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Consider the Honeybee When Attracting Your Social Customers

By Jeremi Karnell 9 years ago
Home  /  Social Customers  /  Consider the Honeybee When Attracting Your Social Customers
Don Peppers published a piece in Fast Company titled “When Trying To Attract Customers, Consider The Habits Of The Honeybee“.  In the article, Peppers highlights how the honeybee is a social insect constantly communicating with other bees about food sources they have found.
When a foraging honeybee comes across a promising food source it returns to the hive and does a little “waggle dance” to tell all the other bees where to fly in order to find this bonanza. The honeybee waggle dance has been shown to be sophisticated enough to communicate the direction of the food source from the beehive, relative to the sun, its distance from the hive, and its overall attractiveness, as well. And this dance provides good direction even on cloudy days, because bees can see light in the ultraviolet spectrum, allowing them to know exactly where the sun is no matter how heavy the cloud cover might be.

It’s easy to draw a parallel between how social customers behave and how honeybees behave.  Think of your customers as honeybees and your business as a flower distributing nectar to the honeybee market.  Great advertising may attract a large number of bees to your flower but in order to get those bees to go back to the hive and do a waggle dance for your product/service you also need to provide a great customer experience.

When consider what will deliver a great experience, one should consider the four important stages of the Customer Decision Journey (CDJ):

The Customer Decision Journey

  • Formulation (Awarness, Consideration)

    This is the moment or instance that triggers interest and the steps our connected customer takes to boil down her initial options.  

  • Pre-Commerce (Evaluation)

    Based on the initial consideration, our connected customer conducts open research to validate her initial choices and surface new opportunities.

  • Commerce (Purchase)

    When a decision is made, our customer journey is only the beginning. Tools and services unlock to shape and steer the ensuing customer relationship.

  • Post-Commerce (Experience/Advocacy)

    Following the purchase, our connected customers bond with the brand. The extent of this bond is defined by their loyalty and advocacy.

At this point, you should ask yourself two questions:

  • What are the story environments that make up the CDJ? (What kind of flowers do we need to nurture?)
  •  What questions should we be asking about at each stage of our customer’s journey to ensure that we are attracting the right individuals and motivating them to engage with our brand? (Are we attracting the right bees and giving them a reason to waggle for our brand?)

I went ahead and took a pass at answering the above two questions to help you jump start your own thinking on the matter:

  • Formulation

    Story Environments

      Television Advertisement Online Advertisement Mobile Advertisement Social Advertising Newspaper Advertisement Radio Advertisement Outdoor Advertisement Flyer Advertisement In-Store Advertising Direct Mail Catalogs Tradeshows/Events




    Key Questions

      How well is our brand storytelling working? Which story environments are conveying our brand the best? Which audience is resonating with our brand story the most?

  • Pre-Commerce

    Story Environments

      SEO Corporate Websites Online Forums & Communities Augmented Reality Physical Showrooms Sales Personnel Samples



    Key Questions

      Are we improving – successfully migrating connected customers to increasingly higher levels of engagement with our Pre-Commerce stories?

  • Commerce

    Story Environments

      SEM Affiliates & Aggregators Corporate Websites Social Media Mobile Applications



    Key Questions

      Are  customers performing conversion actions within our story ecosystem according to our goals?

  • Post-Commerce

    Story Environments

      Social Media E-Mail Loyalty Cards Branded Communities Custom Publishing Customer Service Corporate Websites Mobile Applications



    Key Questions

      Where/how does our connected customers share their stories about their experience with our brand? Does the brand listen to these stories and respond in a timely manner? How do we cultivate the great experiences and reduce the frequency of bad experiences?



Grounding the Customer Decision Journey as a theoretical framework into practical application will be a profound step for any brand forward thinking enough to adopt it.  By understanding the CDJ habitat we maintain for our customers we empower our brand to take the necessary steps to improve/optimize the customer experience at each touchpoint.  This will ultimately result in your customers buzzing about your brand to their hive of associates, friends and family.  Waggle Waggle!
Category:
  Social Customers
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About

 Jeremi Karnell

  (9 articles)

Jeremi Karnell has over 18 years of experience in CEO, president, and CMO roles in companies ranging from early-stage businesses to the Fortune 500, and has expertise in marketing, professional services, and digital product innovation and development. Karnell is a serial entrepreneur and has founded 4 companies, including one which he scaled to more than $100M in gross revenue and over 200 employees across the globe. He has significant business expertise in operating and scaling professional services firms and has helped run significant operations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. In late 2013, Jeremi sold a start-up he co-founded, called OfferGraph, to PolyGraph Media in Austin, TX. OfferGraph was an early-stage multitenant SAAS platform that allows brands to identify, connect with, and monetize relationships with key influencers and their social networks. He helped acquire OfferGraph's core IP and team from Harvard University, which was beta testing with major social networks such as LinkedIn. Prior to this, Karnell was Founder and President of One to One Interactive. He played a major role in establishing the firm's position as an industry leader in online customer insight, customer activation, and cultivation solutions. Jeremi also managed the US and international sales and marketing team, which generated over $20M in net digital marketing revenue with a 40% CAGR from 2005–2012. Under his leadership, One to One was recognized as one of Fortune Magazine's Fastest-Growing Companies, BtoB Magazine’s Agency of the Year, and one of AdAge's Top 100 Agencies in the United States.