5 Minutes... with Gary Vaynerchuk

With all the focus on social media—tweet this, post that, more video—we can sometimes lose sight of why we are doing all this in the first place. To take a step back and look at what all of these tools mean in the big marketing picture, executive editor Daria Meoli spoke with Wine Library entrepreneur, digital consultant, and social media personality Gary Vaynerchuk about his new book, The Thank You Economy, which addresses this issue and takes the position that we have entered an entirely new business era. And in that era, oneway exchanges between business and client are history.

Daria Meoli: What does The Thank You Economy mean?

Gary Vaynerchuk: I think we’re living the humanization of business. I think we’re in the beginning stages of people having relationships with businesses in ways that have never been done before. I think that this whole social media revolution is  being grossly underestimated. The Internet as a whole, in my opinion, is being underestimated, and I think that marketing has changed forever.

This isn’t about how to do social media right. This is about fundamentally changing the game. Everybody’s doing a weekly contest, or “click the white button and watch what happens.” To me, the way to win is on the edges. Engage with every single person—no Tweet left behind. It’s dirty, in the trenches, hard work. And then on the flip side, do big things. Instead of doing, a million dollar social media campaign, run a million dollar commercial that pushes the envelope. Try to stay out of the middle. Try to come at your marketing with some energy, be creative, and really push it.

DM: Can you provide an example of practical application?

GV: Three months ago at WineLibrary.com, we started calling everybody who unsubscribes from our emails. Very early data shows that we’re converting back 40 percent of the people who unsubscribed. We started tracking them to see how they’re buying, and its early but, of the 40 percent that stayed, their buy is up. Those calls changed the concept of our relationship because we actually cared about them. We took somebody who wanted to leave forever and made them a better customer. I’m paying somebody a lot of money for those engagements, but I think it pays off.

DM: If you could give business owners a take-away from the book, what would it be?

GV: Now we’re in the beginning of a land grab to win consumer lifetime value and once it’s won, it’s hard to take it away. And I know that’s not a term that is at everybody’s top of mind, but I think it’s going to be. When you’re all shouting, whoever’s got the loudest voice, which is spending the most money or has the most creative creatives, is going to win. But when you’re going for the heartstrings, it’s a very different thing. We’re going through a very emotional time in the marketing world. If you tweeted out that you got into a car accident and Starbucks replied to you and said, “You’re only a tenth of a mile away from our location. We’re going to bring you a coffee to make your wait to get towed a little bit better.” That engagement between you and that brand is very different than you watching a clever Starbucks Super Bowl commercial. 

And I believe that’s scalable, but it takes a complete recalibration of thought, of dollars, and of just general cultural DNA.