This is the presentation from our latest webinar, “How to Avoid Becoming Social Media Roadkill: Top 5 Ways to Combat Negative Word of Mouth” featuring Travis Murdock, VP of Edelman. Please feel free to contact us to discuss how Zuberance technology can help your company turn social media into sales.

In the Social Media Age, where a handful of bad Tweets can taint your brand, no company is immune from online brand critics.

In this Social Media webinar we addressed:

• How to defend yourself from online brand critics
• How to leverage your Brand Advocates to combat negative Word of Mouth
• When to fight back, and when to sashay away

There were some great questions asked by the audience. Here are a few of them that were discussed:

1) Who should respond to negative word of mouth?

Not CEOs- Take Whole Foods for example: Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, was caught posting positive comments about his company and negative comments about his competitors under a pseudo name. Instead, let your advocates respond. They are authentic, trusted customers who willingly spread positive word of mouth to combat complaints.

2) How do you address a customer who is outraged? Do you handle it on Facebook or do you take it offline?

First, companies need to understand how common and widespread the complaint is to determine whether to respond to an individual. For broad complaints, companies should address the issue publicly, and also at a personal level when possible. If the complaint is regarding an issue specific to a customer’s personal product or account, companies can resolve it privately to make sure a customer’s personal needs are met. It is also important to determine if the same person is complaining under multiple screen names. Jack Neff, from Adage, suggests correlating online complaints with call center volume to clarify the scope of the complaint.

3) What if the negative reviews are coming from closed system like Apple’s app store?

Companies can energize their advocates so that the positive reviews are highlighted rather than the negative reviews. Brands should also look to other places online where prospects are reading content, seeing reviews, and having conversations that are influencing purchase decisions, and energize advocates to post positive comments in these places. It is useful to establish an ambassador inside the company for each social media channel to learn the culture, build relationships, and contribute to the community. If a widespread complaint surfaces, companies can look to these ambassadors to help diffuse the issue because they are already respected by their followers within the specific social media channel.

Related posts:

1. How To Reduce Churn & Boost Loyalty in Three Easy Steps by Leveraging Brand Advocates
2. Webinar 1/27: Learn The Secrets Behind E.L.F Cosmetics Social Media Success
3. WEBINAR: How To Turn Social Media into Sales. David Spark Guest Speaker

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.

Related posts:

1. How To Reduce Churn & Boost Loyalty in Three Easy Steps by Leveraging Brand Advocates
2. WEBINAR: How To Turn Social Media into Sales. David Spark Guest Speaker
3. Brand Advocates: Do They Influence Sales?

UPDATE:

The recording of the live Social Media webinar with David Spark and Rob Fuggetta is available now. Take a look. I’m sure you will be amazed at the results that Zuberance has been able to achieve for three large consumer brands.  The webinar shows you the results of how Zuberance technology turns social media into sales.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010 11 AM PDT/2 PM EDT

Leading companies are harnessing the power of social media and Brand Advocates now to super-charge their sales. In this free, interactive webinar, you’ll learn how to leverage social media to:

• Generate qualified leads and sales
• Drive traffic and boost search engine rankings
• Turn Facebook Fans & Twitter Followers into a Virtual Salesforce

The webinar will feature:

• Real-world case studies
• Practical tips and advice
• Social media metrics

Popular social media blogger David Spark will be joining us as guest speaker.

Register now! Space is limited!

Get a free T-shirt!
First 50 attendees will get a free Zuberance t-shirt.

Related posts:

1. Top 5 Ways to Turn Social Media Into Sales Now
2. Ted Rubin and Rob Fuggetta on How To Turn Social Media Into Sales Now – Recorded Webinar
3. WEBINAR: How to Avoid Becoming Social Media Roadkill

Advocates are companies’ most loyal customers. They’re highly engaged consumers who go out of their way to recommend their favorite brands and products on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Amazon, and more plus offline. There are 500 billon peer impressions on the social web today (Forrester), rivaling ad impressions.

But how do you leverage that Brand Advocate power at scale?

Here are ten ways brands are leveraging their Advocates now at scale via the Zuberance Advocate Platform.

1. Rate & review your products
2. Create testimonials
3. Share content with their social networks like videos, white papers, how-to guides
4. Share promotional offers with their social networks, driving qualified leads and sales
5. Get friends to join loyalty clubs
6. Recommend your brand, products, or services by clicking on “I Recommend This” badges
7. Answer prospects’ questions, reducing shopping cart abandonment and increasing conversions
8. Respond to blog postings about your brand, product, or service
9. Provide feedback about why they recommend your brands, products, or services
10. Give you valuable ideas on how to improve your products and services

Zuberance is the first company with a technology platform that harnesses the power of Advocates at scale and turns it into leads and sales for brands.

Related posts:

1. Brand Advocates and Peer Influence Analysis: 500 billion peer impressions per year
2. How To Reduce Churn & Boost Loyalty in Three Easy Steps by Leveraging Brand Advocates
3. Advocate Analytics: Measuring The Impact of Brand Advocates and Impact on Sales

Brand Advocates can help your brand reduce churn and boost loyalty. In this post we explore three ways to empower your Advocates and customers to help your brand reach those goals.

