In the age of Amazon is brand loyalty still a thing?

By | Brand | No Comments

Are you loyal to fewer brands now than you were ten years ago? Before you read any further take a few minutes to write down the list of the top 10 brands you are highly loyal to — i.e. you buy them every time you go to the store. How long did it take you to list ten? 

For me it wasn’t easy to quickly come up with my list. I really had to think about it for a while, so maybe I’m not as brand loyal as I used to be.  One reason could be that I now buy a lot of products on Amazon Prime (TP, tissue, laundry detergent, paper towels, dog bones, etc.) where I don’t care as much about the brand as long as the rating is good and the price is low (Amazon’s private label is good enough in most cases). 

That’s a big change from just a few years ago when I went to the grocery store and bought the same name brands trip after trip. Then again, maybe I wasn’t truly loyal to Bounty towels or Puffs tissues but I just bought them because they dominated the shelf space — and because it wasn’t worth the effort required to evaluate the quality/value of the competitors. But today Amazon, and other online stores, make it super easy to find dozens of alternative brands with great quality/value and have them delivered to your door. Plus the big name brands have a tough time dominating your field of vision amongst the 20 other products on the page.   

Not surprisingly (and like millions of other people) I’m no longer loyal to “commodity” brands — sorry P&G but store/private label products are damn good these days.   

So what brands am I loyal to?  It took me a couple hours to come up with the following list.  

F45 – technology enabled gym featuring 45 minute high intensity workouts. I’m addicted and as a result am now in the best shape of my life (hence my loyalty).

Lucky Jeans – the most comfortable jeans I’ve found after trying dozens of different brands over the years.  Lucky always fit great, look good and last a long time.

Academy Sports – carries a huge selection of sportswear, sneakers, BBQ supplies, branded team wear, outdoor gear, etc. Unlike any other store, I actually enjoy roaming around Academy checking out all the various things they offer and I usually leave with something I hadn’t planned on buying. 

Southern Tide – both casual and business casual clothes that fit my style, are high quality and regularly come out with new items that I like. I particularly enjoy their shirts that look like “dress” shirts but are breathable, stretchable and wrinkle-proof — they’re great for the 100 degree days here in Dallas.  

Westin Hotels – after 30 years of travel I’ve found that Westin consistently delivers a great experience from location to location all over the world. They’ve kept their properties up-to-date and stylish. And their resort properties are an excellent value relative to the 5-star brands.   

Luchese Boots – the best fitting and most comfortable boots ever. I don’t buy boots often but when I do I only look for Luchese since they are crafted so well they feel great on your feet day 1.

Garden of Life – the highest quality vitamins I’ve found after evaluating dozens.  I’m very careful about what I eat and a lot of supplements are full of junk so I appreciate the high quality manufacturing processes and pure ingredients Garden of Life uses.

Nolan Ryan beef – the best quality steaks for the price.  That is the key when it comes to steaks.  I’ve trusted the butchers recommendation from behind the counter and wound up paying 50% more than Nolan’s steaks which taste just as good, if not better.  Importantly Nolan’s steaks have never let me down — in 10 years I can’t think of a time I’ve been unhappy with one. That’s hard to do in a highly variable product like cattle. 

Vital Farms – great tasting, high quality, pasture-raised, organic eggs.  I eat eggs nearly every day and found these to have the best nutrition/taste for my money — 20X better than grocery store white eggs.  

La Hacienda Ranch – local Dallas restaurant with the best fajitas anywhere on the planet for over 20 years. There’s no need to try anyplace else, take my word for it.  

You’d think that my list of brands would include high consideration things like cars, appliances and electronics that involve lots of time, research and money to acquire.  Nope, for those products I like to research the latest innovations which means I frequently change brands when someone comes along with more/better features (the iPhone is an exception – see P.S. below for the reason). Interestingly my list is mainly comprised of lower price point products so it’s not a high risk proposition to make a switch.  Even in the case of my gym, F45, I have a 2-week cancellation so there’s not much risk to trying other places.  

So what’s the explanation for my loyalty?  Honestly, I think it’s the old fashioned definition of brand — these products deliver on their brand promise of superior quality, taste, style, service, etc. every single time I buy them.  And now that I’ve found the absolute best in each category why would I bother wasting any more of my time?

So despite my initial thoughts that brand loyalty has eroded, I think it’s alive and well, even for things like steak, eggs and fajitas. The key to brands earning consumers’ trust is the same as it’s always been — you’ve got to deliver a superior product (quality, style, value, etc.) consistently over very long time.   

P.S.  Even though I have been loyal to my Mac and iPhone for years I did not put Apple on my list. Now I find Apple products to be buggy and bloated with poor UX — does anyone enjoy carrying 5 different dongles to connect devices to their Mac….or a dongle to connect their “old” headphones to their iPhone???  But, even though I’m frustrated with Apple, I remain loyal because the switching costs are just too high.  

