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Users Not Customers I really thought I was a rebel back in the 80s when I had blue streaks in my hair or in the 90s when I told a boardroom full of conservative main line executives that it was a dog-eat-dog market and we were wearing pork-chop underwear. So when I started reading my review copy of Users Not Customers by Aaron Shapiro I found myself standing up and cheering – literally.

You Are Probably Embarrassing Yourself Online

Shapiro is on a passionate crusade to give companies a whack on the side of the head when it comes to recognizing that users and not customers are the predictor of profitability.

Let me explain. Users are all the people who interact with your brand online and offline – but mostly online. And the companies who make it easy for users to become customers through their online interactions with them will be successful. The ones who don’t – will bear the consequences.

Shapiro doesn’t mince words. He tells it how he sees and you may disagree, but the millions of people who depend on their digital impressions of your business will spend their money with the companies that have put their focus on the user experience.

The best example of this is on the very first page of the book. Shapiro tells the story of his experience inside of a Williams Sonoma store. He was looking to purchase a product and winced at the $150 price tag. He simply whipped out his iPhone, scanned the bar code and found a better price at the Bed Bath and Beyond store. When he asked the Williams Sonoma manager to match the price, they refused and he made his purchase – at the Bed Bath and Beyond. It was that simple.

There is Data Behind the Book

Users Not Customers offers page after page of contextual data and research from the Digital Leadership Set Survey that Shapiro (@amshap) ran as CEO of HUGE, a digital marketing agency that helps global companies reimagine how they interact with their customers and manage their business in the online economy.

Shapiro had these opinions and observations about the digital user experience being at the core of a company’s profitability so he started the Digital Leadership Set study to start collecting hard data that would prove or disprove his theory.

To start, they went to the Fortune 1,000 and then grouped them according to industry. Then for each industry sector they evaluated the twenty largest companies. They measured over sixty aspects of the company that included how effectively their digital effectiveness across all aspects of their business. This information was then aggregated into an overall digital excellence rating between 1 and 100. The companies with the top ratings became part of the Digital Leadership Set. They included: Apple, Amazon, Macy’s, Wal Mart, Wells Fargo Hewlett Packard and more. Notice that these are not ALL digital or online companies. In fact, there are several mature companies in the Leadership Set that have evolved and transformed themselves time and time again.

The result was that:

“True market leaders focus on meeting their user needs above all else. Keep users happy, and customers follow; grow your user base and your customer base grows as well.”

What You Will Learn From Users Not Customers

This 200 page book only has seven chapters that take you on a journey of realization. The introduction is dedicated to bringing home the point that:

“If you’re not thinking about users, you’ll be out of business.”

Once you’ve wrapped your head around the new context of how buying decisions happen you’ll move on to building a user-centric management team. The meat of the book shows you how to structure your business in a way that brings the user experience to the forefront and attract and engage users by giving and not taking.

My favorite chapter in the book is called “TCPF Sales”. TCPF stands for Trust, Convenience, Price and Fun. The epiphany that Shapiro gives you here is that people are online for only two basic reasons:

To do something
To find out what’s new

If you were to only read one chapter – read this one. This is, by far, the simplest, most concrete and clear explanation of how your users (and you) go about making purchasing decisions.

Shapiro also gives many, many examples of companies (both startups as well as established brands) who have embraced this principle and how they did it.

I wasn’t surprised when I saw that one of his examples was Mint.com. This story hit home with me because I’ve been using Mint as an example of a web site that is so easy to use and understand from the split second you land there. I’m not a user of Mint, so I was blown away at their ingenious business model. The service is free and uses advertising to make money. So what, you say – that’s not new. But here’s the cool part. They only show you advertising that saves you money and improves your financial performance. The ads you see are targeted to you and your financial goals and the ads actually HELP you. The result is that while most conversion rates for ads are about .3% Mint gets an average of 12%! That is crazy!

Don’t Read This Book If. . .

This is not the book for you if you like the status quo. If you intend to close your business and retire in the next couple of years – this book will only be mildly entertaining.

But if you intend to be in business for the long haul, then you can’t afford NOT to read this book. Let me warn you. You will find yourself confronted on so many levels. Your web site isn’t good enough, your customer service or management isn’t organized around the user, etc. This book isn’t written to make you feel good – it’s written to snap you into shape for the future.

