← Social Media Marketing Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
Happy new year. Happy 2026. Welcome to the year where AI is changing everything. The marketers who thrive this year won't just know social media. They'll master AI. AI enhanced marketing across all the platforms. And that's exactly what you will be able to achieve when you attend Social Media Marketing World in Anaheim this April. Here's the big announcement. You can save $600 on All Access tickets until January 16th. All Access includes Social Media Marketing World plus our brand new AI Business World Conference. Two world class events for the incredible price of one. Visit Social Media Marketing World.info right now and lock in your biggest savings. Don't let this discount disappear. I hope to see you there. Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads and more sales. Today we're going to explore how to actually turn your customers into super fans so that they actually help recommend your products and services intuitively. And who doesn't want that? My special guest is Brittany Hodak. By the way, if you're new to this podcast, be sure to follow this show so you don't miss any of our future content. Let's now transition over to this week's interview with Brittany, helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Brittany Hodak. If you don't know who Brittany is, she, she is a customer experience expert and high demand keynote speaker. She's the author of the book creating how to turn your customers into lifelong advocates. She's host of the Creating Superfans podcast. Her course is six weeks to Superfans Masterclass. Brittany, welcome to the show. How you doing?
- [02:11]
B
Thanks for having me, Michael. It's so great to be here.
- [02:13]
A
I'm doing well, excited that you're here. Today, Brittany and I are going to explore how to get your customers to generate more customers for your business. Let's start with some of your story, like how did you get into customer experience? Which is really what we're talking about today.
- [02:26]
B
You know, totally by accident. I always thought I was going to work in the entertainment industry for my entire career. That was the plan, that was the path. I got my first job when I was 16. I was a radio station Mascot.
- [02:38]
A
Oh, what does that mean?
- [02:40]
B
Well, I got to dress up as Sting the Bee, which I think it's probably one of the most entry level jobs you can get in the entertainment industry. Wearing a bee costume. And I was in a market, Fort Smith, Arkansas, and I got to go to every car wash, grand opening and state fair and mattress sale that had the radio station broadcasting live. I would go out to those remotes and wear the costume as Sting the Bee. And I thought it was the coolest job in the world. I was obsessed with that job.
- [03:12]
A
Love it. Well, tell me more. Like, how'd that ultimately lead to you getting into customer experience?
- [03:15]
B
Well, you know, I had the good fortune that my maiden name was Jones. And so one day I came to work at the station and our promotions manager, Tammy, said, you. I keep seeing ads on TV for this Bridget Jones Diary movie. I don't know what it's all about. I think maybe it was a book. But I just keep thinking to myself, we have a Brittany Jones. What could we do and call it Brittany Jones Diary? And this was maybe 2000, 2001. And I said, you're always talking about driving more traffic to the station website. What if I just interviewed all the bands that came to town? And you know, that was my diary. What happened when Britney was hanging out with Blink 182? You know, go to our website and find out. And she said, oh, like that other movie that's getting a lot of attention right now, that Almost Famous movie? Yeah, that's getting Oscar Bugs us. Let's do that. Make a list of all the bands that you want to see and we'll set it all up with record labels. And I said, wait, what? Really? And so overnight it became my job to hang out with rock stars and brag about it on the Internet. And I had an older brother who was willing to drive me just about anywhere. So if there was a concert in Dallas or Oklahoma City or Tulsa or anywhere that my parents never would have let me go. As a 16 or 17 year old, you know, they were okay with my brother, who was probably 22 at the time, driving me. And so that kickstarted this fascination with fandom. Why do we love the bands that we love? Why do some artists become the biggest bands in the world and other artists just sort of fade into oblivion or they become one hit wonders? And I started thinking about that, obsessing over that, asking myself that, studying that. And then fast forward a decade when I'd had several other entertainment careers that didn't involve wearing a Mascot suit. I noticed these patterns, that these were the same questions that business leaders were asking that brands were asking, that everybody, whether they had a product business or a service business, were trying to figure out those same things. How do I get people to choose my thing at the exclusion of everybody else's thing? How do I get people to stay loyal to my thing? How do I get people to tell their friends about my thing? And that's when this light bulb moment kind of went off. And my dad had always worked in customer service. He was a restaurant manager when I was a kid, and then he worked at a car dealership. And so I knew and understood that world of service and hospitality. And it's like one day at just clicked and I thought, oh my gosh, I have to teach people who aren't in entertainment how to create superfans. I've got to teach people that regardless of what they're doing, they can use their customers as their growth strategy. It's not just about retention. It's not even just about growth. It's about how can we do such a great job that everybody we serve is creating more customers for us.
- [05:50]
A
Love it. And what year did you publish your book?
- [05:51]
B
My book came out in 2023. January of 2023. So we're coming up on the third birthday of the book.
