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The Digitization of Human Interactions: From Long Tail to Mass Disruption

February 13, 2012 By 16 Comments

Photo Credit: ceibs.edu

“Because the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer, the business enterprise has two, and only two, basic functions: Marketing and Innovation.” – Peter Drucker

Last week I had the pleasure of spending some time at Online Marketing Summit at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel.

Aaron Kahlow founded the conference several years ago and it has seen tremendous growth in just a few years. In fact, it was acquired just a few months ago, and added to the growing list of brands at UBM TechWeb.

We are in the midst of a sizable evolution. That’s no surprise or epiphany to most of us. But peeling a layer or two off of the onion reveals deeper insights about what’s really happening, and more importantly, where senior marketers, should be allocating their money and time.

Marketing’s longtail (online, digital, seo) first became a fringe disruptor of marketing strategies (where we’ve been over the last 15 years or so), and has moved its way steadily towards securing its place as a core component of marketing practice (a few years into this journey now). In some organizations, it leads the way and sets the primary agenda related to an organization’s customer acquisition and retention strategies. For others, that change is quickly coming. Moving forward, “digital” not only will rule marketing, but has the potential to re-define entire business models (think what’s happened to books, music, media).

This once small sliver of the marketing universe is slowly and steadily charging its way to the label enabler of mass disruption.

Considering this phenomenon in 2006, specifically assessing Threadless’ new innovative crowdsourced manufacturing business model, Tim O’Reilly asked “How far off is a future in which the creative economy overflows the thin boundary that separates ‘information’ from ‘stuff’?”

If we consider for a moment the growth of gaming, augmented reality, digital and social network engagement, coupled with the rapidly expanding worlds of mobile and cloud computing, the very fabric of human interactions is being rewired. This clearly has significant implications on one core societal function: commerce, and with it of course, marketing.

Below are 5 key takeaways solidified during my time at #OMS12.

CONTENT STILL REIGNS

The content marketing drum has continued to get louder over the last decade. According to a 2012 study by the Content Marketing Institute;

  • 90% of B2B marketers do some kind of content marketing whether they realize it or not, and
  • 60% of B2B marketers intend to spend more on content marketing in the next 12 months.

It was a central theme at the conference, highlighted at 3 sessions I attended:

“The difference between good and great content marketing,” by Joe Pulizzi
“From Content to Customer” by Joe Chernov
“Integrating Social, SEO & Content” by Lee Odden

(You can find my raw session notes by clicking on the links above. There are plenty of good nuggets in there.)

Despite content marketing’s strong growth, 41% of the marketers in the CMI study said that their greatest challenge was creating content that engages prospects and customers.

I suspect that is because we are witnessing a changing of the guard. Brochureware, product feature catalogues, and brand messages just don’t resonate in a world where attention is the greatest and scarcest of resources.

Experienced marketers are having to unlearn what they know and relearn new tools and methodologies. Many new marketers don’t have the framework and business savvy that comes with experience to put all the pieces together.

Joe Pulluzi and Joe Chernov, respectively, reinforced the idea of creating something of extreme value and then giving it away for free. Social networks allow word of mouth referrals to take place with unprecedented speed and reach, and studies have shown that people are much less likely to share a heavily branded or gated piece of content. In their own words, they underscored the importance of establishing a position of expertise, providing something that is worth their attention, and talking about yourself as little as possible.

Advertisers have long used the concept of product placement for branding purposes within a context that is usually devoid of ads. This philosophy can now be applied across a wide range of mediums and content forms. Subtly branded communities (Proctor & Gamble has several), whitepapers, blogs, eBooks and infographics (HubSpot and Eloqua have done some really good things here) are all ways to fill the top of the funnel.

If you haven’t seen it, DC shoes shows how an experience can be created within a piece of content that resonates with a target audience. It’s a prime example of marketing innovation that has garnered more than 15,000,000 views to date.

Facebook is betting the farm on these principles with their announcement and foray into the world of “Sponsored Stories”, where sponsored content will be embedded within the context of “friends” digital interactions across the web.

While the manifestation of B2C vs. B2B content marketing may ultimately look significantly different, the underlying principles remain the same.

ANALYTICS PLAYING A BIGGER ROLE EVERYWHERE

Ironically, the exponentially increasing amount of digital content and digital interactions is creating overwhelmingly large sets of content, information, and data. Known to many as the issue of “Big Data”, appropriate filters and tools are increasingly important to help decision makers convert massive data sets into meaningful insights, which should ultimately contribute to critical decision making.

Asterdata, acquired last year by TeraData is using its technology to help marketers make sense of unstructured data from varying data sources to better understand the pulse of their marketplace.

The increasingly crowded Social Media Monitoring space was represented at the conference by Radian6, Marketwire Sysomos, and a relatively new entrant to the party named Metavana.

Metavana is particularly interesting for 2 reasons:

1. They claim that their sentiment analysis engine is 90% accurate, which quite frankly is hard to believe, as that practically would far exceed industry norms.
2. In partnership with Satmetrix, they are the exclusive provider of Social NPS – a “Net Promoter Score (NPS) derived from the expressions of sentiment on the social web.”

Claim number 2 is a HUGE (and hard to believe) claim that a previously structured classification (NPS survey response) can now be gleaned from unstructured social signals. These two points alone deserves some time, but this post is already bordering on eBook length, so we’ll save that for another day.

That said, Metavana has an impressive leadership team, and are ones to watch in the space.

DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS PROVIDE DEEPER INSIGHT INTO THE BUYER’S PURCHASING CYCLE

Because more and more of our lives are taking place in the context of a digital medium, digital footprints are being left across the web for marketers to examine. One of the major themes at the conference was the concept of “attribution”, or assigning the proper weight to multiple interactions that may have ultimately contributed to a purchase (or conversion). Up until recently, the “lead source” was typically attributed to the last conversion point, ignoring whether a prospect had had several interactions with an organization across multiple channels prior to that. New technology aims to properly identify, understand and weight each interaction for the amount that it contributed to a purchase or conversion, properly attributing impact of various touches on purchasing related actions during the buying cycle.

