Sensei Blogs

Are You Trolling For Numbers?

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Jane Perdue asked this question on her blog this week: “Are you trolling for numbers or meaning?”

It’s a powerful question at a time where numbers seems to be judge, jury and executioner in our online marketing efforts. From simple numbers such the quantity of “Likes” and followers to numbers that purport to indicate one’s social influence to the black ‘n red numbers on a balance sheet, it’s all about the numbers today isn’t it? Strategies are crafted, decisions are made and conversations are influenced based on numbers. Business – and marketers in particular – love everything tied up in a nice little package: the number.

Notice that Jane asks if you’re trolling for numbers or meaning, which indicates they’re mutually exclusive concepts. Can’t numbers also have meaning? Albert Einstein suggested that a number, in and of itself, has no significance. Beyond representing the quantity of a group of similar objects, it has no meaning, right?

Yet there are many different kinds of numbers such as rational and irrational numbers, real and complex numbers, algebraic and transcendental numbers, perfect numbers, surreal and hyperreal numbers, and finally square and triangular numbers. In these cases, the numbers begin to represent concepts and not just quantity. So maybe the question of number vs. meaning is flawed? Maybe numbers can have meaning? As an example, numbers can represent the percentage sales increase in year-to-date revenue. If an organization collectively imposes meaning on numbers, those numbers mean something to the stakeholders.

So what’s the answer?

It doesn’t matter; the issue is not if numbers have meaning but our reliance on them, regardless of any associated meaning. The overload of data created and exchanged across a dizzying array of distribution channels, which is accessible at our fingertips and on demand, has changed the rules of the game. We can’t get away from it. We need it. We want it. We seek it out. In fact, in most cases we don’t need to find it; it finds us. The resulting interaction of data between people, between people and business, and between people and devices has made numbers – regardless of what we agree they represent – meaningless.

Gross domestic product, inflation rates and economic structures that were once cyclical and predictable are stumping the most experienced economists. The reality is numbers do, in fact, lie. Numbers direct the marketer’s attention toward current trends instead of the trend currents; what is “the now” instead of what that current activity predicts about how consumers will communicate, think or consume our products in the future.

From connections on social platforms to social influence scores, numbers have become a marketing disease causing short-sightedness in strategic thinking. What’s the cure? Stop giving numbers meaning; focus on contextual relationships and communications instead. Insight can no longer be gained by mathematical calculations or by parsing Big Data. The more data we exchange across a greater number of devices, the less meaning numbers will have and the more importance human insight and intuition must be given.

Are numbers meaningless? Are they creating short-sightedness in marketers? Is human analysis becoming more important in the face of growing artificial intelligence?

Agree/Disagree/Why?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Marketers, What Your CEO REALLY Thinks Of You

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

You’ve earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in earned media. You’ve built your Facebook fans to 10,000 in 6 months. You’ve increased the lead funnel by 15% over last year. You’re the golden child of the organization; you’ve played squash with the CEO and received the keys to the executive washroom.

All is right with the world.

Until the company’s fortunes or the economy in general takes a downturn and the marketing budget is the first to get cut and the first department to see layoffs. Your executive washroom keys are taken back; you’re shocked that you once again have to “go” with the rest of the nobodies in the organization. You bide your time and do more of the same with less. Then (Oh Happy Day!) the economy rebounds and the marketing budget is the first to reap the rewards of the loosened purse strings.

Anyone in the marketing industry for more than 10 years, be they a corporate marketing or agency professional, has experienced this phenomenon at least once. When the business or the economy suffers, just as marketing is needed the most, CEOs stop investing in it. When the company’s fiscal outlook swings “to the black” and everyone is optimistic, budgets return to normal.

To my fellow marketers, what does this universal truth say about what CEOs really think of marketing or the value they place on what you do? I’ll tell you: it says they see you a marketer, not revenue generator. Your department is a cost, not a profit center.

Do you still think that branding, brand awareness and lead generation are the goals of marketing?

