Lydia Chan (00:00)

Welcome back to the Audience Connection Podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by Jillian Johnson, a powerhouse in customer storytelling and advocacy. As GoDaddy's customer hype woman, Jillian has spent the last decade amplifying the voices of small business owners, ensuring their stories are embedded into product strategy, executive messaging, and brand storytelling. Together, we had an incredible conversation about why customer stories resonate more than traditional marketing, how to create an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their truth, and the role brands should and shouldn't play in customer storytelling. So if your audience is also small business owners or solo entrepreneurs, you won't want to miss this episode.

 

Lydia Chan (00:00)

Jillian, welcome to the show. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. One, because it's always fun talking to you. And two, we're going to touch on customer stories, which honestly is one of my favorite types of stories to tell. So let's kind of dive right in and start with a brief overview of who you are and the work that you do with small businesses.

 

Jillian Johnson (00:25)

Yeah, who I am, such a big question, but the way I will answer it for this podcast right now is I work at GoDaddy. I have been there for 10 years, and I've really crafted a bunch of programming and a bunch of information about customer storytelling overall. So I like to say that I am the customer hype woman of GoDaddy. And I think that really encapsulates who I am, but I really focus on telling stories of our customers, making sure the voice of our customers is deeply embedded in product, executive presentations, and different things like that. Really, the voice of the customer is what I live and breathe, and I've really made a career out of it.

 

Lydia Chan (01:12)

Awesome. So I guess for the audience's understanding, how do we define the small business audience? And that is a pretty large question. But how would you define who they are and what they care about?

 

Jillian Johnson (01:31)

Totally. I have a very different definition of small businesses than I think a lot of corporate America or even, you know, like the commerce ecosystem. A lot of times you hear a small business has a thousand employees or, you know, compared to a lot to what it is in comparison to a corporation. But at the end of the day, for me, I think it is really aligned with entrepreneurship. I think a small business can be someone by themselves. I think they can have one employee; they can have two employees.

 

I talk to amazing people every day who have a business idea or are just starting out, and they do not recognize themselves as a small business owner because they don't feel like they're official enough or, you know, they don't have a brick-and-mortar. And so my definition of someone who's a small business owner and a small business in general is someone who's providing a good or a service for themselves and for their community.

 

Lydia Chan (02:28)

Yeah. So when, you know, looking at that definition, right? Really like everyday individuals who are, you know, their own boss. What do they care about, right? What's keeping them up at night? You know, what are the challenges that they're facing?

 

Jillian Johnson (02:38)

Yes, I think the best way I can say it is, I think there are two sides to the challenges. I think that there are external challenges, and those external challenges that small business owners face are really, you know, funding, finding customers, and surviving. Like I would say truly surviving in the ecosystem of other small businesses, standing out, and doing all of those things. Those are like three external things. And then the challenges that I see that are more internal and more interpersonal are so, so much of the time I'm getting imposter syndrome 24/7 from these people. They don't believe in themselves. They don't feel like they're pushing themselves far enough. And I, as an outsider, see them being so successful. I see them being an inspiration to me. I mean, I work a corporate gig. I have golden handcuffs, and I look at them with admiration, and I'm inspired because I wish I could do that. I would love to do that, but I'm too scared. And I see them actually doing it, and they think they're not doing a good job. So, the imposter syndrome's a big thing. Think, when you're a small business owner and you're an entrepreneur, you don't have a boss. You don't have someone checking your work. You don't have stakeholders that are basic and shareholders telling you how successful you are or you are not. And I think being your own success metric is a very complicated thing for people, especially if they're shifting into this. They've never done something like this before; that's a big mental flip that I see provides a lot of challenges for folks. And I think there's also that level of interpersonal survival. I know I said it from an external perspective. It's like, can I pay my bills? Can I do those things? Can I survive in business? And then there's the other side of, like, can I survive doing this all? Like, am I going to get burnt out? Can I withstand these late nights? Can I do all those things? And so I think there's a ton of internal and external challenges.