Amanda Kahlow, new VP of Consumer Intelligence for Business Online, highlighted how she had developed a program for Cisco, and other organizations, to understand customer and prospect digital signals to ultimately predict purchase behavior. In an interesting narrative about sifting through millions of data points and trying to find patters in the data, their algorithm was ultimately able to predict which prospects and customers were most ready to buy, and what size their order might be. This type of understanding and insight allowed Cisco to:

  • Do better targeted marketing
  • Alert sales, partners, resellers with the right leads and opportunities
  • Measure marketing effectiveness
  • Allow lead scoring to be data driven instead of using arbitrary numbers.

In the end, it’s a story of properly aligning resources with greatest marketplace opportunities in real time to maximize returns for the organization. As more and more buyers interact with digital content, it paves the way for new opportunities for organizations to listen and respond.

FROM BIG, CRUDE, AND MANUAL TO SMALL, MEASURED, AND AUTOMATIC

As a society, we continue to journey down a path from Big, Crude, and Manual to Small, Measured, and Automatic. In the marketing context, that means that we’ve transitioned from broadcast messages with an ask to buy to strategic analysis of buyer’s purchasing journeys and finely articulated responses to each of their actions, with an understanding that there is a detailed set of psychological drivers and interests at each stage of their journey,

It’s the job of marketing (and sales) to understand and align with that journey. The growth of marketing automation, revenue performance management, or whatever the vendors are calling themselves this month, is about automating interactions in the right way, at the right time, on the right channel, in response to prospects signals during the course of their purchasing journeys. Armed with continuous feedback (structured and unstructured, explicit and implicit), marketers increasingly have the opportunity to sense and respond to customer and prospect needs in real time.

WHAT IT ALL MEANS

What’s interesting to me is that the ubiquitousness of digital connection, and increasingly pervasive social network interactions has created a bifurcation in marketing’s focus. The social web has created a seeming “renaissance of transparency”. Being human and real is an often stated mantra for agencies and organizations to follow. The crowd demands it, and is now louder the companies ability to brand themselves. However, more so than ever before, marketing has become data driven, with marketers often moving deeper into the sales cycle, and being held to higher levels of accountability. There is a risk of the left brain taking over too much of the spotlight.

The greatest challenge for marketers today is precisely blending the art of storytelling with the science of analytics for maximum impact in their marketplace.

IN SUMMARY


The conference was great. Many attendees told me they had TOO MUCH to take back and work on. It was nice to catch up with some old friends, meet new ones, and get to know some folks a little better. While we are undergoing a dramatic shift, the old fundamentals of understanding your customer, and responding in a way that resonates is still firmly in place. Technology is changing how our customers behave, communicate, and expect organizations to respond. Organization who do this best will thrive. If these things aren’t yet on your radar, or you’ve shoved social media, content marketing, and/or marketing automation off into a figurative little dark corner within your organization, it may make sense to provide them with a cubicle or office space. Used properly, it holds potential for significant impact. Ignoring these over the long term may relegate your entire organization into that dark insignificant corner.

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Trust: It matters (more than you think)

January 25, 2012 By 20 Comments

“Organizations are no longer built on force, but on trust” – Peter Drucker

“Technique and technology are important, but adding trust is the issue of the decade” – Tom Peters

“Mistrust doubles the cost of doing business” – Professor John Whitney, Columbia Business School

“As you go to work, your top responsibility should be to build trust” – Robert Eckert, CEO, Mattel

“Transcendant values like trust and integrity literally translate into revenue, profits and prosperity” – Patricia Aburdene, Author of Megatrends 2010

————————————————————-

The quotes above were pulled from the book “The Speed of Trust: The One thing that changes everything”.

In the book, Steven M.R. Covey makes the argument with significant validation that establishing trust is the quickest path to success.

The economics of trust are simple

“Trust always affects two outcomes – speed and cost. When trust goes down, speed will also go down and costs will go up. When trust goes up, speed will also go up and costs will go down.”

Ponder that for a minute. In any relationship, personal or business, progress ultimately hinges on this one simple thing. When the presentation is over, when the proposal is offered, when all the due diligence and negotiations have been performed, doesn’t it ultimately rest on whether each side trusts each other to honor their stated obligations?

One could make a strong argument that the maturing customer revolt; the change in customer behavior that is driving the emergence and growth of Social CRM and Social Business has been birthed out of a general distrust of organizations, and institutions in general, for that matter.

Who the world trusts

Since the customer has lost trust in what marketers and sales people say, and since they can’t trust customer service to actually help them in a meaningful and timely way, they have moved instead to solicit 3rd party opinions about the organizations that may have a solution for them. They look to industry experts and peers for opinions, insights, and answers they can trust. This trend is expanding quickly. According to a study from Shopper Sciences, in association with Google “the average shopper used 10.4 sources of information to make a (purchasing) decision, up from just 5.3 sources in 2010.”

Edelman, one of the world’s largest and well recognized global PR firms has produced something called the “Edelman Trust Barometer” for the last several years.

In the 2012 edition, released this week, we see who the general population views as credible spokespeople – people they can trust. We see that ‘Academic or Expert’, ‘Technical expert in the company’, and ‘A person like yourself’ are bunched together in the Top 3. You’ll notice that CEOs and government officials absorbed significant hits to their collective reputation this year.

Another key finding is that social media grew significantly as a trusted information source, gaining ground on traditional media sources.

And in general, customer expectations are woefully short of being met. You’ll see in the graphic below a huge gap between what customers consider as important and how companies are performing in areas like:

  • Listens to Customer Needs and Feedback
  • Offers High Quality Products or Services
  • Places Customers ahead of Profits
  • Takes Responsible Actions to Address an Issue or Crisis

Where do we go from here?

