If people don’t like your company, they’re not going to buy from you.

In a new study by my old employer, Weber Shandwick, 69% of participants aid they frequently or regularly discuss how they fell about a product they bought. 70% said they avoid buying a product if they don’t like the company that makes it. And, no surprise, 88% said that word of mouth is still most  influences their opinion of a company.

More can be found here on the Forbes blog.

My take from the study: marketing (brand) and corporate communications (reputation) need to be one, or at least work a whole lot more closely than these organizations do in most large companies.

How can we move from this…..

To this….?

In today’s competitive world the most effective way to attract customers and talented employees  is to offer something special and different that attracts people to seek you out. You don’t have to be an Apple or a Google. You just need to be a company that knows and cares for its tribes so well that those tribes, be they customers or employees, seek you out.  Your passion for their success attracts their passion for your company.

The old way of pushing messages onto people is akin to herding cows.  It’s a lot of work, costs a lot of money,  you have to continually push, and the ROI stinks.

Here are some examples of why pushing and herding fails.

Most leadership training is failing

In a conversation last week Case Western business professor and author Richard Boyzatis said that most leadership development programs fail. Why?  Most companies require people  to take courses (herding), but they’re just not really into them. Without the attraction and motivation to learn, people don’t learn. You can require training (herding) but it’s unlikely to stick.

Most brands are becoming commodities

A study by marketing strategy firm Copernicus found that people buy on price because they view most product categories as commodities; there’s nothing attracting to them to one brand over another. None of the 51 product and service categories analyzed in the brand trends study are becoming more differentiated over time and 90 percent are declining in differentiation. So if nothing is attracting people to your brand,  marketers resort to the herding strategy of promoting cost savings.

Most employees are job hunting

In a recent workplace study by Monster, human resource managers reported that employee loyalty has decreased slightly this year. Yet 82 percent of the workers surveyed said they have updated their resume in the past six months, and 59% say they’re looking for a job all the time.  Challenge and inspiration trumps salary and status: When asked what they want this year, nearly half (41%) of respondents want to be challenged and inspired by their jobs; a subset also want to make a difference in their jobs (17%)

Creating an attraction strategy

So as you step back and evaluate your marketing, HR, leadership and organizational development strategies, ask “what will attract and inspire people?” A better customer experience? New ways to work that challenge people? Training that is completely out of the usual training box?

For more insights into the power of attraction, check out the book, “The Power of Pull.“  My summary of the book is here.

More about the book can be found here. I’m just filled with so much gratitude about the response to the book. Clearly people have been looking for a book where “inspire, wisdom, and humor” are linked with end of life and dying. A big outpouring of thanks goes to Justin Evans, partner of the Montreal design firm Stress Limit Design, who created an extraordinary cover. And of course, my remarkable family. Together we can do so much, except for the singing thing.

Just what causes a story to go viral?  New York Times Science writer John Tierney reports today on a new in-depth University of Pennsylvania study  that found:

• People share articles that inspire awe
• Positive stores are more likely to be shared than negative
• More emotional stories are emailed more often
• Stories about anxiety travel, but no where close to those that inspire awe

Having done my own studies on what people like to share and the power of meaning making (Beyond Buzz, 2007), I found this new study  validating and insightful — especially learning more about what the heck is awe inspiring.

The UPenn researchers used two criteria for an “awe inspiring story”: the scale of the story is large and it requires the reader to see the world in a different way.

The researchers also found that people like to share awe-inspiring stories not to impress others, but to realize a type of “emotional communion.”

Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is a strong emotion,” said Dr. Jonah Berger of UPenn. ” If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

One of my most popular blog posts over the past few years  had nothing to do with marketing but was about an awe-inspiring 18 hours in an urban hospital emergency room. The resulting comments, calls and emails created an extraordinary emotional communion with friends and strangers.

Three weeks ago I finished writing a new book about an awe-inspiring journey. It was the most fulfilling writing I’ve ever done, and it’s the marketing project I’m most eager to get moving. Why?  There’s nothing more satisfying than emotional communion, and the buzz that goes with it.

Good lessons for all we marketers who  too often rely on a heavy-on-the-logic, light-on-the- emotion style of business communications.  To realize the powerful possibilities of social media our content needs to be emotional and show what’s possible.

Whenever I go to San Francisco I schedule my business calendar so that I can have breakfast at Boulette’s Larder in the Ferry Building. The food is extraordinary, the restaurant  design remarkable. So while waiting for my breakfast I took out my Droid to snap a couple of photos to share with you.  Because no words can quite capture the beauty of this small little space.

After the click, owner and renowned chef Amaryll Schwertner came over and asked me to stop taking photos immediately. It was against her policy.

“But why,” I asked. “I wrote a book about word of mouth and like to spread the word about great experiences, and photos are a great way to do that.”

“We’ve had a lot of problems with people taking photographs and stealing our ideas,” she explained. “Photographs of our restaurant have ended up in places without our permission. We need to control who takes photos.”

