customer acquisition
Six ways to turn Yelp into your most effective marketing channel
Feb 2nd
Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.
-Jeff Bezos, Founder/CEO Amazon
Guest post by {grow} community member Kathi Kruse
How important is it for your to look your best to a potential customer? Today many companies are still ignoring what’s said about them online, both positive and negative. Some want to put their heads in the sand and wait until the Internet “just blows over.” Folks, your customer is online most of their day and night. They’re talking about you. Pretending they aren’t is a risky proposition.
Your customer loves the consumer review site Yelp. Why? It’s local and it’s easy to use. They look forward to sharing their experiences because it allows them to invest in the community … and in turn get value from the experiences of others.
For many consumer businesses, online reviews are becoming a critical component of decision-making. Car shoppers, for example, are increasingly relying on Yelp and other ratings sites. 84% of people say that online reviews influence their buying decision (Nielsen). Reviewers can also gain influence. Many of these reviews and consumer experiences also reverberate through Twitter and Facebook.
Make no mistake, Yelp can make or break many businesses. For many B2C and service businesses, Yelp may be the most important marketing channel!
What’s the best way to make sure you’re getting some customer love on Yelp?
The key is to have a rock-solid internal process for capturing and maintaining a steady stream customers who are willing to write reviews. Understandably, many of your frontline sales personnel may feel awkward about asking for a review, but you can put it in a way that makes the customer comfortable: “Our business is based on referrals. Would you take a moment to visit Yelp and refer us to your friends and family?” This is a great start to your internal process but it’s only the beginning.
I’ve developed a proactive system of capturing reviews and maintaining a consistent stream of “referrals” from your customers. Here are six ways to get your Yelp groove on:
1. Designate an Online Reputation go-to person who’ll take ownership of your implementation plan. They will be responsible for getting grassroots participation from your staff, as well as monitor and respond to the community.
2. Signage. Create awareness with your customers and your staff. Display “Love Us on Yelp!” signs throughout the store. Entryways, sales offices, customer waiting area, customer service and the cashier area. Give customers a card to take with them that reminds them you’re on Yelp. Put memos on paychecks, repair orders and invoices to create awareness too!
3. Reach out to your Raving Fans. Every salesperson has them, especially those that’ve been with you a long time. These customers go out of their way to do business with you. Ask them to share an honest review – don’t push for positive – just their honest opinion.
4. Hold a monthly contest with the staff. Nothing motivates like a cash prize! Example: if the store gets 20 reviews by the end of the month, you’ll draw a name and that person wins the cash. Have the drawing open to all employees so you’ve got everyone motivated to achieve the same goal.
5. Recognize staff members who get 5-star reviews. A gift or a nice mention during the weekly sales or service meeting goes a long way. When the other employees see it, they’ll be eager to be next.
6. Email marketing. Do a “Love Drip” campaign with a catchy subject line and a nice call to action. Provide a link to your Yelp profile so it’s as effortless for your customer as possible.
Stellar online reputations do not happen without grassroots participation from your staff. Leverage the power of your employees and institute an internal process to be proactive about your online reputation. Get your groove on and let your customers feel it, baby!
How is Yelp affecting your business? Any more ideas you can share?
Kathi Kruse specializes in automotive social media and online reputation coaching for the automotive industry. Connect with her at her Kruse Control Blog and on Twitter: @kathikruse
Your 2012 Marketing Plan: Tell Me What to Do
Jan 5th
The ever-awesome Mitch Joel wrote a dizzying blog post forecasting that 2012 is The Year of More.
He points out that 2012 will be a year of technological and information abundance:
- Social sharing will intensify and choices will multiply
- The marketing stage — even for small businesses — will be more global
- The opportunity to target in a hyper-local way will create an unprecedented push of “deals”
- Devices are still multiplying, not consolidating
- Brands will be fighting hard to connect with us more directly and more personally
- Sorting through the information density today is difficult and becoming impossible.
Mitch is right of course (just don’t tell him that I said so). But here is the grand irony. All of these trends fly directly in the face of what consumers really need right now.
We need LESS.
Consumers are paralyzed by choice and overwhelmed by information density. I just viewed a TV ad for something called Deal Chicken. I thought, does the world really need another freaking way to get coupons? We can’t handle the number of deals we’re already getting!
