Are you a brand ambassador?

Filed under Discussion, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 6 June 2011 at 08:52 {no comments}

Source: Dictionary.com

Since moving to London I’ve had two great opportunities to to meet with and interact with members of separate US embassies.  Both times I was impressed with the openness and genuine interest from the representatives in what I do. This clearly had me thinking about ways that we can all be better ambassadors for our brands. Here are my thoughts:

  • Elevator Pitch. As a brand ambassador you meet a lot of different people from various walks of life. Therefore, it’s incredibly important to know how to succinctly tell who you are, what you do and why your organization matters. In addition, if you want an ambassador to remember you, because they meet a lot of people, having your pitch down becomes important. Do you have your pitch ready?
  • Ask Questions. Ambassadors are curious and inquisitive. They ask good questions not because they are trying to move the conversation along, but because they are good listeners and sincerely interested in what you have to say. Whether you are heading to an industry event or an internal cross-functional meeting be prepared to ask thoughtful questions. But remember, you can’t ask good questions without listening.
  • Follow Up. As ambassador you meet a lot of people and you receive a lot of requests. It seems simple, but following up on requests goes a long way when you know the answer. More importantly, if you don’t have an answer finding someone who might and connecting those two people or doing a bit of research on your own goes even further. Setting up some type of a follow up system and reminders will be key as you turn the act of following up from a task into a habit.
  • Personalization. A good ambassador will make things personal for you and toward you. Think of the people you know who do this well and you will know what I mean.
  • Everyone is an Ambassador. Keep in mind that being an ambassador doesn’t mean you need to be a CEO or CMO.

If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read:

The most important question you can ask

A discussion with Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communications

Book Review: Empowered

Socialnomics: The Revolution is Us

Filed under Case Study by Aaron Pearson on 17 January 2011 at 12:34 {2 comments}

A Book Review

If you didn’t read Socialnomics, by Erik Qualman, when it originally came out in mid-2009, a revised and updated edition just came out in November. It’s worth checking out.

Qualman is an unabashed cheerleader for all things social media, which for someone with a skeptical bent like myself can be a little hard to take at times, but most other social media authors are no different – as Gartner analysts would say, the depths of the “Trough of Disillusionment” for social media are not yet upon us (though 2011 may be the year). This book is written primarily as a guide to social media for marketers and entrepreneurs. Like most, it comes at it with a B2C emphasis, with the rare exception. But that’s nothing new. The fact is that B2C is still ahead in social media so those of us focused more heavily on B2B need to learn from those experiences.

Here’s Qualman at a recent TedX event.

YouTube Preview ImageThe Good:

  1. Word of Mouth to World of Mouth: This is the heart of Qualman’s thesis and it’s hard to argue with. As I’ve said on this blog ad nauseum, every bit of research I’ve ever encountered shows word of mouth as the most powerful influence on the purchase decision-making process. This is at least as true for B2B purchases, and maybe more so. But traditional word-of-mouth influence is slow and each individual only influences a few of the people they know. Grease word-of-mouth with social media and suddenly reach and speed explode with little loss of impact. He calls that “World of Mouth.”
  2. Silence is Not Golden. Qualman cites a study by the Strategic Planning Institute that found that 96 percent of dissatisfied customers don’t bother to complain, and yet 63 percent of those silent dissatisfieds will nevertheless not buy from you again. Yikes! Thanks to social media, it’s getting much easier for those customers to complain when something doesn’t go right. The author emphasizes for skittish companies that this is An Opportunity, a chance to take that feedback to make your product or service the best it can be. Of course, you also don’t have a choice because you can no longer hide the things that aren’t working. It’s better to face up to reality.
  3. Stats. Those of us who have to give presentations on social media are always trying to keep track of key trend stats, and not only has Qualman peppered the book with many, as you’d expect, he did us the courtesy of assembling most of them in the last chapter of the book under Eye Opening Statistics.  Oh, okay, I know you want a couple right now.  One out of eight couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media. Also, 50 percent of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook. There are pages of these handy stats.  (Too bad they’ll all be hopelessly out of date in a year, but so it goes. Maybe he’ll keep updating this.)
  4. Thoughtful Case Studies, without clear villains, just like real life. Sometimes the big companies get it right, sometimes they get it wrong, sometimes there’s more than one winner, and sometimes it takes two tries to get it right. And when we think we get something right, inevitably hubris sets in. I loved the travel example, where ACME Travel, a big player, gets something right on Facebook, but not quite right. A newcomer, Where I’ve Been, one-ups ACME. In turn, TripAdvisor tries to buy Where I’ve Been, but the latter gets a little greedy so TripAdvisor builds their own travel sharing app for less than it would have cost to acquire Where I’ve Been. In the end, TripAdvisor ends up with the most users. Fascinating story.

