How well do you know your customers: Mike Birt

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Mark Evans: Hi. It's Mark Evans, and you're listening to Marketing Spark. How customer centric is your marketing and sales? How well do you know your customers, and do you know how they feel and behave? And how often do you talk to your customers? Do you know them inside out? You'd be surprised by how much marketing is educated guesses rather than based on customer insight. It's marketing developed for a distant, fuzzy target rather than being laser focused. Maybe it's because marketers are busy, lazy, or depending too much on tools and technology. Whatever the reason, it's not a smart way to operate. Your hands are tied behind your back unless you truly know your customers. On today's podcast, I'm talking with Mike Burt, a longtime marketer who works with clients ranging from ecommerce brands to PR firms and nonprofits. In a recent video on LinkedIn, Mike talks about customer intentions and signals and how marketers need to see and understand what customers want and as important, what they don't want. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Mike.

Mike Birt: Hey. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Mark Evans: First question, customer one zero one. Do you think that most marketers really know their customers? And if not, why not?

Mike Birt: I think a lot of marketers know their customers fairly well. Right? So it's hard to make a a wide generalization on that, but I I think that most people try to and think that that is the way to really get ahead. So do they know them inside and out? Probably not. I I see a lot of mistakes out there, and we are I always say it. I'm a customer. You're a customer. We're out there. Even though we do marketing, we are also consumers on the web as well, And we get annoyed and irritated by things some of the brands that we interact with do. So, clearly, people are not knowing their customers inside and out, and they're not listening for intent and signals from people either.

Mark Evans: I find it really interesting because if you read LinkedIn posts, listen to podcasts, there's a constant refrain about knowing your customers and being customer centric and really being in touch with the people that matter. And then when push comes to shove, content is produced that doesn't resonate, and there seems to be a disconnect. There seems to be a disconnect between this vision of what marketing or how marketing is supposed to operate and and what actually happens. And in some cases, I believe that many marketers are making educated guesses. They think they know

Mike Birt: the

Mark Evans: numbers, but not really.

Mike Birt: Yeah. They are. And they're gonna throw out the a wide fishing net and hope that something that that they made sticks. Right? And then we'll see what happens from there. I I think that's exactly right what you're saying about content and that doesn't resonate and they make it because they took a guess at what their their customers might like or might want. If you go and look on on a platform, say, like TikTok, for example, now, right, this is where everybody's at and everyone's talking about it. When you see the most successful people there, they are not trying to be all things to everyone and hoping something sticks. They found a niche, and they found a thing that they're going to do, and they hammer that. And they hammer away at it, they keep hammering that because they found a thing that's working, it's resonating, and they're gonna keep doing that. You don't see these people varying outside their niche saying, oh, I've I've done this type of video too much. I I should try something else. They don't. They will hammer, hammer, hammer until engagement disappears and their customers and fans start telling them, we don't like what you're doing anymore. Then they'll switch, but not before that. They listen to their fans. And when their fans want more of it, they give them more of it. When their fans tell them we don't like it, they stop, and they switch to something else. So you you find the most successful people are the ones really out there listening and engaging.

Mark Evans: Yeah. And I think listening is a underrated skill. A lot of marketers like to talk. We like to hear ourselves talk, but listening sometimes is something they don't do because it takes discipline, and it takes being very customer centric. And one of the questions I wanted to ask you is if a company wants to be customer centric, and that term is thrown around a lot, where and how do they start? Like, what are the key building blocks so customer intelligence, customer insight becomes an integral part of a company's operational DNA?

Mike Birt: Well, the first thing you can look at it, especially if you're an online brand, is you're looking at your customer reviews. Customers are are giving you feedback. And I often hear brands and people who will say, oh, those are the only the angry people who are going to make those comments. Right? So they try to discount feedback that they don't like. And it hurts our feelings like, you know, we're all human. We don't like someone going out. You've worked your butt off for this product and you put it out. You thought it was great. And then you get customers like, you suck. That hurts. We don't like to hear it, but you have to hear it, and you have to have a thick skin, and you have to listen to that stuff. That's a good place to start on your customer reviews. On your social media, what kind of comments are you getting? I used to have a brand when when I was a CMO, and we had over over a million fans on social media. So we had comments constantly. And and I kinda color coded, or we had kind of a heat map for how comments were going. And you could know if things were going well across the rest of your operation just by how people are commenting on whatever you're posting. Right? So even if we were not posting something content or product related, If people were mad at us and if we were late with shipping or we had missed a deadline or something, they're gonna tell us. And even this funny video that had nothing to do with what they're mad at. So you can look and see. People are out there giving you feedback all the time. Right? And that's passive. And you can get active and just ask. How did we do today? Send them something. We all have email drip campaigns. Is one of your drips a customer satisfaction or a customer feedback email. You know? You have we all have post purchase flows, right, or processes that we're doing. Ask people for feedback. People will give you feedback. There's lots of ways to do it, but really it comes from you you have to closely monitor what people are saying about you online, and then just go and directly ask people. They've already bought from you, so they have the experience. Ask them what's happening.

