All the Things to Love | Bride and Breakfast

All the Things to Love | Bride and Breakfast

Customer Behavior - Four Rules for Creating Insightful Buyer Personas [Slide Show] : MarketingProfs Article

Customer Behavior - Four Rules for Creating Insightful Buyer Personas [Slide Show] : MarketingProfs Article

1. Guide the development of relevant marketing programs

Think of the marketing-friendly persona as a tool that helps you develop content and campaigns that give your leads the information they want, when they want it, and provides it to them in a format they appreciate. That a lead has two kids and a collie doesn't really matter.

2. Point to specific interests as they relate to priorities

Forget about generalities. What is each persona's pain point? And what is her priority in implementing a solution? She might be concerned with making an inspired choice that improves her chances of promotion. Or she might simply want to unload an irritating task.

3. Detail circumstances that could close (or derail) the deal

Each persona will approach the buying process differently, so pressing the right buttons is important. Ask yourself, what would make this persona your solution's greatest champion? And what would make her think she'd rather buy from a competitor?

4. Represent a highly defined buyer

A persona should help you target a very specific customer. Avoid what Albee discovered when reviewing one company's roster: Each could have been "representative of the same title, roles, and responsibilities as the others." In other words, interchangeable personas won't deliver the insight you need.

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Forget About ROI, Start Thinking About 'ROE' | Social Media Today

Forget About ROI, Start Thinking About 'ROE' | Social Media Today

Word-of-mouth is gold and social media is the vessel we use to promote it, but how exactly is it accomplished?  As businesses we are always looking for ways to lower the cost of acquiring new customers.  It’s simple economics, the lower the acquisition cost the more sales (and money) we make…simple right?  Not exactly. As with most things it’s easier said than done, but if you make it part of your daily customer/employee interaction to give your customers something positive to talk about you go a long way to influencing a higher rate of word-of-mouth, let’s call it your ROE or "Return On Experience."

In this post I’m going to throw out some radical ideas. Radical ideas that, at first, you will discount as being just that, radical. Then these ideas will start to work on you as you mull them over in your mind, more than likely you will talk with your spouse about them or maybe a co-worker asking yourself and them what if? What if you did try what I’m about to suggest, what would happen? Would it produce rapid word-of-mouth, would it reduce your cost per customer, would it create you more sales? The answer to all of those questions, of course, is yes but I understand that there will be a certain amount of skepticism involved but as you will soon find out, the logic is iron clad.

Customer Experience

I’ve brought this up before but I thought it important enough to bring it up here again and that is: it’s the difference between what people expect and the actual level of customer service received that will dictate whether or not a person will talk about how their business with you went. Of course it goes without saying that if you fail to meet those expectations the word-of-mouth will be negative but if you exceed them, well …all sorts of magical things start to happen, such as repeat and referral business!

The idea is to go so above and beyond what the customer expects that you earn massive amounts of exposure on the level of Return on Experience (ROE) you receive from shocking your customers with your level of customer service. In fact, I don’t want you to think about it as “customer service” at all, instead think of it as:

Customer Enchantment

It might just be me but when I think of the term customer service I think about doing all the things that I’m supposed to do such as be helpful and friendly but when I think in terms of customer enchantment I think on a much, MUCH grander scale. In other words I don’t want you to think about how you can give good customer service, I want you to think in terms of “how can I enchant my customers?”

Enchantment: (en·chant·ment ) Captivation: a feeling of great liking for something wonderful and unusual.

Before I get into some ideas of what I mean I feel it’s important to remind you about the story of the boy and the starfish. You know the one, the one where there are thousands of starfish beached upon the sands where a little boy, one-by-one, is throwing the starfish back into the water. When asked why he’s even bothering when there are too many to make a difference, the little boy replied after throwing a starfish back in the water, “It mattered to that one.”

I bring up that story because I understand that what I’m about to propose would be impossible to do with every customer, of course you wouldn’t want to do what I’m about to propose with every customer anyway because then it would become expected and the whole idea is to go beyond what is expected. Another thing to keep in mind is that you are trying to work your way into your customers social graph (both online and off), or at least become a conversation within it. By influencing your customers to say positive things about you, you in effect create customer that create other customers, thus reducing your customer acquisition cost theoretically in half.

Scenario #1 Let’s say you have a customer come in to your dealership to purchase a vehicle for his daughters 16th birthday. He of course is excited but you decide to take things to the next level by getting the car wrapped for him, complete with a big bow on top. But you don’t stop there because you really want to enchant your customer so you then give to his daughter a year’s worth of free oil changes, 5 complete details and a $150 gas card.

Scenario #2 A customer drops off her car for an oil change and you learn that she is due to give birth to a baby boy in two weeks so you decide to go shopping for her. You buy her some baby related items, maybe a diaper bag and diapers, maybe some baby clothes or baby blankets. While talking with her you learn that she is in need of a car seat or maybe even a stroller so you picked one of those up for her as well and put them in her car for when she comes back to pick it up.

