the science of social 2social strategies for long-term business advantage—and the science behind how they work.

based on research, strategies and insights from the desk of Lithium Chief Scientist, Michael Wu, Ph.D. foreword by Geoffrey Moore

full release summer 2013

foreword i

forewordAs we look out at the world in 2013, it is hard to overstate the impact digital devices and services have had on human culture over the past two decades. Three waves stand out in particular. The first is the wave of Access. Largely enabled by the World Wide Web, all citizens everywhere effectively became connected to all information anywhere. One might quibble about this at the margins, but compared to any other time in history, more people have access to more information—by a lot. The second wave is Media. Massive growth in network bandwidth coupled with deeply compelling end user devices brought us a digital experience with an emotional dimension equal to its intellectual counterpart. No more was computing just for the mind—now it was for the heart and soul. The third wave was Mobile. An explosion of wireless connectivity combined with dramatic reductions in device manufacturing costs made digital truly anytime, anywhere, and as this decade unfolds, for anyone. It is an amazing time to be alive.

But not for the faint of heart. Disruptive innovation of this scale wreaks havoc on established industries. Banking, publishing, travel, hospitality, media and entertainment, retail, and advertising are all being re-engineered even as we speak, and we can only hope that government, health care, education, and public safety are not far behind. In particular, the consumer economy has been upended entirely by virtue of one simple fact: consumers are packing digital hardware 24/7, and they expect to be able to use it wherever and whenever it’s convenient for them. This is an expectation set largely by megabrands like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, but it’s one which must be met by everyone else—despite the fact that they haven’t a fraction of the technology or engineering resources.

ii The Science of Social 2

The good news here is that a fourth wave of change, Cloud Computing, is democratizing access to these capabilities. The bad news is, most executive teams haven’t the foggiest idea how to use them. Simply put, we haven’t as yet had enough time to transition from pre-digital strategies, tactics, and systems, to post-digital. It’s a mad scramble, and while it’s exhilarating for the innovators, it’s frustrating for the pragmatists, and downright scary for the conservatives. We need some ordering frameworks here, and we need them now.

At my end, I have been working on one such framework, called the Four Gears. It deconstructs digital consumer marketing into four core activities: acquisition, engagement, enlistment, and monetization. The first and the last of these are driving an enormous amount of direct response marketing online, with substantial short-term success, but potentially with a negative impact long-term on the consumer experience. That is, if all we do is acquire, monetize, acquire, monetize, eventually we wear out our welcome.

This is where the other two gears come in—engage and enlist. Engaging is all about creating user experiences that make people want to come back. Enlisting is all about them going out of their way to tell their friends. Wherever we can authentically engage and enlist, we add to our credit with consumers, gain permission to monetize in the future, and gain invaluable allies in our efforts to acquire the next cohort of end users.

In sum, acquisition and monetization are the performance gears. They reap the rewards sown by engagement and enlistment which are the power gears. At any given time, if one of these gears is turning more slowly than the others, and turning one’s attention to gears that underperform is the key to achieving the next stage of growth. That brings us to the fifth and final wave of change to consider here, the impact of Social on each of these gears and the consumer relationships they drive.

In this context, it has been my privilege to engage with the team at Lithium, to join their board of directors, to work with their Chief Scientist, Dr. Michael Wu, and to watch and participate in the evolution of what he and they call the Science of Social. For social does indeed need a science. We need to be able to map the dynamics of human behavior to the programs and systems of

foreword iii

digital consumer marketing, commerce, and support. This is the path out of the forest, the one that lets us leverage the extraordinary reach and frequency of digital access while building equity with our target customers instead of consuming it. The Science of Social 2 provides a very good roadmap for this journey. It uses the Four Gears to frame a set of marketing challenges and then applies the science of social to solve for them. How do you leverage social to acquire new prospects? How do you leverage it to engage and enlist them? How does this interface with how you monetize your business model? What are the best practices to follow? What are the pitfalls to avoid?

