MBA2013 Guest Teacher – Matt Edmundson – How to Create a Customer-Centric Experience With Toilet Seat Marketing

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Hi everyone, my name is Matt Edmondson. I am an e commerce entrepreneur, coach and podcaster and it's great to be with you on the Hundred Dollar MBA show. And today we're going to chat about one of my favorite topics, digital marketing. Now, when it comes to digital marketing in general, everyone is looking for the latest silver bullets, asking themselves questions like, should I be on TikTok right now? What's the best Facebook strategy since the iOS changes? Should I add a tracking widget to my website? All these questions are in our quest for the latest and greatest and best idea, the silver bullet. And these are all valid questions I think we should ask ourselves as entrepreneurs and marketeers. But amongst the latest tactics, there are still timeless marketing principles that we should never ignore. And I would argue actually that getting these foundations right are more important than the silver bullets. And one of the key marketing principles I call toilet seat marketing. Now this idea I got when I was listening to a good friend of mine called Rich Rising. He was regaling us with a story of the time he cleaned toilet stalls and the awards that he would win. Yes, that's right, he cleaned toilet stalls. Now I appreciate this is not necessarily a dinner table conversation, is it? But Rich asked, how do you consistently win the award for, for the cleanest toilet stalls? Now it might not sound like the question that unlocks a key principle of marketing, but actually it is. Think about how everyone cleans a toilet store. How would you do it? Picture it in your mind. You open the store door, you wipe down the walls, you spray the toilet and you're off. That's what everybody did. But my friend Rich did something extra, something different, something that other cleaners didn't do. And it's how you win the award for the cleanest toilet. You see, once he'd cleaned the toilet from his perspective, he turned round and he sat down on the toilet. And as Rich says, from here, he had the most important perspective, the perspective of the user. You see, you can clean toilets all day long, but if the stall is not clean from the view of the person on the seat, well, you're going to have problems. And this is toilet seat marketing in a nutshell. Changing your perspective and seeing things from your customer's point of view, whether that's a first time customer or a long standing customer. So is this idea of toilet seat marketing based on the idea that the customer is always right? Well, no. Mainly because I don't believe for one minute that the customer is always right. I know this because I am in fact a customer for me many companies and I know I am definitely not always right because my wife tells me right. So it must be true. Now that said, I do think how our customers perceive things is very important. So toilet seat marketing, as Rich would tell us, is really the management of our customers perception. And you see, this has to be more than just a fancy slogan or a catchphrase about how nice we treat our customers. Mainly because customers don't believe them. According To HubSpot, only 1 in 10 people actually believe a business when they say we put our customers first. One in 10, that's not what you would call a great statistic. So if the customer isn't always right, should we then put the customer first? Is that what this is all about? And I'm not so sure that is realistic either. You see, as business leaders, we have to think about other things beyond our customer. We have to think about our own Company welfare, our bottom line, our profits. We have to think about the staff, our team. We have to think about the environment and our responsibility to our local communities and so on. There's a lot of balls we have to juggle. But what does make sense to me is when the circle of customer focus and the circle of business interest overlap, that gets very, very interesting. Very, very quickly. This is, if you like, cleaning the toilet, from both perspectives. And I discovered this whole thing a few years ago when we changed our business model for one of our online stores. We deliberately moved from a business that had poor customer service to a business that worked very, very hard at our customer service. And do you know what happened when we did? Sales fell. That's right, sales fell. Not a great answer to the question, is it? But they fell in the short run because we couldn't compete on being the cheapest anymore. The next year, though, as our strategy started to take hold in the minds of our customers and they could see that actually customer service for us wasn't just an empty slogan, our sales began to rise. Now, we had to hold our nerve when sales fell at the beginning in the belief that we were on the right track and that we were doing the right thing. And when we did, the next year, we had 20% growth, which equates to over one and a half million dollars in extra revenue. That was a big deal for us. So having done this for a while now, having coached clients in this whole area, what have I about toilet seat marketing? What actually works for us? Well, there are many ways to answer this question, but there are three specific things that I would say make a huge impact for just about any business. And the first one is this. That repeatability and referability are the marketing world's dynamic duo. I'll say that again. Repeatability and referability are the marketing world's dynamic duo. Duo. Now, when we grew by 20% the following year after changing our business model, I noticed that a big chunk of this was actually down to our repeat customer rate growing. And it kept on growing. I mean, it grew way past the industry average. And all of this despite our website no longer being the cheapest. We also learned that customers who were just bargain hunting, well, they were with us today, but actually they were looking for someone else tomorrow. They weren't loyal to us, which is no real way to carry on a relationship, is it? They were expensive to acquire and in fact, they gave us the most grief, so we stopped pursuing them. But the customers that did become loyal were phenomenal. They purchased from us Time and time again. And here's a little known secret. What do repeat customers do besides buying from