Time-starved consumers just want to be told what to do. How do I save time? How do I save money? How can I have more fun? Just tell me. I don’t need to sift through 1 billion results on Google. I have far too much choice. I just want to know.
Isn’t it ironic that companies like Facebook and Google are collecting so much information about us to presumably make our decision-making more streamlined and efficient? Does anybody feel that their information flow is more streamlined today?
Mitch is right. 2012 will be the Year of More. But that is in direct opposition to what consumers need. There’s a business opportunity in there somewhere, isn’t there? How are you helping your customers sort through complexity? How will you tell them what to do?
The customer is the customer. Adapt or die.
Dec 14th
I’ve had a variety of sales jobs in my career and have dealt with some great people … and some world-class jerks. Not just difficult and demanding people, but unethical, bullying, liars at Fortune 100 companies.
One time, a powerful VP demanded that my company buy-back $1.2 million of our material due to a cosmetic issue that did not affect the performance of their end product. In fact, the defect would not even be visible to their consumer. It was a dicey situation. Yes, we were “out of specification,” but this was also going to be a painful financial hit for my company. It was like being ticketed for going 56 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone.
In the end, we paid an $850,000 claim for the products that were made from the defective material.
I later found out this VP secretly sold the defective products to his customer any way, simply adding our claim payment to his bottom line (and annual bonus payment) through some accounting jujitsu. My customer loved bragging about his cleverness to demonstrate the power he could wield over my company.
The dude was eventually fired for this type of behavior, but that did little to comfort me when I still had to work with him every day. And yet, I really had no choice but to take it or quit. This guy was personally responsible for the acquisition of $1.5 billion of my company’s products — at that time, 10 percent of my employer’s total revenue! I had a one-line job description: Don’t lose the account.
I knew that I would only be in the sales position for a few years at the most, so I decided to weather the storm and approach the challenge patiently and calmly, as long as my own ethics or any laws were not compromised.
I realized that the customer is NOT always right. But the customer is always the customer. I was the one who had to adapt to survive and compete.
Fortunately, this is an extreme example but the point is, we can’t always demand that a customer — even a really bad one – change to conform to our needs and processes. Only we can change to adopt to the customer’s needs … or, if it gets too bad, quit.
Understanding this wisdom is difficult but a key to success in a fiercely competitive world.
This story came to mind because last week we had a debate on {grow} about the customer demands for rapid online service, even from hotels, restaurants, and other providers who are on the “value” end of the product line. This is an unfortunate development but they really only have one choice: Figure out how to adapt to the customer service needs AND maintain a low cost structure. They’re not going to be able to dictate customer expectations and still compete in the long term.
I’m currently working with a supplier that is imposing new processes that will take up more of my time and dramatically hurt my cash flow. As a business partner, I want to cooperate and make the whole “system” better, but when I point out that their service levels are declining and the value of these new processes seems to be flowing in only in their direction, their response is defensive instead of responsive. And you know … they might be right and I might be wrong. I’m not perfect. But I’m still the customer.
They may get away with it for awhile if the switching costs are high, but in general the information flow of the web has dis-intermediated many traditional competitive hurdles. It’s easier than ever to find new suppliers for most goods.
In the end, all of us who have to compete for a living know we have just one true source of competitive advantage –
LISTEN to our customers more intently than our competitors,
DISCOVER un-met and under-served needs, and
RESPOND more rapidly and effectively.
That’s it. The customer is the customer. Adapt or die. Right?
Getting to yes on adopting social media marketing
Nov 17th
If you can’t see this video frame, click here to view.
One of the biggest challenges for any social media change agent is getting a company to understand the power and potential of the channel to a point where they say “yes.”
I recently caught up with one of my favorite marketing intellects, David Rosen of Burson Marsteller in New York and he was told me about how he leveraged external news events to nurture client social media activities at an enterprise level. This was so interesting and I decided to flip on the camera so I could share this conversation with the {grow} community.
The conversation with David also gets into getting beyond “yes” and turning social media into a channel that helps companies lower costs, contribute to R&D, and sell more products.
Please contribute your thoughts on this topic in the comment section!
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