On this episode of the Creating Superfans podcast, I’m joined by Andy Cockburn, the co-founder and CEO of Mention Me. Mention Me is an award-winning referral marketing platform that helps brands harness the exponential power of their fans through referrals.
Since 2013, Mention Me has delivered more than 6m referrals totaling $1.8b in revenue for 500 brands, including Puma, Charlotte Tilbury, and Michael Kors. Andy shares fascinating insights on the psychology behind advocacy and why your highly satisfied customers may not be telling their friends about you. We also chat about the importance of measuring the extended lifetime value of your customers and the steps any brand can take to make advocacy the center of their business growth.
listen to the episode
show notes
[00:03:41] How does Andy define an advocate and why are they important for every business
[00:05:18] The three challenges to customer advocacy
[00:07:04] The difference between intention and action when it comes to referrals
[00:08:34] How social capital and social risk influence a customer’s willingness to refer
[00:012:32] What might hold a customer back from promoting a brand on social media?
[00:13:08] How younger and older generations differ when it comes to the psychology of advocacy
[00:14:38] The origin story of Mention Me
[00:16:32] The crucial difference between a customer’s lifetime value and extended lifetime value
[00:18:46] Andy shares an example of an online florist who was blown away at the referral data they discovered through Mention Me
[00:20:08] How can a business owner get started on tracking extended lifetime value and building a referral network?
[00:21:25] What is earned growth rate and why should your business be tracking it?
[00:23:42] What is a “good” earned growth rate?
[00:25:44] Brittany shares an anecdote about a charity she worked with and the most effective method for asking for donations
[00:26:55] How to tell your story to boost your referrals
[00:28:39] The best time to ask for a review or referral
[00:29:02] How to stay connected to your customers even if your industry has very unpredictable purchasing cycles
[00:30:10] The genius way that Mention Me enables customers to refer each other
[00:35:06] What is a brand that Andy is a superfan of and why?
Visit Mention Me’s website
Brittany’s blog post on Earned Growth Rate
The Ruckraft that Andy is a superfan of
transcription
Brittany Hodak [00:00:02]:
Hello, and welcome to the Creating Super Fans podcast where you learn how to turn your customers and employees into superfans. I’m your host, Brittany Hodak, and I’m a speaker, author, and entrepreneur obsessed with all things customer experience. Here’s the thing. We’re living in an experienced economy right now, and regardless of the size or age of your company or even the products or services you’re selling, one thing’s for sure. If your customers aren’t telling their friends about you, you’re in trouble. If you wanna create super fans, being great is no longer good enough. You’ve got to be super. This is the show that teaches you how.
On this episode of the Creating Super Fans podcast, I’m joined by Andy Cockburn, the cofounder and CEO of Mention Me. Mention Me is an award winning referral marketing platform that helps brands harness the exponential power of their fans through referral. Since 2013, mention me has delivered more than 6,000,000 referrals, totaling nearly $2,000,000,000 in revenue for more than 500 brands, including Puma, Charlotte Tilbury, and Michael Kors. In today’s episode, Andy shares fascinating insights on the psychology behind advocacy and why your highly satisfied customers may not be telling their friends about you. We also chat about the importance of measuring the extended lifetime value of your customers and the steps any brand can take today to make advocacy the center of their business growth. Before we dive in, here’s a word from today’s sponsor. If you’re looking for a proven system to make more impact and income, I wanna highly recommend that you talk to my friends at Brand Builders Group. Brand Builders Group are the best in the world at helping people find their uniqueness and building on it to monetize their personal brands. Right now, Brand Builders Group is offering free brand strategy calls to everyone serious about taking Their personal brands to the next level. Just visit free brand call.com/brittneyhodak to request your call. I’ve been a customer for 5 years, and I can tell you the team is absolutely incredible. You may have even heard cofounder Rory Vaden on a past episode of this podcast. They’ve created a system that really will help you get clear on the shortest path to grow your impact, your influence, and your income. So go to free brand call .com/brittanyhodak today to schedule your free strategy session.
Andy, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.
Andy Cockburn [00:02:45]:
Oh, I’m delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Brittany Hodak [00:02:48]:
I always love when I find people in companies that are very like minded, and it seems that you and I and everyone who mentioned me have a lot in common in the way that we think about customers and brand love and super fans.
Andy Cockburn [00:03:02]:
Absolutely. I think, every time I’ve heard you speak Britney, my head has been nodding along. And, Our vision as a company is to make all brands think advocacy first to try and change the mindset in business to how you can truly delight customers so that you grow on the pack of customer love. So I think there there couldn’t be much more in common with creating Super Fans.
Brittany Hodak [00:03:21]:
Yes. Well, I am so excited to have the conversation today. So let’s let’s start at the beginning. What is an advocate? How do you define an advocate? And let’s talk about that, and then why that’s such an important strategy for companies of any size or any age to be thinking about when they think about their overall business model.
