Why Customer Advocacy Is the Most Innovative Area in Marketing Today

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Jan. 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Marketing is struggling mightily to adjust to today's world, in which power has shifted dramatically to buyers who use their own resources to check out businesses and their offerings.

The obvious imperative is to get your customers marketing and selling for you. Unsurprisingly, this is now the most exciting and innovative area in marketing. Firms at the leading edge of this trend will gather at the 2013 Summit on Customer Engagement, March 5-6 in Redwood City, to share their insights.

Deep dive workshops announced

Bill Lee, president of Customer Reference Forum, which runs the Summit, announced new deep dive workshops for the event. "Participants will not only learn how innovative companies are pushing the customer reference and advocacy envelope," says Lee, "but the workshops will also give them tools and processes they need to implement these concepts at their firms."

One area of particular importance is marketing and sales content creation. "Content is critically important right now," says Lee. "Customer content is king. Two workshops will get Summit attendees right to the leading edge in this area: One will show what emerging and next-generation customer content looks like, in today's mobile and app-infused world. A second will show how to arm your sales team with the right customer content at the right time."

Other topics covered by workshops include:

• How to unleash today's increasingly social advocate, who is often completely underutilized by businesses
• How new technologies help firms rapidly turn customer promoters (identified with tools like Net Promoter Score) into advocates who create significantly higher levels of awareness and lead generation than traditional lead generation approaches
• How customer reference programs are expanding the role that references traditionally play, in ways that reach and impact buyers much more effectively in today's social world.

Rich company case studies from the most innovative advocacy programs

In addition, participants at the Summit will learn from innovative practitioners at leading firms who are helping to reinvent customer reference and advocacy approaches. In particular, they'll learn:

• How Intel and other firms develop innovative ways to get elusive marquee brand customers—who typically refuse to advocate—to do so (it can be done)
• How KACE creates Apple-like customer references and advocates—and other firms can too, no matter how seemingly mundane their products and services are
• How Jive Software is integrating its customer references with customer communities to dramatically expand customer advocacy
• How IBM is moving from chasing customer references to attracting customer advocates
• How SMART Technologies is harvesting tremendous value from customer advocates. The firm has 900 brand advocates who account for an average of $130,000 each per year beyond their purchases.
• How to explain the power of customer advocacy to your C-suite, with three C-suite presenters who are passionate about this subject. They include Chuck Ball, SVP of Health Systems at AmerisourceBergen; Lisa Arthur, award-winning CMO of Aprimo; and Katharyn White, who runs marketing for IBM Global Services.

Access to the latest research and the Master Class Series on Customer Reference Programs

Summit participants will also receive free access to the 11-part Master Class Series on Customer Reference Programs, covering a broad array of important topics such as the seven things every reference program must do to succeed; establishing the value and gaining executive support for your program; filling your customer reference and advocacy pipeline (and keeping it full) and more.

They'll also have access to new research on customer reference and advocacy programs, done in partnership with Sirius Decisions.

About the Summit on Customer Engagement

In its fifth year, the Summit on Customer Engagement is the world's most respected conference on customer references and advocacy, drawing major corporations worldwide.

"We also have a select group of innovative sponsors at the Summit," says Lee, "including Big Sky Communications, Boulder Logic, inEvidence, Influitive, Mainstay Salire, Metia, MRM Reference Consulting, Point of Reference, Service Research Center, TechValidate and first-time sponsor Zuberance. They share their broad experience working with reference and advocacy programs in a no-sales environment."

About Bill Lee

Lee is the world's foremost authority on customer advocacy and engagement. Forbes Online columnist Dorie Clark called his book, The Hidden Wealth of Customers (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), "one of the most insightful business books I've read this year." His firms, Customer Reference Forum and Lee Consulting Group, provide educational, research and consulting services on customer strategy, advocacy and community building.

About Bill Lee:
http://www.customerreferenceforum.com/about_leadership.php

About the 2013 Summit on Customer Engagement: http://www.customerreferenceforum.com/event2013

About Customer Reference Forum:
http://www.customerreferenceforum.com/index.php

SOURCE Summit on Customer Engagement