How to Shine at Customer Service

Marketing is essential to the success of any business. Yes, there are some businesses that do well with little or no advertising. But there is more to marketing than advertising. Much more.

 The American House Dictionary defines marketing as “the commercial functions involved in transferring goods from producer to consumer” That covers a lot of ground. It starts with the production of the product, and ends with the purchase of the product. Or does it?

If you don’t like that definition, consider the four “P’s” of marketing: product, place, price and promotion. You may have heard those in business school, and they are, no doubt, important. You must have a good product. You must place it where your target market will see it. You must price it properly. And, of course, you must promote it. 

These two concepts provide a pretty good picture of marketing. But there’s something missing. Something important. And that “something” is customer service. 

“Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.” - Tony Alessandra

 Every successful business owner knows that providing good customer service is important. But have you taken the time to think about why this is true? There are many reasons:

•  Happy customers tend to be repeat customers. If they had a good experience once, they will remember it the next time they need something that you can provide.
• Happy customers can refer their friends and family to you. Your best advertising efforts just can’t beat a personal testimonial from a satisfied customer.
• Happy customers might give your products or services as gifts. This puts them in the hands of a new customer, and if you make a good impression, he could become a repeat customer.
• Happy customers can spread the word far and wide. In the Internet age, anyone can broadcast his opinions through blogs, websites and email. Those who have a favorable opinion of your company may take it upon themselves to provide free advertising for you.
• Unhappy customers won’t come back, won’t refer you to friends and family, and won’t give your products or services as gifts. But they may very well spread the word far and wide. In fact, they’re more likely to broadcast their unhappiness than happy customers are to share their opinions.

 Customer service can easily cause your business to sink or swim. So why isn’t it even mentioned in many definitions of marketing?

 Maybe it’s because it’s such a loaded subject. Customer service is one of those things that permeates every aspect of a business. From the design of the product, to the way it’s promoted, to the method of delivery to the customer, and beyond. In fact, many of the most important aspects of customer service happen after the sale is made. These include responses to questions about the product, handling of complaints, and follow-up efforts.

 Or maybe it’s because customer service isn’t an exact science. There are certain things about it that are universal, but what works for one business won’t necessarily work for another. Small, localized service-based businesses, for instance, might be able to follow up with each customer by phone and ask personalized questions about their experience after each purchase. For larger, product-based businesses, such an approach might be impractical.

 Whatever the reason may be, it’s imperative to keep customer service at the forefront of your marketing efforts. It’s much easier and more cost-effective to keep an existing customer than it is to gain a new one.

 Going the Extra Mile

 “Here is a simple but powerful rule – always give people more than what they expect to get.” -Nelson Boswell

 Customer service is, obviously, about treating your customers well. It’s about making sure they had the best possible buying experience, and that they are satisfied with what they bought. Your competitors know this, and if they’re doing well, they put it into practice.

 If everything else is equal, customers will give their business to the company with the best customer service. So how do you compete with another company that values its customers? You go above and beyond the call of duty.

Even if you have little or no competition in your niche, or your competition has a lousy reputation, it pays to give your customers more than they expect. If you do, they will be more likely to spread the word about their experiences and less likely to stray. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

•  Offer spectacular support. Provide multiple options for contacting your customer service department, such as 24-hour phone support, online chat and email.
• Offer incentives to loyal customers. For example, start a program that gives them gift certificates or discounts after they’ve purchased a certain dollar amount in products.
• Give free gifts with purchases. They don’t have to be expensive to make an impression.
• Make a money-back guarantee. New customers are more likely to try your product if they feel that they have nothing to lose.
• Have a customer appreciation day. Invite customers and prospective customers to your office or storefront, and provide refreshments, activities and prizes. If you do business online only, you could do prize drawings or offer free samples.

 It’s great to try to see things from your customers’ point of view, to think about what you would want, need, and expect if you were one of them. If you can provide that, your customer will be satisfied. But if you can provide more than that, he will be delighted.

 Any business that completely ignores customer service will go under quickly. Those that do enough for their customers to get by will do just that – get by. But if you can consistently exceed your customers’ expectations, you will go far. Doing so will require extra work, and it might require some added expense. But your efforts will be rewarded handsomely.

SOURCE: AreaOfEntrepreneurs

Improving customer engagement strategies with CRM tools

Staying aligned with the needs and expectations of today's customer is a challenging task for organizations of all sizes. There are many more moving parts to customer engagement than in the past, but less time to string together enough meaningful interactions to create full-blown relationships. That's why organizations are turning to customer relationship management (CRM) tools to implement repeatable, consistent strategies for customer engagement.