Andy Cockburn [00:03:41]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So I think advocacy is a very broad, Definition really. It’s it’s anyone who is a customer who is going and helping other people to understand about your brand. And so that could include relatively transactional things like leaving a review, definitely includes referrals and word-of-mouth, Can also include social sharing. There’s there’s a big strata there in terms of the value of those different things. So leaving a review is great, but it’s basically talking to a bunch of people who who don’t know you. Whereas if you if you love a brand enough that you are going and personally recommending that brand to a friend, the strength of the advocacy is very real and very, very powerful. And and that’s what we look to help businesses realize is how can you get customers out there spreading that that true customer love and Enabling businesses to grow in ways that they otherwise couldn’t because of that.
Brittany Hodak [00:04:35]:
Well and let’s let’s start at the beginning because this is so important and I know, there there’s gonna be a full spectrum of people listening to the show. Some are going to have a pretty well defined customer advocacy strategy, and others may be thinking about it for the 1st time. So for someone who hasn’t really analyzed their business and said, let me look at where advocacy is happening naturally already, who those people are, and what I’m doing to engage in a two way conversation and relationship with them. What’s a good starting place. What should somebody who’s never really thought about their business or their sales through the lens of brand advocates do to, you know, sort of create the day one plan in their business.
Andy Cockburn [00:05:18]:
Yeah. I think, so the one of the ways that we think about this is, There’s basically 3 challenges to to tackling advocacy if you’re a business. The first is you want to delight as many customers as you possibly can And, many businesses use Net Promoter Score to do that. So it’s, you know, actively ask the question, how likely are you to recommend? And so you wanna get as many people say 9 or 10, to that as you can. The challenge with that is that you then end up with a proportion of customers who in theory are defined as promoters, But they actually don’t necessarily promote you. They don’t necessarily go to that effort. And so how do you turn as many of those promoters into active advocates as you can? Then the 3rd component is how do you get the data? How do you know which customers are actually out there talking about you? And there we found, Referral programs are the best place to start because they actually create the data that let you see who’s referring. And and that’s something which I’ve mentioned to me for the last decade and we’ve, We’ve helped runs to generate more than 6,000,000 referrals across our 500 clients. But but what that ultimately reveals is incredible network graphs under each business show like how this business is growing through their customers, loving them and spreading the word. These graphs are things of beauty. It really is amazing. And once you’ve got those graphs, it’s, It’s looking at a customer and saying, okay. Look. That person referred 5 people. We call them dandelion customers because they’re, like, they’re they look like a dandelion on the chart. And and then talking to those customers and say, okay, what are you saying? What do you love about us? Why why are you sharing with and where are you sharing and who are you sharing with? Then you can start to understand the dynamics behind not only what you’re doing right as a business that is making customers truly love you to the point they’re willing to tell their friends, But also what they’re saying and how they’re saying, and then you can think of how you can do more of the good stuff that your customers really love.
Brittany Hodak [00:07:04]:
Well and we’re getting it into mention me because I I wanna talk about the growth of your company not just what you’re doing, but also the the trajectory of your company because I think it’s a really great, really fascinating story. But I love as you’re you’re talking about those 3 categories because there is a huge difference, as every single business owner knows, between intention and action. The promoters and the advocates, the people who say, oh, yeah. I would tell lots and lots of people about you and the people who actually take the Yep. And do tell lots and lots of people about you. So it’s about igniting that that actual action. So I’d love for you to talk a a bit about that about that critical step of, yes, maybe somebody has great NPS scores. They have lots and lots of satisfied customers, but they aren’t taking that next Except they aren’t referring friends. They’re just keeping your business as, like, this nice little secret that they have. And I think sometimes for Business owners, that can almost be more frustrating than people who have an okay experience because you’re if somebody has an okay experience, it’s like, okay. I know how to fix that. But if somebody is like, no. I love you. You’re great. You’re fantastic. But they aren’t helping create more customers. They aren’t becoming that advocate or that referral source. That can feel more frustrating in some ways because you’re like, what else do I have to do? I’ve given you an amazing experience. I’ve done all of these things. So I want you to talk a little bit about that pivotal moment when somebody goes from a promoter to an advocate or from someone who is just a loyal customer to a referral source.
Andy Cockburn [00:08:34]:
It’s, you’re absolutely right. It is one of the most frustrating things. If you have done everything right to get an amazing net promoter score That you’re not getting the growth from advocacy. Like it feels deeply cruel because you are you are running that business that deserves to grow. One of the early things that we learned before we set mention me up actually was, at the heart of a referral or a recommendation is a really interesting social psychology. A recommendation or referral really is just an interaction between 2 people and in that interaction, there’s a there’s inherently gonna be some psychology. But People are basically trying to work out how their friend will perceive them before they share the brand with their friend. And there’s kind of 2 filters that we see being applied. 1 is social risk. So if there’s any sense of social risk that their friends might judge them negatively For making that recommendation, then they won’t go near it. And it may be that they’ve had a great experience, but the category one is isn’t one that they’re comfortable sharing Or, it may be that they’re being asked to share something, but they’re not sure what their friend is gonna see. Something very tactical like that that just, makes them feel uncomfortable. And it’s a split second decision. So if there’s any sense of that social risk, they stay away from it. But, the phrase we use on the other side is social capital. But really what we mean by that is, Am I gonna enhance my friendship by sharing this? Like, am I gonna enhance the relationship? And if I feel like, My friend will judge me positively and my relationship will be stronger on the back of the recommendation than I will share. And that might be because They know their friend has a problem and this this, company can solve that problem. It might be because they just had a fabulous customer experience and they want their friend to experience that customer experience. It might even be a bit more superficial. They they feel this is something new and cool and they wanna be associated with it and they put it in front of their friends. But Effectively, we call it weights and balloons. If you can remove the weight of the social risk, you need to clear that hurdle. If there’s any social risk, people won’t share. And then if you can maximize the sense that People will believe that they’re going to look good in front of their friends, and they will share. And so, a big part of our hypothesis, but how much you mean in the early days, was can we put testing behind this to figure out what it takes to make someone feel good about sharing, because that can solve that challenge of customers who love a brand but who aren’t actually helping the brand to grow.