Stand Out from the Crowd for Your Media Pitches and Speaking Submissions

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If you’re looking to get more PR coverage and more acceptances for speaking opportunities then you need to stand out from the crowd of people you are competing with.  I use the EnhanceCV platform to create a nicely designed short bio that includes the highlights of my experience [one sentence for each role], a quote about my marketing philosophy and links to the key content pieces I have created on relevant topics along with key bylined articles I’ve written.  It’s then quite easy for a reporter or event committee to view my work and make the decision that I’m worthy of consideration.  Check out my bio here.

#CMO #ChiefMarketingOfficer

b2b branding

How to Execute a Successful Rebranding for Your B2B Business

By | B2B, Brand, Ebook | No Comments

Rebranding your B2B company is essential to stay relevant with customers and stand out in your market – which means you can’t afford to get it wrong. Yet despite it’s huge strategic importance I’ve never seen another Chief Marketing Officer cover the topic of rebranding so I thought I’d give it a shot.  In this ebook I take a straightforward approach covering all the steps I’ve taken to pull off successful rebranding projects at Entrust, ReachLocal and MultiView.

  • Laying the foundation by aligning senior leadership
  • Developing your positioning, messaging and brand essence
  • Finding the right digital agency to partner with
  • Launching the brand internally and externally

DOWNLOAD the ebook here.

#CMO #ChiefMarketingOfficer

How to Structure a Modern B2B Marketing Org

By | B2B, Brand | No Comments

B2B Marketing Org

I recently joined a great new company, MultiView, and have a clean slate to build a new marketing organization.  After much thought I developed this view of what I think right looks like.  I’m focused on building that brand/web/automation core first and then will add team/budget to build out the functions for Product Marketing, Sales Enablement, Brand/Reputation Building and Direct Marketing. I’d love your thoughts on this and how you structure your organization.  Leave me a comment or shoot me a DM @ToddEbert.

 

new reachlocal website

Starting 2015 in Style with a New Brand & Website

By | B2B, Brand, Web Marketing, Web/Tech | No Comments

And boom goes the dynamite — just a few minutes ago we launched our brand new website, the culmination of months of hard work.  I’m incredibly proud of the entire team for creating this gem of a B2B lead generation website.  From architecture, to design, to content, to dev, to QA we built it 100% in house. I am truly humbled by the creativity, dedication and drive by this special group of people. After a glass of champagne to celebrate they’ll finally get to go home and get some very well deserved rest.

ReachLocal Marketing Team

P.S. Note to self:  never, ever, ever launch a new brand and website during the holidays

definition of interruption marketing

Definition of interruption marketing

By | Advertising, Brand | No Comments

For some nostalgic reason I still subscribe to the daily newspaper.  A couple weeks ago they added a cover-wrap ad to the homepage….errr….front page.  Sure it only takes a couple seconds to remove the annoying wrap but that’s not the point. The point is that they are interrupting me and the brand being advertised receives my ire. So while they are intending to drive awareness and sales they are actually doing the opposite.  When will traditional advertising learn that interruption marketing is yesterday’s news…oh yeah, they are yesterday’s news.

How to make a good promotional video

By | Brand, Demand Generation, Video marketing | No Comments

I’m a longtime American Airlines frequent flyer so they sent me an email about their new small business travel rewards program.   Typically I hit delete in a nano second on the dozens of marketing emails I get daily, but something in the American email caught my eye so I opened it.

In few cases like this where I open the video I usually close in seconds because it misses the mark [too boring, off target, of no use, etc. etc.].  But in this case American did a super job of using humor about business jargon to draw me in and keep me watching until the end.

Congrats American, you did a rare thing which is to make a good promotional video.  Who is your agency?  I’d like to talk with them.

Bringing Your Brand to Life with Video is So Easy

By | Brand, General Marketing | No Comments

If it’s so easy then why don’t more businesses do it?  Maybe they have stage fright or maybe they don’t know about the smart phone apps that make it a no brainer.  Check out this blog post by my team that covers the basics of video marketing and then give it a shot.

By way of example, I’m sharing my “selfie” video that I created in 5 minutes using pictures from my family vacation to Italy.  No, I’m not selfie obsessed, I did this as a fun way to document all the cool places we went and to annoy my teenage daughters by doing something they think that only cool kids should do.

Anyway, for your business you could easily use your phone to take some pics of your store, employees, new products, community service projects or completed jobs.  Then you use an app like PicFlow to select the pics, add a soundtrack and voila 2 minutes later you’ve got a video.  Imagine a kitchen remodeler showcasing many of his completed jobs each month in the same way I put together my selfie-montage.  It would definitely bring his business to life with a side benefit of helping him drive better SEO and social sharing by posting the videos on key sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and so on.  #RLNow

Great Workplace = Stunning Colleagues – The Netflix Approach to Corporate Culture

By | B2B, Brand | No Comments

As I sit here writing performance reviews for my team it begs the question of who to reward and who I should encourage to move on.  That led me to this really interesting presentation by Reed Hastings of Netflx.  

While his approach might too agressive for most companies I really like the fact that they take their culture of performance seriously. And they continously refine the team by hiring all-stars and cutting not just the under performers but those who are adequate.