Scenario #3 You learn that one of your customers has had a death in the family so you send a big bunch of flowers to their house, along with a gift certificate for a free house cleaning and yard maintenance with a hand written card that says, “It’s always tough losing a loved one and we understand that there are always too many things to worry about during times like these. Attached you will find a gift certificate for free house cleaning and yard maintenance, two less things that you have to worry about. We truly are sorry for your loss.”

Do you get what I mean when I say customer enchantment? I sure hope so because by doing things such as the three scenarios above you go a long way to influencing word-of-mouth. Think about what will happen once the word gets out about the things you are doing for your customers and it will get out. In fact your customers will find a way to bring up the amazing things you did both in person and all over Facebook (and Twitter, MySpace, and others) any and every chance they get. They will happily do this because you made a difference in their lives and did something they would NEVER have expected. You now have a customer and a word-of-mouth generating machine for life.

Another Crazy idea

What if you empowered your employees to do this sort of thing. Maybe create an enchantment budget, think of it as advertisement if you have to but by allowing your employees to get creative with customer enchantment and then giving them the means by which to do so you are creating an environment that creates rampant word-of-mouth.

What ideas do you have when it comes to creating customer enchantment, how can you increase your ROE?

7 New Facebook Changes Impacting Businesses

By Andrea Vahl
Published March 5, 2012 

Facebook pages are changing. And that means your business strategy will need to change.

In fact, Facebook has made many new changes that will impact anyone with a Facebook page.

These changes emerged from Facebook’s fMC 2012 Conference.

The overall message was that Facebook is looking at pages as a “mission control” point (which is where the MC comes from in the conference title).

Here is an overview of the changes and how brands can take advantage of some of the new features.

#1: Cover Photo and Profile Image

Obviously one of the biggest changes that we all knew was coming was the cover photo. No more photo strip across the top. You now have one large image to showcase your page. This image must be a minimum of 399 pixels across to be used as the cover photo. But you can have a photo cover designed to take advantage of the extra space you get. The cover photo maximum dimensions are 850 pixels by 315 pixels.

The new Timeline cover photo.

One of the biggest restrictions is the fact that you can’t have any calls to action in your cover photo. You can’t tell people to like or share your page or have any contact information at all, including your web address, phone number or mailing address. Get the full details about cover photos here. These restrictions will require some creativity in drawing attention to your business without some of the methods that have been used in the profile pictures recently.

The profile picture size has been changed to 180 pixels by 180 pixels. It appears next to every post in the news feed as a 30 pixel by 30 pixel picture. The profile picture is best used for your logo or other eye-catching picture without a lot of words.

#2: Larger, Highlighted and Pinned Posts

One of Facebook’s mantras during the conference was the way we tell stories with Facebook. To help you tell your stories, the pictures and videos are now larger and more eye-catching.

You can also highlight a story (by clicking the star icon in the upper right of a post) so that it spans all the way across the Timeline as shown in this Lexus post with a video.

Use Highlight to emphasize a particular post.

You can also pin the story to the top of your Timeline for up to a week. To do this, click the pencil icon in the upper right of the post and select Pin to Top.

Pin a story to the top of your Timeline for greater emphasis.

#3: Setting Company Milestones

Another thing you can add to make your Timeline more interesting is Milestones. You can tell people about big events in the life of your brand or company.

All you need to do is click on the line that runs down the middle of your Timeline and select Milestone. Then you can fill out the information as shown.

Add Milestones to tell your company's story.

Because the posts from your fans are in a separate area, your Timeline is now more focused on your story.

People may be spending more time reading your Timeline rather than just coming to your page to ask a question. The more visually engaging you can make your Timeline, the better.

#4: New Applications

One of the biggest changes is the removal of the default landing tab.

Applications are still available and if you have created a custom welcome tab or added any other special application, it hasn’t disappeared.

You now have 12 applications you can showcase and only the four applications that you move to the top row will appear prominently. You cannot change the position of the photos, so technically you only have three applications that you have control over in that top row .

Choose which apps you want displayed by placing them in the first three rows.

To move your apps around, first click the down arrow next to your top row of apps to display all of your apps. Next, click the pencil icon in the upper right corner of the app. Then select the app that you would like to swap positions with. As mentioned, you cannot change the position of the Photos app.

Change your app position.

Many people are lamenting the disappearance of the default landing tab, but the new app buttons give us an opportunity to be creative. You can change the photo that appears for the app and you can rename the app to give a call to action as shown on Holdren Design’s page.

Use an eye-catching image and rename the app to have a call to action.

Another good use of custom images and tab names.

To change your app photo, again display all of your apps with the down arrow button next to the top row of apps and click on the pencil icon. Scroll down to the Edit Setting selection and from there you can add a custom tab image.

Select Edit Settings to change the name of the tab and use a custom tab image.

Select Change to upload a custom tab image.

The custom tab image is 111 pixels by 74 pixels.

You can have an enticing call to action in your custom tab image.