The quick take is that TRUST MATTERS. It matters more than we think. As executives, as marketers, as sales people, as customer experience architects, and as customer service personnel, at the core of our job to create trust. Trust is the lubricant that speeds relationships and success, with people, and with organizations.

The key observations are:

- There is a significant trust void between customers and organizations
- People primarily trust experts and people like them
- People solicit lots of different opinions and tap lots of different sources when considering vendors

In the graphic below, survey participants have given us clues on how we can continue to build and deepen trust with our prospects and customers.

How do we do this?

The good folks at 1to1 Media summed it up with this tweet yesterday.

Is it just that simple?

There are a myriad of ways that organizations can respond to create trust. Content marketing, coupled with listening to and engaging customers through social channels are certainly a start. Organizations who do a great job of positioning themselves (and their employees) as experts in their field, and deeply embedding themselves within their respective communities and consistently adding value stand a great chance to do well in this shifting market.

Hiring the right folks, while establishing and nurturing a customer focused culture, and evolving internal and external communication channels and structures are all part of the equation.

The widening customer expectation gap and the pervasiveness of distrust presents a GREAT opportunity for those organizations who are able to respond in a way that resonates with their audience, as they will truly standout.

More resources

(1) Here’s a recent article by Don Peppers titled “The Only Lasting Competitive Advantage is Extreme Trust”

(2) Embedded below is the full 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer Slide Deck

2012 Edelman Trust Barometer: Global Deck
View more presentations from Edelman Insights

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured, Finding, Acquiring, and Delighting Customers, Social Business Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Six Things Customers Want

January 18, 2012 By 18 Comments

Often, when asked a question by media, existing customers, or prospective customers, I find myself answering with some version of “It depends.”

What’s the biggest priority in 2012?
Should we begin a Social CRM initiative?
What’s the first thing we should do?
Which software solution should we buy and implement?
Where should we spend our marketing dollars?

Inputs like organizational competence, customer jobs to be done, organizational goals and strategies, cost structures, industry trends, the competitive landscape all influence answers to questions such as these. In other words, the proper direction as it relates to defining and executing organizational or customer strategies are highly contextual, and depend on a comprehensive analysis to determine the right course of action.

However, in speaking with and working with lots of organizations spanning industries from service to manufacturing to distribution in both B2B and B2C environments, there are some common things that customers want. If these were to be front and center on the mind of every senior executive, and every customer facing individual, the customer experience would be improved, and the organization would benefit.

The levers and weighting of each of these things may vary by industry and company, but odds are your organization would benefit from adopting these 6 tenets into the fabric of your organizational culture and DNA.

What else would you add to this list?

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured, Finding, Acquiring, and Delighting Customers Tagged With: , , ,

Customer Relationship Innovation for the Emergent Social Business

December 2, 2011 By 18 Comments

Speaking at an event hosted by SugarCRM and IBM Social Business this week, I informally polled the audience.

“How many of you are NOT on facebook?” No hands were raised.
“How many of you have a twitter account?” Most of the room raised their hands.
“LinkedIn?” Most of the room again raised their hands.

I repeated the same questions, referencing the people in the room’s businesses, and a slightly smaller number of folks raised their hands, but more than half still did.

I then asked – “How many of you know what to do with them?” Giggles. Laughter. Very few hands.

This is where we collectively find ourselves. It’s representative of a number of organizations that I have the opportunity to work with and speak to.

I didn’t even think of asking if any organizations in the room had created a tactical plan to listen and engage with customers and create a seamless (and amazing) experience across multiple channels and domains. Most companies are still trying to get the fundamentals right (as Filiberto Selvas pointed out here)

It’s easy to join a social network. It’s harder to engage. What should I say? What will they think? Do I have permission?

It’s even harder to engage with a coordinated strategy and accurately measure the results of your efforts. Blend activities on the social web with what’s happening in the rest of the organization…across departments…across silos?

If we’re not even on the same page internally, how can we communicate a unified message to the world that hasn’t been careful crafted by our marketing team and the agencies that they work with?

My anecdotal observation is that many companies get here and then acknowledge that it’s just too big of a challenge to tackle…at least for now.

“If you’ve got to start somewhere, why not here? If you got to start sometime, why not now?” – Toby Mac

New landscape.
New customer.
New roles.
New communication mediums.
New expectations.
New corporate culture.
New Focus.
New Critical Success Factors.

It’s quite a bit to digest when people are trying to keep their jobs and help keep the company profitable, when they’ve already just absorbed the jobs of 1-2 people who were laid off over the past few years. However, only focusing simply on the here and now is the path to extinction.

Those who understand how these new changes are affecting their marketplace (which in most cases is larger, more complicated, and more diverse than it was just a few years ago) will be hyper-rewarded. Those who fail to admit, understand, and adjust to these rapidly evolving new realities will be destroyed, or more likely die a long, slow, painful death.

Below are a few highlights from the presentation.

B2B Buyers

FOUR THINGS TO FOCUS ON NOW

While there’s no notes or audio to the full deck, I’ve provided it below. Hopefully it provides value, and helps to stimulate some interesting conversations on the social web and for you in your respective organization(s). Interestingly, Mike Fauscette touched on many of the same themes in his blog post “Customer Service – the new Marketing in the era of the Social Customer”. It’s definitely worth a read.

Customer Relationship Innovation for the Emergent Social Business

One other final fascinating tidbit from the event was that I met and had a good chat with a Director of Marketing from a Silicon Valley startup. I meet and talk with plenty of Directors of Marketing. What was interesting about this one was that she said that she was actually a social anthropologist. My ears perked up. Seems like someone is paying attention. While the roles of social anthropologist and Director of Marketing may seem to be world’s apart, they’re not. Here’s a link to an article I wrote highlighting why it might be the perfect fit.