1. Involve highly satisfied customers in Advocacy activities

First, by involving highly-satisfied customers in advocacy activities like creating reviews and testimonials, you are increasing customer engagement — a key driver of loyalty — among your most valuable customers. A study by Comscore and Yahoo found that Brand Advocates are significantly more loyal, and are more likely to repurchase or recommend the specific brand than non-Advocates. (Source: “Engaging Advocates through Search and Social Media,” Comscore, Yahoo.)  The study used two respected scales of loyalty: the Burke SCO Scale and the Net Promoter Score.

2. New customers referred by Advocates are more loyal

Second, new customers referred by Brand Advocates will be more loyal than customers acquired through traditional marketing and promotions. According to research by customer loyalty expert Fred Reichheld, referred customers spend more money on each purchase, buy more often, and refer more frequently. Here’s what Reichheld says in the “The Loyalty Effect:”

“Customers who show up on the strength of a personal recommendation tend to be of higher quality – that is to be more profitable and stay with the business longer – than customers who respond to conquest advertising, sales pitches, or price promotions.”

3. How to reduce churn?  Empower new customers to spread positive WOM

Studies prove that WOM is highly influential. 90% of consumers trust WOM; only 14% trust advertising (Source: Roper.) Negative WOM spreads like wildfire. Members who hear or read about negative WOM may cancel their memberships and even encourage others to do the same. By energizing your Advocates, Zuberance enables brands  to amplify positive WOM and increase loyalty.

The more involved your customers are with your brand, the less likely they are to churn. By leveraging Advocates to help promote these value-added activities among existing members, a Zuberance-powered program will further enable your brand to reduce churn.

As the Zuberance-powered program progresses, we quantify the impact of WOM on churn. For example, we can measure the loyalty levels of members referred as a result of the Zuberance-powered program vs. new customers who came in via other marketing approaches. This will enable you to create an additional metric in addition to the ones we have in place now (shares, clicks, reviews, impressions, conversions, etc.)

Related posts:

1. WOM Rule #3: Advocates are different than loyal customers.
2. Top 10 Things Advocates will do for Your Brand
3. Exclusive Report: How 3 Companies are Turning Social Media into Sales by Leveraging Brand Advocates

Forrester has just announced its Peer Influence Analysis. In order to make Forrester’s study more tangible for our readers, we’ve put together a brand advocate influence chart that estimates the reach that one of our customers. Once the customer started using our platform to energize their brand advocate base, the level of peer influence multiplied exponentially driving conversion rates upward.

The interesting thing about this projection is that because the content creator is an Advocate (not a marketer), prospects trust this peer recommendation much more than they would if the message came from a brand.

Projected Advocate Influence

This is the first-ever analysis of the scale of peer influence on the social web. Peer influence is what Zuberance enables. It’s a peer (friend or colleague) using social media to tell their friends and colleagues about products and services.

Forrester uses the metric of impressions to measure peer influence. This enables marketers to use a familiar metric to measure the scale of Word of Mouth.  According to Forrester, there are 500 billion peer influence impressions per year in the US, a vast “pool of influence” as Forrester calls it. In other words, the amount of peer influence is massive. And since 90% of prospects trust peer recommendations vs. 14% trust advertising, peer impressions drive sales.

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Things Advocates will do for Your Brand
2. Brand Advocates: Do They Influence Sales?
3. How To Reduce Churn & Boost Loyalty in Three Easy Steps by Leveraging Brand Advocates

Brand Advocates are like gold. Once you’ve identified them and engaged them properly, then you’ve found a virtually untapped and self-motivated sales force for your brand. Brand Advocates spread the word about your brand and products via word of mouth online and offline.

But what happens after you have managed to engage by producing a win-win relationship between the brand and the Brand Advocate?

The main challenge that brands are facing now is how to measure the impact that Brand Advocates have on the bottom line. There are tools to measure engagement and there are tools to measure reach and now even a new concept introduced by Twitter aptly named resonance.

These kind of metrics are great when you want to measure reach and brand awareness but fall short when it comes to actually maesure direct impact in sales.

The main issue facing brands is how to apply a layer of accountability and reporting to the social sharing  and how to turn that into sales.

Zuberance is tackling this issue head on. We have been using our Social Marketing Platform to identify, measure and track brand advocates. Zuberance identifies, measures and tracks Brand Advocates and we provide insights on how to take advantage of this channel.

The metrics and platform we offer can help you tackle some of your marketing challenges right away. Please take a look below and see if the ways we are helping marketers tackle their social media challenges.