You didn't ask me this, but I'm going to say I think the internal challenges are probably the bigger challenge for small business owners that sometimes they don't address. And I think if they could address those items and have more confidence in themselves and see them the way I see them, I think the external factors are a lot more like solvable overall.

 

Lydia Chan (05:13)

Yeah, I completely agree, right? And this is a great segue to talk about, then, you know, brands investing in storytelling, right? When it comes to customers, it's these intrinsic challenges that are going to make us relate to others when we see that in stories. So I guess from your perspective, are customer stories more, why do they resonate more with this audience than, let's say, traditional marketing?

 

Jillian Johnson (05:45)

Yeah, I don't know how you shop, and I don't know how you, you know, purchase things, but for myself and for a lot of people, you know, there's a lot of distrust with big brands. I think that when you have been raised in a society like ours, there's a level of distrust there when it comes to a big brand, but what I will trust is a friend, a family member, someone who looks like me, talks like me, and has had previous experiences like me. If I can see a version of myself in someone else and they're telling me that they like this thing, that it worked for them, I feel a lot more trust there. And so I think customer storytelling overall does a couple of things. I think it really shows and does not tell people the value of your product or service that you're delivering, which I think is massive. No one wants to be told what to do. You need to show them the path, and they have the choice to go down that. I also think it instills a lot of trust to see someone who uses the product go out on a limb and actually talk about it. And I also think it brings a level of authenticity. The way that I approach customer storytelling is never with a script, never with you must do this. And we allow customers to tell their story and fill in the gaps. And I think when you allow a customer to speak truthfully and authentically about their experience, that comes across, and people feel that. People don't feel like they're being sold to. People feel like they're listening to a story and they're gaining information from it, but it's up to them to decide what they want to do with that.

 

Lydia Chan (07:32)

Yeah, absolutely. You know, in 2019, we embarked on a journey to tell over, I don't know what the figure is now, like 150 maybe, small business stories.

 

Jillian Johnson (07:44)

We did 152 stories in a year. Which is...

 

Lydia Chan (07:59)

Yeah. Which honestly was a real privilege, you know, to be able to speak and meet with all these amazing people, right? And having them feel comfortable with sharing their stories and telling their vulnerabilities. And I guess when you look at what is the formula, do you think there is a formula to customer stories?

 

Jillian Johnson (08:16)

Yeah, I do, I do. I am a very pragmatic person, and I grew up being a competitive dancer, and that level of repetition really instilled something inside me to say, like, you know, nothing is ever that new. You know, the dance steps are always gonna be the same. They're just arranged in a different format. And you arrange those steps based on the musicality. Like, what do you hear in the music? What emotion are you trying to convey? What story are you trying to tell? And you can still have the best technical dance, but if the dancer themselves does not emote and does not tell the story, it's always gonna be flat. And I felt that was very applicable to telling customer stories. So I always knew we were gonna want to have a portion of, you know, our company's story, our GoDaddy story, in there.

Ultimately, you're trying to sell the company to your audience and build that trust with potential consumers. So that element will always be there. But how do you wrap it? How do you showcase it in a way that seems applicable to other people? And really what we did is we decided to go out and take this formula, which was very much, let's hear about the customer upfront. Let's really talk to them about who they are without a ton of constraints, really learn from them, hear their story, and allow them that space to speak on that and speak about their own experiences. Out of those 152 stories, I always looked at it as, I know that there's going to be some stories that are gonna hit on more of the top side of the success rate. Some of them are gonna be a little lower, and then we're gonna have our outliers of just absolutely outstanding, and maybe ones that just truly didn't work. So we went out with a formula to hear about their story, pepper in some other product questions when it really related to how they run their business, and we approached it from a much more story-centric, getting-to-know-them space. And then as we developed the relationship further, we started to ask more in-depth, robust, convert questions to drive the conversation deeper into the product or what they're experiencing. And I think you need multiple touchpoints to get really deep product-wise with someone because someone's gonna share their story with you if you're an open ear. You know, if you really care about what they're saying, they're going to open up to you, but you can't have someone open up and then immediately say, Well, like, how did you feel about our product?