The Not So Good:

  1. It’s Not All Rosy. Although Qualman does acknowledge that there may be some downsides to social media, he doesn’t try very hard to think of many. I’m certainly a fan of the concept of “Socialnomics” but the fact is there are threats posed by social and digital media besides the possible decline of interpersonal communications skills in some young people. One of the great things about social media – really the Web in general – is we can really open our eyes to new ideas if we want to. On the other hand, you also have the opportunity to surround yourself only by people who think as you do and to read news and information that only conforms to your narrow point of view. This can actual reinforce socioeconomic and cultural isolation. Here’s a New York Times piece about that from way back in mid-2009.
  2. The Future is Not the Present. This is mainly something for marketers to be cognizant of. Qualman will often state emerging trends as if they are already the current state of affairs. He notes, for example that the media now do interviews via email instead of by phone or in person. Well, some industry media do, in some instances, but certainly that’s not the way any tier-1 journalist conducts interviews today. (The Washington Post ran such a story today on Chinese President Hu Juntao, but not because THEY wanted to. Rather, Hu insisted.) The author also says, “People are now living their own lives rather than watching others.” Presumably, because you see other people doing cool and amazing, you’re less satisfied spending days working, washing clothes and mowing the lawn, and are now taking up skydiving and treks to the South Pole. I’m sure some are but it feels more like wishful thinking.
  3. Search Engines Subsumed by Social Media. Qualman’s concept here is that I care more about what my neighbor thinks than what Google thinks (true) and so we don’t need to go hunting around on search engines.  I would note that most searches on search engines are not for products. Look at Bing’s top 10 searches of 2010 and none were product-related. And most of what we buy, we never did find on search engines. A B2C example: I want a new car. I don’t know about you but before social media, I wasn’t punching in “four-door sedan with good gas mileage” into a search engine. I was talking to my dad over coffee and emailing my friends. Doing that via social media doesn’t strike me as a radical change. A B2B example: Did I ever hire an accounting firm by trolling search engines? I don’t think this trend is as big as he makes it out to be.
  4. It’s Weber, Weber! Sorry, I’m the only one who cares about this, but in his Social Media Rolodex, Qualman gives a nod to Larry Weber, who founded the Weber Group, which merged with us to become Weber Shandwick.  But it’s “Larry Weber” not “Webber.” Had to be said.

Bottom Line: If you read a lot of books on social media, you’ll have heard most of this before. If not, this is one of the better ones for describing the fundamental impacts of the social media era on business and society.  Plus the sources and references in the back are handy.  Just go easy on the Kool-Aid.

You can follow the author on Twitter at @equalman.

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Book Review: UnMarketing

Filed under Resources by Aaron Pearson on 27 December 2010 at 22:45 {no comments}

It’s Sharpen the Saw Season, as Stephen Covey might say. Thus, my first ever book review.  If things go well, three more are on the way this winter.

The subtitle of UnMarketing, by Scott Stratten, is “Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.” It’s not about social media marketing per se, but it does represent the new thinking about marketing and selling that is so epitomized by the way social media work. In other words, customers are in charge, not you, and your job is to make it easy for them to turn to you when they want to buy by establishing helpful, two-way relationships with them and forgetting the hard sell. There is particularly significant emphasis paid to customer service, both pre-sale and post-sale. Stratten pulls few punches, praising some companies by name and calling others onto the carpet.