Top 10 Ways Advocates Can Help You Meet Your Marketing Objectives

1. Monetize Social Media
2. Create awareness of your brand, category, product, or service
3. Amplify positive Word of Mouth
4. Combat negative Word of Mouth
5. Extend your salesforce at very low cost
6. Improve search results
7. Generate qualified sales leads and traffic with relevant clicks and conversions
8. Answer prospects’ questions
9. Bring new customers to you
10. Launch new products

Related posts:

1. Brand Advocates: Do They Influence Sales?
2. How To Reduce Churn & Boost Loyalty in Three Easy Steps by Leveraging Brand Advocates
3. Top 10 Ways Brand Advocates Can Help You Meet Your Marketing Objectives

Is it enough for your brand to be present with a paid link at the point where a customer shows an unmeasured intent of purchase? Is it fair for your brand to pay for a one time action? A single click that evaporates into cyberspace?

Google has started fading from the spotlight fast. It is no longer the wonder kid of the internet and for the first time, facebook took over the reins of the most visited site in the world. Who would’ve thought that normal people sharing every day information can overtake the massive index of websites that Google has been able to collect and serve as search results.

No one can deny that Google continues to be relevant and is one of the most powerful entities fueling the free flow of information across the world. However, Google Adwords, its flagship advertising program is losing its luster in the face of plummeting ROI and conversion rates.

Marketers are looking for options that can allow them to reach consumers, still haunted by the recession and who are watching their disposable income carefully.

But for companies that are driven by a tight bottom line, conversion rates of 5% reflect on the fact that 95% of the time that targeting was wrong.

How can the best search marketing company in the world can get it wrong 95% of the time? Well, it really does not matter, because that 5% conversion rate trumps and outperforms any other marketing channel, except trusted word of mouth.

The problem has not been whether word of mouth is effective but how to escale it and how to accurately track it. Social media is helping but again, social media is a channel and the touch points are dispersed.

How do you scale, measure, identify and track social media actions that can help you sell more?

We will be exploring all these questions and more in future blog posts. Stay tuned! In the mean time take a look at our latest blog post.

Related posts:

1. Is Online Display Advertising Broken?
2. Advocate Analytics: Measuring The Impact of Brand Advocates and Impact on Sales
3. Exclusive Report: How 3 Companies are Turning Social Media into Sales by Leveraging Brand Advocates

We are so excited to have Jeffrey Hayzlett as our guest for our upcoming one-hour live webinar on Wednesday, February 24th at 10 AM Pacific Time. We want to continue (and maybe surpass?) the success we had with our last webinar with Ted Rubin (ELF Cosmetics CMO) as our guest. The response was fantastic so we want to continue to provide you with unique and valuable content through our webinars. Please feel free to register and let us know if you have any questions ahead of time by commenting here or emailing social @ zuberance.com.

You’ll have the chance to ask questions live and to get the answers directly from one of the most knowledgeable and involved CMOs in the industry. Follow this link to register for the webinar at the Zuberance website. Below you will find some more information about the Jeff. You can follow him on Twitter at @JeffreyHayzlett

Jeffrey Hayzlett

Guest: Jeffrey Hayzlett, Eastman Kodak CMO

Jeffrey Hayzlett reveals how Kodak is successfully transforming itself into an innovative leader in digital imaging. He will share his perspectives on what it takes to succeed in the digital age, with a particular focus on how companies can utilize marketing – particularly social media – to build closer relationships with customers, build their brand and create innovative products, and deliver tangible return from their marketing investment.

Attendees will hear how Kodak is utilizing social media and other tools to transform itself; how to multiply the impact of marketing programs by utilizing other people’s money, and how to structure and focus marketing organizations to generate maximum impact.

To complement this fascinating conversation with Jeffrey, we will have the chance to hear from Rob Fuggetta on the power of the advocate and strategies that can be used to identify, mobilize and track advocates.

This is crucial to your company’s success, as a rather small increase on the number of advocates represents a huge gain in terms of market share. According to Delloitte, an increase of six percent points in brand advocates represents a total market share gain of $990 million in the beer industry. We will be blogging more about that research but wanted to give you a taste of what’s coming down the road and how rich the webinar is going to be.

Related posts:

1. Video: Jeffrey Hayzlett with Rob Fuggetta on Social Media and Brand Advocates
2. WEBINAR: How To Turn Social Media into Sales. David Spark Guest Speaker
3. Webinar 1/27: Learn The Secrets Behind E.L.F Cosmetics Social Media Success

Moms make or heavily influence many, if not all purchase decisions in the family. In my family, if my dad made a major purchase decision without consulting my mom first, he could find himself standing in the “Returns” line at the store.

In fact, moms are a powerful and highly influential consumer segment, driving billions in dollars in purchases for a wide range of products and services. As eMarketer points out word-of-mouth and consumer information sites and magazines scored highly. About one-fifth of respondents were influenced by text or video reviews.

So who do moms trust when they’re making purchase decisions? They trust other consumer reviews and Word of Mouth.

A new study by eMarketer shows that moms trust consumer reviews nearly 12 times more than descriptions provided by manufacturers and Word of Mouth up to 5 times more than paid media.

Related posts:

1. Who Do Consumers Trust?
2. Top 9 Word Of Mouth Rules For Building Successful Marketing Programs
3. Debunking Top Five Myths of B2B Word-of-Mouth Marketing