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The Chief Outsider
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Recent Posts
From Loyalty Programs to Leadership: What 20 Years in CRM Taught Me About Organizational Growth
Loyalty programs taught many of us how to turn casual buyers into raving fans. My 20 years in CRM and loyalty for brands like Marriott, Amazon, and American Express—and leading a $3B customer platform—taught me something bigger: The same system that keeps customers coming back also keeps your best people from leaving. When growth stalls, most CEOs reach for the usual levers: more demand gen, more recruiting, more channels.
Finding ‘Grand Slam’ Clients Using an Ideal Client Profile to Build Your Business
Mon, Oct 14, 2019 — A Practical Implementation Guide for Small- and Mid-Sized Business Executives Mark Coronna, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Todd Eberhardt, CEO, Dynasty Leadership Consulting Somewhere in the historical development of Marketing language the concept of an Ideal Customer Profile emerged. You can find frequent discussion of this concept if you are reading marketing blogs today—it is definitely a “buzz” term, and legitimately so, if you understand the power of the concept and apply it to your customer acquisition programs. We’d like to discuss how to practically implement the concept of an Ideal Customer Profile and talk about why it’s important, as well as how it can dramatically impact your business, when applied to your Marketing and Sales programs.
How to Retain Customers and Develop Brand Advocates - Part 3
Thu, Oct 10, 2019 — Part 3 of 3: Winning Retention Marketing Strategies Retention marketing isn’t meant to replace acquisition marketing, but to work alongside it as part of your growth strategy. The activities associated with retaining customers and/or increasing customer value through re-purchasing or up-selling products and services, is less expensive than acquisition marketing. While you need both acquisition and retention marketing, you will get a better return from your investment in retention marketing and create customers for life. In the previous blog post, we discussed how to develop a retention marketing program that specifically addresses the needs of your business. But are there proven retention marketing strategies or tactics that should be considered regardless?
Go-to-Market Security Issues Every SMB CEO or Sales/Marketing Exec Needs to Prevent
Tue, Oct 8, 2019 — Five Key Areas You Must Proactively Manage Mark Coronna, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Mark Sheehan, Principal & CIO/CISO, Stowell Solutions Group This article is a practical guide to being proactive in preventing security issues in your go-to-market (Sales and Marketing) programs and operations. There are many services to use once you have an issue, but in this article, we are offering a checklist of things to do to help reduce your risk of significant incidents that could damage your brand, reputation, revenue, and business valuation. We think it’s better to be proactive than have to react to security events.
Why a “Failure to Communicate” is a First Step to Going Out of Business
Wed, Sep 25, 2019 — What Business Execs Can Learn About the Power of Authentic Conversations Mark Coronna, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Matt McKnight, President, McKnight Advisors If you’ve ever seen the Paul Newman movie Cool Hand Luke, you might remember the hard-boiled egg eating contest, but that’s another subject. The iconic line we all remember, after several failed attempts to bring Luke in line, is when the prison warden remarks, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Knowledge, open communications, as well as procrastination are highly linked to business performance. Having hands-on and personal real-time knowledge of what’s going on in your business is a challenge and having the confidence and willingness to do something about what you’ve learned is another.
How to Retain Customers and Develop Brand Advocates - Part 2
Fri, Sep 13, 2019 — Part 2 of 3: Developing a Retention Marketing Program As we learned in my previous post, retention marketing encompasses the activities associated with retaining customers or increasing customer value through re-purchasing and up-selling products and services. It’s anywhere from five to 25 times less expensive than acquisition marketing—and done well can reduce the expense pressure of acquisition marketing to grow your business. Retention marketing should be a part of any business growth strategy. Retention marketing involves communicating with your customers in a way that helps you nurture and keep them. This should be an ongoing priority for the business with buy-in from the top throughout the entire organization. After all, you’ve all worked hard and spent a lot of money to acquire those customers.
How to Retain Customers and Develop Brand Advocates - Part 1
Fri, Sep 6, 2019 — Part 1 of 3: Why retention marketing should be part of your growth strategy If you are losing customers at almost any rate, you are jeopardizing your business growth strategy. Every lost customer creates a hole that you must fill before you can claim any new customer growth. The more customers you churn, the deeper the gap before you can realize any revenue or profit growth.
Is Subscription Pricing Right for your Business? Four Tests To Reveal the Answer
Wed, Sep 4, 2019 — A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, most consumer enterprises were in the business of selling physical items that could be held, consumed, and bought again. Whether it was a cheeseburger at McDonalds, a quart of milk at the grocery store, or a stamping machine from an industrial supplier, the pricing model was simple: Take the cost to produce, add profit (plus padding for high market demand), and you’re done. Ship one unit, charge for one unit. Simple.
The Millennial Food Shift: How CPG Food Companies Can Rescue Their Market
Wed, Aug 28, 2019 — Never before has the kitchen been so lifeless. For generations, the once-centerpiece of the American home has become much less important – marginalized by Millennials and younger generations who choose to order up their nourishment with a few silent taps of the cell phone rather than the clank of pots and pans. Seemingly overnight, this phase shift in eating habits has roiled the business models of food-oriented consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. They can no longer count on being a key ingredient in the daily lives of today’s consumer. So how did this happen? And what can CPG companies—and the grocery stores that peddle their wares—do to regain mindshare in the public consciousness?
Moving to a Blue Ocean With Growth Gears: Five Steps to Chart a Course for Success
Thu, Jun 20, 2019 — Whether you are a seafaring sort or not, it’s fairly intuitive to expect that a peaceful, sparkling, blue ocean is much more navigable than one roiled by rolling tides, scary sea vermin and dangerous storms. This relatable parable constitutes the foundation of “Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing - Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth,” a book by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne which provides a series of waypoints by which to guide businesses into calmer seas. I recently successfully led a client through the Blue Ocean Shift process prescribed by Kim and Mauborgne, and realized how well the lessons align with similar ones espoused in “The Growth Gears,” a book authored by my Chief Outsiders colleagues Art Saxby and Pete Hayes. “The Growth Gears” does a terrific job of building a process around how to go from random acts of marketing, to a purpose-based method of marketing an organization, by following three pillars—Insights, Strategy and Execution.