- [05:57]
A
Awesome. And you're traveling around the country, speaking, training people, doing all these amazing things. So I guess one of the first questions I want to ask, especially to my community, which is a community mostly of marketers, why is customer experience so important? Said another way, what are the maybe unrecognized benefits that marketers need to pay attention to when it comes to this customer experience concept?
- [06:21]
B
I think experience is the bucket in which everything else sits. So sales, marketing, ops, service, all of it. I always say experience is everything. It's the number one differentiator between your brand and every other brand. It's the hardest thing for your competitors to copy. But everything is experience, every part of it, from pre purchase to post purchase. All of the touch points are giving evidence that people use to shape the way they feel about you and to shape how likely they are to talk about you or not. Are they going to say something negative? Are they going to say something positive? Or more likely, are they going to just forget about you? Are they going to become apathetic because there's so many other things vying for their attention? So whereas marketing is all about attention and qualification and excitement, experience is delivering on what that promises and then having the continuity that lasts. Because it doesn't matter how amazing a marketing campaign is. If somebody tries your product and feels like they were disrespected or somebody was rude or it didn't live up to their expectations, they're not coming back, no matter how clever the next campaign is when the next product launch happens. So experience is all of the departments working together, everyone in alignment about how we bring this brand to life.
- [07:38]
A
Well, and I would imagine that if I have a great experience with your physical product or your service or your event or your fill in the blank, first of all, there's a chance that I might end up sharing that experience with other people. Right. Which might turn me into a natural evangelist. In addition, I might remember you. And when someone else is looking for somebody like you, I might be the one that recommends them intuitively. But I also might even just naturally want to let the world know about it because there's something so special about it. Is that accurate?
- [08:11]
B
Absolutely. And, you know, one of the questions that I ask sometimes is, is your brand easier to refer or to forget? And six weeks or six months or six years after a purchase, when somebody is in a situation where a member of their network says, I need blank in that moment, are they more likely to speak up and talk about their experience with you or just let it go? Are they going to be apathetic or are they going to be an advocate?
- [08:38]
A
And you can control that. And that's what we're here to talk about today. So when it comes to creating a great customer experience, where do we start? Because for a lot of us, we might not have ever even considered something like this before.
- [08:52]
B
Yeah, well, I think a lot of people haven't. And that's why, really, when I wrote this book, it was because I wanted people to get as excited about this idea as I am. I have become obsessed with customer experience. And I remember when I. So I, you know, kind of glossed over part of my story. But I had an entertainment agency that I founded that I was running. I was working alongside some of the biggest artists on the planet. I mean, everyone. Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, Justin Bieber, you name it. I was working alongside these artists to create these amazing commemorative packages and experiences for their fans. And I walked away from that at the height of doing tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue with Walmart and other huge retail partners, because I thought it was just as exciting to focus on customer experience. And all of my friends thought I was crazy. Everybody was like, you've got this cool job. You are always Doing all these fun things. Why would you want to go talk to industries that are teaching people how to win the contract, to re roof a house or to be the accountant? And I said, because it's everything. It's so, it's so exciting. It's what powers our communities and moves things. And so that's really what drove me to write the book and to focus on this is I wanted people to understand that customer experience is, I think, every bit as exciting as the entertainment industry. It's every bit as rock and roll and fun. And so that's the first thing that I want people to know is this isn't like a. I'll get around to it. This isn't a. This would be a nice thing to layer on top of what I'm doing. This is foundational to everything your company and your brand is about. Why should you have superfans? What is it that you're doing to set yourself apart? To say, we are not a commodity provider. We are a category of one. We are the ones who deserve all the fans, all the customers. And so that's really the first part, I think, is embracing this idea of we don't want to just meet expectations, we don't just want to satisfy people. Because just satisfying your client is the quickest path to apathy, the quickest path to those people bolting the second somebody offers them a 5% discount or something 1% faster than your team can deliver on it.
- [11:04]
A
Am I hearing you say that we need to rewrite our story that we believe about our business? Is that kind of what you're telling me?
- [11:08]
B
You know, I love that you asked that because one of the things that I like to say, Michael, is that super fans are created at the intersection of your story and every customer story that overlap. That intersection where your thing, whether it's a product or a service, becomes so relevant to their life that they can't ignore it and they want to make a different choice. That is where super fandom happens, at that intersection. So I have a five part framework called Supermodel that we can go through if you'd like.
- [11:36]
A
Yeah, let's do it.
- [11:36]
B
So super is an acronym and the S in super is start with your story.
- [11:42]
A
Perfect. Tell me more.