Brittany Hodak [00:10:53]:
I love this. And, you know, I think it’s so fascinating because, obviously, in the interconnected age that we’re living in, Especially with social media, you have this social capital and social sharing that’s happening not 1 to 1, but 1 to many, where somebody is making a referral or a suggestion in or advocating for something that’s going out to 100 or even thousands of people. And, you know, one of the things that I say a lot is everyone is an influencer. We’re living in a world now where every single person has the ability to have someone make a decision to act or not act based solely on what they say. Your words carry a lot of weight because there are people around you who who will do something just because you say, but what we’re talking about goes It goes back forever. Right? It goes back to, you know, to the dawn of humanity. Sometimes I joke I even joke in my book that, like, the the earliest recorded, referral marketing or influencer marketing was when Adam took a bite of the apple because Eve said it was awesome. And he was like, okay. Like, I I wanna do this. Right? So this is something that is baked into human nature. It has been around for a very, very long time. I want you to talk a little bit about, that that psychological component, that need for social capital, or or what is this gonna mean in in the relationship through that context of want to money, through that decision to leave the review, post about something on social media, add something to a story to say, hey. I had a great experience and you need to check it out too. What is the psychology that’s happening there? What are those unconscious decisions that people are making before they decide to share something, to the people who who follow them.
Andy Cockburn [00:12:32]:
Yeah. It’s, It’s similar, but a bit different to the, like, 1 to 1. So insofar as people are basically choosing to tie their personal brands to the brand of a company. And so there is again a huge sense of risk. If that if they recommend this brand and that brand end up ends up letting down everyone that they’ve, they’ve introduced they basically will suffer significant, like, personal brand damage. And and so and everyone knows that. No one like, People are generally very, very cautious about posting, about brands, and the recipients know that as well. And There’s obviously gradations within people. We find older demographics are much more cautious about this. Younger demographics are less cautious about it. But actually, on the back of that, when someone posts a recommendation in a one to many way. The conversion rate in the older demographics is far higher than in the younger demographics because they know it’s more meaningful, because, Like, it’s taken more often. It’s taken that older demographic more consideration before they’ve been willing to put their personal brands at risk. And I think that’s partly just how we’ve grown up in the stages of technical evolution as we’ve all grown up. But, but it’s once you clear that social risk, it’s, So am I gonna am I gonna enhance my personal brand by being associated with this brand? And and, obviously, we’re steering clear of paid influencers here. This is people doing it for their love of the company. And that, that’s a wonderful thing when someone is willing to, like, put their personal brand on yours and say, I will stand up for this company. And what they say about you is is also so so powerful because often you learn more about why you’re why you’re doing well in those comments than you than you know internally. You think you’re great at this, but actually people are raving at you about you for for doing this.
Brittany Hodak [00:14:13]:
Well and that’s a great point. I think that’s also why social listening is so important, for companies to to be monitoring what people are saying because a lot of those conversations can happen without the company ever knowing about them if they if they aren’t actively monitoring for things, which I I think it’s a great segue, Ernie, for you to talk a little bit about Mentor. Me, why you built the tool and how the tool is helping brands solve some of these problems.