“What is the value of a mother’s hug?”

AAARRRGG! A week does not go by that I don’t bang my head on my desk in frustration with the articles, presentations and social commentary I see marketers spewing about the value and importance of branding and engagement, especially in the discipline of social media.

Of course brand awareness – the first stage in the customer lifecycle – is important; without it, marketers and sales teams cannot nurture the client towards strong purchase consideration. Of course social media is important; without it, we cannot identify the opportunities and obstacles in the way of consumers’ decision-making processes. Of course content marketing is important; without it, we’re not seeding social proof into the newly-social search engines. All of these go-to strategies and tactics marketers are so found of promoting these days are important, but without a calculation that demonstrates how they’re turning the marketing department from a cost-center to a profit-center, marketers will forever be the fair-weather friend of the CEO and the board of directors.

So, are you a marketer or a profit generator?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Image Credit: George Marks

Your Product Sucks; What It Does is Amazing.

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A common mistake that many software and product marketers make is to orient marketing collateral, Web site navigation and even brand messaging around its features and functions.

Take a look at most technical product or software web sites and you’ll quickly see a navigation button for “features.” Drill down and you’ll see a litany of sub-navigation listing each specific feature, a clever icon, a description of the feature and possibly a video tutorial on how it works. Everything a customer might want to know about the features – except why they should care.

Make no mistake; this is an ailment that many marketers suffer from. When diagnosed, I dispense a healthy dose of snark by stating,“your product features suck!” The remedy is usually met with guffaws, snorts, and hurt feelings. Undeterred, I continue with the rationale for this tough medicine; it doesn’t matter if the features are good or bad, just think they’re bad. Why? Because I’ve yet to meet a marketer faced with a bad product who doesn’t try to slap lipstick on pig. It’s meant to serve as a cue for marketers to rethink their content strategy.

With few exceptions – especially in the software industry – product features are not unique. Yes, marketers will attempt to wordsmith uniqueness into them, but in reality you can find similar features with a simple Google search.

I advise clients to orient that same collateral, Web site navigation and brand messaging around what the product’s features enable the client to do instead of what the product feature does. For example, sentiment analysis in a social monitoring platform doesn’t “identify positive and negative sentiment around brand mentions”, it “builds a better sales funnel by more efficiently identifying unsatisfied competitors' clients with the best opportunity to convert.” As a business buyer, which would you respond to more?

What’s motivating your customer?

When you ask yourself who is reading your content or visiting your site and what do they really want, it’s really a simple concept. What’s difficult is getting over your ego and obsessive need to talk about yourself or how clever your product’s features are.

Understand that when potential customers visit your Web site they already have specific questions in mind that they want answered. And if they don’t come with specific questions in mind, there are questions that are subconsciously driving how they navigate your site. For those in B2B industries for example, there are typically 3 types of users that visit your site from the same prospective customer, and each has their own unique set of questions they’re looking to have answered.

1. The Researcher – generally front-line employees or those in the trenches that have identified a problem that needs a solution. They’re looking for detailed solutions to their problems, what’s going to make their job easier, what’s going to get them that raise or promotion?

2. The Validator – typically a mid-level manager; they don’t care for solution details or demonstrations but are verifying the options provided by the Researcher in order to create cost-benefit analysis to present to their boss.

3. The Executive – spends the least amount of time on your site and are usually looking for one thing: comfort. They want to know they are not the only customer you have in their industry and that others have taken the risk and are happy.

Know that your audience is not interested in your product. They’re interested what it will enable them to do. Now go rethink and rewrite your product’s features. "They suck!"

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Announcing New Book: Influence Marketing, by Sam Fiorella & Danny Brown

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The hype around social influence has been circling around me like a cyclone for a few years now, online, in-print and in-person. I’ve been open and honest with my views on the challenges with the current methodology being used by marketers and software providers alike until someone asked me to “put your money where your mouth is.”

And so I am.