- [11:44]
B
So starting with your story is really all about defining how you are unique, how you differentiate yourself from everybody out there doing something either similar to or identical to what you do or why should I choose you? One of the hardest things to get a handle on is how many prospects you lost before you knew they existed. How many people were told about you and said meh and moved on? And so having a story that's compelling enough for people to not want to ignore, and then having a story that's compelling enough for people to want to share once they hear about it or experience, it has to be. The foundation has to be part one. Because if you don't know what it is that you're doing to deserve super fans to differentiate yourself, it's going to be nearly impossible for everyone on your team to be on the same page about how they bring your brand to life. And then it's going to be virtually impossible for customers to understand how you are in fact different, which means you're going to be competing in that commodity space that we want to stay out of.
- [12:46]
A
Love it. Can you give us an example maybe of a client or somebody that you just to help people understand this kind of in a practical way.
- [12:55]
B
One way that stories really come into play is taglines, mottos. Okay, can you tell me in a few sentences what it is that you're all about? A motto is just a shortened version of a brand story or a brand promise. There is a clothing store in downtown Franklin, Tennessee, where I live, and it's called Finley's. And the tagline of Finley's is pretty things, great people, good vibes. And in six words, they tell you everything. They're all about, we got pretty things, we got great people, good vibes. And those have become the operating principles of what the company is all about. This is what you can expect. This is our promise. Another way that stories really come to focus is an origin story. And that might be a founder origin story. Like, why did you choose to do this? You could be doing anything in the world, but you're doing this. Why and how that founder tells that story, how that executive team tells that story, obviously that becomes very important, not just with go to market, but when you're trying to raise money or align people with your cause. But every single person on your team has a story, too. Every single person on your team chose to come join this mission, to join this company. What is it that elevates the work that they're doing beyond the level of a paycheck and raises it to the level of a purpose or at least a passion? How do they talk to their friends, to their colleagues, to their customers, to their prospects about what this means and why they're here on this mission? And if you don't give your team the tools to be able to tell those stories, to be able to think about that narrative power. In that way, you're really missing the boat, because we know that stories are not only more trusted, but more remembered and more shared than any other form of marketing. It's so critically important because it's part of the DNA of who we are as human beings. So you've got to get focused on not just like the capital S story that you tell, like the origin story, but what I like to call the lowercase s stories, too. Just like an artist might have a set list of the songs that they're playing, and it's a stadium act. Maybe the set list is pretty much set from night to night because there's pyro and there's choreo and there's costume changes, but maybe there's like a couple songs that change here and there. A bar band or a band that's playing at a smaller level might have a book or just a notes folder on their app of, like, here's, you know, the 300 songs. And then they choose the situationally correct one at the right moment. Like, what's the right song in this moment based on everything that's happening. The best marketers and salespeople also have a repertoire of stories, and they use that story set list to inform what's the right story to tell at this moment. Based on what I know about the.
- [15:42]
A
Situation so far, what I've heard you say is you've got taglines, you've got origin stories, and you've got the stories of the people that work for you. There's so many stories, obviously. Right. Especially if you're a storyteller and you kind of see stories and can catch stories. Do you have any tips on, like, maybe how to pick a story that resonates? Just any wisdom for people that aren't sure where to kind of go with their stories?
- [16:03]
B
Yeah. Well, one really good place to start is ask your customers.
- [16:08]
A
I like that.
- [16:08]
B
Not just for testimonials, but you could say to your best customers, hey, your are. What if you were going to tell someone about us, what would you say? And then just listen to what they say, because oftentimes, like, what's the expression? It's hard to read the nutrition label from inside the box.
- [16:22]
A
Yeah.
- [16:23]
B
You know, it's helpful to have an outside perspective. And testimonials are another form of stories. Right. Like a customer story. But asking a customer, hey, what do you say about us? Is going to uncover what they think is interesting, what they think is memorable, what they think is important or different. The other tip that I will say in terms of. If you're listening, listening to this, and you're saying, oh, yeah, I've got to gather up some stories. Number one is they're everywhere, all around you, all the time. Pay attention for them, and you'll find them and write them down. Have, whether it's a notebook or a note app or, you know, whatever, be able to record them when you see them. But the other thing is knowing that they don't all have to be like these epic stories. The thing that makes a story resonant is its details. And. And just like in music, the more specific a lyric, the more universal its appeal. The same is true with stories. And so if you are trying to come up with stories, if you think something is boring, if you think something is pedestrian, if you think something is just like everybody else's, so will everyone else. So it has to start with something that you're passionate about, with details and specificity that really speaks to something that we can imagine, something that we can see. And then you just go from there.
- [17:40]
A
Okay, so you shared a couple stories today. You started with your story about how you were the bee in the costume, working at the mattress shops and all that kind of stuff. And then you also shared how you eventually were part of a company, like an agency, representing some really big brands. How long did it take you to kind of refine those stories? I'm just curious.