It’s fun to be part of the greatest transformation since the industrial revolution? Are you in?

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured, Finding, Acquiring, and Delighting Customers, Future & Innovation, Social Business Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

In search of: A meaningful measure of Influence

November 2, 2011 By 17 Comments

Influence. It’s a captivating word. It’s an alluring word.

We all want it, and we want to know others who have it.

In high school, if you could get the “cool kids” to the party, the rest would follow.

If the most famous and glamorous people in the world use it, like it, and talk about it, it must be great.

INFLUENCE: THE DEFINITION

But is that influence? From our good friend, Webster, Influence is:

1. A power affecting a person, thing, or course of events, especially one that operates without any direct or apparent effort:
2. Power to sway or affect based on prestige, wealth, ability, or position

WHO, THEN, ARE THE INFLUENCERS?

As part of a thought exercise, I asked myself two questions:

(1) Who are the most influential folks in history?

Names like Jesus, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Adolf Hitler, FDR, Mohandas Ghandi, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Steve Jobs come to mind.

Nelson MandelaMartin Luther King, Jr. Steve Jobs

(2) Who have been the most influential people in my life?

My wife, my parents, a former NBC Universal Executive, a business man turned global missionary, the most successful enterprise sales executive I know, a Navy Seal turned pastor and non-profit Executive Director, and select football and basketball coaches throughout my athletic career.

The irony is that many or most of the most influential people in my life literally have no or limited presence on Social Networks (yet). There are dozens of others who influence my thinking as circles cascade outwards, and as contexts become more detailed and narrowly defined, but these are the ones who have spoken into my life, and who have the most influence on my decisions. Their actions and influence on my behavior is for all intents and purposes, not measurable.

THE “INFLUENCE” OF NETWORKS ON THE SOCIAL CUSTOMER

But I am also a social customer. I read reviews. I ask, comment, and interact in public social networks and forums, and these interactions and the things I learn and observe do influence my buying decisions.

WOMMA put together the following infographic about what fuels our collective purchasing decisions. These are the things that have marketers so excited and quite frankly, confused.

Word of Mouth Marketing

LEVERAGE AND THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF INFLUENCE

As the restricted and proprietary ivory towers of media, global communication, and information flow have given way to citizen journalists, we have witnessed the great democratization of media, celebrity status, and, in turn, the democratization of influence itself. Or have we? Has anything really changed?

In the end, business is all about leverage. It’s about maximizing the return on available time, talents, and resources. The social web, ubiquitous connectedness, and the ongoing digitization of everything finds marketers both forced and opportunistically looking to leverage the new influencers (their reach, their networks, and the trust that they’ve established in their tribe) for their respective interests.

Watch this short clip from a fascinating talk by Deb Roy and you’ll see a fantastic example of how an action by one can truly effect the actions of tens, or hundreds, or potentially thousands of others.

So, then, as marketers, the next obvious questions are:

How do we find the influencers?

How do we engage with them?

How do we entice them?

And, ultimately, how do we provide these influencers with a message that they can carry to their audience(s) that benefit our brand, our company, our products, and ultimately our interests?

FINDING THE INFLUENCERS

Who do we reach out to?
This first question is where most people start. Who are the influencers in our marketplace? The answer to that question, in and of itself, may be tougher than it initially seems. The unaware may start with their offline network, and extend their research by finding those with the highest number of Twitter followers. But studies have shown that there is little correlation to numbers of Twitter followers, facebook fans, or similar social network as measures of real influence.

For more reading on this, check out On Twitter, Followers Don’t Equal Influence and Celebrities’ Twitter Followers Have Zero Influence

Some online services have begun to tackle this problem by attempting to measure influence in a more scientific way. By now, you may have undoubtedly heard of Klout, or PeerIndex, or Traackr, or several other upstart influence measurement tools.

  • Are these valid?
  • Should they be used? And if so, how?
  • Does it help me identify the influencers who can allow me the greatest amount of leverage for distributing my message, and more importantly, help make a measurable impact for my organization?

THE EMERGENCE OF INFLUENCE MEASUREMENT SCORES



Klout, the most widely recognized service, recently stirred a sea of controversy when they changed their algorithm score. Perusing through the comments, it was apparent that some had so deeply embraced these influence scores, that they were literally upset that they might lose their jobs, their clients, and for a moment, I was concerned that many of them might even lose their lives.

While Klout’s messaging spun this as a “More Accurate, Transparent Klout Score”, I have to wonder. They’ve never been very transparent about the mechanics of what makes up the Klout score. While Klout started with Twitter, it has since expanded to Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, and a host of other social sharing sites. At first glance, it appears that facebook, in particular, has taken on a far more significant weighting in their recent shift.

When trying to understand the motivations behind actions, I often start with the looking at the money trail. It’s important to know that Klout is a for-profit corporation with venture capital funding. It’s also important to know that they are monetizing their service by providing social data to large consumer brands. Alignment with the world’s most popular and mainstream social network probably makes sense and may contain the most valuable unstructured data for what has emerged as Klout’s primary paying customers, the world’s largest consumer brands. To their credit. it seems that Klout has perhaps taken a big step towards alignment with their customers in providing relevance. Perhaps I’ll no longer be the ideal candidate for pre-screening and behind the scenes previews for new release movies and TV shows, which I’ve received numerous Klout Perk offers for, ignoring all of them.

Watch the editorial video below from the Wall St. Journalas it gives deeper insight into Klout and its effect on many participating in digital media today.

THE STATE OF INFLUENCE MEASUREMENT

Is this really a measure of influence, and if so, in what context, for whom? Or is this simply a service that major brands can leverage to gain access to more targeted recipients of their ads?

How does this concept of influence measurement apply to the billions who choose to make significant changes in their communities, in their businesses, with their customers, and behind the walls of their organizations without doing so on public social networks? How will Klout or something like it really measure actions and communications that truly inspire change and affect thoughts, behaviors, and actions of others?

