As day 2 of INBOUND21 begins, I made sure to fill my agenda with the sessions that I believed would be the most beneficial to myself as an employee of Spitfire Inbound. I want to share my summary of the sessions as well as my key takeaways so that they may also be helpful to you.
How B2B Brands Grow: Great Marketing Drives Sustainable Growth for Companies
This session was hosted by Ty Heath and Jon Lombardo who teamed up to cover the topic of Brand Awareness and Mental Availability. They began their discussion with the statement that, every brand has a brand awareness problem. Ty taught us that the term “mental availability” means a brand comes to mind when thinking of making a purchase. When your brand is quick to appear in people’s minds that shows you have good brand awareness. She went on to explain the 95-5 rule which is the idea that up to 95% of business clients are not in the market for any goods or services. That means most marketing hits only 5% of the population. For example, big purchases such as cars, computers, or new carpet only happen infrequently so this means if you just made a purchase, you are now “out market” and will be for a while after. When you come back “in market” you need to know the brands. It’s our job to make sure we are building mental availability to people “out market” so that when they come back “in market” they think of your brand first. Ty stated that if a buyer doesn’t know your brand when they come back “in market”, it's already too late.
Jon explored the idea of “brand rejection” which is when companies worry that their brand may be tarnished and become rejected by the public.
My key takeaway from this session was that brand rejection is not common, possibly 2 or 3 people out of a 100 so the real problem is “brand unawareness.” Jon gave the suggestion that companies should pull the messages out of the current happy customers then use that information in their marketing plan. Another interesting concept that Job explored is the Duplicate Purchase Law whereas you compete with the biggest brands in your category, regardless of how you position your brand. The term mental availability is all about being remembered so there is an acronym RMB. This acronym stands for Reach everyone in the category, Message around category entry points to link your brand to key buying situations and Brand everything – with distinctive brand assets.
AMA: Keep Your Best Clients Happy
This session was entirely AMA style which allowed the audience to send in their questions and we could upvote our favourites. The first question that Carl Sakas answered was; what are the key skills to train junior team members on? The answer was clear - start with some shadowing, see how they perform on client calls. Carl also suggested that you could try some role playing to practice client situations. The next question from the crowd was; at what point do you determine when a client should be let go, how much weight should your team hold in that decision especially if they are the day to day lead? Carl answered this question perfectly when he said, when you have a toxic client and you do not fire them you are telling your team that that revenue is more important than their happiness. He expanded on that by saying, if you have a very large toxic client let your team know that maybe you can’t afford to get rid of them now but you're working on it and then dial up your sales. Make sure you let the team know that you are working to fix things ASAP because clients come and go but great team members are worth their weight in gold.
One of the great questions from the attendees was; what is the most effective way to consistently measure client satisfaction? Carl prefers to use the scale called NPS which is basically how likely are you to recommend this business to your friends? This is called the net promoter score and the ideal score you're getting a 9 or 10. The final question was; what if your agency is over promised and under delivered how do you restore the relationship? Carl believes that it's hard to get clients that are unhappy back to happy again because they've been burned and the only way to prove that they can trust you is for you to keep delivering. Carl suggested that you need to say, we figured out what happened and we've created these steps internally to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Using Behavioral Science to Improve Client Success
Andrea opened up the session with a question to the audience - How do you make decisions? This was the start of a discussion based on known biases and how decisions can be both rational and irrational. Andrea described the relationship between psychology and economics, it's about understanding what influences peoples mindsets and design approaches to behavior change for more beneficial outcomes. She recommends that we understand exactly how this works so that we can design marketing for customers and work with these biases rather than against them.
The first bias that Andrea taught us was the “action bias” which is the tendency to think that value can only be realized through action, it's also the tendency to act as opposed to practice restraint. We as humans have a predisposition to act. The next bias that presented to us was the “framing bias.” This is where people make decisions based on whether their options are presented in a positive or negative light.
My key takeaway was based around the most interesting bias that was presented which was the “Rhyme as Reason effect.” This bias has a cognitive affect on humans; if it's written as a rhyme it is more believable. I could not comprehend that we as humans would believe something more if it was written as a rhyme. How strange is that concept?
I guess next time I want to get someone to believe me I will simply just state the fact to make an impact, look how easy that was.
Using Metaphors for Storytelling Success
Genein Letford, Chief Creative Officer, LLC, InterCreative Strategies
I was looking forward to this session all day as I love a good metaphor especially when it comes in the form of storytelling. Genein Letford was full of metaphors and advice on how to train your brain to look for metaphors in the natural world. Her first statement was that, “Emotion wins over intellect” which is the reason why metaphors work so well. A metaphor attaches to the emotion and it absorbs into the persons mind. Genein recommends that when telling stories you should use all the senses so that brain can encode those parts. An example is when you use a leak as a metaphor. Use the emotions that people have already in them about dealing with plumbers, dealing with mould, dealing with the stress of a leak and take that emotion into your story.
My key takeaway happened when Genein asked the audience an interesting question that stumped me. What is your metaphor? What animal represents you? I could not think of my metaphor nor an animal that represents me. This question about my own metaphor lead me to ask what I represent, not only in my work environment but also in my personal life. It’s a great way to gain insight and learn how to use your metaphor in your own storytelling or in a sales pitch.
