2015's Top Trends in Customer Engagement From Thought Leader Bill Lee

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Jan. 6, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The prospects for business growth in 2015 haven't been this good in years. And the pathway to robust growth is becoming much clearer as well, says Bill Lee, who produces the annual Summit on Customer Engagement (February 24-25, Redwood City, CA).

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"Companies that excel will place greater emphasis on customer advocacy and engagement as well as broadcast media in 2015," says Lee, "while deemphasizing some of the overhyped promises of social media and branding," says Lee.

Following are his top growth trends for the year:

Customer Content: Still King, With a Growing Kingdom
When it comes to business growth, content will continue to rise in importance. And among all content, customer content that is well and creatively told—customer stories in particular—will be king. Customers—your buyers' peers—are the one resource you have that buyers most want to hear from or about.

Social Media: Back to Earth
The always-dubious notion that "broadcasting" to markets though social media would create mass movements toward products is now pretty much dead (as we've seen, for example, in the case of Facebook). People don't view social media as a broadcast medium. They view it as a tool for personal interaction. Social media can amplify and extend content life, but look elsewhere for the big push you need to gain or increase brand awareness. Such as ...

Broadcast TV Is Back
Pronounced dead five years ago by many gurus, TV is back with a vengeance. Smart consumer brands like P&G are finding that TV is more effective than ever at creating awareness and memory in markets. Once that's achieved, then people will (might!) share on social media with their friends in ways that keep the campaign going.

For B2B brands selling to more specialized business markets, the trick is to find an adequate substitute broadcast medium that can reach your market at a reasonable cost.

Get Personal With Your Rock Star Advocates and Influencers
The hot new "technology" in 2015 will be H2H (human-to-human relationships). Companies who develop deep H2H relationships with their customers, especially their "rock star" advocates and influencers—the ones who can best attract buyers—are better positioned for rapid growth.

Customer Communities Rising
More companies can build vibrant customer communities than they think they can. And the effort can be worth it—communities of buyers' peers draw buyers. People were agog at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce this year, which registered some 130,000+ users, prospects, vendors, developers, etc. in San Francisco—a (very large) microcosm of the firm's entire market. In fact, CEO Mark Benioff has emphasized customer-prospect communities and interaction from day one, a key factor in Salesforce.com's rapid growth.

Marketing's Task: Get Known to Your Entire Market, Get Remembered, and Be Available
Research star Byron Sharp (@profbyron) is compiling remarkable, and well designed, research that blows many familiar marketing canards out of the water. If you want to grow robustly, for example, a common marketing strategy is to segment the market. But that approach doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Fast growth firms get known to the entire market. Apple illustrates this: it grew nicely when it sold computers to designers and artists. But it created exponential growth when Steve Jobs decided to develop a music player for the entire market. Same with smartphones.

Branding: Back to Earth Too
The rather overblown notion that customers have a "relationship" with your brand is thankfully fading away. Call this the decline of "brand narcissism." Most smart brands in 2015 just strive to get noticed, and remembered. That's it. But that's more than enough to spur robust growth as long as you get noticed and remembered by enough people, as Sharp points out.

Customer Experience: You're Probably Trying Too Hard
Companies should create a solid customer experience, but should you really obsess over gaining another 5 points for your Net Promoter Score? Or would those resources be better spent letting your target market know about and remember you and the success your customers are enjoying?

The Opportunity for Stealing a March on Your Competitors in 2015
To sum up, use the customers you've got to create vibrant relationships with your market, and memorable stories that will get you known and remembered by buyers. Develop deep, personal relationships with your rock star advocates and influencers. Figure out how to broadcast their stories to your entire market, affordably. And then be sure you have the goods where and when the buyer wants them, when she's ready to buy.

A simple strategy, and one that's research-based. But it also represents a significant paradigm shift, so it's probably not being followed by your competitors in 2015. So, what are you waiting for?

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Bill Lee
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SOURCE Bill Lee