CRM focuses on helping organizations systematically manage the processes involved in acquiring customers and maintaining good relationships -- or, in basic terms, how they go about finding, catching and retaining good customers for as long as possible. While it's still critically important for CRM to optimize internal operations and systems of record for customer information, organizations also want them to be systems of engagement that proactively help build and sustain ongoing relationships with consumers.

Who needs CRM tools?

Creating and sustaining good customer relationships today requires organizations to have a philosophical model geared toward putting the customer first: Be FAIR -- flexible, analytical, interactive and responsive. Customer behavior, needs and expectations are changing as fast as new technology is being introduced. And as these changes accelerate, companies with FAIR customer engagement models will already be set up to be aligned with customers for an extended period of time. This means modern CRM tools and strategies will play an increasingly important role in the success of most, if not all, businesses today. As companies use content to target customers with shrinking attention spans, there are fewer opportunities to turn clicks into customers and brand advocates. This is why CRM has become a necessary technology and strategy that companies can't afford to ignore.

The foundation of CRM

Today, there are three main foundational areas of traditional CRM: marketing automation, sales automation and customer service.

Marketing automation involves the finding part of CRM and centers on identifying potential customers, nurturing them and using software to prioritize those efforts. To that end, marketing automation involves methods such as lead generation, lead scoring; lead nurturing, which tracks leads and develops them into sales-qualified leads; and lead conversion, which converts those leads into contacts, accounts or sales opportunities. Targeting content to the right audience based on analyzing social data is important for companies' marketing efforts. Employing content (email, SMS, video, blogs, display ads, etc.) to attract the attention of prospects searching for solutions to their challenges is just the first step. Turning that first interaction into a convertible lead requires processes and systems that use data to determine what leads to pursue and which to avoid, how to nurture different lead types and when a lead is ready for the sales team.

While list building, creating landing pages and blasting out email marketing campaigns comprise the basics of marketing automation, there are more sophisticated technologies and uses. Adobe's Marketing Cloud enables organizations to send a contextual email that can be updated as a recipient opens it. For example, an email sent on Monday to a person living in Atlanta would include an offer to make a purchase at a local store. But if the recipient doesn't open the email until Wednesday while in San Francisco on a business trip, the message is updated to include an offer at a store located closest to his or her location. The email could include a Save to Wallet option that would digitize the offer and put it on his or her phone via Google Wallet or Apple Passbook, increasing the likelihood of the offer being redeemed. Just as important, marketing automation products from companies such as HubSpot, Marketo and InfusionSoft are integrating with services such as GoToWebinar and video marketing platform Vidyard to streamline the lead generation and qualification process, making it easier to exploit lead activity and data from other important systems-driving acquisition activities.

Sales automation. The sales process must be as efficient and effective as possible. Sales and marketing must work together to figure out how to use marketing's information about what activities and content was used in order to provide valuable context to the sales cycle. Using a system to track the stages involved, activities performed, which resources to use and the likelihood of closing all help to manage the process. This also helps sales professionals and sales management get a better handle on what's in the pipeline, when to expect deals to close and what activities win more deals. Tools from vendors such as Lattice Engines, SalesPredict and Infer help companies understand which deals are ready to win and what it will likely take to close them.

More than ever, CRM is a part of the overall customer journey ecosystem.

Sales today is also about aligning the sales process to the buying process of savvy customers who are doing their own research and determining which vendors they want to engage further. Understanding where they are in their customer journey and having systems and processes in place to send them the right content at the right time help the sales team anticipate the kinds of information buyers want to make their decision. From a more foundational perspective, modern sales automation systems still must handle the basics such as managing contact information, tracking tasks and activities and facilitating general account and territory management. These systems should also make it easy to manage pipelines at the individual level while providing the big picture at the management level for forecasting purposes.

Many sales force automation applications, such as those from Salesforce.com, SugarCRM and others, enable companies to transfer leads from marketing activities into the proper sales processes at the optimum time in the sales cycle. Additionally, these systems are also integrating with sophisticated pricing and quote management systems from companies such as Callidus Cloud, PROs and Aptus, providing even more sales intelligence and efficiency during the process.

