TRANSFORM YOUR CUSTOMER MARKETING Improve Engagement, Reach, and Advocacy with Online Community 1

TRANSFORM YOUR CUSTOMER MARKETING Improve engagement, reach, and advocacy with online community 1

INTRODUCTION

Customer marketers have a tough job. They’re tasked with keeping customers interested after the initial sales push, opening the door for sales to convince customers to buy more from the company, and finding customers who are happy enough to advocate for the organization.

All of this requires you to be in tune with your customers' needs, which is a monumental task. The organizations who win at engagement make those customers feel like next-door neighbors. How can you reach the right customers when they're spread out across devices, interests, and locations?

CUSTOMER MARKETERS, MEET ONLINE COMMUNITIES When so much of the world is digital, it should be easy to reach customers, and online community software makes that a reality. You can bring your customers together, all in one place online, where they can talk and exchange ideas. Engagement is its natural outcome. And even more than that, you can use online community to help, curate, and create.

HOW CAN AN ONLINE COMMUNITY TRANSFORM THE CUSTOMER MARKETER'S ROLE?

Transformation is a big concept, but online communities can deliver. They’re a growing channel for customer marketing teams because they can transform your day-to-day, no matter the size of your team.

With an online community, customer marketers have a comprehensive platform to engage customers, with multiple tools at their disposal, such as:

»» Automation rules to encourage participation

»» User-generated content promoting upsell opportunities

»» Gamification to pique interest and keep interactions both fun and organic

Customer marketers can use a myriad of online community tools to get customers more engaged, reach customers for upsell opportunities, and scale advocacy programs.

1 GET YOUR CUSTOMERS MORE ENGAGED

SO HOW DO WE GET “ENGAGEMENT”? THE MAIN POINT: ONLINE COMMUNITY GIVES The foundation of customer engagement is great relationships with CUSTOMERS A PARTICIPATORY WAY TO FIND customers. The methods you use to create relationships are entwined EXCLUSIVE SUPPORT AND RESOURCES. in a few departments, including yours (customer marketing), customer service, and customer success. Customers might be engaging by leaving complaints on your Twitter account, which can be useful to Engaged customers should be your team’s goal. These customers are spot and resolve issues, but it's not an ideal way to communicate with the ones that will help you achieve marketing goals year over year. If your customers on a personal level. You want a place where meaningful you look around on the web for ‘customer engagement,’ you’ll find dialogue can happen between your brand and your customer base. advice about “how to better engage your customers” or “strategies you absolutely have to try.” People are talking about engagement When customers join your online community, they get access to an because it’s both very difficult and very rewarding. Engaged customers exclusive portal you created to help them be successful, which is a great are more likely to increase spending, recommend your products or start toward building a positive relationship. services to your peers, or even participate in a case study for you. Instead of emailing faceless customers, interact with customers in real time, building meaningful relationships with them as you provide them with resources they need to succeed. And it’s not just you+customer relationships that grow. Customer+customer relationships grow as well, especially with access to a platform that makes it simple to start discussions and learn from one another.

THE NITTY-GRITTY SHARE RESOURCES Employ these three tactics to engage customers. The opportunities you have in an online community to provide resources to customers are almost endless. Compiling your resources Provide real value to your customers by helping them be in this online space makes the process of finding answers faster and successful with your product or service. They’ve invested in your easier for customers. stuff, so help them to use it well! HERE ARE A FEW WAYS YOU CAN DO THIS: When you use an online community, there are a few things you can do to encourage customer success through engagement. File Libraries: One of the simplest things to do is to create a file library with useful documents that customers request often, including resources you wouldn’t want to share on your public website.

Webinars: Create webinars exclusively for customers that inform them about a complicated feature of your product, give them insight into your shared field, or promote an additional product they could purchase.

A customer who is fully engaged Events: Use your community to promote events where customers can get to know your staff, learn more about your industry or represents an average 23% product, or network with each other. premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and Knowledge Base: You probably develop educational resources relationship growth compared with for your product – why not develop a space where customers can the average customer. access trainings and product information at their own leisure?

(Source: Gallup, 2014) Courses: Use a learning management system integration in your community to offer trainings or courses to your customers. Classes could range from training on how to be a community ambassador to extra education in your field.

ENCOURAGE ACCESS TO PEERS ENCOURAGE STAFF PARTICIPATION Communities are a natural place for customers to connect with Employees from all sectors at your company should be active in your likeminded people. You should expect to see discussions ranging online community. Customers get to see the human face of your from questions about best practices for using your product, organization when they interact with your employees – you’re doing networking, to just small talk. The community you set up for a little person-to-person marketing, especially if your staff is helpful them is likely to become more than just a place to discuss your and respectful. A company where customers can rub shoulders with product, and be a place where they’ll find friends and make your staff is going to look a lot more collaborative than a company valuable professional connections. where customers’ only link to you is a “contact us” page. This direct channel to your staff will lead customers to be more successful, and Whether your department or another will own the community, help them feel connected. make sure someone is responsible for community management. It’s likely customers will strike up discussions on their own, but if discussion wanes, you’ll need someone to spark conversation.

