Continuing your relationship with your current customers is always a challenge. In today’s online world there are many more options for B2B Marketers to stay connected to their customers like through social networks and online communities. At ReachForce, we decided to mix a little old school with some new school and start a book club with a twist. Instead of meeting at a local coffee shop to discuss the book, we will be discussing it here on The B2B Lead. If you are a ReachForce customer, you should expect to receive our first book soon, if not already. If you are not a customer, click here for an online discount.

Our first book is The Marketing Gurus - Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of all Time. It is a “best of” collection of Marketing books from the past 15 years. Each week, Leigh Anne and I will share our perspectives to get the conversation started but will rely on you to join in to share your thoughts, opinions and ideas. We will begin the conversation next week in order to give everyone a little time to get started. Next week we’ll be reading and chatting about chapters 1 & 2.

Happy reading!

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When I was in college (far too many years ago) we learned about the 4 P’s of Marketing. Of course, in just the last few years, we’ve seen a major shift in thinking about the 3rd P – promotion. We no longer accept the notion that 2% returns on direct mail or 0% responses from print advertising are smart Marketing. Instead, we are laser targeting our messages to audiences and using social marketing to build a following of like minded customers.

With increasing interest in the power of communities, we now have the 6 C’s of Social Influence Marketing thanks to Dave Friedman, president of the central region for Avenue A | Razorfish. In today’s post, I’ve shared some of Friedman’s very timely advice on making social marketing and communities work.

You see, I’ve had some very interesting discussions of late on how to design and “position” a community. It boils down to “can you really design and position a community or will the community itself determine what it becomes?” We’ve decided to let the BreakingPoint community define itself. Stay tuned for the big launch announcement and see how this works for us.

In the mean time, here is what Friedman has to say courtesy of Chief Marketer Report.

1.Content: Access to valuable tools and content is a key factor in a consumer’s decision to interact with a brand. Regardless of their goals, brands need to think about customizing bite-sized, portable content or experiences for their most prominent target segments—content that their “friends” would be proud to display, share, or support.

Sound familiar? This was the focus of The B2B Lead – snack size educational nuggets.

2.Customization: Users crave the ability to customize, post and share content. On social networks like MySpace or Facebook, users define themselves through their personalized profile pages and the elements that they choose to display. Marketers need to empower consumers to express themselves.

3.Community: The adage “build it and they will come” is not applicable here. To build community within social media campaigns, brands need to achieve several things: Give users a reason to interact with your brand frequently by providing unique content, value or engagement. Let your content travel by distributing it across widgets and other mechanisms beyond your Web site.

Get the rest of the 6 Cs Or, check out Joseph Jaffe’s version at www.jaffejuice.com.

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User group conferences are expensive and time consuming but are the best way to have your customers network with each other and for you to get real face time with them to update them on new products and features and gather input on where you should be headed next. I was speaking with a colleague about her user group conference. She has managed them in the past but wanted a better way to stay connected with customers after the conference. Her boss wanted her to create an online community because social media is so hot right now. However, an online community didn’t seem like a right fit because her customers wanted real answers for executives not just responses from whoever in client services happened to be monitoring the discussion boards that day.

I recommended that she continues to hold events throughout the year but to instead make them virtual. As part of the goody bags at the user group conference she could give everyone a web cam. Then, once a quarter, she could organize a live virtual conference on Skype (if Oprah can get housewives to use it, you can get executives to). Users may not be able to interact with each other as much, but an executive could be on hand to make announcements and answer questions. Now I am a firm believer in pushing your message through as many media as possible because everyone’s preferences are different. After the live web conference, she could turn the highlights into a webcast for those who couldn’t make it and send a newsletter with updates as well. That way people can digest the information in their own way.

The point here is that no matter what you do to stay in touch with your customers, do something. We learn in school the importance of keeping our current customers, “It is easier to keep a current customer than to gain a new one.” Somewhere along the way acquiring new business became the focus and we forgot that our current customers are our gold.

As a footnote, I have not executed a campaign such as this one. This was truly an idea I had in the moment when my colleague told me about her dilemma. I would love to hear from anyone out there who has done something similar!

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