5 Steps to Build Powerful Customer Word of Mouth Marketing

There are many ways businesses harness the power of word of mouth to drive brand awareness, sell more products and drive demand and engagement online. There is little doubt that your customers are your No. 1 asset when it comes to marketing. Associating your brand with positive word of mouth and validation by the customer is a win-win situation for any brand.

This is true of Lumension’s brand as we’ve held steady in our commitment to leveraging customer success stories in our marketing and PR efforts. And it’s paid off. Why? Because our customers are the ones in the trenches every day, facing and addressing business challenges. Getting happy customers to provide testimonials of how your technology, solution or services are helping to define and address their business critical areas is key to communicating to other prospects that this could be the right solution for them as well.

There’s been a dynamic shift in the way people make buying decisions. They’re not blindly turning to marketing collaterals and Web sites to make those decisions. Instead, they’re turning to their peers, friends, online communities, Wikis and even YouTube to research and develop their own opinions. So wherever you can place your customers to help engage and spread the message is potent.

Technology and social media channels have created greater avenues to intensify our efforts and spread the customer message and validation. To do a great job on customer marketing, it takes a concerted effort on the part of marketing/communication and PR teams to outline a customer marketing strategy that incorporates key communication channels. Below are 5 steps to a winning customer marketing strategy that includes success stories, videos, whitepapers, blogs and PR.

1. Define a Customer Success Program

Every organization should have a Customer Success Program, which should include the following:

• Define a strategy – Without strategy, it’s all meaningless tactics. This strategy should include the types of customers, vertical markets, specific pain points/challenges, solutions, etc., that you’re targeting with this program. Lastly, you should include how you’re planning to market it and what types of channels you’re focusing on to get the message out. Once you’ve laid this foundation, meet with key stakeholders to review, edit and finalize this strategy.
• Objectives for the program – Second, understand what you’re hoping to accomplish through this program. The Customer Success Program should first and foremost address why customers should join this program and how it benefits them. Every brand has a story, and getting your customers to share their experiences with your brand is the first step. Communicate how your company wants to tell its story to the world through this program. Create a brochure that includes customer testimonials on how the Customer Success Program has been instrumental to their organization. The brochure should also include key samples/links of other customer success stories. When you’re putting the plan together, this needs to be a cross-functional effort. Work with your sales management and key executives to really understand what incentives they’re willing to give to the customer in exchange for participation in the program. This information will help solidify your plan.
• Sell it internally – Finally, getting the internal teams on board is crucial to successfully executing this plan. Once you have the external Customer Success Program, you need to have an internal version as well. This helps rally the troops and gets them to sell your plan for you, especially the sales team since they’re face-to-face with the customers all the time. The plan should answer the question: “What’s in it for me?” Just as you have created incentives for the customers, you will need to think of incentives for the internal teams.
• Setting up the process – Once you have all this, now you will need a process. How does this work, and what can the sales team do when customers are interested? The steps should be fairly simple. Identify the customer. Set up customer screening calls to walk them through the process, and send them the Customer Success Program materials in advance. Make sure the customer understands that before you begin the project, they will need to get an internal approval from the marketing or legal team. Once you have that, you should have a set of questionnaires to help you write the customer success story. Be sure to cover all grounds – including media opportunities that your team will seek once the story is approved. There are different ways to tell the story — written success stories (two to three pages that include an overview of the customer, challenges, approach and solution/ROI), video success stories and ROI whitepapers (that detail and highlight ROI from using your products/services).

2. Videos are the Future to Content Marketing

With YouTube being the second most used search engine for content and research, videos are the way of the future. Given my journalism background, I’m always inclined to tell a story through videos and images. Capturing the story and adding a voice and face to a story can prove to be powerful. Do your research and find out what type of videos you want to create with your customers. Every time you write a success story, you should be creating a video success story. See sample here. Hire a freelance videographer or photojournalist to shoot b-roll and customer interview and put it all together. Give them samples of what you’re looking for.