This spring Que Publishing, a publishing imprint of Pearson, will release Influence Marketing: How to Create, Manage and Measure Brand Influencers in Social Media Marketing coauthored by Danny Brown and me!

Danny and I will move the conversation beyond social influence scoring and give you a start-to-finish blueprint for making influence marketing work in your organization.

Featuring case studies, empirical evidence, digital workshops and much, much more, Influence Marketing is based on successful campaigns that Danny and I have jointly and independently executed in this space. We look forward to sharing more with you in early January!

In the meantime, you can take advantage of the Cyber Monday week-long offers on Amazon.

Reserve Your Copy Today!

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

How Kred Changed My Point of View

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

My disdain for social scoring platforms is no secret. Not only have I expressed my opinions on this site, my perspective on – and experiences with – these tools have been widely written about in books, magazines and on other blogs. I’ve been interviewed on Web, radio and television broadcasts where I’ve shared those same views. I’ve not been able to attend or speak at a conference this year without someone yelling: “Hey, it’s the Klout-guy!”

If all of those articles and interviews were to be boiled down to one sentiment, it would be that you’re a fool if you pay any attention to social scoring platforms. There are many factors that have impacted my view on these, from my personal experiences during job interviews, inaccuracies in scoring algorithms, security concerns, poor operating practices, and of course the fact that these platforms can be gamed, thus rendering the scores meaningless.

While I’m not the lone marketer with these apprehensions, some have asked why I’ve been so vocal in my opposition. In truth, it has been less about the business of social scoring as it was about the use of social scoring. A new breed of “professional influencers” who understand how to game the algorithm for personal and financial gain has emerged and they’ve muddied the social pool, making it difficult to distinguish real influencers from fabricated ones.

Brand marketers (and others within the organization) were misplacing their trust in these scores and crafting communication strategies around them without understanding the context or accuracy of the reported influence. As a marketer who prides himself in successfully creating word-of-mouth marketing campaigns that drive measurable results, I took exception to how these scores and platforms were being used.

Overcoming Prejudice and Logic

A lunch-time conversation with Dups Wijayawardhana, the co-founder and CEO of Empire Avenue, shed some new perspective on the debate when he challenged me with this statement: “Even if you believed none of these tools could accurately measure influence, in combination with other tools and processes, they have value.” In theory I understood his point but in practice I could not get over the inaccuracies that many have proven exist in these measurements or the subject matter of said influence, not to mention the fact that I could not always gain direct access or ownership to the actual database of names these tools spread my message to, or the algorithms used to identify them.

The one point I could never argue was that such tools – and the very concept of scoring influencers – will not go away. Scoring influencers was done before social scoring platforms like PeerIndex, Klout and Kred became so popular and I’m certain many more will emerge in the future. I owed it to my clients to further explore the current state of these platforms.

Meet Kred.com

After a lengthy and very frank discussion on the subject with Andrew Grill, CEO of Kred.com and Lee Bogner, Vice President of Business Development, I began to see the evolution of these tools and, for a moment, had hope in the future of the practice. Created by social analytics leader PeopleBrowsr, Kred measures influence in online communities connected by interests.

For influencers, Kred presents a visual history of a person’s social media influence in a rather cool drill-down dashboard that’s fun to play with. However, cynicism saw this interface as another gamification tactic to keep us interested and playing their game. On the other hand, for marketers Kred offers four distinct services:

Brand Follower Scores
Find the most engaged (influence) and engaging (outreach) followers of your brand over a select timeframe.
Brand Champion Influencer Identification Score
Find the most engaged and engaging users around your @name #hahstag, or keyword matching your brand over a select timeframe.
Competitive Follower Score
Find the most engaged (influence) and engaging (outreach) followers of a competitive brand over a select timeframe.
Competitive Mention Score
Find the most engaged and engaging users around a competitor’s @name #hashtag, or keyword matching your brand over a select timeframe.

It’s not these services that had me rethinking my stance on Kred, but its philosophy and business practice in providing those services.