Andy Cockburn [00:14:38]:
Yeah. Thank you. So, so we set up mentioning it almost 10 years ago in the UK and and did it, coming out of a business called HomeAway, which is now known as Vrbo. The world’s largest marketplace vacation rentals at the time. And we just had this fascinating insight when we were working there where, when we surveyed customers, about 60% said they were coming in on the back of a recommendation from a friend, which is fabulous. You know, that’s the kind of business you wanna be running. But, actually, when, when it came to running the business, there was very little we could do with that data point. Like, what what do you change in the business? What do you do once you’ve got that data point? And And so we, we were in a business where there were 18 brands around the world, and they were all trying to do referral, and they were all fundamentally failing. It was it really wasn’t working. So we spent a couple of years playing with a couple of the brands and managed to turn it into a channel that delivered an incremental 20% of growth. And and if I’m like, wow. This is great. This is how businesses should grow. Like, how can we help more businesses grow from their customers? We took some of the learnings from that around psychology. One of the things we do is enable people to share just using their name so you don’t need to share a link. And and we applied that and said, okay. Let’s help Transform marketing so that more people can grow organically from their customers. And over the last 10 years, we worked on, Hundreds of referral programs for brands, but the I’ve got a lot of data that but a couple of years ago, we had a real insight that The referral mechanic is really helpful, but it falls short of delivering on the potential of advocacy because potential of advocacy is far, far greater. Like, getting as many customers who love you to go out and spread the word. It’s more than just those that will, go through a referral program. But once you start to Get the data from referral. You can transform the way that a business thinks about how they treat their customers so that they can drive advocacy. And so once you have tracked that data, We can take a different view of how valuable a customer is. So most businesses today look at customer lifetime value in terms of How valuable their most how, who is their most valuable customer, and that’s, that’s fine. It it tells you one dimension around the customer, which is how much they’re spending with you and how much you think they’ll spend in the future. But it basically views a human being as a wallet, whereas actually a human being is so much more than that. And the the to to add the other half of the customer’s value is to think about what they’re doing for you out in the real world in helping, to Spread the love for your brands and to grow your brands. And so to capture that data is really interesting, and referral is a very tangible way of doing that. And so rather than looking at, LTV, we look at extended lifetime value, which incorporates the referrals into LTV, and we see that it’s a totally different set of customers who are your best customers when you start to think about it that way, which is, you know, kind of mind blowing and means that businesses, unless they take this approach, are not optimizing for advocacy and not really thinking about how they can do the right things to get their customers to be advocates for their business and put all their weight behind treating those customers in a way that rewards them for for being so good to them.
Brittany Hodak [00:17:42]:
Yeah. And I think looking at that extended lifetime value is so important because one of the things that I say a lot is everyone is in the experience department. Every single person at your company is the chief experience officer in some way in in various interactions with your customers, and It’s so important to have a central place of truth for anyone to be able to understand. Of course, we wanna treat every customer as if they were our most important customers. But the reality is there are some customers who are driving far more business, who our futures are far more tied up with than others, and that is information that everyone needs to be able to have access to to see. And when you’re looking at this extended lifetime value, like you may, you know, it would be very easy if you were not measuring and monitoring that to think, oh, this this this is a only $1,000,000 a year contract. That’s not that important and failing to realize that that $1,000,000 a year customer has actually been responsible for 35 or 45 or $55,000,000 of customers because of the referrals.
Andy Cockburn [00:18:46]:
Yeah. Exactly. And, like, at the to give you an example from the other end of the spectrum, I was looking at some data from, I’m an online florist, today, and there was 1 customer who made 3 purchases in her 1st year and spent $84. And so she sat in their databases as basically not very interesting, like, kind of lower quartile. But when you look at Her referral behavior, while she made those 3 purchases in the 1st year, she referred 4 people directly who spent $1500 between them. And so suddenly, this is really interesting. She’s kicked she started this chain. And then if you look beyond that to the entire network, she kicked off. Up to this point, they spent about $5,000 between them. So she initiated a chain that kicked off $5,000. And then when you start go back and ask the question, okay. Well, she stuck around, didn’t spend that much, and then she left after a year. If we’d known that she was doing all of these other things, like, what what could we have done differently? Like, as a florist, she. They probably should have sent their flowers every single month to, like, engage her and to thank her for being such a great advocate, and they could have afforded to because of the value that she was creating. And then she probably would have carried on buying, and she would have carried on advocating. And then if she you treat that and, multiply it up by all the customers, suddenly your entire growth dynamic has changed. But at the moment, the mindset is in business is not tuned into this the real value of advocacy and what it can deliver for business.
Brittany Hodak [00:20:08]:
Well, I love that example. For a business owner out there that’s listening that that is new to this concept of Extended lifetime value and and and creating, the referral network and the tracking systems to to be able to identify these advocates to engage in the two way conversations to do the things that you’re suggesting to to keep the relationship going. Where do they start? What it what is what is a typical when somebody comes and says, you know, hey, mention me. I I wanna know more about who is, driving the growth of my business. Where do you start with them, Andy?
Andy Cockburn [00:20:41]:
Yeah. So the starting point is trying to get the data. And so normally that is a referral program of some some description. And if you’re a small business just starting out, there are plenty of pretty, pretty simple widgets that you can plug into most e commerce sites just to Start to get data. Now they’re not optimized. They’re not sophisticated, but they will start to get you some data. And then because they don’t self optimize, It’s really important you start talking to customers. So once you see someone who is a referrer, don’t look at that in a spreadsheet and say, oh, great. They referred. But pick up the phone and talk to them And say, tell me tell me what your experience was. Why did you why did you refer this? And then you start to live and live the experience of referral and advocacy, and It changes the way you think about how you build your business. And then there’s 1 other metric that we find incredibly helpful that was, Developed by Fred Reichheldt. He’s the guy who came up with Net Promoter Score 20 years ago, that he came up with just a couple of years ago called earned growth, which, is a brilliant North Star metric for building a business that is focused in this way, and focused on customer love. And earned growth Effectively calculates how fast you are growing if you don’t spend any money on sales and marketing. And so for some businesses, you know, they they would They will grow anyway, because they have customers out there spreading words. Customers are coming back. For some, they will be shrinking by 20%, some we should shrinking by 50%, and they need to keep on putting money in to keep that growth up. And understanding your underlying dynamic in the business as to What’s happening before you’re spending money on sales and marketing really gets you to that advocacy first thinking that I was talking about up front of okay. I I know what I need to do in terms of getting my customers out there and spreading word because either my business is never gonna grow automatically and and I need to get advocacy rates up, Or maybe I can reduce my spend if I manage to get this advocacy rate up and, you know, what could that do for my business in terms of how valuable it is? So under having that true north metric of earned growth, we find really, really helpful for just keeping people honest on on focusing on, doing the right things for customers so that they, they want to recommend you and that you stand out and you create the reasons for them to share.