End of the cold call, start of authentic relationships.

Who Should Read It: I would particularly recommend the book for small business owners, consultants and entrepreneurs – people who may have other jobs besides marketing and bring some perceptions about marketing that come from not being able to keep up on how the Web and social media in particular have changed consumers’ expectations of vendors. On the other hand, even sales and marketing professionals, especially in B2C, will benefit from some of the principles here.

What Really Works:

  1. The Title. And by that I mean the overall concept. I’ve already talked up UnMarketing as a concept in a work discussion – it’s a great title and absolutely true. I like that it’s not a “Social Media Book,” but that social media is infused throughout. In the real world, as I’m always preaching, there isn’t online and offline, there’s only Inline – everything working seamlessly together.
  2. Hierarchy of Buying. The author’s Hierarchy of Buying for service-based businesses is a useful organizing principle for UnMarketing. It puts cold calling on the bottom – “annoying 99 people in a row to potentially talk to someone who may hire you based on no trust and price alone” – and the power of current satisfied customers at the top, which is why current, happy customers, ergo great customer service is so important. I loved the anecdote about great service at Lush because it happened to me too.
  3. Thought Leadership. While the tactical means to go about it isn’t as easy as the author implies for many industries and organizations (see below), I like the focus on establishing thought leadership as a means to build trust and a relationship with people well before they may be ready to buy.
  4. Web Links: Many examples come with links to resources online – using bit.ly links to make it easier for those of us reading in tree format. Here’s a Domino’s Pizza franchise apologizing to a customer on video and here’s how an online billing outfit called FreshBooks makes fans.

What Doesn’t:

  1. The book is written in the first person and all of the author’s examples are based on his own personal experience as a consumer, motivational speaker and social media activist.  While the basic principles apply to anyone, when he gets tactical, especially in the second half of the book, I question the applicability of every approach.
  2. Although he has some interesting anecdotes from big brands like Wal-Mart and Zappos.com, he assumes that “you” is usually “you” literally, not your company or brand and that you don’t have to manage any of the complexities of a larger organization.  Again, the principles apply to almost anyone but the tactical details do not.
  3. He starts selling himself more the farther into the book you get.

Bottom Line: If you are an entrepreneur starting a small business, read the whole book and you’ll have a leg up on the competition, unquestionably. If you work in sales, marketing, customer service or communications for a larger organization, I’d read the first few chapters and skim the rest.

`You can follow Stratten on Twitter at @unmarketing.

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Listening & Responding to Customers: Industries That Have Struggled Are Making Strides

Filed under Other Voices Interview, Uncategorized by Aaron Pearson on 28 January 2010 at 12:42 {9 comments}

A Q&A With Jeannie Walters, Founder, 360Connext

Jeannie Walters’s Chicago-based consulting firm specializes in the cornerstones of customer experience, including customer engagement, employee engagement and connections like social media. Before starting 360Connext, she spent 12 years at Vox, a customer experience consulting firm, eventually as President and Partner. Walters specializes in helping companies achieve more loyalty from employees, customers and prospects through improved experiences at every level.

Jeannie Walters, Founder, 360Connext

Jeannie Walters, Founder, 360Connext

I spent some time last week talking with her about the profound impact improved customer engagement can have in B2B, both in terms of strengthening existing business relationships and in unleashing those customers as word-of-mouth advocates for your brand.

Aaron: Talk a little about what you learned at Vox that reflects your priorities now at 360Connext.

Jeannie: A main focus for me has been around the customer experience, and typically no one person owns that function so it touches a lot of areas. Employee engagement is one of the easiest ways you can influence customer experience so that’s a big focus for me right now. For example there are a lot of companies right now that have laid off employees and you need to keep those remaining employees focused on the mission. The other area that’s really coming to life is social media to connect directly with customers, and that goes to both content and communication. But most customer initiatives don’t typically work, because it has to become a part of the organization’s culture.

Aaron: Changing culture is a very long-term process, right?

