This book is about building a one to one relationship with your prospect to go from customer satisfaction to customer loyalty. For a quick review, customer loyalty means that they will not leave and even forgive mistakes. Customer Loyalty is the holy grail of any organization. Loyal customers do the following:
1. Refer more business by word of mouth.
2. Spend more money with you.
3. Are at the high end of your life time value
4. Forgive mistakes and offer real suggestions for improvement
Now the key is - how do we do this with Business Social Media? We will dive into this with Gary's book.
Simple! You need to understand this or you will lose to your competition. The good news is social media is wide open and most businesses, regardless if they are B2C (business to consumer) or B2B (business to business), do not use this effectively. This means that you can gain a huge competitive advantage over your competitors by simply being first.
Are you a business small business owner and think Social Media is not important? Perhaps you think it is not important because you do not have time to learn it. This is not uncommon in the small business world. I can attest to the fact that you can spend so much of your time in the business that you forget to work ON THE BUSINESS.
Do you run a large organization and simply afraid of the openness of Social Media? This is not uncommon. You see corporate speak that do not allow employees to use Twitter, Facebook and other social mediums. The problem here is that people are talking about your brand and you don't even know it. Take the blinders off and get educated. This has to start at the top of any organization. We will dive into more details now.
I normally dive into the book contents at this point but need to add this section to drive home a point. Here it is in BOLD - TAKE OFF THE BLINDERS AND EMBRACE THE SOCIAL MEDIA PARADIGM AND THE THANK YOU ECONOMY
1. Stupid Quote 1: "This telephone" has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." Western internal memo 1876
2. Stupid Quote 2: "While theoretically and technically TV may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." Lee De Forest, radio pioneer, 1926
3. Brilliant Quote: "If I had a nickel for every time an investor told me this wouldn't work........" Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon
Ok - on with the show....
There are excellent examples in the book on how Social Media can enhance your business or leave you in the dust. I will touch on three points:
1. Thank You Economy Defined - Gary makes a point here to be real with your customers and engage them. This is a pull strategy and not a push strategy. Being real means apologizing when you screw-up, being humble and having a mindset of the customer. This does not mean simple push great deals and your products and services to your customers all the time. What Gary shows, time and again in the book, is that when you build a relationship then the money follows. People understand passion and sincerity. The bull shit meter will go up if you engage people and you are not sincere.
2. Ping / Pong effect - This is where traditional marketing (TV, Direct Mail, Radio) meets Social Marketing (Twitter, Facebook etc. like engagement and marriage). To put this in real perspective, think of traditional marketing as a one night stand. Companies spend millions on a 30 second Super Bowl add and hope they earn enough money to pay for it. As we have seen in the dot.com craze this did not work and wasted millions. Now if you view traditional and social marketing in the same plan then it becomes a marriage. You do a TV spot but with a call to action that people need to go to Facebook, Twitter etc. to continue the chat. This is an effective call to action. This allows you do measure your results and know the numbers of highly engaged prospects / customers. Once this happens then it is up to you to CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION and build a relationship.
3. Avaya Example: This really cemented it for me. We sell our software solution business to business and it is hard to visualize how Social Media will work. It is easy to see the benefits if you are a doctor or dentist. You have the content and expertise to engage your patients through social media to grow your business. The good news is this is wide open because 95% of doctors & dentists don't do this. Avaya sells solutions to businesses. In the book, Gary profiles how Avaya engages their user base and some of the payoff. In a nutshell, they use Twitter to answer technical questions and head off complaints before they mushroom. Avaya received a $250K deal because a happy Twitter subscriber recommended them.
The real power of the Thank You Economy comes from sheer numbers. Remember one thing: 60% of Americans right now use Social Media and the percentage is growing daily. Of those 60%, they also buy Business to Business stuff.
I hope you have found this short video summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes habit. Habits form in as little as 21 days.
One thing you can take away from this book is to get educated right now on Social Media. If you don't then you will lose ground. Remember that human nature does not change but the way to engage has throughout history. Don't miss the Social Media wave.
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