This is where I'll be from June 25th through July 31st.
23 Steps to Build Personal Brand
1. Identify Your Passion
2. Think of 20 or more blog topics that you can write about or video on your passion so you can have plenty of content to publish when you are ready to launch your blog
3. Ask yourself the questions "Can I talk about it better than anyone else?" and "Am I so passionate about it that I can get up at 4:30am, 5 days a week to do it?"
4. Name your personal brand eg "The online gaming guru" or "The place to get your scrapbooking tips"
5. Buy your user name (as a domain name) preferably a .com and or .tv at http://www.hostmonster.com/
6. Choose Your Medium eg video, audio or the written word as some people can write, others are better on video and some can communicate their passion through speech
7. Buy a hosting account and a WordPress theme that suits your medium
8. Hire a web designer so that you can present the most professional brand you can afford to the online world as it is the global front door for your digital online brand
9. Make it easy for people to share your content and include a retweet and Facebook share buttons as a minimum as well as making it easy for fans to subscribe via RSS and email
10. Create a Facebook fan page
11. Sign up for Ping.fm (multichannel social media promotion and publishing software) or Tube Mogul (online video distribution platform) then select all the platforms you want to distribute your content (Twitter and Facebook are absolutely essential) choose others depending on your interests
12. Publish and post your content to your blog
13. Write, video or record your posts regularly, preferably once a day 5 days a week
14. Create community by leaving comments on other peoples' blogs and replying to comments on your blog
15. Use Twitter search to find as many people as possible talking about your topic and communicate with them
16. Follow people on Twitter who are following leaders in your niche (they have already identified themselves as being interested in your subject area)
17. Use Google Blog search to find more blogs that are relevant to your subject
18. Join as many Facebook fan pages and groups relating to your blog topic as possible
19. Repeats steps 12 to 18 over and over and over and over and over and over
20. Monitor your brand with Google alerts or Tweetdeck so that you can thank people that publish your content and protect your brand from misconceptions
21. Find and use tools to make it more efficient to publish and promote your blog content such as socialoomph.com
22. When you have the feeling that you have gained enough traction and attention and you have fans that are spreading your message then start reaching out to advertisers and begin monetizing
23. Place a big button on your site that invites and makes it easy for people to do business with you
Inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk's "Crush It"
2. Think of 20 or more blog topics that you can write about or video on your passion so you can have plenty of content to publish when you are ready to launch your blog
3. Ask yourself the questions "Can I talk about it better than anyone else?" and "Am I so passionate about it that I can get up at 4:30am, 5 days a week to do it?"
4. Name your personal brand eg "The online gaming guru" or "The place to get your scrapbooking tips"
5. Buy your user name (as a domain name) preferably a .com and or .tv at http://www.hostmonster.com/
6. Choose Your Medium eg video, audio or the written word as some people can write, others are better on video and some can communicate their passion through speech
7. Buy a hosting account and a WordPress theme that suits your medium
8. Hire a web designer so that you can present the most professional brand you can afford to the online world as it is the global front door for your digital online brand
9. Make it easy for people to share your content and include a retweet and Facebook share buttons as a minimum as well as making it easy for fans to subscribe via RSS and email
10. Create a Facebook fan page
11. Sign up for Ping.fm (multichannel social media promotion and publishing software) or Tube Mogul (online video distribution platform) then select all the platforms you want to distribute your content (Twitter and Facebook are absolutely essential) choose others depending on your interests
12. Publish and post your content to your blog
13. Write, video or record your posts regularly, preferably once a day 5 days a week
14. Create community by leaving comments on other peoples' blogs and replying to comments on your blog
15. Use Twitter search to find as many people as possible talking about your topic and communicate with them
16. Follow people on Twitter who are following leaders in your niche (they have already identified themselves as being interested in your subject area)
17. Use Google Blog search to find more blogs that are relevant to your subject
18. Join as many Facebook fan pages and groups relating to your blog topic as possible
19. Repeats steps 12 to 18 over and over and over and over and over and over
20. Monitor your brand with Google alerts or Tweetdeck so that you can thank people that publish your content and protect your brand from misconceptions
21. Find and use tools to make it more efficient to publish and promote your blog content such as socialoomph.com
22. When you have the feeling that you have gained enough traction and attention and you have fans that are spreading your message then start reaching out to advertisers and begin monetizing
23. Place a big button on your site that invites and makes it easy for people to do business with you
Inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk's "Crush It"
Salt Is Not Boring
by Seth Godin in Purple Cow
"Is your product more boring than salt? Unlikely. So come up with a list of ten ways to change the product (not the hype) to make it appeal to a sliver of your audience."
