Top 5 Social Marketing Quotes of the Week (9/8-9/12)

September 15, 2014

 

  •  The Quote: “Companies that are committed to customer centricity have leadership that communicates and lives the organization’s values, Alvarez said. They also have a clear vision and strategy, metrics that align with customer-centric objectives, employee rewards that are tied to customer values, and activity seek and listen to customer input, among other approaches.” – Ginger Conlon of DMNews on LinkedIn
  • Why it matters: Customer-centricity cannot be a strategic move, it must be a strategic value for companies. The sooner a brand starts to genuinely love its own customers, the more effective those customers will be in helping grow the brand. Conlon points out that this shift in thinking begins with the employees that a company is comprised of aligning with customer values and building a strategy around that shared core of beliefs.

  • The Quote: “Brand Advocates on the other hand are a sustainable marketing force. They crave engagement from your brand. Unlike influencers, they are eager to support, promote and defend your brand on a long-term basis. Plus, their trusted recommendations affect each part of the purchase funnel, thereby driving business results.”  – Mahesh Neelakantan (Marketing Magazine)
  • Why it matters: “Brand Advocates crave engagement from your brand.” That means your brand can connect with its best customers without ever having to disrupt their daily life, on or offline because they are a part of it. For marketers, finding out who those advocates are and the motivations behind why they engage should be not only the most important thing we do, but also the most rewarding. Neelakantan makes a great case that advocates are inexpensive, effective and capable of influencing word-of-mouth more than any other customers.

  • The Quote: “We are continuously looking for ways to increase our brand salience and loyalty. Seventeen years ago, we created a powerful platform called Priceless where we celebrated the priceless moments in people’s lives. Today we are evolving Priceless to create priceless experiences by connecting people to their passions.” – MasterCard CMO Raja Rajamannar in an interview with Kate Kaye (Ad Age)
  • Why it matters: Brands can no longer afford to track only purchase, they must also track their consumers’ affinity for their products. MasterCard understands that leveraging that passion allows them to stop reacting to consumer trends and start influencing them. Loyalty is born when customers know a brand is listening.

  • The Quote: Because consumer word-of-mouth is the most powerful way to drive sales, and social is the embodiment of this process, brands should focus on facilitating the creation of these vital conversations. – Brewster Stanislaw (Digiday)
  • Why it matters: There are many things a brand can do to foster conversation within its social ecosystem. Acknowledging the hand-raisers in a brand community is a great place to start. Acknowledgement drives word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth drives sales. It’s a brilliant cycle that both retains old customers while helping to acquire new ones and finding new ways to motivate consumers to participate in these conversations should be a top priority for every marketing team.
  • The Quote:  “What we’re looking to deliver is one-to-one relationships between our global community and the brand, so it’s essential to have the resource in place to be able to respond in an agile way.I work with a large social team at Microsoft and with agency 1000heads to make this happen, but I also take responsibility myself and have my own personal relationships with Connects members. Trust is vital too. We fully trust our community to create content on our behalf, as demonstrated through projects like our Instagram Takeovers.”– Carla Eid, head of Microsoft Mobile’s Connects program in an interview with Ben Davis (eConsultancy)
  • Why it matters: This post is all about the planning and strategy that goes into making an advocate marketing strategy work. The four P’s of marketing are no longer relevant, the new emphasis on resources, responsibility and relationship have taken its place and the three R’s are here to stay. One to one relationships require actual resources to develop and maintain that connection with consumers. Start there and build a strategy from start to finish around the people its comprised of.