GoodBuzz Blog

Play Marketing – Advertising that Respects People

May
25

By

How to Recruit Advocates for your Business?

Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, leadership, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

The new economy is based on advocacy. A Mckinsey marketing study found that 2/3 of US economy is now based on advocacy: Friends telling friends what is Hot and what is Not. Only 14% of people trust advertising, 69% are interesting in advertising blocking technologies, and 78% of consumers trust one to one recommendation from friends.

If your business is struggling to attract clients, it’s simple because you don’t have enough advocates.

Your advocates are customers, prospects and even strangers who like you and your business. They can’t help but singing to the world nice songs about how great, how magnificent, how terrific you are.

Your business flourishes when more than 10% of your customers become advocates; You thrive when 30% turn advocates and you become irresistible when like Apple 78% of customers are your fans, and go beyond advocacy to create Ads for your brand with their own money and resources.

Frederick F. Reichheld and Thomas Teal found that an increase of 5% of your advocates will yield your profits 25 to 95%.

The question now is how to recruit advocates?

  • To recruit customers as advocates, you should become advocate for your customers,
  • To recruit peers as advocates, you should become advocate for your peers,
  • To recruit friends as advocates, you should become advocate for your friends,
  • to recruit strangers as advocates, you should become advocate for strangers

Trust in the law of reciprocity, and you’ll see that happens.

The law of reciprocity states that we repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. It’s a common mantra in our culture – the Golden Rule is another example of the law of reciprocity.

For companies the question to answer is how to become the advocate for customers, peers, friends, strangers.

Adopt IRaaS (Information and Recommendation as a Service) marketing approach.

IRaaS is a customers’ engagement utility that uses “Information as a gift ™ ” to induce positive emotional connections to customers and contacts. The positive emotional connections have the power to turn customers and contacts into voluntary advocates for your organization, generating a consistent word-of-mouth referrals and a Nonstop Viral Buzz for your business.

How it works?

“simply go to that address book and list out the 20 percent of your contacts who matter most. Do you know their interests? Their biggest dreams and goals (professional and personal)? If you don’t then that is a place to begin. Once you do, mark down next to each name what specific actions you can take that will help that person realize those goals. What connections can you make for them? What knowledge can you transfer to them? Call them up. No agenda. No ‘asking for the business.’ Just deliver value relevant to them and keep doing it.”

Howard Mann

May
14

By

No Man is an Island: You Don't Have to Face Life Alone.

Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, Linkcrafter, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Are you feeling lonely?
Do feel like you need a helping hand but just can’t ask for it?
Do you feel like no one outside there could understand who you are and your inner value?

You are not Alone. You just feel alone, because we are all connected to each other. There are thousands of people out there ready to listen to you, ready to support you, ready to care about you, ready to give you a chance.

No Man is an Island: You Don’t Have to Face Life Alone.

To succeed in business as in life you need to make Friends. Your success depends on the number of friends you made. For businesses owners it means you need to Turn more strangers, prospects and customers into Friends.

What you need to succeed is Friends.

  • If you don’t have enough customers, it’s simply because you don’t have enough friends,
  • If your advertising is not delivering good results, it’s simply because you don’t have enough advocates to confirm your message to their friends. When a friend asked about your advertising, he is told: ” be careful, I don’t know these people and this is  advertising, the reality may be different. You know … Ads are Ads”,
  • If you customers don’t recommend their friends to you, it’s simply because they still think you are a risky business to recommend. They can personally take the risk to do business with you, but they are not ready to recommend you,
  • If your customers evaporate after the first transactions, it’s simply because  nothing make you memorable and you don’t remind yourself to them in a memorable way.
  • If people don’t listen to you, it’s simply because you don’t have a strong opinion about your business solution and express this opinion with enthusiasm and passion.
  • If  everyone forget about you, it’s simply because you forget about everyone.
  • If no one remind you, it’s because you don’t remind anybody.

To make friends, start treating people like friends.

Treat your customers the same way you’ll treat a friend. Lit you eyes when you see them, recall their name, remember what they said last time to you, ask about their news based on previous conversations, and share what is hot and what is not hot list, and ultimately  invite for a beer or any other entertainment.

