It’s Mother’s Day weekend! Let’s celebrate moms and how they have turned marketers upside down.

As a marketer, I have been impressed with how moms have worked with companies to make their voice heard and to get companies to understand that if their needs (and the needs of their children and families!) are met with applicable solutions, they will become brand loyal. As people become as comfortable with social media tools and sharing their voices as moms, I am confident that they will follow this path and forge partnerships with the companies that serve them.

I have tapped into four wonderful moms (of all boys!), Christa Miller, Shelli Johnson, Jeannie Cusick Walters, and Becky Carroll who just also happen to be some of the smartest communicators I know. Here’s the advice they’d like to share with fellow marketers and communicators:

Christa Miller, owner of Christa M. Miller Communications and mom to two boys:

“Don’t assume that all mothers’ experiences are alike. Some are very similar, of course, but motherhood is so intensely personal that even our reasons for (example) going back to work, self-employing, or leaving the workforce altogether to stay home are not as cut and dried as the actions you see. (Mothers forget this, too.) Parenting cuts to all our deepest wishes, hopes and insecurities, our most personal life experiences and the way we see this awesome responsibility. Respect that, whether in humor or seriousness, and you’ll win my trust.”

Shelli Johnson, own of Frontier Consulting Group and Have Media Will Travel, and mom to three boys:

“Share a story that I, as a mom, can relate to—any story that some mom will relate to—and you’ll have my attention. If you get personal and make it real, you have me. Promise.”

Jeannie Cusick Walters, owner of 360Connext and mom to two boys:

“I wish there were more messages about how awesome moms are to each other. We’re always helping each other out and supporting one another – it’s not this crazy competition some marketers want to make it.”

Becky Carroll, owner Customers Rock!, author of The Hidden Power of Your Customers: Four Keys to Growing Your Business Through Existing Customers and mom to two boys:

“Don’t forget that not all moms (and mom bloggers) are mothers only of little ones. We who have teenagers are still moms – and we fondly remember the tiny hands and warm hugs that are sometimes missing at this age… market to that.”

Marketers, understand this: humor, trust, and understanding wins! Moms, what advice would you share with marketers?

Momentum: Moms won’t like your brand if you clutter up her Facebook page with promotions

“Facebook is the place Moms love. 91% of the Moms surveyed have a Facebook account and 62% claim to access it multiple times a day. A very high percentage, 76%, have liked or friended a brand or product on Facebook. Why? Because they liked the brand’s personality or wanted first-hand knowledge on new products or deals.

Why does she choose not to like or friend a brand? She doesn’t want you cluttering up her page with promotions and she’s concerned with privacy. And she feels Facebook is for her “real friends”. Plus she takes into account she’s probably already receiving emails, catalog, direct mail and mobile messages from the brand.”

Yahoo! Advertising Blog: Tips for Marketing to Moms Online During “Me Time”

“Content-matching combined with day-parting is key …it’s not just about reaching moms; it’s about reaching them at the right time with the right message.

‘Whether it’s on a PC or a tablet, the approach should be about creating content and messaging that respects a woman’s need to have both productive time and me time…’”

Marketing to Moms Blog: 8 Changes in the Mom Market over 5 Years

“Millennial moms have redefined Burger King’s old tagline, “Have it your way”. Today’s new mothers expect to customize products, media and even the lifestyle of motherhood. They are applying their pre-baby style to post-baby life and customizing motherhood to their daily activities, personal values, goals and philosophies and expect the products they purchase to be customizable to the motherhood they define for themselves.”

Material Instinct: Product extensions: why new isn’t always better

“When it comes to new products for moms, here’s my litmus test: solve a real problem without making more work for her. Creating another thing for a mom to pay for, own, maintain, and find in her purse is not progress unless it’s truly useful. Otherwise, let’s call it for what it is: preying on her insecurities while pocketing more of her cash.”

Social Times: Marketing to Moms on Twitter? Make Them Laugh

“A new study says that a majority of moms (52%) like to see humor in businesses’ tweets. Further, what moms want most from businesses’ tweets are links to interesting articles/news (71%) followed by links to sales or special offers on their websites (67%) and links to downloadable coupons/discounts (63%).

On Twitter they’re looking for good deals, too, but they also want to be kept informed about news and articles that are relevant to their lives.”

Happy Mother’s Day!

[Image source: SheKnows.com]

I just finished reading Ernan Roman’s latest book, Voice-of-the-Customer Marketing: A Revolutionary 5-Step Process to Create Customers Who Care, Spend, and Stay and I must say, this book is a gift to marketers, management and any business owners who truly cares about their customers.

