Komen and the Privacy Act: 3 Takeaways

THE SITUATION: Social media can impact the national and global agenda with astonishing speed ... and it can also put people and institutions on the spot, instantly.

Two Hurricanes: Recently, marketers learned two powerful lessons regarding how empowered, engaged social media communities can form suddenly around an issue and exert intense pressure on political leaders, nonprofits, and corporations. How you prepare for (and respond to) these "social media hurricanes" may well determine your success in the marketplace ... and perhaps even the survival of your organization.

National opposition to the Stop Online Privacy Act, (SOPA), reached its peak at a critical moment.... and stopped the legislation in its tracks, despite a well-financed support campaign from major content providers like the Walt Disney Company and NBC Universal. These numbers tell the story: ⇒ Before the social media protests, SOPA votes:    Senate: 48 supporters and 6 opposed.    House: 32 supporters and 25 opposed. ⇒ After one day of social media protests:    Senate: 37 supporters and 22 opposed.    House: 26 supporters and 95 opposed.

The plans of senior leadership at the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation to pull funding from Planned Parenthood suddenly became one of the hottest online topics, generating over 1.3 million Twitter posts in a single week.   Last Friday, in a stunning reversal, the foundation bowed to the pressure and renewed its funding ties to Planned Parenthood.

3 TAKEAWAYS FOR MARKETERS:

TAKEAWAY #1: Do a “Tone Deaf” audit. Otherwise smart companies, such as Netflix and Bank of America made poor decisions recently that hurt their customers and their credibility. How could they have been so out of touch? Be humble and do a “Tone Deaf” audit by consulting your stakeholders and customers about important decisions and announcements so you do not become the next victim.

TAKEAWAY #2: Improve how well you listen to your customers and constituencies. Being out of touch with their customers and how they might react to major decisions was a key factor which contributed to the missteps of the organizations cited above. Make sure you are using multiple “listening posts” to stay close to the voice of your customers and constituencies. Use a combination of the following: depth research, social media: Facebook and Twitter, surveys: on-site, email and phone, customer service and customer feedback and analytics.

TAKEAWAY #3: Stay Flexible. Know when and how to change course if a hurricane descends.It is sometimes better to cut your losses, regroup, and issue a humble apology than to engage in a "debate" whose outcome is already clear ... and that your brand cannot possibly win.

Starbucks - 3 Twitter Best Practices

Twitter can help your business get closer to its customers ... create better word of mouth and greater brand advocacy ... and generate great ideas from engaged fans. How? Start by learning from the best practices used by companies that have been successful with Twitter.

Start by learning from Starbucks. When a national brand accumulates nearly two million followers on Twitter, its social media strategies are worth examining. The Seattle-based coffee giant is currently ranked as the fourth most popular corporate brand in this space. (By way of comparison, General Motors has 44,000 Twitter followers.)

The Starbucks tweetstream is impressive. Check out these three easy-to-emulate Twitter best practices. Each can be adapted to any industry, and each is modeled consistently via the company's Twitter account, @Starbucks -- which I found to be deeply personalized to individual questions, complaints, and suggestions from customers.

Best Practice #1: Do Something You Know Your Customer Believes In. Starbucks uses Twitter to promote cause-driven promotions that resonate powerfully with its user base. One particularly successful example was a “promotion where customers received free coffee if they brought in a reusable mug. This promotion grew their online fan base by 21% outside of the U.S. and by 6% overall. It not only drove sales, it changed how people purchased and consumed their coffee." (Source: Smartblogs.) What causes do your customers believe in?

Best Practice #2: Ask for Pictures. Starbucks uses Twitter to post plenty of interesting, user-generated images of its followers drinking from, displaying, or generally having fun with something that bears the familiar green company logo. Circulating these images means more engagement, greater advocacy, and broader brand awareness. How easy is it for a customer to take and forward a picture of your brand image? What would happen if you tweeted those images?

Best Practice #3: Let Customers Know That You Are Using Their Ideas. Starbucks uses Twitter to update individual customers on the status of individual ideas they have submitted via @MyStarbucksIdea. Wouldn’t you follow a company that kept you up to date about that?

If you haven’t given your company’s Twitter account regular attention (as in, original posts at least once a day, and prompt personal responses to each customer post), take a closer look at the infographic above.

Positive Customer Experience: What's the Return on Investment?

The Challenge: How do you build a business case for potentially costly changes to improve the overall customer experience?

The Reality: Marketers can expect reluctance to support new customer experience initiatives without proof that the investments will actually pay off. Sentiments like "If it ain't broke, don't spend money to fix it" may combine with old-fashioned organizational inertia and make changes difficult.

Three Marketing Lessons

To prove the value of improving the customer experience:

Lesson #1: The truth is out there. Today’s consumer has the power to cause your enterprise pain, or, through "evangelism”, raise it to new heights. Among the numerous points of contact with your company, you will find many mishandled "moments of truth", i.e., missed opportunities to improve both the customer experience and your organization's return on investment (ROI). The challenge is to identify these moments ... and then quantify how much fixing it is likely to be worth to your organization.

Customers are eager to tell “someone” what those moments are, how to fix them, and what will motivate repeat purchases and advocacy. But they need a responsive and caring department with whom to share this critical business intelligence. The question is, which people and teams in your organization have "listening to customers" across all channels, as a core part of their job description?

Once you know what needs to be improved, what part of the customer experience could turn borderline or dissatisfied customers into motivated advocates, you will know what to measure and, the revenue implications.

Lesson #2: Compare repeat purchasers with other customers. What trends show up? This kind of information often costs little or nothing to track down. As this thoughtful paper from Forrester Research points out, correlating purchase data with other information (such as survey results) can yield some compelling bottom-line conclusions.

"Analysts at Adobe combined historical purchase and upgrade data with survey data and found that customers with the highest feedback scores also had the greatest lifetime values. Differences in lifetime value between customers with the lowest and highest feedback scores ranged from 43% among retail customers to a whopping 288% among key business accounts."

Lesson #3: Patiently target the right prospective allies. Building coalitions for organizational change takes persistence, particularly if you work in a large organization. Once you identify a customer touch point that has a dramatic effect on the overall customer experience, keep collecting all the evidence you can that connects, directly or indirectly, to that touch point ... and then keep sharing that evidence with the internal stakeholders most likely to be affected by it. Remember that video and audio clips of customers and prospective customers discussing their problems can be particularly powerful motivators for senior executives.