 

Jillian Johnson (10:55)

Just first off, shut down the relationship. Nobody's having fun anymore. Like, it just gets shut down. So to have a pathway and a runway where the first step is just them talking about themselves and their journey and small business and entrepreneurship as a whole was a great first step. And then if we really loved them and we loved their story and we felt a mutual connection, then we would follow up and go deeper and deeper. The formula that we put together was we wanted to spend, I think it was like 60 or 70 % of the time talking about them. And then 40 to 30 % talking about GoDaddy overall, and I think that's applicable for any business. And we also had a lot of space in there for them to walk around and do different things like that. So like on a normal day, I think every single shoot we go out and do, we have like the interview upfront, we're gonna have them talk about themselves upfront, they're gonna loosen up, they're gonna feel better. We're gonna talk a little bit about the company and more of that product piece or whatever you're trying to sell as a corporation, and then I always did like that we break a little bit after that. I know that sometimes when you have a production day, you want to really push through a lot of things, but I find so much inspiration when I'm doing nothing and when I'm not paying attention to what I should be paying attention to. And then I have ideas and sparks, and I see a lot of that happen with our customers that we work with. We give them a little bit of a break once they talk to us, and then we chat with them again while they're moving and doing something else. So we brought up a lot of similar questions in the second half of the day to get other versions, to have them open up a little bit more. And I think that formula is pretty good. Do you feel like that was a formula? I mean, you were there.

 

Lydia Chan (12:40)

Yeah, no, I think it kind of ladders back to what you mentioned about, you know, someone is going to be like a floodgate, right? When they're talking about what they love and when they're doing what they love in combination with talking about it, right? That's only going to, you know, get even more authentic material and even deeper material about what exactly it is that they're passionate about, right? So I definitely think that was part of the formula, to say, How do we do more of this verité-style shooting where someone is actually doing what they love while talking through certain aspects of their business or, you know, the product, whatever it might be?"

 

Jillian Johnson (13:31)

And also, I think a very big value out of the verité section was a lot of people in the interviews will shut down. And I don't think that's anything that a producer or director or anyone can really manage because at the end of the day, if you are ever approaching a customer with some level of production, that is always gonna be intimidating and scary to them, especially if you go back to my previous comment about a challenge. And a lot of times small business owners don't feel like they are as amazing as external people see them because there's already that imposter syndrome. When you sit them down in front of a microphone and in front of cameras and in front of people all staring at them, that's a very intimidating situation. They already don't have that robust confidence to tell their story and pitch it like a corporation would. They don't always have a mission statement. They don't always have a PR person that's prepping them. So this is really the first time a lot of folks are going out and speaking about their experiences. And so having that traditional interview was really important to get the meat of what we needed. But the verité side pulls back a lot of pressure. Like you said, working with doing their own thing where their confidence really lies and peppering in a couple of questions always was really impactful because they are not as nervous and they're not as scared because they're in their domain.

 

Lydia Chan (15:01)

Yeah, yeah, and this jumps to something I wanted to touch on later in the conversation, but I think it's a really great segue into it, right? Like the literal starting point of the project. I know when we worked together, it was the number one priority to make sure that we make people feel comfortable and we don't treat them as talent, right? That was the word that we can never say. So when brands are looking to do customer stories, how should they approach the production so that they're able to build that trust with the customers and create an environment that is extremely comfortable for them to share their truth, if you will?

 

Jillian Johnson (15:29)

Yeah, I was told one time early in my career, the more you know, the worse experience you give. And I was given that advice specifically from a user experience (UX) perspective. And the way that I think about that often is when you know a lot, you make assumptions for other people. And you are on so many productions a day, like you don't even think about how this net new person would feel coming to this space. It's their first time. They've never had this experience. They're nervous. They want to make you happy. And so a lot of the production things that we did really were under that veil of, OK, you guys are professionals. Everyone's been doing this for a long time. How do we kind of take that expertise out of it and make it a little bit more, I hate to use the word elementary, but a little bit more elementary for these people?

