Advocamp: Lindsay Faria
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Making It Personal: Create Meaningful, Win-Win Relationships With Advocacy with Lindsay Faria, Senior Partner Marketing Manager at Intronis
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Advocamp: Lindsay Faria
- 1. Making It Personal: Create Meaningful, Win-Win Relationships With Advocacy @influitive | #advocamp Lindsay Faria Senior Partner Marketing Manager Intronis
- 2. Making It Personal Creating Meaningful, Win-Win Relationships With Advocacy 2
- 3. Intronis Partners (Our Customers) SMBs (Partners’ Customers) A Little Context… 100% Channel Model → Partners = Customers 3 Our success is tied to our Partners’ success
- 4. In order to grow your accounts, you need to know your accounts. 4 (And the people at them.) TrustGoals ConnectionsInsight Data
- 5. 5 It is 6-7x more expensive to attract a new customer than it is to keep an existing one. TrustGoals ConnectionsInsight Data
- 6. Rewards – Recognition – The “Warm And Fuzzies” How We Create Wins for Customers 6 Premium Access Performance Improvement Better Enablement Resources Marketing Opportunities Networking Opportunities
- 7. How We Create Wins Internally 7 Content Testimonials, blog posts, e-books, webinar presenters, press release quotes Sales Referrals, references Partner Success More engagement, An extension of their team Product Management More Feedback, Beta Pool Events Fuller rooms Demand Generation Leads, social shares, reviews, webinar attendees Partner Marketing Better output Support Fewer tickets
- 8. 3 Tips for Getting Started 8 Express sincere gratitude, always. Acknowledgement Spontaneous Personalization Show them that you’re human, too. Humor Empathy Experiences Make it about them. Goals Individuality Successes
- 9. Thank You 9
- 10. #Advocamp Lindsay Faria Sr. Partner Marketing Manager Intronis Top 3 Takeaways: 1. Make your marketing about your customers' goals, individuality and success. 2. Show your customers you're human through humor, empathy and experiences. 3. Express sincere gratitude, always. Making it Personal: Creating Meaningful, Win-Win Relationships with Advocacy
Editor's Notes
- For the next fifteen or so minutes, we’re going to talk about how advocacy can be leveraged to drive deeper relationships within your customer base, and why this is so important. We all know that our customers often provide huge upsell and cross-sell potential, and they can also be your best sales people. Keeping and growing your existing customers should be factored into your business growth plans just as much as bringing new logos in the door. And the quality of your relationships has a major impact on your ability to drive this sort of growth. At Intronis, we began formally incorporating advocacy into our overall marketing strategy about one year ago. So, I’d also like to share with you some of what I have experienced and the ways I’ve seen this approach benefit not only our customers, but my colleagues, and even me as an individual. Before we get going, let me just give you a bit of context to describe a bit about our business at Intronis to help set the stage for how we refer to our customers throughout today’s discussion.
- First, it’s important that I mention that we operate in a 100% channel model. This means that each of our customers, who are typically IT service providers, are referred to “Partners”. They actually buy our solution, and re-sell it as a service they deliver to their customer. In this model, our success is tied directly to the success of our Partners: The more effectively we enable them to sell and promote the solution, as well as to support their customers on the solution, the more successful they are. So throughout this presentation, you will hear terms like “partner success” and “partner support”, we’re effectively saying customer success/support. In my role in partner marketing, I work closely across the marketing, partner success, and sales teams to make sure that a) our partners are engaged and positioned well to effectively promote, sell and support our solutions and b) to help promote growth of existing partner accounts whether through account expansion or penetration. So, when advocate marketing came up in a meeting only a short time after I joined the company, I jumped at the opportunity to spearhead the project. It would give me a way to quickly build the portfolio of partners I could have 1:1 interactions with, which would let me immerse myself in what our partners were doing, thinking, and needing – which was going to be critical to my success in my role. Needless to say, it’s gone pretty well, and how I landed here today to share a bit with you about how the program has impacted us.