These are the questions I hear every day. If these are your questions too, then you will definitely want to read on.

—Geoffrey Moore

4 The Science of Social 2

introduction 5

introductionSocial isn’t new. We’ve been social since the Stone Age. Commerce isn’t new either. We’ve been trading since we made the first hand axe. But layer a new and powerful technology (social media) on top of these age-old behaviors, and it gets complicated.

Today, we can easily socialize with mind boggling numbers of people on Facebook. We can jump on eBay and sell our first edition Tom Sawyer to a collector in Buenos Aires or buy an eBike from a family cycling shop in Hamburg. Social media has turned our age-old goods and services distribution infrastructure on its head and it’s put an enormous ultimatum to businesses: adapt or die.

That we are social isn’t new, but because of the Internet, how we behave as consumers is radically new. Social media has transformed how we consume, assess and share our reactions to brand experiences—and what we expect from brands in return for our loyalty. Because our praise and complaints stand on public record, forever, we’re more empowered to make real demands on the brands we do business with. And so we do—in spades.

Social media technologies haven’t altered the social principles behind human behavior. But they’ve utterly transformed our habits and powers of

6 The Science of Social 2

communication—and, as a matter of course, revolutionized what we expect as consumers. Today’s social customers have changed business-as-usual, forever.

How well your company answers its social customers’ demands will define your bottom line. Consumers today expect nearly instantaneous service from whatever channel they happen to be using—an enormous challenge to companies who can’t possibly scale their internal teams to meet these growing demands. Meanwhile, most companies are still using traditional two-gear methods in a new world: acquire customers and monetize them, just as they’ve always done offline.

In the social era, when a simple acquisition-to-monetization strategy works at all, it’s just not sustainable. The reason is that a simple acquire-monetize model commoditizes the product. That leads to an offer-based business model of constant discounting. While this might work short-term, it’s ultimately not profitable in the long run.

The pressure is on to find sustainable answers to the social media revolution. After all, it’s not exactly news. We’ve lived with social media for some time now. Yet the paradigm shift social media has brought on is truly unprecedented and the ground has far from settled.

social: as disruptive as it gets

You might not feel it yet (though it’s likely that you do). If you’re reading this book, odds are your company is at

an inflection point. You’ve heard the famous quote from Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics, “The ultimate ROI of Social is whether your business will

acquire

monetize

source: Forrester Research, Inc.

‘ok’, ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ on the experience they delivered

64% of companiesranked

introduction 7

still exist in five years.” You need a response to social disruption and you’re searching for adaptive insights and guidance on the very best way forward.

Though we might have grown weary of constant adaptation and secretly wish it would all settle down, it’s important to remember that revolutionary times are fleeting times. Revolutionary times offer a small window of opportunity for grabbing a competitive position in the emerging order. Those who figure it out first and best are poised to take the lead in the new social era and keep it for a long time. Unlocking the codes to winning tactics and best practices in the new era is what this book is about. The Science of Social is for those who intend to survive this period of disruption, adapt and gain a lasting competitive edge. Starting now.

science: as strategic as it gets

The social marketplace is hugely complex and our very survival depends on how well we navigate it. To many, the task feels insurmountable. It’s easy to slap up a Facebook page, call your business social and call it a day (i.e. bury your head in the sand). But if that approach hasn’t held you back with this era’s social customers yet, it will. Count on it.

The good news is that even across the vast complexity of social media, the way people behave socially and commercially is, in fact, highly predictable—with a little help from science. That’s great news for brands trying to finesse a social strategy. It’s also the discussion we began in The Science of Social: influence, superfans, gamification—how to build and strengthen relationships.

Technology has changed, but humans haven’t. That’s a very useful insight for business. Because while new technologies make adaptation necessary, the social and psychological principals at work with your audience make effective adaptation possible—if you know the science behind how it works.

leaders in customer experience outperform their peers by 22.6%

source: Forrester Research, Inc.

