Have you been too busy to organize Christmas gifts for your customers? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one! This time of year seems to have a speed of it’s own and with extra social gatherings, increased demand in the lead-up to Christmas and your own personal gift-giving, customer gifts can easily be forgotten. Sometimes […]

Ok, so you know how valuable customer case studies are and you also know how to write a case study. But what does a sample case study look like? Here we have 5 different sample case studies for your inspiration! Each of these case study examples takes some simple feedback from customers and packages it […]

Wondering how to write a case study? If you run a business that aims to get results for someone, business case studies can be some of your most powerful marketing material. When done right, they’re an authentic, content-rich way of telling stories about your business. They’re not pushy – but they show exactly what kinds […]

Ok, so you’ve got a brand new business and you know it’s important to use your networks to get things off the ground. All the best business people say you’ve got to use your networks, right? Yes, but there’s an art to this! Do it wrong and you’ll find that you’ll end up annoying and alienating your […]

The other day I was busted. I’m still looking back on it now and shaking my head in shame. I was unprepared for a few simple questions about a new project I’m working on. In this case, the stakes weren’t particularly high, but I should have known better. It would have been a great opportunity to practise my […]

There’s a reason customer satisfaction is high on the agenda for almost all successful companies… customer churn is very expensive. But even more than that, having customers that are not happy or leaving for some other reason is a very unsatisfying way to run a business. You can hardly feel like you’re making a positive impact […]

There’s so many great online marketing tools out there – many of them clever and very effective when used correctly. But in my opinion these are over-represented in business media and many businesses are forgetting that there are plenty of off-line, traditional marketing tools that can be equally effective. The key is to choose the […]

Any idea what Uber, Paypal, Evernote, Dropbox, Amazon Prime and Airbnb all have in common? They’re all wildly successful AND they all used customer referral programs as a key part of their growth. Getting customers to refer their friends and family to you is probably the most powerful way to grow your business. Occassionally this […]

Most people will trust word-of-mouth recommendations above anything you might say about your own business. But, do you know what the next best thing is? Customer testimonials or customer reviews. We’ll talk about reviews another time but it’s easy to collect customer testimonials – and here we’ve got the exact steps on how to do […]

I was recently listening to one of my favourite podcasts – The Tim Ferris Show – and heard this episode with Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby. There are a lot of gems in it and I highly recommend you listen to the full podcast, but one part that struck me was a story Derek told about how he decided to inject some personality into his business.

Did he create a new brand, get new logos and graphics created, hire or retrain his team on a new company philosophy? No, initially he simply sat down and re-wrote the “order confirmation” email so that it was personal, full of flair, and really ‘spoke’ to his customers. It took all of about 20 minutes and made all the difference to how customers thought about the business. Here’s an extract from it;

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year”. We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

People LOVED this email – so much so that many of them shared it with friends and posted it on their websites.

Suddenly, his business became remarkable. He had given customers something to “Remark” about. Something specific to tell their friends about.

A crowd attracts a crowd – and just like most people will prefer the restaurant that is already busy than the empty restaurant, people are also more likely to choose your business if you can demonstrate that you’re popular. But it’s a chicken and egg thing, isn’t it? How do you look popular so that you […]