Mark Evans: One of the interesting things that I find, especially when I'm doing positioning engagements, is that I'll ask an entrepreneur or a CEO if I can talk to 45, 10 of their customers. I wanna find out what customers think because, obviously, an entrepreneur has particular bias and perspective, but you'll get something completely different from customers. And what's interesting when I do that is that many of them well, some of them will balk because they don't want a third party consultant like myself to be talking to their customers. And then when they eventually agree, because it's an integral part of how positioning happens, I'll do the interviews and then report back to the CEO. And some of the things I tell them, it's things that they've never heard before. It's things that surprise them, sometimes trouble them, because they've never taken the time to actually talk to their customers. And I find it really interesting that a company can take its customers for granted. Once you've spent all that time and energy to attract them, onboard them, get them into the fold, then you assume that they're fat and happy. They don't need any tending. They don't need to be nurtured, or you don't have to market to them. Why is that? Why do companies seemingly ignore their cuss their customers?

Mike Birt: A lot of shortsightedness, and there's a lot of focus on customer acquisition costs. Right? There are some some brands, maybe a a SaaS b two b brand might talk about churn, or subscription based companies might talk about their churn. But for the most part, everyone's on the front side of marketing. Right? Because that's the sexy, that's the fun, that's the where all the magic happens. Right? On the front side, the acquisition side, we're out there acquiring new people. We're growing sales. Aren't we awesome? And they spend a lot of time on that, and they worry about their customer acquisition costs. And then they forget about lifetime value, and they forget about churn. Right? It's way harder, I've always found. It's far harder to acquire a new customer than it is to keep one you've already acquired. So, yeah, I don't know. I I see that mistake in a lot of companies too. Like, you have all these customers. Why aren't remarket to them, get them their new products. You're offering new offers to try to acquire a new customer. What are you doing for your current customer base? You need to really take a close look at those folks because those are your ambassadors. Those are your influencers. You know? Though that's your social proof. Anything any of those other marketing buzzwords, we can say. Your current customer base is all of those things. You know? Market to them. Keep them. You've already acquired them. You've paid that cost for acquisition. Now get repurchases or keep their subscription stretched out. Right? If you had a a three month goal, get them out to six. If they were repurchasing in six, can you get it to five? You know, what can you do? There's so much you can do in marketing that's way cheaper, far cheaper to people you already have a relationship with than it is on the acquisition side going out and reaching people who don't know you. So I would highly recommend people really spend much more time than I know they do on their current customers. It's a cheaper group and they've already bought from you once, they'll probably buy again.

Mark Evans: When you were the chief marketing officer at Grunt Style, you were very the company was very focused on a specific type of customers. That interests me because many companies have customers across the spectrum, different verticals, different sectors, but you were very niche oriented. What was your approach in terms of discovering what those type of customers wanted, and how did you deliver marketing that resonated with them and served their specific needs and interests?

Mike Birt: When it first started and for the first several years there at Grunt Style, the customer was one tiny niche, a marine infantryman or an army infantryman. And that was it. Those were the only people we talked to. And it was that way because that's who all of us were within the company. We were primarily all veterans and mostly had served in either marine or army infantry. So it was us. We were speaking to an audience that we knew very well. So we know it was very niche, but then we were in this audience, and we knew these customers in a way that other brands who were far bigger than us, who had way more money and could market more, could not speak with that voice that we had because we knew it because we were part of that audience too. So, yeah, we were really very hyper focused on a very small niche. It's less than 1% of the military who are in the infantry. So we knew we were, ignoring a lot of other audiences and and customer groups, but we could make a good amount of money and certainly at the size of the company we were then by just being very hyper focused because we we couldn't really mess that up because it's who we were. So we knew how to speak to it, and we found that it worked. And we just kept capturing more and more of that group, and it was really successful for us. And really being hyper focused, it really helped us learn messaging, audience, how do you talk to them. I mean, it it was just it was great. And it worked out because that's who we were again. The rule on our social media team, you had to actually be an infant had to have been an infantryman. We we weren't hiring people who weren't even. So we had, three people on social media or four when I first started that they were all infantrymen. One was a Silver Star recipient. That guy that was great. Nobody with any marketing experience either. No marketing degrees, no experience, but they had experience in the audience we were trying to market to, so it was very authentic. You know, we screwed stuff up. We did stuff wrong, but and we probably didn't follow any Leo Burnett rules. Right? But we knew the audience we were trying to sell to, so they connected with us because it was authentic, and it worked.

