Random Acts of Kindness in Marketing and Business

If you didn’t know already, it’s Random Acts of Kindness Week. Don’t worry if you didn’t know – it’s also the week of Pancake day, so it’s fairly easy to get distracted!

But, like pancakes, kindness is very important in life. A lot of us express kindness in many different forms and different areas of our lives. You might think a week of kindness is silly when we should be kind all the time. That is true, but Random Acts of Kindness Week is a week dedicated to kindness and taking that extra, conscious step to brighten somebody’s day. Think of it like you’ve made your friend a pancake, but you add a bit of extra sugar to your friends’ pancake, just to make it all that bit sweeter.

Obviously, we don’t have any right to tell you how to be kind, but we wanted to discuss the importance of kindness in marketing and customer experience.

The Happy Science Behind Kindness

Do you feel really good when you’ve done a good deed, whatever it is, even if it’s just holding the door open for someone? Well, that’s all part of the chemical rewards your body gives following some genuine kindness.

Studies have shown that if you perform just one random act of kindness a day, it’ll not only reduce your stress, anxiety, and depression but your body is flooded with the same hormones that make you and the person you’ve helped feel calmer, healthier, and happier.

To start with, serotonin which heals wounds, helps you relax and makes you feel good. Then you get a hit of endorphins which reduce pain, and oxytocin which reduces blood pressure and makes you feel more loving and loved.

So the lesson here is be as kind as you can! You’ll both be more energised and confident, you’ll feel fewer aches and pains, and you could even live longer.

Be Kind and Business Will Be Kind to You

We believe acts of kindness should come from the heart and be genuine acts, not PR stunts to make your brand look better. We’ve all rolled our eyes at that guy on LinkedIn who shares a photo of himself buying a homeless person a coffee.

People are pretty smart, and it’s quite obvious when acts of kindness aren’t genuine and have an agenda.  However, the result of a genuine kind act in business shouldn’t be ignored.

You probably know this, but being kind really reflects on who you are and what your brand represents in the eyes of a customer. If you’re self-employed or have a small team and you say and do kind things, people will associate your brand with being a warming and kind brand! It’s harder for corporate brands to achieve this because they are viewed with far more cynical eyes.

But take a look at the guys at BrewDog as a good example of kindness. They have brought together an incredible community of beer lovers, all through their passion and their kind approach to the world, and they are constantly tackling social issues. They even gave away free beer for a week! If that doesn’t spell kindness, I don’t know what does.

But it doesn’t stop there. Kindness helps your business in many ways, such as:

Helps to Retain Customers

Did you know retaining customers is far more valuable than acquiring new customers? This is a pivotal point in marketing. You should aim to retain your customers once you’ve acquired them, so be loyal to them and they’ll be loyal to you. The general rule of thumb is that typically increasing customer retention by 5% helps to increase profits from 25-95%. The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.It can be as simple as sending them a gift to thank them for what they’ve done for you. This is something we like to do here at Spaghetti Agency. We send out a little gift, sometimes compromising of some chocolate, a pen and a cool mug to say thanks to those who go out of their way for us, or sometimes just because we feel that person deserves it. We make sure we send birthday gifts and cards because we enjoy making people feel special.

Improves Employee Morale and Work Ethic

Kindness in the workplace fosters an attitude of gratitude. You do that extra for someone, and it’s very likely they’ll reciprocate and do that extra for you. It’s a proven science that kindness enhances the engagement of employees and fuels their creativity, so they will bring more ideas to the table; some that could really help your business!So perhaps give your employees an extra bit of love. Because let’s face it, who doesn’t want to work for an awesome company that treats them well! Bringing me to my next point…

Assists in Recruitment

Employees don’t take shit no more. It’s not considered a luxury to have a ‘kind’ working environment, these days it’s deemed essential to have that and rightfully so. That being said, those companies who choose to go the extra length for their employees, showing that their employees come first, are found to have a greater attraction for prospective employees and tend to hire a superior calibre of people. Studies also show that it leads to lower recruiting, hiring, training costs, and higher productivity.

And lastly, a big one we believe in.

Kindness Creates A Sense of Community

You may know our Facebook Group, Spaghetti Besties, a group compromising 2.5k people in business. Like a ripple, it has spread to become a fantastic group of people who share thoughts, ideas, advice, freebies, and at the core, a hub of kindness. That wasn’t created by chance; it was created because we wanted to connect with people who’d been a part of our journey, those that we’ve met along the way and people we wanted to stay in touch with to bring them all together. We want our Besties to enjoy happiness and success.

In 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer found that 80% of consumers have a preference for businesses that have a role in dealing with contemporary societal issues. Using kindness in your business allows you to reach this 80%, because you are indeed thinking beyond yourself. This is certainly a timely fact amidst the pandemic. We’ve seen hundreds of people in our networking community pulling out all the stops to help each other, whether it be offering their services or just an ear to listen to, all for free. Our group is becoming more popular than ever because the kindness that is happening, is spreading.

We could go on forever!

There are a ton of reasons why being kind in the business world will bring you good karma.

Here’s a little list if you’d like to read more into it.

• S Chamber of Commerce Foundation – the business case for kindness
• CoreValues – how kindness increases employee motivation and engagement
• Forbes – how being kind is a recipe for success in business
• Medium – in business it pays to be kind

But to sum it up, it pays to be kind.

Use this week as an excuse to do that little extra kind act for someone.

If you want some inspiration or cool ideas on some kind acts you could do, pop along to our incredible group – Spaghetti Besties – where there are all sorts of great kindness acts happening every day!

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