Don't Just Relate - Advocate!: A Blueprint for Profit in the Era of Customer Power

"Establishing a reputation for customer trust, transparency, and advice will be the new differentiator. Congratulations to Glen Urban for moving 'best marketing practice' up a notch."

—Philip Kotler, author of several books on marketing, including Kotler on Marketing, Marketing From A to Z, Lateral Marketing, Ten Deadly Marketing Sins, Social Marketing, and the best-selling and authoritative textbook, Marketing Management, now in its 12th edition.

Traditional "push/pull" marketing no longer works. Even highly-touted customer relationship initiatives are failing. Smart companies are pioneering an entirely new route to higher margins and sustainable competitive advantage: customer advocacy. This book reveals how it works, why it works, and how to make it work for your company.

In today's environment, you must build unprecedented trust among customers who have more information, options, and sophistication than ever. You must transcend "relationship marketing" to focus on maximizing customer interests and deepening customer partnerships. It's not easy. But if you do it, you gain immense opportunities your competitors simply can't touch.

Glen Urban offers a complete blueprint for getting there. You'll learn how to improve on all eight elements of customer advocacy, from transparency to partnership. Urban answers frequently asked questions about advocacy strategies, helping you identify and overcome your most significant obstacles. Then, drawing on new case studies, he shows how to align culture, metrics, incentives, and organization, driving effective advocacy throughout your entire organization.

• Power shift: Why your customers now drive your relationship ...and why they no longer respond to conventional marketing

• Do your customers trust you now? Assessing your company on eight dimensions of trust

• Your customers are smarter than you think ...and they'll appreciate being treated that way

• Tools and plans for moving to customer advocacy Changing culture, people, metrics, incentives, and organization

• Straight answers on the pitfalls to avoid, and how to get results

In today's environment, you must build unprecedented

Beyond "relationship marketing": The new route to success with today's empowered customer

• Don't fight your customers: earn their trust!

• Craft customer advocacy strategies that work

• Reduce customer acquisition costs, increase margins, accelerate growth

• Deepen customer trust, one step at a time

• Learn from the experiences of today's customer advocacy pioneers

• For every CxO, board member, marketing leader, and strategist

Today, customers call the shots—and they know it. You can fight them, and lose. Or you can become a true customer advocate, and win.

Customer advocacy means faithfully representing your customers' interests. It means giving them open, honest, and complete information (because they'll discover the truth no matter what you do). It means talking with them, not at them. And it requires a massive transformation in both your culture and your processes. Now, one of the world's leading marketing innovators shows why you must make that transformation— and how to make it work.

MIT's Glen Urban covers the entire "pyramid" of customer advocacy: the "base" (starting with TQM and customer satisfaction initiatives); the "middle" (relationship marketing); and the "pinnacle": new advocacy techniques built on trust, not coercion. Drawing on the latest customer advocacy initiatives at firms such GM, Intel, Qwest, and John Deere, he identifies crucial lessons for earning customer trust, keeping it, and profiting from it.

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Now Is the Time to Advocate for Your Customers

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments.

About the Author.

1. Now Is the Time to Advocate for Your Customers.

    Watch Out for Growing Customer Power!

    How Should Your Company Respond?

    Building Advocacy.

    What Is New Here?

    The New Tools Work Well.

    The Paradigm Is Shifting–Pioneers Will Gain Advantages.

    What You Will Learn in This Book.

2. The Internet Creates Customer Power.

    The Internet Is Pervasive.

    The Travel Revolution.

    Sources of Customer Power.

    Auto Buying–It Is Not Your Father’s Buying Process.

    Customer Power Is Healthy.

    Power Has Been Granted.

3. The Balance of Push and Trust Is Shifting.

    The Balance between Push/Pull and Trust/Advocacy.

    The Balance Is Shifting in the Travel Industry.

    In Automobiles the Shift Is to Trust.

    Health–The Need for Trust Is Increasing.

    Power, Balance, and Impact.

4. Customer Power Is All Around You.

    Industries Are Changing Dramatically.

    Converging Forces Are Amplifying the Impact of the Customer Power Shift.

    The Paradigm Is Shifting.

5. Theory A–The New Paradigm.

    Rules of Traditional Push/Pull Marketing.

    The Mcgregor Revolution in Organization Theory and Its Analogy in Marketing.

    Rules of Marketing Based on Theory A.

    Antecedents of Theory A.

    Advocacy in Marketing Leads to Advocacy-Based Management.

6. Where Are You Positioned on the Trust Dimensions?

    Where Are You Positioned on the Overall Trust Dimension?

    Where Are You Positioned on the Trust Components?

7. Is Advocacy for You?

    Does Advocacy Fit You?

    Building an Advocacy-Based Strategy.

    Evolutionary Strategies.

8. Tools for Advocacy.

    Building the Foundation of the Advocacy Pyramid.

    The Dream Versus Reality in CRM.

    Continuous Learning to Build Trust and Cross-Channel Coherence.

    Building Trust with a Virtual Trusted Advisor.

    “Listen In” to Learn Customer Needs.

    Building a Virtual Advocate.

    New Tools Are Emerging.

9. Questions and Answers about Customer Advocacy.

    Will Customer Advocacy Really Work?

    Can You Trust Your Customers?

    What Is the Role of Advertising in a World of Customer Power?

    How Widely Can You Apply Customer Advocacy?

    Is Customer Advocacy Really a Paradigm Shift?

10. Moving to Advocacy.

    Empathize with Your Customers.

    Change the Culture of Your Company.

    People, Measures, Incentives, and Organization.

    Consistency and Coordination.

    Trust for All Stakeholders.

    Vision, Courage, and Passion.

    Building the Total Pyramid.

11. The Advocacy Imperative.

    What Is Most Important to Remember?

    The Future of Trust and Advocacy.

    The Advocacy Imperative–If You Do Not Do It, Your Competitors Will!

    The Advocacy Checklist.

    The Challenge of Customer Advocacy.

Afterword: Author’s Note.

Index.

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