Posts Tagged ‘Customer Lifecycles’

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Welcome to the Buyer-Enabled Movement

February 7th, 2012

In response to my last two posts, an “Open Letter to Buyers” and an “Open Letter to Buyer-Enabled Organizations”, I have tried to articulate the evolution in the conversations I’ve had about why social is disruptive to business as we know it, why a buyer-enabled approach is so critical to the long-term viability of your business, and why your team needs to pay attention now. Continue reading “Welcome to the Buyer-Enabled Movement” »

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Posted in Archive 2012

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Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to Buyers

November 7th, 2011

Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to BuyersWe owe you a mea culpa…. We’ve been seller driven, not buyer driven. We’ve focused on selling you what we think you need (what we sell) versus helping you make better decisions.  We haven’t helped you make the business case for why this is a significant problem.  We’ve automated our marketing systems to better reach you, but never asked if or what you’re interested in.  We’ve treated you as a company, not as a group of individuals with different needs, perspectives, and roles.  We don’t know what a “day in your life” looks like to give us context as to why you don’t have the time to sit through our “canned” presentation, educate us on your business, and sift through all of our market claims.

Continue reading “Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to Buyers” »

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Posted in Archive 2011, Marketing Strategy

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Open Letter to CMO’s – Social Target Marketing for Complex Sales

September 26th, 2011

I’m not sure if you saw the “Open Letter to CMO’s” in the Social Executive Council.  The feedback we’ve received is that the post is helping to build your own business case to address the impact that social is having on the purchase behaviors in your industry, in particular those with a very complex buying/selling process.

With that in hand, many of you have now asked me to share our approach, to arm you, as the internal advocate, for the conversations you need to have within your organizations as to why social target marketing is more critical than ever.

At a high level, social target marketing is about how we can build better relationships with likely buyers to create new opportunities for our business that we’re missing out on today.

Continue reading “Open Letter to CMO’s – Social Target Marketing for Complex Sales” »

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Posted in Archive 2011, Social Marketing

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Is Your Business Over-Automated?

October 6th, 2010

I have never heard anyone tell me that a business is over-automated, but I think it should be a term and concept that should enter into the business lexicon ASAP. I would define over-automation as the mechanical, impersonal, and crappy customer experience that I get when I have to engage with a large enterprise with lots of customers and too many bright people thinking about the bottom line.

I will pick on Blockbuster for a minute. Blockbuster, in its heyday, was a powerhouse in the movie business that is, as of this week, in bankruptcy. As a customer, you could tell that the company designed their customer experiences to maximize profitability; hence the late fee model that made more money than the original rental fees.

On paper, this is a great idea. In execution, it pissed off a lot of customers and, I would contend, led to the gap in trust that opened the door for Netflix. I really like the visceral experience of browsing isles looking at the sea of titles and seeing which one stands out. I like doing the same in bookstores. Online doesn

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Posted in Archive 2010

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Building A Social Marketing Business Case – Part 1 – Definitions

April 22nd, 2010

This multi-part series will provide information on social marketing and answer the following questions:

  • What is it? (I already can hear, not another buzz word….)
  • Why is a new definition required beyond Social Media, Social Networking, Social CRM, or Web 2.0 Marketing? (gotcha there)
  • So what? Why should I worry about this? Hint: Revenue Generation and Customer Referrals (I assume this would be important to you)
  • What does a Social Marketing strategy look like?
  • What does a Social Marketing Roadmap look like for this?
  • How do I leverage what I am already doing?
  • How do I build a Social Marketing Business Case?
  • How do I measure Social Marketing?

Now that I got the major questions out of the way, let move next into the definitions;

Social Marketing – The re-orientation of traditional marketing to reflect the new post-digital, network relationship oriented, and influencer-driven social interactions. Social Marketing leverages a multi-channel, multi-directional approach towards building relationships with a transition away from the structured Marketing roles of product management, product marketing, marketing communications, public relations, channel marketing, sales support. Instead, marketing is reoriented around enabling the key interactions that support the buying process.

Social Media – Basically, you have the social networks that you participate and the online communities that you own which are built into your corporate website. See my post on Social Media is Like Fishing for more details. Social Media is changing buyer behavior, coming more fluid, and marketing must adjust the model to to support the reflected changes. See my post on the Changing Role of the CMO for further explanation. Read more

Online Communities – communities of interest built upon a foundation of Web 2.0 social networking tools; profile, blog, wiki, social bookmarking, calendaring, media sharing, etc that enable the user to interact with other users and content through the website. See my post on Online Community Blueprint for more details.

Post-Digital - If everything is becoming digital, why does digital matter? The buyer doesn’t really care if the interaction is on the web, they just want to get what they need. A lot of marketing still segments online and offline which creates an artificial barrier to developing a seamless customer experience.

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Posted in Archive 2010

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