Tony Hseih (pronounced Shay), an investor, CEO, serial entrepreneur, and author shared wow insights about growing businesses, building a killer company culture, hiring and working with (the best) employees and the greatest non-marketing   non-advertising) strategy ever.

Tony Hseih’s new book Delivering Happiness, A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose will be out on June 7, 2010.  In the book he’s sharing his insights, success and mistakes.  And Tony wants other businesses to avoid the mistakes he’s made.

Here are highlights from Tony’s speech at the HBS Business Growth Summit that I think can benefit small all business owners:

Early on in Zappos’ life as a start up company, the management team decided they were a “customer service company that happens to sell shoes and clothing.” All decisions were then  based on how do we create the best customer experience possible? No lip service here.  Zappos went from zero to over a billion dollars in sales in less than 10 years.

Where Do You Invest Capital?

How to invest your capital:  Zappos decided to invest its capital in other functional areas than marketing.  No big advertising campaigns.  Here are some investment examples if you’re interested in building a lifelong relationship with your customers like Tony is:

• Customer service call centers with staffed with employees that genuinely share Zappos values. Keys: several interviews.

• Operating warehouses around the clock to provide faster deliveries, improved service.

• Free shipping for both purchases and returns.

• Surprising customers occasionally with overnight delivery at no extra charge.

• Sending all employees—regardless of job function—to customer service training and having all employees spend 2 weeks in a call center.

• Being willing to fire employees who are not a culture fit, even if they do everything else about their job well.

• Asking themselves,” what are the stories our customers will tell their friends?’ and how do we make those stories happen?
• Offering new employees $2,000 to leave Zappos at the end of new-hire training.  This  ensures that all employees are the right fit with Zappos culture and values.

How Non-Marketing Investments Pay Off

The management team (correctly) determined that if Zappos delivered exceptional customer service, that their customers would do their marketing for them.  And boy have they.

Listening to Tony speak was a lot like my shopping experience with Zappos over the last several years.  Always pleasant,  delightful, and more than you expected.

I only wish companies like Sony—where the price tags are way higher for televisions, etc.—could be a fraction as responsive and fun to deal with as Zappos.  But that’s a post for another day…

Do order yourself a copy of Delivering Happiness.  We all got an advance copy as part of the Conference, so I am reading mine now.  Will share more insights soon.

Here are some juicy links to “Delivering Happiness” resources Tony’s book team has assembled, click here.

Photo: My partner’s video cameras, Flip Minnow and 3-year old, Sony HD

Conversion Rates Matter

If you’re working to improve your website conversion rate, an online video maybe a useful marketing tactic.

‘Conversion rate’ refers to the percentage of the people that visit your small business web site that take the action you’re hoping they’ll take.  The action might be to:

• Join your email newsletter list
• Download your how-to articles
• Bookmark your site for future visits
• Subscribe to your RSS feed to follow your content updates in a news reader
• Or (best) call your company for more information, or to make a purchase

Video Is Ideal for Telling a Story

Social media marketing is all about creating an online conversation and telling stories that connect with buyers.  People that need your products to get things done.  A great way to turn web visitors into buyers is to tell a compelling story about your company and your products and services that draws them in.  A story that makes them want to contact you!

Bedhog, an ecommerce company, does just that with their video.  The entrepreneur briefly tells the story about how, as newlyweds, she and her husband debated over who took up more room in bed and a charming new bedding product was born.  Check out the Bedhog video by TurnHere here.  Sleepsquad is a time-saving concept for mattress buyers.

Not Ready to be a Video Producer?

It’s been my experience when working with business owners, that the biggest challenge is the time involved.  It can be relatively easy with today’s easy to use digital video cameras to make a video.  But it does take time and a bit of experience using the camera.  And some level of editing is usually needed to prepare a somewhat professional video.  That’s why the Internet gods have created outsourcing.

If, after checking out the results many businesses are experiencing, you’d like to dip your toe into the online video pool, you could try outsourcing to a company like TurnHere.

TurnHere creates and distributes online videos for small business owners among others.  They manage creating the online video for you from beginning to end—making it easy for small business owners that are not ready to buy a digital video camera and do it themselves.