Like, talent, when I think of talent, that's a model and actor. That's someone who they are paid to be there. It is their craft. They understand how to change their tone to have it be a different emotion. They understand how to receive direction and what to do with that. When you call a customer talent, there is that assumption that they will act like talent. And I think that's where some of your experience as corporations working with people sometimes gets in the way of working with the customers. You assume that they can show up and that they can do it. Someone can be very excited about your product, and you put a camera in front of them, and they have nothing to say. And that's always a risk when you're working with customers.

 

Lydia Chan (17:28)

Yeah, no, I mean, so many things to touch on here. Think of finding those little gold nuggets; it can all ladder back to actual marketing campaigns, right? And like very specific marketing messages. So having these really vulnerable and just real relationships with the customers is how you get those nuggets, right? And I think that at the start of the project or at the start of this whole campaign, what we came to the table with was the mindset of, We're here to help you tell your story, right? We're not here to impose our expertise or direct you to do whatever it is we're asking you to do in each scene; we're here to help you. And I think when you have that mindset, you put on various different hats, right? You put on the friend hat, you put on an empathetic hat, and you put on the hat of an educator as well, right? Because we always need to educate folks who are not talent, right, or part of the industry about what's going to happen. Like, what are the steps? How long does it take to set up an interview, right? Like, you can't assume these things when people are not, you know, every day, you know, all day, every day on set.

 

Jillian Johnson (19:00)

I also think, to your point of education, I think there's also a perspective of if you are working in corporate America or you're working in corporate, you are inundated with corporate language. You understand how, and especially as a marketer, you understand how to market yourself. You understand how to take fragments of your corporate strategy and embed them into what you're doing and integrate that into your everyday language. And I think that's a big gap with entrepreneurs and small business owners is that they don't have that kind of waterfall of language. And I think a big portion of what I try to do on set when I'm talking to a customer is also walk them through my thinking of, Hey, I know you are trying to do this. And so when you're answering questions like that, this is a great place for you to insert your mission and vision for your small business and your way of, you know, marketing yourself. And I feel like so many times I have conversations with folks on set when we take a break or whatever, and they're like, Am I doing good? Am I doing a good job? And I'm like, of course you're doing great. You're actually smashing it. I have some thoughts, like why don't we work through it?

Like, I feel like it would be really cool if maybe you talked about it like this because of all of these previous things you've spoken to me about. And afterwards, a lot of times people will text me or call me after and say, My gosh, like, this was so good. I was able to take what we learned on set and hear you kind of be a mirror and reflect my own thoughts and feelings back to me. And I went back on the website, and I changed some of my copy. I went in, and I changed marketing materials, or I felt more confident to, like, put an elevator pitch together. I think outside of just the education of, like, what will happen when you're on set to make it not scary for you. I think there's also education on communication and what's the best way to tell your story and what's the best way to inject kind of your mission and vision into everything that you do. Because that's what people like. People want to buy the person and the story. They don't always care about the product. And I think that works twofold for people who want corporations and businesses who want to bring customers into the fold.

I did something called narrative bridges where I took an RTB, and then I would say, No one in the world would say like this. And then I would get keywords, and then I would write a very everyday colloquial statement. So for us, if it was, you know, 24/7 support. Not a lot of people are gonna naturally say that. A customer is not naturally going to repeat your RTB. But what is that message really telling us? What is that RTB telling us? It's telling us that you'll be there for them, that they're always available if you have a problem, and that you can talk to a real person. What are those things? And then I would come up with another statement where we would expect a customer, if they wanted to hit on that RTB or if they were going to satisfy that RTB, they would say something like, When I called, I called in the middle of the night, and I was able to actually talk to a real person; they were able to help me. Those two statements deliver the same message. It just is in something that's more human and more palatable is an everyday person. And I think internally, if you are wanting to do more customer storytelling, I think that's an exercise that I would recommend people do. And I think that exercise within itself will also allow you to be more open to what a customer is really gonna tell you on set.

 

Lydia Chan (22:42)

No, I think it's the brand's job, right? It's the people who work for the brand's job to navigate through those real statements and figure out what exactly was the benefit that drove these more human things that have occurred and then take that to your marketing message or even the way you tell the story, right? Like the whole 24-.hour support. That's a visual for me, right? Someone, you know, waking up in the middle of the night, they're probably in night sweats or whatever. They're texting Jillian, and they get a response. And that's a nice kind of visual that also touches on the human element of it and the RTB.