Mark Evans: I find that really interesting because you your marketing team was in the shoes of your customers. They'd been there. They'd done that. They knew what the experience of being an infantryman was like, and so they could talk the talk. They could because they've walked the walk. And that's really interesting because it goes back to our original premise of really knowing your customers. But if you were the customer, then arguably, you can talk to them and whatever and you can connect with them a lot easier. And maybe that's the key for many marketers. Maybe marketers have to sort of not only think like a customer, imagine what it's like to be in a customer's shoes, but actually sort of be the customer at the same time, if you know what I'm what I mean.

Mike Birt: Yeah. No. I agree. Sort of

Mark Evans: and I don't think that happens enough. I think marketers just don't have that kind of experience or don't want that kind of experience.

Mike Birt: It it's a shame because I know, you know, there's a lot of pressure in marketing. Right? Every month, people have metrics they have to hit. So they kinda get focused on on their goals and their metrics, and then they they lose that feel. I think marketers sometimes forget that they're customers too. So put put yourself in in those shoes. Take off your marketing hat sometimes and just be a customer. Visit your website as a customer and think to yourself, why would somebody buy from us? Why are they buying from us? And if anybody is, why are they doing it? Why are they even visiting us? When they visit us and they leave it, why did they bounce? You know, why did they click? Why did they not click? Are you asking enough of these whys rather than just saying, no. That piece didn't work. We'll try try something new. Let's get the next thing out and see if that works and just you're just gonna start churning stuff out and hope for something that hits. But ask yourself these whys and put yourself you're a customer. I I always tell my people that that work with me, you are a customer too. There are things you like and things you don't when you're out on the Internet. So if you don't like something and it annoys you, why would you do that to your own customers then? Right? Like a pop up. Exit intent pop ups, for example, just drive me insane. I I think that is something that says, hate you as a customer when you do an exit intent. And most people hate it, but then they do it on their own website. It's like, why? I don't understand.

Mark Evans: I I wanted to actually ask you about that because that there was that that video that you did about customer retention and signals that customers are sending. What was the inspiration for that? What were you thinking? What triggered that that thesis or that idea? Obviously, this is something that obviously has been bugging you for a long time because it's Yeah. Suspect you see it over and over again. So maybe you can highlight some of the biggest transgressions when it comes to companies that don't listen to their customers' intentions.

Mike Birt: I I see it a lot now on, particularly media websites. Right? Because display has changed so much, and they're they're struggling. They used to be able to make money by just having people visit their websites. Right? Now you if and and I'm a marketer, and if this upsets people, but I use Adblocker. I don't know if everybody else does, but I use it. I used to believe in Karma and I didn't, but I'm like, no. I use it. Okay? And I I think it that sends an intense signal to people. If I have AdBlocker on, I don't it's like I'm opting out of your marketing. So you shouldn't wanna market to me because I'm telling you, I'm not gonna do anything you're asking. I found that then just traveling around reading news on websites, you get that that pop up sometimes that says, hey. We we support ourselves with marketing on our being able to sell ads on our site. Please white list us so you we can keep this free. The more I see it, the more I just thought how funny that was or or really just how disingenuous it is because you know I had an ad blocker on when I came to your website. Just because I turned it off, it doesn't mean I'm gonna do anything for your advertisers on your website. Isn't I'm not now all of a sudden gonna become a a purchaser. So you're just telling everybody, hey. Look. Between you and me, just turn off the ad blocker. We need to make our ad revenue. We won't tell anybody. You know? We won't tell our our our advertisers. And and I think it's disingenuous and dishonest, honestly. So that pop up that says turn off your ad blocker to me is is just something that's missing the whole intent of what of what a customer is telling you that they're giving you a signal and you're just wasting money. You're wasting your advertisers' money by allowing that. So that's where that came from. And then the exit intent one, it it just annoys me because I'm my mouse is going over. So then you recognize my mouse was about to hit the back arrow. And now is when you're gonna pop up and tell me, oh, are are you sure you wanna leave? Would you like to sign up for our email? No. No. I'm leaving. And now you're annoying me even more. I you didn't capture me. I you didn't get me to do anything. And now just as I'm getting ready to walk out the door, you oh, hey. Stop. Stop. Stop. I have something cool. I think both of those just really misread people, and they miss intent. And then they're advertising to people who don't wanna be advertised to. And it it's always been my thing as a marketer. Please tell me if if you don't wanna be advertised to. Please opt out. Please turn on an ad blocker. I only wanna reach the people who are open to marketing. I don't wanna waste money on a lot of people who have no intent to ever purchase from an online company ever. Right? So that that's where that came from in a in a nutshell. Like, I get annoyed by some things marketers do, and and I tell people the number one rule in marketing is don't be annoying. Let's try not to be annoying. That's a that's a new technique.

