Strategy

“The customer is always right.” Such is the mantra of service-oriented companies whose front-liners would probably bend over backwards just to ensure that each and every customer is satisfied. However, this mindset is more commonly present in B2C companies. After all, they serve the customers and end-users directly. It’s easier for them to gather feedback on customer experience and satisfaction. Meanwhile, for B2B companies, their primary agenda is to sell…

For much of the Agile community, scaling is the topic du jour. The principles and practices that enable agility for a single team are relatively straightforward. Software developers at least have been making them work for multiple decades now. But as soon as we start adding additional teams or trying to interface with groups outside our own department, things get real complicated real fast. For marketers, the complications can feel…

One of the biggest challenges in marketing today is increasing retention and lifetime value of existing customers. By optimizing this value, brands have the opportunity to improve business performance. The key to successfully enhancing this value is through a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program. Developing a customer advocacy approach includes many facets, including data, measurement and research. Let’s explore what customer advocacy is, why it matters and the role…

I am so excited to let you know that today you can purchase Mean People Suck: How Empathy Leads To A Bigger Profits and A Better Life. You can buy it on Amazon, Walmart, Barnes & Noble and the audiobook will be out soon. Like in a few days... When most people hear the title, they typically say, "yeah, mean people really do suck!" Then I can see them reflecting.…

If customer service is a school coach, customer success is a personal trainer. The former is reactive, transactional, and focused on serving as many people as quickly as possible. Trainers are proactive and flexible, designing programs around what the trainee wants to achieve. But just like athletic trainers, customer success people need two things to succeed: engaged trainees and the right tools. Although a customer success staff can’t control who…

The biggest challenge marketers face right now is reaching their target audience, and I mean really reaching them. Not just publishing an advertisement or piece of content that an audience might see or read; but reaching them with a message that piques their interest and starts a conversation. This is where account-based marketing (ABM) comes in—and, it’s no wonder that ABM was deemed the second most popular marketing strategy for…

The optimal brand experience differs from company to company. That might sound obvious, but it evidently isn’t to some CMOs: By overly relying on martech, they’re creating an expensive — and unremarkable — brand experience. According to research from Forrester, CMOs are spending more on tech than any other C-suite members. Through 2022, CMOs are projected to increase their spend on automation, data, and tools by up to 11%. Over…

With the launch of Mean People Suck, I thought I would share 14 of the books that inspired Mean People Suck the most. But first, what is Mean People Suck all about? The fact is that most people are unhappy in their careers. And they point their finger at a negative work culture, a mean boss… co-worker… or customer. Mean people suck. Some leaders believe that they need to be mean in…

What do you think is the key to successful marketing? Many would say it comes down to understanding your audience. This is certainly true, but once you’ve gathered intelligence on your audience, what do you do with that information? In its essence, successful marketing boils down to understanding the mind of your customer and using psychology to influence them to perform the desired action. Smart marketers use psychology in a…

This article is based on my forthcoming book, Mastering Marketing Agility (Berrett-Koehler, June 2020).  When a CMO is hired, somewhere an hourglass flips over. Grains of sand begin plummeting from the upper half, piling up inexorably in the bottom until time runs out and the CMO is politely asked to leave. It’s a grim picture, and it turns out it’s not even a very big hourglass compared to those measuring…