Brittany Hodak [00:22:56]:
Yes. Earned growth rate is so critical. I will link in the show notes to a blog post, on my website that that breaks down EGR, how to track it, why it matters, and why it is to an important north star metric for, every single business to have. So I’m glad that you brought that up.
Andy Cockburn [00:23:11]:
Fabulous.
Brittany Hodak [00:23:12]:
Now what are What are some of the goals that you recommend, people shoot for? Obviously, every industry is different, every business is different, but for somebody who Hasn’t tracked advocacy spending in the past. They say, okay. Wow. I’ve never even thought about getting data around this. Let me think about it. Let me look at EGR. Let me see what I’m doing. What are some general parameters that you like to offer, that you like to see for how much of a businesses, customers should be coming from advocates and referrals?
Andy Cockburn [00:23:42]:
It, I’d love to give you a really simple answer for that. Sadly, there isn’t this a truly simple answer.
Brittany Hodak [00:23:47]:
It’s more complex.
Andy Cockburn [00:23:48]:
There’s, It really depends on the dynamics. So different sectors are referable in different ways, and so you see very different dynamics across sectors. You also see very different dynamics across stage. So younger businesses are usually easier to refer than older businesses because People haven’t heard of them, and so people feel comfortable, like, feel like they’re sharing something new. And, actually, we saw during COVID huge amounts of increases in advocacy and referral for new businesses that were filling a gap for, for people who couldn’t buy what they were otherwise trying to buy, because closed or they wouldn’t let outside of their, houses and apartments. And and so roughly speaking, We look when we think about in a referral program, the numbers we’d see, we’d expect a share rate, I. E. If you’re asking people to share what percentage of customers share between 10 30%. And if someone is, receiving a share, a conversion rate of between 30 50%, that will go through and convert and become new customers. You then get some really nice dynamics around of the people who’ve been referred, they are then 5 times more likely to refer someone else because they’ve seen the experience, and they’ve come in predisposed to loving and trusting the brand. And so you see those metrics improve quite nicely over time. But that’s a kind of a ballpark as to where you’d be from a referral perspective. When we look at end growth, it really is all over the place, and that is so dependent on the category. Because If you have a dynamic where customers are likely to come back frequently, it’s easier to have a higher growth rate because, and subscription businesses have a higher subscription businesses have a high end growth rate, whereas if you’re a one off purchase of furniture, it’s you like, you automatically have a lower end growth rate. So what’s interesting then is looking where you are versus your peers, and we’re currently building on growth into Me so that we can show people that because that’s the context you need.
Brittany Hodak [00:25:44]:
Yeah. That context is so important and, you know, a a couple of thoughts as you’re talking. 1, I I think I included this anecdote in the book, I was working with a charity one time, and the the CEO of the charity asked if I knew the number one reason that people donated. And I said, you know, maybe because of an experience in their past where they were touched by this issue. And, she said, nope. Try again. And I said, they’ve seen firsthand the impact that you’ve had in their community. And she said, nope. The reason that people overwhelmingly gave for giving was because they were asked. They said somebody asked me to make a donation and I said, alright. So if you are young in your referral program, knowing that the power of simply asking for a referral is is so important and you will be shocked how many people are willing to help you if you ask, but if you don’t, it’s not necessarily because they Didn’t like you or didn’t have a great experience, but it just never occurred to them to make that referral or to introduce you to somebody else. So never be afraid of asking for a referral, for a review, for someone to to help connect you with someone in their network because oftentimes it’s just that simple.
Andy Cockburn [00:26:55]:
I I couldn’t agree more. And particularly if you’re a small business and you just explain your situation and explain that you’re a small business looking to grow and it makes a big difference and it matters to you, It it creates a bond between the customer and you, that level of authenticity. 1 of 1 of our earlier customers was an energy company in the UK. An energy is an interesting one because it’s quite commoditized. It’s not it’s hard to differentiate. And And we were unsure how well it would work, but they went out with a very strong message, which was simply, we’re a small new company with, based in Bristol with local customer support. Please support us. And it was fabulous. It took off. It became the the biggest marketing channel, Getting customers for the word because it felt like they had some kind of personality. Whereas all of the other big incumbent energy companies, like, with this big blob that know what that felt totally amorphous and totally impersonal. And so that little bit of differentiation meant that, They were able to ask and and be appreciated in a way that, the other companies would have killed for.
