Need more evidence that Word of Mouth is the most powerful driver of business for B2B marketers?
48% of B2B marketers say half or more of their business comes from Word of Mouth, according to a new Zuberance poll.
We conducted the poll during our September 21, 2011 webinar, “Secrets of B2B Social Media and Word of Mouth marketing.”
-Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance
The following is an excerpt from the upcoming book, “Energize! How to Turn Fans, Followers, and Loyal Customers into Social Media Marketing Machines,” by Rob Fuggetta, Founder & CEO, Zuberance.
Most people assume that advocacy is limited only to sexy or cool brands like Apple, Starbucks, or Porsche. Not true. Advocates of business brands can also be just as enthusiastic.
Hard-Core CDW Advocate: Justin Dorfman
Justin Dorfman is a self-described “hard-core CDW Advocate.” (CDW is a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government, education, and healthcare. Ranked No. 38 on Forbes’ list of America’s Largest Private Companies, CDW features dedicated account managers who help customers choose the right technology products and services to meet their needs.)
Dorfman, 26, is a support engineer for NetDNA, a content delivery network based in Los Angeles. Dorfman’s passion for CDW was ignited back in 2004 when he bought his first product – a RAID controller, a device that manages physical disk drives – from CDW while working for Western Costume Company, a costume warehouse in Hollywood. He was so impressed with CDW’s responsiveness and customer service that he said: “Oh my God, I’m in love with this company.”
The Interal CDW Champion
Since then, he’s purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of computer gear from CDW while serving in IT positions for other companies. For example, when he started a new position as a junior systems engineer in December 2009 at Mahalo, he started buying gear from CDW. “I turned Mahalo into a CDW customer,” says Dorfman. In the 16 months he was at Mahalo, the company purchased about $200,000 in computer gear from CDW, largely as a result of Dorfman’s enthusiastic advocacy.
CDW has never paid Dorfman for his recommendations. “I put my reputation on the line for CDW and they’ve stood by me. They deliver every time,” says Dorfman. He adds: “They’re reliable. They don’t lie. You get your own account manager. There’s no calling and waiting on hold. They care for IT professionals. They know what we’re up against. They really get it.”
Establishing Advocate Relationships
Dorfman has become Facebook friends with CDW Senior Account Manager, Matt Cipolla. Cipolla has even recommended Dorfman on LinkedIn. “We know each other’s girlfriend’s names. We’re on a first-name basis. You’re just not going to get that from other IT companies,” says Dorfman.
In addition to evangelizing CDW to colleagues and friends offline, Dorfman recommends CDW online on Twitter (@jdorfman, where he has 443 followers as of July 2011;) by re-Tweeting CDW’s content and deals; talking them up on his blog (blog.justindorfman.com); his personal website Frugal IT; and on Spiceworks, an online community for IT professionals, where he created a “I love CDW” icon.
Lauren McCadney, Sr. Segment Marketing Manager for CDW, says: “I believe he (Justin) has come to represent the future of marketing: influential Brand Advocates that establish a personal relationship with their favorite brands. I’ve worked him for more years than I can count. And it was only in the last five years that I’ve come to really know customers like Justin as both a source of consumer insight but also as a friend.”
Read more: “Energize! How to Turn Fans, Followers, and Loyal Customers into Social Media Marketing Machines”
Read more: Extreme Brand Advocate Stories
-Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance
The following is an excerpt from the upcoming book, “Energize! How to Turn Fans, Followers, and Loyal Customers into Social Media Marketing Machines,” by Rob Fuggetta, Founder & CEO, Zuberance.
Melody Overton of Seattle is such a passionate Starbucks Advocate that her moniker is “Starbucks Melody.”
“I’ve been called Starbucks Melody even when I’m in the courtroom,” laughs Overton, an attorney who works in downtown Seattle, not far from where Starbucks was founded at Pike Place Market in March 1971.
Starbucks has more than 24 million fans on Facebook and 1.6 million Twitter followers, as of August 2011. But it’s hard to imagine any Starbucks customer more knowledgeable or passionate about Starbucks than Starbucks Melody.