No Secrets

Kred is an open book. It doesn’t hide the algorithms it uses to identify, segment and rank individuals, which is extremely helpful for those of us who like to do a deeper dive into the nature of relationships between influencers and followers when designing influence marketing campaigns. Further, its history as a data management/analysis firm becomes evident when you review its methodology; Kred gets it.

Advanced Filtering

It understands that social scoring gamers, employees (yours and your competitors) and others “work the system” to artificially increase their scores, so it actively seeks out, flags and removes these individuals from the lists Kred provides its clients. In that same vein, Kred analyzes the sentiment of content shared by those it scores to offer greater and more accurate segmentation of the audience.

Kred’s focus is not to sell scores or be a facilitator between you and your audience but on providing a customized consulting service that works to help identify the multitude of considerations and filters required to accurately manage an influence marketing campaign. Oh, and if you don’t want to use Kred to broadcast a message, you can take the list and work it yourself.

Multi-Dimensional Scoring

Its scoring is two-dimensional and evolving. Kred states its scores “reflect trust and generosity, the foundations of strong relationships.” It scores “influence” as the ability to inspire action and “outreach” that reflects generosity in engaging with others and helping them to spread the message. “In the future, you’ll see the scores become multi-dimensional with the inclusion of even more data sources that could include attribution, affinity, context and more,” states Mr. Grill. This provides marketers greater insights and allows for better planning and decision making in our outreach efforts.

It's About Me

Kred’s business plan, service and platform are designed to build their business by truly improving the effectiveness of a business’ influence marketing efforts, not to increase its own revenues by being a middle man between the business and a black hole of undisclosed "influencers".

While I’m still wary of any platform that claims to be able to unequivocally and scientifically rank something as fluid and unpredictable as influence, I appreciate the openness and flexibility of Kred and how it provides me with solid data points that I can choose to incorporate into my own influence marketing programs.

Could there be hope for social influence scoring platforms?!

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The Grand Paradox of Social Communications

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

You cannot read a marketing or social media blog today without stumbling across the advice: “humanize your brand.” The advice is certainly not a new concept to marketing, but one that has had new importance breathed into it in the face of the ever-evolving digital relationships businesses have with their customers.

It’s the grand paradox of digital and social communications; we’re racing to connect through inanimate computers and mobile phones in order to build stronger relationships with people.

Messages are often misconstrued by our inability to effectively translate our intent to the written word. Doing so is a task that requires tremendous training and skill and very few of us are either so trained or skilled. Yet, with social networks and blog content management tools in hand, we’ve all become active brand publishers attempting to fabricate relationships through social channels.

Some argue that the real problem lies in the consumer’s inability to interpret our intent because each views the same message with his or her own personal filters. The emotional, financial and social states of each member of a business’ community impact how they process the communications received. Businesses using social channels to sell products and services often create content without understanding where the customer is in the decision making or purchase cycle, thus decreasing the likelihood that their efforts will contribute to any form of relationship-building.

Regardless of which theory you subscribe to, digital communications have distanced us from our customers as much as they’ve embedded us in their lives. As a result, the need to “humanize our brand” has become a more urgent priority for marketers. Nuances, colors or even a headline could make the difference between your digital handshake being perceived as firm and strong or limp and weak.

The Relationship Gap

Business leaders are being trained to do more with less, generate more profit with less investment, and sell more with fewer sales people. The very ethos of our capitalist-based civilization moves us towards this goal, so it’s no wonder that social media’s appeal of mass communications with less effort and expertise has captured the imagination of marketers and business executives everywhere. Sadly, the push to communicate digitally has decreased our ability to truly connect with people, build strong personal relationships and create truly outstanding customer experiences. The connections we are making are fickle and tenuous.

Now don’t mistake my intent, I’m not advocating we remove social or digital communications from our vocabulary but I am sounding the alarm for those who have become singularly focused on the social channel to humanize the brand. Social media has become a black hole of sorts, sucking us in and forcing us to create strategies and tactics to counter the impersonal nature of the technology that drives conversations today.

