Cassandra Jowett
What Is An Online Community, Anyway?
Quick! What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “online community?” Facebook? LinkedIn? Your company’s support forum? The definition of online community varies depending on who you talk to. Joanne Jacobs, a digital strategist who spoke at a live online session at a past…
Is Your Content Marketing Plan Sustainable? Probably Not, Says Mark Schaefer
Two years ago, Mark Schaefer, a five-time best-selling author and Professor at Rutgers University, controversially wrote that most content marketing plans were not sustainable strategies. The problem, he explained, is “content shock”—a term used to describe the point at which the amount of content available...
7 Steps To Creating The Best ABM Campaign Ever With Advocacy
Developing your account-based marketing (ABM) strategy while keeping your brand advocates in mind will ensure your next ABM campaign is a success. Combining the two gives you the best of both worlds: the targeting power of ABM, and the ability to leverage your advocates’ personal...
Marketers Have Seen (And Done) It All. Here’s How To Get Their Attention…
Not easily swayed by buzzwords and fluff. Great at small talk. Able to capture the attention of a room. Sounds like the life of the party, right? This perfectly describes a Marketing professional. But Marketers are about much more. They’re skilled communicators, have stellar analytical abilities and are always on top...
What Taylor Swift’s “Swiftmas” Can Teach B2B Marketers About Delighting Customers
Every holiday season, B2B marketers send their best customers a standard holiday card with either a bottle of wine or a basket of chocolates. And somehow—through this incredibly generic gesture—we expect our customers to feel like they’re special and valued. In reality, all we’re really...
Marketing & Customer Success Alignment: The Path To A Better Customer Experience
Customer Success is a greatly misunderstood and underestimated part of a business’ overall customer experience. Without a customer success strategy in place, a business can’t hope to retain the customers marketing has attracted, or create a fanbase of customer advocates that can help it...
3 Research-Driven Insights That Will Improve Your Customer Referral Program
Up to now, much of the B2B industry’s knowledge about the effectiveness of referral marketing programs has been anecdotal. Granted, there are some great case studies, but there have been relatively few studies done on a referral marketing program’s potential impact on the bottom...
5 Key Ingredients For A Successful Customer Referral Program
Don’t take this the wrong way, but if your company is like most B2B organizations, it’s taking a haphazard approach to referral marketing. The majority of customer referral programs boil down to everyone keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that their customers will recommend the...
3 Powerful Hidden Benefits of Customer Reviews
Online reviews are becoming the new marketing currency as more and more buyers turn to peer reviews to help make their purchasing decisions. In a webinar with Uberflip, Vinay Bhagat, Founder & CEO of TrustRadius, shared how your brand can upgrade its sales and marketing by folding customer reviews into your campaigns and processes. Here are some of Vinay’s…
Why Connected Device (Internet of Things) Consumers Make Great Advocates
Everyone knows that person who always has the latest connected devices. These early adopters have the newest phone, smartwatch, fitness tracker or wifi thermostat before their friends. And they’ve got a strong opinion about the tech they use. They don’t just buy something because it’s...
Use B2B Buyer Personas To Create Advocates After The Sale
Every smart marketer uses B2B buyer personas to drive their messaging so it resonates with prospects. However, they often forget to think about these personas when trying to engage their customers after the deal is signed. To turn customers into vocal and passionate brand advocates,…
B2B Buyer Persona Profile: Educators
Educators are perhaps the most selfless group of professionals you’ll find. They work tirelessly to perfect their lesson plans, inspire students and share their knowledge with others. They are highly dedicated to their profession. Their passion for teaching often means they often don’t have time...
Why Your Customer Success Strategy Needs Marketing Alignment
There is a new kind of economy in the marketplace—the “subscription economy.” Subscription models, like those used by Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies, create a much lower barrier for entry for customers and allow for much higher adoption rates of new and innovative services. On the flipside,...
5 Things Killing Your Customer Community
No one likes to the see the time and effort they’ve put into developing a project or program end in failure. However, as discouraging as it may sound, this is exactly what happens with the majority of customer communities. But it doesn’t have to be...
How To Increase Engagement With Community Programs
Aah, engagement. It’s a love-hate relationship for online community managers. When people are talking, trading advice and letting you know they’re getting value from your community, life is good. When the virtual halls seem to echo with emptiness—not so much. Fortunately, there is a way…
Why You Need A Purpose-Driven Community—And 4 Ways To Create It
Most organizations start an online community with the hopes that it will shorten the sales cycles, create a better customer experience, and foster more loyal customers. However, an upcoming benchmark report from Demand Metric has found that just 6% of organizations with online communities feel...
5 Things Programmer & Developer Advocates Crave
They are the quiet, focused individuals, eyes glued to the screen 24/7 as they create and tweak seemingly incomprehensible code. That’s who the programmer/developer is to most. At least that’s how they’re portrayed on TV. And to a degree, that’s absolutely correct. But there’s more...
4 Ways To Turn Passive Lurkers Into Active Community Members
While the definition of community can vary widely depending on whom you ask, most community managers agree on the differences between an audience and a community: An audience is a group of people who listen, while a community is made up of people who interact.…
How To Improve The Customer Experience By Humanizing Your Brand
A recent Forrester report revealed that, in order for companies to deliver an exceptional customer experience, they must focus on making emotional connections. There’s a growing body of evidence that suggests human connections can help drive enthusiasm, loyalty, advocacy and lifetime customer value. A study...
Advocates: This Savvy CMO’s Secret Weapon For Brand Transformation
Many company rebrands put too much focus on the logo. (Just think about Gap’s major logo redesign fail, which is estimated to have cost the company $100 million.) However, a rebrand is more than your visuals and advertising. Today’s B2B buyers aren’t influenced by advertising.…