TurnHere has many happy customers and some interesting data about the value of online video to increase interest and sales.   Here are some results shared with me by TurnHere.  Their partners and some third party research organizations compiled the results:

• 52% of viewers take action after watching online videos
• 30% of viewers visit a store
• Clicks for more information increase by 30-40%
• Phone calls to your business increase 16-20%

TurnHere does a nice job of helping professional services companies to tell their stories in an interesting, non-slick-advertising way.

Is an online video that educates your web visitors about the value your company offers an answer for improving your sales?  It will depend on how effective the video is at demonstrating exactly how your products and services fill a need for the web visitor, potential buyer.  The video must be short and compelling without being too salesy.

TurnHere Benefits

I think—if you haven’t already got a friend, child, niece, or local provider that can do a video within your budget—the TurnHere solution is worth a look.  Here’s why:

Video producers that are recruited by TurnHere are experienced film folks.   That means they know how to help you, the business owner, tell your product or service story in a compelling and professional manner.

1. Brevity is key.  They help you create a video that is 60 to 90 seconds in length.
2. You review the finished video online. Best of all, you don’t have to learn how to “edit” video.
3. You only spend part of a day shooting it and the producer comes to your location.
4. TurnHere will distribute your video to online video sharing sites for you, if you wish.
5. The  videos are professional and polished.

A small company I know here in San Diego is trying out the TurnHere service. I will let you know about their experience.

Meanwhile, if you’re not up to producing a DIY Internet video for your business, check out TurnHere.  They often have promotions and specials running.

Full disclosure: The nice public relations person for TurnHere, Alison McNeill, sent me a note about this service and I really liked the quality, and the short, to-the-point length of the videos. So I am posting about it.

DemandGen Report surveyed 218 BtoB sales and marketing professionals and found that social media is (actually) driving leads and helping to connect with prospects.  The study took place in June.  (DemandGen Report is an online publication that focuses on sales and marketing automation tools to help companies drive growth.)

Source: DemandGen Report

LinkedIn (58 percent) and company blogs (36 percent) are the top two social media tools producing these results.  Interestingly, Twitter came in third at 31 percent.

In no surprise to me, only 17 percent of these folks report Facebook as a source of leads.  It seems unless you are a large, well known brand Facebook is probably not a good use of lead generation time/resources for a small to midsize business-to-business company.  Although the article does not state the size of the companies surveyed, DemandGen Report offers a webinar series for small to midsize companies so I think SMBs are their readers.

Here are some highlights of the survey results:

• Some early adopters are generating from 10 to 15 percent of leads via social media connections
• While marketers and PR folks are driving the most activity, other teams are participating: Sales –  41 percent; Product management – 21 percent; Engineering – 13 percent

• The top 3 most successful social networking tactics reported by this group are:   Joining/participating in industry groups (25%;  Starting conversations on industry topics (25%); Answering questions on industry topics (23%)

Is LinkedIn helping your company blog to drive leads and connections with prospects?  How about your company blog?

Read the entire DemandGenReport article here.

Brian Carroll offers a great how-to for using LinkedIn for lead generation here.

Mike Sachoff cites another study showing company blogs as the most valued Social Media tool here.

But one untapped resource all B2B companies have is real customers with authentic, from-the-trenches stories to tell about how your products and services helped them to be successful.  

So, how about putting a video camera in front of them and letting them tell their story about how your company helped them?

Source

That’s how Speakeasy—a provider of voice over Internet (VoIP) telecom and broadband services for consumers, home offices and small to midsize businesses—created four killer video case studies.

According to BtoBonline.com, Speakeasy traveled to four of their small business customers’ locations, interviewed them and let them tell the story.   No script was used and Speakeasy picked their most complex service as the subject for the case studies.

In these case study videos, Speakeasy’s VoIP services come across as cost-effective, easy to upgrade, seamless, professional, well you get the picture.  You can view the video case studies here.

The BtoB article talks about the extensive ‘earned media’ (public relations) coverage Speakeasy received in publications like BusinessWeek, InfoWorld, USA Today and Wall Street Journal and Web sites MSN Money and Yahoo Finance.