- [17:58]
B
You know, in my book Creating Super Fans, I write about this idea of origin stories and how the origin stories that you tell are different based on the audience that you're speaking to and also the outcome that you're looking for. So, for instance, when I was running that agency, I talked a lot about starting as that radio station mascot, because that was the path that led me there. But now that I'm a keynote speaker, and that's primarily what I do. I'm a speaker, I'm an author. I tell other equally true stories, but almost like a different plot line. So if you're going to look at, like, season one versus season two versus season three of a TV series. So, for instance, I. Because we're talking about entertainment and we're talking about customer experience, I talk about those stories which I've been telling for years. Not exactly the same way every time, but. But sort of, you know, hey, here are the things that helped shaped who I am and how I got here. But now that I'm a keynote speaker and an author, sometimes I talk about the fact that I wanted to write a book from the time I Was like coloring and coloring books. Like, I wanted to write a book before I could read. And my mom and dad would take pictures of me. I didn't take dolls to bed like most kids. I took books. And they have all these pictures. It's so funny because it was the 80s, so, you know, it's everybody. It just, you look back at pictures and as a parent today, you're like, oh, my parents were trying to kill me. Because the cribs are just like a thousand pillows and blankets and all the things that they say now, like, don't have the crib. It's those like crazy slats that you could like get your head caught in. All the crazy things that, that existed back in the day. But every single picture of me as a kid, like a baby, a toddler, a preschooler, I always have a book. There's always a book in the crib, there's always a book next to me. Like, I just loved to read from the time that I was like, looking at picture books, making up stories. And so the fact that I'm an author now is not something that I take lightly because it's something that I wanted to do for so long. And because it was so important to me, I waited a really long time to write my book. So anyway, that's a very different snapshot of who I was as a kid, but equally true. And as we tell our own stories, whether we're the founder, whether we're the cmo, whether we're just the marketing assistant who is there to do social media, all of our stories are important because a company is a living, breathing organism that's made up of all of the people that are there. And all of those people have fascinating backgrounds and, you know, fascinating parts of their lives that help inform why they, as a three dimensional human being, chose to come work at this company and be a part of this thing. And that's why stories are important, and that's why stories help bring things into focus.
- [20:41]
A
Okay, so we're on the S in the acronym super, and we talked a lot about story. What's next?
- [20:48]
B
So next is you, and you is understand their story. So whether it's the customer, whether it's a story, a stakeholder, whether it's an employee, whoever you're talking to, understanding their story. Because as you recall, I said that superfans are created where your story and theirs overlap. So you have to be able to quickly determine what is important to them, what is it that they're struggling with or what's the transformation that they're looking for, what do they need help with? And until you understand that big picture 30,000 foot view, you know you're going to have trouble with like a market fit, but zoomed in, you're gonna be a commodity, you're gonna be seen as a solution, not the perfect solution because you have to understand what it is that they're looking for. So a lot of the things that your customers are looking for are going to be universal, right? So I want quality, I want something I can trust, I want something that's potentially as fast as makes sense for it to be given what your thing is. But then the specificity around I want X X because Y. Understanding that level of detail, having not just the information but the empathy that comes with getting to see that full picture is when you can truly move out of that commodity zone and start to make the kinds of connections that inform the things people will be saying about you to their friends.
- [22:14]
A
Tell me if you can relate to this. You know that feeling when everyone around you seems to know something and you're not clued in on it? It that's how a lot of marketers feel with AI right now. They see competitors or friends getting great results, but they often don't know where to start and maybe that's you. Social media Marketing World 2026 helps solve this for you. We have a sub event called AI Business World and it includes 20 tactical AI marketing focused training sessions that you can apply to all aspects of your marketing. Plus when you attend the main conference, you also get strategies for Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and a whole lot more. Here's what Melanie Miller said. Quote I realized if I hadn't attended, my business would have been obsolete. I'm now so far ahead of my competitors, unquote. Save 600 on all access tickets before January 16th. That includes both Social Media Marketing World and AI Business World. Head to Social Media MarketingWorld.info and secure your transformation today. So give us an example of how you tie your story to their story because I think that would be really fascinating to people. If you want, you can stick with your example and talk about how when you're speaking to a specific audience, how you might alter it. Or you can give another example if something pops into your brain.
