I have been busy with the BBBT the past couple of weeks. This is the first chance I have to highlight some new kindred spirits.
There seems to be a lot of blogging about blogging lately.
Ripple writes about blogging for a long time.
Jeremy is not sure he wants to keep blogging.
BloggerCon is coming up and that is generating lots of talk.
People don’t like that they aren’t on the A-list.
And the conversation about making money with blogs continues to grow.
I realize between bloggers that this is going to be popular topic. I have posted multiple times on various aspects. I guess I have just reached the saturation point.
My thoughts:
ok…I think I feel better now.
Rolex Awards for Enterprise is a contest designed to support innovative ideas.
The winners of this year’s contest and their ideas are truly amazing and inspiring.
For example, Nigerian Mohammed Bah Abba developed simple cooler using two pots and filling the space in between with wet sand. The evaporating water causes a temperature drop and keeps the inner pot cool. The “refrigerator” doesn’t need electricity. Eggplants can now last 27 days rather than three. Farmers don’t need to sell their produce in a hurry and there has been a revival in the local pottery industry.
Be sure to check out all five inventions.
[via venturpreneur]
Since we just finished the book tour, I thought I would give you some more potential reads.
Here is a list of books that Ben and Jackie recommend at the end of their Discussion Guide.
I want to thank Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba for sharing their thoughts on Creating Customer Evangelists.
I also want to thank all of the tour stops for their time and their hospitality.
If, for some reason, you haven’t purchased the book yet, go buy it now. This is the newest Essential at A Penny For… and I strongly recommend it.
Ben and Jackie have also written the Creating Customer Evangelists Discussion Guide to go with their book. It is great for using with a team as you build evangelism into your business.
Next week, we’ll be announcing the next book for our May Business Blog Book Tour.
Stay Tuned.
Q: Since this is a book tour, how would you tell a bookstore to create customer evangelists? How does a distributor create evangelists for other people’s products?
For bookstores, one model is City Lights, the legendary San Francisco hub in the Haight Ashbury district. It has a colorful history, a distinct political viewpoint and a rich selection of works from beat poets. In other words, it has a well-defined cause — the expression of a liberal political and artistic viewpoint via its inventory. It’s not for everyone, but it’s a Mecca for many people, both locals and tourists. Because it’s a Mecca, it is rich with evangelists.
Conversely, big-box stores try to be all things to all people. Just as the television networks are being marginalized by specialized content on cable, so goes the possible future of mass-audience bookstores. If they compete merely on price, they’ll lose to Amazon, which has thousands of evangelists for its selection, low prices, and ease of use. That’s where a bookstore experience really matters.
During our U.S. book tour last year, we did many talks and signings at Barnes & Noble and Border’s stores, and we loved meeting their hard-working and friendly employees. Those two companies have led the way in adapting the Starbucks model of a comfortable place of community, but with no disrespect intended to our many friends there who carry our book, they’re akin to McDonald’s in their sameness. How does the typical customer define the difference these days between Border’s and Barnes & Noble? It’s nearly impossible.
A distributor, like any B2B company, differentiates itself by its service. To generate healthy evangelism, the employees at a distributorship must believe in the products they’re selling. If they don’t, find something else to sell because your lack of authentic belief is easily telegraphed.
Second, a distributor must focus on creating emotional connections with customers. A distributor may not own the products, but it owns the customer. The connection must be so strong, and the service so valuable, that a customer would be heartbroken for switch. Some B2B companies may say their customers purchase on price, and only price, but try telling that to Southwest Airlines, which competes in the commoditized airline industry yet leads all of its competitors in word of mouth, top-line growth and profitability!
Q: I am a big believer in measurement and how they drive behavior. You mention over 30 potential measurements of evangelism. Where would you tell a company to start as they try measuring their current level of customer evangelism?
A: Excellent question. Here’s how we suggest an organization approach customer evangelism measurement:
Task 1: Strive to ask 100 percent of your customers “How did you hear about us/our product/our service?” An excellent response rate is at least 90 percent. Here’s why it matters: Build-A-Bear Workshop knows that 50 percent of its business comes from word of mouth, 40 percent from walk-ins at store locations and 10 percent from a aggregate group of various sources. As a result, the company smartly focuses its marketing on word-of-mouth.
