Category Archives: Positioning

Cloud computing, Leaders, Positioning

Seven ways to turn customers into advocates

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Let's assume the product or service you sell is of high quality and holds significant competitive value.  

You can add another important competitive barrier, and a differentiator, by turning your customers into advocates of your company.

Companies like Salesforce.com [my client] are supplying technology that enables companies to share information, solve problems and consult with customers in real-time.  By example, Salesforce is now showing us how the pursuit of advocacy brings you even closer to your customers — and augments traditional sales and marketing powerfully for this new age.

Essentially, when your customer is your advocate, he or she shares the good news with others.  Also important:  your customer advocate tells you first how well your product works and what will make it even better.  A customer advocate is as committed to your company as you are to the relationship — giving you, as Salesforce likes to say, a customer for life.

Rome-roma-italy-2624701-l Imbed these seven actions into your customer relations activities and you'll be on your way to recognizing your customers as advocates.

Show your customer you are listening.  When a customer contacts you, respond immediately.  Use the words your customer uses to describe a situation or to answer a question.  Talk about the business and customer challenges.  Ask about the team. 

Be useful to your customer in a variety of ways.  Read periodicals and blogs about his industry.  Send her articles and site links that will help her do her job.  Share stories about other customers that will spark ideas. 

Connect to your customer beyond the sale.  Send a one-line email or leave a short voicemail just to say hello.  Follow the customer's blog, Twitter feed or Facebook page.  Connect on LinkedIn.

Embrace your customer's culture.  Pay attention to the office environment when you visit.  Bring a small food gift that you know will be put to use in the kitchen.  Acknowledge a dress code not by matching it exactly but by a slight adjustment to your own style.  If the customer communicates only by email, use that; same if it's voicemail or text message.

Take up as little of your customer's time as possible.  When you have a meeting or conference call, stay on point and only address product features if they relate to a specific topic.  Stick to the agenda.  Keep meetings under 45 minutes.  Be on time.

Leave your customer wanting more of you and still blown away by your product or service.  Be available and free with information, but be careful about sharing too much extraneous detail about your process.  Share your successes and acknowledge that you couldn't have done it without him.  Connect your experience with her — and what you've learned from her — to the success of your company. 

Be where the customer is.  If your customer is holding an event, buy a ticket.  Buy his products, if appropriate, or share stories of people you know who use them.  Make a business connection for her.  Always demonstrate that the customer is front-and-center in your priorities — that you appreciate the relationship — and that the business you conduct is more than a transaction.

Management, Positioning

Five posts on the essentials of corporate communications

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However much you're using social media to talk with your customers — what I call the muscle of engagement — you still need the skeleton.  These writers do a great job of showing what that is.

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  • Writing:  Pay attention to how you write and it will help you organize your entire communications effort.  This approach is from Journalistics.
  • Culture:  Look for these qualities in your agency of record — and promote them inside your marketing and communications teams.  From BrandingStrategy Insider.
  • Crises:  Have this in place for those issues that catch you by surprise.  From MyVenturePad.  
  • Questions:  Always answer a question from the media, even if you don't have one.  From Journalistics.
  • Speaking:  Focus on the needs of your listeners and stakeholders and let that inspire you to speak from the heart.  From the Bishop of London.
Branding, Positioning, Social media, Weblogs

Six marketing blogs that help you run your business

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There is a great deal of content floating around on the Internet about marketing, especially when it comes to incorporating social media into the traditional marketing mix.  I find myself saving posts from these blogs on a regular basis.  In reading them, I find workable ideas for clients, whatever their size and scope.

MyVenturePad.  Written for the startup but appropriate for organizations at all stages.  The writers address all aspects of running a business.

Branding Strategy Insider.  Produced by The Blake Project, offers the best descriptions and guidelines for the branding process.  The writers also help to cut through the jargon.

Small Business Trends.  Good for anyone who wants to grasp marketing from the ground up — including corporate executives.  A useful tool for testing the performance of large marketing functions as well as building a marketing focus in a small or medium business.

MarketingTech Blog.  Writers well-grounded in social media, based in the US Midwest.  This blog provides a counter-balance to the echo chamber populated by the self-proclaimed social media gurus.

Radian6 blog.  How to make social media a rich channel for connecting with stakeholders.  The company offers clients a technology platform for engaging with stakeholders online and measuring the results.  The team also produces eBooks that are easy to digest.

HubSpot blog.  Inbound marketing focused.  That's the official term for the marketing processes focused on direct connection with a company's customers.  In its blog, HubSpot addresses the nitty-gritty aspects of managing these processes.

Books, Current Affairs, Executive, Management, Positioning, Social media, Startups, Technology

The seven business books I believe are right for right now

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These books, which I've read or am reading, are works whose content can inform business life. 

The Power of Pull:  How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion.  John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, Lang Davison.  Aptly describes the change that is afoot and how anyone — and any business — can sustain relevance and connection.

Team of Rivals:  The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  Doris Kearns Goodwin.  Shows how competitors can collaborate when their leader is clear about the objective and recognizes how their motives can help reach the goal.  [Side benefit:  I found the description of the actions of biased journalists soothing.  If this country survived a civil war and those reporters, it can survive anything.]

The Divine Comedy.  Dante Alighieri [The John Ciardi Translation].  Amazing that despite every other kind of growth, the human character really never changes.  Very useful.

I Hate People:  Kick Loose from the Overbearing and Underhanded Jerks at Work and Get What You Want Out of Your Job.  Jonathan Littman, Mark Hershon.  The authors do an outstanding job of categorizing every personality you can encounter in the workplace.  The psychology and the comedy of pathological behavior.

Delivering Happiness:  A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose.  Tony Hsieh.  Sometimes nice works. Here's how to do it and prosper without becoming a patsy.

Power:  Why Some People Have It — and Others Don't.  Jeffrey Pfeffer.  How to get comfortable with power and decide whether you want it.

Overlook Much, Correct a Little:  99 Sayings by John XXIII.  Hans-Peter Rothlin, editor.  The musings of an enlightened mind, these thoughts inspire action that benefits every stakeholder in an organization — most especially, oneself.

 

 

 

Positioning, Social media, Television

The future of marketing

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It's refreshing to see writing at the top of this list from The Future Buzz, capturing the writer's opinion about the 15 necessities for tomorrow's marketing career.  Usually, if someone can write, he or she can think.  "Can write" means more than stringing together words; it means making a point with a beginning, a middle and an end.  Whether or not you're writing a blog post or a brochure.  I'm glad to see writing make the top of one list, at least.

The folks at the Marcus Graham Project know this.  Their presentation during a week of AAAA gatherings in San Francisco was refreshing because it addressed an old problem in new way.  They are shining a big, bright light on television and how we watch it, and they're integrating the traditional message — caution of over-watching — with delivery that young people can understand.  Without sacrificing the quality of the writing.  The project is asking questions many entrenched advertising gurus should be asking — and the project's leaders are offering solutions that make sense and entertain while they engage a new demographic in industry leadership.

I hope these guys keep writing.