I like the way each of the four small business customers tells a story.  None of the videos were scripted.  It doesn’t feel like a typical case study—problem, solution, result—I was actually entertained.  And, I’d sure call Speakeasy if I needed VoIP services for my business.

BTW:  if I were buying real estate in Boston, I’d call the hard-working Ballast Realty Group.  Note to Ballast—get video on your site soon. You rock on screen!

Granted, these are well produced, professionally shot videos—hence the $200,000 budget (including travel).

Some next steps for you to consider:

• Who are your best customers that have been successful in part by using your products and services?
• Which ones could tell the story the best?
• What’s in it for me? (WIIFM) Your customer gets to showcase his or her own business in an online video.  Are they on YouTube yet?

Could you create short online videos with your customers that tell stories about how your products help them to be successful?   Sure you could!

Here is the Speakeasy.net YouTube Channel BtoBonline’s complete story is here.

7-13-09 Update:  Here is link to Guy’s blog where he published all of the links he discussed at this event.

This morning 600 people gathered in La Jolla (San Diego) to hear Guy Kawasaki talk about “Social Media to Market Your Business”.

Photo source: Adjix TwitPic

Guy treated us to a powerful tutorial on how he uses social media (and by social media I mean mostly Twitter) to build his new venture, Alltop.  The lesson was so valuable because he visited each social media site and demonstrated in real-time how he uses the services to search and to market.

A good time was had by all.  Thanks Guy and San Diego Venture Group.

Alltop is an online “magazine rack”.   Alltop compiles the top content sites in 600+ subject areas (food, wine, news, venture capital, football, art…)

Guy generously shared tips, tricks and strategies.  If you’re a small business or a startup working to grow your customer base by improving visibility, attracting attention and visitors to your web site, here are some cool ideas from the busy Tweeter who just published Reality Check: The Irreverent guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competiton.

He started with some of the networking social media sites:

Finding or Checking Out People On Social Media Sites

LinkedIn’s highest and best use is to see who is connected to your personal network of contacts.  A good tool for finding partners and doing background checks on folks you’re thinking about working for, or partnering with.  (Most of the 600 here today use LinkedIn.  Not so much on the Twitter users…)

Jigsaw is useful when you want to directly contact a person but do not have their company email or other contact info.

Spokeo provides human resource folks with background information (the good and the bad) by searching people on 43 different social networks.

Tip from Guy: When approaching someone for first time, anything you learn about heir interests can give you a helpful icebreaker.  Like maybe the person’s Amazon wish list contains books about soccer, wine or vintage cars.  According to Guy, you might tweak the person’s interest for the few minutes you need to begin your pitch.

Marketing Your Company Using Social Media

Unless you’re a well-known brand with a base of fans already on Facebook, Guy doesn’t recommend using the site to market your business.  “You’ll end up talking to yourself and your competitors” he says.

This is where his love of Twitter comes in.  Guy thinks “Twitter is the best thing to happen to marketing since, well, maybe ever…”

Guy’s Strategies + Tools for using Twitter

Build a following

• Follow everyone who follows you.  Out of respect he believes.  (and my note hey, who knows where your next customer, gig or opportunity will come from?)

• Search for people with your interests. Here is Twitter’s advanced search page.

Find interesting links.  Tweet or Share them.

Search Alltop (just as an example) for juicy content related to your business and the interests of your market.

Try Adjix, a free-link sharing service for use on Twitter.  It also shortens URLs, a must for 140-character limit-Twitter but unlike other link-shortening sites, Adjix allows you to schedule re-tweets.  Bonus for Firefox web-browser users is an Adjix button.   http://web.adjix.com/AdjixWhatIsIt.html (Personally I find Firefox’s web browser to be like a rocket compared to Internet Explorer’s more 1960’s VW Beetle.)

Big Companies  Using Twitter Successfully to Market

JetBlue They actually answer customers’ questions.  Check out their twitter page, this is 5-star customer service

Los Angeles street food vendor Kogi BBQ is known for Tweeting where their food truck will stop and at what time.  This small restaurant is said to have hundreds lined up to buy their tasty food at each stop  http://twitter.com/kogibbq

Comcastcares is poster boy for customer service for Comcast with 23,000 Twitter followers.

Next post I’ll cover Guy’s killer Twitter marketing tools.

