Your business success is now forever linked to the success of your customers Customer Success is the groundbreaking guide to the exciting new model of customer management. Business relationships are fundamentally changing. In the world B.C. (Before Cloud), companies could focus totally on sales and marketing because customers were often 'stuck' after purchasing. Therefore, all of the 'post-sale' experience was a cost center in most companies. In the world A.B. (After Benioff), with granular per-year, per-month or per-use pricing models, cloud deployments and many competitive options, customers now have the power. As such, B2B vendors must deliver success for their clients to achieve success for their own businesses. Customer success teams are being created in companies to quarterback the customer lifecycle and drive adoption, renewals, up-sell and advocacy. The Customer Success philosophy is invading the boardroom and impacting the way CEOs think about their business. Today, Customer Success is the hottest B2B movement since the advent of the subscription business model, and this book is the one-of-a-kind guide that shows you how to make it work in your company. From the initial planning stages through execution, you'll have expert guidance to help you: Understand the context that led to the start of the Customer Success movement Build a Customer Success strategy proven by the most competitive companies in the world Implement an action plan for structuring the Customer Success organization, tiering your customers, and developing the right cross-functional playbooks Customers want products that help them achieve their own business outcomes. By enabling your customers to realize value in your products, you're protecting recurring revenue and creating a customer for life. Customer Success shows you how to kick start your customer-centric revolution, and make it stick for the long term.

Make community building your ultimate business growth strategy In Customer Communities: Engage and Retain Customers to Build the Future of Your Business, Nick Mehta and Robin Van Lieshout deliver an actionable playbook on how to cultivate meaningful communities that fuel quantifiable business growth. In the book, you’ll learn how to capitalize on this new growth strategy to scale your company and develop excitement around your products and your firm. The authors outline the 10 foundational Laws of Community, explaining why community development does not need to be expensive and how to integrate community in the heart of your customer journey. You’ll also find: Strategies for creating a cross functional customer engagement team Techniques for building community in places that aren’t the web or on social media Ways to bring your organization’s culture and values into your community with a human-first alignment An essential roadmap to community development for customer success, marketing, support and product teams, and other entrepreneurs, founders, and executive business leaders. Customer Communities will earn a place on the bookshelves of anyone with a stake in organizational growth and resilience.

An authentic brand community is more than just people buying your product or working alongside one another. This book articulates the critical roles of mutual concern, common values, and shared experiences in creating fiercely loyal customer and collaborator relationships. Smart organizations know that creating communities is the key to unlocking unprecedented outcomes. But too many mistakenly rely on superficial transactional relationships as a foundation for community, when really people want something deeper. Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles Vogl argue that in an authentic and enriching community, members have mutual concern for one another, share personal values, and join together in meaningful shared experiences, whether online or off. On the deepest level, brands must help members grow into who they want to be. Jones and Vogl present practices used by global brands like Yelp, Etsy, Twitch, Harley Davidson, Salesforce, Airbnb, Sephora, and others to connect in a meaningful way with the people critical for their success. They articulate how authentic communities can serve organizational goals in seven different areas: innovation, talent recruitment, customer retention, marketing, customer service, building transformational movements, and creating community forums. They also reveal principles to grow a new brand community to critical mass. This is the first comprehensive guide to a crucial differentiator that gives organizations access to untapped enthusiasm and engagement.

""Secrets of Social Media Marketing"" is a handbook for marketers and business owners to use in deciding how to employ the new social media for online marketing. Social media has quickly moved from the periphery of marketing into the forefront, but this is a new and quickly-evolving field and there are few established formulas for success. Building on the lessons set out in Gillin's acclaimed and oft-reviewed ""The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media,"" this book provides practical advice on strategy, tools, and tactics. It is a hands-on manual that will educate marketers on how to extend their brands, generate leads, and engage customer communities using online tools.

What if you discovered a blueprint that could grow your brand’s reputation and loyalty, dramatically reduce customer service issues, produce content and technology, and cement a powerful, lasting relationship between you and your customers? Communities have been a popular topic since the rise of the Internet and social media, but few companies have consistently harnessed their power, driven tangible value, and effectively measured their return on investment (ROI) like Salesforce.com, Star Citizen via Kickstarter, and Red Hat. Companies such as PayPal, Facebook, Bosch, Microsoft, CapitalOne, and Google, have also built communities inside their organizations, which have fostered innovation, broken down silos, and helped their organizations to operate more efficiently and collaboratively. People Powered helps C-suite leaders, founders, marketers, customer advocates, and community leaders gain a competitive advantage by answering the following questions: What is the key value proposition of building a community? What kind of community do we need and how do we build and integrate it into our organization? How do we incentivize and encourage people to get involved, build reliable growth, and keep community members engaged? How do we develop authentic, productive relationships with community members both online and in person? How do we get departmental buy-in, hire effectively, and create consistent, reliable community engagement skills in our organization? What are the strategic and tactical pitfalls and roadblocks we need to avoid? How do we make sure that our community continues to grow with us—and more importantly, how do we make sure that we continue to grow with them? People Powered pulls together over 20 years of pragmatic experience into a clear, simple methodology and blueprint to not just answer these questions, but deliver results. Don’t get left behind—become an industry trailblazer and ensure your company’s longevity by tapping into the most dynamic force both outside and inside your organization: the people.

How insights from the social sciences, including social psychology and economics, can improve the design of online communities. Online communities are among the most popular destinations on the Internet, but not all online communities are equally successful. For every flourishing Facebook, there is a moribund Friendster—not to mention the scores of smaller social networking sites that never attracted enough members to be viable. This book offers lessons from theory and empirical research in the social sciences that can help improve the design of online communities. The authors draw on the literature in psychology, economics, and other social sciences, as well as their own research, translating general findings into useful design claims. They explain, for example, how to encourage information contributions based on the theory of public goods, and how to build members' commitment based on theories of interpersonal bond formation. For each design claim, they offer supporting evidence from theory, experiments, or observational studies.

An updated and expanded Second Edition of the popular guide to social media for the business community Marketers must look to the Web for new ways of finding customers and communicating with them, rather than at them. From Facebook and YouTube to blogs and Twitter-ing, social media on the Internet is the most promising new way to reach customers. Marketing to the Social Web, Second Edition helps marketers and their companies understand how to engage customers, build customer communities, and maximize profits in a time of marketing confusion. Author and social media guru Larry Weber describes newly available tools and platforms, and shows you how to apply them to see immediate results and growth. Rather than broadcast messages to audiences, savvy marketers should encourage participation in social networks to which people want to belong, where dialogue with customers, and between customers, can flourish. in Networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and even Flickr are the perfect forums for this dialog; this book shows you how to tap into this new media. In addition to the tools and tactics that made Marketing to the Social Web a critical hit among marketers, this second edition includes three entirely new chapters that cover recent changes in the field. These new chapters describe how Facebook will monetize its business and one day surpass Google; how companies can measure the influence and effectiveness of their social media campaigns; and how marketing to mobile social media will grow into an effective practice in the near future. Marketing must reach out into new forms, media, and models. Marketing to the Social Web, Second Edition presents an exceptional opportunity to use these new tools and models to reach new markets, even in today's fragmented media environment. Larry Weber has spent the last three decades building global communications companies, including Weber Shandwick Worldwide and the W2 Group. He is also the founder and Chairman of the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange, the nation’s largest interactive advocate association.