Customer service. In many cases, customer service is the most important piece of the CRM puzzle. Studies have shown that acquiring a customer is several times more expensive than retaining a current customer. Additionally, the benefits of turning one-off customers into loyal ones and possibly brand advocates can extend well beyond the value of individual transactions. Providing fast, accurate responses to customer questions and the ability to proactively guide them to more efficient ways to use products or services are critically important to extending the customer lifecycle.

Implementing the right service processes to handle customer issues, assigning them to the right person and having the right escalation procedures in place are important pieces of the service puzzle. Providing libraries of content to guide customers on support issues (or knowledge bases), live chat or mobile apps may be what customers need to get the level of service they expect. Or possibly an active customer support community where customers help one another is needed to scale your service reach. There are many approaches and options for creating great customer service experiences, and it's important to put the right ones in place to reap the benefits.

To underscore the importance of weaving customer support processes into highly used engagement channels, Zendesk, which provides a cloud-based support platform, recently partnered with Facebook to allow customers to receive order information and interact using Facebook Messenger. Conversely, companies can engage with customers and manage support requests directly from Facebook Messenger.

The evolving CRM tools market

The role of technology in delivering CRM has also evolved with the times. Although there are several on-premises CRM tools available, most of the best technologies today are cloud-based, making it easier and less expensive to get started.

If you have minimal integration and customization needs, cloud-based products can be managed from within the business unit. But if you require a product that can be integrated with mission-critical back office systems such as ERP, or your company requires deep customization to your system, you'll probably want your IT staff to take the lead in administering the system. And if you don't have the internal IT expertise or resources available, finding certified service partners to help implement and maintain a CRM tool should be an important part of the selection process.

Companies such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle provide the full suite of CRM and related products that cover marketing, sales and service. However, this kind of encompassing functionality isn't only for enterprise-level organizations; companies such as Zoho provide a full suite of CRM-focused apps for small and medium-sized businesses. But, as noted, many technologies address the specific needs of companies that are in specialized markets.

More than ever, CRM is a part of the overall customer journey ecosystem, where systems of record, systems of engagement and systems of intelligence need to work together in near real-time to help companies meet customers' growing expectations. CRM, ERP, content management, E-commerce, data analytics and other systems provide each other with certain pieces to the customer engagement puzzle, making it critically important to put the right systems and frameworks in place to stay aligned with customers as they evolve.

Finally, mobility is a major consideration when determining which technology is needed to implement your CRM tool. How much needs to be done via mobile devices and which mobile device types will be used? This could be incredibly important to the success of your CRM implementation, particularly from a user-adoption perspective, and especially with the sales team. Making it easier for sales reps to enter valuable information about their interactions with customers and prospects can be addressed with mobile apps that automatically associate emails and phone calls to contact records. This creates a solid win-win, as sales reps get to focus on relationship building -- and not data entry -- and management gets the data it needs to make better decisions from a forecasting and resource allocation perspective.

People, process and technology

CRM has always focused on having the right people involved, using the right processes, implemented with the right technologies to manage relationships with customers. While it's imperative you select the right tools to help your company implement CRM successfully, the strategy you develop to engage customers will play a primary role in deciding which technology to invest in. A follow-up article will address these strategies and delve into various use cases to help you determine your specific CRM tool needs.

SOURCE: SearchCRM

8 Common Reasons Why Over 50% of Small Businesses Fail Within the First 3 Years

Over 50% of new small businesses fail within the first three years. Hearing this statistic can scare even the most well prepared entrepreneurs. Here is a list of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make that leads to business failure.

1. Bad Location – Location is crucial to the success of your business. You should always perform thorough research on the surrounding demographics of your potential location.

A good location may help struggling businesses survive when times are tough. A bad location could ultimately mean the end to even the most well managed business.

2. Operating Capital (Cash flow) – When starting your business you need a clear plan as to how much capital it’s going to take. One of the most common mistakes made by business owners is not having enough money to start and sustain their business. It’s important to figure out how much money you’ll need. You must take all cost into consideration. Even those unforeseen expenses like equipment maintenance. It is also important not to have unrealistic income expectations. Be conservative, usually you never make the amount of money you expect when first starting out.

3. No Website – 7 out of 10 people use the internet in America alone. All businesses should have an online presence. Websites give potential customers the ability to find information about your products and services. You can also generate additional revenue by selling your products or services online. You must be visible in today’s online marketplace in order for your business to reach its pinnacle.