Task 2: Cull the following measures from your most loyal and enthusiastic customer evangelists:
* What do they say, specifically, about your company/product/service? (Knowing their specific, word-for-word pitches should help you adjust your own marketing)
* How many networks do they belong to? (They can help you find more people like them inside their networks)
* Who are your top 10 evangelists in terms of generated referrals? (Think about developing a special “insiders” program for them)
* Who are your top evangelists for purchased products/new business?
Task 3: Ask as many customers possible if they have referred you — yes or no. Forget measures such as purchase intent or brand awareness; they’re useless because they don’t measure action. Ask customers if they have actually referred you to others. Whether the answer is yes or no, develop a series of follow-up questions to understand why.
Q: I would like to get your thoughts one of your case studies – Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks. What do you think of his new blog?
A: Cuban is an incredibly smart and savvy businessman, and a brilliant marketer. Someone asked us during the course of our research for “Creating Customer Evangelists” if Cuban was smart or just lucky for having sold his former company, broadcast.com, to Yahoo for nearly $6 billion. Our answer: If luck and good fortune were the streets of a city intersection, Cuban would own all of the property in the neighborhood.
Considering how computer-savvy he is, we’re wondering why it took Cuban so long to launch his blog (which debuted earlier this month).
That said, what’s he written so far is pure Cuban: provocative and outrageous. In explaining why he’s referring reporters to read his blog for quotes, he writes: “[It’s because of] the satisfaction of knowing that each [reporter] will have to explain to their editors what a blog is — and argue for who knows how long about whether or not BlogMaverick.com is an attributable source.”
Dan Gillmor asks Mark Cuban five questions about his new blog.
Q: Talk a bit more about the two books that you recommend at beginning of your book, Customers.com and Futurize Your Enterprise. What did you like so much about those two books? Would you still recommend them?
A: When it came out in 1998, both Jackie Huba and I loved “Customers.com” because it presented a vision for ecommerce that was customer-centric, not design- or brand-centric. Unfortunately, too many marketing directors believe that a website is more about maintaining an image than providing real utility or function. The book was, and still is, a brilliant treatise on delivering an Internet experience that’s driven by a customer’s experience.
We both loved “Futurize Your Enterprise” because author David Siegel evangelized how the Internet was going to change the world. Even though the book was published in 1999, the chapter on “The Truth Economy” still resonates today.
If you have missed some of the BBBT, you can go the CCE tour page. I have compiled an index of the links from all the stops.
I also have the same setup for our last tour with Barry Moltz.
Enjoy!
Today is the final day of the Business Blog Book Tour.
Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Creating Customer Evangelists, will be posting through out the day. We are also going to be cover some different topics.
So, give a warm welcome to Ben and Jackie [applause]…
I know you have all been waiting.
You can now download Hanson’s “Penny and Me” from iTunes. “Love Somebody to Know” is the B-side on the EP.
If you were looking for the BBBT at Startup Skills.com, it seems we have been a victim of lost mail and spam filters.
You can pick up the tour tomorrow with Doug at the Small Business Blog.
FC Now highlighted the Guru Red Manifesto today.
To go along with the Customer Evangelism/Cluetrain conversations we have been having, take a look at Point #13 – Lemmings. Respect the Tribe:
Whether it’s clothes, computers or food, most people emulate and copy other members of their tribe or social group. Children learn behavior by copying those around them. Adults do much the same. People mimic the behavior of their peers whether they are choosing an investment or a restaurant – even if their own judgment would direct them elsewhere. As people observe and follow each other, they contribute additional momentum to the vortex, in turn drawing in more people. In a modern market driven economy it produces a unique result – a compulsion to copy the purchasing behavior of others, and the willingness to pay a premium to do this. The foundation of our remarkable success as a species has been our instinctive inclination to accept, mimic and propagate the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of others in our tribe. Ignore this aspect of human decision at your peril.
They use natural instinct to explain trends and fads. I wanted to draw out that its word of mouth and conversations which create ‘the vortex’.