Since I am a marketer/ social media enthusiast—I’ve translated the speakers’ recommendations into marketing ideas.    (Apologies in advance to the experts.)

This is part 1 of my posts from ideas shared at the DMC’s “Orange County Business Growth Forum.”

Steve Mednick, Plenum Revenue Group: Steve Mednick is a professor at the Grief Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC and a serial entrepreneur.  He shared his own bootstrapping stories and those of students of the Greif Center program.

One of the graduates of this USC program is Mark Benioff, founder of Salesforce.

•    The start point. When launching a new startup  (or for that matter,  a new product, service or marketing project) just get to the start point.  What is the idea that will get you started?  What is the idea that will get you your first customers?  We’re in business to get customers.

•    On market research.  Don’t worry about needing a budget to do research. The only opinion that counts is the customer’s.  Ask your (potential) customers when in doubt.  Then, give them what they want (as long as you make a profit.)

• Cynthia’s note:  I uncovered one of my small business clients best ideas for generating revenue during a 15-minute call with one of his best raving fan customers.

•    Ask someone for help.  If you’re uncertain about a project, product or service—ask someone!  Use your network. Talk to 250 people. Get help. Find someone who knows about what you’re attempting to achieve.

•    Your ability to execute in the marketplace = $$$.  Execution–finding a way to get something done—is the key.

•    Take the hair-on-fire approach. [To starting a company or a marketing project.)  Just do the next thing, take the next action to get to your (next) goal.  Steve had a great slide for this one.  Actually all of his PowerPoint slides were excellent. Very Zen.  Not crowded, not busy, got his message across, told the story.

•    “Think from your customer backwards.” Saras D. Sarasvathy published research about “thinking from the customer backwards”.  In 2007, Saras was one of the top 18 entrepreneurship professors by Fortune Small Business Magazine.  Steve Mednick says:  “Just start talking to customers.”

•    Get past the ‘great idea’ stage. Get to customers to execute your ideas.

•    Network. Network. Network.  Become known in your space.

•    Give to get. Make connections.  Brand your company as the go-to-person for your products, services.

Thanks to Steve Mednick for a great presentation.  Here is the link to his complete article, Bootstrapping Your Business – Get Real – Get Started

Next post I’ll cover more pearls of wisdom from the Digital Media Center’s  “Orange County Business Growth Forum.”

Any hair-on-fire ideas that worked for you that you’d like to share?  Add them below in comments.

If you’re looking for from-the-trenches B2B marketing strategies and tactics that work, you’ll want to check out what two marketing gurus from Service-Now.com have to share.

Tuesday night in San Diego, two marketing superstars from 4-year old startup Service-now.com delivered an in-depth, insightful view of a business and marketing success story.

Matt French, Brian Surritt, Marketing Director, and Rhett Glauser, 
Communications Manager, at the the only enterprise service desk (ITSM) via SaaS (Software-as a-service)  help-desk company, shared killer marketing insights.

The program title was “Achieving Leading B-to-B Brand Awareness On a Shoestring Budget” but their tactics/strategies have resulted in mouth-watering business growth and customer engagement.  The Service-Now.com approach makes other ‘branding’ strategies look wimpy by comparison.

It doesn’t hurt that Service-Now is loved by its customer base (F1000 to Global 2000 companies) and has tons of loyal fans that spread the love via word of mouth.  The big takeaway for me was how smart Service-Now’s (small) marketing team (we had half of them in the room) has been about integrating traditional marketing, social media and word of mouth. They stay in touch with analysts, the press and since “Our clients really want to see us grow…” as Rhett said, they really leverage word of mouth.

Results? According to San Diego Business Journal on February 13, 2009: “Service-now.com, an information technology support company in Solana Beach, said it has generated $20 million in revenues in fiscal year 2009, which ends July 1, following a record first half.”

Here are some of Service-Now.com’s marketing strategies:

Let their raving fan customers speak for them. Customers regularly join the company’s webinars as guest speakers and participate on panels at trade shows.  Word of mouth marketing doesn’t get any better than that.  The company captures the testimonials for re-use.

