is something that we’re looking to do now, which is basically to take our community and possibly move it into off Facebook groups to then really understand the value of the community because then we’re able to connect the community and the activity.
Daniel Glickman 47:49
That’s impact a bit of that. What is the underlying theory about why mentions are important or important to track?
47:57
Yeah, I think the first thing is any Anytime a customer mentions you or takes the time to talk about you, you need to acknowledge that so we try to do that as best as we can. They don’t have to mention you a lot of the times when customers mentioned us on say, Instagram stories, or Facebook or YouTube, there’s nothing that they’re getting out of it by mentioning us, right? It’s purely out of the fact that they’re happy with the service and the experience that they’ve gotten from whatever interaction they had with their company, whether it’s with somebody specifically, or just the fact that the tool is really awesome. So you know, them mentioning us, the least that we can do is like, at least acknowledge that we track mentions just because there’s SEO benefits, it’s driving traffic to our channels, which indirectly then drives traffic to our website, gives more awareness for us also opens up doors for conversation with them being marketing partners, and then talking, you know, having those conversations about Hey, love what you’re doing. We love your channel. We’d love to do a case study on you. Now we do a case study Now they share the case study with their channel. And so we start getting into niche markets.
Daniel Glickman 49:06
What are your personal KPIs? What are you personally responsible for
49:09
its traffic from social channels. And also these joint venture these collaborations, we use UTM links, segmented by channel. So we know how much traffic we’re getting from Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube, all of our partners have a specific unique link as well that they share. So then we know exactly not just by partner but also by activity, I don’t think there will be a perfect way to, to measure relationships. This is something that we really battled with, as well as that, like, what is the value of relationships? How much time should we be spending, building these relationships, nurturing them going to conferences and hosting dinners and events and things like that. There’s always going to be a certain aspect of it, there’s going to be always a percentage of it that’s going to be unknown to you because it’s just an intangible thing, right? There’s going to be a huge part of it. That’s always not measurable.
Daniel Glickman 50:01
Rob, this was really great. I appreciate your time.
Rob Balasabas 50:03
Yeah, no thanks for thanks for the call Daniel. It’s always good to hear from you.
Daniel Glickman 50:14
This podcast episode was produced by me, Daniel Glickman. I also did the editing and sound mixing. My guest today were Mari Smith, the queen of Facebook. Daniel Voss, Director of Product Marketing at the go to webinar, and Rob lsms from thinking Special thanks to Christopher boots who encouraged me to start this project. You can learn more about myself and about this podcast at bt u podcast.com. And please, if you liked this episode and think it’s valuable, it would mean a great deal to me if you posted a review on iTunes or share it with the long so others could enjoy this
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