Look to your Bad Habits to Foster Your Goals

When helping many enterprises wrap their arms around a social strategy, I always try to get them to circle back to their business drivers or goals for embarking on a social roadmap.   If these aren’t in place it will be virtually impossible to arrive at results never mind deploy the correct social technology to succeed!

A blog post on Workshifting.com regarding “7 Habits That Derail Your Goals” by David Baeza really pushed me rethink goal setting process.   The definition of a goal by the Oxford Dictionary is “the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result”.   This is critical in developing a social roadmap.  

My epiphany was: Goals are set to Rectify Bad Habits.   Goal setting, by nature, should be prefaced by a gut wrenching exercise to determine why this is a goal to start.  What aren’t you doing or what are you doing which is preventing the ideal nature of business nirvana?   We all have heard to death that “Goals need to be measureable.” Sure, okay… but does that make them achievable?   Think about a personal goal which continues to show up on the list in January year after year.  Some of the top personal goals every year are to lose weight, stop smoking, spend more time with family, exercise more…  you get the picture.   

Let’s look at this.   On your goal list is:  I want to lose 30 pounds this year.  Okay, that is:

1.     Attainable (given you have 30lbs to lose) with proper management and is less than a pound a week. 
2.     It can be measured by a scale
3.    It can be broken up into smaller goals that can be used as incentives along the way.  I want to lose 10 pounds by March 31^st.

What most people don’t do is look at really why they need to lose 30 pounds.  They may realize they don’t eat healthy or exercise or have an addiction to ice cream.  However, these are still symptoms rather than the root of the problem that is causing the issue.   You aren’t going to suddenly decide fruit is tastier and a craving rather than ice cream.  

Moving this into the professional realm.   Do you want to have better customer retention?  Okay great.  Your social strategy goal is to impact customer retention and increase your percentage by 10% over two years and drive incremental existing customer sales up by also 10%.   Lofty goals, my friend.  Lets put the goal analysis magnifying glass on it.

1.      Attainable: Yes, companies can improve customer retention by 10%
2.      It can be measured.  Sure I have 1000 customers how many of these are still customers in two years.
3.      It can be broken into smaller subsets

Here is the question…  Why are you having a problem with retention in the first place?  Better communication and listening to your customers on a 24/7/365 basis is certainly a step in the right direction just like joining a gym.   However, simply having a place to listen or work out is not going to get you to the goal.  For many, this is hitting bottom.  They have looked in the mirror and decided what is looking back at them isn’t the person or company they want to be in life.   If you are a company leader, is the organization really the best it can be?  Are you finally ready to implement changes that need to happen in order to make your customers more loyal or buy more from you?   Are you cultural ready?  

You may not realize the core of the problem.  Your customers probably understand it.  Social Technology can be a great mirror.  Painful for some.   Addicting to others.   So when you look in your corporate mirror are you seeing the Biggest Loser when they walk into get on the scale for the first time or at the finale?   Zappos.com, Ford Motor Company, American Express and others are addicted to looking in their social mirrors at themselves.  It is not a bad thing for you and others to like what you see.  

Success is not chance.  It is hard work with a bit of luck around the edges.   Social success is not easy or free.   Companies that are seeing success have dedicated the appropriate resources from a human resource, financial and cultural standpoint.   

Social Measurement

On the bell curve of social strategy adoption, there are the early adopters and those that want so much proof of a roadmap of success they will forever being playing catch up to their competitors. If you are one of these companies, I ask you to answer this question. Do you know what every customer is worth to you over their lifespan? I am guessing the answer is no. Even with customer loyalty programs and CRM systems, I am positive most rank and file employees do not know this number. 
In a case study in "I Love You More Than My Dog" by Jeanne Bliss, she highlights Zane's Cycles. They know that each customer is worth $12,500 over their life span of purchasing bicycles and associated products. (More in our case given my husband and I are avid cyclists) As a result, they are rabid about service. Ms. Bliss isn't the only one to notice this as Zane's is also a featured business in American Express' OPEN Forum. This is a community targeted at the small business owners with OPEN cards to interact with each other to share best practices. Getting noticed and having the over the top success is a wonderful achievement for Zane's. Let's be honest, they are located in Connecticut. Our winters are as conducive to year round cycling as say a shop in Texas.

If you want to know if a community is going to drive and product ROI, understand the worth of a community member (insert happy customer or valued customer). Also, by understanding what a well educated customer worth to you walking in the door, you can understand the importance of a welcoming and nurturing first impression is to your business. Your first impression is often what they see on the web. Think about how many times you "Google or Bing" a business prior to purchasing an item or walking in the door. A community for your customers discussing your business is a wonderful way to welcome existing and new customers looking to verify prior to trusting you with their hard earned capital.

Let's do some math. I am going to use some base line numbers. A new community is a first year investment of $75,000 - $100,000. An average customer spends $600 a year with you. This is $50 a month. (I drop that easily at a local nail salon.) This means a social community must produce an extra 175 customers to be profitable a year. How is that for an ROI number?


If you are a large enterprise, that is an easy number to commit to achieving. Say your average customer is worth $5,000 a year. That is only 20-25 customers you have to secure. A more realistic target is adding 100 more customers. That is ½ million in gross profit. Have I got your attention yet?


More math (sorry), add this to the number of community members that will increase their annual spend with you or not be as swayed by the competition because of the relationship and value you are expressing to them. Let's get scary… So your biggest competition deploys a robust uber friendly community and lures 200 customers away from you. What is that worth?


If you are looking for ROI, seek no further than the worth of one customer and divide it by the cost of deployment. It really is peanuts. I will ask it again... Do you know what every customer is worth to you over their lifespan?