4. Expanding Too Fast – This is one of the major causes of business failure. Business owners get success mixed up with how fast they can expand. Growth that is steady and slow is most important. Create a solid customer base and a good cash flow system. One indication that you may need to start thinking about expanding is when you’re having trouble keeping up with customer and production demands in a timely fashion.

5. Lack Of Research – Before starting your new business you should always do tons of research. Researching things like competition, demand for the product or service you will provide, availability and initial start up cost is very important. Great Ideas plus tons of research are two key components to small business success. Take time to understand the market and weather there is room for you to succeed.

6. Bad Marketing – If your customers don’t know you exist your business will fail. You must promote and advertise your business in the most affective way possible…within your budget that is. Create a marketing plan with an intact budget. Always start with direct marketing first, for example direct mail, email and local ads. These are quick and easy ways to incorporate tools to measure your marketing effort. Companies like itextmedia.net offer low cost text marketing for small businesses.

7. Terrible Management – Having a good business idea is one thing, managing that business is another. More times than not new business owners lack business management experience. They fail to recognize their weaknesses and how important it is to hire the right people to support them. They also have difficulty managing the meat and potatoes of the business; purchasing, marketing, and budgeting just to name a few. A good manager must have the ability to positively motivate workers make good decisions and lead the company in the right direction. He/She must also be a fast learner and pay close attention to the market.

8. Lack of Excitement (just trying to make a buck) – In order to maintain a level of success in your business venture it’s important to love what you do. Not having a strong desire to succeed or passion for what you are doing will lead to failure. Not only should you be excited about starting your own business, but more importantly you should be excited about the products or services you’re providing to your customers. There’s an old saying. If you love what you do, you won’t work a day in your life.

SOURCE: businesslightsideas

How Companies Break Into Emerging Markets

Startup Best Practices 15 - Start With The Why

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” This line from Simon Sinek’s TED talk captures the power of a values based marketing campaign. Simon contrasts feature-based marketing - start with what the company is selling continue to how they do it and finishes with why - to value based campaigns which reverse the story-telling order. Values campaigns start with the why.

Starting with why is a simple but powerful framework for startups to develop a unique marketing message, particularly in a competitive marketplace. Starting with why focuses on values which are difficult to emulate, not features which can be copied. Without question product differentiation matters, but it may not suffice in a world where “Customers, generally speaking, see significantly less difference between us and the competition than we do ourselves. It’s not that they think most suppliers are particularly bad on brand, product, or service. It’s just that [customers] don’t think [suppliers are] particularly different.” Source:CEB

Apple embodies starting with why. No surprise, then, that Apple owns the most powerful brand in technology. There’s no better example than the 1997 Think Different campaign whose narrative embraces a set of values and in so doing, inspires us:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Which other computer company embraces rebels? And how many millions identify with that espirit? And once Apple has done it, it’s impossible for any competitor to copy the strategy without being regarded as a pretender.

Similarly, inside each Moleskine notebook, a small, embossed card tells the buyer that a nearly identical journal captured the creative genius of Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway. No other notebook can claim that. That card has mooted the traditional competitive axes of cost, size, and paper quality.

There are many other eminent consumer brands who start with why, like Virgin and Nike. While there are fewer in enterprise software, some do exist. Salesforce’s iconoclastic “No Software” moniker tops the list. As Marc Benioff describes in this blog post, he started with why:

A brand is a company’s most important asset. A company can’t “own” its facts. If the company’s facts (speed, price, quality) are superior to the competition, any good competitor will duplicate them, or worse, improve upon them, as soon as possible. What a company can own, however, is a personality. We own NO SOFTWARE—not because we are the only one doing it but because we were the first to think it was important to customers. By consistently delivering an attitude that is future focused and pioneering, we have created a personality.

Starting with why is the Challenger Sale, the most effective sales technique, in a different form. The challenger sale provokes prospective customers to think differently about what they are buying, to focus on something other than features, namely values. And that marketing and positioning, when well executed, uniquely positions a company to win by creating an unreplicable advantage.

This marketing technique applies to competition, hiring, fund raising, and every important sales process for a startup. It’s an invaluable skill to master.

SOURCE: Tomasz Tunguz

Great Customer Experience Involves Repaving the Bumps in the Road

Great customer experience is like really good highway design. How do you know if you’re driving on a well-designed highway? If you think about it, there are three hallmarks of good highway design. It’s intuitive (marketing), easy to use (operations) and well-maintained (customer service).

