Word of mouth

Your best customers are pure gold

July 19, 2014

You’ve heard it before — the top 20% of your customers, your very best customers, account for 80% of your profitability and referrals.  We intellectually know that and yet our behavior sure doesn’t show it.

We spend all kinds of dollars, time, energy and worry chasing after new customers and after someone starts to buy, the typical business sort of forgets all about them.  Much like people’s dating patterns — there’s a lot of wooing that goes on before the wedding but after the “I do’s” get said, the florist goes broke.

Our poor best customers get the same treatment from us and that needs to stop.  We need to shift a portion of our marketing focus away from prospects and invest even more in our best customers — the ones who have already proven that they’ll sing our praises, buy more and more and bring their friends along for the ride.

Fortunately, my friend Stan Phelps has written a book to help us all do just that.  This book, What’s Your Golden Goldfish, is the third book in a trilogy of marketing books that are all built around over 2,200 crowdsourced examples of real life marketing smarts.

This particular book shares over 100 examples of what leading brands like Starbucks, Doubletree, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Virgin Atlantic are doing differently to cater to their best customers and earn even more of their business and loyalty.

The book showcases nine different ways to let your best customers (and employees) know how much you value them. By doing those little extras, you will make your company even stronger.  You will differentiate yourself even more from your competitors, you’ll keep both your best customers and employees longer so they contribute to your success and with every little extra, you will create more word of mouth buzz.

The entire series of books is all built around the idea of lagniappe which is a creole word for “a little something extra.” In this edition — Stan helps his readers explore how organizations large and small can do a little something extra for their most loyal customers and employees.

You’ll love the storytelling but make sure you have a pen and paper handy because this book is going to spark so many ideas that you’ll never remember them all.  And as you implement them — your best customers will reward you with even more buzz, money and referrals.

Sounds like it is going to work out well for everyone, doesn’t it?

If you’re interested in Stan’s entire series, here’s how you can get them from Amazon.  If your an Amazon Unlimited customer, you can read the electronic version for free.  If you want the paperbacks, click on the links below:

• Third book — What’s Your Golden Goldfish: The Vital Few
• Second book — What’s your Green Goldfish: 15 Ways to Drive Employee Engagement and Reinforce Culture
• First book — What’s your Purple Goldfish: How to Win Customers and Influence Word of Mouth

 

Note:  If you click on one of the Amazon links, I get a few cents.

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Is your marketing making you a rock star?

May 31, 2013

Mack Collier has hit a home run with his book Think Like A Rock Star* and I really want all of you to get his message.

As consumers get more jaded by traditional advertising and marketing that interrupts rather than connects — this book serves up the answer.

Why not be so good, create so much goodwill and treat your best customers like the super stars they are — all so you can unleash the word of mouth power of those best customers? We know that there’s nothing more influential than word of mouth and that an endorsement from a trusted friend/source absolutely influences buying decisions. So who wouldn’t want more of that for their business?

Author Mack Collier has studied how some of the world’s best entertainers have inspired their fans to help grow their fan base, sell concert tickets and CDs/downloads and in general — create buzz that elevates the star’s status and earning potential.

One of the reasons this is such a smart read is because it puts the marketing emphasis where it belongs — on existing customers (and even more so…. super engaged existing customers) rather than chasing prospects. Mack outlines many ways that rock stars connect with their fans, show their genuine gratitude and appreciation to their fans and inviting those fans to be their biggest advocates and evangelists.

You’ll get all kinds of ideas of how you can make your business a rock star too. Your best customers will be as ready to give you a standing ovation as the examples in the book. One of the features of the book you’ll find incredibly valuable is the Backstage Passes. These informational call out boxes give you very specific ways you can apply the examples to your own business. Like a little recipe card — they’ll guide you step by step.

I highly recommend this book (click to buy on Amazon*)and the concepts in it. Mack models his theories well — read the book and become one of his fans!

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Any brand can become talkable

July 28, 2012

Are you talkable?

On this blog, we often explore the importance of brand and the power of word of mouth. It seems that many business owners/leaders believe that you can just plan on something being spread by word of mouth and voila, it happens. (Sort of like planning for a video to go viral).

The reality is — to become a brand that is worthy of being talked about is hard work.

It’s about being very purposeful in every little detail of your business.

That’s why I love this video series by John Moore from Brand Autopsy.  John’s listed a bunch of attributes (29 to date) of a talkable brand — like believable, measurable, and emotional to mention a few.  And he’s done a video for each “able” that makes your brand talkable.

The videos are part education, part entertainment and part inspiration.  I think you’ll enjoy the short (less than 4 minutes each) offerings.

Check out the series (click here) and then come back and tell me which of the “ables” you think your business has already mastered.

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What are you doing to generate word of mouth

October 6, 2011

 

Amazon’s Vine program

We all know how awesome word of mouth is.  We know it beats any mode of advertising and that over 90% of consumers say it’s the most compelling factor in their decision to buy.

We all want it.  We want our customers to go skipping down the street, singing odes to us.  We want them to pull out their rolodex and drunk dial their peers to shout our praises.  We want them to tattoo our logo on their rear end. (Hey, it works for Harley)

So we patiently sit and wait for them to do just that.  And we wait.  And we wait.

Perhaps it’s time we actually do something to make it happen.

Amazon created a program they call Vine.  They have formed a small cadre of customers and inved them to be Vine members.  A Vine member gets two free books or any other item (they provide a list…you choose from that list) that Amazon sells every month. In exchange, you agree to review those items.  Good, bad or ugly — once you publish your two reviews for the month, you’ll eligible to get more free stuff the next month.

I’m a Vine member.  Of the 12 or more reviews I have written, almost all of them have been positive.  A couple effusive and a couple were so-so.  So at least 80% of the reviews they’ve gotten from me have been praising the products.  They generated word of mouth because they set out to get it.

If mega-store Amazon has to actively create word of mouth opportunities, what do you suppose the odds are that you’ll suddenly get a bunch of spontaneous praise?

Exactly.  Which is why we need to purposefully and actively generate it.

How could you do that in your business or how are you doing it today?

 

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