#5: Facebook Offers

Only a few companies have access to Facebook Offers currently, but it will be rolled out soon. According to Facebook’s Offer Help section, they “expect to make Offers available more broadly soon.” Facebook Offers are like Facebook Deals on steroids.

The post is sent through the news feeds of your fans, which is much more visible. There are easy ways to share the Offer, both through the post itself and then when the Offer is claimed. Fans get the Offer by clicking the Get Offer link, see the terms and then click the blue Claim Offer button as shown.

Click Claim Offer to get the coupon sent to your email.

Because Facebook has everyone’s email address, they are able to individually email your Offer to the person who claimed it. Unfortunately, the page does not have access to those emails through which the Offer was claimed, but at least the word is spread about your Offer.

The person who claims the Offer receives an email showing how to redeem the Offer and the terms.

Facebook Offers could be a huge win for small businesses offering things like a “free webinar” or consultants offering a “free 15-minute consultation.”

The danger is making sure you have the bandwidth to deliver the Offer. There didn’t seem to be any way to cap the number of Offers that were claimed. Einstein’s Bagels had close to 30,000 people who claimed the BYGO sandwich offer. Not too difficult to fulfill if you have 500+ locations and you anticipate that some won’t redeem the Offer at all—but still, you don’t want to get into a bad situation with fulfillment problems.

Facebook gives some good tips on ways to make your Offer successful by telling us to “make discounts substantial”—20% off or even free—as well as setting a reasonable expiry date to “let people have a few days to see and claim the Offer.”

The other question is when Facebook Offers will be widely available. Facebook stated, “Offers are only available to managed advertising clients.” Once this is rolled out to more pages, it would seem that every page would want to create one if it was free. Plus it appears that Facebook may not be vetting the Offers before they go live. Offers may become too much of a good thing, but that remains to be seen.

#6: Facebook Insights, Admin Panel and Messaging

Another change with the Timeline is the location of the Insights. You can now access them by clicking on the Admin Panel in the upper right corner.

The Admin Panel tells you about new notifications and gives you access to the "back-end" of your Facebook page.

The Admin Panel has much different navigation than before, but everything appears to be there.

Access your Insights through the Admin Panel.

You will still be able to see the old-style Page Dashboard if you click the Manage drop-down menu and then Edit Page.

Click Edit Page to see the old-style Page Dashboard.

From the Admin Page, you can also invite your email contacts, invite friends, share your page and create an ad from the Build Audience drop-down menu.

Use the Build Audience drop-down menu to access several options on getting the word out about your page.

Facebook has done a nice job of giving us lots of options to learn more about the new page design from the Help drop-down menu. During the Preview, the Help drop-down menu links to tutorials, but once you publish your Timeline you will have access to some different options.

One of the capabilities will be to easily request a name change for your page. This name change is the title of your page, not the custom URL you may have set for your page. You can still access this form here. Great news for people who have changed their company branding, have had a misspelling in the name or have other tweaks they have wanted to make.

Request a name change for your page

One of the most interesting developments of the new page Timelines is that we can now get more information on other pages that have changed to the new Timeline. When you click on the Likes box, just underneath their Timeline cover photo you cansee the most popular age group, a People Talking About This Trend graph and their most popular week.

You can now see more Insight information about any page that has the new Timeline.

Companies could possibly hide the Likes box by swapping it to a lower position than the top 12 apps that are accessible to the public. But that would also hide the social proof of how many people like your page.

Pages will also have the ability to receive messages from fans. The Message feature can be turned on or off from the Manage Permissions area of the Admin Dashboard.

Enable the Message button from the Manage Permissions area.

The Message button is enabled by default so if you want to disable it, you will have to uncheck the box. Messages can only be initiated by a fan—they cannot be initiated by the page to a fan. The page can reply to the message sent.

#7: Facebook Advertising

Another new announcement that was covered in the fMC Conference was some changes to advertising. The ads will be larger and the product names are the Reach Generator and Premium on Facebook. The Reach Generator is designed to reach more of your existing fans than you currently are reaching through the news feed.

Mike Hoefflinger, Facebook’s director of global business marketing, said thatcurrently pages only reach about 16% of their audience each week with posts. With the Reach Generator ads, pages can reach 50% of their fans each week and 75% each month. Beta testing done by brands such as Ben and Jerry’s was able to reach 98% of fans and double engagement.

The Reach Generator ads are designed to connect to your existing audience and will include the Page Post stories. The ads will not be based on CPC or CPM models, but will be an “always on” ad. These ads will be shown on the right side of the page and they will also go into the news feed and mobile streams. Learn more about this product in Facebook’s Reach Generator Guide.

Premium on Facebook is designed to distribute your stories to new connectionsand will be shown on the right side of the home page, in the news feed, in mobile streams and when someone logs out of Facebook. Find out more in the Premium on Facebook Guide.

Again, there were lots of big changes to pages that came out of the fMC Conference. Read more about their guides here. Ultimately, the Timeline look needed to come to pages and there are a lot of ways we can use it to our advantage.