I guess what character, if you were to just encompass this into a character, what character does the brand play in these stories? Or how should brands think about the character that they should play?

 

Jillian Johnson (23:48)

I don't think the brand should play any character, which I think is a hot take. Let me put it this way. Okay, if we were going to a party and the person of honor is our customer, I think the brand should be the venue that everyone's going to. I don't think they should be another guest. I don't think they should be the birthday cake that has candles on it, because that's still too much of a spotlight. I think it should be the venue, because I think if you really want to play a role and you want to bring customers into your storytelling, you are picking people that already are passionate about your product. They're already willing to be advocates. They have something to say; you have had a good experience, they have had a good experience with you already, and they want to tell someone about that. I think it's best that you don't get in their way. I think it's best that you give them a format in which they can do that. And I think that's where it's really less about the character that they play. However, when it comes to that person's partner within the company, like the me of it all, of who should be the person that's talking to the customer, what type of personality that person should have, or whatever character that person should be, I think that person should have a massive empathetic ear. Because to get something positive and not think you're gonna get anything negative at the same time is not realistic. When I show up to a customer event or we're doing customer production or anything like that, everybody is already prepared, and our customers already know that if something bad happens, they've had a bad experience, and they want to talk about it, they can also talk about it here. I will never go into a room and ask them to just shower me with compliments and not provide any constructive criticism. I think that's a lot of times where brands get uncomfortable; they may not want to sit in front of a customer who is going to talk about how much they love the company and you've invested this money to put a production together, and then they start talking about a complaint. Traditionally, what I've seen when that happens is people have a tendency to shut down and feel awkward about it, but I view that as they care so much that they want us to be better. You know, people don't really tell you corrections or the truth or negative things unless they want you to know and they care about you and they want it fixed.

And so I think that is also a big thing: you need to be willing to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. And if you hear something that's pretty negative on set, I would always recommend someone to go back to that person before you put their story out there; make sure you've solved it for them and said, Hey, I know we talked about this on set. This was really important to me that I could solve this for you. I've done all this work. Here's where we're at. Are you feeling better about it? Are we missing anything? Because you don't want to leave any type of lingering negativity, but you also want to show up and hear, you know, you have to show them that you listen. And you can't only listen when it's good because then that relationship is so one-sided that they're not gonna come back. They're not gonna continue to share. That relationship is going to be too transactional. And so I really would encourage people to not approach customer storytelling or customers in general as transactional. It needs to be relationship-based. It's a give and take. And I've been on the other end of those conversations when they're not great or they're negative. And a lot of times it's not even about, you know, a product or a service. A lot of times it's the customer who is having a personal issue and they are struggling to get to somewhere on time, or I've gone on set and a customer has talked about how they haven't had any sales for two weeks and they're really nervous about paying their rent.

Like, that's a real thing that I can't do anything about. But what you do in that moment is you say, Okay, guys, let's put the cameras down; let's take a 15-minute break. I normally will go over to that person and be like, okay, let's talk about it. Like, what can we do to potentially solve some of this? Like, do you want us to maybe put a sign outside? Do you want someone to stand outside and let people know that you'll be open at the end of this shoot? Like, what can we do to mitigate some of that concern right now? And I think that's huge.

 

Lydia Chan (28:14)

Yeah, I 100 % agree. I think it all ladders back to, well, I love the venue metaphor, by the way, because it all comes back to the place where it's like, I am here to help. Right. So at the venue at a party, you have the staff at the venue who is just ready to jump on anything that might occur or anything that you need. Right. It's the backdrop, and it's also the little L's, if you will, right, in the background just making sure that everything is working fine and that you're taking care of, right? And then the whole feedback aspect of it, I really like, you know, how you phrased it in, even in friendships, right? It's like we, it's hard to give negative feedback, but if you really care about someone, you're gonna give it because it sucks. Like, it hurts to give negative feedback. So I think for brands, yeah, so for brands, they have to listen, they have to listen, and, you know, just, just make those human connections.

