Referral marketing needs an obsession with customer issues

COLUMN We live in a recommendation society. It is no longer the providers with their advertising, but enthusiastic customers who share their experiences with others who will decide from now on whether new customers come and buy. An obsession with customer concerns is therefore a must, says Anne M. Schüller* in her column.Organizations can only survive in the long term if customers love them and tell everyone why. Customer orientation and customer satisfaction in the traditional sense are not enough. Rather, the services offered must be so captivating that customers report on them vehemently. However, even the most enthusiastic users do not always automatically remember to thank you with positive word of mouth. This is why customers must be systematically encouraged to recommend the product to others. The new recommendation marketing shows the way.The old and the new referral marketingI am often asked what distinguishes the new referral marketing from the old referral marketing. The two main facets are these:1 The old referral marketing was exclusively offline. You only reached a few people with your talk and the whole thing was quickly forgotten. Now we are living in a new era of recommendations. Digital campfires complement the classic places for recommendations. It is now possible to get the advice you need from anywhere and at any time via cell phone research. Web portals, social networks and mobile apps have become a veritable playground for innovative forms of referral marketing. The experiences that third parties share with the web community in this way can be read by millions of people in no time at all - and they practically never disappear from the web.2 The old referral marketing was primarily a sales management tool. In addition to customer referral programs, it mainly involved asking for referral addresses, usually at the end of a sales pitch. The new referral marketing, on the other hand, turns the entire company into a referral machine. Recommendations are experienced perfection at all touchpoints, the points of contact between customer, employee and company. Because only outstanding services receive good word of mouth. This requires four essential ingredients: Enthusiasm, trust, top performance and top performers. To achieve this, the internal framework conditions must first be right so that top performers can be attracted in the first place and top performance can be achieved.Referral marketing: a task for the entire companyNew referral marketing also means that random referral conversations become intentional. The systematic creation of good reasons for recommendation is therefore an ongoing task for the entire company. It must therefore be ensured at every touchpoint that what happens there is worth recommending and that suitable recommendation elements are incorporated, which in concrete terms means that all corporate measures must be designed in such a way that they contribute to positive word of mouth. The new sales and marketing guidelines are as follows:- Develop the customers who are already there into referrers.- Turn those who are not (or cannot) become customers into word-of-mouth propagandists.- For this purpose, you need a crystal-clear positioning with eUSP, i.e. emotionalizing unique selling points. Then you need "idea sparks" and "stardust", i.e. emotionalizing, inspiring ideas. Finally, communication content that fascinates people so much that they voluntarily pass it on is important. High-quality content plus shareability are therefore a must.The internal framework conditions must be rightSilo structures are incompatible with the requirements of the new marketing and a recommendation society. Because in silo organizations, each department does its own thing. I was recently invited to speak at a telecommunications company. The new head of marketing was introduced to us at the management conference: As the natural enemy of the call center unit. "Why is that?" I wanted to know. "Marketing constantly makes promises that can't be kept in the store, and the employees on the phone then have frustrated customers on their hands. "Almost everywhere in the company, there is still uncoordinated and alpha-hierarchical management. And while everything is irreversibly changing outside, valuable time is being wasted inside with worn-out rituals from the depths of the last century: power skirmishes, top-down formations, planning games and budgeting excesses prevent any necessary progress. Companies are trapped in their own systems. And they will fail not because of the market, but because of their structures, because classic management formations spend most of their time organizing themselves instead of taking care of business and customers. *Anne M. Schüller is a keynote speaker, multiple award-winning bestselling author and business coach. With a degree in business administration, she is considered Europe's leading expert in referral marketing and touchpoint management. She is one of the most sought-after speakers in the German-speaking world. When it comes to the topic of customers, she is one of the most frequently quoted experts. Her clientele includes the elite of the business world. www.anneschueller.de