"Think small. One vestige of the TV-industrial complex is a need to think mass. If it doesn't appeal to everyone, the thinking goes, it's not worth it. No longer. Think of the smallest conceivable market, and describe a product that overwhelms it with its remarkability. Go from there."
"Outsource. If the factory is giving you a hard time about jazzing up the product, go elsewhere. There are plenty of job shops that would be delighted to take on your product. After it works, the factory will probably be happy to take the product back."
"Build and use permission asset. Once you have the ability to talk directly to your most loyal customers, it gets much easier to develop and sell amazing things. Without the filters of advertising, wholesalers, and retailers, you can create products that are far more remarkable."
"Copy. Not from your industry, but from any other industry. Find an industry more dull than yours, discover who's remarkable (it won't take long), and do what they did."
"Go one more. Or two more. Identify a competitor who's generally regarded as at the edges, and outdo them. Whatever they're known for, do that thing even more. Even better, and even safer, do the opposite of what they're doing."
Find things that are 'just not done' in your industry, and do them. JetBlue almost instituted a dress code for passengers. They're still playing with the idea of giving a free airline ticket to the best-dressed person on the plane. A plastic surgeon could offer gift certificates. A book publisher could put a book on sale. Stew Leonard's took the strawberries out of the little green plastic cages and let the customers pick their own-and sales doubled."
"Ask 'Why not?' Almost everything you don't do has no good reason for it. Almost everything you don't do is the result of fear or inertia or a historical lack of someone asking, 'Why not?'"
"Is your product more boring than salt? Unlikely. So come up with a list of ten ways to change the product (not the hype) to make it appeal to a sliver of your audience."
"Think small. One vestige of the TV-industrial complex is a need to think mass. If it doesn't appeal to everyone, the thinking goes, it's not worth it. No longer. Think of the smallest conceivable market, and describe a product that overwhelms it with its remarkability. Go from there."
"Outsource. If the factory is giving you a hard time about jazzing up the product, go elsewhere. There are plenty of job shops that would be delighted to take on your product. After it works, the factory will probably be happy to take the product back."
"Build and use permission asset. Once you have the ability to talk directly to your most loyal customers, it gets much easier to develop and sell amazing things. Without the filters of advertising, wholesalers, and retailers, you can create products that are far more remarkable."
"Copy. Not from your industry, but from any other industry. Find an industry more dull than yours, discover who's remarkable (it won't take long), and do what they did."
"Go one more. Or two more. Identify a competitor who's generally regarded as at the edges, and outdo them. Whatever they're known for, do that thing even more. Even better, and even safer, do the opposite of what they're doing."
Find things that are 'just not done' in your industry, and do them. JetBlue almost instituted a dress code for passengers. They're still playing with the idea of giving a free airline ticket to the best-dressed person on the plane. A plastic surgeon could offer gift certificates. A book publisher could put a book on sale. Stew Leonard's took the strawberries out of the little green plastic cages and let the customers pick their own-and sales doubled."
"Ask 'Why not?' Almost everything you don't do has no good reason for it. Almost everything you don't do is the result of fear or inertia or a historical lack of someone asking, 'Why not?'"
Marketing Insights
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Highlights
"Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users' standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better."
"If a product's future is unlikely to be remarkable-if you can't imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product-it's time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new."
"It's not an accident that some products catch on and some don't. When an ideavirus occurs, it's often because all the viral pieces work together. How smooth and easy is it to spread your idea? How often will people sneeze it to their friends? How tightly knit is the group you're targeting-do they talk much? Do they believe each other? How reputable are the people most likely to promote your idea? How persistent is it-is it a fad that has to spread fast before it dies, or will the idea have legs (and thus you can invest in spreading it over time)? Put all of your new product developments through this analysis, and you'll discover which ones are most likely to catch on. Those are the products and ideas worth launching."
"IT IS USELESS TO ADVERTISE TO ANYONE (EXCEPT INTERESTED SNEEZERS WITH INFLUENCE)."