Marketing Brings Intuition into Customer Experience

Well-designed highways don’t leave drivers wondering what to do next. They offer clear signage letting drivers know when there are curves ahead, guidance about on-ramps and exits, and recommendations, like the “suggested” speed. Similarly, a well-designed customer experience uses marketing to connect with customers, set and manage their expectations. Communication is clear, concise and consistent.

Operations Makes Customer Experience Easy to Use

A well-designed highway is built on stable infrastructure. The roadway is reliable. The pavement is smooth. Bridges provide logical connections between different interstates. In the same way, a well-designed customer experience is built on a solid foundation—people, processes and technology—that instills trust in customers and is the bedrock of long-lasting customer relationships.

Bumps in the Road Are Unavoidable, Remember to Repair and Repave

The best highways are well-maintained, not because they never have a pothole or cracked pavement, but because the municipality invests in repairs to keep them in good condition. The same is true of great customer experience. It doesn’t mean there are no issues. It means the business recognizes and recovers from those issues in a way that shows the customer they value their relationship.

For example, Eddie Merlot’s, used email marketing to reach people who had dined with them before, promote holiday dining and drive reservations. They partnered with Open Table to take lunch and dinner reservations. Lunch was only available on certain dates, but that wasn’t reflected on Open Table. The customer experience was easy to use, but marketing and operations were out of sync.

This error forced the restaurant to cancel reservations—clearly a bump in the customer experience roadway. But, Eddie Merlot’s tried repaired the customer relationship by offering to have the local restaurant manager follow up personally. They even paved over the bump in some cases by honoring some reservations and offering private dining at a time when the restaurant was supposed to be closed.

The key to a great customer experience, like a well-designed and well-maintained highway, is a solid infrastructure. It also requires intuitive marketing that is easy to use and seamlessly connected to other parts of the business. And, most importantly, when there are bumps in the road, which there will be, quickly deploy resources, like empowered front line employees, to make the necessarily repairs.

SOURCE: Gartner

Why Social Engagement May Be More Important Than Marketing

Carlos Dominguez, president and COO
of Sprinklr, notes that while marketing is
about getting people to want to talk to a company, customer service is about
interacting with someone who is already
invested in the brand. His goal: get companies to blend those tasks in “ways that
are radically different.”

Marketing today is not about what a company says. It's about what
customers say about the company.

To Carlos Dominguez, that kind of thinking is a truism. “Taking
someone who’s got a problem — who’s already a customer in a
bad situation — if you can satisfy them and convert them to an
advocate, that’s kind of the way of the new world,” he says.
“But very few companies are thinking through that lens.”

As president and COO of Sprinklr, a U.S.-based enterprise social
media management company whose clients include 40% of the
Fortune 50 and companies like Microsoft, Nike, Gap, and P&G,
Dominguez leads the company’s marketing, sales, services, and
partnerships teams. Before joining Sprinklr, Dominguez spent
22 years at Cisco Systems, serving the last seven as a “technology
evangelist” and representative for the chairman and CEO while
delivering keynote addresses worldwide.

In a conversation with Gerald C. (Jerry) Kane, an associate professor
of information systems at the Carroll School of Management at
Boston College and guest editor forMIT Sloan Management Review’s
Digital Leadership Initiative, Dominguez talks about what the
brightest digitally-centric companies are doing today.

Give us a quick overview of what Sprinklr does and where you see the
market potential.

As social has evolved, businesses are finding that they need to leverage
it in everything they do, whether it’s servicing their clients or talking
to them or listening to what they care about.

From the very beginning, the whole premise of Sprinklr was to provide
an enterprise platform for large companies to be able to do everything
that needed to be done in that new world with all of those different
channels. We want to give brands some power to be able to engage
with customers in the channels that they are choosing to use. When
I say power, it’s about giving them information. It’s aggregating stuff
for them, making them more intelligent.

Here’s an example: Companies are collecting lots of information on
people, but when I’m in a store that information is not usually
presented to the people that are dealing with me. I’ll give them an ‘A’
for collecting the data, but a ‘D’ for not using it in a way that’s really
meaningful to them or — better yet — me. On the other hand, when
I walk into my car dealer and my name pops up in the display as I’m
driving down the ramp and it says, “Welcome, Carlos Dominguez.
Great to have you,” and then, the guy comes in and says, “Oh, you
were here last time for these problems. Is everything okay?” That
simple experience, just leveraging the data that they have on me,
makes all the difference in the world.