 

Jillian Johnson (29:13)

I totally agree. I want to touch on one thing in the venue. I also think within that space of the venue, you show up to a party or you show up to like a wedding or whatever, the venue always looks beautiful. And you're like, wow, this place is so cool. And I think it also aligns to the brand in the sense of there was so much pre-work that happened before this customer arrived to set and arrived to this venue that they have no idea about. And I like it that way.

I think the planning, all of the conversations, all the contingency planning, and understanding what RTBs you want to hit on, and all that stuff, I think all of that happens outside of your customer, outside of your venue. That's all your pre-planning. But then you set everything up, you have the stage set, and then they show up, and it's up to them. And then you allow the customer to just be themselves and work within this environment that you've created because if you control the venue and you control the environment, you already have controlled your constraints. So they can be whoever they want to be, but you've already set the terms. So they can feel as free as they possibly are when you already know, like, we're not going to use all of this. So, you know, speak your mind, speak your truth, have fun, and enjoy yourself. The, like you said, the elves in the venue, like we already know what we're doing with this. We're already ready to go. Like, we're good.

 

Lydia Chan (30:48)

Yeah, for sure. So I want to pivot a bit. Since we're talking about the brand, and it's always about marketing metrics, right? We want to move beyond metrics, but that's hard because a lot of this takes a lot of investment. It takes a lot of time, money, and what have you. So what metrics do you emphasize? And how do you put value in that when it comes to talking to leadership or stakeholders or whoever is going to invest in this type of content as well as this type of attention?

 

Jillian Johnson (31:40)

I have a lot of different success metrics that are definitely not the most quantifiable. I think when you are working with real people, you can't always shoehorn them into an engagement rate, a click, a share, or anything like that. And I think you need to be a little bit more creative about how you, you know, really measure your success. I think keeping the traditional metrics as a part of your programming is always important, but the things that I have added into what is successful are really all around, like, how did the customer walk away that day? And the testimonials I get back, I have so many texts and DMs and things like that where people will walk away and be like, I had no idea.

I was that person. I never thought I'd be able to get in front of a camera. I even got a text from one of our customers today. Someone texted me that they were on the news today. And he was like, Could you believe I, when we first met, would have never done that?" I would have never been capable of it. But look at me, like I'm on the news. They can't get rid of me trying to sell my product. And to me, that's so valuable because we open the door to our customer to be more and do more than they ever thought was possible. And I think some of that messaging education is where you know you did a good job on set. If someone feels really confident to do it again. I also feel like at the end of the day, a lot of times you're building a customer story for a singular, like a single deliverable, one video that will go one place at one time as a campaign, but I have found a lot of value in repurposing some of those assets and repurposing those videos when it comes to buy-in from executives or other individuals. A lot of people don't have the opportunity to talk to a customer. They are not having people in their DMs or in their texts or in their emails talking to them. I know that I take that for granted often. I try not to. But I do know that sometimes I will like get into that phase where I kind of assume once again that everybody has this experience, and they don't. And things that are really impactful at this level of customer storytelling are sharing back any insight that happened on set or sharing those videos. If someone calls out a product and says it was amazing, I like to follow up with that product owner. I like to follow up with that developer and be like, My guys got a shout-out. My gosh, look at this." Or sharing some of the feedback, maybe that's constructive criticism with some of those product owners. Just because you're doing a customer story doesn't mean that's not an opportunity to harvest some voice of the customer moments. You're there; you have the opportunity; that's a great place. I also think crying. I know that's maybe such a strange metric.

But I love collecting people's tears. If I send someone a video or if someone watches a video and they cry, I feel like we did it. That is a really clear proof point that you connected with someone on an emotional level. I have not had someone cry because they didn't like it. If that happens, maybe I'll change the metric in the future, but.