Mark Evans: I agree with you. And and I think part of the problem is that marketers have probably leaned too heavily into technology and tools to get them to do their dirty work. Drip marketing, for example, we're all victims of trying to pound away at people's inboxes, so eventually, they'll capitulate. You leave a a website, you know, an offer for a newsletter or a discount. They're using technology to try to engage, but that's the wrong approach. I mean, you if if you really know your customers, then you'll figure out the better ways to engage with them rather than using hacks or cheats. And I think you're on the right track there. Definitely on the right track.

Mike Birt: Yeah. I agree. I I think marketing has really been taken over by tech. I see this in job posts for marketers now with, like, some of the coding skills they want. I'm like, you're you're asking for a marketer. Right? Like, I'm an IT person. I'm like, am I out of touch? You know? Like, have I learned something? But, yeah, I think tech tech should be a tool that helps amplify your message. It should not be a tool, that helps you avoid having to do the work. It it's not an just a set and forget thing that now we can just we'll make money. So, you if you use tech correctly, it's it's great. But if you don't, you're gonna lose out on a lot of insights, and you won't even know why people aren't buying from you or why they're running from you.

Mark Evans: Many of the guests on this podcast come from relationships that I've developed on LinkedIn, and you're one of them. Mike has been an active commenter on my posts, and it's interesting to look at people's different approaches to LinkedIn. Some people are super serious. Some people are super engaged. I would say that your approach is a little offbeat. It probably reflects your personality, and it it's slightly irreverent. I mean, just looking at your your title, for example, you describe yourself as two times former Google applicant and three time winner of the Mike Burke is awesome award for awesomeness. First, I wanna congratulate you for for your willingness to take a different approach to LinkedIn. And the second, I just wanna ask you about the way that you think about LinkedIn and social media for that matter. How it relates to this overall obsession with personal branding these days?

Mike Birt: I just wanna have fun with it and not take it too seriously. It's social media. I view it the same. I know people say, you know, LinkedIn is not Facebook. It's a business version of Facebook. So like on Facebook, you always see people all it's a highlight reel. Right? So it's their their personal highlight reel on Facebook. And that's what I think LinkedIn has become. It's just your business highlight reel. Very little of it feels real to me either when you know? It's famous now, like, for people to joke about the we hired a homeless person thing. Right? You know, that that went around. Everybody was talking, and and you see how fake it can be because all of a sudden, everybody, all of a sudden, was hiring a homeless person, but that they wrote that story to engage the algorithm. Right? So everybody talks about that. I just don't worry about it. If if people like me, they like me. If they don't, they don't. If they wanna engage, great. I just like to have fun with it and talk about the things that I like, And I'm gonna be real about it. I'm not gonna be fake or, you know, try to do things on purpose to engage in the algorithm. I'll test out and do some different things for sure, but still, I just wanna remind people to have fun with it and not take it so seriously. And the algorithm, whatever it is, will change next week. And whatever was working for you this week that you spent all that time on, LinkedIn will change it. And now you're back to to square one. So just be real from the start and don't worry about it, you know, and and see what happens.

Mark Evans: Before obviously, I'm gonna probably upset some of the more ardent LinkedIn engagement folks out there. But you think about it and the same applies for social media in general. It's a game. Like, we're playing a game with LinkedIn. You know, we play against the algorithm. We play against other people who are saying the thing same things we're doing, competing for the spotlight like we're doing. And I think that's probably especially for independent marketers like you and I, it's probably a healthy approach because you take the platform too seriously. If you lean on it too heavily to be the place where you engage prospects, where you attract business, eventually, it won't be fun anymore. You know? It'll be it'll be make or break, do or die. And if the platform stops working for you, then you're arguably dead in the water. So I think the my advice, and I think, you know, you would probably say the same thing, is that to use it, to have fun using it. We're also, you know, pulling the different levers every day and hoping they work, and there's really not a lot we can do. So you just gotta look go along for the ride.

