About Me 0055: Forum Making Money

The next chairman of the Republican National Committee will face a debilitating debt, several of the candidates running for the post said during a candidate forum Monday, offering a stinging, if mostly implicit, indictment of incumbent Michael Steele.

In an hour and a half long gathering sponsored by three conservative organizations, candidates seeking the chairmanship said the next person to assume that office needs to spend the next two years rebuilding the RNC's credibility with major donors who can help prop up the ailing committee.

"It's time for some tough love at the Republican National Committee," said Ann Wagner, the former RNC co-chairman and ambassador to Luxembourg under President George W. Bush. Wagner said the RNC is "steeped in mismanagement, distractions and drama."

The RNC ended the 2010 election cycle with at least $20 million in debt, according to internal estimates. That stands in stark contrast with previous cycles over the last decade, most of which the RNC began in the black. Steele's critics have blamed the incumbent chairman for neglecting major donors, costing the party millions.

"We have to practice what we preach as Republicans, and we have to get our debt under control," said former Bush administration official Maria Cino, who has worked at or with the RNC for the better part of three decades.

"We're going to start out this cycle with one of the largest debts we've ever had. We're going to need to raise $20 million before we can start banking money," added Saul Anuzis, the former Michigan Republican Party chairman making his second run for the top post. "With this unprecedented debt, this is going to be a major challenge with respect to rebuilding our credibility."

Every startup needs to understand that the customer paradigm has dramatically shifted over the past two years with pervasive social networks and smartphones. The customer base is no longer a mass audience that can be driven by mass media, but a dynamic network of individual customers who interact with each other, and expect to interact with you as a business.

If your business doesn’t connect with your customers, individually and as a community, demanding customers will not only ignore you, but will actively keep other customers away. According to the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study by Deloitte Development, one third of all online communities now launched by businesses fail to engage even a hundred participants.

A new book by David L. Rogers, titled The Network is Your Customer, elaborates on this paradigm shift, and outlines the following five key strategies to thrive in this digital age, prioritized from the most basic to the most complex in value to the customer:

Access to your business from the relevant network of customers. Every organization today faces the expectations of an always-on world. To compete, startups must find ways to provide customers an easier, faster, more pervasive connection to digital networks, via mobile as well as the Internet.
Engage customers with relevant and valuable content. In an environment of media overload and rampant ad-skipping, startups that want to engage customer networks need to create content that customers actually want to consume. Funny videos and worthless give-aways won’t make your website go “viral” these days.
Customize your interactions to meet unique customer needs. You need to give customers the tools to customize products, services, and content to suit their needs and interests, to engage them more deeply, add value, and differentiate your offering from competitors.
Connect to the customer in your communication. Join in conversations with customers who are already shaping brand perception and sharing their ideas and opinions on the Web. Conversations may be on existing social media, or on your own brand forum established specifically for this purpose.
Collaborate with customers on shared goals. One of the most powerful ways to engage customer networks is to invite them to collaborate with your startup on shared goals and projects. This requires the right balance of motivators (love, glory, and money), and the right balance of bottoms-up versus top-down control.

Many businesses that seem to understand the new paradigm still fall for some common mistakes, like the following, that can blunt the effectiveness of their efforts:

Infatuation with technology. Founders too often see a list of the latest hot tools, and go after them, without first making the proper analysis and connect to relevant customers. The best tools, if not relevant or used incorrectly, can’t save you.
Lack of customer insight. Startups launch plans without taking the time to understand the networked behavior of their customers, or the drivers for that behavior.
Lack of clear objectives. Without a clear scope and vision, efforts become unfocused, lack impact, and are impossible to measure. Everyone on the team has to be involved and on board, or the efforts will be fragmented.

This book outlines a good process for planning and implementing a customer network strategy to match your customers, your business, and your objectives – whether you need to drive sales, reduce costs, gain customer insight, or build breakthrough products and services.

The bottom line is that today, whatever your goals and whatever your business, the network is your customer. Connect to it and win customers.

Marty Zwilling

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Monday, January 24, 2011

Forum Making Money

No comments:

Post a Comment