In average a person has 11 to 12 intimate contacts, 150 social contacts and from 500 to 1500 weak ties. Look what will happen to your business if you succeed in the next 12 months to have 12 to 15 intimate friends in the business category you are playing or in your ideal clients list :

Number of Intimate Friends

Intimate friends of your Friends(x12)

Social contacts of your Friends (x150)

Weak ties of your Friends (x1500)

Potential reach through your Friends network

1

12

150

1 500

1 663

2

24

300

3 000

3 326

3

36

450

4 500

4 989

4

48

600

6 000

6 652

5

60

750

7 500

8 315

6

72

900

9 000

9 978

7

84

1 050

10 500

11 641

8

96

1 200

12 000

13 304

9

108

1 350

13 500

14 967

10

120

1 500

15 000

16 630

11

132

1 650

16 500

18 293

12

144

1 800

18 000

19 956

13

156

1 950

19 500

21 619

14

168

2 100

21 000

23 282

15

180

2 250

22 500

24 945

If you succeed to have 15 intimate Friends inside your business industry or from your ideal clients list, you could reach up to 24 945 contacts, without measuring the cascading effect. Your marketing will automatically go on autopilot:

  • You”ll be Wanted and Welcomed in Your Customers’ and Prospects’ Mind,
  • You’ll quit  From chasing customers to Customers coming to you,
  • You’ll Receive faster, more enthusiastic and more qualified responses to any promotion, Turning more prospects into good paying clients,
  • You’ll turn your customers and contacts into an army of free sales people and voluntary advocates for your organization, Generating a consistent word-of-mouth referrals & a Nonstop Viral Buzz for your business,
  • You’ll have all these astounding results without spending money in advertising or wasting time and resources in countless networking websites, clubs or events.

Go ahead and make Friends and Succeed wildly. Good luck.

Apr
26

By

A Friend at a Tough Time.

Category: Business Strategy, Conversation, customer relationship, Winner Choice Tags: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Danny wants to buy a car. He knows what he needs in a car – good mileage, enough room for his two kids and their dog, four-wheel drive, a good sound system. He knows what he wants in a car.

The problem is finding a car that can provide him all of those things.

Thankfully, Danny is in a better position than the unfortunate fellow we mentioned earlier who took his search online. Danny happens to have a good friend who loves cars, constantly reads car magazines and the latest reviews, and who does a little repair work himself.

Naturally, the first person Danny asks about what car he should buy is this knowledgeable friend.

The friend is more than willing to help. He gives Danny a couple of options to choose from, explains the pros and cons of each option, and sends Danny on his way ready to buy a car. Danny’s probably feeling pretty good and confident at this point, and he’s an informed consumer.

Now, imagine Danny knows no one who has knowledge about cars. Where does he go?

If he’s like the average consumer today, Danny goes online to try and gain knowledge. Seven of the top 10 web properties today are search engines, and that demonstrates just how essential online searches have become to consumers who don’t have a knowledgeable friend to help them with their problem.

So Danny runs a Google search for his desired car features. Immediately, he’s inundated with way more information than he can process. There are millions of sites clamoring for attention and at least fifty different cars that could possibly give him what he’s looking for. Danny has no way of narrowing them down.

A full 28% of search engine queries end without giving the consumer a satisfactory answer. Danny hasn’t got much of a chance.

He’ll probably spend a lot of time vainly trying to process all the information. There’s little to no chance Danny walks away from his Google search feeling like he’s received a solid recommendation by a reputable source.

There aren’t any studies on satisfaction rates for asking a knowledgeable friend, but from personal experience, we’d say it’s nearly 100%.

Danny’s knowledgeable friend has his best interests at heart. His friend won’t get a commission on the car and the sale will do absolutely nothing for him personally. The only reason he’s recommending the car to Danny is because he wants to help Danny get exactly what he’s looking for.

He’s a good friend. That’s what friends do.

You need to become the knowledgeable friend for your customers.

IRaaS shows you how to become that knowledgeable friend and earn your customer’s loyalty for life.

Become a consumer-empathetic business and you’ll be paid back ten-fold. Howard Mann put it most succinctly in his book Your Business Brickyard: Getting back to the basics to make your business more fun to run.

The choice is yours. If you enjoy tracking sales pipelines, opportunities, sales quotas, and ‘deals’ then there are a ton of systems out there that fill the need and work quite well. If, on the other hand, you hate the idea of cold calling and prospecting, simply go to that address book and list out the 20 percent of your contacts who matter most. Do you know their interests? Their biggest dreams and goals (professional and personal)? If you don’t then that is a place to begin. Once you do, mark down next to each name what specific actions you can take that will help that person realize those goals. What connections can you make for them? What knowledge can you transfer to them? Call them up. No agenda. No ‘asking for the business.’ Just deliver value relevant to them and keep doing it.”