The Surprise and Delight Strategy - After the Show

He is just a wealth of information and he just never leaves anything out. And that made today's episode for After the Show challenging for me, because I was like, what am I going to talk about? I want to talk about so many things from Nick's episode. Like so many things were highlights for me. And in these episodes of After the Show, if you've listened before, you know this isn't a recap of the show. It's just me picking one thing and going deeper on it.

And so at first I thought I was going to go deeper on the whole aspect of treating customers more like you're building this relationship. Like they're your best friend versus a customer. Like really, you know, you've heard that analogy of dating somebody, right? You're dating and then you're wanting them to like you. And then you become official and then you propose and then you get married, all those things.

If you think of your customers in that way, where you're really building the relationship and becoming their best friend versus trying to sell them, I think it really changes the mindset in your marketing. How you're speaking to customers, your offers and the experience.

But I'm not going to talk about that because I want to talk about I do feel like, you know, Nick did a good job there. But I do want to talk about surprising and delighting your customers. For me, I love this. I will talk to my team and be like, how can we surprise and delight? Is there ways that we can over deliver? I try to do that here on the show. And when you go above and beyond and you do surprise and delight, and you do something out of the ordinary.

Like Nick said in this episode, something unexpected, that is memorable. That creates people talking about you, that gets them thinking about you, and that gets them to want to come back and be a loyal customer. And because there is so much competition and choices for the consumer today, we really want to be memorable and by doing the unexpected and surprising and delighting is a really amazing way to do that.

One of the things I think of when I think of the power of surprising and delighting is Stanley cups or Stanley mugs that, you know, has just gone incredibly viral and has blown up because of social media. This company went from $75 million in revenue a year to $750 million in revenue a year, 10x-ing their business. Primarily from social media and influencers talking about their company and showcasing their mugs and people are collecting them.

But the biggest tipping point for Stanley was last year when a woman's car caught on fire. And I don't know if you saw this, it was all over TikTok, but a woman's car caught on fire and thankfully nobody was hurt. But when she went back to clean out the car, her Stanley cup was still in the cup holder and she shook it and there was still ice in it. Talk about an incredible ad for Stanley. Actually have chills as I'm filming this, like, that's just incredible. So she posted that to TikTok.

It went viral. It went nuts and Stanley did something so smart. They jumped in and I believe it was their CEO did a video. With the woman whose car burned and caught on fire and they said, "Hey, we're going to send you some Stanley's and we also want to buy you a car." And so they bought her a car and then she did this whole video of her getting the car and just this really nice recap video of what happened to her.

I actually shared that at EVOLVE and you can see that what that car, I don't know, probably costs Stanley $35,000-40,000. So yeah, like as an independent business, you're not going to necessarily go buy your customers a car. But my point is they saw an opportunity, they acted on it. They really seem to come from a heart place and a caring place versus let's capitalize on this. Who knows what the meetings were like, but like I really felt like it was genuine.

And people see through that too on social media, if it's genuine or not. Like it was such an authentic story that really helped build their business to where I want to get this stat right. I'm going to read it. So their market share before all of this happened was 2.13%. Now, they're nearing 16 percent. 15.89 percent market share and this articles from February of 2024 on electromarketing.com and Yeti, which we know Yeti, right? That's a big competitor to Stanley Yeti owned 16%.

So like there, when this article was published, they're right there. Basically with their competitor. Jumping from 2 percent market share to 16 percent market share from a TikTok video by surprising and delighting. And the thing is, is that emotional arousal increases people's likelihood to share. And that's why it went so viral. And there was actually this whole study done by the Wharton School of Business.

Professor Jonah Berger, who talks about how we can pull at those emotional responses, how it creates that action.

and he studied this whole case of what happened with Stanley with this car burning and what happened and why it went viral. Yeah and so the power of storytelling definitely in that lesson, but also really surprising and delighting. And I just think that's where independents really have an opportunity to make a big difference for your customers.

Like for example, one of my episodes, it was episode 96 with Barb Binkley with Cooper and Binkley Jewelers, who will also be speaking at EVOLVE this year on my success panel. In her episode, she talks about how she gives back to so many different organizations, how they're really a part of their community. They've done things, I believe it was for their 75th anniversary for their store, either 70 or 75. They went around the town and just did a surprise gift to.

