Download: Consumer Electronics Company Gets 5% Conversions By Energizing Brand Advocates

This case study highlights a leading consumer electronics company that was recently facing a marketing crisis. Negative Word of Mouth for their new flagship product was hurting their reputation and sales. So they turned to their most enthusiastic customers (AKA their Brand Advocates) and energized them to create social recommendations for the brand and product.

In only a few months the company has:

• Energized thousands of Brand Advocates to create social recommendations
• Increased its star ratings on a leading shopping site from 2.8 to 4 stars
• Recorded a 5% sales conversion rate, 10x higher than normal

Download the case study and learn how to:

• Identify Brand Advocates by name and email address
• Mobilize Advocates to create social recommendations and drive sales
• Track results from social recommendation programs in real-time

We want to hear from you!  Feel free to share your thoughts on the whitepaper below.

Forrester Research Inc Analyst, Josh Bernoff, released a report recently entitled, “Competitive Strategy in the Age of the Customer.” The report discusses the only sustainable competitive advantage in the current customer-centric era: engagement. Below are some highlights from the report.

• 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.

Brands- Stop thinking that all eyes and ears are on you. All eyes and ears are actually on your customers. Download “Competitive Strategy in the Age of the Customer” here.

-Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance

To download the white paper, click here.

Marketers currently face a barrage of challenges and shifts in the way consumers engage with their brands. The over-saturation of advertising, and an ever-increasing distrust of ads, has led to a decline in the effectiveness of Paid Media. All the while, Earned Media is only gaining momentum, and for good reason. Today, it’s Earned Media impressions that are building brands and paving the way for an open dialogue between companies and their customers.

Download the white paper and learn:

• Earned Media is the most trusted and credible form of content for a brand
• Social media has amplified the sheer quantity and reach of Earned Media
• 25 to 40% of all traffic and lead generation comes from Earned Media
• Earned Media Lasts
• Earned Media is Measurable

Paid vs. Earned media was also the topic of our recent webinar featuring Forrester’s Sean Corcoran, Edelman Digital’s David Armano, and Zuberance’s Rob Fuggetta.

Click here to watch the webinar recording, “A Marketing Imperative: Balancing Paid vs. Earned Media.”

-Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance

Last week The Customer Collective released an ebook on “New Trends in CRM” that offers a variety of perspectives from thought leaders to help you think about leveraging CRM and related tools to achieve concrete results.

Download “New Trends in CRM.”

Below are a few of the highlights.

Charles Green (Founder and CEO, Trusted Advisor Associates) wrote a chapter on “How Social Media are Ruining Your Lead Qualification Strategy” and states that traditional lead qualification assumes there is an infinite number of leads that are independent of each other. In the age of social media, the fact is, your customers and prospects talk to each other; and the more they talk, the more they build impressions. Brands need to help their leads, offer them value, and create future demand. Don’t treat them as unconnected, blank faces.

Cheryl Hanna (Blogger, Service Untitled) contributed a chapter called “Use Social CRM to Improve Communications” that explained how to leverage Twitter and Social CRM in general. Besides listening, engagement, and damage control, leverage Twitter for market tracking- companies can track end users and consumers who are recommending products but aren’t necessarily customers (i.e. didn’t personally purchase the product) and leverage social media to convert them to customers.

The chapter contributed by JD Lasica (CEO, Socialmedia.biz), “Four Experts on How to Turn Social Media into Sales,” covered the panel discussion from our San Francisco social media event in October, which was part of the Brand Advocacy Series. Some key takeaways:

• Becky Brown (Director of Social Media Strategy, Intel)- Find people who are not your Advocates, but your negative Advocates and take the issues on yourself instead of outsourcing social media or leaving it up to a college grad. These are real customers talking about your brand, so engage with them directly.
• Tony Lee (VP of Marketing, TiVo)- If you’re not failing quickly when experimenting with marketing initiatives, you’re not doing an interesting enough experiment.
• Rob Fuggetta (Founder and CEO, Zuberance)- The ROI of Word of Mouth marketing campaigns? “Put $1 in and get $10 back.” This is earned media, not paid media where fabrication and marketing speak hold sway.
• Michael Brito (VP of Social Media, Edelman Digital)- Advocates and influencers are distinct segments. Advocates are talking about your brand whether you ignore them or not; influencers often require incentives. If you look at your Advocates across the web, their reach is much greater than being featured on the front page of TechCrunch.

