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“Up to 90% of [marketing] spend goes to advertising and retail promotions. Yet the single most powerful impetus to buy is often someone else’s advocacy.” – David C. Edelman, Principal, McKinsey & Company, in Harvard Business Review”
Marketers are spending money in all the wrong places! To which we say…
Kim Johnston, VP of Marketing for Parallels, a desktop virtualization software company and also a Zuberance customer, was featured in BtoB Magazine today. In her conversation with CMO Close-Up, she discussed how the company is taking advantage of the trend of more Apple products moving into the enterprise, as well as how her experience at Symantec Corp. influenced her current approach.
The interview also highlighted the success Parallels has seen in energizing their Brand Advocates.
“Social for us is very two-way. We learn a lot from them, but it’s also a vehicle that we offer back out. In terms of customer advocacy, we turned on an advocacy program a couple of months ago through an agency called Zuberance. That program yielded well over 1,000 reviews, where business customers in their own words are talking about the impact that Parallels Desktop for Mac has had on their businesses. They’re not hesitating to share that with one another, too. The dialogue is so rich that the customers are sharing with one another. It’s been really nice to see that authentic word-of-mouth marketing is working and doing quite well,” says Kim Johnston.
Read the full BtoB “CMO Close-Up” here.
Kim Johnston was a guest speaker in a recent webinar, “How Box, AVG, and Parallels are Leveraging Customer Advocates to Drive Sales.” Click here to watch now.
Twitter Pumps Up Discovery Feature with Social Signals – CNET
Twitter’s “Discover” feature is getting more dialed in to users’ preferences, a blog post by Twitter Vice President Satya Patel announced this morning. The post says the feature will pay attention to “additional personalization signals” to figure out which stories to display, instead of just showing users what’s trending.
Facebook Sets IPO Date For May 18: Report – Forbes
Facebook has set a planned date for its initial public offering of May 18, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the matter.” The social networking giant is expected to start its roadshow on Monday to pitch the company to potential Wall Street investors, the Journal reports.
79% of Marketers Plan to Increase Spend on Social Media Marketing – eMarketer
As marketers spread their time and resources across digital, social media is becoming a bigger piece of the puzzle. Looking at spending on advertising and marketing tactics, 79% of US marketing professionals said they plan to increase spending on social media marketing or ads in the next 12 months, with mobile and tablet spending not far behind, at 75% and 66%, respectively, as the next areas that will see budget growth.
Report: Cover Images Draw Eyeballs on Facebook Timeline Pages – AllFacebook
Eye-tracking outfit EyeTrackShop turned its eyes to timeline for pages and found that the cover image was king.EyeTrackShop’s findings ran counter to those from another eye-tracking study earlier this month by Simple Usability, which concluded that the importance of cover images was overrated, saying that most users did not notice creative combinations of the cover image and profile image, and many thought of the former as advertising space.
LinkedIn Tops the Forbes Fast Fast Tech 25: Annual List of Growth Kings – Forbes
The crucial question for investors is how much weight you give to things you can’t begin to imagine. That leap of faith is what drives interest in our list of America’s 25 Fastest-Growing Tech Companies. All of them have shown a remarkable ability to defy sales gravity. We combed more than 5,000 publicly traded technology companies, looking for profitable companies with a minimum revenue of $150 million and a minimum market value of $500 million.
WOMM-U Info
Date: May 7-9, 2012
Location: Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel, Chicago
Hosted by: Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)
Zuberance and Restaurant.com are teaming up to present a fantastic case study at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s WOMM-U conference, “Advocacy is Delicious: Turning Restaurant.com Advocates into a Social Marketing Force.”
Restaurant.com is the leading provider of restaurant savings nationwide. The company offers the best deal on every meal at more than 18,000 restaurants nationwide with nearly 50,000 daily gift certificate options. Restaurant.com has helped customers save more than $2 billion since the Arlington Heights, Ill.-based company was founded in 1999. Restaurant.com will describe how they’ve created a thriving group of tens of thousands of Advocates and how they’re energizing these Advocates to spread positive Word of Mouth and drive sales.
Expert Speakers
Chris Krohn, President and Chief Marketing Officer, Restaurant.com (@ckrohn1)
Chris is a veteran of the e-commerce, hospitality and financial services industries. With his strong background in growing entrepreneurial businesses and expertise in marketing, business development and technology, Krohn oversees the Restaurant.com’s marketing and IT functions. Krohn joined Restaurant.com in May 2011 from Whitney Automotive Group, a multi-brand B2C retailer, where he was Chief Marketing Officer and VP Business Development. Krohn’s operating experience also spans the hospitality and financial services industries. He was formerly Vice President of Marketing at Harrah’s Entertainment, head of marketing for Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Managing Director of CME subsidiary, OneChicago LLC.
Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance (@robfuggetta)
As Zuberance CEO, Rob is ultimately responsible for all aspects of the company’s business including product, engineering, operations, customer success, and sales and marketing. Rob is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley who has played a leadership role in three start-ups including Genuity, which went public in June 2000. Rob was formerly a partner at Regis McKenna Inc., the legendary Silicon Valley marketing and communications firm, where he co-led the global Apple business. Rob is the author of “Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force,” to be published by John H. Wiley, Inc. in June 2012.
Below is the recording of our recent webinar, “Brand Advocates on Facebook: What You Need to Know About Timeline, EdgeRank, and Leveraging Your Superfans.”
(Click here to view webinar recording on Slideshare.)
Featured Speakers:
Key Takeaways:
To learn more, download the whitepaper, “Turning Fans and Followers into Brand Advocates.”
Dear Brands,
Consumers don’t trust you.