you? Time and time again, they tell their friends about you. So that means your appealability goes up, but your referability rates go up as well. And it gets better, I tell you, the more you get into this, because the benefit of a referred customer is that they are much more likely to become a loyal customer. Okay, so loyal customers refer customers. Those customers who are referred become loyal customers who then refer more customers. It becomes almost like a self perpetuating cycle sustained by the energy of your customer service team. For me, it's the miracle of modern marketing. So we can throw in phrases, you know, like influencer marketing, micro influencers, and even now nano influencers, because it all sounds new and trendy and we all like that. It's the silver bullet. But the truth is this advice is over 2,000 years old. And it is simply this. Treat your customers the way that you would want to be treated in that same situation. And if you do, you'll do really well, especially in the long term. So toilet seat marketing is about repeatability and referability, and repeatability and referability are the marketing world's dynamic duo. The second thing with toilet seat marketing is that actually answering questions is an exceptional way to grow that all important trust factor with your customers. Now we all know that customers have questions. In fact, they have a lot of questions. And my experience tells me that the more I can answer those questions, the better the relationship I will have with that customer. I don't know about you, but I've been to websites where I'm interested in a product or a service, but there's no pricing on the website. I have to fill out a contact form to get a quote or for somebody to talk to me about the pricing. Now usually they do this because the person running the website is paranoid for whatever reason about their pricing. How many times have I filled in one of those forms? Well, if I'm honest, hardly ever. Now I have questions I have. I want to know how much something's cost. I at least want to know the ballpark. But those questions aren't being answered and so I feel slightly annoyed about the whole affair. Which is, well, it's not a great place to start a relationship, is it? But we do know that there is a direct correlation between knowledge and trust. The more the customer feels they know, the more they trust the products, the brand or the service. So when it comes to your website, product pages therefore are incredibly important. Your about us page is actually Going to be one of your most visited pages, especially by new customers, because they want to get to know you. Because the more they get to know you, the more they trust you. Okay. And this was when we started to change things ourselves. When we figured this out, we were like, man, how do we answer all of these customer questions? Okay, so we did things like searchable, frequently asked questions on our website, clear headlines and product information. We spent days, weeks working on our About Us page. We added live chat so we can answer more questions that were coming in. And as an aside, I think I'm just curious to see if live chat's going to evolve into something like livestream e commerce, where savvy e commerce businesses, I think are going to have knowledgeable and likable team members live streaming for large chunks of the day directly from the website, answering questions as they come in in real time through the comments. Now, of course, we also worked hard on our reviews, and reviews are a big aspect of social proof, but reviews do something else. They answer customer questions. We have all read through reviews of products and companies because they answer those questions we subconsciously have, like, will it arrive on time? Are these guys actually reliable? How have other people use this product? And so on. Right? These are all the questions in our head. So toilet seat marketing then, is about finding out what questions your customers are asking. You. Take the most popular ones and you answer them wherever your customers hang out. Sure, that's going to be on your website, but it'll be on social media, blogs, podcasts, and so on. Because ultimately this builds trust. And building trust is such a powerful marketing tool that we've got at our disposal, yet so many of us forget about it because we're too busy looking for the latest spinny widget for the front page of our website. And finally, toilet seat marketing is about washing your hands. Now, I appreciate this is a little bit cryptic, but let's think about the toilet stall. Again, the experience is not just about the toilet. It is also about the sink, where they wash their hands. Both need to be clean. Now, what this means is that for your customer, there is always something extra, something more that they need out of the experience of buying something from you. And you should make every effort to understand what your customer's metaphorical sync is. Now, I can tell you that this is more than just understanding their demographics or putting their Persona with a picture and a name on your wall. These are all great, but not really enough, if I'm honest with you. I have to think about and I have to Understand my customers values. So we had a beauty website for example, and we started to dig into this and we understood that customers were buying from us more than just skincare. Okay, we dug into their values and do you know what? The more we dig, the more we realized that our customers were buying themselves a gift, a treat. Their values were self care. They were investing in themselves. They wanted to feel special and pampered and cared for. This then started to lead us to ask certain questions. One of them was, how did the customer feel when they received one of our packages? Now sure, we sent it out quick, but did they feel special? Well, we quickly realized the answer to this question was in fact a resounding no. A metaphorical sink needed work. We were like Amazon. Everything went out in a brown box. Now who ever got excited about a brown box? No one, that's who. Unless it was my kids when they were six, seven months old. See the boxes, they are brown and they are boring. So we wanted to change our packaging. But on the same same hand, we also had to think about our own values as a company of sustainability and fun. So we actually kept the same brown box, but we started to print on it text