Case studies are a staple of how companies market themselves because a customer success story is often the next best thing to a personal referral. Convincing customers to participate in a case study though can be quite the challenge and, in certain markets, near impossible.
What if you could motivate your customers to spread the good word about your products and services without constant prodding? Is it even possible to create an environment in which positive word-of-mouth about your company’s performance lessens the case study requirement?
Word-of-mouth has big time impact on sales, profitability and corporate valuation. Boston-based marketing firm BzzAgent recently reported that 27 percent of all conversations include a personal recommendation. While consultants at McKinsey & Company believe two-thirds of all economic activity is influenced by shared opinions about a product, brand or service.
Advocates of this type of viral marketing even have their own trade group – the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association or WOMMA. Although more consumer oriented, this Chicago-based industry advocate has attracted tier-one business-to-business marketers like Dell and Motorola.
Logic demands that customers reticent about participating in a case study would not be inclined to talk up your company and its solutions. However, with a creative approach and a gentle nudge you may be able to motivate some word-of-mouth buzz:
1. Excite your customers with the thrill of trying out new marketing-related technologies. Don’t underestimate the “cool” factor. Blogs are mainstream, so how about partnering with your customers to set up a wiki on a topic relevant to your products.
2. Make your customer user group a high prestige organization by promoting it through your company’s traditional marketing, advertising and public relations programs. As its reputation expands, encourage user group members to proactively discuss the company and issues of importance.
3. Introduce “Tryvertising” to your marketing mix. If possible, offer up a trial run of your product or service as a means of converting prospects to customers and, equally important, sparking discussion in the market.
May 2, 2005, 2:46 pm
High Impact of Word-of-Mouth
Posted by jeffM
Comments (0)
Send this
April 11, 2005, 1:39 am
It's Good to be the King
The FOSE trade show rolled into Washington, DC this past week. Among its rows of 10x10’ booths and crowds of government administrative personnel shoving free pens into their CDWG-branded bags, was an excellent group of key note speakers.
Speakers may be the most valuable aspect of the super-sized industry conferences because of the insight they share about their company’s positioning, messaging, thought leadership and to-market strategy. It is often more than what you find in press releases with their sterilized quotes. It’s also interesting to hear the companies a speaker acknowledges as competitors and who gets dismissed as an afterthought.
My schedule prevented me from catching Paul Otellini of INTEL or Kevin Rollins of Dell, but I was there 30 minutes early to hear what Bill McDermott of SAP America had to say about the enterprise applications market in government.
I can sum up Bill’s presentation in a single sentence: it’s good to be the king.
While the Oracle/Peoplesoft/JD Edwards/Retek combination company poses a legitimate number two in the market, they’ll be sending much of the next few years figuring out how to integrate their products while maintaining their existing customer set. Yes…greater market share is primed for SAP’s taking. Bill knows it. SAP’s competitors know it. And the FOSE audience last Thursday knew it.
What did Bill do? He got on the offensive in his presentation…big time. Here are a few of Bill’s suggestions to the senior government executives in the audience:
“It’s too risky and too hard to have too many vendors providing complex technology. It is critical for customers to focus on working only with the market leaders.”
“The best of breed strategy has failed and will never succeed again. Supply chain companies like i2 and Manugistics, and pure play CRM vendors are irrelevant.”
“Open systems are critical, but the focus of interoperability has to be on the market leaders, like SAP and Microsoft.”
“The next 9 to 12 months will determine the future of the enterprise applications business.”
“SAP has 10,000 developers working every day to improve SAP products. That’s a tremendous investment in R&D and the traits of a market leader.”
Bill is a bit arrogant. And I don’t believe its curtains just yet for best of breed because true innovation is rarely delivered by a company as large as SAP. When you are a market leader though you are suppose to act like one. That means creating fear and doubt in the minds of customers about any company not on the top of the hill.
Speakers may be the most valuable aspect of the super-sized industry conferences because of the insight they share about their company’s positioning, messaging, thought leadership and to-market strategy. It is often more than what you find in press releases with their sterilized quotes. It’s also interesting to hear the companies a speaker acknowledges as competitors and who gets dismissed as an afterthought.
My schedule prevented me from catching Paul Otellini of INTEL or Kevin Rollins of Dell, but I was there 30 minutes early to hear what Bill McDermott of SAP America had to say about the enterprise applications market in government.
I can sum up Bill’s presentation in a single sentence: it’s good to be the king.