There is a long way to go. These fledgling measurement scores are valid experiments and I firmly believe the precursors to something more meaningful, more relevant, and more useful, but there is only so much they can measure today. Couple that with the extreme potential and propensity for inaccuracy and fraud, and the system’s reliability breaks down.

Ironically, Klout specifically has suffered quite the backlash on social channels. Recent alarms have sounded over privacy concerns and the inability to remove one’s self from Klout. (Though you can do that now.)

In closing, there are several challenges that the world of influence measurement must overcome before being truly valuable for organizations and brands. I’ll start with a few and let others weigh in.

(1) Klout (and other measurement tools) will act in their best interest. As long as their interests are aligned with profit, their is opportunity for corruption. Witness recent allegations against the major ratings agencies in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis for an example. (To be clear, I have no problem with Klout specifically, nor is this in any way any allegation against them)

(2) As evidenced by the video above, online personalities will act to game their score, something that has been proven to be easy to do. High “Influence” scores then have the potential to be allocated to those who have the most time on their hands to play an online game, then actually make any meaningful change or impact on the world.

(3) True influence is about changing behavior. It’s hard to measure anything truly meaningful today and correlate to something measurable (ie. a purchase, a referral or mention that led to multiple purchases)

(4) Measurement scores must be relevant to the motivations and priorities of the ones utilizing the scores.

(5) *** Perhaps the biggest one that will only be resolved with time and the eventual “digitization of everything”:

Only a small percentage of most of our actions happen in the digital world today. Though, this is changing rapidly , digital influence measurement systems can only evaluate a very small percentage of what’s happening in the real world.

THE REST IS UP TO YOU

I’m sure I’ve missed a ton so I’ll leave the rest to you.

What are some other challenges / gaps you see in today’s “influence measurement” scores? How would you improve them?

Or, maybe you can surprise me, what are some ways that you have used one of the emerging influence measurement systems to measurably impact the bottom line of your organization?

And if you still want more on the topic of influence, my friend Dr. Michael Wu has written quite a bit on the subject, especially as it pertains to social networks.

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured, Finding, Acquiring, and Delighting Customers, Future & Innovation, Social Business Tagged With: , ,

In an era of crisis & revolution, is your company the next target?

September 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

We are living in interesting times indeed. Geo-political revolutions, financial crises, economic uncertainty. Try as we might to ignore them, the fact is that the very fabric of capitalism is being re-evaluated, and perhaps even rewoven.

What we have assumed and known for at least 150 years is at the very least being questioned. Institutions that have spanned generations are now vulnerable.

Banks are still closing down weekly. The situation in Europe is increasingly fragile as previous whispers of dramatic austerity and potential collapse of the Euro become potentially viable outcomes.

In the United States, President Obama’s approval rating is at an all time low. Congress approval rating is at 14% – FOURTEEN PERCENT! – also an all time low.

Civil unrest has spread from oppressive dictatorial regimes in the Middle East and Africa to the developed world (see London riots).

Corporate America is obviously feeling the effects of many of these issues as they affect all of us, directly or indirectly.

You are likely familiar with the recent collapse of these famed organizations:

  • Lehman Brothers
  • Merrill Lynch
  • Blockbuster Video
  • Borders Bookstores

Power to the People

Friends, we are living in a unique era. While world leaders collectively wrestle with the greatest economic challenges in the last 70 years, many corporations find themselves doing the same. Customers are voicing their opinions about companies they do business with, as constituents voice their displeasure about the poor job their leaders are doing on their behalf.

The following incidents caught executives by surprise as specific cries against corporate actions rallied the hearts, minds, and activity of thousands in revolt against insensitive corporate interests.

  • Dell Hell
  • United Breaks Guitars
  • Kevin Smith’s Southwest Airlines Incident
  • Greenpeace and Nestle

Jeremiah Owyang chronicles a more complete list of corporate social media crisis here

What’s perhaps most interesting is that these recent revolutions and crises, whether political or corporate, are being fueled and enabled by the reach and connectedness of internet based social networks.

While Jeremiah and the team at The Altimeter Group once again published a quality open research report titled “Social Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare” , it is possible to miss some of the larger, more important underlying issues.

The Seeds of Revolution

Surely, rapid uprisings and revolutions don’t just happen because someone tweets about it, or posts a YouTube video. It’s not the medium that really matters. It’s the ability for the message to spread, and for people to self-organize quickly – to out-think, out-flank, and out-number their oppressors or aggressors.

Revolution happens because a latent frustration finds an outlet. It happens because enough people unite and take action around an idea of change. Connected by a common interest or frustration, the network effect takes place as people unite in a flash mob around a common goal. It happens because the thought of things staying the same becomes more fearful and oppressive than the uncertainty and risk associated with standing up and going a different direction.

According to BJ Fogg’s behavioral model (Hat tip to Dr. Graham Hill and Dr. Michael Wu for pointing me his way), there are three primary factors that lead to behaviors:

  • Motivation
  • Ability
  • Trigger

You see, I believe that there are tons of latent motivations out there that never turn into anything because the other two factors don’t exist. Social Networks and ubiquitous connectivity are providing the ability to actually do something once a trigger occurs. With latent motivations and now the ability to do something now in place, a trigger event becomes a spark that can quickly flame into a roaring fire.

In a world that is increasingly connected, increasingly digital, and access to anything and anyone is available in real time, corporate leaders should be considering the following questions.

The fabric of global society is transforming from a collection of lots of small, geographically connected groups to groups that are connected in a new geography that transcends previous space and time limitations.

Much of the new global infrastructure has been laid and it will continue to become more pervasive and more powerful.

People can now aggregate across boundaries, and organize beyond the constraints and management comforting silos. Al Quaeda and WikiLeaks quickly come to mind. In the same way, business units are self-organizing around the constraints of their IT departments.