Jeannie: It is, but one step people can take is to really understand what your customer experience is right now. I’ve worked with large companies like Allstate and AIG and that’s a daunting effort. So you need to take it one piece at a time. For instance, look just at your social media strategy. Or just look at conversion rates online. Then take those learnings and apply them to the next piece and the next piece. Don’t expect a CRM system to be a magic bullet to [fully understand the customer experience].

Now my focus is more on midsized companies because in a lot of ways, you can move things a lot quicker, make changes easier. Oftentimes, midsized companies are still run by the original leader. They are often more passionate about the customer experience too.

Aaron: How do you engage employees in customer experience initiatives? It’s not just about the marketing and sales people, right?

Jeannie: The problem is we often focus on the salesperson relationship but often after the deal those people move on. So companies need to focus on retention as much as acquisition. All the money and resources go to acquisition or selling – making the sale. …

A lot of the [employee engagement problem] relates to hiring the right people and making sure they’re the type of people that solve problems and are service-oriented. Because if you get feedback from customers, you need people who are really prepared to respond.

Aaron: So what are some of the best practices in being responsive to customers?

Jeannie: Be very public about feedback and use it. There are some SaaS [Software as a Service] companies that do a great job of that. They say, “Customers, we heard from you and so we’re doing x, y and z” with our software. The other thing is kind of empowering employees to solve problems. Call centers are often incented to spend less time on the phone and that’s terrible.

Aaron: I’ve actually heard of call center workers purposely faking connection problems to rack up a bunch of short calls.

Jeannie: Yes it’s better for them if they hang up.

Aaron: Of course, it can be hard to find the resources for solving that caller’s problem right then and there, especially with complex products.

Jeannie: So you need to be realistic, about whether we can call you back for instance. At the end of the day, humans are reasonable. The rub comes in when the expectation comes a certain way and is not delivered. Cell phone companies are finally figuring out that service is what they do and getting much better at call center service.

Aaron: Talk about customer events. Do people use them well?

Jeannie: Social media has done a lot to promote events better and to help companies understand what customers are looking for. People want substance, and especially with complicated products, they want to understand how to make this work better for me, and another customer can help them understand that best. SaaS companies have also done a great job here by bringing together their power users to help [these other customers] and that’s had a lot more influence on the experience.

Aaron: It’s interesting that you keep bringing up SaaS companies – these are companies that realize they are service companies, not software companies, so it seems natural that they would really be focused on listening to and responding to the customer, true?

Jeannie: Absolutely true. Also, look at banks and how they used to be known for abusing small business clients. They took your business for granted and then realized people have more choices. Some banks have been strugging with family-run businesses because the clientele is dying off and they didn’t reach out to the next generation. I had a client who found their business customers had a relationship with their banker. So if the banker moved on, so did the business. In response, the bank started creating small business-focused events – forums for small business customers. AmEx Open Forum is an example of that. If you are an AmEx busines customer and carry an Open card, you get access to other entrepreneuers like yourself. The part of the pendulum swing that we’re in is exclusive memberships. I predict we’ll see more of that. People want to find the right people a little easier.

Toro Pioneers Influencer Relations to Grow Commercial Business

Filed under Case Study by Aaron Pearson on 30 October 2009 at 10:06 {2 comments}

“We like to joke that we make tall grass short,” says Michael Happe, vice president and general manager of the Commercial Division at Toro Co.

In fact, caring for turf is a lot more complicated than that – and critically important – when you’re a golf course or a stadium. These commercial customers seem to recognize that and reward Toro with about a 10 percent premium for many of Toro’s products because they appreciate the ways Toro can help make their turf just a little bit better and deliver better TCO. Happe told members of the Business Marketing Association here in Minneapolis this week that such customer loyalty has ultimately been created through strong multidimensional relationships built over many decades.

Clearly, “social networking” predates Twitter and Facebook.

Toro equipment at St. Andrews - courtesy Toro Co.

Toro equipment at St. Andrews - courtesy Toro Co.

