Back in the days when record albums were issued in vinyl, I used to base my decision to plop down money for the entire album on whether or not I liked the B-side of the single. My thinking was, if the B-side was good the album would be good. If the B-side was good but wasn’t on the album, the album had to be great because they had more material than they could fit on the album.
In both scenarios I was almost certain to go out and buy the album. If the B-side wasn’t that good or felt like a throw-away track I wouldn’t buy the album and figured that the band didn’t have enough good material to make a strong album.
Maybe my logic was a little harsh, but I wasn’t going to let them get any more of my money when they didn’t care about putting out a quality product. And for a 45 that meant two solid songs. Maybe some record labels or artists wanted to save their best material for the A-side of the singles when they didn’t realize that the B-side was an opportunity to give fans, and more importantly potential fans, a reason to love them.
When someone knocks your socks off you’ll brag to your friends about them. Today, people have thousands of friends in their social media contacts. When they share their experiences the ramifications can be huge.
Maybe I’m just jaded, but for me that bar is pretty low. It should be easy to impress, but sadly, that’s rarely the case. The companies that do though, reap the rewards. The ones that don’t won’t last. How to do it? Give more than what’s expected.
Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this a lot. He says the key to success is to care…a lot. Giving more than what’s expected is caring in it’s truest form. People don’t forget experiences, good and bad. Do your best to make it memorable by giving more than what’s expected and you can turn an okay experience into one that’s special.
Have you been impressed with a company that went above and beyond? What did they do that was different? How do you give your customers more?
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