3. Why ROI Sells

This may be the hardest part to get the customer to agree to, but try it anyway. If there is an ROI element to it, sell them on why they want to go with an ROI whitepaper versus a simple two- to three-page success story. This is an extensive process that dives deep into how the customer is using the product, what sort of tangible ROI they are seeing and how the product/services has benefited their organization. See sample here (registration is required).

4. Customer Media Coverage

Publications are always looking for customer war stories, and the best way I’ve seen to get feature and standalone coverage is to get customers to sell your story for you. This is on par with a good product review. Who needs a product review when a news outlet just published a customer’s story on how they are addressing industry specific challenges? This is also true of vertical publications. By securing a media opportunity, you’re not only building a powerful brand position, you’re making a superstar out of your customer. For example, we reached out to the Wall Street Journal to get coverage for one of our customers on the mobile computing threat. The WSJ reporter loved the idea of getting a live person on the phone to walk him or her through the types of risks mobile devices were posing to the organization. The great part was the customer actually talked about how our product was key to keeping their data secure with so many new devices connecting to the network. On that note, it’s important to have your customer reference list (those who have signed on to be media references) for outreach outside of the success story.

5. Market the Customer’s Success Through Integrated Approach

You have all these great customer assets. The big question remains: How do I effectively market the customer’s success? Simple. Take an integrated approach. There are great marketing opportunities to include these stories into the overall mix.

• Market it in your monthly customer or nurture newsletters (under customer highlights)
• Build a webcast or podcast version of the customer success story, and promote it via YouTube and iTunes (even look into distributing it on Kindle)
• Create a social media news release to distribute with links to the success story, videos, etc.
• Invite the customer for a Q&A blog post and add appropriate links to their other assets
• Secure speaking opportunities (where relevant) for the customer to tell their story via other platforms
• Submit them for awards (where appropriate) based on their war story and unique approach
• Send it to all the internal teams so they can use it as a selling tool

In this day and age where dollars are short and marketers are being asked to be nimble and flexible with our strategies, it’s important for us to leverage the assets we have in our toolbox. Customers are your greatest marketing assets, and understanding key ways to harness their word-of-mouth impact will prove to be crucial to your organization’s success.

Social Media Reshaping Journalism… How Will You Cope?

According to a blog called Simple Zesty, there are 10 industries that will be revolutionized by social media – print media, politics, television, hospitality, sports, music, recruitment, advertising, PR, and shopping. With the availability of Web 2.0 tools such as YouTube, Twitter, etc. the power to create, publish and syndicate content no longer resides to only the news publication and journalists.  Today, we have the capability to custom create and communicate our own editorial content to influence the way the online community digests and disseminates information in real time. Prior to Web 2.0 adoption, consumers had to wait to get information on the latest news and information from your print and broadcast news. Now, we, the masses, have become writers and content creators from all walks of life, spreading information in real time. People are becoming social journalists in their own right to publish photos and stories from their points of view. For instance, real time terrorism was captured on Twitter by the actual users trapped inside the hotel that was bombed by terrorists in 2008, which catapulted Twitter to new heights.

 

The revolution in Iran – some of the most riveting and thrilling reporting was done via Twitter by a university student in Tehran who goes by the moniker Tehran Bureau. So what does this say about the changing landscape of the news media? Will social media change the way journalists adopt, connect, engage, and disseminate information to the rest of the world? Will this change affect the way PR/Communications and marketing pros connect and communicate with the media? One reporter, Del Jones (http://twitter.com/jonesdel) of USA TODAYwhom I’ve been following closely on Twitter, is one clear example of someone who gets it and understands how to harness the power of social media to look at the emerging trends and ride the way with the rest of us. Through social media, he engages, connects and collaborates with his online community.  He is someone who is authentic and transparent in his approach to social media (two key traits I admire most). In this blog Q&A, I ask Del about how he came to embrace social media and some key tips on ways for us PR professionals to approach reporters via social media platforms.

What prompted you to join the social media craze?  

