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In the customer lifecycle, the prospective customer begins to become aware and to form a picture of your company — hazy at first, then solidified by what they discover and experience. A lot of the information that customers absorb — and a lot of the opinions that customers form — are in place before any representative of your company has a personal interaction with that prospect.
Social media is a popular topic at just about every company these days. Enterprise, SMB, and even very small companies understand that social media is a key competitive differentiator.
Major players like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have played a critical part in helping drive the social media phenomenon, and rising subscribership is proving that social business is here to stay.
Social media channels help generate a lot of valuable data that can be leveraged quickly and effectively. Companies can gauge customer reaction to products and services and other marketing stimuli on a real-time basis as never before.This wealth of information is commonly referred to as social intelligence and it is quickly becoming a mainstream tool for marketing and sales.
In...
On April 3, we introduced you to Danny Brown and Sam Fiorella who are about to release a new book on the increasingly popular subject of influence marketing. During the first part of our interview, we asked why they choose to tackle this subject and what the basic premise of the book is.
In that discussion, we explored the nature...
2012 will be remembered as the year social influence scoring became a mainstream conversation among marketers and public relations professionals. It will also be remember as the year that this subject became a lightning rod for heated debate across social platforms, blogs, and at conferences around the world.
When IBM hired researchers to find our whether using social improved the success of their salespeople, this is what they found:
This is a short video interview (filmed by Steve Farnsworth of @Steveology) with Ed Brill, Director of MobileFirst at IBM, and author of Opting In: Lessons in Social Business from a Fortune 500 Product Manager.
Diamond Candles is an e-commerce company located in Durham, North Carolina. The company makes 100% all-natural soy candles with a surprise ring hidden within every candle. Diamond Candles features a vibrant online community on its Facebook page of 236,000+ fans and is growing rapidly. This is an interview with Josh Beaty, Director of Social Marketing & Community, about using Facebook for “social selling.”
The role of Chief Customer Officer is relatively new, an outgrowth of the increasing power and influence of customers. Interest is growing in this position because it puts a public face to the importance of customer service, and signals a public declaration that the customer—because of the rise of social networks and the dissemination of opinion and ideas on the Internet—should be represented in the boardroom.
A chief customer officer (CCO) is in charge of influencing corporate activities to make sure that the customer’s needs are understood and met by all the members of the organization. The CCO is tasked with making sure that all the divisions of the company: finance, sales, marketing, customer service, etc. appreciate the customer’s needs across the boundaries of those divisions.
According to Jeffrey Henning,...
Ah, the little gift (also known as a lagniappe) after purchase. The free oatmeal cookie after your meal at the Red Eye Grille in Manhattan. The sweet-smelling bag of delights from the cosmetic counter tucked into your shiny sack of high-priced makeup.
Everyone can remember a personal story of a little gift AFTER purchase. When I was little, my parents shopped at the same nursery every spring because the owner gave me and my brothers a little seedling as we checked out. Hours, days, weeks of fun—my parents wouldn’t have shopped anywhere else.
But the lagniappe BEFORE purchase. That’s kind of rare. However, expect to see it trending up soon. Why? Because a recent study in the International Journal of Marketing Studies reports that customers who received a lagniappe BEFORE purchase spent an average of 46% more than non-gifted customers. Yes, not a typo. Forty-six percent.
Why should a gift before...
The link above is to a press release about a new study released by MarketTools, Inc., who interviewed 331 executives at companies with annual revenue greater than $10 million. Completed surveys showed the following results:
Mark Benioff’s advice this week was to watch this video of customer service expert John Tschohl talking about Netflix’s tribulations over the past 90 days.
It is a frightening tale of how quickly sentiment can swing in the social economy. The velocity and impact radius of a bad or good experience is unprecedented.
For nearly 15 years, Netflix has completely outclassed every one of its competitors. Better product. Better pricing. Better service.