It sounds strange, but if I show someone these videos or these customer stories, whether it's internal or external, and they show me some emotional response to me, I say, Doing, you know, we're on the money. I can tell that we're telling this story because it's emotional to be an entrepreneur. It's tough. It's fricking tough out there, and it's frustrating, and it's overwhelming, and it is so much within your own self. Like they are living, breathing, they are wearing so many hats, and for our small business owners and entrepreneurs to see themselves in that final deliverable, that is always my favorite thing. When they cry and they feel pride and they feel excited and they want to share it with their community and it really turns into a word-of-mouth situation, that's a huge value add. So I am collecting tears as if they were a share on social media. To me, I think that's probably more valuable.

 

Lydia Chan (36:17)

Yeah, that is, I think, just a really great explanation of going beyond the metrics, right? Because it's not just, like you said, it's not just this video deliverable. It's not just this campaign. It is this whole 360-like ecosystem of what the brand is doing with this customer as a partner, as an advocate, as like a friend, right? And that touches so many different departments, like you mentioned, right? Like your development department, your customer success or retention department, and your marketing department. So we can't just look at, hey, this is the budget for this campaign, and it had this many views, clicks, blah, blah, blah. It's all these other things that you've gained from going forward with this project.

 

Jillian Johnson (37:16)

Yeah, I really like to think about it as like an iceberg of impact. I think my favorite visual that I use way too much in every single strategic document I put together is a tip of the iceberg; all the stuff underneath it, and you see the video out on different marketing channels, and you see those metrics, but everything underneath the water is like what's gonna sink the ship. So you need people to believe in it. And I think there's so much more you can do with these assets and customer storytelling overall that it doesn't need to just be about the metrics because the metrics are only, you know, how do you track?

Community engagement and advocacy for their small network: Know there are a lot of magical things that happen that we just don't have metrics for; we don't have the means to track on a regular basis, and I think being open to what those things could be and being open to syndicating things outward and letting your customers run with their own story. That's another thing that I think a lot of times brands don't often do is share back a lot of the content with our customers that we partner with. It's a big thing. I know that was a big thing for us when we were talking about deliverables. I was like, we need to also provide some deliverables for the customers because they're showing up, they're taking time out of their day, and they are potentially losing money by spending time with us. We also need to provide mutual value for them, allowing them to have an asset that they can publish on their own social media or text in their own group chat or present to their own small business networking community that you're still in the room. Your brand is still in the room. People will say GoDaddy did this for me. People, if you give people things back, a lot of times you will be surprised. I go on to some of our small business websites all the time, and I will see some of the photography we shared back on their website, and we'll be credited. We'll be credited. You know, people really do like to share the love, and we get so. I have so many customers coming back to me and being like, I need to meet this person. I met them on the street. They had a great idea. You were the first person I thought of connecting them with. That value is unbelievable. Like, we have our customers going out and advocating for us because they had such a great experience with us.

 

Lydia Chan (39:44)

Yeah. Jillian, I feel like we touched on so many things. I guess to wrap things up, you've mentioned a lot of advice for brands, right? But I guess, is there anything additional that you'd like to mention or kind of sum up for any brands or individuals who are truly looking to create customer-centric campaigns that build connections?

 

Jillian Johnson (40:15)

Good question. I think the one takeaway that I would want to put out there is your customer has already purchased your product or is already engaging with you. So if you kind of wow them to be like, We, a company you've given your hard-earned dollars to, are interested in you, like, we want you. Like, I think that there's just more love, honestly. I think there's honestly more love that brands can put out back to their customers. And I think that they'll get it tenfold. I really think it's about being less transactional with your customers, approaching them less as paid talent and more as true advocates that have already invested in your brand and your business and want to talk about it. Like, give them the runway to do that. Sometimes customer stories don't need to be in a super highly produced situation. I think be creative of where you meet your customers, where they're at. We're doing a lot of experimentation now on being more collaborative with our customers within content and seeing what that looks like. And I think that's going to continue to be the future as influencers and content creators will continue to dominate media overall. Like people want to invest in new personalities and new people. So don't be afraid to find different types of people and make sure that your customers that you're showcasing are a true reflection of your audience.

 

Lydia Chan (41:45)

Amazing. Well, Jillian, thank you so much for your time, your expertise, and your insights. I really enjoyed our conversation. So thank you for coming on the show.

 

Jillian Johnson (41:56)

Of course, I'm glad to be here. Good talk for hours.