I’m sure my high school class would have voted me the least likely to succeed in social media (had they had any clue).  I still don’t use Facebook or LinkedIn, although I’m registered on both. I was a complete Twitter skeptic, but I have a counter-intuitive streak in me. Twitter was growing and I needed to know why. So, when I had some time on my furlough (yes, three weeks of unpaid leave), I decided to devote 1-2 hours to figure it all out (ha ha). Months later, I’m still trying to figure the thing out, but I’m hooked to the point that my editor would probably fire me if I didn’t have so many followers (so please don’t unfollow me). I’ve also threatened to reveal personal information about him on Twitter if he fires me, so the social media craze is really all about having your own printing press should revenge become absolutely necessary. 

How is Web 2.0 changing the media landscape? Is that a good thing or bad thing?

I’m a free market person, so if people find value in reading anything, then it’s good. The only thing I object to is the wholesale plagiarism that goes on. Blogs will cut and paste entire stories I’ve written, never bothering to link back to USA TODAY. If they want to help USA TODAY pay my salary, then maybe they can steal my intellectual property (yeah, I know intellectual in my is a stretch, but you know what I mean).

How should journalists approach Web 2.0 and how transparent can they be?

This is a touchy point. I push it far more than most journalists, most who will still seem to think they are above it all and won’t post anything that isn’t a link or some boring factoid. I’ve been called into the boss’ office for going too far. They didn’t like it when I started giving out free online subscriptions to USA TODAY to my special followers (the joke being that the dot-com site is free to all). I’ve always been a believer in the “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission” model. When it comes to Twitter, it’s always easy to dial it back but I’ll continue to push the envelope. If I don’t tweet for a month, it will be because my 401K went down even more and I really need my job.

Many USA TODAY reporters are afraid of getting on Twitter. They have been made gun shy by the reader comments below our stories on the Web page, which are full of venom. I find the culture on Twitter to be the opposite of people who bend over backwards to be nice.

Are policies different for journalists than corporations?

From what I’ve read, USA TODAY is actually very liberal in its policies compared to most. It amazes me that media outlets that are built on the first amendment are the first to take it away from their reporters. Shame.

How does this change in terms of engagement for PR and marketing professionals when it comes to connecting and building relationships with the media?

It’s been very good for me. I get a few pitches on Twitter, which I ignore as I do pitches on email (unless, of course, I’m interested). However, it has allowed me to put forward a human face to PR people, who before Twitter, thought I lived in a dungeon. It’s nice not to always feel mean. I like to compare Twitter to the Lion’s Club Luncheon of old. Business types would show up. They all wanted to sell something to everyone, but nobody did any selling at the luncheon. Rather, they just got to know each other so that selling could be accomplished sometime down the road. Twitter greases the wheels.

Is social media/networking hindering or helping the media community?

Helping those who are good at employing it. 

When it comes to pitching, what are your key recommendations for PR/marketing professionals?

Pitch away. There is no formula. Most pitches I don’t like and there are a few I like a lot. Then, there is a huge amount that I don’t like much but have something to it. I hang on to a lot of emails until I figure out an angle that I’m interested in pursuing. PR people sometimes get an email from me a year later after they send a pitch. I prefer email pitches because I have developed a system for saving the emails I want so that I can find them down the road. I rarely respond to them, however, because I don’t like to get into a long discussion about why I don’t like their story pitch. It’s a question I really can’t answer. It’s my gut instinct.

Jones makes a great point that social media is changing the way even journalists communicate and connect with people. From my point of view, I can’t say whether all journalists should adopt the social media tools to connect with people, but I do believe that just like with anything, only by listening to what people are saying can journalists really understand what we’re looking to hear and learn from them. Just like the “push” tactic of marketing and PR has changed the way we communicate with our audience, it too has changed the way journalists disseminate news to their audience.  Vice versa…PR and marketing pros need to understand how social media is changing the news media landscape. We must embrace this shift and learn how to connect with them in new ways in order to reach and connect with them.  