- [23:39]
B
You know, I was in Hawaii recently and for a speaking event and I stopped to get some cookies on my last day so that I could bring back here to my boys. And as I was waiting in line I noticed the gentleman ringing people up was asking everyone the same question. Which is, where are you visiting from? And I thought it was so fascinating. And so he asked me the question and, you know, I told him that I was visiting from Tennessee. And I said, hey, I'm just curious, were you guys trained to ask that question? Because I, I've noticed you ask that. And then you had something to say about Japan, you had something to say about Florida, you had something to say about wherever. And he said, you know, I was taught to ask this, this two or three jobs ago at my very first retail job that I ever had. And I've just never stopped doing it because I think it's so fascinating and it's so cool for me to think about these cookies that I make here in our shop every day with my colleagues are traveling all around the world. And it's so cool that I get to go home at the end of the day and say, oh, somebody is taking something that I made back to Cape Town or back to Sydney or back to Marrakech. And, and I thought that was such a brilliant example of you're only asking one question and then maybe a follow up. But what you're doing is showing your customer, I care about you. I want to know who you are, where you're from, and get that little snapshot of life. And so when I say connect your story to theirs and understand them, it's not that it's got to be something that takes a 45 minute interview back and forth. It's, do you see a, a logo on their clothing that denotes like, oh my gosh, like they are a fan of the same team that I am a fan of? Or do you notice that they have a diaper bag? And then maybe you have a, a kid and you see that connection of something that you share, but it's really about looking for ways that you can better understand who they are and then potentially also see an overlap in the things that matter to you and the things that matter to them that may or may not have anything to do with what it is that you're actually selling.
- [25:37]
A
This is very cool. Now I want to ask this question. What if you're selling to a person that you never actually meet because it's all done online? Is there a way to, to intersect their story and your story with some presuppositions about what you may know about your audience? I'm just curious.
- [25:51]
B
Great question. I love this question. And, you know, one of the things that I feel like is happening so much right now is because there are so many AI tools that are being Pushed out to say, like, hey, we can help you prospect 10,000 people at a time. It used to be people used to say, like, oh, show me that you know me. Like that the bar, like, show me that you know me. But I feel like now the same way that it's hard to look at a video or image and not ask yourself, like, did this really happen? Like, did this penguin, like, really become best friends with this turtle? Or like, was this AI show me that you know me is over? Like, that's done. It is now. Convince me I should care. And even if you've not talked to that person in real life, it is your job to make them understand why they should care about your thing. If you are interrupting them where they're at, if you're in a marketing scenario, like, I'm doing a cold outreach or moderately, you know, cold outreach to someone, it is your job to make them understand why they should care. And so what are some of the things that you might know without knowing someone? Well, depending on the industry that they are in, you might know that tariffs are impacting them. You may know that regulatory things are happening. Right. Maybe they've got a highly regulated industry and there's a change happening because, you know, it's the beginning of the year, whatever it is. Like, there are always things that you know that you can use as a starting point to deduce what might matter. And then those conversations back and forth again, even if they're not happening in real life. It's like looking for rocks in a river. You may not see the whole path, but that rock that you're on allows you to like, jump to the next rock. And then you see, like, okay, here's like three more potential stones that I can see, which is the one that I jumped to from here. There.
- [27:39]
A
Interesting. Okay, cool. So so far we've talked about S's story. U is understand your customer story. And just speaking for marketers that are out there, if there is no actual interaction, like, let's say you've got a website or E commerce product or YouTube videos or something like that, I still think if you understand your customer story, like you mentioned earlier, you can tell your story in a way that you know will resonate with those kinds of customers. Would you agree with that?
- [28:06]
B
That? Oh, absolutely. And that's why you've got to get crystal clear on who is it that you want to serve. Like, what is the avatar of the person, Even if you don't know them individually, even if you don't know it's Like Molly Smith from 123 Main St. You may know I exist to serve dance studio owners who are typically going to be between this age and that looking to solve these problems.
- [28:25]
A
Yeah. And you probably have some of them as customers, and you've already gathered up insights, and you can make presuppositions that will allow you to tell a story that will connect with them. So now we have the next letter, which is P. So tell me about that.
- [28:37]
B
Well, P stands for personalize, and that is where these first two come together. So the all of these build on each other. It's very much like steps on a ladder or layers in a pyramid. And once you have clarity on your story and your customer, then P is about, how do I make each customer? Even if you're doing it at scale, even if you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people, how do I make them feel like the most important customer that I have? How do I do things that they are going to think, oh, wow, like, this was a little easier than I expected, or this was a little more delightful? And in the book, I talk about the fact that basically you can boil personalization down into two camps. There's the high tech and the high touch. And what the smart companies do is think about how those overlap and it becomes one plus one equals five. Because when you've got high tech and high touch working together, that is where you create the highest degree of impact. And a fun example from the past couple of weeks. I love Snoopy. I'm a huge Peanuts fan. I have a ridiculous amount of, like, licensed Peanuts. I can see three Snoopy things behind me in my reflection just on my shelves. So my favorite accessory that I wear every day is my Snoopy Apple watch, which, if anybody has an Apple watch and you don't have the Snoopy watch face on it, you are doing it wrong. It is the best. It's so much fun. It's so delightful. I love looking at my wrist every day and seeing cartoons. So There are about 150 different, different animations that are anywhere from like 5 to 15 seconds long. And it's just Snoopy and Woodstock doing.