Sincerely,
The truth.
OK, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but a new study by Nielsen found that consumers are indeed losing faith in paid media and looking to their friends for brand recommendations more than ever before.
(Click on the image to enlarge.)
With the rise of social media and third party review sites, everyone has a voice these days. Even my Grandma told me she wrote a Yelp review of her local Hometown Buffet (she gave it 5/5 stars of course). It is now crucial that brands get their Advocates to venture out on the social web and recommend on their behalf.
Check out these success stories of companies empowering their Advocates:
To learn more about leveraging your trusted and influential Brand Advocates, download “Turning Fans and Followers into Brand Advocates.”
New Nielsen Study: Consumers trust recommendations from peers above all other forms of advertising – ZuberRants
A new study by Nielsen found that consumers are indeed losing faith in paid media and looking to their friends for brand recommendations more than ever before. It is now crucial that brands get their Advocates to venture out on the social web and recommend on their behalf.
Google+ Redesign: Here’s What’s New – Mashable
Google’s social network got a redesign that makes it prettier and easier to navigate. “It accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google,” Google Senior Vice President Vic Gundotra argued in a blog post announcing the redesign.
Foursquare and Tumblr Move to Capture Ad Revenue – Forbes
Nobody has Cracked the Engagement Code. As much as social networks would like brands to think that their targeting abilities will mean a greater return on investment, an 8% drop in ad engagement on Facebook in the last quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012, shows us that the “secret code” to reaching the online audience in a meaningful way has yet to be cracked.
Amazon and eBay Add Pinterest Buttons – ClickZ
Retail is inherently visual, so it comes as no surprise that two of the biggest online sellers – Amazon and eBay – have added Pinterest buttons to product pages.
LinkedIn Rolls Out New Targeted Follower Tools for Marketers – Business Insider
LinkedIn will launch two new functions for companies who have followers on LinkedIn, both of which will be of interest to marketers and advertisers: “Targeted Updates” and “Follower Statistics.”
Date: April 12, 2012 Time: All day event Price: FREE
Webcast provider, BrightTALK, is hosting an all day online summit on the topic of “Social B2B” on April 12 where our Founder/CEO, Rob Fuggetta, will be presenting on brand advocacy.
Social media has definitely been the buzz word for the last decade, but what makes it unique for B2B organizations? Does Facebook and Google+ work for B2B and is LinkedIn the best social network to engage professionals? Experts will share their best practices on social media programs aimed at the B2B buyer, social CRM and the important steps you need to take to become a social business.
Some of the presentations include:
Are you a business owner? How important is Word of Mouth in promoting your products / services? Most likely your answer is VERY IMPORTANT!
And you are not alone. Three years of working with Enterprise Customers have given Zuberance enough experience and data to unequivocally state that the most satisfied customers a Business has, their Brand Advocates, are extremely important for their success; Data from a recent study tells us that:
We deeply believe in the power of Brand Advocacy and the benefits it can bring to your business. In order to make these benefits available more broadly we are releasing Zuberance Self Service (Beta).
In a nutshell: Zuberance Self Service allows any business to identify their most satisfied customers, their Brand Advocates, and then energize these Advocates to generate online reviews and share offers with their social networks. All of the activities are tracked so impact is clearly understood and messaging / offers can be optimized. Zuberance Self Service compiles best practices Zuberance has gathered through three years of catering to Enterprise Brands.
Zuberance Self Service is completely free during the Beta, after the Beta period is over Zuberance Self Service will be free for any company up to 200 Advocates identified; and then charged in a tiered subscription model based on the number of Advocates in the program.
Through the next few months we will be adding more features and capabilities, we look forward to receiving your comments and feedback (please use our online community.)
-Filiberto Selvas, VP of Product, Zuberance
Twitter Adds Embeddable Tweets: 8 Creative Ways to Leverage Them – Social Media Examiner
Embedded tweets allow you to take a tweet or a conversation and post it on your website or in a blog post. You can use this feature to share your Twitter conversation with a larger audience. Read this post to learn how to leverage this new feature in 8 creative ways.
Facebook Adds Yahoo Patent Lawsuit to IPO Filing – Mashable
Facebook updated its $5 billion initial public offering (IPO) filing this week to include the details about its patent battle with Yahoo. This is the third time Facebook has amended its S-1 form. The list of lawsuits against the company seems to grow as the company gets closer to becoming a publicly traded company, which is expected to happen by May.
Google to Launch Third-Party Commenting Platform to Rival Facebook – The Next Web
Google is about to launch a new commenting system that will tie into the search giant’s Google+ platform, web services and web search, a source close to the product’s development confirmed with The Next Web. The Google comment system, which will almost certainly rival that of Facebook, will have deep links to Google’s network of services and websites, indexing comments in Google Search, and most significantly, the system will be available for use on third party sites.
Twitter Rewind: Big Highlights From 2012 to 2006 – Mashable
Six-year-old Twitter is a remarkably different animal than it was when co-founder Jack Dorsey sent the service’s first tweet in March 2006: “just setting up my twttr,” he wrote. To keep the social media powerhouse intact as more people, celebrities and world leaders find their roles in the birdcage, Twitter has evolved its aesthetics, functionality and business model. In this post, Mashable gathered the best moments in Twitter’s eventful existence to help you reminisce.
New Study: Men Seek Online Product Reviews and Tell Their Friends About Their Findings – eMarketer
A new study by Men’s Health magazine and GfK Roper found that men not only compare prices online and read consumer reviews, but they also tell their friends when they learn something positive about a brand or product online. These online shopping activities are significantly higher for product categories like tech, auto, food/cooking, and more.
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