Happe considers People to be the “mysterious fifth P” of marketing but it’s clear that it’s not just a trite saying. I was actually rather fascinated to learn the degree to which Toro leverages influencer networks to grow their business. My firm, Weber Shandwick, has partnered with Community Analytics to help clients quickly identify influencers that matter, but Toro has nurtured its own

network over a long period of time, and it’s delivered business results.

Golf is Toro’s biggest business and they’ve been serving it since courses motorized horse-pulled reel motors in the 1920’s. Through the decades, the company has invested a tremendous amount of effort creating advocates from individuals that have never bought their products.

These influencers are people like golf course architects, irrigation designers, consultants, universities and associations. Toro has a corporate accounts person who spends nearly all of his time just on these influencers. They are an integral part of the Voice of the Customer process, with their own Toro-sponsored events, meetings and networking opportunities. As a result, when customers call trusted advisors for advice, inevitably these people tell them they can trust Toro.

Influencer relations for Toro is also about unleashing Toro experts to do more than selling. Some of the most important business development employees at Toro don’t sell equipment. Like Dr. Jim Watson, who became a go-to guy for Toro for nearly six decades whenever customers had turf problems. He helped the Chicago Parks Department solve an emergency turf issue at Soldier Field in the early ‘90s when they needed to lay new sod over sand without roots, two weeks before the first Chicago Bears game of the year. He advised the Chicago Parks Department that they could get through the season by cutting the sod several inches thick so it would stay in place during football play despite the lack of roots.

Or John Singleton, a Toro employee who for decades became the go-to-guy for irrigation issues for golf architects like Robert Trent Jones, and put this comprehensive service ahead of selling. They were successful because of their relationships.

Channel partners, ad agencies, market researchers – the way Toro engages with all these groups reflects the high value they put on deep, interdependent relationships.

Today, Toro has a leading share in the golf industry. The recession has been difficult and they’ve had to cut back on some of these efforts to make it through, but Toro’s CEO has been with the company for 32 years, knows what sustainable success requires, and has instilled it in the culture of the company. It’s a good reminder of the limits of quarter-to-quarter business management.

4 Great Reasons to Start a Social Media Program as a B2B

Filed under Application by Kate Brodock on 3 April 2009 at 11:12 {5 comments}

A lot of B2B marketing professionals or departments have wondered what, if any, benefit they would get out of adding social media components to their marketing plans. Isn’t that for consumer-facing companies?

Here are 4 ways to start thinking about incorporating social media within your company:

Thought Leadership

  • Provide valuable information that establishes your company as an innovate thinker in your industry.  The end goal is to position yourself as an industry leader.
  • You could post a blog on useful industry information, again providing timely and innovative content to your readers.  Kinaxis has done a good job at this with their blog, The 21st Century Supply Chain.
  • Develop a complete content production program with such things as eBooks, white papers, webcasts etc and utilize social media channels to disseminate your information.
  • Part of the concept of a content production plan is that the information that you’re outputting is ultimately connected to your brand in the eyes of the reader.

Research

Marketing Profs has a great post about the benefits of social media for B2B companies.  I won’t re-invent the wheel, as they did a great job in explaining it. They focused primarily on the research advantages it offers, with the following highlights:

  • Conducting research to understand more about a prospect’s or client’s “buying desires.”
  • Finding decision makers for certain products and services.
  • Extracting names from a given community for lead generation.
  • Getting answers to questions, reaching out to other experts.
  • Finding joint-venture marketing partners and creating various “cooperative opportunities.”
  • Connecting with past customers, keeping them up-to-date.

Brand Outreach

  • People often gather online around common interests or professions.  Many are employed in their field and, if not in a decision-making position, are at least closer to the decision-maker than you may be.  Join in their conversation in a valuable way.
  • Sponsor groups or networks that offer a forum of exchange and engagement for people that might be in what you consider your “target company” (see above).

Communication and Customer Service

  • The ability to connect with customers and clients in a way the offers 2-way communication and conversation can greatly increase relationships between parties.  Rethink the way you communicate with your clients.
  • Use new technologies to streamline the flow of information. Offer a platform to discuss pertinent issues and share knowledge on such topics as R&D, sales, supply chain, production and marketing.

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