8 The Science of Social 2

A social strategy—a real one—is an adaptation to the new social customer, plain and simple. Doing business in the new paradigm requires a new paradigm for your business as well. That shift begins with building strategies for deeper engagement and enlistment of your customers.

This book is about adapting your business to survive, and thrive, through a permanent disruption of the traditional business model. Success today is more complex and more sophisticated. Lasting competitive advantage is no longer possible with the old two-gear acquire/monetize paradigm. In the age of social media, businesses must build a viral loop where social customers are fully engaged and happily enlisted to make brand experiences better for everyone. Successfully engaged customers play new and vital roles in the business, enlisted to help solve problems for other customers and share their passion for the brand. No less than four gears are needed for long-term competitive success today—acquisition, engagement, enlistment and monetization.

Before we expand upon the Four Gears Model, let’s take a moment to look back at The Science of Social and talk a bit more about the impetus behind The Science of Social 2.

customers who engage with companies over social media are more loyal and spend 20% to 40% more

with those companies than other customers

source: Bain and Company

interest

awar

enes

s

desi

re

action

acquire

en

gageenlist

monetize

introduction 9

the science of social

The Science of Social unpacked strategies for how to scale, lower costs and improve your customer experience by cultivating superfans—that most influential, knowledgeable and prolific 1% of your customer base who make going social so hugely worthwhile. Along the way, we dug into the basics of forming and strengthening relationships, and we considered some key behavioral theories of what shapes human motivation, influence and engagement. Finally, we introduced some general strategies for gamification, in which all those insights and theories get put into action.

The Science of Social 2 connects the discussions of The Science of Social to the bigger economic picture in order to drive more holistic business strategies. Here, we bring you the latest insights and research from Lithium’s chief scientist, Dr. Michael Wu, laid out on the structure of the Four Gears business model devised by business and technology strategist, Geoffrey Moore. This social strategy not only addresses the acquisition and monetization of customers through social media, but also the critical engagement and enlistment tactics that result in that all important viral loop—when customers acquire more customers for you. As complex as social media is today, it’s crucial that businesses keep their eye on the real prize—using social to create a reliable, predictable and sustainable engine for economic success.

The Science of Social 2 considers the business implications of exactly how social media has changed customer communication, the customer journey and customer relationship management (CRM). Most notably:

1. Customer relationships—peer-to-peer and customer-to-company—are crucial.

2. The only way to win on loyalty is to understand the science behind relationships and think long term.

3. Business advantage will go to companies willing to adapt to the call of social with fundamental changes in technology, strategy, internal structure and cultural philosophy.

10 The Science of Social 2

4. It takes the healthy motion of all four gears in the Four Gears model—acquire, engage, enlist, monetize—to get a viral loop spinning that will persist and keep you in it for the long run.

The Science of Social 2 is the deep exploration of that final point above. We’ll devote a full chapter to each gear and examine each up close. We’ll look at the science behind how they work and along the way talk about how to develop sustainable strategies for keeping all four gears in motion.

First, let’s dig a little deeper into those business implications—of just exactly how the rise of social media creates that need to re-think our communications strategies, how we motivate customer behavior and how we manage the customer relationship.

communication in the social era

In The Science of Social, we talked a lot about social customers and how they differ from traditional customers. Social customers are impatient, empowered, connected and sophisticated. They always do their homework and they do it socially.

We know social customers trust one another more than they trust company spokesmen. They go to customer communities to learn the real deal about your products, and they validate your marketing messages through peer-to-peer interactions over social channels like Twitter and Facebook. There are huge and important differences in the way communication works in a traditional marketplace (print, TV, radio), and the one described above. Social communication

is born, lives, breathes and dies in a manner quite different from the way traditional communication does. Here’s how.