- [30:06]
A
Cute things with a little time hand thing. Would you around?
- [30:09]
B
Yeah, with the little time hand. And for anybody who's, like, watching this interview here, I'll try to hold it up to the camera. The thing that I love about it is it would be delightful on its own, right? This opportunity to, like, see their Snoopy. He's, like, going to work. Like, he's probably, like, about to pack things up because the work day's over. So what Apple does is instead of just serving random ones, Snoopy and Woodstock interact with the hour hand. So like right there you can see Snoopy, he's getting ready for dinner. He's like making a pizza. He threw the pizza. But what they do is use the situational data that they have to serve up contextually relevant cartoons. So for instance, at night it's a night cartoon, during the day, it's a day cartoon. If I'm swimming, Snoopy is like swimming, or he's scuba diving or he's surfing. If my heart rate is elevated because I'm exercising, Snoopy is exercising. There are so many fun little Easter eggs. And then on holidays, so there are certain ones that will only be served on Valentine's Day, on Easter, on Thanksgiving, on Halloween, and then my favorite, which this one just happened like a few days ago, my birthday. So on my birthday, there's one day a year, December 1st, where I get to see Snoopy and Woodstock birthday themed animations with balloons and cake and confetti and all of the fun things. Now that is the only example in all of those 150 animations that is actually truly personalized for me. The rest are contextualized. And so what they were doing is taking contextualized information, taking situational data that exists in other places. Right? So we know the temperature. Oh, that's the other one. There's a, like, if it's raining outside, it'll be storming on my watch. Often sometimes the first indication that I have that it's raining outside is because I looked and I saw Snoopy in like a monsoon or a hurricane. And I'm like, oh, man of us we're getting outside. So they're taking the data that they have about, you know, where I am, you know what I'm doing, you know what the temperature is, you know what the time it is, you know, I'm probably about to eat, or that I'm, I'm on a walk or you know, all of these things. And instead of just letting that information live in silos, they said, how do we create content that feels a hundred percent hyper personalized, super duper relevant? And does it matter that hundreds of thousands of other people are seeing that same Snoopy animation that's time based at the same time as me? Of course not. Because to me it feels like Snoopy and Woodstock are just entertaining me personally. Brittany. All day long, Apple made this watch face for me, Brittany. To be delighted multiple times a day. When I look at My wrist.
- [32:44]
A
Okay, that's absolutely fascinating. Now, how in the world world do we apply that? Because it seems so unbelievably complicated. Right. For your average human to do. But what's some lessons we can learn from that?
- [32:57]
B
Well, I think some lessons are what is the data that you have that maybe you're not using in a creative way? I was just on the phone with a girlfriend a couple days ago and she told me she had ordered a hot chocolate maker and she thought it was so cool that the company had been sending her emails based on the shipping information and then offering her content. One of them was, you know, hey, the post is going to be delivering this today, so we thought you might want to take a couple minutes to watch this unboxing video so you know exactly what's in the box. And then after it got delivered, the next email was, okay, we know you want to get started as soon as possible. So here are a few quick and easy recipes that you can make with the cocoa maker. So it wasn't just like, like, hey, you ordered this. Here's a bunch of stuff. It was the right content at the right time based on information that lived presumably in a different system somewhere else. And somebody had built the integration. And the thing that I think is fascinating about this is, and again, it doesn't all have to be high tech. Sometimes high tech stuff is just as important. It's, you know, I was advising a car wash manager who was looking for ways to have people keep their car wash subscription longer. And I said, said, you know, how many of your customers have kids? And a lot of them do. I said, what if every time somebody went through that car wash tunnel with a kid, your attendant, when they were drying off the car, handed them a Hot Wheels car and said, mom and dad are doing a great job keeping their car clean. I want you to keep this car clean for me. Like, what do you think that would do for retention? What do you think that would do for customers coming back? And that became like his favorite thing that his team gets to do.
- [34:37]
A
Very cool. Cool. So the high touch example was the car example. And would you also say the high touch example might be the example of the guy that's with the cookies, you know what I mean? Because he's actually interacting with them. That feels like something that's kind of above and beyond. Is that correct?
