Follow the principles of thought leadership and the profits will follow, too.

By Tom Marks

With modern-day marketing, we’ve been missing more than the boat. We’ve been missing authenticity, the truth and mutual respect. Being polite is more often out of sight. Smiling at customers has become all but toothless. Appreciation, which was once a life tenet, is more often a general accounting term.

It’s fixable, though. It just requires the inclusion of an important aspect of business that is frequently misunderstood and often poorly imitated – I’m talking about thought leadership.

I have not only written about the importance of thought leadership, but I have also studied it and researched its values. A lot. It’s a key focus in my recently released book, “The Second-Best Business Book Ever Written: The Pursuit of Thought Leadership in Sales, Marketing, and Life,” and is part of the “21st Century Disciplines of Market Leaders.” I recognize the origins of thought leadership that began 2,500 years ago with Greek philosophers, explore the significance of storytelling in messaging and the neuroscience behind it, and share how I have seen these ideas change the game in marketing – particularly in the car wash sector.

It makes some sense; after all, cleansing a car isn’t altogether different from cleansing the mind. It makes us all feel damn good. And feeling good is damn important.

I’ve had the privilege of working with car wash owners, private equity firms that owned car washes, and in one of my last hurrahs, Mister Car Wash, which is ranked as the No. 1 conveyor car wash in the United States in the most recent CP Top 100 list with an estimated 491 locations. 

Car wash people are my type of people. They dig-in. They work hard. They’re family. They don’t point fingers or pass the buck. They’re honest and true. I know this for a fact because I’ve completed more than a healthy amount of definitive and comprehensive Voice-of-Customer (VOC) research in the car wash industry. 

Part of my work for Mister Car Wash, which was a two-year effort, included VOC of their internal people, most of whom were in the field; VOC conducted among their customers (telephone and intercept interviews); and other VOC work to develop internal branding for employee recruitment and retention. 

What I discovered in my VOC work through questioning, probing, tabulation and analysis were five reoccurring themes that were so persistent, so persuasive and so irrefutable that the inner workings of each theme cannot, under any circumstances, be ignored. For consumers, the most important themes by rank are hospitality, clean cars, convenience, superior facilities, and professionalism. 

But here’s what will flip your lid. When the VOC was conducted among car wash managers, the thematic rankings were flipped, but that’s about it: clean cars, hospitality, professionalism, superior facilities, and convenience. This is a relatively unheard-of occurrence in VOC research.  To conduct one-on-one interviews with completely different people, consumers versus employees, and the themes don’t vary at all, only the rankings, you have irrefutable conclusions that guide any car wash owner to what matters most to most everyone. 

This is a rare case where messaging segmentation doesn’t require segmentation at all. It’s what one group wants to receive and what the other groups want to achieve. 

It's magic. And much of that magic is generally one of the most often overlooked components of any sales and marketing message – storytelling. Statistics after statistics prove it. Consumers remember stories far more than they remember any other part of a message. So, car wash owners need to develop their storytelling expertise. Don’t just say you provide top-notch customer service and hospitality, share stories that made a difference in your customers’ lives. 

Avoid the tired treatise that you clean cars better than anyone, explain how and why. And don’t just bark about your professional employees; share the rigorous training programs they endure, the highlights of their leadership accomplishments, and most of all, how they advanced their careers to become industry thought leaders. Make everything human, for consumers and employees, no matter how significant your investment is in technology and equipment. 

And there’s that same amount of magic in being a thought leader, which is available and embraceable by any car wash owner regardless of whether they have one, a few, or many locations. Being a thought leader in the car wash industry is of critical importance; it translates to market leadership, sustainability of your marketing and sales growth, and the celebration of consumers driving by other car washes to go to yours. That’s because you'll always be the go-to destination when you’re a thought leader. 

To be a thought leader, you need to be accomplished in three distinct inter-disciplines. They are Wisdom and Insights, Trust and Honesty, and Ethics and Causes. And when you hit the mark on these, you’ll hit the mark on your sales and marketing aspirations. 

Consumers are in desperate search of your wisdom: How you clean cars better, how you take care of their needs and show noteworthy acts of professionalism. And it’s these same people who seek your trust: That you’ll take care of their second largest asset, that your facility is as clean as the cars you shine, and that your attitude is as glistening and lasting as the hot wax mixtures you apply in your tunnel.

But they also want owners to own local causes. And that’s your ethical side. In my research, it was clear that every action cannot be a money grab. That you need to give to get, and that you need to do it consistently, not sporadically. 

You can differentiate yourself from others by being the thought leader in your market, by knowing what makes your customers tick, and by satisfying their thematic needs. It’s not that difficult; it’s just that more often than not, we forget the advertising industry’s most basic adage: Those who prove too much prove nothing at all. Stick to the five themes and the only thing sticky will be an increase in your year-over-year revenue.

About the Author
Tom Marks spent 48 years in the marketing profession and nearly two decades on the professional speaking circuit. For years, he wrote the Sunday marketing column for Gannett Newspapers under the title E-Quipped. He also owned his own sales, marketing, ethics, and thought leadership company, TMA+Peritus, before retiring. 

What’s VOC?
If you’re not familiar with what VOC is, how it works, or why it's the most relevant, useful, and actionable research you can conduct, you’ll find a detailed “how-to” in my book. My publisher, Inc Magazine, says in addition to being the guidebook on how to become a thought leader, it’s the first and only step-by-step VOC guide ever published, at least for developing critical insights, which is an integral part of the branding process. 

VOC Tips: For starters, you’ll need to find a VOC professional to conduct the interviews. Next, you can work with that person to develop an Interview Guide that walks your respondents through a series of questions and probes that reveal consumer insights about your operations. After that, you’ll need to tabulate and group answers together to find the reoccurring themes, and finally, your leadership team will need to develop the messaging and storytelling that provides calls-to-action that results in increased revenue and incremental sales.