Event marketing. The company puts on 6-7 events per month.  Webinars attract 300-500 attendees.  They never miss the IT industry key trade events and leverage them for all they can.  Service-Now.com’s customer fans stand in their trade show booth, pull in passers-by and rave about the service.

Regional Industry events: They are finding more success at Regional events with the tight economy and lower travel budgets (Have you looked for regional industry events to participate in and find new customers?)

Leverage Partners’ databases. They use partners’ databases to promote webinars.  Could be how attendance numbers are so enviable. (Think about your partners—can you create a cross-event-promotion partnership?)

Social Media & Web 2.0. Service-Now offers customers and prospects a number of ways to participate with the company, and each other online.  Transparency is their mantra;  they require user, web visitor registration in very few places.  Here is a list of all Service-Now.com employees on Twitter.  CEO-Founder Fred Luddy included.  The company was nominated for a Groundswell Award from Forrester.

Wiki: all product documentation and info about software update is provided here.

Community: 7,000 of Service-Now.com’s 36,000 users participate in their online community.  Forums are here Groups here and there are several employees blogging.

On demand Demos: here http://www.service-now.com/what-we-do/demo/
Free instant access to the software—no registration required.

Customer Advisory Board:  Members are listed here from companies like Qualcomm, UBS, Staples.

Training Videos are here.  These are in big demand by customers—even though the web-based software is very intuitive.

Thanks to the sponsorship of Southern California BMA (Business Marketing Assn.) and local HTMA (High-Tech Marketing Alliance) San Diego for the event.

P.S.  Service-Now.com is looking for a web-designer, developer to hire among

P. P. S.  Update 5-26-09: I got Brian Surritt’s name wrong!  That’s what happens when you forget to ask for a business card–Brian is a great presenter.

If you’re a CEO in manufacturing, engineering, or, well, a small to mid-sized business, you’ll want to dip into this Web 2.0 /social media (2-part) interview.  Find out from Jim Burns, the temperature expert CEO of Burns Engineering, the reasons he’s adopted social media, business blogging, Twitter and is building an online community for his customers and prospects.

Forbes and the new Razorfish Digital Report told us this week, “Yes, CEOs should Facebook and Twitter”.  And if you didn’t already know, (yes you heard it here first boys and girls),  “Web 2.0 is no longer just for teenagers.”

Q. Tell us about Burns Engineering.

A.  Burns Engineering will turn 50 this next year.  We manufacture temperature sensors for industry.

Our market position is based on “BE-ing” temperature-measurement experts (TME)… BE is the acronym for “Burns Engineering” of course.  We take that commitment seriously – inside and outside the organization.

Q. You’re using blogs and building an online community (social media, Web 2.0). Usually companies use these to create a closer relationship with customers, suppliers, etc. You seem to be unique in the temperature-measurement industry. What got you to take the social media approach (plunge)?

A.  At Burns Engineering we love BE-ing in conversation with existing customers and reaching out to new prospects.  So as a mature company, it’s a lot of fun to play with and the leverage the new media of Web 2.0 to keep these conversations alive. Burns has always been in rich, regular conversation with our customers about temperature-measurement:  Web 2.0 offers many new ways to deepen and broaden that conversation—in cost-efficient, effective, creative ways that all businesses need to do more of these days.

We’re not going to make CNN Headline News with our temperature-measurement expertise, but our specialized temperature-measurement solutions, products and services impact billions of production dollars in the industries we serve.

We got started in the Web 2.0 world after we partnered with an agency in Minneapolis – areyoufrank.com. They first helped us create our annual marketing plan based on our business objectives, then we looked to cost-effective technology we can leverage to implement our strategic plan and achieve the right online / offline marketing mix …

-    BEblog on WordPress: written by our product development and marketing leader … early product/service messages, lighter content, our hub of TME

-   Monthly BEblasts through Constant Contact: strong click-through rates since we often include at least half a dozen ways to interact with us: new articles, application notes, product info, community registration and of course, personal conversation opportunities with our sales team

-    BEpoll leveraging PollDaddy technology: gauges what our customers are thinking … then we share the results on our BEblog and continue the discussion there

-    Our online configurator: puts product creation in the hands of our customers, then we connect in person to make sure they’re getting the best solution possible

-    Starting our own Twitter TME community!