“Humanizing your brand” is certainly an important tactic of modern content marketing strategies, but social content does not humanize your brand. Social content, generated by your marketing team or your customers, is a testament to how human and relatable your brand is; it’s a time-capsule tchotchke that future generations will use to better understand what you were. It does not create what you are. Humanizing your brand requires a culture change that embodies everything a business, its staff and the products and services they produce represent. It’s a way of doing business, not a content marketing strategy.

Do you agree? Can you humanize your business through social media and content marketing strategies? Or is it what I’ve argued, just a testament to the humanity of your brand (or lack thereof)? Share your thoughts below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The Corporate Blog Challenge

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Last week I posted an article asking if corporate blogs had become sacred cows. I questioned the logic of a corporate blog remaining the center of a social communication hub when readership is down, competition for attention is increasing and our audience’s preference is evolving towards shorter, more visual content. Why are marketers so unwilling to accept that, in some cases, the value of a corporate blog is diminishing?

The question sparked a good conversation across many of the social channels that it was shared in. A common theme to those who disagreed with my suggestion was that if readership is down, the problem is not competing social channels or the audience’s changing preferences but the quality and format of the corporate blog itself. Most argued that the corporate blog is still THE place to represent your brand and maintain control of your message without the public or social-spin that can derail your efforts in other channels.

I agree that a corporate blog is an important element in the social mix and also that most corporate blogs fail to provide the value readers seek and thus fail to retain regular readers and/or drive value from it. However, I disagree that simply revamping these blogs will make a large difference. The reality is that our audience has moved on.

I’ll Take The Challenge

Those of you who know me know that I love a great debate and that I never back down from a challenge. So for a moment, I’ll accept the argument that the fortunes of corporate blogs can be reversed by reimagining their structure and content. So let’s consider what would have to be done to a typical corporate blog for it to remain a viable social hub for its business.

My point of view: today’s corporate marketing challenge is no longer the lack of quality blogs, but the audience’s content consumption habits and preferences. With this in mind, below are the 3 key changes required by corporate blogs to remain relevant:

1.   Go On a Diet
Blogs posts need to shed a few words around the middle. Few visitors have the time or desire to read long, drawn out articles. Shorter, hyper-relevant and more frequent messaging is critical to attract and retain readership today. Further, the audience is increasingly accessing content from mobile devices that are not ideal for long-form content. I’m not suggesting that longer articles should not be posted, but they might be better served as downloadable whitepapers or e-books.

2.   Get a Make Over
In his SNL skit “Fernando’s Hideaway,” Billy Cristal stated so eloquently, "It's not how you feel...it's how you look...” Corporate blogs must take a lesson from the market, which is exploding with more visual content. So instead of posting 1,500 word articles, why not create and post visual slide decks, video interviews, podcasts or image galleries (please no kittens) instead? Get out of your comfort zone, try on something new and watch the reaction.

Secondly, your site should be refitted using responsive design so that its layout is dynamically reshaped based on the display capabilities of the device accessing it such as smart phones, tablets, netbooks, laptops and oversized desktop monitors. Maintaining a consistent customer experience is critical to branding efforts as well as content consumption.

3.   Start Dating
Once you’ve lost a few words and had your makeover, get out there and meet new people! You can convert your blog into a true social hub by replacing infrequent posts with a grid of feeds from all your other social channels such as Twitter, SlideShare, YouTube, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn Groups, etc. This creates a speed-dating environment within your blog that allows your audience to better mingle with you and your content. Alternatively, you can join blogger communities using services such as Triberr which connect complementary bloggers who support each other through distribution and commentary.

Lastly, allow your audience to generate some of the content within your site. This might be the biggest challenge for most since a corporate blog is seen as “the voice” of the brand but in reality, your audience is more interested in their peer's experiences with your brand than your views on it.