Brittany Hodak [00:27:59]:
Yeah. And, you know, that’s a great example of of something I talk Which is this idea of super fandom being a two way street. If you wanna go from a commodity to a category of 1 in your customer’s minds, You have to differentiate yourself and story is one of the fastest and most powerful ways to do that because now all of a sudden people have a an anchor point in their mind when they think of you. They They have something other than, like, oh, energy company, light bulbs, energy bills. You know, they they now feel like they understand your story and they wanna help you. They wanna, you know, again, sort of give some of that social capital over to, oh, yeah. This is something that I identify with in some way or this is something that I connect with in some way.
Andy Cockburn [00:28:39]:
I totally agree. And I think the other point on asking, is, like, when you ask, And gen generally, I would say you can’t ask too much, but I, but the best places to ask are at points of delight. So if you have moments in your customer journey where you know you are likely to like a customer. Like, asking at that point is is by far and away the most powerful.
Brittany Hodak [00:29:02]:
Well and I love that you gave the example of a furniture company before where you said this is very often, like a one time purchase. It’s a one off. It’s not a subscription model. Subscription model. It’s not something where you know there’s seasonality to what they’re purchasing. That is where I think it becomes very, critical to look for ways to keep that conversation going. I I did a, an episode of this podcast earlier this season with the CEO of a company called Handwritten, which is an automated note sending service. And he talked about, specifically how businesses who make one time sales are finding ways to make a recommendation based off that purchase of, hey, we found that people who, bought this couch loved this coffee table. Have you taken a look at this coffee table? And, oh, by the way, because we’re so grateful that you made your 1st purchase, we’re extending this discount out for you. Or if friends come over and love your couch, be sure to let them know that they can get one for x percent off. So using the data that you do have around someone’s purchase decisions to try to anticipate or, even influence in some ways what that next action will be based on the data that you do have around that purchase.
Andy Cockburn [00:30:10]:
Yeah. Exactly. And I think one of the things we found, is that there will be conversations had about your brand or your product. Furniture is a great example. Like, you know, it it won’t be the day after you get the sofa, but the first time your friends come to your, to your house and see the sofa is when there will be a conversation about that sofa. It will be quite strange if there wasn’t if there was a new sofa in the room. And at that moment, you really want the customer to be raving about you. And that was one of the reasons, like, we early very early built the capability to just share using your name. So our clients, customers can say, oh, I got it from this brand, and you can just mention Andy Coburn when you’re buying and you can get Whatever it is that I’m able to share, whether it’s a discount or or free products or whatever. And that that really helps just capture the conversation and take make it so much more likely to become a conversion for the brand rather than a conversation that is forgotten about later in the day. And so Thinking through how you can both ask, but also make it more likely that someone will actually take an action on the back of the recommendation and referral. Because that’s that’s the other, like, painful thing in this whole jet experience. If you actually get someone to go out and say something nice about You, it’s very likely that they have already filtered for relevance. So it’s likely to be relevant to that person that they’re talking to. Otherwise, they wouldn’t waste their friend’s time. Like, Like, how do you make sure the person does something on the back of that conversation because they are they are really they are your your best customers, best friends, and you really want them to be your next customers.
Brittany Hodak [00:31:49]:
Absolutely. And I just love as a as a marketer the brilliance behind, you know, you’ve called the company, mention me, and people are literally mentioning the names of who referred Heard them by by using the name, so I think that’s, that is very smart on a lot of levels. But, to your point, it’s a lot easier for me to remember, oh, My friend Travis told me to check out this truck bike. Like, I’m going to be more likely to remember Travis than I am Going to be able to, you know, go back to some email or text that he forwarded me with some code that, like, maybe expires by the time that, I get around to checking it out however many days or weeks later. So it’s a it’s a really smart way to have that evergreen, referral network built in continuing to grow.
Andy Cockburn [00:32:33]:
Thank you.
Brittany Hodak [00:32:34]:
Plus who doesn’t like to be able to take credit for sending somebody somewhere, right, being able to say, oh, yeah, I’m I’m so glad that that I told you about it and you had a great experience.
Andy Cockburn [00:32:43]:
I yeah. I think one of the when we when we were developing the idea, one of the ideas we were basing on was telling your friend to go to a bar and mention That you know that yeah. You know the friends and that that dynamic of keeping it very human and very real really matters.
Brittany Hodak [00:32:57]:
Yeah. 1 then and then, obviously, if, if the bartender hears your name, enough times, hopefully, they’re gonna have some free drinks for you the next time you come in. Right? Hey. A bunch of people came in and said they were your friends, Andy. Thanks for sending them our way.
Andy Cockburn [00:33:09]:
Yeah. Fingers crossed. The the best part I’m gonna do anyway.