63%

of consumers search online for others with similar problems when they need help— only 19% of brands think that’s the case

source: CMO Council

introduction 11

Traditional communications are:

transient. Communications between a company and a customer are usually not recorded.

opaque. Even if they are tracked, they are not easily retrievable, and therefore not visible to other customers. Opaque communications are much easier for businesses to manage and control.

unidirectional. Traditional communication is not two-way. Also, it’s typically handled by siloed departments. For example, customer-to-company communication is usually handled via the support/service department. Company-to-customer communication generally goes through the marketing/PR department.

one-to-one or one-to-many. Traditional communication is seldom (if ever) many-to-many. Because customers don’t know who or where other customers are (owing to the transience and opacity of traditional communication channels), coordination between customers is difficult.

Now let’s look at the characteristics—and consequences—of communication changes in the social era.

Social media communication is:

persistent. Social customers have megaphones for praise and complaints alike. Once they use them, the record of those statements on your brand is permanent. Customers can say absolutely anything about you and you can’t erase it.

transparent. What customers say about a brand is public, searchable and visible to all, enabling communication and coordination between customers. This gives customers much greater control of their conversations with brands. And that empowers customers.

bi-directional. Unlike traditional channels, social media inherently allows communication to go both ways—i.e. customer-to-company and company-to-customer. With everyone in the company talking to any one

12 The Science of Social 2

of your customers, the siloed model becomes an enormous obstacle. The new problem of “who owns social?” now arises with different departments vying for control.

almost always many-to-many. This means the sheer number of potential conversations grows really big, really fast. Specifically, with N customers, the number of potential conversations is ~ N(N-1)/2 ~ ½N2.

It’s easy to see how the volume of social media conversation quickly becomes colossal. Companies can’t possibly scale internal teams enough to respond to the tsunami of social customer conversations out there. Here’s how the math works:

If you have one superstar agent who can handle 1,000 social conversations on average, 10 such agents would be able to handle 10,000, 100 would be able to handle 100,000. As we can see, that’s not nearly enough.

If you have one superstar agent who can handle 1,000 social conversations on average, 10 such agents would be able to handle 10,000, 100 would be able to handle 100,000. As you can see, that’s not nearly enough to keep up with customer increases.

source: Forrester Research, Inc.

of those who have a dissatisfying sevice experience share it on social channels

29%

10k customers

~50M potential conversations

100customers

~5k potential conversations

1k customers

~½M potential conversations

only social can scale social

introduction 13

If you have 1000 customers, you’ll have only 1000 customer-to-company communications, but there will potentially be 499,500 customer-to-customer communications. That difference gets to be even more dramatic as your customer base grows. You can see that it can all get very out of control very fast.

Because you have many more customers than employees, the only way to build the infrastructure to meet that level of demand for interaction is to enlist the help of your customers. Only social can scale social.

Because social media communication is many-to-many, the relationship between the customer and the brand has fundamentally changed. This can be a death knell or a game-changer. Those brands slow to adapt to the new order are doomed. Those determined to figure out social first and best are already reaping enormous benefit and gaining huge competitive advantage.

This is the sort of adaptive paradigm shift we’re talking about: scaling social with social. It means inviting customers to play an entirely new and active role in the business. We’ll discuss how to do exactly that, and more, in Chapter 4: Enlistment. First, let’s look at the second biggest implication of social media—it’s impact on consumer behavior, and in turn, the customer journey.

the new, non-linear customer journey

In a product-centric, sales-based economy, the traditional customer journey is linear: Marketing → Sales → Support.

As businesses scramble to both scale for the global consumer and gain operational efficiency, a goods-dominant logic must give way to a service-dominant logic. That means, the traditional product-centric, sales-based economic model must become a service-centric, subscription-based economic model. As more businesses move to this service-dominant logic, we find that more of the products we buy are really services to which we’re subscribed (e.g. mobile services, app stores, Zipcar, software as a service, infrastructure as a service, etc).