What Sprinklr aspires to do is this: as customers continue to evolve,
engaging with multiple channels in multiple ways, we will become
the platform with which the largest brands in the world engage their
customers from beyond the firewall. So, regardless if it’s coming in
through a social channel, a mobile channel, an email, a phone call;
regardless of whether it’s a legacy or a brand-new system, somehow
Sprinklr is connecting all of these systems in a way that it’s able to
inform and provide the brand with the information they need to create
an absolutely incredible experience for their customer. That’s our
aspiration.

Can you tell us about a client that is really out in front on this?
There’s a lot of them, but Microsoft is incredibly progressive, and
they’re a client. They have dozens of products and brands, touch
hundreds of millions of customers each day, and are a truly global
company. 

You start thinking about all the channels their customers are on —
imagine being the CMO of that organization. You spend a lot of money
building a campaign, you’re going to go out on social channels to publish
it, but how the heck do you do that? What sort of data do you get?

Where we’re extremely unique is that we’re built for that scale,
regardless of how big a company and its campaign is. Microsoft is
a wonderful example of a company that can drive campaigns, know
who the people are who are talking about the brand, the influencers,
get them engaged. I’d say they’re fully digital.

What do you see that motivates companies to really become serious about
engaging with customers on social business platforms?

What drives them is that their customers are on those channels. I’m
the father of three Gen-Yers. They would never, ever think of dialing
 a 1-800 number. The infrastructure that’s been built during my
generation is radically different from what the younger generation uses.
My kids will send an email, maybe, but mostly they’ll just tweet and
talk about how pissed off they are. The fact that companies need to pay
attention to these channels is nothing more than that’s where their
customers are going.

Do the tools that you offer them let them do customer service either better or
differently than they could do in other, more traditional channels?

That’s a great question. Let me tell you how we approach this.

One of the clients who we’re working with brought us in because they
wanted to improve their customer service. They didn’t feel like they
were doing a good enough job on the social side, of listening, engaging,
responding, doing that kind of thing. They said, “Hey. Give us a solution.”

But the dialogue we had with them quickly changed and we said to
them, “Look. We’ve got a solution for you, but first can we ask, how
much are you spending in marketing?” They looked at us and said,
“Well, why the hell are you asking that question?” And we said,
because in marketing, all the dollars you’re spending is to get people
to want to talk to you. On the customer service side, you actually have
a customer, someone who’s invested in your brand, who’s invested in
your product. They happen to have a problem and they want to get a
resolution. And the KPIs in that world are around how quickly we can
resolve that problem and hang up on that customer.

The example here is you can’t begin to look at clients if you’re really
a customer has a problem, and they’re a great customer of yours —
 do you make them an advocate? How do you make them a proponent
of your brand? Because in the world in which we’re living today, it’s
no longer about how much money I spend. It’s about what people
are saying about me. It’s not what I say. It’s what they say.

So, that’s a radical move. Taking someone who’s got a problem
who’s already a customer in a bad situation, you satisfy them and
convert them to an advocate — that’s the way of the new world.
But very few companies are thinking through that lens.

Can you project out three-to-five years? What’s this going to do to organizations?

I think there will be people in charge of marketing and customer service
and PR and AR and accounting and legal — they’ll all exist because
somebody has to own the function — but at the strategic level, I think
all of those groups are going to talk about what they do through the
lens of what is the customer experience.

Everyone’s going to unify around the customer, which is ultimately
what you have to do. When you do that, that will force, basically,
customer service and marketing to look at the customer, the way they
spend money, the way they focus the entire organization, in ways that
are radically different.

What skills will be necessary either for employees or for managers to successfully
work within the company you envision for the future?

I think all skills are going to change. I was talking to someone on a
plane about why Gen Yers do what they do, and he was talking about
how gamification and gaming has shifted their thinking. For them,
you’re on a level. You’re playing a game, whatever it is, you work
really hard, and you complete it. Now, you get moved to the next level,
and it’s a little bit harder.

That translates into expectations in the workplace. I can’t begin to
tell you how many Gen Yers walk in and say to me, “Hey, you asked
me to do this task. I did it. Can I do something different?” I go,
“Well, that was the first time.” He goes, “No, I’ve mastered it. I need to do something different.” And that’s a result of a lot of the environment that
they’re in.

Leaders are going to have to change if they want to attract, retain, and
maintain those generations. That’s a given.

How important is culture to successfully leveraging digital for business advantage?