While the Oracle/Peoplesoft/JD Edwards/Retek combination company poses a legitimate number two in the market, they’ll be sending much of the next few years figuring out how to integrate their products while maintaining their existing customer set. Yes…greater market share is primed for SAP’s taking. Bill knows it. SAP’s competitors know it. And the FOSE audience last Thursday knew it.
What did Bill do? He got on the offensive in his presentation…big time. Here are a few of Bill’s suggestions to the senior government executives in the audience:
“It’s too risky and too hard to have too many vendors providing complex technology. It is critical for customers to focus on working only with the market leaders.”
“The best of breed strategy has failed and will never succeed again. Supply chain companies like i2 and Manugistics, and pure play CRM vendors are irrelevant.”
“Open systems are critical, but the focus of interoperability has to be on the market leaders, like SAP and Microsoft.”
“The next 9 to 12 months will determine the future of the enterprise applications business.”
“SAP has 10,000 developers working every day to improve SAP products. That’s a tremendous investment in R&D and the traits of a market leader.”
Bill is a bit arrogant. And I don’t believe its curtains just yet for best of breed because true innovation is rarely delivered by a company as large as SAP. When you are a market leader though you are suppose to act like one. That means creating fear and doubt in the minds of customers about any company not on the top of the hill.
Posted by jeffM
Comments (0)
Send this
April 4, 2005, 8:02 pm
Online Referral Networks Go B2B
Toss the brand. Throw out operational efficiency. Do away with HR and employee relations. The driver of business is sales. Without revenue, everything else is irrelevant.
Implementing effective sales programs are the bane of most companies. Selling is hard and often unpleasant. No one likes the rejection that comes with lead generation or, worse, the silent void of no response from targeted prospects.
That’s why sales executives constantly scour the market for new strategies and tools to improve their success. This ongoing quest gave rise to the corporate social networking market, comprised of vendors like LinkedIn , Ryze and Knowmentum . These sites allow professionals to increase a company’s circle of contacts while providing the ability to view contacts in their network at various degrees of separation.
A relatively new market entry is Jigsaw Data which, unlike other online referral networks, is dedicated to serving the sales professional. Jigsaw helps its 5,000 members short-cut the amount of time it takes to identify the right target at a company to contact with a sales pitch.
Jigsaw has an interesting business model as the company taps into the collective contacts of its membership to populate its database. It is an impressive database that includes more than 440,000 contacts at 45,000 companies.
Admittedly, I am suspect of any attempt to automate the relationship-building process. Meaningful business relationships are forged over time on a foundation of mutual value.
As such, Strategic’s team invests a tremendous amount of time and energy managing the agency’s Network of Relationships® to deliver measurable business development results for our clients. We facilitate one-on-one connections with “dealmakers” based on our client’s business goals, and then provide a level of intelligence (along with the supporting credibility garnered through public relations) to ensure the introduction leads to a productive dialogue.
Jigsaw is worth checking out though and at $25 per month the fee is in line with the value proposition. Just keep in mind that in a business-to-business or business-to-government sales environment identifying the right contact is just the first part of a multi-step process.
Implementing effective sales programs are the bane of most companies. Selling is hard and often unpleasant. No one likes the rejection that comes with lead generation or, worse, the silent void of no response from targeted prospects.
That’s why sales executives constantly scour the market for new strategies and tools to improve their success. This ongoing quest gave rise to the corporate social networking market, comprised of vendors like LinkedIn , Ryze and Knowmentum . These sites allow professionals to increase a company’s circle of contacts while providing the ability to view contacts in their network at various degrees of separation.
A relatively new market entry is Jigsaw Data which, unlike other online referral networks, is dedicated to serving the sales professional. Jigsaw helps its 5,000 members short-cut the amount of time it takes to identify the right target at a company to contact with a sales pitch.
Jigsaw has an interesting business model as the company taps into the collective contacts of its membership to populate its database. It is an impressive database that includes more than 440,000 contacts at 45,000 companies.
Admittedly, I am suspect of any attempt to automate the relationship-building process. Meaningful business relationships are forged over time on a foundation of mutual value.
As such, Strategic’s team invests a tremendous amount of time and energy managing the agency’s Network of Relationships® to deliver measurable business development results for our clients. We facilitate one-on-one connections with “dealmakers” based on our client’s business goals, and then provide a level of intelligence (along with the supporting credibility garnered through public relations) to ensure the introduction leads to a productive dialogue.
Jigsaw is worth checking out though and at $25 per month the fee is in line with the value proposition. Just keep in mind that in a business-to-business or business-to-government sales environment identifying the right contact is just the first part of a multi-step process.