Check out the web site for Users Not Customers to get PDFs of free chapters as well as lots of great videos and blog posts.

Users Not Customers Will Wake You Up to the Future of Doing Business

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5 Questions and 5 Reasons Your Customers Want the Answers

Jan 6th

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Where are you online?

What’s your domain name and what are your keywords? If you don’t choose keywords relevant to your product or service, then your people (your customers and prospects) can’t find you.

who what when where

It’s all about the keywords. When people search for your subject, the way they discover you is by the words that are in your domain name, article titles, article descriptions and the body of your content.

Your website should have a theme that connects to your product or service, and your keywords should relate to that theme. You can use Google Keyword Search to find out how many people search for the phrases that you come up with. This way you can choose relevant words and phrases that people are actually looking for. It’s not enough to rank on the front page of Google; you have to rank for the language that your people are using.

What does working with you feel like?

Don’t just tell your potential clients; show them through testimonials and case studies so that they can hear what other people say about you.

Show them through your website design and in-store or website experience. If you say you believe in simplicity but your design is overcrowded and your first point of contact is scattered and confused, it tells your prospects something. Are you sending out the message that you want them to hear?

Who are you and who cares?

Identify your target market and then do the research—by asking questions and listening to the answers—to understand them. Once you know who your audience is, then you can tell them who you are in a language that matters to them.

The better you know your audience, the easier it is to write a relevant and personable bio or product page. And if you choose to hire a copywriter, then you’re in a better position to edit what your writing team crafts for you. Remember, you have to actively participate in the message creation surrounding your business.

How do they get started with you?

If your prospects want what you have, make it easy for them to say “yes,” pay and get started. Don’t just drop your new client after you get the money. Make the next steps as clear and simple as possible. After all, you want a long-term relationship, not just a one-time purchase, so take care of your client.

For example, if they order from you, then ship the item as quickly as possible. And if you cannot (because it’s custom-made after each order is placed), then include automatic communication that lets them know that you have not forgotten about them.

You can share the creation journey with them. Is it still in the design phase? Is it being hand drawn or carved? Is it being prepared to ship? Is it en route? Let them know, because good communication makes every situation a little better.

When do they start?

You have to give your prospect a reason to care right now; otherwise they’ll put it off indefinitely. Is there a special bonus for purchasing right now? Is there a benefit that you can highlight that they can not and will not live, without once they know about it?

Business is about communication. Connect, and stay connected.

Questions Photo via Shutterstock

5 Questions and 5 Reasons Your Customers Want the Answers

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Green Business Trend: Giving Customers a Bigger Role

Jan 3rd

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Customers are no longer just passive witnesses to businesses’ green efforts – They’re joining in. Many companies are moving away from conventional cause marketing – just donating dollars to charity — and creating their own environmentally focused campaigns that encourage customers to be part of the solution. These initiatives can engender more goodwill from consumers because they’re offering a genuine avenue to make a difference.

eco grocery bags

Much of this change is being fueled by the growing influence of social media, which allows a company to make its green efforts more transparent and creates a two-way conversation. Telling people you’re environmentally friendly isn’t good enough anymore; you have to have to discuss it with them and engage.

Retailer Old Navy, for instance, collected used flip-flops this past spring in a partnership with Terracycle so they could be recycled into playground equipment donated to schools and community groups. Best Buy recently dropped its $10 electronics recycling fee, Reuters reports, to encourage customers to recycle more old computers and monitors through its stores.

For many small businesses, turning customers into participants may be as simple as asking them to schlep reusable shopping bags to the store or to sign up for electronic delivery of newsletters or billing statements. But the most effective campaigns often take it a step further and get a little more creative: They come up with a unique initiative that inspires customers to want to do more to help the planet and feel really good about it.

One particularly interesting campaign I found: Swing Salon, a New York City hair salon, donated customers’ hair clippings to Matter of Trust, a San Francisco nonprofit that used the hair scraps to create mats that soaked up oil from the Gulf oil spill in order to protect wildlife.

These kinds of initiatives — even if they require little or no extra effort on the customers’ part — can be particularly effective and create more loyal customers in an age when consumers are seeking more authenticity and socially responsible behavior from the businesses they patronize.