and graphics that told the customer how amazing they were, how special they were. We wrapped the products in tissue paper because I wanted them to feel like they were opening a gift. And we also got rid of the plastic bubbles that we were using and replaced them with something else. Popcorn. Yep, popcorn. Turns out popcorn is an incredible packaging material. It's lightweight, it's sustainable, and it's fun. Three things that I care deeply about right now. Do you know how many people put photos on social media of our brown boring packaging? No one. That's who. Unless it was a complaint. But when we started to use popcorn, everyone started to post and comment about it. So for a few extra pennies, we created a much better owning experience. It was much more like a gift. They felt special. We had, if you like, created magic because we understood their values. Our metaphorical sync added to the whole experience for our customers and it didn't detract from it. So this is what toilet seat marketing is. It's turning around and viewing the same problem from a different perspective. You look at it from your perspective and you look at it from your customer's perspective too. Two views that when merged together, give you a complete and whole picture. Toilet seat marketing creates referability and repeatability. It creates trust. And when you go that extra mile and understand their values and what else needs to be part of the whole Experience, it creates magic. So here's my advice. Go and buy a toilet seat. Put it in your office and from time to time sit on it and see things from a different perspective. Then go wash your hands. Find the magic. You'll be glad you did.

Want to buy a car your way? Of course you do. That's why CarMax offers an experience designed just for you. Want to start online, then visit the lot, then go back online? Sure. Want to talk to a real person or chat online? Either works. Want to take your time and compare all the makes and models? No problem. Then make up some time by filling out the paperwork at home and schedule express pickup or home delivery. Done. When it comes to how you buy, CarMax puts you in the driver's seat. Want to drive? CarMax delivery restrictions apply. See CarMax.com for details. How good was that episode? Seriously. When I heard this lesson, when I was preparing for this episode, I thought to myself, wow. This idea of sitting in the seat of the customer on the toilet seat in this example and understanding what life is like for them, what is their perspective? If you were to buy your product or service, what kind of experience would wow you? What would make you feel like, man, this team really has got my back, has my best interests in mind. I can't wait to tell other people about it. Create that experience. Whether it's getting on a phone call when they first join you or buy a product from you, whether it's giving special gifts like like he did and wrap them in popcorn. I love that idea. Whether it's just making sure the customer knows, hey, we are here if you need us, reach out. This is not rocket science, guys. And the reason why it works, it's because it makes sense. Because it's simple. Because it's at the root of why we love businesses. Because businesses take care of us and give us good service. We love them. We talk about them. Think about when you had a great experience and at a business or purchasing something you can't help but tell other people. This is why Disney is known for its customer service and its word of mouth marketing. Because they have great service. This is why when you have a great experience at a restaurant, you tell other people because it was fantastic. Now here's the good news for all of you who are listening. When it comes to online products, online businesses, courses, coaching, software, books, whatever it is, the bar is really low. Customer service is really not something they invest in. This is something I learned and doubled and tripled down on customer service with our business webinar Ninja because I learned that no one's really doing this. And you can differentiate yourself by being exceptional at customer service and customer experience, by doing very little, by just being available, by answering people's emails quickly, by answering the chats, by being helpful. Because practically no one is doing this. Okay? The bar is very low in the industry. So if you just make a bit of an effort, like get back to people's emails within two hours, you're going to wow some people. If you want to learn more from Matt Edmondson, check out his podcast, the E Commerce Podcast, where he speaks to experts in the e commerce business field and shows you how to grow and develop your business. That wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 me a show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app. And don't forget to leave us an Apple Podcast Rating and Review. By leaving us a rating and review, you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. On Fridays, we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. You could be one of our winners. Just leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and listen in on Friday to see if you won't. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. At the end of the day, your customer signs up for your product, for your service, for your whatever to get a result. If you can make it easier on them to get to that result through the experience they have through your customer support, they will really appreciate it. They'll be like, wow, this is so much easier than I imagined it was going to be. And this is what's going to cause word of mouth marketing. This is going to be gold for you and your business because every time you get a customer, they're going to tell other people and bring in more customers for you for further free. How's that for a customer acquisition rate? Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Bringing your business dreams to life takes heart and about a thousand decisions a day. That's why Atlantic Union Bank's knowledgeable bankers are here for you with the right guidance and customized solutions to help you reach your business goals. So whether you're planning your next move, upgrading your space, or scaling to meet demand, we make sure your business is ready for what's ahead. Because we're big enough to support you, get the small enough to know you Atlantic Union bank any way you bank.