Guess what? Our prospects and customers now have the ability to do the same.

The question every executive should be asking right now

So then the next question is, will your organization lead the next revolution in your marketplace, empowering and giving voice to the latent motivations of your customers, or will it become a victim of a more agile, more united group of customers who will self organize around their collective needs and jobs, leaving your outdated organization in their wake?

Let’s continue the discussion

If you are in Southern California or Arizona, please join me on September 21 and 22 as I lead discussions centered around this topic in a series of Executive Breakfasts sponsored by NICE.

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Networks, Signals, Reputation and Delight

April 20, 2011 By 1 Comment

The era of mass marketing, sales driven information gathering and sharing, and being “just good enough to win” is being shattered by the rapid emergence of a smart, networked, and increasingly demanding generation of empowered customers. In the fragmented and fast moving world of concepts, buzzwords, technologies, and applications, most executives are looking for looking for answers to a few basic questions:

- What matters?
- What’s different?
- How can I and or my organization benefit?
- Where is the opportunity?
- What should I do now?

As I survey the evolving landscape, there are four primary things that stand out as emerging keys to sales and marketing success in an always on, attention scarce, information rich world.

  • Growing your network
  • Sending signals that are valuable
  • Building a glowing reputation
  • Focusing on delighting your customers

None of these are new tactics. They’ve all stood the test of time and have been employed by folks over the last several hundred years. However, the speed and access to people and information has made each of them exponentially more important. Take a look at the stats in the image below.

*** TAKEAWAY ***: When buyers want something, they’ll turn to search and their network to look for answers. Make sure you are there.

Why reputation and ranking is important

A great “human digitization” is taking place. Hordes of people and content are flooding into the web. Search engines and other content and people filters have to come up with a scoring mechanism to make results meaningful. Google, Bing, Facebook, and others are merging “people rank” with “page rank”. Search results are now being presented taking into account the “influence” and “reputation” of the messengers who are sharing it.

*** TAKEAWAY ***: Position yourself and your organization as a voice that matters (among those who know you, AND those who have yet to discover you)

Messenger as Important as the Message

*** How do you do this? ***

  • Build your network(s).
  • Send valuable signals – these could be blog posts, tweets, white papers, videos, comments, etc.
  • Focus on delighting your customers, prospects, partners, employees, suppliers, etc. It matters. It stands out. It breeds enthusiasm, loyalty, and word of mouth.
  • As your networks and signals expand their reach with positive sentiment, your reputation will increase.
  • As your reach and reputation grows, it provides an even greater platform to create moments of “delight”
  • Congratulations! An exponential and continuous feedback loop has been created.

Networks, Signals, Reputation, and Delight

For more on the concept(s), feel free to download/view the entire presentation below, or simply contact me directly.

[slideshare id=7541190&doc=networkssignalsreputationanddelight-110406175312-phpapp01]

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The Future of Customer Relationships: Where is all this heading?

February 18, 2011 By 2 Comments

Shifts in technology and human behavior are rapidly changing customer’s expectations of companies. Things are moving so fast, that most executives are not only trying to catch up with the changes, but identify what some of the changes are. Understanding what those changes mean to each business is a more complicated matter altogether.

Ross Dawson brilliantly lays out his observations of the mega trends happening around us in the charts below.

Ross Dawson Map of the Decade

Ross Dawson Zeitgeist 2011

Two growing and intertwining concepts (influence and reputation) are rapidly gaining ground and creating controversy as to their accuracy, adaptability, and use. There is a growing gap between those who believe that these scores and algorithms are the key to priority and leverage, opening up the door for profitable arbitrage, and others that believe that this is the emergence of a new caste system based on false measurements.

Just today, Klout just released a plugin for Twitter that displays an “influence” score (see the screenshot below), but this type of technology and scoring is currently in its infancy, and still marginally beneficial in the context of real life. However, some large and well known organizations are already giving perks and preference to customers with a high klout score.

Twitter Klout Plugin

Dr. Michael Wu, Chief Scientist, of Lithium Technologies, has been doggedly trying to uncover the meaning of influence, its impact on relationships, and ultimately corporate profit structures. Target the influencers, and you can move the crowd. There are seemingly vast opportunities in understanding and leveraging influencers within networked communities.

Influencer Network Graph

But, in reality, the influence/reputation conundrum is just one small movement in a massive tectonic shift happening that is disrupting geopolitical structures (Egypt, Bahrain, etc.), macro-economic theories and assumptions (the financial meltdown and the current response(s), human behavior, and corporate sustainability.

In late 2009, in one the most popular posts ever on customer focused portal, CustomerThink, Graham Hill outlined 15 tenets in his “Manifesto for Social Business”


No1. From Individual Customers… to Networks of Customers

No2. From Customer Needs, Wants & Expectations… to Customer Jobs-to-be-Done

No3. From Company Value-in-Exchange… to Customer Value-in-Use

No4. From Delivering Value to Customers… to Co-Creating Value with Customers

No5. From Marketing, Sales & Service Touchpoints… to the End-to-End Customer Experience

No6. From One-Size-Fits-All Products… to a Long-Tail of Mass-Customised Solutions

No7. From Competing on Products, Price or Service… to Competing over Multi-sided Platforms

No8. From Company Push… to Sensing and Responding in Real-Time to Customers

No9. From Technology, Processes & Culture… to Complementary Capabilities and Micro-Foundations

No10. From Made by Companies for Customers… to Made By Customers for Each Other

No11. From On-premise Applications… to On-demand Solutions from the Cloud

No12. From Stand-alone Companies… to an Ecosystem of Networked Partners

No13. From Hierarchical Command & Control… to Collaborative Hybrid Organisations

No14. From Customer Strategy… to a Portfolio of Emergent Customer Options

No15. From Customer Lifetime Value… to Customer Network Value

Add to these, the fast growing mobile, always connected individuals, and you have the making of a perfect storm, for those who understand where things are headed.