Brittany Hodak [00:33:12]:
Well, for anyone who is interested in up leveling, or even beginning their, their advocacy marketing, obviously, check out Mention Me. I’m a huge fan of everything that you guys are doing. And for people who, are maybe not ready to to to build something quite as sophisticated. Just know, as Andy said, that you should start by asking for those referrals, tracking those referrals. It doesn’t have to be sophisticated. I, I took my kids to, a new dentist a couple of years ago, and it was a pediatric dentist. And the recommendation had come from, our nanny at the time, who had grown up going to this dentist. And I filled out a form. As I was doing all the paperwork, it said, how did you hear about us? And the box that I checked was referral and I and I wrote, you know, Sadie and her name. The dentist, hygienist, And the dentist and the receptionist on the way out. All 3 of those people said, oh, Sadie sent you. We love Sadie. How’s she doing? We haven’t seen her in a few years because she had, you know, turned 18 and and gone to another practice. It can be as simple as asking Who sent you and then reading that information and responding to it in a way that is warm and authentic. And I’ll never forget that the dentist Had such wonderful things to say about Sadie, had, you know, fond memories to tell me about, like, oh, we remember when we did Sadie’s braces, and, You know, I didn’t know Sadie when she was 12 and had braces. I met her when she was 20 and nannying for for my oldest son, but, being able to connect those dots makes your community of customers feel that much smaller, that much closer together, and that that much more tight knit. So, you know, there are there are so many benefits to making advocacy the center of your marketing and growth efforts.
Andy Cockburn [00:34:57]:
I totally agree.
Brittany Hodak [00:34:59]:
Well, Andy, what is something you wanna advocate for? What is a brand, or a product that you love that you think more people should know about?
Andy Cockburn [00:35:06]:
Yeah. I, so there’s a there is a product that I’m totally in love with because, so I quite like out the outdoors and I love, outdoor swimming and hiking. And there’s a product called the ruck raft, which was invented a couple of years ago that allows you to put your rucksack, on an inflatable that you blow up So that you can swim across the lake and then get out, hike over a hill and then swim across the next lake. It’s a beautiful product. So I love the idea. It transforms the enjoyment of the outdoors, But I love them even more because about a year in, they had a product defect where one of the straps wasn’t working very well on a couple of the products. And even though they were, you know, 18 months into the journey, when things are very tight and I had no problem with my product, they messaged the entire customer base And said, we are recording all products and sending you brand new ones. And so they they made that decision, probably quite significant financial cost and risk to them Do the right thing by their customers. And on the back of that, I love that company forevermore. They, I know that they will do the right thing by their customers, and that means a lot.
Brittany Hodak [00:36:05]:
Well, that is a great story. Thank you for sharing that, and we’ll, we’ll we’ll link, to the product in the show notes for anybody who wants to check it out. And I’d also love to let people know where they can learn more about you and mention me. So, Andy, what should people who are interested in learning more about how to make advocacy their the center of their marketing growth deal.
Andy Cockburn [00:36:24]:
Yeah. So please come to our website, mentionme.com, and on there, you will find a bunch of resources to help you think about How you can grow from customer advocacy, and and how you can think about setting yourself up for success.
Brittany Hodak [00:36:36]:
Amazing. Well, Andy, thank you so much for coming to the show today.
Andy Cockburn [00:36:40]:
Thank you so much. I I already enjoyed that.
Brittany Hodak [00:36:42]:
Alright. That’s all the time we have for today’s episode of the creating super fans podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Now remember, if you’re a superfan of today’s episode, you can help us out in a big way by leaving a review and a rating wherever you get your podcast. It may seem like a little Thing that it can make a huge difference in helping others discover the show. Now until next time, remember, super fandom is a two way street. Show your love for your customers and your employees, and they’ll love you right back. We’ve got an exciting show lined up for next week, so I hope we’ll see you right back here. Bye bye.
Yeah. Exactly. And I think one of the things we found, is that there will be conversations had about your brand or your product. Furniture is a great example. Like, you know, it it won’t be the day after you get the sofa, but the first time your friends come to your, to your house and see the sofa is when there will be a conversation about that sofa. It will be quite strange if there wasn’t if there was a new sofa in the room. And at that moment, you really want the customer to be raving about you. And that was one of the reasons, like, we early very early built the capability to just share using your name. So our clients, customers can say, oh, I got it from this brand, and you can just mention Andy Coburn when you’re buying and you can get Whatever it is that I’m able to share, whether it’s a discount or or free products or whatever. And that that really helps just capture the conversation and take make it so much more likely to become a conversion for the brand rather than a conversation that is forgotten about later in the day. And so Thinking through how you can both ask, but also make it more likely that someone will actually take an action on the back of the recommendation and referral. Because that’s that’s the other, like, painful thing in this whole jet experience. If you actually get someone to go out and say something nice about You, it’s very likely that they have already filtered for relevance. So it’s likely to be relevant to that person that they’re talking to. Otherwise, they wouldn’t waste their friend’s time. Like, Like, how do you make sure the person does something on the back of that conversation because they are they are really they are your your best customers, best friends, and you really want them to be your next customers.
Brittany Hodak [00:31:49]:
Absolutely. And I I I just love as a as a marketer the brilliance behind, you know, you’ve called the company, mention me, and people are literally mentioning the names of who referred Heard them by by using the name, so I think that’s, that is very smart on a lot of levels. But, to your point, it’s a lot easier for me to remember, oh, My friend Travis told me to check out this truck bike. Like, I’m going to be more likely to remember Travis than I am Going to be able to, you know, go back to some email or text that he forwarded me with some code that, like, maybe expires by the time that, I get around to checking it out however many days or weeks later. So it’s a it’s a really smart way to have that evergreen, referral network built in continuing to grow.