Overton probably knows more about Starbucks than most Starbucks employees including their baristas (not unusual for Advocates of Starbucks and other brands.) When Overton talks about Starbucks, you can hear the excitement in her voice, like she’s had a few too many lattes.
Overton is the author of a popular blog all about Starbucks entitled “StarbucksMelody.com.” She also tweets about Starbucks (@SbuxMel), where she has about 4,000 followers. Overton is not a Starbucks employee or paid consultant. “I’m not on Starbucks’ payroll. They’ve never even given me a gift card,” she points out. Instead, like millions of other Advocates of other brands, Overton recommends Starbucks because she wants to share her authentic enthusiasm for Starbucks with others.
A Passion for Coffee
“I have a passion for coffee,” says Overton, who visits her local Starbucks “ritualistically twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.” Her favorite Starbucks coffees are the reserve blends prepared in Starbucks Clover® brewing system, found in some Starbucks stores. On those rare warm summer afternoons in Seattle – for Seattle, that means anything over 70 degrees – Overton likes drinking Starbucks iced passion tea or iced green tea.
“I like the way it (coffee) really has the ability to bring people together,” writes Overton in her blog. “I like the conversations around it. I like being able to have a common ground to connect with people about. Most of all, I fall in love with those moments when you can see some deep joy in a person’s eyes over discovering a new coffee, learning about coffee, or just hanging around the coffee – even if not drinking it.”
Her favorite Starbucks store? “Oooh, that’s a tough question. But like I’ve said on my blog, very high up there would be the store at First & Pike in Seattle, at the entrance to the Pike Place Market. It has beautiful design. The customer service is good. And it was the first Starbucks store to get two Clovers,” Overton says.
Melody Gets “Totally Sucked In”
Overton’s love affair with Starbucks began when she moved to Seattle in 1989 from nearby Tacoma, Washington, where she was in the air force. Overton’s attraction to Starbucks was as strong as Starbuck’s Italian roast.
Overton’s passion for Starbucks kicked into high gear in 2008, when Howard Shultz came out of retirement to the revive the faltering company, which he said had lost some of its “romance” and “soul” as it became a global behemoth. In a highly unusual move, Starbucks actually closed down all of its stores on February 26, 2008 for one evening to train its baristas.
“2008 just rattled me. What an insane year that was for me, as a Starbucks lover. I said to myself: ‘Wow, this is really cool.’ I just got totally sucked in. I became so excited about Starbucks,” says Overton. She was particularly impressed by the launch in April 2008 of MyStarbucksidea.com, Starbucks’s first online community. “I loved it! I felt like I really had a voice; that I could connect with Starbucks and with other people like me and make a difference,” she says.
Melody’s Most Memorable Starbucks Moment
Overton’s most memorable Starbucks moment occurred three years later in January 2011, when she attended the official unveiling of Starbucks’s updated logo. “That was amazing,” says Overton, one of only three consumers Starbucks invited to the event, held at the company’s headquarters in Seattle. “Oh my God, I even got my picture taken with (Starbucks CEO) Howard Shultz. When I walked out of there I was on cloud nine. I felt like I had died and gone to heaven,” she gushes.
Rampant Starbucks Advocacy
Overton continues advocating Starbucks today to readers of her blog, Twitter followers, family, friends, colleagues, and just about anyone who’ll listen. “I’ve been known to randomly bring up Starbucks in all sorts of places, even when I’m sitting in a hair salon,” laughs Overton.
“The hardest people to sell Starbucks to aren’t in Seattle,” says Overton. “People here are hugely over-caffeinated,” she states. “My biggest accomplishment was when I got my sister-in-law, who lives in southern California, to drink a Starbucks pumpkin spice latte,” says Overton.
Exactly how many people has Overton converted to the Starbucks religion as a result of her rampant advocacy? “Hmmm, I’m not sure. It’s probably in the hundreds, or more.”
“I’ll have to ponder that over a French press,” she chuckles.