- ADD TO THIS SLIDE – Trust, personal goals, what makes them tick outside of office – animate those words You’ve probably heard the stat that says it is 6-7x more expensive to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one. It’s expensive to constantly be trying to add new customers to replace ones you’ve lost, but that model doesn’t produce real growth; and is reason enough to give some serious thought to your retention, engagement, and overall customer experience strategy. But it’s not enough just to keep your current customers – if you’re not focusing on GROWING them, you’re missing a huge opportunity. One of the easiest and least expensive ways to grow is within your installed customer base is with customers that like you and believe in your company. But it doesn’t happen on its own. It takes a lot of information gathering, relationship building, and hard work. It’s awfully hard to grow an account that you know nothing about, and that doesn’t know everything it should about you as a business. (*******CLICK TO ANIMATE SLIDE***********) Learning about the business’s goals, challenges, and how they use your product provides a great foundation for this; and on top of that you are able to create deeper more meaningful relationships with the individual people that you’re working with, you’re setting yourself up to really take things to the max. When you’re bogged down in your day-to-day work, it can be easy to forget that your customers are people too. But this is really important to keep in mind at all times, because at the end of the day, people tend to want to continue working with other people that treat them well, that they trust, and that they feel are invested in their success. Yes, you’re likely talking to them during the hours that they’re wearing their ‘work’ hat, and you and they are busy, but if you put in the extra effort to create a deeper connection with them, more often than not, it will pay off in a big way. You need to know how your product or service is impacting their ability to do their job and enabling their company to meet it’s goals, and be aware of any shortcomings, as well. You need to listen closely to feedback and show that it is being reacted to, and also listen closely for potential upsell or future upsell opportunities. It’s important to know what additional functionality, services or products they might be looking for. Understanding their personal business challenges, their day-to-day struggles on the job, and what motivates them at work are key to your success. Whether it’s remembering that your customer is an avid fan of a particular sports team, or that in their free time they play in a Bon Jovi cover band, knowing what your customers are into helps you to have conversations with them that you otherwise couldn’t and potentially to uncover common ground between you and them – which is incredibly valuable in developing your relationship. And, it’s also worth nothing that it’s a two way street. When you make yourself relatable to your customers on a human level as well, guess what? You give them the opportunity to like you! Not just your company, but you! And the personal credibility and trust that is built there reflects positively on your brand; and makes your customer feel more comfortable advocating on your behalf. So, this is something we’re really bought into at Intronis - We know how important it is that we help our customers be successful, and we want them to know that we’ve got their backs at throughout every stage of their buyers journey, and that there’s a commitment to this from virtually every functional area in the business. The product team needs to ensure that their product is delivering on its promise, that it is forward thinking and transparent about its product development plans. And that they’re listening and incorporating feedback into their plans. The technical support team needs to ensure that it delivers excellent service, even during its trying encounters with frustrated customers, They need to be knowledgeable, and communicative, but more importantly, empathetic. The account management team needs to be aligned with what the customers goals are, and be an advocate for them within your organization. They need to make sure that their customers have access to the tools and resources that will drive their success. And, they need to be good listeners. The more customers feel that they are listened to and that their feedback is acted upon and that their time is valued, the more the customer is engaged in a 1:1 relationship, the higher their satisfaction tends to be. And marketing gets involved too. Lets talk a bit about how we, as marketers, are making this an area of focus for us by way of advocacy.