- [34:53]
B
Yeah, it is. And that's the really cool thing about the supermodel is every pillar builds on the one that comes before. So asking the question, where are you visiting from? That's you understanding your customer story. And then the P personalized. Because once when he says, oh, I've always wanted to visit Morocco or oh, wow, I have so many friends who live in Florida and your beaches aren't as good as our beaches or whatever you're saying, it's connecting your story to theirs. And so absolutely there's overlap. But the beauty of the supermodel is not only is it simple to remember, but it's simple to come up with ideas, to step into those things. And sometimes personalization is, is exactly that. It's, it's paying somebody a thoughtful compliment. It's saying something that's going to make them smile. And then other times it's, you know. I had a real estate agent tell me recently that her favorite closing gift is having Etsy artisans create replicas of the house as a birdhouse. And then there's like a birdhouse in the front yard that looks like the house house. And that is so incredibly high touch, right? It's very personalized. But then another realtor who's at that same event was like, oh, I love birds too. I've been buying people bird buddies and then I'll like swap postcards. So anybody who doesn't have a bird buddy feeder and app, it is so much fun. I have one now based on that conversation, I am like low key obsessed with it. But she was saying it's so cool because I can take my bird buddy postcards, which are like the snapshots or videos of the birds that are visiting, and then share them with other clients in the neighborhood. And so, so two very similar ideas, right? Like I'm gonna buy a bird feeder, but two wildly different executions. One is high touch, one is high tech. They both can be very high impact because they feel personalized. They're connecting your story to your customer story.
- [36:45]
A
Love it. Okay, so let's move on to the next letter in the acronym, which is.
- [36:50]
B
Letter E. Letter E stands for exceed expectations. And this is the one that's the most nuts and bolts. Customer experience. Like when people think about customer experience, this is sort of that pillar. I talk about what I call intentional experience design, which is a more accessible way to journey map to ask ourselves what are the moments that matter the most before, during and after that interaction? And how can we exceed our clients expectations? Because we know if we are meeting a customer or client's expectations again and that might put us in that commodity zone, it might be just as easy to forget about us as it is to become loyal to us. Because maybe 24 months goes by between the time that the toilet breaks and then, you know, the kid flushes the next thing down the toilet two years later. Which to you is that actual example? I was just thinking recently about the fact that plumbers were a category that I never really would have thought I could have, like an emotional connection to who I use. It was always just like, who is the home warranty company sending out or who is the first person that answers their phone or who comes up top in the Google search. But a couple of years ago, and probably like the third time that we had somebody come to our house because one of the boys had flushed something down a toilet, a plumber said, hey, are you potty training yet with either of the boys? And I said, yes, we are with my older son. And he said, do you know about the targets? And I said, said, no, it's target. And he said, oh, they're the best. This is how we taught my little boys to not be all over the place and they work so well. And he pulled out a stack of like poker chip sized little paper rings and they had dinosaurs on them. And he said, you just drop one of these in the toilet and then when the boy aims at it, if he has good aim, the dinosaur sinks. And so it's a game like, can you sink the dinosaur? And I thought not only was that so brilliant, not only was that like a total differentiator, it made life easier. Really, really did help my boys. Both were like, that's how they both use. Learned how to like not be, you know, super messy. Like, can we sink the dinosaur? And so do you think that his card made its way to the refrigerator and is still there years later? Of course it did. And of course it is. And it's not because he fixed the toilet faster than the last guy who had to come fish a Thomas the Tank Engine truck out of it. It's because he went above and beyond. He exceeded my expectations. He didn't just, just do the thing he was there for. He used the information that he had and he made my life better.
- [39:25]
A
I love this. As you were thinking, I was thinking about my plumbing experience. I used to put everything down the drain because in my brain I'm like, why don't you put everything down the drain, especially the kitchen drain. So we had a bunch of fiber sitting around and I'm like, I'm just going to put this down the drain. So anybody who's a plumber knows what happened. I put a bunch of fiber on the drain because I didn't know what to do with it. And it expanded.
- [39:49]
B
Oh, no.
- [39:50]
A
And it created something where they had to saw literally it out, and it created this thick, gelatinous stuff that was impossible for it to get through. And the lesson that I learned is you got to be careful what you put down the drain. Right. It's dumb, it's stupid, but it's the.
- [40:06]
B
Story you don't know till you don't know.
- [40:08]
A
It's the story that's popping into my brain because he taught me. Yes. Not just should you not be put fiber down the drain, but you shouldn't put oil down the drain, and you shouldn't put all these other things down the drain because it doesn't pass through. And it was like, oh, I learned something. So I kind of think you're right. Like, if you bring somebody out, like a plumber or an electrician, because you had something happen, it's one thing for them to actually just fix the problem. It's another thing for them to teach you how to prevent the problem from ever happening again. Don't you agree?