Read more: “Energize! How to Turn Fans, Followers, and Loyal Customers into Social Media Marketing Machines”
Read more: Extreme Brand Advocate Stories
-Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance
My biggest inspiration at Zuberance has always been our customers like Intuit, Rubio’s, and CDW and their fanatical Brand Advocates.
Now, I’m putting their stories in a book, entitled “Energize! How to Turn Fans, Followers, and Enthusiastic Customers into Social Media Marketing Machines.”
In the coming weeks, you’ll get sneak previews of the book here on the ZuberRants blog.
WHY ENERGIZE!?
There are lots of books about social media.
(My friend Michael Brito has a new book called “Smart Business, Social Business.” I highly recommend it.)
But until now, there hasn’t been a book on how to turn Advocates into a marketing force.
Energize! fills that gap.
BEYOND SOCIAL MEDIA
Energize! isn’t a social media marketing book, per se.
It’s about passionate Brand Advocates like George Hamma, an avid BMW Mini Advocate whose enthusiastic recommendations have inspired five friends to buy their own Mini’s, worth about $200,000 to BMW; Melody Overton (AKA “Starbucks Melody”), a Seattle attorney who is a walking Starbucks encyclopedia and who knows more about Starbucks than its baristas; and Justin Dorfman, a CDW Champion, whose enthusiastic recommendations have driven several hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales for the online IT retailer. (Read: Extreme Brand Advocate Stories.)
And it’s about innovative marketers and visionary business leaders that are transforming their companies and delivering ground-breaking marketing results by activating their Brand Armies. People like Lauren McCadney, who is championing advocacy at CDW; Porter Gale, a social media rock-star and former CMO at Virgin America; and Eric Ryan, the CEO of Method Products, whose avid customers (“People Against Dirty”) have turned household cleaners into a social movement.
A HANDBOOK FOR BRAND ADVOCACY
Today, as the power has shifted from marketers to social-media powered consumers, getting more “social recommendations” (recommendations on the social web) has become the Holy Grail. Seventy-one percent of marketers say advocacy is now a top priority.
Energize! will show you how.
You’ll learn how to energize your Brand Army by getting them to recommend your brand and products via reviews, stories, answers to prospects’ questions, sharing promotional offers and content, and more.
Energize! will feature more than 100 real-world case studies, profiles of Brand Advocates and marketers, plus tips and tricks on how to build and activate your Brand Army.
I hope you have as much fun reading Energize! as I’m having writing it.
Stay tuned.
-Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance
Title: Secrets of B2B Social Media & Word of Mouth Marketing
Date: Wednesday, September 21
Time: 11am PST/ 2pm EST
Twitter hashtag: #B2BWOM
As a B2B marketer, are you harnessing the power of social media and Word of Mouth to drive leads and sales?
Register now to attend this free webinar featuring real-world case studies from leading B2B companies like Intuit, Adobe, Microsoft, CDW and more!
What You’ll Learn
Expert Presenters
Laura Messerschmitt, VP of Marketing, Outright (@ljmesser)
Laura Messerschmitt is the Vice President of Marketing at Outright, an online bookkeeping solution for small businesses. Prior to Outright, she spent seven years with Intuit, where she led social media marketing efforts and advocacy programs. She holds a B.S. in Mathematics (Summa Cum Laude) from UCLA and an MBA from Stanford University.
Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO of Zuberance (@robfuggetta)
Rob has more than 20 years of experience in Word of Mouth marketing. His WOM strategies have created marketing success for Apple, Intuit, Norton, and many others. Fuggetta is a frequent speaker and author of the upcoming book, “Energize! How to Turn Fans, Followers, and Enthusiastic Customers into Social Media Marketing Machines.”
Harshly critical comments like these on TripAdvisor, Amazon, Yelp and other shopping or review sites are killing your sales and ruining your brand’s cherished reputation.
Depending on the size of your company, negative reviews like this may be costing your business hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
Here’s why:
1. Online reviews influence what people buy. 83% of online consumers say reviews influence their purchase decisions, according to Opinion Research. In the hotel industry, travelers are 3X more likely to book a room at a hotel with 5 stars vs. a hotel with 3 stars, Morpace has found.