The exchange left me cold and wondering. Just what could anyone “steal” by taking a picture of a  little restaurant?  A restaurant’s assets are its food, its service, and its vibe. How can one steal that total experience in a one-dimensional photo?

And why be fearful of letting people take a picture and spread word of mouth, the most vital marketing for a restaurant. Sure, my photos aren’t professional but I doubt I would hurt the restaurant’s image.

My advice for all businesses and Boulette’s Larder is to let go of  fear, and let people who love you spread the love, especially with photos. The greater the love, the less likely that any negative remarks or pirate photos will ever hurt your reputation.

Here’s a photo of the restaurant taken from Boulette’s web page. I hope I don’t get reprimanded again.

‘Tis the season for marketing planning, which can be painful if you’re in a rut. From many years of experience I believe every company has remarkable ideas to talk about, but finding those ideas can sometimes be challenging.

This week I talked at the Word of Mouth Supergenius conference about how to shake things up and find those ideas. Thanks to Merritt Colaizzi of SmartBlog on Social Media for her post that sums up those ideas. You can find it here.

Finding those interesting ideas to talk about is well worth the work. Consider:

• What do sales reps to say to engage prospects?
• What makes your proposals and RFPs stand out?
• Social media only works if you have interesting ideas to talk about
• How do CEOs get employees’ attention?

To get more interest, you have to be more interesting.  It doesn’t mean you have to be cool like Apple. In fact, much of my work has been with “boring” B2B companies.  Everything in marketing and sales gets much easier when you find the “talkable” ideas.

If you get stuck, call me to help jump start your thinking. If your company is really stuck, let’s do a workshop in 2010  to uncover those amazing ideas just waiting to be found.  While I am slightly biased, this is the best marketing investment you can make next year.

1. What will cause my followers to smile
2. What will enrich people’s perspective
3. What will inspire

Thanks to Hollie Delaney of Zappos.com, for sharing this yesterday during out social media session at The Conference Board conference on extending your brand to employees. Thanks too to the other super-smart and generous panelists — Marietta Cozzi of Prudential Financial, Kat Drum of Starbucks, and Kelle Thompson of Liberty Mutual.

Companies spend so much on acquiring new customers, hiring the best talent possible, taking chances on innovative marketing concepts. But engaging employees often seems to a stepchild, loved, but in a less passionate way.

Given the influence of employees on customer loyalty, maybe the priorities need to be altered. At yesterday’s Conference Board conference Engelina Jaspers, HP’s vice president of corporate marketing, shared three stats that can help focus management’s attention on employee engagement:

1. 68 % of customers leave a company because of poor employee attitude
2. 41% of customers are loyal because of good employee attitude
3. 70% of brand perception determined by experiences with people from the company

Brian Ray of McDonald’s is quantifying the value of committed employees in revenue and profitability for McDonald’s owners/operators. (85% of McDonald’s are franchises), and has just completed an project to create an employee value proposition.

(So interesting that every company seems to have a customer value proposition and mission, but not so for employees.)

To develop this “EVP” McDonald’s spent just $65,000 and asked two simple questions, which got an amazing 79% response rate from frontline workers in 33 countries:

• What do you love about working for McDonald’s?
• What do you love the least about working for McDonald’s?

What do your employees love the most and least about your company?  These two simple questions asked at least annually can provide the insights you need to understand how to make your employees your best marketing advocates.

Alarmed, my husband cleaned the feeder and thoroughly checked the yard for any weird growing berries or other vegetation that could be deterring the animals. But nothing. Pretty sure that the birdseed was contaminated  he emailed  PETCO Customer Relations, and they wrote back:

Unfortunately, there has been no information provided to us regarding any issue with the PETCO Black Oil Sunflower Seed. You may want to check if there’s something different with the bag that you recently purchased compared to those you have purchased before…You may also want to contact the manufacturer, Kaytee, regarding your inquiry.

Why would PETCO refer us to  the manufacturer when it was a PETCO branded product?  Why wouldn’t they ask for more details about our purchase so they could track possible contaminated shipments in our geographic area? Why wouldn’t PETCO apologize and tell us to return it to the retailer for another product?  If they looked at my husband’s purchasing history — he has one of those PETCO PALS loyalty cards — they’d see just how steady and profitable a customer he has been over the past 10 years.

The lack of PETCO interest so turned off my husband that he switched to a competitor, PetSmart, and tells all of his animal-loving friends about this story. Talk about word of mouth marketing.

The marketing lesson is this:  customer service is more important and valuable than any advertising.  It creates positive or in this case, negative, word of mouth.  Yet for many companies customer service is not part of marketing.

Advertising, promotion and CRM loyalty programs report to marketing, but not customer service?  In today’s social media world where the good and bad travel fast, that’s just for the birds.

Our bird friends are returning after a month away from the feeder.   But no squirrel. We think he may have died from the tainted birdseed.