Vol. 5 , No. 24     June 13, 2006

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Reg Price and Don Schultz
Two Birds With One Stone: The Disarmingly Sensible Way to Growth and Profit From Existing Customers

Outraged customers are true problem children. They not only defect but also (often) depart in a storm that is time consuming and de-motivating for your staff. Alternatively, delighted customer's actions bring real benefits. Their profit impact brought about by their loyalty has been well documented. They are usually great to deal with and openly show willingness to actively support you. The more of them you have, the better.

The challenge is, What strategies should managers employ to best manage the critically important customers at the extremes—to encourage the advocates and silence the problem children? Given the importance of the two customer extremes, the way forward fits into a disarmingly simple action plan that we call the "two birds with one stone" strategy.

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We recently conducted a survey on a related topic. Click this button to view and filter the B-to-B Voice of the Customer Benchmark Survey Results.

Note: This article and the survey results are available to paid members only. Get more information or sign up here.

Mack Collier
How to Make the Online Community Your Marketing Partner

Marketers have a choice: You can continue using the same marketing methods you have always used to reach your customers, or you can try something revolutionary. You can join them. You can stop trying to guess what your customers are talking about, and instead join their communities and talk to them directly.

Here are some of the tools -- like blogs, MySpace, and other consumer-generated media -- that your customers are already using to communicate online, and how you can incorporate them into your marketing plan.

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Gerry Myers
The Bottom-Line Case for Marketing to Women (Part 1)

"Marketing to women" has become the new buzz phrase for many companies. Corporations are creating high-level positions with the title of director or VP of the Women's Marketing Initiative; forming Women's Advisory Boards; hiring consultants to help them; and employing and promoting more women.

While these moves may be seen by some as politically correct, there should be a sound business basis for recognizing this influential market segment and trying to capture its loyalty and dollars. How would capturing just 1% more market share impact your bottom line? 3%? 5%? 50%?

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A Note to Readers

Your Comments & How I Invented Blogging

Last week, I solicited your ideas on an issue I'd been pondering: Why don't more women comment more on blogs...?

Your response was, in a word... WOW. More than 90 women (and two guys named Troy and Ed) wrote to add their two pesos on the issue. Some emailed me privately, but most commented here on the blog post itself.

Some of my favorites (excerpted):

"We don't blog because...We don't have time to! We take on a lot, and probably too much, of the nitty gritty details at work and home.... Finally, men love to give their opinion, whether it leads to an end result or not. For myself, and the women that I work with, we are happy to give an opinion when it matters. It isn't essential to our psyche to be heard on every subject." —Gale Lee

"Biological differences—Testosterone in men and Cortisol in women may contribute to men's desire to engage in conflict and women's desire to avoid it... Behavioral differences—society has different roles and expectations for the sexes. Men and women often have different communication styles. This may affect why they post comments and what types of comments they post and are attracted to."—Holly Buchanan

"Women tend to be far more receptive aware in their communications, and I think it would be a very unfulfilling forum because they expect so much more. For us guys it is perfect for that very reason, that it is devoid of emotion, body language and all those other subtle cues that we do not respond to as well anyway. Men love it, because we are finally on a level playing field." —Troy

"My theory is that the gender gap in blogging/commenting is more technology driven than usage driven, in other words, even though blogging is a social medium, it's a social medium that was created within the technology community—which is male dominant, and mostly white.... As adoption spreads, age, gender and ethnic differences will even...." —Anne Simons

The above are but a few of the responses. I encourage you to swing by and check out the others. I know, I know... a lot of you are too busy—but your voices make a difference at the Daily Fix, at least for me.

Please do swing by. At the very least, you can read about how I invented blogging. (True story! Kinda pathetic, maybe. But true nonetheless.)

Until next week,

Ann Handley
ann@marketingprofs.com
Chief Content Officer
MarketingProfs

Last Issue's Top 5

Newly Posted Jobs

Jana Eggers
Five Steps to Making Marketing Projects...Well, Easier

Do you remember that Dilbert panel where Dilbert follows a building map to find the marketing department? Upon arrival, he finds Grecian columns, a party that would make Bacchus proud, and a sign that says, "Welcome to Marketing. Two drink minimum."

For me, having been on both sides of those Grecian columns, this cartoon sums up a gap between marketing and technology.

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Jeff Thull
Surviving 11th-Hour Negotiations

One of the enduring myths of negotiation is that it is a back-and-forth struggle with your customer that occurs in the final stage of the sale, the "close." Here's how to survive (and maybe avoid) it.

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Sherri Leopard
Five Steps to Connect Marketing to Sales, and Sales to Financial Results

Increasingly there's a new priority emerging for marketers, and that is sales acceleration: Finding disciplined and repeatable ways to move existing customers as well as prospects from "why?" to "buy"—more rapidly.

Here are tips on how marketers can prove their value and work together with sales to accelerate the sales cycle.

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See our related data. Click this button to view and filter the Sales & Marketing Alignment Benchmark Survey Results.

Note: Benchmark Survey Results are available to paid members only. Get more information or sign up here.

Meryl K. Evans and Hank Stroll
Marketing Challenge: When Customers Control the Message

Customers have more power than ever, requiring marketing to change how it works to better meet customer demands.

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Contact

Publisher:Allen Weiss
amw@MarketingProfs.com

Content: Ann Handley
ann@MarketingProfs.com

Strategy and Development:
Roy Young
roy@MarketingProfs.com

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Val Frazee
val@MarketingProfs.com


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