14 The Science of Social 2

In a subscription-based economy, social consumers expect this operational efficiency from brands. So the personal service expectation is service near real-time, at any time—the business hour is meaningless. They know their purchase comes with no obligation. They can discontinue service at anytime, defect to whatever is cheaper and pay only for what they consume.

Moreover, they trust their peers more than they trust brands—so when they need that personal service right now, they turn to their fellow customers. Social media makes that very easy.

Today’s social customers have exponentially more connectivity and influence. It’s easy for us to find a dinner recommendation on Yelp! from a fellow foodie, or tap our Facebook friends to help decide which movie to see this weekend. The subscription-based economy has fundamentally changed our customer expectations, resulting in a non-linear customer journey that is quite different.

Non-linear doesn’t mean there’s no more purchase funnel. What’s not linear about the new customer journey is that the point of sale is now only the beginning of a long-term customer relationship. There’s no limit to how many times loyal customers—and those they influence—might pass through the purchase funnel.

Here’s what it means for business:

1. In non-linear customer lifecycles, customer lifetime value has the potential to be far more profitable than the initial point of sale. That’s why customer relationships become critically important, because relationships are what keep them loyal and continuing their subscription.

2. Because of the transparency of social media, service experiences influence future purchase events more than ever.

3. Because social media allows for many-to-many communication, an organization’s relationship with its customers—and between its customers—can be a game-changer.

Lastly, let’s take a look at how social media has changed the relationship between your brand and your customers.

support

companyad

voca

tes

END OFPROFITABLE

RELATIONSHIP

linear vs. non-linear customer journey

leadsprospectspotential customers

linear non-linear

sales

marketing

customers

introduction 15

In a subscription-based economy, social consumers expect this operational efficiency from brands. So the personal service expectation is service near real-time, at any time—the business hour is meaningless. They know their purchase comes with no obligation. They can discontinue service at anytime, defect to whatever is cheaper and pay only for what they consume.

Moreover, they trust their peers more than they trust brands—so when they need that personal service right now, they turn to their fellow customers. Social media makes that very easy.

Today’s social customers have exponentially more connectivity and influence. It’s easy for us to find a dinner recommendation on Yelp! from a fellow foodie, or tap our Facebook friends to help decide which movie to see this weekend. The subscription-based economy has fundamentally changed our customer expectations, resulting in a non-linear customer journey that is quite different.

Non-linear doesn’t mean there’s no more purchase funnel. What’s not linear about the new customer journey is that the point of sale is now only the beginning of a long-term customer relationship. There’s no limit to how many times loyal customers—and those they influence—might pass through the purchase funnel.

Here’s what it means for business:

1. In non-linear customer lifecycles, customer lifetime value has the potential to be far more profitable than the initial point of sale. That’s why customer relationships become critically important, because relationships are what keep them loyal and continuing their subscription.

2. Because of the transparency of social media, service experiences influence future purchase events more than ever.

3. Because social media allows for many-to-many communication, an organization’s relationship with its customers—and between its customers—can be a game-changer.

Lastly, let’s take a look at how social media has changed the relationship between your brand and your customers.

support

company

advo

cate

s

END OFPROFITABLE

RELATIONSHIP

linear vs. non-linear customer journey

leadsprospectspotential customers

linear non-linear

sales

marketing

customers

16 The Science of Social 2

the social customer relationship

It’s easy to bolt social media onto your traditional channels and continue managing your customer relationships as usual. But, as we discussed in The Science of Social, social is not just another channel. Simply being there is not enough.

The changes brought about by social media are infrastructural, cultural, pervasive, profound and permanent. The smartest business response is in kind. Successful management of today’s social customer relationships means:

1. addressing what social media has done to revolutionize patterns of communication,

2. adapting to the new non-linear customer journey, and

3. using open, transparent, peer-to-peer experiences to develop an entirely new kind of relationship with the customer.

