Reduce your CAC with Content and Community

Reduce your CAC with Content and Community

Your most valuable asset in growing your business is not your team or your product, it is an enthusiastic customer base. Empower them to be your community of influencers and they are rocket fuel.

How did Red Bull grow to a billion-dollar brand with initially zero advertising? They built a community using eye-catching content and engaging events. For years, I did not understand why the brand did things like create a free Red Bull Music Academy or put on free shows around the world. The brilliance of these was they created a direct and authentic connection to an activated fan base. The last I checked, they were selling around 7 billion cans of caffeinated sugar water every year.

 Advertising is useful, it works, and it is also expensive. One of the most under-utilized ways to reduce CAC and gain people to your brand is to energize a brand’s existing customer base, turning them into brand advocates. If they feel taken care of by you, if they feel seen and heard, they are more likely to tell their like-minded friends about your brand and how awesome it is. Everyone wants to be seen, to be heard, and to understood. Do that, and you win. This is the essence of creating authentically engaging experiences for your people.

 You can see who does this well, and who doesn’t get it. If all your brand is broadcasting are images of your product, how is that inspiring to your audience? A company like Patagonia uses its feed to inspire and activate its community through inspiring content. Sure, they are selling products, but that is secondary to selling an ethos. Buy into the ethos first, buy the physical manifestation of that ethos next. Remember that people don’t just buy products, they buy better versions of themselves. It is this higher version that gets expressed in the content of the best brands.

 There are many ways to show your customers that you see, hear and understand them. The first is to change the word you use for them to clients. Customers imply a commodity; client has a deeper fiduciary relationship. Even if you have hundreds of thousands of them, think of them as your clients, not just a number on a spreadsheet. You are there to serve them, and to improve their lives.

The function of content in a brand’s marketing constellation is to build community. It is to amplify your current buyer’s good feelings about the brand and to bring prospects further into the community where they will turn into buyers themselves.

Communities are not all-inclusive. They have values, they have aspirations, they have certain ways of being that differentiate them into a separate community. Content is where those values get expressed. It is where brands have the opportunity to say this is what we stand for, and to be the champion of their people. It says if you would like to join our tribe, buy our product. Nike is a tribe of like-minded people, which also happens to sell sneakers. Elon makes cars, but what he is really selling is a vision of the future.

 Part of this involves awesome consumer-centric customer service. When Leslie Blodget was building BareMinerals, she personally talked to as many of her customers as she could every day, even when there were millions of them. Tim Cook starts his day by reviewing the recent incoming Apple customer emails, not all of them, but enough so he feels he knows his buyers. And what are Apple Stores, other than a global web of Apple clubhouses expressing the love that Apple has for their customers? It is a content play, a way of activating and showing people you care about them. Could you imagine Dell doing that? Not so much.

 Content, done correctly, builds community, activates your people, increases your influence and it reduces your CAC.