Andy Cockburn [00:32:33]:
Thank you.
Brittany Hodak [00:32:34]:
Plus who doesn’t like to be able to take credit for sending somebody somewhere, right, being able to say, oh, yeah, I’m I’m so glad that that I told you about it and you had a great experience.
Andy Cockburn [00:32:43]:
I yeah. I think one of the when we when we were developing the idea, one of the ideas we were basing on was telling your friend to go to a bar and mention That you know that yeah. You know the friends and that that dynamic of keeping it very human and very real really matters.
Brittany Hodak [00:32:57]:
Yeah. 1 then and then, obviously, if, if the bartender hears your name, enough times, hopefully, they’re gonna have some free drinks for you the next time you come in. Right? Hey. A bunch of people came in and said they were your friends, Andy. Thanks for sending them our way.
Andy Cockburn [00:33:09]:
Yeah. Fingers crossed. The the best part I’m gonna do anyway.
Brittany Hodak [00:33:12]:
Well, for anyone who is interested in up leveling, or even beginning their, their advocacy marketing, obviously, check out Mention Me. I’m a huge fan of everything that you guys are doing. And for people who, are maybe not ready to to to build something quite as sophisticated. Just know, as Andy said, that you should start by asking for those referrals, tracking those referrals. It doesn’t have to be sophisticated. I, I took my kids to, a new dentist a couple of years ago, and it was a pediatric dentist. And the recommendation had come from, our nanny at the time, who had grown up going to this dentist. And I filled out a form. As I was doing all the paperwork, it said, how did you hear about us? And the box that I checked was referral and I and I wrote, you know, Sadie and her name. The dentist, hygienist, And the dentist and the receptionist on the way out. All 3 of those people said, oh, Sadie sent you. We love Sadie. How’s she doing? We haven’t seen her in a few years because she had, you know, turned 18 and and gone to another practice. It can be as simple as asking Who sent you and then reading that information and responding to it in a way that is warm and authentic. And I’ll never forget that the dentist Had such wonderful things to say about Sadie, had, you know, fond memories to tell me about, like, oh, we remember when we did Sadie’s braces, and, You know, I didn’t know Sadie when she was 12 and had braces. I met her when she was 20 and nannying for for my oldest son, but, being able to connect those dots makes your community of customers feel that much smaller, that much closer together, and that that much more tight knit. So, you know, there are there are so many benefits to making advocacy the center of your marketing and growth efforts.
Andy Cockburn [00:34:57]:
I totally agree.
Brittany Hodak [00:34:59]:
Well, Andy, what is something you wanna advocate for? What is a brand, or a product that you love that you think more people should know about?
Andy Cockburn [00:35:06]:
Yeah. I, so there’s a there is a product that I’m totally in love with because, so I quite like out the outdoors and I love, outdoor swimming and hiking. And there’s a product called the ruck raft, which was invented a couple of years ago that allows you to put your rucksack, on an inflatable that you blow up So that you can swim across the lake and then get out, hike over a hill and then swim across the next lake. It’s a beautiful product. So I love the idea. It transforms the enjoyment of the outdoors, But I love them even more because about a year in, they had a product defect where one of the straps wasn’t working very well on a couple of the products. And even though they were, you know, 18 months into the journey, when things are very tight and I had no problem with my product, they messaged the entire customer base And said, we are recording all products and sending you brand new ones. And so they they made that decision, probably quite significant financial cost and risk to them Do the right thing by their customers. And on the back of that, I love that company forevermore. They, I know that they will do the right thing by their customers, and that means a lot.
Brittany Hodak [00:36:05]:
Well, that is a great story. Thank you for sharing that, and we’ll, we’ll we’ll link, to the product in the show notes for anybody who wants to check it out. And I’d also love to let people know where they can learn more about you and mention me. So, Andy, what should people who are interested in learning more about how to make advocacy their the center of their marketing growth deal.
Andy Cockburn [00:36:24]:
Yeah. So please come to our website, mentionme.com, and on there, you will find a bunch of resources to help you think about How you can grow from customer advocacy, and and how you can think about setting yourself up for success.
Brittany Hodak [00:36:36]:
Amazing. Well, Andy, thank you so much for coming to the show today.
Andy Cockburn [00:36:40]:
Thank you so much. I I already enjoyed that.
Brittany Hodak [00:36:42]:
Alright. That’s all the time we have for today’s episode of the creating super fans podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Now remember, if you’re a superfan of today’s episode, you can help us out in a big way by leaving a review and a rating wherever you get your podcast. It may seem like a little Thing that it can make a huge difference in helping others discover the show. Now until next time, remember, super fandom is a two way street. Show your love for your customers and your employees, and they’ll love you right back. We’ve got an exciting show lined up for next week, so I hope we’ll see you right back here. Bye bye.