- ADD TO THIS SLIDE – Trust, personal goals, what makes them tick outside of office – animate those words You’ve probably heard the stat that says it is 6-7x more expensive to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one. It’s expensive to constantly be trying to add new customers to replace ones you’ve lost, but that model doesn’t produce real growth; and is reason enough to give some serious thought to your retention, engagement, and overall customer experience strategy. But it’s not enough just to keep your current customers – if you’re not focusing on GROWING them, you’re missing a huge opportunity. One of the easiest and least expensive ways to grow is within your installed customer base is with customers that like you and believe in your company. But it doesn’t happen on its own. It takes a lot of information gathering, relationship building, and hard work. It’s awfully hard to grow an account that you know nothing about, and that doesn’t know everything it should about you as a business. (*******CLICK TO ANIMATE SLIDE***********) Learning about the business’s goals, challenges, and how they use your product provides a great foundation for this; and on top of that you are able to create deeper more meaningful relationships with the individual people that you’re working with, you’re setting yourself up to really take things to the max. When you’re bogged down in your day-to-day work, it can be easy to forget that your customers are people too. But this is really important to keep in mind at all times, because at the end of the day, people tend to want to continue working with other people that treat them well, that they trust, and that they feel are invested in their success. Yes, you’re likely talking to them during the hours that they’re wearing their ‘work’ hat, and you and they are busy, but if you put in the extra effort to create a deeper connection with them, more often than not, it will pay off in a big way. You need to know how your product or service is impacting their ability to do their job and enabling their company to meet it’s goals, and be aware of any shortcomings, as well. You need to listen closely to feedback and show that it is being reacted to, and also listen closely for potential upsell or future upsell opportunities. It’s important to know what additional functionality, services or products they might be looking for. Understanding their personal business challenges, their day-to-day struggles on the job, and what motivates them at work are key to your success. Whether it’s remembering that your customer is an avid fan of a particular sports team, or that in their free time they play in a Bon Jovi cover band, knowing what your customers are into helps you to have conversations with them that you otherwise couldn’t and potentially to uncover common ground between you and them – which is incredibly valuable in developing your relationship. And, it’s also worth nothing that it’s a two way street. When you make yourself relatable to your customers on a human level as well, guess what? You give them the opportunity to like you! Not just your company, but you! And the personal credibility and trust that is built there reflects positively on your brand; and makes your customer feel more comfortable advocating on your behalf. So, this is something we’re really bought into at Intronis - We know how important it is that we help our customers be successful, and we want them to know that we’ve got their backs at throughout every stage of their buyers journey, and that there’s a commitment to this from virtually every functional area in the business. The product team needs to ensure that their product is delivering on its promise, that it is forward thinking and transparent about its product development plans. And that they’re listening and incorporating feedback into their plans. The technical support team needs to ensure that it delivers excellent service, even during its trying encounters with frustrated customers, They need to be knowledgeable, and communicative, but more importantly, empathetic. The account management team needs to be aligned with what the customers goals are, and be an advocate for them within your organization. They need to make sure that their customers have access to the tools and resources that will drive their success. And, they need to be good listeners. The more customers feel that they are listened to and that their feedback is acted upon and that their time is valued, the more the customer is engaged in a 1:1 relationship, the higher their satisfaction tends to be. And marketing gets involved too. Lets talk a bit about how we, as marketers, are making this an area of focus for us by way of advocacy.
- UPDATING SPEAKER NOTES HERE - Talk about it as a partner vs. a vendor As discussed, at the highest level, our mission is to make our Partners successful at their jobs. The more success…. In our case we focus on using a gamified advocate platform, powered by Influitive, as a key platform to support our customer engagement and advocate marketing efforts. By joining our “Insiders program”, they get access to tools and information that otherwise wouldn’t. For example, we test out ideas on our insiders and solicit feedback from them. We sometimes test out content or campaign ideas on them before rolling them out to general audience. They also have access to training materials through our “tip of the week” and “recipe for success” challenges, and we share new user docs through them. We incentivize them for getting better at their job, whether it’s by taking part in our educational challenges or whether it’s vying for that esteemed “certified tech” badge that they get by completing our certification program They also receive higher quality enablement resources, as a result of the information, feedback and insight we gather from them via the platform. Because we know that marketing is an area where many of our Partners need help, we also keep an eye out for marketing opportunities for them, and push them to them. For example when there is an awards nomination open that is looking for entries from IT service providers, we promote the idea to them and encourage them to enter. Or if we see a HARO media opp, we may promote it to a small group or even just one of our advocates who we think is a fit. On top of all this, they get the chance to network with their peers. They use a community feature where they can get quick answers to their questions from someone else who is in their line of work – and they also get to show off their own expertise by helping out others who are asking questions They also get to have some fun and show off their personalities a bit by participating in conversations that don’t center solely around work – we have IT techs sharing pictures from their vacations for their peers to see, or debating who the better super hero is, and participating in funny photo caption contests. (*******CLICK TO ANIMATE SLIDE***********) And, wrap all of these benefits up into a package by adding an opportunity to earn rewards, gain recognition, and most importantly, to feel the “warm and fuzziies” about their experience and their role in our Partner community. All of these benefits are presented in a platform that’s fun to use and apparently somewhat addictive. Whether they use the Insiders solely as a way to do the fun challenges and compete with their colleagues on a leaderboard, or whether they use it mostly for the knowledge sharing in the community, there is value there for all of the participants, and it’s something they get to do at their leisure – no one is pressuring them at their job to do it, it’s something that they’re doing on their own and they’re building their own connections. They also benefit personally from the deeper engagement that Insiders fosters, they have another person (or actually, group of people) they’re on a first name basis with and that they know things about… and who know them. We’re the folks who make sure they get a shout out on their birthday or get perked with a gift card just because they’re awesome. The partner gets to enjoy all these “wins” for themselves… and we benefit in so many ways, as well.