They had 70, I think it was for their 70th. 70 gifts of jewelry. That they would just go out to a local restaurant and film it and see a woman sitting at the bar and be like, "Hey, we have a gift for her," and give her diamonds, like diamond earrings. I mean, just incredible. And one of the people that they gave a gift to was actually a woman who was in a park and she had recently lost her husband. And so getting that gift from Cooper and Binkley is a surprise and delight.

She did not need to buy anything. You know that woman is telling everybody, she knows that she just had this jeweler come up to her. And I think they gave her diamond earrings. I hope I'm remembering that correctly. What that meant to her. And so then people are going to go and shop at Barb's store because she did that. They're going to talk about it. People are posting it on social media. You get that viral content, you get the user generated content. Because you're surprising and delighting.

You're doing the unexpected. I think it's just incredibly powerful when businesses do that. You know, something that I also thought was really smart is I have a friend named Julie who works in a home decor and furniture store. And one of their policies is you can take home a piece of artwork. If you need to see it on your walls. It's hard to imagine sometimes when you're in the store, like how is it going to fit in the space and the colors. Am I going to love this?

Like I'm not sure if this is what I'm wanting. So they'll allow you to actually take it home.

They'll even deliver and hang it for you so you can try it before you buy it. And I just feel like that's not necessarily like a surprise. But it's next level customer service on really supporting the purchase of your customers, making it easy for them to say yes. Because here's the deal. It's already in your house. It's already hung. There's a convenience factor and then hopefully you love it. And you know what?

If you don't, then that store is going to make it easy for you to remove it because they'll come get it and then you could shop something else. Or maybe now it's not the right time. But that does create loyalty because the fact that you went above and it's that law of reciprocity where you did something for me. So I feel like I owe you something now. And we're not doing this because we want our customers to feel like they owe us something.

It's just a natural thing that happens that when we do care, we do show up, we do go the extra mile. People feel it and they want to work with people like that. They feel like I want to support you too, because you are supporting me. Those are the kinds of businesses, in my opinion, that will thrive, that will remain, that will be sustainable. And the ones that are just trying to make quick money, make it fast, make it easy, checking out, not showing up.

We're just not going to see those kinds of businesses anymore. Very few of them are we going to see. So I want you to take away from this episode. How can you surprise and delight? And you know, this isn't a first time we've talked about it here on Rooted in Retail. So maybe you've already taken something from this show or from a guest or you are doing something unique on your own and you should tell me about it because I want to hear what you're doing.

So go to the Rooted in Retail Facebook group and share how you surprise and delight your customers. And here's the deal, it doesn't have to be big. Like I said, you don't have to be buying a car. Are you doing little things? On my episode with Mary Kate and Grace, we talked about with real Wilrett Flowers. You know, they give the kids balloons in the store when they come in, that's a nice little surprise and delight, like just a cute little thing that you can do. So what are you doing?

It can really help you gain more market share. It can help you possibly go viral on social media. It will help more people coming back again and again, which we learned from Nick's episode is very challenging. A high percentage of people just do not come back. So what can you do? What are you doing? Take action from this episode, I want to know. And I have a big favor to ask of you. If you are enjoying Rooted in Retail, can you please share it with one other retailer friend?

By having more listeners on the show, that helps us get potential sponsors and that helps us keep producing the show. And I love doing the show and we have so many great ideas of where we want to take it. And of course that takes some money, and we've got a lot of content we're producing because I just can't stop producing content to help support you. And so if you feel supported from the show, can you just share it with a friend so we can get some more retailers listening to the show?

It really would mean the world. If you're in a buying group, if you have a little mastermind you're in, if you're in a Facebook group with other retailers, if you're on a text group chat with some retailers. If you're going to market and you could tell your rep about it. Because a lot of reps listen to this show too, and they tell their retailers. If any of that applies to you, even the next door neighbor.

You know, even if they are a coffee shop and retail is small, I think that they would actually get a lot out of this show. So if you could share it, that would absolutely mean the world to me. And thank you for listening and as always, I'm rooting for your success. Have a great week ahead. Bye. Thank you so much for being here. It means the world to me. Don't forget to join the rise and shine newsletter, which is social media news.

You need to know sent via email every Monday morning, go to crystal media, co. com slash rise to join and don't miss the newest episode of rooted in retail, which drops every Sunday morning.