"Differentiate your customers. Find the group that's most profitable. Find the group that's most likely to sneeze. Figure out how to develop/advertise/reward either group. Ignore the rest. Your ads (and your products!) shouldn't cater to the masses. Your ads (and products) should cater to the customers you'd choose if you could choose your customers."
"Make a list of competitors who are not trying to be everything to everyone. Are they outperforming you? If you could pick one underserved niche to target (and to dominate), what would it be? Why not launch a product to compete with your own-a product that does nothing but appeal to this market?"
"What tactics does your firm use that involve following the leader? What if you abandoned them and did something very different instead? If you acknowledge that you'll never catch up by being the same, make a list of ways you can catch up by being different."
"What would happen if you gave the marketing budget for your next three products to the designers? Could you afford a world-class architect/designer/sculptor/director/author?"
"What could you measure? What would that cost? How fast could you get the results? If you can afford it, try it. 'If you measure it, it will improve.'"
"Buy a bottle of Dr. Bronner's. Now, working with your factory and your designers, Bronnify a variation of one of your products."
"Do you have the e-mail addresses of the 20% of your customer base that loves what you do? If not, start getting them. If you do, what could you make for these customers that would be super-special? Visit sethgodin.typepad.com and you can sign up for my blog and get daily updates."
THE MAGIC CYCLE OF THE COW
1. Get permission from people you impressed the first time. Not permission to spam them or sell them leftovers or squeeze extra margins from them. Permission to alert them the next time you might have another Cow.
2. Work with the sneezers in that audience to make it easier for them to help your idea cross the chasm. Give them the tools (and the story) they'll need to sell your idea to a wider audience.
3. Once you've crossed the line from remarkable to profitable business, let a different team milk it. Productize your services, servicize your products, let a thousand variations bloom. But don't believe your own press releases. This is the inevitable downward slide to commodity. Milk it for all it's worth, and fast.
4. Reinvest. Do it again. With a vengeance. Launch another Purple Cow (to the same audience). Fail and fail and fail again. Assume that what was remarkable last time won't be remarkable this time."
SNEEZE!!
Purple Cow History
Highlights
"Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users' standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better."
"If a product's future is unlikely to be remarkable-if you can't imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product-it's time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new."
"It's not an accident that some products catch on and some don't. When an ideavirus occurs, it's often because all the viral pieces work together. How smooth and easy is it to spread your idea? How often will people sneeze it to their friends? How tightly knit is the group you're targeting-do they talk much? Do they believe each other? How reputable are the people most likely to promote your idea? How persistent is it-is it a fad that has to spread fast before it dies, or will the idea have legs (and thus you can invest in spreading it over time)? Put all of your new product developments through this analysis, and you'll discover which ones are most likely to catch on. Those are the products and ideas worth launching."
"IT IS USELESS TO ADVERTISE TO ANYONE (EXCEPT INTERESTED SNEEZERS WITH INFLUENCE)."
"Differentiate your customers. Find the group that's most profitable. Find the group that's most likely to sneeze. Figure out how to develop/advertise/reward either group. Ignore the rest. Your ads (and your products!) shouldn't cater to the masses. Your ads (and products) should cater to the customers you'd choose if you could choose your customers."
"Make a list of competitors who are not trying to be everything to everyone. Are they outperforming you? If you could pick one underserved niche to target (and to dominate), what would it be? Why not launch a product to compete with your own-a product that does nothing but appeal to this market?"
"What tactics does your firm use that involve following the leader? What if you abandoned them and did something very different instead? If you acknowledge that you'll never catch up by being the same, make a list of ways you can catch up by being different."
"What would happen if you gave the marketing budget for your next three products to the designers? Could you afford a world-class architect/designer/sculptor/director/author?"
"What could you measure? What would that cost? How fast could you get the results? If you can afford it, try it. 'If you measure it, it will improve.'"
"Buy a bottle of Dr. Bronner's. Now, working with your factory and your designers, Bronnify a variation of one of your products."
"Do you have the e-mail addresses of the 20% of your customer base that loves what you do? If not, start getting them. If you do, what could you make for these customers that would be super-special? Visit sethgodin.typepad.com and you can sign up for my blog and get daily updates."