Any good music suggestions, anyone? I've been struggling to find new, focus-enhancing music to get me through the day. I listen to podcasts on my commute, but I get distracted if I try to listen while working. All suggestions are welcome! ------Sara Sara Singleton Singleton Online Community Manager

Something I've been getting into recently is music with a deep base beat (I guess it's more techno-y stuff). I think that's actually more helpful for focusing than not listening to anything, oddly enough. Check out my focus playlist, lmk what you think!

Jake Barton

EXPAND YOUR 2 CUSTOMER MARKETING REACH

THE NITTY-GRITTY THE MAIN POINT: BRING YOUR CUSTOMERS TO YOU Make use of your customers’ proximity with these two ways WITH ONLINE COMMUNITY. to increase upsell.

Since you have a way to easily connect with customers, use the How do you currently communicate with your customers? Maybe you platform to promote upsell campaigns. Your methods don’t have to be send out a weekly newsletter, see them at your tradeshow booth, or do over-the-top (and probably shouldn’t be): There are natural ways to a webinar once in a while. Whatever methods you use to connect with create face time for your additional products or services. For example, them, you probably wish there was a way to make sure they’re really you can rely on user-generated content and inbound marketing hearing you. Your communication is key to increasing their business methods to increase interest in any additional purchases available to with you. customers.

With an online community, you have direct access to your customer base. This is the perfect set-up for customer marketers.

CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR USERS TO HEAR ABOUT UPSELL OPPORTUNITIES

 ENCOURAGE USER-GENERATED CONTENT  USE RESOURCES STRATEGICALLY TO PROMOTE UPSELL CAMPAIGNS

Create communities within your online community specifically to Although you’ll want most of your resources to directly support promote add-on products and influence purchasing decisions. User- customer success, you can weave in resources about additional generated content can work powerfully in your favor, as customers products or services you’ve got available. Fit these into your customer discuss the pros and cons of additional opportunities, the value success framework by showing how they’ve increased other customers’ they’ve found, or ways they’re leveraging a product. Customers success or productivity. The webinars or events you create can appreciate hearing straight from other users who’ve experienced generate interest in additional products across the community. the product or service already, knowing they’re not getting a sales Try featuring current customers who’ve found success in these webinars. pitch. Even if they hear cons, they’ll be informed about what they’re They’ll add to your user-generated content stash and make your case purchasing. Because customers already know what flaws or pitfalls more credible. they might encounter before they buy, these types of information exchanges can prevent nasty surprises. of global respondents said that Customers who aren’t actively looking to increase their investment recommendations from people may stumble across these communities as they browse and read they know is the most trustworthy about the benefits their peers are enjoying from an add-on product. form of advertising. Again, it’s always convincing to have happy customers praising your (Source: Nielsen, 2015) product, so that customers aren’t just hearing it from sales reps.

FIND WAYS TO LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

 GET TO KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS THROUGH THE COMMUNITY LEARN MORE ABOUT

Your community teaches you about your customers. Instead of relying on a couple SHOWING CUSTOMERS surveys or calls with customers, you can read their discussions with others, see what THEY MATTER IN OUR resources they’re using, or even chat with them yourself. Your online community is VOICE OF THE an extensive source of data you can use to tailor your customer marketing efforts. CUSTOMER If you peruse discussions daily, you’ll gain insight into the interests and needs of HANDBOOK. customers, which will ultimately teach you to speak their language when you run upsell campaigns.

 INTRODUCE VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER OR FEEDBACK PROGRAMS

Using your online community, you can implement a formal or informal voice of the customer program. Your customers should feel like their opinions matter to you, and providing them with a place where they can voice concerns or suggest updates about your product or service will show customers that you do care.

Additionally, their feedback is extremely valuable for your entire organization, especially if it’s echoed by a large group of customers. Customers offering their feedback can help sales understand prospects’ desires, and you can use customer feedback to influence and refine future marketing messaging and drive product improvements.

Customers explaining how they use your product gives your sales team insights in how to sell it. They’ll be able to discuss the benefits to various types of organization knowing these different use cases.