A few tips on how to connect and approach reporters and analysts on Twitter:

• Research your target audience – trade and business reporters as well as analysts
• Follow them on Twitter and their blogs consistently
• Engage – follow their content on Twitter and their blogs and comment if relevant
• Participate – keep an ongoing dialogue with them even if they don’t follow you.
• Provide feedback and input using traditional tactics – provide news that would be relevant to them and the stories they cover.  Write compelling news pitches that could add value to their current or future stories and learn what they are working on so you can contribute.
• Link it – as Del mentioned, if you have a blog, look at their stories and write a post that references or links back to their blog or story and post it on Twitter
• NEVER blindly pitch a reporter on Twitter (unless you have a good relationship with them)

Another good read by Mashable: Social Journalism: Past, Present and the Future.

Do you agree? Let me know what you think.

PR & Marketing Pros: Unlearn Your Trade to Succeed or Get out of the Way!

The advent of social media and the social web is challenging many public relations and marketing professionals to understand, incorporate and participate in these new channels to be effective in their roles. Businesses looking to adopt these new tools as a way to engage, monitor and grow their influence are facing the same struggle. In a recent blog post, titled “The State of PR, Marketing and Communications: You Are the Future,” Brian Solis writes, “It is this element of fundamental transparency of Social Media combined with its sheer expansiveness and overwhelming potential that is both alarming and inspiring PR professionals everywhere. At the minimum, it’s sparking new dialogue, questions, education, innovation, and also forcing the renaissance of the aging business of PR itself.”

For this blog post, I spoke with David Meerman Scott, thought leader and pioneer in this arena and author of many books such as The New Rules of Marketing & PR, a BusinessWeek bestseller being published in 24 languages, and his new book World Wide Rave among others, to discuss the changing face of PR/marketing and how it’s forcing PR/marketing professionals to “unlearn what they have learned” to remain relevant. In this interview, we take a look at the past, the present and the future of PR/marketing and what professionals need to do to stay ahead and maintain their competitive edge.

There is a lot of noise around social media. How has the introduction of social media changed the face of PR and marketing?

Well, prior to the Web, we as PR and marketing professionals had three ways to reach people — to buy ads, beg the media to write about us or hire salespeople to bug people by knocking on doors. Social media has provided us with an opportunity to publish our own information and earn attention rather than buying, begging or bugging people. It is illustrative of what’s changed because with the advent of social media and the web, anyone can publish online to reach and be seen by millions of people through Twitter, YouTube, etc. It’s evolutionary in terms of how we communicate today and what it means for PR, marketing and sales professionals.

How should PR and marketing pros evolve?

The most important thing for us (I include myself in that) is to have an understanding that we have to unlearn what we have already learned in order to be successful in the world of social media. For a long time the success of advertisers was predicated on how well they were able to buy attention or make TV commercials. Further, the success of PR professionals has been based on how they can convince the media to write about their clients. Neither of these things is about creating original content. The traditional ways of doing things involved buying, begging and bugging. That approach has changed. What marketers and PR people need to understand is that while their skills are still valuable, they need to evolve their approach and their techniques, or they won’t be successful. What it really comes down to is what can they create themselves or for their clients using new ways to reach a broader audience. Today’s strategy involves a completely different skill set. Rather than thinking like a traditional PR person, you have to think like a publisher — you’re not just working to buy attention or to get a reporter to write about your client. Today’s approach is fundamentally different.

I do believe that PR agencies are still needed today for their traditional skills of media relations. I don’t think social media makes the skills of PR people go away. There will be room for people in the PR industry to work with media to craft stories on their clients’ behalf. However, we have a tremendous opportunity to influence people in other ways beyond the traditional approach. For example, if you look at PRSA’s definition of public relations, and I’m paraphrasing here, it’s about how an organization deals with its public. There is no mention of media relations. However, a lot of PR people believe their job is only media relations, solely to generate ink from third parties. We now have an opportunity to influence and reach the public using new tools, and this is great news for all PR people because we never had that option before. To reach people directly, we had to go through the media. Now you have more choices. You can help your company or your clients reach their publics in different ways through YouTube, Twitter, chat rooms, Flickr, blogs, etc. by publishing different yet compelling information.

What do you see as common pitfalls of today’s marketing/PR pros?