- (Animate people as I go through departments) Since incorporating advocacy into our strategy, not only have we started to have a lot more fun by interacting in a unique way with so many more of our Partners, and from developing close relationships with many of them… but I’ve been able to improve my performance at my job. I’ve been able to kick over more success stories into production, I’ve been able to make it so that when we need a partner quote for a media opportunity or a press release, I know just where to get it, in a short amount of time. The even better news, is that stakeholders throughout the organization are benefiting too: Go thru a few examples of specific ways other teams are impacted Name the department and remark on the key ways that they are benefited. The demand generation group has been pleased with how we have used this to amplify our message overall (online reviews, advocates active in forums to weigh in on peer purchasing decisions. ex: within a year, we increased the number of reviews we had on one channel by 933% -but we have been able to, pretty much effortlessly, drive new reviews on that site. We’ve also been able to, with ease, increase our number of social shares by XXXXXXXX. (Need to finish reporting on this) Our sales team is pleased because they’re now receiving hot referral leads. We’ve found this to be a particularly powerful way of producing referrals which tend to be tough in our business due to the fact that the MSPs operate locally and don’t often want to refer their competitors. This is showing us new potential as far as referrals come in. Also, if they’re looking for a referencable partner, we can serve as a resource to help identify one since we have a good idea of who our happiest folks are at any time. I also have some very happy Content marketers that sit next to me every day, that have been able to quickly solicit and leverage partner quotes for testimonials, customer success stories, press release quotes, blog posts, and more. On my team, in Partner marketing I’ve been able to incorporate get feedback on the sales enablement pieces we provide, capture testimonials of how Partners are using our rebrandable campaigns and pieces, etc. and then use that to drive adoption among other partners. And also, the brand loyalty we create here lends itself to my team’s goals of growing those existing accounts. The Events team is filling their event rooms easier and has a new way of making post-event feedback forms fun & rewarding. They’re also looking into using the platform to scale up engagement leading up to, at, and after the event by encouraging registrants to share via social social Support team (customers can now ask questions of their peers first if they choose) Partner success benefits from, really, having us as an extension of their team. their customers are constantly kept warm & engaged, they get an extra level of attention and have additional support from their community) – if someone is struggling in the community, for example, we se it and can call their attention to it ASAP, and they get a quick response. It makes their job of keeping customers happy easier. And, of course our Product team relies heavily on partner feedback, and this has created a whole new channel through which they receive that, which they love. (*******CLICK TO ANIMATE SLIDE***********) And actually, this helps drive the personal relationships internally as well. For example, these are just a few of the people who’s days are made easier as a result of advocacy, and with whom I’ve been able to earn brownie points. So what do we have now? We’ve made our Partners happy, we’re making our colleagues happy. We’re developing relationships and providing value to the INDIVIDUALS involved. And that makes me happy. It’s a Win-Win-Win.