Check back tomorrow. We’ll continue our interview with Jim Burns, CEO of Burns Engineering.  If you’re in temperature measurement, check out Burns Engineering Booth 3205 at Interphex, New York City, March 17-19.

Update:

Part 2 of interview here

The last post of the interview is here.

Photo source: Wikipedia, Flickr

Thanks to our friends at ZZYZX Snapjack, a cool startup that designs and sells patented professional instrument cables, we attended a wonderful charity event last night.  It was NAMM’s (National Assn. of Music Merchants) 17th annual Muriel Anderson’s All Star Guitar Night.  Captivating guitarists entertained us with lovely, innovative music—often sounding like there was an entire band on stage instead of a single player.

Something one of the performers said made me think of how small businesses can think about social media and marketing to their audiences (customers).

Tommy Emmanuel is a gifted performer celebrating the 50th year of doing what he loves.  Along with two Grammys, in 1999, Chet Atkins honored Emmanuel with the title of “Certified Guitar Player”.  (Source: Wikipedia.) Only three other people in the world share this honor for contributions made to the guitar as an instrument.

Last night Tommy Emmanuel was presented Guitar Player Magazine’s 2009 Legend Award.  In his acceptance speech Emmanuel said that he always puts his audience first.  That’s what entertainers do.  He said when choosing songs for his audience, he has to consider one thing: will the music ‘move’ the audience?  He believes, that if the music moves him, it will move the audience.

Put Your Customers First
As a small business you have an audience.  Your suspects, prospects, and customers.  They’re your future fans.  You want every word you write and step you take to market your products to focus on your customer.   To put their problems and priorities first.  To educate them on how to better solve problems.

• Are you putting your audience first, or are you putting your products and services first?
• Does your web site put your customers first by answering their questions clearly?
• How do you know what’s important to your customers, right now?
• How do you use social media to listen for those (pesky) fast-changing customer needs?

We often fall into the trap of telling customers what we want them to know about our products and our company.  Understandably,  it’s a tough habit to break.  You’ve spent blood, sweat and tears creating your products and offers.

Of course, Tommy Emmanuel has had 40+ years to listen to his audience and learn what moves them.  He also says that he feels he’s just at the beginning of his career.  (How cool is that?)

What are you doing to find out what moves your audience?  How much do you know about your customers?  Their children? How many online communities or offline places are you listening to learn about your customers?

Before Web 2.0 made the world of marketing (sort of) easier, small business could pick up marketing ideas from the big guys. Now we have social networking sites, blogs and online communities.

Humm—the tables have turned. Wall St. Journal today has article about how Microsoft is actually taking a page from small companies with its new advertising campaign.  (The economy must be worse than we thought.)

According to the article the ad campaign is “…using actual Microsoft customers to give the products more personality.”  Customers like Coca-Cola, Nestle and Method (beautiful/useful hand soap +). The coolest person they’re using is CEO of Quicksliver, outdoor clothing and equipment maker.

The execs are talking about how technology (Microsoft) has helped their business.  (Duh, small business knows that recruiting your raving fans is the best way to tell the story about your products/services.  It’s how you find like-minded prospects.)

All sneering aside, the way Microsoft is capturing the testimonials is smart.  “…their improvised lines were recorded by telephone, both to save money on production of the ads and to underscore the message that communications technology can be cheaper than travel.”

Small Business Leads-to-Sales Boost Alert:

Here is your homework if you need a way to jump start your customer conversations, leads and sales:

1.    Pull out your list of your raving fan customers.
2.    Call them and find out who’s willing to tell a great story about how your products help them:  Save money.  Speed up processes. Eliminate tasks. Insert what you do best [here].
3.    Record them on a good old-fashioned telephone answering machine.
4.    Post them on your blog, web site.

While you’re on the phone with your fans, ask them what else you can do to help them to get through this “economic tsunami”.

Let Your Customers Know You’re There
Or stop by and deliver coffee and bagels.  Early in the am.  Show them how much you care about them.  We’re all in this together.

Here is the link to complete WSJ article, “Microsoft Stresses Savings” (subscription required).

Other ideas?  Any good recommended providers to get audio, telephone recorded testimonials quickly up on a company’s web site.  Easily? For non-techies?