Getting back to my point earlier, the pitfalls for PR pros are that they’ve become very skilled at crafting a story idea that somebody else will write about and broadcast, skilled at working with others to say something on their behalf or their clients’. If that’s all you do, you’re going to miss out on a tremendous opportunity to create content for yourself. The pitfall is that you really do have to unlearn the skills that you have learned to successfully engage in the social media sphere.

For instance, I get pitched every day from other PR people to write about their stuff. I almost never do — maybe one or two times a year when somebody sends me traditional pitches or press releases. However, if somebody tweets something or sends me a link to a blog post that I find interesting, that gets my attention, and I often write about it on my blog or tweet about it. I’ve written about a lot of companies but I’m not going to write based on a traditional press pitch. PR pros need to think differently to be successful. I believe they need to be forward-thinking PR professionals who can seize the opportunity and guide their company or their clients that are struggling with social media on the new ways of publishing and communicating.

A lot of times when I’m on a speaking circuit, people ask me to show them how to do this. I get asked constantly by companies and executives for suggestions on how they can incorporate social media into their overall strategy. What I say to them is to check out PR agencies and marketing and ad firms to see if those firms have the skills to put it together. The truth is not many can. A lot of PR/marketing or ad firms will create a tab on social media that links to poor Twitter updates to show that they’re doing social media. I tell those companies looking for help to find the PR/marketing/ad firms and find out how active they are in social media. Find out if they do YouTube videos, whether they are active on Twitter, blogs, chat rooms, etc. and that will be your guide in terms of whether that agency can help you. If they’re not active, there is no way they will be successful in helping clients do social media. There are agencies that are terrific with social media, and I encourage organizations to work with those firms to get their social media efforts going. The good news is that anyone who wants to become adept at this can.

What are some common misconceptions about social media?

I think the main thing here is that people make it out to be too much about the technology and not enough about the content itself. The second major thing is that people need to be thinking not about themselves or their ego, their clients or their products — but think about the people they’re trying to reach. What are the problems they’re trying to help solve? People who are steeped in traditions will automatically create social media based on what they know. To do social media successfully, you need to put away the thought that you have to talk about your products, company, services, etc. but start thinking about valuable information you can create and publish to help solve people’s problems. 

What top three pieces of advice would you give to PR/marketing pros looking to stay ahead?

    •       First and foremost, unlearn what you have learned,

    •       Second, participate. You have to participate yourself. You can’t bill yourself as an

            expert unless you’re doing it yourself.

    •      Third, do it now. Don’t wait, analyze or pontificate. Get it going.

What are your thoughts on ROI — investment versus influence?

I believe they’re not mutually exclusive. Traditional ROI seems to apply to certain things in marketing. I believe it’s because executives are fearful of social media, and that’s why they hold people who want to implement social media accountable to measurements that other parts of the organization are not being held accountable for. What’s the ROI of putting a new coat of paint on the building? What’s the ROI of the CEO making a trip to California? We don’t calculate ROI in other parts of the business but hold ROI to social media. It might not necessarily be ROI in terms of the traditional MBA approach, but there are tons of ways to measure social media — where you are on the search engines, measure what people are saying, etc. There are all sorts of things that can be measured and how it impacts the brand and influence of your company or your client’s company.

What’s your next big project?

I am working on a New Rules of Social Media series of books, and we’re going to be doing three titles a year featuring different authors. The books will include details of different aspects of social media. The first book will be coming out in October of this year: Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, the co-founders of HubSpot.

For more information on David Meerman Scott, visit http://www.webinknow.com/.

Cutting Through Social Media Hype: Starting from Ground Up

I can’t preach enough how the PR landscape is dramatically changing. I know as an insider and a PR (I’d like to call myself a ‘pro’ at this point) I know it is all about ‘do’ or ‘die’.  I live and breathe security. This is what I do and this is what I know. I’m passionate about security – how the landscape is changing and what threats are evolving.  So is PR and marketing. I actively monitor what our competitors are doing, what they’re saying and how they’re positioning themselves in the market. As a PR pro, I don’t like to EVER trail behind. I like to be on the cutting edge.  My boss @cedwardbrice (http://marketinggimbal.typepad.com/) is exactly that way and he pushes the team pretty hard to be on the cutting edge and try new things, take risks. This means staying on top of the market your company or client plays in as well as the profession you’re in.  To be frank, I’ve met a lot of PR professionals who are content with the way they approach PR and complacent in their approach. Not me. I look at the latest trends, the evolution taking place within the landscape and take risks to define what “greatness” means.

