Tuesday 9 April 2013

How to Maximize Engagement:
Beware of Andrés, the "False Fan"


The other day, we introduced the idea of focusing on your most profitable 20% of customers in order to achieve a better ROI, or Return On Investment in your Digital Marketing. These are your "True Fans", the 20% who cause 80% of your business' turnover, according to the Pareto Principle.

To make things easier, in the preceding article we christened clients of this type with the name Wally, the name we use here in Spain for the popular children's character "Waldo" in the books created by Martin Handford. Calling your "Most-Profitable-Twenty-Percent" simply "Wally" is not only shorter: it helps us visualise a Real Person, instead of a series of data points in an Excel sheet or Access database.

Here at Barcelona Virtual, we'll keep developing key strategic points around Wally in successive posts of this series on Día 1. In today's article, we'd like to underscore not only the importance of identifying and taking care of your "Wallys". You also need to be on the lookout for the "False Wallys", who are nothing less than "False Fans". They can be very toxic.

Community Managers know them well: they usually refer to them with exasperation as "Trolls", "Terrorists" or worse. We prefer to give them the name "Andrés", thanks to a popular Spanish refrain:

"¡Es por el interés que te quiero, Andrés!"

The quip "I love you for what I get out of you, Andrew" points clearly to a situation that is mutually beneficial, because both parties are interested in using each other for their own ends. However, an Andrés is far from being a Fan, and will quickly abandon any Old Brand* foolish enough to invest resources in cultivating a relationship that will never be.



To make matters worse, since very many Old Brands are themselves USERS, only interested in consumers as long as they consume and serve a purpose, this mutual "use and abuse" is quite endemic, especially in Social Media "strategies". Paul always complains that such campaigns are not only short-sighted and ineffective: they also indirectly insult you as a current or potential customer.

They're not really interested in YOU; they only want to use you as long as you continue to be a €€€ or $$$ "Dispenser".

To conclude for today, Forrest Research has grouped users of Social Networks in a series of categories you can see in the chart below. In our opinion, your Wallys, all of them "True Fans", will tend by nature to be more active and to contribute to healthy Engagement indicators in your Social Media channels. They might even engage in constructive criticism, once in awhile.

But it will be for your good. They want you to succeed:
they truly love and admire your New Brand ;-)




* Old Brands = our designation for companies who have not yet "seen the light" and awakened to the fact that the New Consumer has the power and decides their future. New Brands not only are products and services of the 21st Century, both digital and relational by nature. They are also Brands created by companies that recognise their future innovation and success will come only from the "Relevant Relationships" they cultivate with their Wallys, their most profitable customers.

Photo sources:
Keyboard: http://creativosinc.com/blog/2013/03/customer-engagement-lease-con-cuidado/

Feliz Falsedad: http://aliciafitipaldi.wordpress.com

Forrester Research: http://www.webgeekly.com/lessons/social-media/the-6-different-types-of-social-media-users-which-one-are-you/

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