In his book We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World, branding consultant Simon Mainwaring cites a 2009 Edelman survey finding that 83 percent of consumers would change their consumption habits if it could help make the world a better place to live – and 61 percent have chosen to buy a brand that supports a good cause even if it wasn’t the cheapest one. Sixty-six percent of respondents believed corporations need to do more than give money to a good cause – they also need to incorporate causes into their business.

Mainwaring writes:

“Many consumers, especially those of the Millennial generation, are no longer willing to tolerate corporations and brands that neglect purpose or prevaricate about their efforts to be responsible citizens.”

Eco Grocery Bag Photo via Shutterstock

Green Business Trend: Giving Customers a Bigger Role

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Best Ways to Engage Your Customers on Facebook

Nov 14th

Selling shovels to miners was a very profitable business in the gold rush days. Selling data to Facebook Page owners might be today’s equivalent. You can buy ads on Facebook, just like you can on Google’s pay-per-click advertising network. You can do friend and fan campaigns.

But what creates true engagement on Facebook? What can help you extract the meaningful data that helps you do a better job than your competitors?

Most of us think we know the answer, but a recent study and new analytics platforms are giving small business marketers the deeper insights that help them create stronger relationships. Here are some data points from a recent survey by Roost, a social marketing platform that evaluated more than 10,000 Facebook and Twitter posts by small businesses from over 50 industries. (Read my product review of Roost.)

Not All Posts Are Created Equal

Beyond the standard Likes, Comments, Shares and Retweets, this survey determines which posts yield the highest levels of interaction amongst local business fans and followers. As a semi-related aside, some marketers have decided it is better to buy followers or fans with ad campaigns. If you’ve contemplated that, read this 2011 Wall Street Journal post that shows ad blindness is on the rise (which means click-throughs are decreasing).

Photos Rule on Facebook

The two greatest engagement tactics on Facebook are Likes and Comments, with Likes leading the charge. Roost finds that the best way to achieve Likes is through photo posts, quotes and status updates, with photos providing 50 percent more impressions on average than any other post type, and quotes providing 22 percent more interactions when compared to all post types.

Asking Questions Increases Engagement

Findings also show that questions generate almost twice as many comments as any other post type. The second most popular way to get fans commenting is through a compelling business status update. Facebook Shares are a great way to disseminate business and product messages across fans’ networks, and links are 87 percent more likely to be shared than any other post type.

Roost also evaluated Twitter usage and found that quotes drive 54 percent more retweets than any other type of tweet, with status updates being the second highest driver of engagement. So if you’re more active on Twitter, start sharing more quotes. In addition, a different study from Optify showed how the use of Auto-DM (direct messages) on Twitter decreased follower rates by 245 percent. (Read Optify’s blog post titled Auto DM Use Led to 245% Increase in Unfollow Rate.)

The Roost study essentially allows a small business to figure out which type of post drives engagement. As on many social network sites, visual options such as a photograph or video will spark more interest in the Facebook community. Selling shovels is definitely profitable, but most small business owners would rather be standing on the gold mine along with their customers.

Best Ways to Engage Your Customers on Facebook

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Death By Digital Products – Returns, Merchants and Customers

Oct 9th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Marketing Tips

75% payout. This proudct will benefit Any internet marketer or anyone who wants to be an internet marketer. The product is about merchant accounts, returns, customer satisfaction and physical products. Happy customers buy again. Make them happy.
Death By Digital Products – Returns, Merchants and Customers

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Should SMBs Blog to Customers or Colleagues?

Oct 6th

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It’s a question that I’ve seen come up a lot: When you’re blogging for SEO, who are you writing for? Should you be aiming your content at your colleagues in the industry, or are you blogging for your customers? Obviously, both are worthy approaches, but which gets the best results?

Over at GeoLocalSEO, Steve Hatcher recently offered a strong opinion for why SMBs should be blogging for their peers, not for their customers. Today I thought I’d bring the other side of the argument, because I do think it’s a worthy discussion.

That said, I respectfully disagree with Steve. For a small business owner, I think your blogging investment is far better spent producing content for your customers, not for your colleagues in the industry.

Why? Below are a few reasons.

Your customers are performing searches.

When we encourage small business owners to start blogging, we talk to them about keyword research. We offer them advice on how to find out what types of queries their customers are entering as a way to understand what they want, what they’re looking for, and what types of needs the business can fill. Once you know what your customers need and what they’re looking for, you can make yourself the answer to their problem. For example, if you know that 300 potential customers a month are searching for [product name battery life], you can create content that addresses that concern or problem. You make it so that when they’re looking for authoritative content, they find you. That’s not keyword stuffing. That’s solving a problem.