So there you have it. Me arguing the "other side". Not sure I've convinced myself that a corporate blog should always be the center of a business' social efforts, but if it has to, a change in strategy is certainly in order.

Where do you weigh in (see what I did there?) on this debate? Can a corporate blog upgrade to compete with the changing needs of its audience? Or should it bother? Share your arguments for and against in the comments below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Lead Generation Continues To Challenge B2B CMOs

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

B2B customers have become more independent buyers in the procurement process as a result of their increasing access to information, research and peer-recommendations. In fact, this modern buyer is something of an enigma to B2B vendors. Traditional lead generation efforts such as trade show and publication advertising, direct mail, email, etc. are decreasing in effectiveness. Lead generation through social marketing has received much hype yet case studies demonstrating real bottom-line impact are still few and far between. How does one capture their attention (and wallet-share) in an environment where competition has surpassed competitive vendors to include the increasing availability of information and perception driven by customers and non-customers alike?

Sales teams and marketing organizations are experimenting with lead generation tactics in an attempt to drive both greater volumes and conversion of leads. However, innovation (and results) within a B2B’s sales process will not occur by morphing existing lead generation practices because the problem does not lie with the tactic but the department the business looks to for lead generation.
Engaging the modern B2B Buyer is no longer about sales campaigns; it’s about re-channelling your business’ sales focus, efforts and budget from external to internal practices. Real ingenuity and results will come when the business shifts their sales efforts from Customer Acquisition to Customer Development.

Traditional Lead Generation Continues To Challenge B2B CMOs

The challenges of generating high-quality leads, as well as high volumes of leads, continues to be the main challenge of B2B CMOs. Further, there has been a decline in the tactical effectiveness from overall quality and quantity of leads generated according to B2B marketers surveyed recently. In fact, many tactics declined by 50% or more in reported effectiveness per Marketing Sherpa’s 2012 B2B Benchmark Report.

Further, this study highlights the fact that one of the key barriers is the lack of internal resources in staffing, budgeting or time. The next largest challenge reported is the business’ lack of ability to stop executing lead generation tactics in order to think and plan strategically.

These findings fuel my argument that shifting resources from customer acquisition to customer development will reap the greatest reward in today’s marketplace. Gartner Group reports that just a 1% increase in a B2B’s client retention rate could represent an average 8% increase in the business’ profits. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what we’re ultimately trying to achieve: greater profits?

Rethinking the Lead Generation Source

I will admit that marketing teams are – and will be – challenged to wrestle resources and budget from traditional sales department s and tactics in a continuingly sluggish economy. However, doing more of the same garners just that: more of the same, which (as the MarketingSherpa study highlights) is more dissatisfaction with lead conversion.

Last week my partner Jeff Wilson here at Sensei Marketing and I debated this issue as a keynote presentation at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston. I presented the case for a stronger focus on Customer Development strategies to fuel the innovation required to drive greater sales results for B2B organizations. During the debate I argued that the value of existing customers, through improved customer experience and management generated:

1. Increased Quantity of Leads
Moving existing customers from being just “satisfied” to becoming an advocate will drive greater new customer leads by populating the marketplace with positive peer-recommendations and case studies; something buyers are increasing seeking before even speaking to sales teams.

2. Greater Conversion of Leads
Monitoring and measuring the customer experience with both the products purchased and the service received across the entire customer lifecycle generates the insights needed to sharpen the strategies, tactics and messages needed to improve conversion rates with prospective customers.

3. Increased Profits
A better understanding of the relationship between the efforts to maintain a satisfied customer and the profit generated from those same customers, provides the required insight and analytics that will filter and pre-qualify prospects; thus allowing the sales team to focus those limited resources on those customers most likely to drive greater profit.

Clearly both acquisition and development strategies are required for a business to thrive. However, today’s marketplace requires a new approach to acquisition that B2B CMOs are struggling to grasp. Do you argree? Where do you stand on the issue? Join the debate in the comments section below.