David Brock, David Tyner, and Esteban Kolsky also shared their insights on trends in CRM. Click here to read more.

A leading California fitness chain generates qualified leads and new memberships by tapping into their highly satisfied customer base.

Download the Brand Advocacy case study now.

With high customer satisfaction and advocacy scores, Club One‘s #1 source of memberships has always come from Word of Mouth referrals. By identifying and energizing their highly satisfied customers (Brand Advocates) through the Zuberance Advocate Platform, the fitness chain was able to systematically leverage the power of Word of Mouth driving qualified leads and new memberships. Club One put an offer into the hands of their Advocates, who then shared offers with their friends through email and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The result? A 9X ROA (Return on Advocacy.)

Download the case study to learn how Club One:

• Identified their best customers, creating an army of Club One Advocates
• Energized their Advocates to share offers to their social networks
• Generated a 9X ROA (Return on Advocacy)

Take a look at the video below where Kari Bedgood (Director of Marketing and PR, Club One) describes how Club One has been mobilizing their Advocates to drive sales and positive Word of Mouth.

Chili’s Grill & Bar has the largest and most successful brand advocacy program to date. They are tapping into the authentic enthusiasm of their best customers, mobilizing them to spread positive Word of Mouth and drive sales. Once identified, Chili’s Advocates willingly created reviews, rated Chili’s restaurants, and shared offers without any incentive. Chili’s Advocate channel has proved to be a highly cost-effective marketing force; one that continues to grow and can be leveraged in multiple ways over time to drive sales.

Download the Case Study to learn how Chili’s:

• Identified their Advocates through multiple channels
• Mobilized Advocates to create reviews and publish to them Yelp
• Energized Advocates to share offers with their social networks
• Generated millions of influence impressions via the Advocate channel

Read the Word of Mouth and Brand Advocacy case study now!

Download: What’s a Brand Advocate Worth?

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how much a Facebook fan is worth, with estimates ranging from zero to $137. Forrester points out that Facebook fans have no intrinsic value unless they do something to provide business value to the company. “It is what companies do with fans that create value, not merely that a brand has fans,” says Forrester’s Augie Ray.

While people may question the value of a Facebook fan, there is little debate that Brand Advocates have real business value. But what exactly is a Brand Advocate worth? Our latest whitepaper addresses this question, stating that Brand Advocates are worth at least 5x more than average customers.

Why?

1. Brand Advocates spend at least twice as much as average customers.
2. Unlike average customers, Brand Advocates go out of their way to recommend their favorite brands and products. These recommendations drive sales.
3. We estimate that the value of this advocacy means that Advocates are worth an additional 3X more than average customers.

In “What’s a Brand Advocate Worth?” you will find:

• A in-depth explanation as to why Brand Advocates are worth 5x more than average customers
• Examples of the value of Brand Advocates from three product categories
• Zuberance Brand Advocate Value Calculator: a formula for calculating the value of your company’s Brand Advocates

Download whitepaper

What are your thoughts? You can leave your comments below or to schedule a discussion with the author, Rob Fuggetta (Founder/CEO of Zuberance), please email cara@zuberance.com.

Learn how three companies are harnessing the power of social media and Brand Advocates to generate measurable increases in sales and positive Word of Mouth. This new report from Zuberance is jam-packed with real-world data and results from the front lines of social advocacy.

One of the companies in the report is getting a 59% conversion rate to action by energizing its Advocates.

Access the report here. Make sure to register receive the report today.