Word of Mouth (WOM) is the “world’s most powerful sales tool,” according to Nielsen. Today, thanks to social media channels like blogs, Twitter, review sites and more, WOM and social recommendations are more influential than ever. But is WOM effective in B2B environments? Discover what’s fact and what’s fiction in B2B Word of Mouth marketing.
The new Forrester Research Inc report, “Emerging Technology Applications For Marketing,” stresses the importance of businesses understanding up-and-coming marketing technology in order to effectively communicate to customers. These technologies are a great support to the marketing mix. Forrester advises CIO’s and CMO’s to work together for ideal business success. In order to stay relevant and reliable, CIO’s should be aware of new technologies that could be incorporated into the marketing strategy, especially in B2B companies.
Some key takeaways from this report are as follows:
When you address customer needs effectively, sales follow. Marketing should focus on putting the customer in the driver’s seat, which ultimately benefits the bottom line.
58% of Marketing Professionals think IT and Marketing speak different languages. 56% think IT doesn’t understand our business. In reality, the two departments are very closely related – both have a clear set of processes that help the organization relate to the customer, enhance the brand experience, collect data and help secure revenue.
One of the four emerging technologies to watch in 2011 is: Brand Advocate platforms to energize Word of Mouth (WOM). Zuberance was given a notable mention as a supplier of this technology!
Consumers are increasingly more proactive in their advocacy of brands through recommendations across social media channels, which is extremely helpful for B2C companies. But, B2B marketers can use Brand Advocate platforms to encourage WOM by loyal customers in order to generate sales leads, references, and share your thought leadership.
Encourage your marketing team to get customer feedback on how to improve. With thoughtful responses you can deliver better customer service and collaborate with IT to find new technologies and vendors to address concerns or opportunities.
In conclusion, IT and Marketing can easily work together to employ new marketing initiatives that deliver more value and are sustainable in our highly social world.
Key takeaway: Companies need to adjust their business strategy from being customer focused to customer obsessed. The proliferation of social media has disrupted every industry and created empowered consumers. They now have the tools to rave about your products, complain about your customer service, or follow your brand within the interconnected social web. Customer obsession should be business’ #1 priority over any other strategic imperative.
Value versatility over lock-in. Focus your strategy, energy, and budget on processes that improve knowledge of and engagement with customers that take priority over maintaining traditional competitive barriers. Don’t back your “loyal” customers into a corner through contracts and proprietary technology. Instead, aim to create authentic advocacy by adjusting to customer needs. Enthusiastic repeat business is much more valuable than content customers (who might actually be detractors) that are stuck in a contract.
We are now in an empowered-customer-centric era. Shift your thoughts and budget accordingly. As Ian Wolfman of imc2 said, “Stop using ads to cover up a weak reputation and unhappy customers. Prioritize Word of Mouth over mouthing off.” Bernoff suggests cutting 10% of your traditional advertising budget and reallocating it to strategies that include a viral potential like social, devices, and content. Ads are far more effective when consumers are primed to believe them through the influence of their peers.
Find ways to sell more to current customers and get them to recommend your brand to their networks. New customers are more expensive to acquire than repeat customers; and repeat customers are much more accessible. Let your current customers, particularly you’re Advocates who are willing and ready to spread their enthusiasm, be your customer acquisition force by making it easy for them to recommend your brand.
Measurement is key. Prove your word of mouth marketing efforts are successful but measuring results. Appropriate metrics will vary across companies, but companies must measure campaigns that can tie back to business results such as leads, database sign-ups, inbound clicks, etc.
Social media isn’t a “one size fits all” solution. If the client is in the B2B space they need to spend months if not years building a relationship. That’s because B2B sales cycles can be extremely long, said Mark Kurtz, Chief Growth Office and VP of New Media for Gage Marketing.
But in the B2C space, Gage can be very aggressive through promotions, contests, and ad campaigns. Ultimately though, social media doesn’t exist and survive in a bubble. It’s all about integrating a campaign, said Kurtz.
Last week, Zuberance sponsored an event held by the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association’s (SVAMA) on “The Next Step in Social: Beyond Listening & Engagement” at the Adobe headquarters in San Jose, CA. The highly engaged audience was there to gain insights from top marketers from Adobe, Intuit, Altimeter Group, and Zuberance on energizing Brand Advocates and measuring social media ROI. Take a look at the panel recording below.
Keynote Presentation by Chris Arens, Partner, Catalyst S+F
Panel Discussion: The Next Step in Social: Beyond Listening & Engagement
Featured Panel:
Moderator – Chris Arens, noted influencer, author and marketing/ad agency veteran
Globalization of business is not an excuse for lacking a good relationship with your customers.
The moment you start calling your customers “end users” respect goes out the door. They are PEOPLE.
“Thinking about buying an Advocacy army? Forget it. You can’t buy love.” -@christianarens
“Recommendations are the new advertising.” – CMO of Visa
B2B users are the heaviest users of social media, so it pays to have a strong community to guide them to your brand.
Measuring social media ROI varies across businesses. Zuberance developed ROA (Return on Advocacy) to measure the value of a recommendation.