Mike Birt: That's pretty much it. Right? And just make the stuff, keep practicing at it, make your content. You're gonna get better at it. And anything that you're doing then, even if it doesn't do well for LinkedIn, you're getting better at something that'll benefit a client. You're getting knowledge and understanding, and and you're practicing what you preach when when you put yourself out there to do these things. Because a lot of us, when we are engaged with a client, one of the first things we're gonna tell, or I do anyway, is tell the CEO or the the senior leaders, where's your social media presence at? You know, why why aren't you doing it? You know? Most of us are probably gonna tell senior leaders, if you're not out there as an evangelist for your company, why should anyone listen to you? So if I'm not out there at least willing to put myself on camera and I gotta put myself out there too, I think that's what we're all doing. At least it shows we're gonna practice what we preach, and we can still help people. You know? It it'll still help. It's it'll benefit clients one way or another. Even if you don't get a thousand likes on something, if you look at the numbers, I think the last numbers or research I saw about LinkedIn is that over 90% of the content is made in less than by less than 10% of LinkedIn people. So there's a huge dark market out there watching you that you're unaware of. And just because somebody might not have liked or commented or shared on one of your posts, it doesn't mean that people aren't aware of you or that your potential clients aren't keeping an eyeball on you. I I've gotten clients off of LinkedIn who never had engaged with any of my stuff. I just get a message and say, I saw you doing x. Know, You like, you did? I had no idea. Even if you feel like you're speaking to the void, keep speaking. People are watching you.

Mark Evans: Speaking of speaking into the void, I've noticed recently that you started making videos. How's that going for you? Because I think if I if I you're trying to make a video every day. Is that the is that the way that you're approaching video

Mike Birt: or truth? I'm very contrarian and very anti authoritarian even even to myself. So when I set out rules for myself like that, I will inevitably break them because nobody's gonna hold me to anything. Right? So I am trying, and it it's it's going okay. I do. I went back and I'm working on TV writing again. I I used to be ten years ago, I started a website for as a hobby where I wrote about TV just because I love watching TV. And and that, it was actually my journey into marketing. I I I grew that to about a million visitors a month on a website, and then I stopped it when I got into grunt style because I just got too busy to be able to to have any hobbies. And so I'm back to that. And I'm actually doing on TikTok more so and and having fun. And, again, talking about things that I like. Finding a niche, I'm growing a little bit there. So it's fun. And it it's worked on LinkedIn. You know, here here's the biggest thing I think the benefit to do it. And it's maybe even at at my level, your level, guys like us who you know, we've been doing this a while. It gets me back into when was the last time you actually spent a little time working with a video editing tool? You know? Because as as a CMO, I wasn't doing any of that. I was managing people doing those things. So it's really it's been nice to get back into the weeds of of that kind of production where you're like, well, I'm I'm back to being a rookie at this again. And I look at I hate my videos sometimes because I look at them. I'm like, oh, man. Your production values are just you're awful. You would never approve this if somebody brought you. If one of your people brought you this video, you would tell them to go back and do it again, you know. So but it I'm having fun with it and just trying to be less rigid about how often. And when I have an idea for something, I will make a video and and put one up.

Mark Evans: One final question. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they find you on LinkedIn? Where can they find you on TikTok if they're interested in your musings about television?

Mike Birt: Oh, gosh. If they wanna follow me on TikTok, please get me to the thousand followers, folks, because you need me live.

Mark Evans: What's your name on TikTok?

Mike Birt: I am the TV genius on TikTok. Okay. I know. I got the website. So there's the TV genius website. New. I'm just getting it going now. So but please, yeah, if there's followers. If you guys like TV, please. I just love it. And then on LinkedIn, you you can find me there. That's where I do really most of my business talk. I don't take people off of there. I don't have my own personal website or anything. You can message me. Like, I'm not trying to be super fancy. I'm just like everybody else.

Mark Evans: Mike, this has been a great conversation. Really enjoyed talking to you about marketing and obviously about the importance of knowing your customers. Thanks everybody for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review. Subscribe via I Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, and share via social media. To learn more about how I help b to b SaaS companies as a fractional CMO, strategic adviser, and coach, send an email to Mark@MarkEvans.ca, or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you later.