EXPAND YOUR 3 CUSTOMER ADVOCACY PROGRAMS

THE MAIN POINT: ADVOCACY PROGRAMS ARE A NATURAL Marketing campaigns OUTCOME OF AN ONLINE COMMUNITY. featuring paid influencers can be fun and can certainly Companies rely on advocacy from customers but finding customers who are willing to achieve rapid awareness participate can be tiresome and difficult. It’s often hard to know which customers are and reach, but they will happy, which ones are annoyed by your calls, or which customers are eager to share their never be able to counter the story with you. lasting value of an authentic An online community is the perfect place to develop advocacy programs – you have advocate, particularly when access to your customers, incentive mechanisms, and the ability to scale. it comes to countering The community serves as your window into customers’ attitudes towards your company, criticism or improving the and you can glean information just by perusing discussions and taking note of names. On perceived status of your an even easier level, you’ve got data on which customers are participating in discussion brand or industry. and which discussions they’re participating in. You can see how they fill out their profile (Source: Moz, 2017) or if they even fill it out.

These data points provide insight about where the customers are along the journey. They may be too new to reach out for a case study, or they might be a repeat buyer who wants to discuss the benefits of an add-on product. These aspects of the community indicate who and when you should ask, streamlining the customer advocacy journey.

This data also allows you to personalize your engagement. You know what your customers’ interests are and how they Advocates like to participate. Reaching out to a customer to ask them if spend 2x more they’d be willing to write a blog post is easier if you can say, than average “I noticed in your recent post that you’re very interested in customers on X issue,” to show you’re listening to them and want them to favorite brands. TYPES OF ADVOCACY PROGRAMS share their expertise. Appealing to their interests increases (Source: Nielsen, 2015) If you don’t have a formal advocacy the chances they will want to participate. program or process, get started with a simple campaign to ask customers to THE NITTY-GRITTY review you on websites like Capterra, Yelp, Use these three built-in community tools to improve your advocacy. G2 Crowd, or Google reviews. Here are a

One of the most natural outcomes of helping your customers be successful are customers few easy campaigns you can run: who want to talk about their experience. Your online community has built-in tools you can »» Review campaigns use to find and incentivize these willing advocates, at scale. »» Event speakers Establish the types of advocacy opportunities you want customers to participate in, and »» Case studies then determine the qualities you want each segment of customer advocates to have. Use »» References the three following tools to segment and incentivize participation. »» Blog posts »» Product advisory board

AUTOMATION Automation rules within your community allow you to scale your customer advocacy campaigns, which is one of customer engagement’s biggest challenges.1 If you’re LEARN MORE ABOUT selecting customers and reaching out manually right now, you can make this process AUTOMATION IN OUR more efficient through automation. EBOOK CREATED WITH FEVERBEE - USING Gauge customers’ interest in supporting your company by how engaged they are in your online community. You have data on the customer journey, and then you can AUTOMATION TO optimize and scale customer advocacy programs to reach out with a message that is SUPPORT MOTIVATION personalized, yet automated. IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES. Instead of having to paw through your data to find willing customer advocates, automation allows you to target small segments of your community based on what members have or have not done. For example, you could create automation rules that send an email to a customer when they’ve posted at least X times on your community that invites them to write a review for your company.

Save your staff time and grow customer advocacy without having to manually ask every time.

1 https://www.inc.com/sujan-patel/customer-engagement-is-the-new-marketing.html

GAMIFICATION GIFTS/REWARDS Gamification is not only a great tool for community managers to Gifts and rewards, known as extrinsic motivators, can encourage increase engagement, but also a useful way for you to encourage advocacy and engagement. These types of motivators are useful customers to participate in advocacy programs. You can use for reaching short-term advocacy goals, like when you want gamification to encourage them to get even more involved in the customers to leave you a review. community, and from there, become customer advocates. A word of caution: Use gifts and rewards sparingly. When IDEAS FOR HOW TO USE GAMIFICATION: these are your only motivators, you’re in danger of making your relationships with customers purely transactional. Your long- Establish tiers for community members who participate a term goal for your community should be to provide value, and certain number of times, encouraging them to level up (e.g. advocacy should naturally flow from that. Ideally, your advocates bronze for 30 posts, silver for 45 posts, gold for 60 posts). are willing to work on your behalf because they see value in your brand/product. Award members badges for certain activities, e.g. answering unanswered questions, starting new threads, and so on.

Set up a point system for members so they receive recognition or eligibility for programs once they have a certain number of engagement points.

Take time to recognize your advocates and MVPs in person, too! You could bring them up on stage at an event and thank them, and/or present an award.

CONCLUSION

Expand your customer marketing program by employing all the features of an online community. As a customer marketer, an online community is a way to expand your capabilities without having to add extra staff or put in more hours. Your community could be transformational to your day-to-day as you increase customers’ satisfaction and engagement, gain a better understanding of their needs and how to meet them, and encourage customers to become your advocates. Work smarter, not harder!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Who Should Own Your Online Community?

How to Triple Your Customer Advocates in One Week

How to Cultivate Customer Advocates in Your Community

Creating an Advocacy Program from Scratch: QA with Higher Logic's Marketing and Community Teams

The Wikipedia Effect: Why People Volunteer

Automation Rules for Beginners

Marketer’s Guide to Customer Community ROI

How Customer Engagement Increases Customer Sales