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

How to Manage Advocates and Drive Qualified Leads

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Advocacy, the third stage in the Customer Development sphere of the Sensei Customer Lifecycle model, is the culmination of the business’ effort to engage and support the customer. A customer who has reached this stage in the lifecycle has experienced the seamless conversion of your relationship from vendor-prospect to vendor-customer and now embraces you as a business “partner” more than a vendor.

See posts on the first two stages of the Customer Development cycle:
A Purchase Order Does Not Guarantee Customer Loyalty
Advocacy, Not Sales, is the End Goal of B2B Loyalty

At this point, your team and processes have become integrated with those of your customer. You’ve established real-time pathways for communication and you’re providing relevant marketing, sales and business development support. Your customers are satisfied and you’ve earned their loyalty; you’ve created an advocate. Your job is done; sit back and watch the leads come flying in.

Not so fast. Marketers have grossly over-estimated advocacy. Referrals - even among those customers from whom you’ve earned loyalty - aren’t assured. Further, they’re not guaranteed to be quality leads nor qualified leads. This is not the time to become lax in your engagement efforts.

Advocates and the referral process still require proactive management to successfully feed the “Awareness” stage in the Customer Acquisition sphere of the lifecycle. Below are some recommendations:

1. Set Advocate Expectations

If performance expectations were not conveyed to a newly-hired salesperson within your firm, what do you believe their success would be? The same applies to customer advocates. While the best referrals often come from genuine customer commentary, it’s human nature to complain about the products and services we dislike more than complimenting those that we appreciate. For this reason, a business should not shy away from asking for referrals from potential advocates. Since these customers now consider you a business partner rather than a vendor, such requests are usually accepted and acted upon gladly.

Note: requests for referrals are less effective and generate fewer qualified leads when made to customers who have not progressed to this stage of the customer lifecycle.

2. Categorize Advocates

Generic requests for referrals may encourage lead quantity but neither quality nor high conversion. The goal of advocacy is to increase qualified, measurable leads into the Customer Acquisition sales funnel. To do so effectively, your business must first qualify the referrers based on the influence they have within their community, the quality of relationship you have with their key players, the size of their industry, etc., as applicable to your business and industry.

Values are placed on each “advocate category” based on share of wallet earned, profit generated, ease of doing business, speed the customer progressed along the lifecycle, etc. Leads are tracked back to the customer advocates and their categories, providing context, prioritization and instruction for the sales team to better manage the lead funnel.

3. Enable Advocates

Requests for leads, regardless of how willing the customer advocate is, do not always generate action. Translating the willingness to refer into taking action requires you to empower the advocate with the right content and means to act upon that desire. Online tools such as referral forms, co-branded blog posts, etc. or offline events where advocates are encouraged to invite colleagues to a networking event can enable customers to act on your behalf.

Without context and timing however, such tools are less effective. As with the Loyalty Phase of the Customer Lifecycle, relevance is critical to success. Blindly sending requests for referrals to advocates dilutes the referral pool and challenges their good will. Generate a plan that strategically asks for referrals from specific customers when relevant transactions occur such as customer feedback, successful resolution of a customer complaint, financial milestones, etc.

4. Acknowledge Advocates

As with other good deeds, referrals are cause for celebration and a genuine expression of appreciation. Acknowledging the value of a customer’s referral provides the positive reinforcement required to maintain the balance between the two partners in this venture: vendor and customer.

Further, it’s imperative to highlight converted leads and the impact that the new customer provides the referring customer, not your business. The value to your business is understood; you’ve increased your revenue. The value to the referrer is not so clear so it’s important to highlight the connection between their action, the converted lead and the benefit to their business. What has this new client, the lessons learned or the additional revenue added to your business that will directly impact the referring business? Can some new partnership or benefit be created by having both clients reselling your product?

Notice that we didn’t list “reward advocates” here. Rewarding advocates with financial incentives and other perks is often appreciated but typically carries only short-term value. Improving the advocate’s business and/or the relationship between the business partners is strategically a better long-term plan.

