I often write about the inspiration I take from Chip and Dan Heath’s business book Made to Stick. The book presents very compelling reasons why some ideas thrive while others die. According to the authors, there are six principles of sticky ideas – ideas that are easily remembered and passed along virally.

The book and its valuable lessons have been top of mind for me lately as I raced to prepare my company and its products for relaunch. Most importantly, the principle of unexpectedness or unexpectedness in the service of core principles. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXPECTEDNESS
How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. We can use surprise — an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus — to grab people’s attention. We can engage people’s curiosity over a long period of time by systematically “opening gaps” in their knowledge — and then filling those gaps.

I’ll be tackling the pain of knowledge gaps in a future post on SEO and link baiting. But today, I wanted to share a great tool for seeking inspiration by hunting for cool (it just sounds so uncool saying that): TrendHunter unlocking cool is the world’s largest community dedicated to trend spotting and cool hunting. It is chock full of surprising, unexpected and “cool” ideas and products that you’ve probably never heard about. It strikes me that this must be the source of many of the “breaking news” posts on popular blogs today. Might even provide a good blog post or two for you.

Got any other great ideas for seeking ways to surprise your customers?

We’ve all heard of the authors of Chapter 7, Peppers and Rogers, and although they are typically more B2C focused there’s a few good points in this chapter worth mentioning. Whether we’re B2B or B2C, marketing to our customers is important. We all know or have at least heard that 80% of our business comes from 20% of our customers. So are we doing enough to keep the 20% that generate the most revenue for us?

As B2B Marketers, we are now able to personalize almost everything we do (one-to-one marketing). This is especially true when it comes to marketing to our customers. We are able to call out specifics about each individual customer engagement and tailor our messaging directly to them. Peppers and Rogers list 5 questions we need to be able to answer before building out these personalized programs.

“To increase your share of customer, one customer at a time, you need answers to these questions:

1. Which customers are the most valuable ones, and why?
2. Which of your current customers aren’t worth catering to at all?
3. Which customers will give you more business by referring others to you?
4. Which prospects would you like to convert to customers?
5. What types of consumers [leads] do you consider real prospects?”

ReachForce Promo alert – as you are pondering these questions and trying to figure out how to get the most accurate answers, check out ReachForce Insight Lite.

My biggest takeaway from this book was that the Japanese see everyone in the company as marketers and that often they do no even employ a marketing department. (Not to self: must find new career if moving to Japan) I think that this can be applied to any B2B company. I know here at ReachForce we have multiple departments working directly with customers and other than writing case studies, I have very little interaction with customers. We do obviously have current customer programs, as evidenced by this book club, but our sales, operations and customer success management teams are really on the front lines and know the most about what our customers and prospects think about us.

As marketers, we should use this to our advantage. We should empower those customer facing teams to know what we are doing in marketing and make sure they are well educated on any upcoming product launches. They can then in turn empower our customers with this information. These teams are also a useful source for gathering feedback. They can be especially helpful in determining new products and features. Developing personaes is very popular right now and they are the best source to tell you about your customers. Knowing as much information as possible about your customers will not only help you to further develop those relationships but to also help you find more prospects that match their profile.

Did you have any takeaways from this chapter or have any personal experience working with Japanese companies?

B2B Marketers spend lots of time and money on trying to acquire new customers. After all, you have sales guys breathing down your backs for new leads all the time and quotas to meet for bookings and new customers acquired. As the drum beat on the recession gets louder, there’s more and more buzz about holding on to what you have, that means current customers. Why is it that in a downturn we worry about keeping our customers happy and not in growth cycles? Have you and your executive team ever taken a step back to see how much of your revenue actually comes from current customers? Or how many customers use you for a year and then choose not to renew because they have been ignored all year? Adding a current customer program has the potential to dramatically increase revenue.

Implementing a current customer program involves much more than just a nice holiday card/gift once a year. You should have programs throughout the year to keep them engaged. Just as in lead generation, current customer programs should be segmented. This can be based on your own parameters: by products purchased, by size, by revenue contribution, by role within the company, etc. Once segmented you will be able to prioritize and focus on their needs with relevance. Also remember that cross-selling a current customer is more than blasting the new message to a current database – ask yourself, is the person (role) of the person in my database the right one for this value proposition/message? Do I need to find the right decision maker for that role?

Here are some ideas to building and maintaining an ongoing relationship with your customers:

• Start a newsletter – be sure to tell them information that they care about not just the latest award you have won
• Ask them for feedback and input; consider asking them “The Ultimate Question” www.theultimatequestion.com
• Create a customer community – you can develop your own or start small with a Facebook or LinkedIn group; the social web has enabled us to keep the conversations going all of the time.
• Send thought leadership – this could be whitepapers or books that are exclusively available to customers, do a survey and share the results, share best practices
• Host a user group conference – this is the most expensive but it is a great opportunity for you to connect with your customers and for them to connect with each other

This year we are making customer retention programs a priority. We’re sharing best practices via The B2B Lead, we’ve started a ReachForce Book Club and included our customers as honorary members and that’s just the beginning….

What percentage (%) of your marketing spend do you focus (or should) on current customer marketing? It’s never too late to get started driving more out of what you already have.

This chapter had some really good stuff in it.

“Marketing Is Everyone’s Job” I couldn’t agree more. “Marketing is about creating and sustaining relationships with customers and those in the industry’s infrastructure. That means everyone, from salespeople to engineers and production workers, must see themselves as marketers.” As marketers we are expected to define our position in the market as well as our image but we rely on everyone else in our company to uphold it and continue to reinforce it. Here at ReachForce, we run many different lead generation programs to warm up prospects and help move them into the sales funnel, then our sales team takes over and continues to ‘market’ our value. Once we win a new customer, we are dependent on our customer success teams to deliver not only high quality data but also help our customers with best practices. Each group that touches the prospect/customer has a different role within the company but still continues is market to them along the way. It’s important and we believe it’s what makes our customers continue to come back for more.