I first learned about Ernan’s new book when Denise Lee Yohn interviewed him on her blog. (If you don’t read Denise’s blog, Brand as Business Bites, you should. It’s full of great branding insights!)

After reading the interview, I knew that I had to put this book on the top of my reading list because it not only embodies my beliefs on customer-centric business—it provides a process to bring the customer closer to the center of the organization.

While “voice of the customer ” research has been around for a while, Ernan shares his five-step process so that companies can put VOC research into practice. For those who might be speculative, the process is backed with solid case studies.

Listening Versus Understanding

The foundation to any well thought out social media strategy is listening. If you are familiar with social media, you know listening means using tools like Radian6, SM2 or Google Alerts to capture what people are saying about your brand on the Internet.

However, there is a lot of work that needs to take place between listening, understanding and implementing change. Listening online alone often leads to a misunderstanding of context and nuance.

Scott Rogers captures that best in his post, Listening Versus Understanding: There is a Difference.

“The first step in listening (and any VOC program) involves obtaining customer feedback.  Customer feedback, whether it happens in real-time or later, is the customer’s viewpoint.

Customer feedback comes from those whose desire to give feedback exceeds the personal constraints for giving feedback – time, place, personality traits, etc.  Back in 2007, J. Walter Smith from Yankelovich gave a speech at the CRMC Conference in Chicago where he mentioned, from their national survey, the dollar value the average person thought a minute of their time was worth – it came to well over 3 times the national average income.  In other words, we must cherish the feedback customers give us, because it shows how much value it had to them to provide that feedback.

It is human nature to simplify, categorize, clarify, and make things black and white. Those of us who practice the art (or science, depending on your bent) of ‘listening’ to customer feedback need to not only understand that ‘if no two people interpret anything in the exact same way’, this pertains not only to the customers we are ‘listening to’, but to us too – the listener.”

The pitfall with using social media listening alone is that it is just one channel.  Obviously, it’s not smart to use the feedback of one channel to determine what business shifts must take place to meet customer needs and wants. It takes on- and off-line interactions and multiple channel analysis.

Voice of the Customer Marketing is the key to unlocking the full benefit of listening to, learning from and tapping into the wisdom of the customer.

The Five-Step Process

Step One: Conduct and Apply VOC Relationship Research

• Interviewing customers, prospects, and key stakeholders to understand how they expect the marketer to satisfy their needs for a high-value relationship.

Step Two: Create VOC-Driven Opt-In Relationship Strategies

• Engaging prospects and customers to tell you exactly what they value and want from you…and what they don’t want from you.

Step Three: Create a VOC-Driven Multichanel Mix

• Creating an integrated, multichannel marketing program that engages and inspires your customer.

Step Four: Create a VOC-Driven Social Media Presence

• Creating strategies for real-time engagement with your customers and prospects.

Step Five: Invest in an Excellent Customer Service Experience

• Not pretending that customer service is something for operations to worry about.

Companies That Gave Their Customers a Voice

Voice of the Customer Marketing offers case studies that show step-by-step how companies have not only tapped into their customers, but have changed the game in their industry by doing so. Companies like:

• Walt Disney Company
• IBM
• Microsoft
• Tiny Prints
• Ford Motor Company
• HMS National
• Nike
• Lifeline Screening
• Palms Trading Company
• MSC Industrial Direct

The mix of case studies proves that Voice of the Customer Marketing works regardless of industry or size. There is no room for the “that’s only for B2C or large companies” excuse.

How about it? Will you consider giving your customers a voice? There is no reason not to now that someone has provided you with a process.

[Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Voice of the Customer Marketing through McGraw-Hill’s Business Insider Program. I had the opportunity to select this book as part of the program and did so because it focuses on customer-centric business.]

[Image: TMS ]

“Unengaged Employees Don’t Create Engaged Customers” - Bruce Temkin

For the past week I have spent considerable thought on how and why marketing is broken (more on that later this week) and why it’s imperative to understand the challenges so that we, as marketing and communications employees, can fix what ails business today. Many businesses and their employees often have misperceived notions that they know what is best for their customers, even when case study after case study show why that philosophy is broken. In reality what they think is best for their customers is really just a short-term plan for what is best for them—their bottom line. Then, there are companies that truly understand why customers need to be at the center of their organization and they use that philosophy steadfastly to prosper year-after-year. Do these companies possess a magic bullet? Of course not. They succeed because they plan to provide the best customer experience—repeatedly. And that planning starts with their employees.

Customer Experience Snack: Is your trusting cup half full, or half empty? Why believing your employees fuels your prosperity engine.