In order to stay ahead, I’ve learned a lot over the years in terms of the role social media plays in the world of PR. After extensively researching what my competitors were doing, I wanted to take a more innovative approach and this is how I did it with the help of some clever PR/marketing and integrating that across our social media channels.  But first things first, you have to establish your strategy so below are some tips I’d like to offer up. But the key thing here is collaboration and integration – two very important words.

Getting Started

Define your strategy – do your research and understand what your strategy is for integrating your PR strategy with social media strategy. What’s the best social media channels that your company would best be suited for.  Is it Twitter that you want and is a fit for your company. If so, how are you willing to support it? This leads to my next step. 

Outline your resources – given the current state of the economy, can you support it and do you have the resources to support it. If you can’t back it up, your efforts will go to waste. In order to remain relevant in the social media realm, you have to consistently and constantly remain on top of these channels to support with your key messages and engage in two way dialogues.

Establish your social media channels – once you’ve established your strategy, set out to employ these channels, whether it’s Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, etc.  For Twitter, make sure you’re following all of the relevant people in your industry and reporters/analysts who play in your space (@CindyKimPR, @_Lumension, @cedwardbrice).

Build up those channels with strong, rich content – these channels mean nothing if you don’t have the right content that your readers are interested in reading about. For instance, our Twitter account for Lumension is all about breaking news on the latest and greatest security threats that are relevant to our security / IT readers.  YouTube for instance – we have over 8,000 viewers who consistently visit our channel because our videos are premium content with our key experts who can speak to the evolving threats, landscape, and best practices.

Establish a corporate blog – this is the most powerful platform to engage your readers, elevate your company’s profile, and establish your company as the “thought leader” in the industry.  Create and push out content that is thought provoking, tied to breaking news, relevant to the industry, and critical to publishing informative conversation pieces. For example, I recently wrote a Q&A blog post on the State of Cybersecurity: Debate with Pat Clawson and Mike Jacobs.  Great tie into the latest debate over what our cybersecurity plan looks like and what it should be in order to thwart cyber crooks from penetrating our networks and critical government and civilian systems.

Key thing to remember is having a very succinct, streamlined rapid response strategy either with your PR firm or within your PR department. This way you know how you’re going to integrate and push out content in a very timely fashion. For instance, we have a great process in place with Lois Paul and Partners. Our PR team is not only exceptional but very proactive in terms of leveraging these channels to get exposure.

Integrate all of these channels for maximum exposure – once you have all of these channels established (and you don’t need to have them all but a blog is a great start), integrate across your PR efforts.

Real World Case Study

We recently had a Conficker outbreak and this news headlined pretty much every news outlet you can think of, including CNN and all the security trade press. As part of my strategy to take a unique approach to this was to look at the threats Conficker posed on networks and critical systems. I worked with inside experts to craft a blog that went up immediately.  Once this blog post went live, I went and sent the blog link to my PR folks at LPP to do some heavy media outreach (with the link to the blog). I then went on to Twitter to tweet about this latest threat and linked it back to our blog.  With reporters following our tweets combined with our outreach by LPP, we gained significant coverage on this.  CNN then followed up with our experts to get additional quotes for a follow up story which ran [date]. Matt Hines of eWeek then blogged about it, sourcing directly from our blog. This is an immediate return on investment. By integrating these channels across your PR efforts and tying in rapid response, you can spread your message “wide”. 

PR firms who resort to simply pushing out news through their traditional channels, I’m afraid, are missing out. The key thing here is to understand where the conversations are taking place and where your target audience is looking for information. Simply by understanding and joining the conversation, can you truly leverage your social media efforts and integrate that across your PR channels.

While these best practices are tried and proven in my industry, I believe these carry over to other sectors as well.  Do you think different rules apply to different sectors. Tell me what you think?