As I continued on reading I got to the section about Using Word of Mouth as a marketing strategy. “Word-of-mouth testimonials are more believable than any advertising or marketing ploy you can dream up.” This seems so simple, why aren’t more people leveraging it? Here at ReachForce, I spend little to no time on branding. I always say, our branding strategy is to win more customers, continue to make the ones we have happy and hope they will help us spread the word and build the ReachForce brand. But am I being too passive about this, just waiting for it to happen all by itself? In this chapter, author, Regis McKenna, listed a few ideas of places to start a word-of-mouth marketing initiative. I’ve included them below –

• Customers – we’ve got to stay in touch with them and keep them involved so they will help continue to spread our message
• The selling chain – “Training and educating people who meet with customers pays handsomely.”
• Industry watchers – i.e.analysts, consultants – “these people gain their information by word of mouth – they visit plants, attend analysts’ meetings, and talk to people in anyway connected with the industry”
• The press – “More than 90% of major news stories in the business and technical press come from conversations with insiders. Journalists rarely write stories based on press releases, so it’s up to you to engage them directly.”

There’s lots of other great points/messages in this chapter. Anything jump out at you? Please do share.

Continuing your relationship with your current customers is always a challenge. In today’s online world there are many more options for B2B Marketers to stay connected to their customers like through social networks and online communities. At ReachForce, we decided to mix a little old school with some new school and start a book club with a twist. Instead of meeting at a local coffee shop to discuss the book, we will be discussing it here on The B2B Lead. If you are a ReachForce customer, you should expect to receive our first book soon, if not already. If you are not a customer, click here for an online discount.

Our first book is The Marketing Gurus – Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of all Time. It is a “best of” collection of Marketing books from the past 15 years. Each week, Leigh Anne and I will share our perspectives to get the conversation started but will rely on you to join in to share your thoughts, opinions and ideas. We will begin the conversation next week in order to give everyone a little time to get started. Next week we’ll be reading and chatting about chapters 1 & 2.

Happy reading!

When I was in college (far too many years ago) we learned about the 4 P’s of Marketing. Of course, in just the last few years, we’ve seen a major shift in thinking about the 3rd P – promotion. We no longer accept the notion that 2% returns on direct mail or 0% responses from print advertising are smart Marketing. Instead, we are laser targeting our messages to audiences and using social marketing to build a following of like minded customers.

With increasing interest in the power of communities, we now have the 6 C’s of Social Influence Marketing thanks to Dave Friedman, president of the central region for Avenue A | Razorfish. In today’s post, I’ve shared some of Friedman’s very timely advice on making social marketing and communities work.

You see, I’ve had some very interesting discussions of late on how to design and “position” a community. It boils down to “can you really design and position a community or will the community itself determine what it becomes?” We’ve decided to let the BreakingPoint community define itself. Stay tuned for the big launch announcement and see how this works for us.

In the mean time, here is what Friedman has to say courtesy of Chief Marketer Report.

1.Content: Access to valuable tools and content is a key factor in a consumer’s decision to interact with a brand. Regardless of their goals, brands need to think about customizing bite-sized, portable content or experiences for their most prominent target segments—content that their “friends” would be proud to display, share, or support.

Sound familiar? This was the focus of The B2B Lead – snack size educational nuggets.

2.Customization: Users crave the ability to customize, post and share content. On social networks like MySpace or Facebook, users define themselves through their personalized profile pages and the elements that they choose to display. Marketers need to empower consumers to express themselves.

3.Community: The adage “build it and they will come” is not applicable here. To build community within social media campaigns, brands need to achieve several things: Give users a reason to interact with your brand frequently by providing unique content, value or engagement. Let your content travel by distributing it across widgets and other mechanisms beyond your Web site.

Get the rest of the 6 Cs Or, check out Joseph Jaffe’s version at www.jaffejuice.com.

User group conferences are expensive and time consuming but are the best way to have your customers network with each other and for you to get real face time with them to update them on new products and features and gather input on where you should be headed next. I was speaking with a colleague about her user group conference. She has managed them in the past but wanted a better way to stay connected with customers after the conference. Her boss wanted her to create an online community because social media is so hot right now. However, an online community didn’t seem like a right fit because her customers wanted real answers from executives not just responses from whoever in client services happened to be monitoring the discussion boards that day.

I recommended that she continues to hold events throughout the year but to instead make them virtual. As part of the goody bags at the user group conference she could give everyone a web cam. Then, once a quarter, she could organize a live virtual conference on Skype (if Oprah can get housewives to use it, you can get executives to). Users may not be able to interact with each other as much, but an executive could be on hand to make announcements and answer questions. Now I am a firm believer in pushing your message through as many media as possible because everyone’s preferences are different. After the live web conference, she could turn the highlights into a webcast for those who couldn’t make it and send a newsletter with updates as well. That way people can digest the information in their own way.

The point here is that no matter what you do to stay in touch with your customers, do something. We learn in school the importance of keeping our current customers, “It is easier to keep a current customer than to gain a new one.” Somewhere along the way acquiring new business became the focus and we forgot that our current customers are our gold.

As a footnote, I have not executed a campaign such as this one. This was truly an idea I had in the moment when my colleague told me about her dilemma. I would love to hear from anyone out there who has done something similar!