Every company in every industry is looking for the “next big thing” to gain an edge over competition or increase sales. Developers that created Guitar Hero and other video game companies are under a tremendous amount of stress to create new ideas … and deliver quickly. The target audience these games have no shortage of opinions. With new technology in our faces daily, people expect more out of products and services. Add in what Hollywood shows in movies, and soon enough, people believe they should be able to be beamed from place to place.

It is no different in the web conferencing industry.

So how does a company stay ahead of the competition?

Talk to Current Customers
At ReadyTalk, we have gone to great lengths to engage in conversations with our current customers. While we think we know how customers are using ReadyTalk, there is insight that can be provided by interacting with them.

Read What Your Customers Are Reading
To be able to understand what your customers’ want, find out where they are getting their information from. Whether it be industry magazines, blogs, or conferences, having this insight will allow you to understand their point of view and speak their language.

Talk to Competitors
Call their sales team and ask what makes their product the best choice. Try the competitors’ solution and see what works really well and try to expand on it. Using a product similar to yours may spark a new idea or way to enhance the customer experience.

Continuously brainstorm new ideas. Have more conversations. Deliver. Repeat.

As I had mentioned in my last posting, my partner in crime and fellow web seminar guru Jessica Kahn and I have been brainstorming as to how we can revamp or rev-up our web seminar series. So, how might one go about “renovating” the norm in order to gain more appeal, yet retain a reputation of reliability? Sometimes even the slightest changes can make people weary, however, it can also be the slightest change that can catalyze an audience and funnel in a fresh crowd as well. That’s one of our current (and on going) objectives here on the marketing team - a goal that I’m sure is shared by the majority of marketing teams in any industry.

A web seminar can be used for various marketing initiatives such as nurturing, lead generation, and education. Here at ReadyTalk we’ve geared the majority of our series toward the educational aspect, however, we would like to now put more emphasis on the lead generation side of things. Why? There is a lot of time and effort that goes into planning, coordinating, scheduling, and promoting a web seminar and ultimately it would be great to get as much of a return as we take to make it worth while for our audiences.

We want it to not only compliment our services but also be a trusted resource for our audiences to use in their day to day business practices. Like I said, it’s coming up with the “it” factor that will catalyze our audience in their current undertakings and in turn, potentially come back full circle simply by word of mouth and promote our undertaking. What is it that launches this cycle? How can we spice it up? Who do we target? What is the “it” we are seeking and more importantly - what makes “it” stick? I don’t believe it comes down to a specific detail, but rather a bundle of small ones that will provide the best outcome. It’s a lot of brain-storming, a lot of feedback from attendees and input from other employees, and again – a lot of trial and error. We are learning as we go and improving with every adjustment.

I’ve recently celebrated my three month anniversary…with ReadyTalk. So far, we seem to make a good pair and I foresee a bright and promising future ahead of us. Hand in hand we are tackling the vast and expansive world of web and audio conferencing, specifically in the area of campaign planning for our web seminar series.

I digress. My role in this relationship that has developed over the last three months has been a learning process – as are most relationships, I’ve discovered. Luckily, I’ve been able to work along side some bright minds and creative gurus. They have attempted to teach me the multi-faceted process of project planning, coordination, campaign management and a plethora of other marketing strategies that I hadn’t even heard of up until now. (Sidenote: isn’t it amazing how much stuff they manage to skip over in college that would prove to be quite useful in the workforce…  ) It’s all about the experience. It’s not how many assignments or papers you’ve turned in; rather, it comes down to the daily process of practice, trial & error, and mirroring individuals that have done this for years who you’d be lost without. Thus far it appears as though the attempts of my mentors have been successful and I’m adding new insight daily to my ever-expanding warehouse of knowledge.

Next time I’ll cover the methodology that we are attempting to put together to give the series a larger pull and more value to the publics we are trying to reach. We are slowly but surely revamping our approach and I think the outcome will be a solid move towards our ultimate goal.

Brian Carroll has another great post about the value of current customers., At ReadyTalk, our business model is based on exceptional customer service and support with a streamlined product that is easy to use and extremely stable. Given our exceptional service model, we understand the value of our current customers.

Take a look at some of these statistics:

• For every customer who bothers to complain, there are 26 others who remain silent.
• The average “wronged” customer will tell 8 to 16 people.
• 91% of unhappy customers will never purchase services from you again.
• It costs about five times as much to attract a new customer as it costs to keep an old one.

With statistics like these it is amazing that more companies don’t put more energy into keeping their current customers. Remember this: The magazine that gives new subscribers gifts while ignoring subscribers that have been reading their magazine for years. Even as a child, upon hearing these offers, something felt wrong to me.

At ReadyTalk, we not only have lead nurturing programs but we also are working on implementing a customer nurturing program. The objectives of this program are to build loyalty among our current customers, promote stickiness through programs and get them to use more of our products and services.

I would love to hear from you if you have implemented such a program or are thinking about it.

Technorati Tags: customer retention, loyalty, Brian Carroll, customer nurturing

Ardath Albee has a great post today about the power of storytelling. Ardath’s post and e-book (which can be obtained from the link) is quite similar to a seminar we hosted by Andy Goodman entitled “Storytelling: Your Most Powerful Communications Tool”.

Ardath, like Andy, suggests that in order to capture and retain your prospects and customers attention you must tell a story that relates to them. As Ardath states in her e-book “when you enable people to step into your story and envision their future with you, their problem solved, you develop empathy. Empathy leads to trust….and [trust is] the prerequisite for engagement.”

The key is to tell the right story to the right person and this is where segmentation comes into play. At ReadyTalk, we track job function and title for all of our customers and prospects. This allows us to tell an accurate story to which the reader can relate.

I particularly like her suggestion that each piece of content you choose to develop should be based upon urgency. Specifically, each story you develop must play to the readers sense of urgency t ogain attention. As Ardath succinctly puts “Urgency means aligning the story’s plot with a priority of the buyer.”

I would love to hear some of the ways your marketing department creates compelling stories for your customers.

Technorati Tags: Ardath Albee, storytelling, segmentation