- [40:38]
B
Absolutely. Or to just make something a little bit better. So another recent example, we got our roof replaced. Place. Everybody in my neighborhood got new roofs this year because there was a terrible hailstorm. And I don't even know how my husband chose the roof company. He just was like, you know, pick somebody. They came, they did a fine job on the roof. I mean, be honest. It's like, it looks. It looks like a roof. Like, I don't know about shingles. I don't know about flashing. I didn't even know what that was. They were like, what color flashing do you want? And I was like, I don't. I don't. The right color. I don't. I don't even know why that is. For a million dollars, I couldn't tell you what color the flashing is on my house or even point to what that means. So anyway, they do the roof. Roof. You know, great, fine, whatever. The thing that I remember most about that experience is that for a whole week, I was just finding nails everywhere in the yard. I was terrified to let my boys go outside barefoot, even with their shoes on. I was like, you have to be so careful. And I mentioned it to my neighbor Trish down the street, who got her roof done a week or so before us by a different company. And she said, oh, didn't they use the magnet thing to sweep for nails? Nails? And I said, no, what's that? And she said, when our roofers finished, they had guys walking around with these magnets on poles. They showed us, they pulled up like hundreds of nails. And then they said, we'll come back after it rains the first time because that's when a bunch of them are going to surface. And so people swept her yard, then came back after the job was done to sweep the yard again. My roofing company, meanwhile, did none of this. So her husband Mark showed my husband Jeff the thing and we ordered one on Amazon and then and spent the next couple of weeks every time we were outside looking for nails. Who do you think I am going to recommend if anybody says to me who's a good roof company? Because doing a good job on the shingles and the flashing, whatever that is and everything else. Like that is not the ceiling, that is not the bar that you celebrate yourself on. High five. If you hit like that is what you have to clear, that is the floor. The expectation is that you are amazing at the thing that you do that is literally your job. But where you create super fans, where you earn referrals, where you have people want to save your information and come back is going above and beyond in those other things. Doing things like showing that you care whether or not your customer is going to get a nail in their tire or a nail in their foot or a nail in their kids foot or anything else. You have to ask yourself, what is it that surrounds the thing that I do that adds value and differentiation to the actual, actual thing that I'm being paid for?
- [43:02]
A
Love it. What's the last letter? R. Right. What do we do there?
- [43:06]
B
Yeah, I can't leave you just with soup. Yes, the R in super stands for repeat. And it's a nod not just to the fact that you have to consistently do these things over and over again. You can't just exceed expectations once and be like, we did it, we're done. It's about the repetition. So in my book I get into the systems and the processes that we need to put into place to turn everybody on our team to what I like to call the acting chief of experience. But it's about the fact that that consistency compounds. Repetition isn't boring. Repetition is branding. Doing the things that we do again and again and again, committing to the things that we know we need to do to set ourselves apart, to differentiate ourselves is what creates not just an amazing experience, but a predictably amazing experience. The kind we want to come back for again and again, the kind we want to tell our friends about. I am sure, Michael, you have had the experience of going to a restaurant for the first time, having just, just like the greatest meal, thinking that you can't wait to go back and have it again, going back again two weeks later, and it's okay. And then you've got all this cognitive dissonance of like, oh, man, was it supposed to be okay that I just got lucky the first time, or was tonight a bad night? If I come back a third time, is it going to be worse? Is it going to be good again? Should I hire something different? And so what do you do? Oftentimes you just go eat somewhere else. Right. Because you don't want to A, set yourself up for failing and having a horrible experience, or B, to continue to second guess yourself after the, the fact of, like, oh, well, it's, it's not going to be consistent. So the R stands for repeat. Elizabeth Arden said, repetition makes reputation and reputation makes customers. And I think she was absolutely right.
- [44:43]
A
Brittany Hodak, author of Creating Superfans, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today. If people want to learn more about you, connect with you on the socials, possibly participate in some of the programs you've got going on, like your course, where do you want to send them?
- [44:58]
B
Yeah, well, if you want to connect with me, I'm Brittany Hodak. I told you, my maiden name was Jones. I sort of hit the SEO lottery when I got married. I went from Brittany Jones to Brittany Hodak. Not a lot of competition for that handle. So I'm just Brittany Hodak literally everywhere on social media. But if you go to brittanyhodak.com, you can find more information about all of this. So season four of the Creating Superfans podcast is launching very soon. My book Creating Superfans is available everywhere the books are sold, and as you said, the six Weeks to Superfans masterclass, all of that information is@brittanyhodak.com thank you.
- [45:30]
A
Brittany, so much for sharing your insights with us today.
- [45:32]
B
Thanks so much for having me. This was a blast.
- [45:35]
A
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@social mediaexaminer.com 701. If you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a listener listener for a while, would you give us a review on whatever platform you're listening on? And if you want, you can tag me on Facebook, LinkedIn and or X and do check out our other show, the AI Explored podcast. This brings us to the end of the social media marketing podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. What if you could get year round AI training? That's exactly what's waiting for you with our AI Business Society. To learn more, visit socialmediaexaminer.com AI.