“Wegmans trusts their employees because they select them with diligence and with clear success factors in mind.  Then they prepare them for success – so that they can trust both their judgment and the skills that Wegmans has to develop. To enable employee belief, Wegmans invests up to 40 hours a year per person in training and career development.  This enables this company to “throw out the rule book” and believe in employees’ ability to make judgment calls that are right for each customized customer situation.  The only “rule” there:  ‘No customer can walk away unhappy.’”

“Employees love this kind of environment—and their numbers show it. Within their industry, Wegmans has dramatically lower employee turnover rates, higher operating margins and 50% higher sales per square foot.”

(I can tell you as a Wegmans customer this philosophy has made me come to love food shopping! Seriously.)

Customer Experience Matters: The 6 Laws of Customer Experience (eBook)

“…While you can make some customers happy through brute force, you cannot sustain great customer experience unless your employees are bought-in to what you’re doing and are aligned with the effort. If employees have low morale, then getting them to “wow” customers will be nearly impossible.”

“Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers. Value is created by satisfied, loyal, and productive employees.”(as quoted from the Harvard Business Review).

Customer Think: The Customer Experience Planning Gap

“Management may plan one thing but different employees approach issues differently.”

“What businesses fail to understand is that a deliberate and consistent Customer Experience is the only way to customer loyalty and advocacy. Let’s say that people are generally satisfied with one company but know that the experience depends upon who they are going to meet there. Will they recommend it to someone?! No, because they will put their name to it only if they have seen consistent excellence not that there is a 70% chance of a good service.”

Beyond Philosophy: Lessons from the Milgram Experiment

“The purpose of the experiment is to show how people will adhere authority, follow orders and give a lethal electric shock to a person despite being able to hear their excruciating screams. What has this got to do with the Customer Experience? We know the subconscious experience is very powerful in a Customer Experience.”

“From a leadership perspective, you need to consider how you act, behave and are perceived… If you are a leader are you sending out subconscious signals to your employees so they don’t tell you want they really think? If you are an employee do you have the courage of your convictions to tell the truth.

A few challenges for you to mull over….

• What are the subconscious signals you are giving to your Customers?
• What could you do to provide a great Customer Experience?
• Are you really listening [to]  the people that know what is going on?
• Are you speaking out about what is right and wrong with your Customer Experience or just following the herd?”

Happy reading and watching!

[Image: getgreenliving.com]

Let’s pretend… Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all go away due to lack of funding or revenues. What happens next?

If you are a social media consultant how will you advise your clients to continue their social media efforts? If you are a company how will you maintain your social media efforts?

Are you serious about social media enough to innovate or come up with another strategy to use social media to stay connected with your customers, prospects, employees, investors, etc.?

Seriously, have you thought about it?

[Phew! This goes on record for one of my shortest posts ever!]

“A guy walks into a bar…”

Kidding. 

It actually goes more like this “a communicator walks into a meeting and the VP or client says ‘I want bloggers!’” (or we want a “well known” social media consultant!)

I used ‘communicator’ because I don’t want to be accused of continually beating up the PR rank and file and because it’s not always PR folks, it’s also marketers and organizations/clients seeking social media consultants. 

So what’s the pickup line you ask? “I/We LOVE your blog!” 

If you have a blog I am sure you’ve heard it before. Someone wants something from you and they figure the quickest way in is to flatter your blog. What annoys me about this pickup line is the assumption that bloggers are so vane that sucking up with an insincere one-liner will make them give you what you want. A lot of us bloggers don’t blog to be self-important. We blog because it’s a space for us to share our thoughts, insights or opinions and to be a part of the community (whether that’s marketing, social media, golfing, wine, shopping, business, whatever…). 

When I get this line (and my gut tells me they are insincere), I’ll usually say “Hey thanks! So tell, me what posts have you liked or disagreed with the most?” The usual reply: “er, um, ah…” Yeah, thought so. Another indication of insincerity is that they have never once commented or even tried to be a part of the community. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you want something from someone who blogs―whether it’s a blog post you seek or consulting services-don’t enter the relationship with a cheesy one-liner. It doesn’t work in a bar and it surely doesn’t work in business because no one wants to be just a person on your list. (Actually, this is just good advice for interpersonal relations…people know when they are being used, no matter how smooth, suave or smart *you* might think you are.) Relationships do matter regardless of the situation.

Next time you find yourself uttering those words, remember that you have just joined the ranks of being “that guy (or girl).” (In case you don’t know what that means… it’s the obnoxious person no one wants to be near.)

Have you heard any other one-liners recently?