Online marketers have always liked Facebook for its vast audience, but a new report from Pew Research hints that the reigning king of social media platforms might be losing its crown. In March Pew declared YouTube to be the most widely used social media platform in the United States, visited by 73% of adults with popularity across diverse age groups and ethnicities. If you want to maximize ROI from social media, here are some points...

Maximizing customer satisfaction is important for everyone, but utilities are a special case. Regulatory approval of a much needed rate increase or a new infrastructure plan is often tied closely to public perceptions, making it absolutely crucial for utilities to keep customers on their side and avoid negative publicity. So let’s take a look at three lessons in utilities marketing, according to the customers of 87 U.S. water suppliers surveyed by J.D. Power in 2016-2017.   LESSON...

Severe weather has already hit U.S. utilities hard in 2018, following a 2017 that was the worst year on record for weather and climate events. So it’s not surprising that many utilities are taking a more proactive approach to outage communications. In fact, the market research experts at J.D. Power note that customer satisfaction with utilities is now tied more strongly than ever to timely outage information. If you want customers to stay on your...

A tough communications challenge for financial institutions is core system conversion. How do you keep account holders on your side when a new processing system might initially mean inconvenience and service interruption? Here are five keys that must be part of your plan if you hope to evolve and grow, without losing members or customers - or your hard-earned brand equity.   Timing. Our experience creating successful conversion campaigns for both banks and credit unions...

Surprisingly few businesses make customer retention a priority. It’s estimated that nearly half of all companies put most of their effort into acquiring new customers, while only about one-fifth emphasize marketing to current customers. But if you’re a marketing pro trying to get results on a budget, targeting people who already know and like your product makes perfect sense. Consider these statistics: Retaining a customer costs only one-fifth as much as acquiring a new one,...

If your staff followed a strict dress code but spoke to customers in wildly different ways, it wouldn’t be long before management took action to get everyone on the same page. Yet many companies devote volumes to brand standards for logos and graphics without sharing how all employees should live and breathe the brand. Every person in your organization can be a brand advocate, so make sure your internal guidelines include these four essentials. Your...