Culture is everything because it determines how you behave. If your
culture doesn’t value social and enable change, you’ll never survive this.
You know all the history of all the companies that haven’t made it.
Culture is a very critical piece of it and changing it, as you well know, is a
really difficult thing to do.

There’s a stat on change that I like to cite, that after a severe heart
attack, when you have to exercise regularly, eat right, and stop
smoking, only 20% of people do that. Here’s change imposed upon
people that only one out of five choose — and that’s life over death!

So the change management side to this stuff is really very rigorous.
There’s technology, process, and people in anything that you do.
Tech is easy. It’s transforming the process and the people that’s difficult.

SOURCE: MIT Sloan Management Review

8 Ways to Do Big-Time Marketing Without Spending a Fortune

Marketing is essential to any company’s bottom line. However, traditional advertising channels such as newspapers, radio and television can get expensive really quick. Furthermore, they may produce little or no ROI. Contrary to these earlier practices, your own marketing strategy does not need to break the bank. Here are several tactics for saving money on marketing while still ensuring that your message reaches your target audience.

1. Do partnered giveaways.

Team up with other brands to generate large contests with grand prizes instead of organizing small, standalone giveaways. All of the involved businesses should pool distribution support and marketing manpower, as well as share email lists and social media followings. One example to take inspiration from is Oklahoma’s News on 6, a TV station that has partnered with different local businesses in Oklahoma to promote giveaways.

2. Foster user-generated content.

Get users to build content and broadcast your company. BuzzFeed utilizes this method by encouraging community posts. HerCampus.comis largely community-driven, with the majority of its site content created by university women. Another tactic is to create a contest for the best user-generated content. For instance, Doritos hosts a yearly Crash the Super Bowl contest with a cash prize to get fans to produce Super Bowl video commercials for the brand.

Related: Millennials Spend 18 Hours a Day Consuming Media -- And It's Mostly Content Created By Peers

3. Promote customer referrals.

Encourage customers to refer their friends to your product or service. Airbnb and Uber grew considerably thanks to their powerful referral programs, both of which only involved small incentives. All you need to do to bolster your referral program is to provide a little money or discount to the source and recipient of the referral.

4. Use social media.

Social media provides many cost-free avenues for advertising your brand, including Facebook and Twitter. Another growing opportunity is hosting a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) and inviting Reddit users to ask any questions. A wide range of individuals and companies have hosted Reddit AMAs, from celebrities promoting movies, to employees of large corporations, to founders of start-up companies. Before hosting one of your own, be sure to read through a few relevant threads to get a sense of what the best practices are for marketing your business and for answering questions.

If you have more money in your social media budget, consider creating a YouTube video. Get ideas from “Dumb Ways to Die,” a safety PSA for a local Australian train company that went viral due to a skillful combination of animation, catchy music and black humor.

Related: If Marketing About Avoiding Death Can Be Funny, Why Is Your Content So Somber?

5. Hire brand ambassadors.

Employ friendly individuals to be brand ambassadors for your product or service. Brand ambassadors act as representatives of the company and spread the word to the public in many types of ways. Businesses like Lyft and Amazon hire university students as brand ambassadors to advertise their services across college campuses.

6. Transform old campaigns into new ones.

Instead of starting a marketing campaign from scratch, repurpose or update a previous one to save time and money. Refashion what works and toss out aspects of the campaign that were not successful. Moreover, this strategy should help maintain the consistency of your message, and according to Rand Group, a consistent advertising message may improve brand recognition. An inconsistent one on the other hand can be costly – it can lead to significant setbacks for brand recognition.

7. Exploit online marketing tools.

There are many free or low cost marketing tools on the Internet that help companies save money and time on marketing efforts. For market research, SurveyMonkey provides free online survey and questionnaire tools for polling your target market and analyzing their responses.MailChimp offers a free email marketing service for sending emails using newsletter templates, managing subscribers and tracking email results. If you want more powerful tools, try a 30-day free trial ofHubSpot, an extensive inbound marketing and sales software.

8. Dispose of weak ads.

Stop wasting money on poorly performing ads. This may sound like common sense, but an estimated 46 percent of ads go unseen, so many businesses do spend money on ads that never reach an audience. Keep track of what you are paying for and why you are pursuing certain tactics. If there are marketing channels that have little ROI, then curb your ad spending, reevaluate your current strategies and carry out more effective advertising approaches.

