“A disappointed believer is the greatest cynic,” I heard someone say a while back. If you make a marketing mistake, great customer service, particularly admitting, addressing, and fixing problems, helps your customers feel appreciated enough to give you another chance or two. But the magnitude of the evangelist’s expectations leaves little room for error. They expect the best. They believe – know – you’re going to deliver it. They invest their time and effort to share their beliefs with others and recruit them into your fold. Let them down and you’ll lose them, people they’ve brought in (your believers are your talkers), and potentially many others. Meanwhile, closed loop marketing produces no disappointed believers.
In the sustainability field, closed loops are closely associated with manufacturing systems. Closed loop production systems entail circulation of materials through product’s life stages so no waste or byproducts get produced. Everything stays part of the system. “Nothing is thrown away…because there is no ‘away’.” Similarly, closed-loop marketing produces no former customers.
In closed-loop marketing, first comes the promise your company makes to your customer about the benefits of your offering. The promise, communicated through a wide range of touch points, engenders an expectation. The delivery stage, when the customer buys and consumes your offering, confirms the expectation and reinforces it for future delivery. The more satisfying the delivery, the higher the likelihood the expectation will increase. When (there are no ifs in closed-loop marketing) the customer returns to make another purchase, you’re back at the delivery stage, where the loop closes again and moves back to the promise.
The same goes for every one of your brand believers. In fact, closed loop marketing ratchets up your believers’ evangelism over time. In addition, believers extend the loop to people in their circle, advocating for your brand and promoting your offering. They expand the loop, and as a result, your marketing system becomes sustainable and organically grows through word of mouth. Maybe you acquire new customers, maybe even new believers. Surely, however, the customers your believers’ introduced into the loop will feed them their experiences with your brand, hopefully confirming they made a good choice promoting your brand. Trust your believers to spread the word and they will trust you not to disappoint them.
All of this means only one thing: don’t make a promise you can’t keep and consistently deliver on the promise you do make. The closed loop of your marketing will take care of the rest.
Quote: Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, Basic Books, 1995.