Join the Conversation

On Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 1 pm PST / 4 pm EST, please listen in to a conversation as some of the world’s brightest minds will evaluate and debate where we’re heading, project how multiple trajectories might collide, and what your organization should be preparing for now.

I’ll be participating in a roundtable, hosted by Focus.com featuring experts Ross Dawson, Dr. Graham Hill, Dr. Michael Wu, and analyst and futurist Denis Pombriant as we explore topics such as:

1) Influence and Reputation: How forward thinking companies will leverage these new measurements to attract and keep customers
2) Co-Creation: What it is and why it’s next in the evolution of customer centricity
3) The Impact of rapidly maturing mobile and collaborative technologies on organizations, their customers, and society as a whole

UPDATE: You can find the entire recorded audio section of the call here.

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Social Media, Collaboration, and Customer Insights with an elite group of experts: April 4-6, 2011

February 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When SugarCRM asked me to assemble the social track for SugarCon, the first thing that impressed me was the “spirit” of the track, and conference for that matter. It had little to do with touting Sugar; the company, or the products they make. Rather, it was all about creating a gathering of thought leaders, practitioners, and vendors to mutually work together in the effort of taking the next leap in improving customer relationships.

The great thing about working in collaboration with an open source company is that they “get” stuff like “open”, “collaboration” and “community”. It seems to be just naturally in their DNA and has been since their inception.

SugarCon 2011

I am excited about the lineup. The quality of speakers is amazing, and contains a diversity of perspectives that is hard to emulate, especially at a vendor conference. If you are free April 4-6, 2011, please mark your calendars and plan to attend SugarCon.

Considering that the price for the entire event is far less than what these folks normally charge for an hour of their time, plus the invaluable benefit of networking with other executives, marketers, sales folks, and technologists, it makes it a no-brainer if you can attend. Add to that the additional keynotes, 5 additional tracks, and it’s truly an event you won’t want to miss.

***** To make it even sweeter, mention the special discount code #SCON040511 and get $150 off. *****

Here’s a quick breakdown of the presenter’s lineup, chalk full of folks who have a reputation of keynoting on their own.

Paul Greenberg

Paul Greenberg


Paul Greenberg (@pgreenbe)

Paul will be keynoting the event. If you don’t know who Paul Greenberg is, you probably “have been very busy”. He’s written four versions of the best selling book, “CRM at the Speed of Light”, is an independent analyst, and a well respected consultant to some of the largest and well known CRM vendors in the world. He coined the most used definition of Social CRM, and has energized an industry with his research, intelligence, signature writing style, inquisitive mind, and kind and generous nature. Paul was the mastermind and primary catalyst behind one of the most unique and powerful events I have been to almost exactly a year ago, which has since quite literally propelled an industry (Social CRM) that Gartner is now saying is greater than a $1 Billion marketplace. Paul is well worth the price of admission alone.

By the way, there’s another one of these now famous #scrmsummit events coming up next month (March) in Madrid, Spain if you can make it.

Esteban Kolsky

Esteban Kolsky


Esteban Kolsky (@ekolsky)

If you clicked on the Madrid, Spain “Social CRM Strategies for Business” link, you probably saw a picture of Esteban dropping knowledge in a purple shirt and a shiny blue tie. While he likely won’t be wearing a suit, he most definitely will be dropping knowledge about the evolution of social and CRM to this point in time, and will be leveraging his extensive research experience (former Gartner analyst) to paint his view of the coming “collaborative enterprise”. Esteban is one of the sharpest minds in the space, and possesses a great blend of experience (analyst, consultant, practitioner), and background (an Argentinian of Eastern European descent that floats around Silicon Valley). He’s also got a great sense of humor. You won’t want to miss his session.

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff


Dr. Natalie Petouhoff (@drnatalie)

One of two PhDs. in the lineup, “Dr. Natalie” made quite a splash last year when she jumped from Forrester Research as a Customer Service analyst to take a role as “Chief Strategist” for Weber Shandwick, one of the world’s leading global public relations firms. In fact, Weber Shandwick was just named global agency of the year, for the second year in a row. In addition to being an actual rocket scientist, Dr. Natalie has written multiple books, is a university professor, and has led organizations in a wide variety of capacities as an analyst, consultant, and senior executive. Bringing together a depth of varied experience and a warm and entertaining style, Dr. Natalie will inspire new thoughts and ideas for you to take back to your organization.

Adrian Ott

Adrian Ott


Adrian Ott (@ExponentialEdge)

There’s not many people who have been called “Silicon Valley’s Most Respected Strategist”. Her consulting work is rooted in 18 years of corporate experience, and Adrian recently wrote and published her award winning book “The 24 hour Customer” which takes an intriguing look at why time is more valuable than money, and why and how to work with attention deprived customers. She’s appeared on Bloomberg TV, BusinessWeek, The Washington Post, and other major media for her research and insights about growing businesses in today’s exponential economy. Seriously good stuff. That’s all there is to it.

Dan Zarrella

Dan Zarrella


Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella)

Dan is the original Social Media Scientist. Beneath the hype and hyperbole of the social media evolution, one guy has a reputation of looking deeply into the numbers and producing insights and takeaways that often fly in the face of the mainstream cheerleaders. He knows why certain tweets gets retweeted, and when and why to post certain messages on your facebook page. He is the author of The Facebook Marketing Book and the Social Media Marketing Book. Based on his research, he knows what day and what time you should blog, or tweet. Hubspot is leveraging guys like Dan to fuel exponential growth. Take copious notes when you’re listening to Dan because they’ll translate to success and dollars when you’re back in the office.