And that means programmatic changes to strategy, technology, structure and culture.

support/service

mar

ketin

g/PR

support/service

mar

ketin

g/PR

traditional channelstraditional channels

traditional channelstraditional channels

social channelssocial channels

social channelssocial channels

social as justanother channel

pre-social

the fullpower of social

bidi

rect

iona

l/so

cial

company

company

company

introduction 17

the social customer relationship

It’s easy to bolt social media onto your traditional channels and continue managing your customer relationships as usual. But, as we discussed in The Science of Social, social is not just another channel. Simply being there is not enough.

The changes brought about by social media are infrastructural, cultural, pervasive, profound and permanent. The smartest business response is in kind. Successful management of today’s social customer relationships means:

1. addressing what social media has done to revolutionize patterns of communication,

2. adapting to the new non-linear customer journey, and

3. using open, transparent, peer-to-peer experiences to develop an entirely new kind of relationship with the customer.

And that means programmatic changes to strategy, technology, structure and culture.

support/service

mar

ketin

g/PR

support/service

mar

ketin

g/PR

traditional channelstraditional channels

traditional channelstraditional channels

social channelssocial channels

social channelssocial channels

social as justanother channel

pre-social

the fullpower of social

bidi

rect

iona

l/so

cial

company

company

company

strategyYou’ll need to develop strategies for working with advocates and influencers, and for cultivating superfans (that 1% of customers who create most of your content). The goal is to get to a point where you are co-creating value with all of them. Whether it’s answering technical questions about your product, helping to spread your marketing message or defending your brand, these non-corporate affiliates are not only crucial for scaling, they are far more effective than any company voice. We’ll talk more about inviting customers to play these new roles in the business when we talk about the Four Gears model.

technologyObviously your technology has to be up to the challenge of today’s social marketplace. One of your chief challenges will be to deal with the sheer scale of social media conversations. Instead of just managing single conversations with N number of customers, your CRM systems must track and manage roughly ½N2 conversations among those customers. Since these conversations are unstructured, these systems also have to be intelligent enough to interpret and understand the conversations, prioritize them, route them to the proper responder and integrate with existing workflows.

18 The Science of Social 2

structureSocial customers see your company as a single corporate entity—one Twitter account, one Facebook fan page, just like any other user. They don’t see you as a conglomerate of different departments.

Your company’s internal structure must reflect how the new social customer sees you. When setting social strategy, facilitate interactions between support, marketing, sales and product development. Breaking down some of the organizational walls not only provides a more seamless customer experience, it will also increase satisfaction and loyalty in the long run.

cultureLastly, it’s essential to rally the organization around becoming more customer-centric. As conversations become more transparent, companies must engage social customers with authenticity, transparency, honesty and humanity. You may have scores of employees watching the social stream from the inside, but from the outside, the entire world is watching.

putting it all together: the Four Gears model

So far we’ve looked at how social media changes communication in ways that challenge the traditional business model. We’ve looked at how social customers, their expectations and their behavior demand new reactions from every department in your company. The problem is that brands scrambling to respond to these pressures often try to herd customers straight from acquisition to monetization.

Focusing on just the acquisition and monetization gears may work in the short term—in fact it’s so tempting that most companies are doing just that. It is, after all, the traditional model most of us are used to, where the profitable relationship with the customer ends at the point of sale. But it’s also hugely inefficient in the new subscription economy. It ignores the enormous power and benefit of re-casting social customers as agents of acquisition. Not to

introduction 19

mention what a two-gear models does to margin compression (we’ll get to that—how to avoid the Box of Death—in the monetization gear).

The overarching message is that a focus on the acquisition and monetization gears alone won’t justify your investment in social because it isn’t sustainable. The traditional model simply misses everything that social offers and demands. You need four gears to win on customer experience in the long run.

the Four Gears: acquire, engage, enlist, monetize

The Four Gears model was devised by leading market development and technology strategist, Geoffrey Moore. Moore is a Lithium board member, founder of the Chasm Group and author of several best-selling books on revolutionary business strategy including Crossing the Chasm and Escape Velocity: Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past.