The lesson to be learned is that advocacy is not to be taken for granted. Advocacy – and advocates – must be planned, managed and tracked as carefully as any other stage in the Customer Lifecycle. Advocacy is the launching point for new customers, not the end-point of the service team’s customer management efforts.

Join the conversation. Is this a realistic model for B2B organizations? Or are they simply too focused on short-term goals for such long-term strategic planning?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Advocacy, Not Sales is the End Goal of B2B Loyalty

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In the B2C world, “Customer Loyalty” has become synonymous with points or rewards membership programs which are used to aid in the acquisition of new customers rather than building value in existing customers. Such loyalty programs are rarer in the B2B landscape yet the tactical importance of loyalty is equally misunderstood and underutilized.

91% of B2B executives questioned in a Sensei Survey listed “increasing sales” as the purpose for generating customer loyalty. If a purchase was the end or final point of the customer lifecycle, then these executives might be correct; however, increased sales are a by-product of loyalty, not the end result. The goal of increasing loyalty is to establish the foundation of customer advocacy.

Creating true advocates, those with the personal dedication and passion required to recommend your business or with the power to truly influence their peers towards a purchase decision, requires unquestioned loyalty. Without it, referrals are infrequently given and rarely without direct solicitation from you. Creating these advocates should be the business’ guiding principle when developing customer loyalty programs.

Relevance is Key to Loyalty

This degree of loyalty is not earned by volume price breaks but through relevance. How relevant is your relationship to the customer on any given day? How relevant are your products and offers to the customer when they’re received? How relevant is the response to customer service requests?
Most B2B businesses group customers by industry, size, purchase volume, share of wallet, etc. and formulate general loyalty strategies to coerce increased purchase orders. Using such general categorizations as the basis for loyalty programs is a short-term plan that limits the value of the customer from reaching its potential.

Sensei recommends the following strategies to generate advocate-worthy loyalty.

1. Align with Your Customer’s Value Proposition

Understand the value proposition that your customer proposes to the end-user and adjust your products, packaging, and options to help them deliver upon that promise. Remember that your existing customers are not only your customers; through their advocacy they are a conduit to many potential new customers. Adjusting your products and services to better align with the channel’s value proposition ensures the unquestioned loyalty required to drive advocates.

2. Monitor and Be Flexible Enough to Adapt In Real-Time

Monitor the changes in the economy, competitive factors or other issues that impact your customer’s businesses. How has their business’ focus had to change? What are their current attitudes towards the future? Have their short- or long-term strategies changed? Market conditions are evolving at increasingly frequent intervals; what was once a motivator is now an obstacle to doing business. Your business’ ability to proactively adapt to such changes will demonstrate leadership and solidify fervent loyalty.

3. Personalize, Personalize, Personalize

Relevance is not expressed in offers and promotions that anyone in the business’ category or geography can also access. Personalization requires rewards, education, ancillary products or support that is specific to the business, not their category.

Further, don’t confuse loyalty with reward programs in B2B industries. To demonstrate relevance, consider incentives that include premium packaging or personalized marketing collateral that will increase their ability to generate more revenue. Or consider providing the customer an outside consultant to create a customized social or marketing engagement strategy to better connect with their customers. Or for customers with time-sensitive or mission-critical end-user engagements, consider offering priority customer service handling.

Ironically, when you eliminate the goal of increased sales from your loyalty programs, you achieve the greatest sales increase. Shifting tactics from cash incentives or general point-for-purchase schemes to relevant and personalized services builds a longer-term loyalty that produces brand advocates. Among these customers you’ll earn a greater share of wallet and increase their life-time value to your business. However, of even greater value are the referrals generated by these customers, which have the power to drive more qualified leads than most customer acquisition strategies.

Join the conversation! What's your take on Loyalty in B2B? Should the end goal be advocacy as I suggest here or increased wallet share from existing customers?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego