 There is not much time left if you're buying holiday gifts for the busy marketing professionals (employed or self employed) on your list.
Some quick ideas, if you need them: 1. FREE MARKETING TOOLS (introduce them to these tools for zero cost) : HubSpot Marketing Free: A comprehensive marketing platform with free tools for email marketing, social media management, and more. Mailchimp Free: A popular email marketing platform with a free plan that includes basic features and automation. (I used Mailchimp Free for years as I got my newsletter going.) Beehiiv Free: A web app that makes creating and distributing beautiful newsletters easy. (I really like what Beehiiv is doing and am in the process of transitioning my newsletter to this platform.) Canva Free: A design tool that helps create visually appealing content for social media, presentations, and other marketing materials. (Canva is great, especially for non designers. It helps to make design easy.) 2. BOOKS ON MARKETING, SALES, AI AND MORE: There are tons, let them pick their favorites and listen to them on the go with a gift subscription to Amazon's Audible (affiliate). 3. NOISE-CANCELING HEADPHONES: Bose QuietComfort 45: High-quality noise-canceling headphones for focused work and relaxation. (affiliate) Sony WH-1000XM5: Another top-rated option with excellent sound quality and noise cancellation. (affiliate) 4. ERGONOMIC OFFICE SUPPLIES: Standing Desk Converter: Allows for easy conversion between sitting and standing positions. (affiliate - I have one similar to this and it works great.) Ergonomic Mouse and Keyboard: Reduces strain on the wrists and hands. (affiliate) Blue Light Blocking Glasses: Protect eyes from harmful blue light emitted from screens. (affiliate) What else? What are you hoping Santa will bring?  In a B2B SaaS company's 1:many customer advocacy programs, false advocates, or more specifically, transactional advocates, are individuals who may appear to be strong advocates from an engagement perspective, but who don't genuinely contribute to the program's symbiotic success unless they're directly being rewarded to do so, or their "advocacy" (used loosely here) is half-hearted -- surface-level broad -- or just outright vague to the point of not being at all useful. All just so they can get the reward...Going through the motions without emotion.
These the so-called are advocates gaming the system for their own gain vs. being intrinsically motivated to want to advocate on behalf of your product/brand/org because they get value from it, and also recognize how you/the org benefits (win, win). But why do we have "transactional advocates?" Because we created them by training our customers to approach our program that way with various reward item incentives, and a lack of explanation about how it's a mutually beneficial collaboration engine. Having run these kinds of programs myself, I can tell you it gets exhausting to police false advocates, and it can get expensive for the org to the point that when budget planning comes around, this program is seen only as a line item expense and is potentially cut. (That's the wrong move IMHO, but without the right context and the opportunity to correct the problem, I absolutely understand why it happens). Don't misunderstand me here, gamification, badges, and rewards all have their place in a well-oiled customer collaboration engine, but making the rewards a dominant central focus just to get participation will result in the significant expense of transactional advocates, which can cloud any ROI results. We typically want our customer advocacy programs to bring outsized value to our customers (and thus to our organizations by their advocacy output from participating). In order to do that though, there needs to be internal and external transparency (i.e. clarity) about why the program exists, so all involved want to participate. We need our own org, as well as our customers, to opt-in to the the concept that our advocacy program is positively symbiotic. These programs work best when you are in collaboration with customers vs. "bribing" them like a lonely wealthy person paying for lavish parties to have people hang out with them (makes me think of the song, "Nobody knows you when you're down and out"). So, if your 1:many customer advocacy program is heavy on reward items, requires a large budget to operate (beyond the cost of the software platform and team to run the program), and the quality of advocacy you're deriving from that effort is lacking, then you may need to consider revamping your approach. Here are some thoughts to start that process:Ask your customers. Find those good advocates in the program and start a virtual advisory board with them to find out what is working for them, and how you might double-down on those ideas. Do the same with top customers who do not participate in your advocacy program to find out what might motivate them to participate in your program. This does two things: gives you diverse insight outside of the echo chamber of your program, and helps you recruit new, right-fit, members to your program. Think about reserving rewards for surprise-and-delight kinds of gifting -- aka non-expected rewards that are not always tied to customers knowingly getting something for completing an action. (Plus, with rewards in general be aware of anti-trust laws and anti-bribery regulations in various countries/regions that may prohibit your ability to provides rewards to begin with). Surprise-and-delight can endear customers further to your program and brand because you create positive, unexpected moments they're grateful for. Find more intrinsically valuable ways to reward your customer members with recognition, access, experiences, and career help. For example, create a spotlight to showcase what individual customers are doing in their role that is a win for their success using your product that other members may have interest in, and/or could learn from. Not necessarily the mega big wins, either, but perhaps the day-to-day things that are little known unless you're a deep user of your product. Here's another thought: reward advocates with access to your org's exec team so your exec's can participate in customer listening sessions. Many execs want to speak to more customers, and often executive level titles in customer orgs want access to your execs. Or, have your exec do a short form interview with the customer to make that customer look great for choosing to use your org's product. This can help your customer's personal brand, and provides your org more content to use. This is also an example of the next one -- experiences -- this kind of exec interview with a customer could be a motivating experience for a customer who is a VP at their org looking to build their thought-leadership. Give something that most professional individuals can use: help with their career in the form of teaching them how to build and use their personal brand for their own professional success in their current role with their current employer (your customer account). This is useful to the individual because as we all know, we as individuals are primarily responsible for our career paths. Personal brand help is one way to appeal to individual customer members in a way that can have positive rippling effects to their employer, and what ever future employer they may eventually move on to, as well as your org for providing the training and benefitting from some of their social posts about your product. A major intrinsic motivator and point of value that is actually a through-line with the above ideas is that they're mostly things that can be leveraged to facilitate customers connecting with, not only your org's staff, but more importantly, each other to grow their professional network and peer relationships, which has far-reaching benefit for all parties. Knowing how to design 🍥or write ✍️ in marketing is one skill, but understanding and being able to apply and execute those designs and writing into various situations that drive your desired action 📈 elevates that skill from being in marketing to being a marketer (aka a creator). BTW: Marketers who came from a creator background — creatives in the arts who have spent any time pursuing their craft entrepreneurially 🎸💵 — is why, in my opinion, they are good marketers. They understand what it takes to have an idea, realize it, and grow a following around it. It takes a lot of work and time, it’s not easy. That’s why they’re professionals.  According to Gartner Digital Markets, "Customer advocacy is when buyers actively promote and support your brand because they believe in your products or services. It involves engaging and empowering customers to become brand ambassadors, spreading positive word-of-mouth and influencing others." I think it's important for customer advocacy practitioners to focus on the "engaging and empowering" of customers to become brand ambassadors, but how do you do that? At, perhaps, an oversimplified level you have to talk to your customers, and/or at the least, pay attention to their behaviors that provide signals about what would help them be successful with your product and beyond...and I would argue that the real value to customers that can unlock their advocacy for your product or brand lies in the "beyond." Think about how you can help individual customers (not just the account -- their employer) be successful in their career (and perhaps with your product). As soon as you appeal to the individual, what they care about in a professional context, and provide real value to them within that context, what you're doing from an advocacy standpoint becomes a useful, "sticky" proposition to them, that they will more likely want to take advantage of. From there, be transparent about how the relationship you're building is mutually beneficial... When you're honest and transparent about what you're doing, AND you provide customers with great value, they are empowered to make a choice to advocate on behalf of your product/brand. Because it's their choice, their advocacy is far more valuable than a transactional, bait 'n switch, short-lived "relationship." Here's the link to the Gartner Digital Markets article - there are some good nuggets of info in there.
🤔Quick thought: Customer Marketing & Advocacy vs. Customer Advocacy Marketing
Why do we refer to this function as customer marketing and advocacy? …When,if we’re doing it right, we as customer marketers should be putting our customers first and advocating on behalf of them (our advocates) to build trust and cultivate customers’ participation in acts of advocacy that can be leveraged by marketing? When we say customer marketing & advocacy it feels like we’re putting our company’s priorities first and advocacy is an afterthought (aka the customer is an afterthought 😬, yikes).  Customers in your advocacy program want to network with each other. They know that it helps their personal brand, accelerates their role success, and helps lead to future career opportunities when they can meaningfully expand their professional network. That’s why it’s of value to your customers if your organization can help make it easy for them to find each other to make those connections. Here’s a simple, and easy-lift, way to do it. Use your customer community, advocacy platform, or even a private LinkedIn group you’ve set up just for customers…just some place online where your customers regularly gather. Create a peer-to-peer networking post. In the post, ask customers who are interested in, and open to, networking to share their title, industry, company name, and LinkedIn profile URL in a comment. Then ensure the post instructs commenters to review the comments for people they would like to reach out to via LinkedIn to connect with, and/or set up an intro chat. Those looking to network can use control F (find function) to search the comments for titles or other keywords as identifiers of peers with whom they would want to connect. You can even go as far as providing a sentence or two script for those reaching out to their peers on LinkedIn to initiate a networking conversation, like: We are both part of the XYZ company customer program and I found your LinkedIn profile from the networking post. I just wanted to reach out to connect and have an intro chat. Depending on the platform you may be using to gather and communicate with your customer advocacy program members, there are varying degrees of sophistication you can get into with peer-to-peer connections and even more direct recommendations and matching. At this level you can gain the ability to track that these connections are happening, which can help prove another great benefit of your advocacy program to the org — peer-to-peer references, peer-to-peer mentor/mentee relationships, and often cross-seek and up-sells come from such peer-to-peer connections. Oh by the way, it’s also great for executive customers. How you ask? Create a private, exclusive group online just for your customers who are executives (I recommend a private LinkedIn group for this one because most executives are on LinkedIn regularly). Offer a 1:1 personal introduction to the customer executives you want to invite to this LinkedIn group. Let me know know that by joining they will have access to other customer executives who join from your organization. It's an opportunity specifically designed for executives to find one another and network right on LinkedIn, where they are anyway. Then, the group can function like the peer-to-peer networking described earlier. The beauty of using a LinkedIn group is that if the executive has their LinkedIn notifications turned on they will be notified when there are posts to that group, which is the reminder to them to pop in and do some networking. Remember, customers who participate in your advocacy program may be brand/product ambassadors, but they likely are more driven to participate because they care about their own careers, and how your program might help them in their role to get promoted, or to find their next role. Lean into that motivation and provide value. Doing so will endear trust and respect and more advocacy.
Emily Amos, founder of Uplift Content, will be speaking at CustomerX Con in Boston in a little over a week, and while she's there she will be conducting a “woman-on-the-street”-style interview with attendees. Her goal is to ask one single question of as many customer marketers and customer advocates as she can, and then compile the responses into a helpful resource for the customer marketing community. Here's the question: How do you measure the performance of your customer stories? To kick off her effort prior to the conference, she tagged several CMA professionals on LinkedIn, myself included (I'm honored), to answer her question. As usual, while on LinkedIn trying to answer the question, I ran into the character limit because my response was too long. So in order to share my long answer without a character limit, I created this blog post... My answer to the question: This isn’t exactly an area that the role I’m in typically is responsible to measure, however, I do have some thoughts about it. Because a customer story will likely live on a web page you can measure the basic web page metrics — traffic, click-thrus, conversions. You can even break this down a bit further if you have/use different formats of the story, like video vs. written to identify which format converts best. As conversions happen (form fills, etc.), you can likely track the lead through the sales cycle to closed won/lost status, if it gets that far. Then you can look at how many deals included that asset as part of the journey. So what’s measured in the scenario above is really just a strong indication, based on online actions, whether or not the story was effective at converting those site visitors into the next stage of the sales process. Unfortunately, we know that site visitors don’t always follow the most easily measured path that we marketers would prefer they take. In reality, you will never know if someone read the story, didn’t fill out the form for a demo, then later chose to return to your website, then reached out to a buddy on LinkedIn using your product to get the name of their contact at your org. Then they got in touch with someone and a deal ensued from there toward a close/won status. You can perhaps gain some additional insights by enabling customer-facing teams to use the customer story in their outreach toward sales (net new, up-sell/cross-sell). Even KR them on the usage of the story asset to hold them accountable toward using it (hopefully you’ve connected with Sales prior to creating the asset to ensure it’s fulfilling needs they have in the sales process to begin with). Give each Sales person a unique tracking link that can be used in email signatures, in decks presented to prospects, in email outreach and follow ups to prospects, etc. Then you can see how often the asset is being used by Sales — one measure of whether or not the story is effective: does Sales even use it? Then you can compare how often the sales team is using/sharing the asset with the traffic to the story online and ultimately the conversion rate of the web page the story resides on, and how many closed/won deals included that asset as a touch point in the sales process. Emily is a good human who is amazing with customer stories, so if you find yourself in need of help to craft effective customers stories, click the button below and check out her website.
 I keep seeing posts and practices that suggest using AI as a starting point to create a first draft in record time. Then use your human intelligence to edit that draft to your needs. Perhaps it’s just me, but that process does not tend to save me time, or produce the kinds of results I’m after — quality and expedience. Here’s what I’m getting at: I think AI is a better editor than an initial drafting tool when it comes to writing. When I try to start writing with AI, I have to create a prompt to have AI produce a draft. Certainly, I can add reference sites or other inputs to help refine the prompt toward an output that is a potentially workable draft. That’s time spent crafting a prompt. Here’s what I don’t like about that: Even inputting tone of voice instructions into the prompt, the initial draft output doesn’t have my tone, or the brand’s tone; it still needs quite a bit of massaging. That’s time spent where I have to edit. Editing the draft AI has produced leaves me feeling like I’m trying to make something work from what’s been given me instead of starting with solid ideas that need editing to tighten it up and ensure it flows well to it’s point or call-to-action. AI as an editor, however, has been a much better experience for me. I’ll write my first draft or an outline of ideas then save myself time by having AI refine my writing to make it more concise or come up with paragraph transitions that I hadn’t thought of. Approaching it this way tends to allow your own tone of voice and writing style (which is an output of your thinking style and communication style of expressing those ideas) to come through while the AI tech shaves time off of the process of specific word choices and sentence structures. All in all, I think AI in writing is a time-saving editing tool vs. a creative starting point.  If you release your work week stress by playing guitar and songwriting then the following might unlock some new possibilities for you that you may not have previously realized. I've been a guitar player/songwriter for years, and I'm always searching for simple ways to record reasonably good quality sound with the least amount of gear possible. I've always been interested in simplifying the equipment needed to get a good sound -- for a live gig, or at home when I'm recording music. These days, the technology is such that it's much easier to get quality sound without a lot of gear. This has been good news over the years for my personal less-is-more-gear-philosophy. The tech gets better and smaller. I love that I can record guitar and vocals direct to my iPhone Voice Memo app and get a nice little recording with little more than a small amplifier and my iPhone. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, and maybe I'm late to the party, but I get excited when something like this works and makes it super simple to very quickly plug in to capture a song idea without having to set up several pieces of equipment just to record something that sounds good when I listen later. By that time, I may have lost my creative momentum. My opinion is that creativity is best captured fresh; at the moment inspiration strikes. The great thing is, the recording set up I'll explain is simple, and you likely already have what you need to make it work. I've used a Fender Passport Mini amp (https://amzn.to/4dfr86R), which has two inputs for an instrument (guitar) and a microphone (vocals). This amp has a USB output jack. Plugging my guitar and mic into the amp and dialing in the amp for the sound I want, I can then use the amp's USB output to plug directly into my iPhone and record. However, you will want an iPhone camera pack adapter (https://amzn.to/3zqmZ26). The USB output cable from the amp will go into the USB port on the iPhone camera pack adapter. The other end of the adapter has an iPhone Lightning jack (male), which plugs directly into your iPhone. If you're like me, you have all sorts of various iPhone adapters lying around; accumulated over the years. It is necessary to use this camera pack adapter to achieve the outcome we're after. There's something in the way the adapter works with the iPhone to capture the signal. So, here's the summary of the set up: -Guitar and mic plugged into the amp -USB cable from the amp's USB output jack to the iPhone camera pack adapter -The adapter's iPhone Lightning cable plugs directly into your iPhone -Open the iPhone Voice Memo app, start a new recording, play your song, stop the recording, and listen. That's it. Now, have fun. Record your next masterpiece. Here are other amps that I own or have used that are great and have a USB output jack. -Fender Acoustic Junior amp: https://amzn.to/4dfr86R -Boss Katana amp: https://amzn.to/4gBfqWO (links are affiliate links) Here's an audio clip of the sound quality direct from my Fender Acoustic Junior amp into my iPhone Voice Memo app. No tweaking of the sound other than how my amp was dialed in.
Stay on top of your personal brand, networking and continuous personal and professional development9/16/2024
 Ideally, we all have mentors and colleagues we can connect with to learn from, swap stories with, and share information to improve in our roles as customer marketers and advocacy practitioners.
In addition, in between IRL connections, or in lieu of having many of them, industry books and audio books are a useful source of information and inspiration. While our kids are all getting back to school now, it reminds me that it's time for me to also get "back to school" to expand my knowledge. I like to read, but also have come to enjoy audio books to be hands free and able to absorb knowledge while doing other things like cleaning the house or working out. It's no longer a "I'll do it when I get to it" kind of thing to constantly being networking, building relationships and mentorships with others as you build your personal brand and strive to excel at your craft. The world moves quickly these days and we have to make our own luck by being prepared to recognize opportunities when they arise. Staying informed and sharp is a way to do that. Though, I do realize you have to do this in a way that feels somewhat comfortable to you (not too comfortable, slight discomfort is where growth lives 🙂). The following are some thoughts to help you stay on top of your personal brand, networking and continuous personal and professional development:
If you're in the customer advocacy, customer marketing, customer success, customer experience space, check out some of these titles for your professional development: https://amzn.to/3zcFV4j (affiliate) |
Hey there. I'm Nick
Invest in yourself. Get creative/business/life insights in your inbox - sign up for my eNewsletter.
(affiliate links appear in content) Archives
December 2024
|
RSS Feed
Proudly powered by Weebly