Remember the old small business customer service mentality?\u00a0 Where pleasing the customer came FIRST, and the need to delight them was \u201ca given\u201d not an option?\u00a0\u00a0 Great news \u2013 it\u2019s back (or at least on its way back)!<\/p>\n
The democratizing nature of social media has returned power to the customer, making Brand Advocates one of our strongest marketing assets.\u00a0 If we want to share their power (not\u00a0take<\/em> it!), we need to adopt customer service as the new way of marketing \u2013 or \u201cunmarketing,\u201d a term mentioned by\u00a0Brian Solis<\/a> in the introduction to his book\u00a0Engage<\/em><\/a>, and Scott Stratten<\/a> details extensively in his\u00a0blog<\/a> and book\u00a0UnMarketing<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Considering this power shift,\u00a0the #1 question we should be asking our Brand Advocates is<\/strong> <\/strong>\u201cHow may I serve you?\u201d<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>Ask early and ask often.<\/p>\n This\u00a0\u201cHow may I serve you?\u201d<\/em> question shows our Advocates that we are back on the customer service bandwagon, and just as importantly, it keeps\u00a0us<\/em> in check.\u00a0\u00a0 If you aren\u2019t ready to make \u201cHow may I serve you?\u201d<\/em> your priority question, consider these implications for use:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 It flattens the traditional hierarchy of \u201cpush\u201d messaging,<\/strong> giving even more\u00a0power to our Advocates.\u00a0 The more power our Advocates have, the more power our brand has.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 It reminds us to arm our Advocates with tools for evangelizing in their own way.<\/strong> Side benefit: those tools are also of great value internally in our organizations!<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 It reminds us of the necessary two-way street of communication<\/strong> between us and our Brand Advocates.\u00a0 The era of mutually beneficial brand-Advocate relationships is here \u2013 let it work for you, your brand and your Advocates!<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 It reminds us that our egos need to turn the spotlight over to our Brand Advocates.<\/strong> The success and impact of our product or service is not about how muchwe<\/em> love it, but about how it \u201cserves\u201d our customer.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 It gives us direction for innovation.<\/strong> <\/strong>When we know what our Brand Advocates want more of (or less of), we have a blueprint for change.\u00a0 We have unprecedented access to the needs and desires of our market \u2013 why would we even consider not tapping into that??<\/p>\n So here\u2019s your new 4-word marketing strategy for 2011: <\/strong> <\/strong>Guess Less, Ask More<\/strong><\/em>\u2026 and\u00a0always start with<\/strong> <\/strong>\u201cHow can I serve you?\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Ted Rubin<\/a> Ted has a deep online background beginning in 1997 with Seth Godin, as CMO of e.l.f. Cosmetics, & recently as Chief Social Marketing Officer, Open Sky. Originally posted on Zuberants<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Remember the old small business customer service mentality?\u00a0 Where pleasing the customer came FIRST, and the need to delight them was \u201ca given\u201d not an option?\u00a0\u00a0 Great news \u2013 it\u2019s back (or at least on its way back)! The democratizing nature of social media has returned power to the customer, making Brand Advocates one of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,7],"tags":[928,133,985,468,32,1080,131,30,1029,897,3,1079,1078],"class_list":["post-2584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-tedrubin","tag-brand-advocate","tag-brian-solis","tag-customer-service","tag-engage","tag-marketing","tag-marketing-strategy","tag-scott-stratten","tag-social-media","tag-social-media-marketing","tag-social-media-strategy","tag-ted-rubin","tag-unmarketing","tag-zuberance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2584"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2600,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584\/revisions\/2600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}