2. Negative online reviews are a “silent killer.” Prospects don’t call you and say, “Hey, I just decided to eat at a different restaurant because I heard your service sucks.” They just go to a different restaurant.
How to Estimate Impact of Negative Reviews
Here’s a simple formula of how much business is lost by negative Word of Mouth in the form of negative reviews, using a restaurant as an example:
Brand Under Attack? Fight Back!
Identify and energize your Advocates, those highly-satisfied customers who act as champions for your brand and products. Invite them to rate and review your products and services. Make it easy for them to share and publish reviews on shopping and review sites and elsewhere.
Here are a few real-world case studies:
-Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance
From the upcoming book, “Energize! How to Turn Fans, Followers, & Brand Advocates into a Powerful Marketing Force” by Rob Fuggetta.
Here’s one of the biggest myths about B2B Word of Mouth advocacy:
Only a small fraction – maybe 1% to 5% – of customers recommend the business products and services they use.
In fact, about 50% of business customers are Advocates, our surveys of business people have found.
The percentage ranges from 24% for a telecommunications services company to 81% for an IT reseller. (See chart below.)
Our polls are not scientific surveys. But the results point to a clear finding: if you’re a B2B company, you’ve got more Advocates than you think.
If you have 100,000 end users, you may have an army of 50,000 highly trusted, influential, and social media-powered Advocates.
What’s the best way to find out how many customers you have are Advocates?
Ask them if they recommend you. It’s that simple.
Read more about what’s fact and what’s fiction in the world of B2B Word of Mouth marketing here.
-Rob Fuggetta, Founder/CEO, Zuberance
Zuberance Founder/CEO, Rob Fuggetta, was recently interviewed on Live Digital, a weekly half-hour television show about living and working in a digital world, hosted by Shelly Palmer on NBC Universal. (To jump directly to Rob’s segment, fast forward to 17:35.)
Live Digital Episode #59 features:
What does the Skype acquisition mean for Microsoft? Should videogames be considered art? Have apps changed the way we behave, in the morning? And has Sony’s PlayStation Network finally recovered? Shelly chats with Rob Fuggetta about social media branding — MRC International’s Jeff Bander on the effectiveness of online advertising — and, BiteHunter.com’s CEO Gil Harel sheds some light on daily deals. Also included are some great Google tips and cool websites, and Wired.com’s NY Bureau Chief John Abell and Shelly talk about the damage to Sony’s PlayStation Network that cost millions.
Find more episodes of Live Digital with Shelly Palmer here.
-Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance
Zuberance was recently named a winner of the TiE50 Award in the Internet/Social Networking category at TiEcon 2011, the world’s largest conference for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, industry executives, and thought leaders.
This year, the TiE50 program screened 1619 high quality companies worldwide, through a multi-tier screening and judging process. “TiE50 Winner was clearly ranked amongst the best of the breed by a team of 60 highly accomplished and experienced judges. These experts included globally recognized venture capitalists, CEO’s, academia, and serial entrepreneurs,” said Mr. Vish Mishra, Chairman of TiEcon 2011 and President of TiE Silicon Valley. “Being recognized as a TiE50 winner is a true testament to their entrepreneurial spirit and world class caliber,” Mr. Mishra added.
“TiE50 companies this year again represented an extraordinary set of ideas, innovation, and business opportunities. Since its inception two years ago, 94% of TiE50 companies have been funded, attracting over $20 Billion in investments! 42 companies have already exited,” said Ram K. Reddy, Chair TiE50 2011. “We plan to feature our finalists and winners through various channels and outreach programs during the year,” added Mr. Reddy.
You can see the full list of TiE50 Award winning companies here.
-Cara Fuggetta, Marketing Manager, Zuberance
Below is part 4 of 5 of the Chicago Brand Advocacy Series panel discussion on “How to Turn Word of Mouth and Social Media into Sales.”
You can find key takeaways, photos, and more videos from the Chicago Brand Advocacy Series here.
Loading ...
