This kind of social gravity isn’t just about how many likes you can get on Facebook. This is about enduring, meaningful, and authentic relationships with your customers and the people in their lives.
How can you shift from push to pull and create your own social gravity? With three basic steps: Purpose provides the Why; Platforms the What; and Partners the How.
1. Shared Purpose
The objective of Push marketing is to convince a customer to make a purchase. In contrast, the objective of Pull marketing is to achieve a shared purpose. At Sears Holdings, where I work, the Craftsman brand of tools and equipment has an orbit strategy for do-it-yourselfers. The Craftsman Experience studio in Chicago creates live experiences and professionally produced content to help members of the Craftsman community create and accomplish their DIY projects. The focus isn’t on the immediate purchase, but on achieving the shared purpose of creativity, craftsmanship and accomplishment. This shared purpose attracts existing Craftsman customers, and leads them to bring along their DIY friends as well.
2. Engagement Platforms
While Push marketers focus on products, Pull marketers focus on engagement platforms. These platforms are what engage customers outside the purchase process and deliver value beyond the products being sold. Some of the most well known engagement platforms are Google’s search engine, Apple’s iTunes music manager, and the Nike+ running community. Google, Apple and Nike don’t charge people for using these platforms. But they keep their customers in frequent orbit around the brand, and make it easy for customers to purchase a product, whether an ad, song, or shoe.
Engagement platforms are built from multiple layers working together. The identity layer recognizes the customer. The data layer exchanges information to personalize the experience. The relationship layer enables connection among the brand and community members. Finally, the value layer delivers benefits to the users.
One of the reasons why orbit strategies are becoming so popular is that social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google provide ready-made identity, data, and relationship layers. All you have to do is figure out the right engagement strategy for the value layer.
There are five types of engagement strategies that are particularly common.
a. Content, e.g. Huffington Post
b. Conversation, e.g. Facebook
c. Collaboration, e.g. Quora
d. Contribution, e.g. Kickstarter
e. Commerce, e.g. Groupon
These aren’t the only strategies. Pinterest, for example, has popularized a new category around curation. And don’t think you have to be a startup or media company. Kraft Foods has built a very effective orbit strategy around recipes, combining content, conversation, and commerce. And innovation firm PSFK uses curated content to generate gravity for its research and consulting business.
3. Collaborative Partners
Partners are a powerful way of amplifying your gravitational field. By combining forces, you can multiply the value of your service and bring in new constituencies. In addition, partners can add credibility. They reinforce that you are seeking to create value and build relationships beyond pushing products.
Apple’s platforms are integrally connected with partners, whether music companies for iTunes or developers for the App store. When IBM sought to engage mid-market companies, it partnered with GOOD to launch the GOOD Co. project. And Kraft Foods recently partnered with HSN to bring commerce to its recipe community.
Keep in mind that your own customers should be collaborative partners. Threadless sources designs for its t-shirts from its customers, and lets the community pick which ones to produce. And P&G sources new innovation ideas from outside the company through its Connect+Develop program.
There are many ways to create customer gravity. Start with a purpose both you and your customer care about, and for which you have something to bring to the table. Then create an engagement platform that creates value using one of the types of value mentioned here, or create your own. Finally, look for partners who can bring expertise, resources, credibility, and reach.
With purpose, platforms, and partners, you are ready to build social gravity. So stop pushing and start pulling!