Moore’s Four Gears model reflects his decades of experience advising disruptive technology companies on innovative market strategies. It’s a simple, but visionary model for what it takes to achieve lasting business success in today’s marketplace. It also serves as a fitting framework for the deeper exploration of The Science of Social—Dr. Wu’s strategic and tactical insights on influence, relationships and gamification.

The basic idea behind Moore’s Four Gears is that in order to drive a viral following online—that is, a lasting influx of increasingly loyal customers that keep you in business for the long run—your social strategy needs four “gears” moving together as follows:

acquireThis is your starter gear, the mechanism that enables you to attract and capture new consumers. The key challenge for the acquisition gear is that the social web is huge, complex and getting more so every day.

20 The Science of Social 2

engage This is your power gear, the gear that nurtures prospects and customers, and cultivates long term loyalty. The key challenge with the engagement gear is the problem of sustaining interest and attention in a crowded, noisy, competitive social marketplace.

enlist This is your turbo gear, the gear that invites your customers to participate in the business in a whole new way—helping you to acquire new customers, support other customers and generate new product ideas. The enlistment gear is the loop of the viral loop, the drive-train of the Four Gears engine. The key challenge with the enlistment gear is the problem of securing, motivating and sustaining participation.

monetizeThis is your performance gear, the part of the machine that helps you convert, deliver, satisfy and up-sell. They key challenge with monetization in social media is that it’s easy in the short-term, but impossible in the long term without all the other gears.

Which gear is most important? A common question. But that’s like asking which wheel of your car is most important. If you’re missing one (or more) you won’t get far. Some gears may spin faster than others or require different commitments, but no one gear is more important than any other. A sustainable social strategy needs all four gears moving in concert to get a viral loop that can persist in the long-term.

Done right, you get social customers who buy more, are willing to pay a premium for your products, stay loyal longer and recruit other customers. That means increased sales, higher margins and lasting competitive advantage.

Over the next four chapters, we’ll explore each of the Four Gears and, in turn, lay out the science behind why and how they work. As you dig into each, think about your own company and which gear is performing best—and worst—for your own business objectives.

acquirestarter gear

drive awarenessand interest

enlistturbo gear

build advocacy

engagepower gear

build relationships

monetizeperformance gear

generate revenue

introduction 21

engage This is your power gear, the gear that nurtures prospects and customers, and cultivates long term loyalty. The key challenge with the engagement gear is the problem of sustaining interest and attention in a crowded, noisy, competitive social marketplace.

enlist This is your turbo gear, the gear that invites your customers to participate in the business in a whole new way—helping you to acquire new customers, support other customers and generate new product ideas. The enlistment gear is the loop of the viral loop, the drive-train of the Four Gears engine. The key challenge with the enlistment gear is the problem of securing, motivating and sustaining participation.

monetizeThis is your performance gear, the part of the machine that helps you convert, deliver, satisfy and up-sell. They key challenge with monetization in social media is that it’s easy in the short-term, but impossible in the long term without all the other gears.

Which gear is most important? A common question. But that’s like asking which wheel of your car is most important. If you’re missing one (or more) you won’t get far. Some gears may spin faster than others or require different commitments, but no one gear is more important than any other. A sustainable social strategy needs all four gears moving in concert to get a viral loop that can persist in the long-term.

Done right, you get social customers who buy more, are willing to pay a premium for your products, stay loyal longer and recruit other customers. That means increased sales, higher margins and lasting competitive advantage.

Over the next four chapters, we’ll explore each of the Four Gears and, in turn, lay out the science behind why and how they work. As you dig into each, think about your own company and which gear is performing best—and worst—for your own business objectives.

acquirestarter gear

drive awarenessand interest

enlistturbo gear

build advocacy

engagepower gear

build relationships

monetizeperformance gear

generate revenue

coming early summer 2013

get serious results from social

what are you

waiting for?

see what we mean about serious resultsin our customer success book

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