What’s your upgrade strategy?
In consumer marketing, there are a variety of ways to attract customers, grow customers, and keep them loyal. And over the last 10 years, we have seen a lot of consumer marketing tactics make their way into human resources and how we treat candidates and employees. From espousing that “candidates are consumers” to developing candidate experiences that mirror the customer experience, the tactics and strategies of consumer marketing are becoming commonplace with talent. In fact, candidates and employees are coming to expect a more red-glove approach to their careers.
But, it’s time we dig deeper into consumer marketing for some of the nuance. In my years doing shopper marketing, I learned about a common practice called “Switcher Strategy”.
What is Switcher Strategy?
Switcher strategy, at its core, is the collection of tactics a brand will employ to get a customer to switch from one brand to another. Billions of dollars and countless hours are spent finding ways to get people to switch from one laundry detergent to another, one phone manufacturer to another, one bank to another. Everything from pricing strategy, coupons, shelf location, in-store promos, out-of-store promos are all driving people who are loyal to Gain to switch to Tide and vice versa.
And if you think about it recruiting is 100%, without a doubt, “switcher strategy”. Straight up. We are doing this on a daily basis. Today’s recruiting effort is all about: How do we get this person to switch from their current job to our company? We think through how we compensate people, what makes this job attractive to someone, how to we stand out in the crowd? We employ countless tactics and practices to support recruiting’s version of switcher strategy.
The thing is: Billion-dollar operations need more than one element of the strategy to drive sales and shareholder value. And while switcher strategy is a huge component of the overall marketing strategy, it isn’t the whole strategy. It’s just a piece of the marketing puzzle designed to obtain customers. The overall marketing strategy focuses on getting customers, keeping customers, growing customers, and ultimately creating loyal customers.
The best consumer marketing funnels end with Loyalty and Advocacy.
If you want to get to loyalty and advocacy, you implement what’s called Upgrade Strategy.
What is Upgrade Strategy?
Upgrade strategy is something you sometimes don’t even know what’s happening to you, especially if it’s done well.
Think loyalty cards. Think about what it’s like when you’re close to status on an airline. You know, when you’re close to status on an airline, you may book a last-minute flight at the end of the year to get to Gold. No wait, is that just me?
The holy grail in consumer marketing is ubiquitous loyalty. Don’t believe me, look at the biggest brands in the world, look at FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google). It’s not about a one-off purchase, it’s about daily shipments of product, it’s about streaming non-stop, it’s about buying not just the latest phone, but the watch, the earbuds, the chargers, everything. It’s about the sale, AND the extension and loyalty.
And if you look at talent, we have absolutely no upgrade strategy.
All of our eggs are securely in the switcher basket. We really do focus solely on getting people to switch from their company to our company.
But if we have learned anything in the last 7 months since people started walking away from their jobs, it’s time to start not just thinking about upgrade strategy, it’s time to DO something about it. It’s time to implement an upgrade strategy.
We are far from creating loyalty and advocacy. But now is the time to start. It’s beyond time to implement programs, and processes to help your people upgrade.
If we are to believe all of the research, 94% of people would rather stay at their company if you invested in them, according to LinkedIn. They WANT an upgrade.
It’s time to help them.
It’s time to make this easy.
It’s time to make this happen.
What are you doing to help your talent upgrade their careers?
Are you making it easy for them to find and apply for a new role with you?
Do they even know how to upgrade with you?
Where do they go?
Who do they talk to?
Are your recruiters sourcing your own people for their open roles?
Are your recruiters growing the relationships with the people they recruited into your org?
The reality is, this isn’t hard. It’s been done in consumer marketing for years. All it takes is the decision to implement an upgrade strategy for your people.