“Would you really stay away from social media even if there was no ROI? No, of course not.” – @robfuggetta
9 out of 10 people are listening but not posting on branded social channels. Deal with negative comments publicly and show your community that you’re listening. Some of the best campaigns come from taking negative responses and fixing it, which can turn detractors into Advocates.
Intuit invites their Advocates into the “Intuit Inner Circle” where they are given access to exclusive events and information.
The voice of customer helps fuel innovation. Adobe uses their Facebook fan page as a forum to engage with users, gain insight, and bring that info back to product development.
“Social media is bringing people into the company. It’s not about getting through gate keepers anymore.” – @mariapoveromo
The key to energizing Word of Mouth? Simply give Advocates the tools to recommend in ways that are easy, convenient, are distributable across channels.
Thank you again to the panelists and everyone who came out!
Last night, Zuberance sponsored the event held by the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association’s (SVAMA) on “The Next Step in Social: Beyond Listening & Engagement” at the Adobe headquarters in San Jose, CA. The highly engaged audience was there to gain insights from top marketers from Adobe, Intuit, Altimeter Group, and Zuberance on energizing Brand Advocates and measuring social media ROI.
*Note- We will have the recorded version of the panel discussion available here on Zuber Rants next week. Stay tuned!
Here are some of the key takeaways from the discussion:
Globalization of business is not an excuse for lacking a good relationship with your customers.
The moment you start calling your customers “end users” respect goes out the door. They are PEOPLE.
“Thinking about buying an Advocacy army? Forget it. You can’t buy love.” -@christianarens
“Recommendations are the new advertising.” – CMO of Visa
B2B users are the heaviest users of social media, so it pays to have a strong community to guide them to your brand.
Measuring social media ROI varies across businesses. Zuberance developed ROA (Return on Advocacy) to measure the value of a recommendation.
“Would you really stay away from social media even if there was no ROI? No, of course not.” – @robfuggetta
9 out of 10 people are listening but not posting on branded social channels. Deal with negative comments publicly and show your community that you’re listening. Some of the best campaigns come from taking negative responses and fixing it, which can turn detractors into Advocates.
Intuit invites their Advocates into the “Intuit Inner Circle” where they are given access to exclusive events and information.
The voice of customer helps fuel innovation. Adobe uses their Facebook fan page as a forum to engage with users, gain insight, and bring that info back to product development.
“Social media is bringing people into the company. It’s not about getting through gate keepers anymore.” – @mariapoveromo
The key to energizing Word of Mouth? Simply give Advocates the tools to recommend in ways that are easy, convenient, are distributable across channels.
Thank you to the panelists and everyone who came out!
Last week, we teamed up with Big Fuel and brought the Brand Advocacy Series to New York where top marketers discussed “How to Turn Word of Mouth and Social Media into Sales.” The panel provided attendees with insights on the value of brand advocacy and what companies like JetBlue, Microsoft, and Kotex are doing to energize Word of Mouth.
An Advocate is someone who recommends brands or products without being paid to do so. Use the”Ultimate Question” to identify Advocates: “How likely are you to recommend our brand to your friends and colleagues?” Someone who scores 9 or 10 on a scale from 1 to 10 is an Advocate.
JetBlue conducts surveys, looks at email, and discussions in social media. They all add up to create the “Voice of the Customer.”
Influencers and Advocates are not the same. Advocates are consumers that don’t necessarily have to be bloggers, but within their own social circles they’re very influential. But having an influencer be an Advocate for your brand is the ideal situation because they recommend in a genuine way and have significant reach.
92% trust WOM from their peers, but only 18% trust bloggers. Nothing is more influential than people you know.
JetBlue: We want everyone to be a promoter of our company regardless of how many people are following you.
JetBlue: We saw 13 million of media dollars generated from doing the “All you can fly in a month” campaign. The community that formed through this campaign organized a party in Vegas (on their own) where over 200 people attended. Jetblue thanked the community by showing up to the Vegas party with boxes of sweatshirts. JetBlue didn’t do anything more than set up and host the community. They didn’t do anything necessarily to “juice” it.
Zuberance is dead set against giving incentives to get people to recommend. While it’s NOT OK to incentivize advocates, it IS OK to thank them after recommending your brand.
The key to energizing Advocates is to make it easy for them to recommend.
Content drives conversation and the right content can drive the conversation you want.
Microsoft: Advocates are invaluable to us. We don’t have the influence that an advocate has. We simply can’t have the same impact as an advocate. Coming from Microsoft will never be as impactful.
How do you get people to talk about sensitive subjects? Answer is the engagement point, where the brand and the consumer meet. Connect with them on something that’s important to them. Example: Kotex fits, period. It’s about “what fits you.” So it was about taking the issue personal. What was important to the young woman.
“The 6am Test” – What’s important to consumers when they wake up? Be relevant to your audience on their agenda? Leverage the interests and behaviors of the people you’re talking to. Understand the person you’re talking to before you engage.
You have to earn the right to monetize. You do that through engagement.
Listen (or download the audio) of the podcast discussion here.
Live from NYC: How to Turn WOM and Social Media into Sales 5/17/11[ 58:47 ]Play Now | Play in Popup
Download: Top 5 Myths of B2B Word of Mouth.
Some key takeaways from this report are as follows:
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