You need to build authority with customers, not colleagues.

We know that there are more businesses blogging today than there are businesses not blogging today. And one of the main reasons so many companies have made the leap is because they know with more competitors, more noise and a tougher fight for visibility, small businesses need to differentiate themselves by establishing an authoritative voice in their market. While people looking for a locksmith may not spend all day trolling blogs about locksmiths or hanging out in locksmith forums (those exist, right?), they are going to do their due diligence before hiring someone. When they get a recommendation from a friend or when Google shows them the nearest locksmiths in their area, you’d better believe that user is going to do their homework and check the company website, the blog, the Twitter account, etc. This happens. This is how we vet companies now. And by creating that authority via your blog, you put yourself in a better position to get that customer.

You want to start conversations with customers, not colleagues.

Steve makes a worthy point in his post when he says that the people who comment on his SEO blog are other SEO experts, not people looking for services. And that’s often the case in the world of SEO and Internet marketing, but when you venture away from this circle I’d argue that it changes.

Do you know who comments on blogs related to cooking and recipes? People who are interested in cooking and possibly buying your cookbook.
Do you know who comments on active lifestyle blogs? People who may be in the market for a new kayak or a six-person tent.
Who comments on blogs about cars and automotive issues? People who love cars and often spend their weekends working on theirs.

Those of us in the marketing world live in a very incestuous bubble. But “normal people” do not.

Your customers are checking for your pulse, no one else.

The Web is changing customer buying behaviors. Today customers go online to research companies on their own before they ever attempt to contact them about their product or service. They’re looking for signs of a pulse when they do this–signs that you can give them what they need but also that your company is human and relatable. One of the great things SMBs have been able to do through their blogs is to tell their stories and show their human side to an audience that’s waiting for it. They’ve been able to talk about how they got started, share what drives their passion, and introduce their customers to people on their team. This has helped them find customers and differentiate themselves from everyone else in your industry. Your colleagues probably don’t care why you love what you do or what drives you to get up every day. Your customers absolutely do.

As a small business owner, there are many different approaches to blogging that you can take. You can blog for your customers, the people you’re trying to attract to your website. Or you can blog to your colleagues. In my opinion, your time is better spent appealing to the first group. They’re the people searching for you, evaluating you, and coming to your site (and the search result pages) looking for helping solving problems. Speak to them.

What about you? Who is your blog content aimed at?

Should SMBs Blog to Customers or Colleagues?

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Three things clients and customers want

Aug 16th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Marketing Tips

Not just the first one.

And not all three.

But you really need at least one.

1. Results. If you can offer a return on investment, an engineering solution, more sales, no tax audits, a cute haircut, the fastest rollercoaster, a pristine beach, reliable insurance payouts at the best price, peace of mind, productive consulting or any other measurable result, this is a great place to start.

2. Thrills. More difficult to quantify but often as important, partners and customers respond to heroism. We are amazed and drawn to over the top effort, incredible risk taking on our behalf, the blood, sweat and tears that (rarely) comes from a great partner. A smart person working harder on your behalf than you’d be willing to work–that’s pretty compelling.

3. Ego. Is it nice to feel important? You bet. When you greet us at the door with a glass of white wine, put our name in the lobby of the hotel, actually treat us better than anyone else does (not just promise it, but do it)… This can get old really fast if you industrialize and systemize it, though.

This explains why the local branch of the big insurance company has trouble growing. It’s hard for them to outdeliver the other guys when it comes to the cost effectiveness of their policy (#1). They are unsuited from a personality and organizational point of view to do #2. And they just can’t scale the third.

Put just about any business with partners into this matrix and you see how it works. Book publishing, for sure. Hairdressers. Spas. Even real estate.

The Ritz Carlton is all about #3, ego, right? And on a good day, there’s a perception that the guys at Apple are hellbent on amazing us yet again, delivering on #2, taking huge career and corporate risks on our behalf. As soon as they stop doing that, the tribe will get bored.

(There’s a variation of ego, #3, that comes from being in good company. This is what gets people to sign up for Davos, or to choose ICM as their agent. Your ego is stroked by knowing that only people as cool as you are part of this gig. Sort of the anti-Groucho opportunity. Nice position, if you can get it, because it scales.).