Dr. Michael Wu

Dr. Michael Wu


Dr. Michael Wu (@mich8elwu)

Speaking of scientists, Dr. Michael Wu is taking some of the most complicated subjects underpinning the social web, social business, and social networks, dissecting them and then educating the masses with detailed yet digestible explanations of how things really work and how successful organizations can leverage networks to thrive. As the principal scientist of Lithium Technologies, a leader in Gartner’s Social CRM Magic Quadrant, and the pioneer platform provider for customer communities, Dr. Wu has access to a boatload of data, and he slices and dices it with precision. The output is keen insights into why some communities, organizations, and individuals thrive on the social web, and others don’t. Dr. Wu will teach you how seemingly far reaching concepts such as influence, gaming dynamics, and other factors can be key differentiators between marketing and customer service success and failure.

Becky Carroll

Becky Carroll


Becky Carroll (@bcarroll7)

What Becky Carroll is working on now could be enough for most people to complete in a lifetime. She’s a professor at UC San Diego, an NBC news correspondent, book author, consultant, and manages the Verizon customer community. She’s long been an author of one of the most popular blogs in the world focused on customer service and customer experience. Entertaining, multi-talented, and engaging, she understands the social world well, and knows what works with customers. Soak up her wisdom and add to your bottom line.

Christopher Carfi

Christopher Carfi


Christopher Carfi (@ccarfi)

Christopher started his blog called “The Social Customer Manifesto” in 2004! He saw today’s reality nearly a decade ahead of it’s time, and is now looking ahead at the future and the impact of the perfect storm mashup of social, mobile, and cloud computing and what it means for consumers, and in turn, the organizations that seek to earn their business. After nearly a decade at Anderson consulting, he founded Cerado, Inc. to provide software and services that enable businesses, organizations and associations to better connect and understand their customer and member communities. He recently joined Edelman Digital, the digital arm of the largest, independently owned communications firm in the world, Edelman, the publishers of the Edelman Trust Barometer, the subject of my last blog post.

Brent Leary

Brent Leary


Brent Leary (@brentleary)

Another guy who was early to the game, Brent literally started the social crm conversation on Twitter back in 2008 by creating the #scrm hashtag and bringing together a community of thousands to discuss the topic. He co-authored Barack 2.0, chronicling how Barack Obama leveraged Social Media on the way to the presidential election. Brent is the principal and founder of CRM Essentials, and is a well respected analyst, consultant, and thought leader. His thoughts are regularly featured in Inc. magazine, OPEN by American Express, and he’s been quoted in several national business publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and Entrepreneur magazine. Brent specializes in the SMB market and always has unique, relevant and actionable insights to share.

Laurence Buchanan

Laurence Buchanan

Laurence Buchanan (@buchanla)

Laurence heads up CRM and Social CRM within the UK for Capgemini (Technology Services). In his current role Laurence is responsible for Capgemini’s CRM & Social CRM go-to-market strategy and business development across all packaged vendors and industries. He is passionate about helping clients articulate their customer-centric vision and strategy, and enabling that through the smart use of technology. Prior to Capgemini, Laurence spent a decade with SAP, where he was global vice president for SAP CRM. He is a recognised authority and evangelist on CRM, Social CRM and customer experience transformation. He writes regularly on Social CRM at The Customer Revolution and is a member of the CRM advisory board at the Rotman Centre for CRM excellence in Toronto.

Matthew Rosenhaft

Matthew Rosenhaft


Matthew Rosenhaft (@mmrosenhaft)

Matthew Rosenhaft is the Principal of Social Gastronomy and Co-Founder of the Social Executive Council, an elite group of global CxOs, focused on leveraging social technologies in their organizations. He is a former marketing executive who specializes in Social Business, Marketing, and Architecture Strategy. He also has founded several early-stage venture-backed technology companies and holds a US patent for a mobile marketing technology. You won’t want to miss Matthew’s session as he unveils the research findings of his firm, and provides an ultra-tangible example of how companies can leverage social market research to provide insight into strategic customer focused initiatives. The subject of his research? SugarCRM. Come attend this no-holds barred session as Matthew unveils clues to Sugar about what the marketplace and prospective buyers think about them, and offers some suggestions about how they might respond.

That’s the lineup. What are you waiting for? Register here, save some cash with the #SCON040511 discount code, and let’s setup a time to connect while you’re there.

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Who and what the world trusts

January 26, 2011 By 2 Comments

This week, Edelman published their 2011 version of the Edelman Trust Barometer. Over the past 4 years, I’ve begun to watch this report as it comes out annually with great interest. Below is the slide presentation.

[slideshare id=6689233&doc=edelmantrustbarometerexecutivefindings-110124175807-phpapp02]

Here are some of my observations.

Trust in Institutions in the US and UK are pretty close to levels of trust in Russia.
Wow. Enough said.

CEO’s aren’t all liars and trust in experts or credible sources is growing.
As more and more people have begun to share their voice in the digital realms, the deluge of information has once again created demand for filtering.

Edelman Trust Barometer 2011

People overwhelmingly trust people in the technology industry most
I find this a bit surprising and wonder if this is because in general people feel that Google, Apple, and (gasp!) Facebook have actually made their life better and easier?

Edelman Industry Trust 2011

Quality, transparency, trust is what leads to corporate reputation
Interesting that there is such a high correlation between trust and quality

Quality Transparency Trust Edelman 2011

Corporations should be good be good members of society
More than 80% of people in Germany, the UK, Ireland, China, US, Mexico, Indonesia, Canada, The Netherlands, Sweden and Russia believe that corporations should create shareholder value that aligns with societal interests as a whole.

Edelman 2011 Corporations Society

So what does this mean for organizations?

- Create great quality products and services
- Treat employees well
- Promote and share internal talent and expertise with the world to establish credibility and trust
- Aim to create systems of interdependent value distribution; Focus on shareholder returns, AND be mindful of local communities, and society at large.
- In the US, UK and some other countries, there is a trust leadership void. This means opportunity for the organizations who can excel in the items listed above.

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