- In closing, I can summarize quickly three broad but actionable tips for starting to improve the quality of your interactions to drive more fruitful relationships – whether or not you are using an advocacy platform or not, and regardless of what role you play within your organization. Make it about them. In everything you do. …. And what does a delivery man have to do with it, you ask? When I think about some of the personal relationships I’ve developed with vendors and customers over the years, I often think fondly of my former UPS delivery man named Bill. Bill was one of the first people to welcome me aboard to my new job that I started weeks after graduating from college, and one of the first to congratulate me on becoming engaged five years later when he spotted something shiny on my hand. For seven or eight years, I saw Bill every day at 4pm, and though he had a tight schedule to keep to to get his work done, he ALWAYS took a few minutes to see how things were at the company, and even more memorably, how I was doing. He wasn’t necessarily making me more efficient at my job or enabling me to produce more leads, but he made me feel good by being a “regular person” that I interacted with at work. Because of the simple things he did, I was less likely to want to talk to Fedex or DHL when they called From the way you conduct your phone calls and onsite visits, to which content your marketing team sends them, it’s important to make sure they know that you’re listening to what THEY want and need to help them be successful, both professionally and personally. Focus on what makes them tick. And also, what bugs them. If you know something bugs them, record that information, and share it. It’s also important to get to know the person beyond knowing what their role at the company is. Make them feel like they’re the most important person in the room. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge their personal triumphs - that stuff is memorable. We had a customer who mentioned in one of our advocacy activities that they had just become a new dad. Within an hour, he received an electronic gift card to a popular baby goods retailer congratulating him on his family’s new addition. He completed no specific advocacy activity in exchange for that – he just shared something that we thought was exciting and we wanted to find a way to celebrate with him. People remember things like that, and it does impact their future business decisions --- . To this day, I’m a fan of UPS – probably because of a subconscious loyalty to Bill – my friendly pal n the brown suit. 2. Show them you’re human, too. Don’t be afraid to let them get to know you as a person. Does anyone recognize this lovely lady, falling up the stairs in her ball gown? It’s Jennifer Lawrence, taking the tumble of her career on her way up the stairs at an awards show. If you’re like me, you probably felt bad for her… but respected her for how she handled the fall when she finally made it up to the podium. And you know what? It somehow made her more relatable. She’s very good at the demonstrating that while she’s very talented, she’s human. This can work for you too. Not to say that you want build relationships based on your stumbles, but you want to let them see you as a person – not someone who’s just selling them or going through the motions at your day job. Whether it’s letting them know about your own goals and challenges, even just comparing summer vacation plans, there’s value in letting them see you as a person as well. So, if you’re going out to do a customer visit and you know your customer is a huge baseball fan, take them to see the game – and leave the business talk behind at the office. Focus on building those connections because at the end of the day, it’s is a lot harder to fire someone that you know and like than someone you don’t know much about. 3. Say thank you. Always, always, always, say thank you. There are so many different ways to do this, no matter what budget you have or what resources you have to work with. We try to ‘reward’ feedback and engagement as much as we can – and sending tokens of appreciation are a great way to do it. When they do something extra special for you, whether it’s referring a new prospect to you, or working with you on a case study, try sending them a thank you gift, whether it’s a new book on a topic they are interested in, or a box of chocolates. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but it goes a long way. And if you can personalize your ‘thank you’, even better! Actually, we recently asked our partners how they like to show their appreciation to their customers, and how they like to be thanked as well. We saw a lot of the “send a thank you card”, “send a gift basket”, type responses, and one guy simply said “Thin mints – I LOVE thin mints”. I got a chuckle out of it, and I did actually make a note to myself to at some point send this him some, out of the blue some day. I’m just waiting for the right moment to strike. Again, when people share those little details about themselves with you, they’re giving you an opportunity to use it to delight them. There are also ways to do it without spending any money at all. For example, you can simply feature that person as a customer profile/spotlight for their contributions for your community. We want to make sure we shine a light back on those who have helped us. And, of course, the best way to thank them in general to show that their feedback and their contributions are being put to good use.