Marketing your brand can be an overwhelming and costly process, but these tips will save you loads of money and time. There are many morefree and inexpensive tools available today than ever before – take advantage of them!

SOURCE: entrepreneur.com

Developing Results-Driven Thought Leadership Marketing

 “Business buyers don’t buy your product; they buy into your approach to solving their problems.”

Most B2B marketers need to position their firms as thought leaders on the issues their buyers face. This is easier said than done, because marketing mindsets focused primarily on brands, products, and offerings makes it difficult for marketers to develop interesting content that captures their buyers’ attention.

A lack of skills and experience in developing customer-focused content make it difficult to produce engaging content. Our benchmark study showed 87% of marketers struggle to produce engaging content. (subscription required)  And most firms don’t have a process or framework for managing thought leadership marketing initiatives, so they push out product brochures and white papers thinly disguised as thought leadership content.

As a result, buyers don’t find B2B content engaging because the digital world gives them more power to form buying decisions alone. To intercept these buyers when they begin to discover issues and start to explore options; marketing and sales teams need to put your firm’s points of view out there for prospects and customers to see. Really provocative or forward-leaning points of view help to not only attract an audience, but build interactions.  Doing this is thought leadership marketing.

When done right, thought leadership marketing is a way to stand out from the competition, create interest, and earn the trust of potential buyers early in their problem-solving process. This makes potential buyers more likely to seek out your firm when they enter the purchase cycle. Forrester defines thought leadership marketing as:

The process of formulating big ideas and insightful points of view on the issues your buyers face, capturing those ideas in multiple content vehicles and sharing the ideas with prospects and customers to enlighten them, engage them in a dialogue, that creates an exchange of value, and position your company as a trusted resource.

To successfully engage B2B buyers, thought leadership marketing must check off some key attributes that go beyond content and solution marketing. To provoke and engage the right audience, thought leadership must present:

A clear, compelling point of view. Thought leadership marketing doesn’t just educate potential buyers about an issue; it provides a strong point of view that brings new insight and thinking to an issue. For example, Deloitte publishes “Global Human Capital Trends” to share thought leadership about the changing nature of work. It this series, Deloitte takes a strong position on what it takes to make human resources management more agile and forward-thinking as well as bolder in its solutions.

Actionable advice. Thought leadership provides persuasive and practical guidance on what clients should do now. After absorbing your thought leadership perspectives, clients should feel better equipped to tackle an issue or make a decision. For example, KPMG International doesn’t just report on regulatory changes, it publishes concrete recommendations for what companies need to do to ensure they comply with new regulations.

A tone that starts a dialogue. In telling the story, thought leadership does not shut down the conversation with a one-sided argument. Rather, it invites people to participate in a dialogue and expand on ideas and encourages audience members to share their own views on the subject with others. For example, glass-packaging manufacturer Owens-Illinois encourages its customers and enthusiasts to share the reasons why they choose glass products on its glassislife.com site, a destination dedicated to exploring social issues and creating inspiring moments that show why glass is cool, beautiful, innovative, and more sustainable.

No mention of products, services, or offers. While thought leadership output should talk about an approach to solving problems that align with the strengths of your offerings, true thought leadership should not talk about your products or services at all. It should be helpful to potential customers even if they don’t buy from you every time. True thought leadership should be a gift to the market that is given without any expectation of immediate commercial return.

Any B2B company that solves complex problems should create a set of strategic objectives, resources, and processes that make thought leadership happen as a part of its marketing strategy.  To make thought leadership marketing an effective editorial endeavor – and pay off in tangible results to the business – Forrester developed a four-step framework for thought leadership marketing. Using this framework, marketers must:

1.     Identify the audience members you want to engage, understand the issues they face, and determine what impression you want that audience to have of your firm.

2.     Develop a thought leadership platform consisting of one big idea about the trends affecting your industry and a hierarchy of supporting points of view on the major issues your audience faces.

3.     Engage the audience previously identified in a true dialogue by developing a communication plan that distributes your thought leadership ideas across all own, earned, and paid channels.

4.     Assess the outreach in terms of leads, sales, and market influence.

Great thought leadership takes a committed, consistent approach.  After evaluating your readiness for thought leadership marketing against Forrester’s 4-step framework, you may decide you are not yet ready take the plunge.  That’s okay because the framework principles can help improve the impact of any content marketing you undertake. Please take a moment to look further at the research (subscription required) and let me how you are using thought leadership to create new ways to engage with customers.

SOURCE: Forrester