A Boy and His Dogs (5 Ways to Create Loyal Customers)

We started a fun new chapter of our lives last Friday when we got two new dogs.  Yes, TWO!!!!  What was I thinking?!?!

It got me to thinking … we’re starting new relationships from scratch.  Kind of like you do with customers every day.

So here are a few things that I’ve learned about loyalty from my dogs … and who knows loyalty better than a pooch?

Kindness

This one goes without saying – well, until now.  But, like pups, customers respond to a kind voice and gentle demeanor. 

Consistency

Dogs and customers both have a short memory.  They are most likely to remember their very first and very last encounter with your institution.  So you and your staff must be on stage and on-point with every single interaction.  You can “say” you have great service, but it’s the consistent application of great service changes behavior and breeds loyalty.

Immediate response

Things don’t always go as planned.  With our youngest puppy, I’m ready to hang a sign in the house that says, “XX Days Accident-Free.”  For the record, this morning the sign dropped back down to 0.

When “accidents” happen, address them immediately.  Errors are an opportunity for you to pro-actively address an issue and actually build a better relationship.

For more on this topic, click here for our blog “Turning Oops into Opportunity.” 

Focus on the experience

Certainly my dogs are becoming loyal because we love them.  But having fun certainly doesn’t hurt!  Every day, we make a point of playing fetch and wrestling and letting them chase the kids (in a fun way).  My shepherd and I are quickly becoming great trail-running partners. 

I’m not expecting your customers to want to chase a Frisbee, but understanding what drives your customers – when they’re not in your branch – will help you to build a better relationship.  How do you accomplish that?  LISTEN.  You need to talk to your customers about their lives, not just their banking.

Positive reinforcement

Whether you're teaching Fido to sit on command or training a customer to use their debit card more times per month, rewarding good behavior works.  You don’t necessarily need a detailed rewards program – though there are many great ones out there.  But a simple personal touch, like a hand written “thank you” note for every new account opened goes a long way.

By following these five, simple ideas, you can become the Dog Whisperer of your customer loyalty program.

New Report: B2B Content Marketing Trends

The new report "B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012" is now available on Slideshare. Be one of the first marketers to share the brand new report with your friends and colleagues via Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook (just go to Slideshare and use the social sharing feature)!

Earlier this year, we conducted our annual B2B content marketing survey with the 30,000+ members of the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn to learn more about the latest trends in content marketing.

Here is a quick summary of the most important trends we found (more):

The Top-5 Trends in Content Marketing

1. Content marketing is expanding dramatically in terms of tactics, forms and volume of content
- 84 percent of marketers say content production is on the rise
- Over half of the participants are using 10 or more formats and tactics that they deem “effective”
- These same respondents are spreading content creation across 6 different functional roles

2. Content is at the heart of B2B marketers top 3 goals—lead generation, market education and brand awareness

3. The fastest growing content format is Infographics, whose use increased 1.5x from last year

4. The biggest challenge for marketers is time and bandwidth to create content
- 94 percent of B2B marketers create new content from scratch

5. Most B2B marketers are trying to measure content engagement
- Web traffic, views & downloads and lead quantity & quality are the top 3 measurements

For more details, download the full report "B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012".

We would also like to thank our sponsors for supporting the B2B Content Marketing Report:

IDG Enterprise | NetProspex | Optify | Maximizer Software | Solution Publishing

Thank you!

Why You Shouldn't Rely on Cost-Per-Lead

About once a month, I'm publishing a post that shares insights I've discovered at another blog. This month, the insight comes from ViewPoint l The Truth About Lead Generation. The primary author of this blog is Dan McDade whose firm (PointClear) provides lead generation services to B2B companies.

Earlier this year, McCade wrote a series of three posts discussing The Cost-Per-Lead Fallacy in Measuring B2B Lead Generation Investments. Here are the links to the three posts:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

All of these posts contain excellent information, and I highly recommend them. Here are a few highlights.

McDade argues that it's a big mistake to use cost-per-lead as the primary basis for managing and measuring B2B lead generation investments. As he puts it, "This metric rewards the wrong behavior, delivers low-value sales leads, and fails to deliver the kind of business intelligence needed to drive marketing ROI now and in the future."

McDade goes on to identify several specific shortcomings of cost-per-lead as the primary lead generation metric.

• Emphasizing cost-per-lead encourages marketing to deliver high volumes of low quality sales leads.
• Cost-per-lead focuses on costs rather than on the value or ROI produced by marketing efforts.
• In most companies, cost-per-lead is used primarily to measure the cost of early-stage leads. Rarely is cost-per-lead used for late-stage leads such as "sales accepted" leads or "sales qualified" leads. When cost-per-lead is used only for early-stage leads, it is not an effective way to measure outcomes.

I completely agree with most of Dan McDade's criticisms of cost-per-lead, and I would add one of my own. There is nothing inherently wrong with measuring cost-per-lead, but problems will arise if cost-per-lead is misused or used in isolation.

In my last two posts (here and here), I discussed how to calculate the value of leads at every stage of the demand generation process. If you know the value of your leads at multiple stages, then measuring the cost of leads at those same stages can provide useful information about the performance of your lead generation activities and programs. If you don't know the value of your leads, measuring the cost of your leads is mostly a waste of time. The information you generate won't enable you to make better decisions, and it may lead you to make choices that will do more harm than good.

Apple vs Samsung, rulings by courts and consumers