It’s tempting, particularly for a small business, to obsess about the first—results—to spend all its time trying to prove that the ROI is higher, the brownies are tastier and the coaching is more effective. You’d be amazed at how far you can go with the other two, if you commit to doing it, not merely talking about it.

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New Lotto Approach- 3.3% Cr- Happy Customers

Jul 14th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in All Posts

This is probably one of the best lottery offers ever. The unique approach makes it sell like hot cakes. Affiliates will receive all the help for promoting it efficiently and 75% commission out of $67. You must see the sales letter…
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Learn How to Gain Retail Customers for Life With “Reinventing The Wheel”

Jul 9th

Chris Zane, founder and president of Zane Cycles, offers a brilliant look at customer service and business growth through the tactics at a scrappy and innovative bicycle retailer. Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers sounds a little more technically researched than it actually is. Yet Zane provides the right clues to the puzzle of building a retail organization and selecting the perfect elements to satisfy customers. The book caught my eye while browsing a Barnes & Noble shop, so I asked the publisher for a review copy.

Great Service Begins the Moment a Person Enters Your Store

To get into Reinventing The Wheel you have to understand the author. Chris Zane loved bikes and business at a young age. He has owned Zane’s bicycle shop since his teen years, and has grown it into one of the largest bicycle shops in the United States (it is also the largest Trek bike retailer in the world). He has won awards and has been featured in Harvard Business Review and Inc., among other publications.

How did he attain this visibility and success – over $15 million in annual revenue? Zane illustrates how providing unexpected service builds customer loyalty with a metaphor about a bowl of 400 quarters representing how much he’d spend on service to a customer. In his standard presentations he encourages the audience to take quarters from the bowl, watching the various amounts the audience members would take. Yet no one “takes the whole bowl”:

“The point is that when you as a customer are presented with more than what seems reasonable, like a bowl of 400 quarters, you will self-regulate …. By providing more service than what folks consider reasonable we can build trust and loyalty and remind them how hard we’re working on their behalf.”

Zane goes on to note how giveaways that cost his shop just $86 brought about 450 one-on-one interactions that “alleviated a bit of pain for customers and created a lasting memory while doing it.” He also notes what at stake for businesses that don’t live and die by the “quarter mantra:”

“As hard as it is to win a customer’s loyalty, and regardless of how big your bowl of quarters is, you can also lose that customer in a heartbeat if you and your employees ever turn on your autopilot.”

Retail Insights and Guerilla Marketing Muscle

Much as Bob Taylor gets into the fine points of guitar manufacturing in Guitar Lessons, Zane describe growth challenges he faced along the way, such as gaining corporate approval to sell Trek bicycles into the premium market. These stories provide useful insight into how a business owner transitions from a small operation to an advantageously organized provider of niche services and make moves beyond the hustle mode. Zane notes to a Trek rep how his job is easier, selling 100 bicycles in one call, where Zane must find 100 buyers for those bikes.

Zane explains how he upsets the competition in segments like “drive up the price tag on competition” in which he tried to recruit a competitor’s manager. He gives several examples of strategically outwitting the competition through guerrilla marketing to acquire new customers:

“My competitors didn’t understand that I had changed the rules of the game on them and that every time they thought they were matching me, they were actually falling further behind.”

Some of the game-changing tactics will sound overly competitive if you operate in an industry where “frenemy” relationships among service providers are the norm. But there’s understandable science behind the madness, like not competing on price. Zane makes much-touted concepts like customer service as a profit driver more real than any white paper could.

The last chapters touch upon people-oriented subjects such as employee selection and embracing customer diversity as good business. The last chapter, “Think Nationally, Act Locally,” sums up the previous chapters well and serves as a reminder of how working with customers locally can make a difference.

Who Will Benefit From Reinventing the Wheel?

The book contents best aids service businesses. The most prescriptive text will benefit thoughtful, aspirational business owners who know that a hustle mode is not sustainable beyond specific moments of sales growth. There is a lot of bravado mixed in with Zane’s suggestions, but daring to offer your customers the best is Zane’s overall point. I found the book a stimulating concoction of aggressive competition and customer-oriented focus that distinguishes it from other memoir/business books.

Reinventing the Wheel will show how reinventing your business for growth can be easy.