THE MAGIC CYCLE OF THE COW
1. Get permission from people you impressed the first time. Not permission to spam them or sell them leftovers or squeeze extra margins from them. Permission to alert them the next time you might have another Cow.
2. Work with the sneezers in that audience to make it easier for them to help your idea cross the chasm. Give them the tools (and the story) they'll need to sell your idea to a wider audience.
3. Once you've crossed the line from remarkable to profitable business, let a different team milk it. Productize your services, servicize your products, let a thousand variations bloom. But don't believe your own press releases. This is the inevitable downward slide to commodity. Milk it for all it's worth, and fast.
4. Reinvest. Do it again. With a vengeance. Launch another Purple Cow (to the same audience). Fail and fail and fail again. Assume that what was remarkable last time won't be remarkable this time."
SNEEZE!!
Purple Cow History
Marian Wright Edelman
"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make the big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to the big differences we often cannot foresee."
Feedback Please
The essentials to good business practices are:
Common Sense
Good Ethics and Morals
Great Listening Skills
Fantastic Communication
Provide the Consumer with what they want
Give Executives 100% Effort
Establish a Mission Statement
Manage Accordingly
What do you think? Please respond below.....
Common Sense
Good Ethics and Morals
Great Listening Skills
Fantastic Communication
Provide the Consumer with what they want
Give Executives 100% Effort
Establish a Mission Statement
Manage Accordingly
What do you think? Please respond below.....
7 Breakthrough Marketing Strategies
A few months ago, Steve Tovak wrote a great article on NOW marketing strategies that can help TODAY. Check it out here
What the Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell
True Colors
"'Does she or doesn't she?' and 'Because I'm worth it' did the same thing: they not only carried a powerful and redemptive message, but-and this was their real triumph- they suceeded in attaching that message to a five-dollar bottle of hair dye. The lasting contribution of motivational research to Madison Avenue was to prove that you could do this for just about anything- that the products and the commercial messages with which we surround ourselves are as much a part of the psychological furniture of our lives as the relationships and emotions and experiences that are normally the subject of psychoanalytic inquiry."
"'Does she or doesn't she?' and 'Because I'm worth it' did the same thing: they not only carried a powerful and redemptive message, but-and this was their real triumph- they suceeded in attaching that message to a five-dollar bottle of hair dye. The lasting contribution of motivational research to Madison Avenue was to prove that you could do this for just about anything- that the products and the commercial messages with which we surround ourselves are as much a part of the psychological furniture of our lives as the relationships and emotions and experiences that are normally the subject of psychoanalytic inquiry."
Marketers see green, go green with video
"Companies will continue to analyze their marketing plans as we enter 2011. Traditional marketing approaches will be reconsidered as they have become less effective in reaching their target audiences. Businesses are rapidly embracing digital media as a preferred tactic to reach and engage consumers, boosting the bottom line.
Harris Interactive, an information gathering group for surveys, polls and web marketing analysis applications, recently reported the results of an in-depth study: 87% of online adults use social media; 17% of adults ages 18-34 use social media 6 to 10 hours per week.
The concept of video marketing has emerged as a highly effective tool in increasing companies' search engine optimization. At the 2010 Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo, Greg Jarboe, president and co-founder of SEO-PR, revealed that: Americans watch more videos a month on YouTube than they conduct searches on Google; A video is 50 times more likely to get a first-page Google ranking than a text page.
Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and other video or image social sites will get more attention as a marketing method. Among the most common types of video being used by businesses are company introductions, customer testimonials, product presentations/demonstrations, video blogs (vlogs) and company seminars/presentations.
Digital marketing tools also provide companies with the "feel good" benefit of being earth-friendly by reducing traditional printed marketing materials. Savvy business owners will weigh all of these options as they review their marketing plans in 2011."
-Kristan Getsy
President/CEO Life's Eyes Media
Harris Interactive, an information gathering group for surveys, polls and web marketing analysis applications, recently reported the results of an in-depth study: 87% of online adults use social media; 17% of adults ages 18-34 use social media 6 to 10 hours per week.
The concept of video marketing has emerged as a highly effective tool in increasing companies' search engine optimization. At the 2010 Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo, Greg Jarboe, president and co-founder of SEO-PR, revealed that: Americans watch more videos a month on YouTube than they conduct searches on Google; A video is 50 times more likely to get a first-page Google ranking than a text page.
Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and other video or image social sites will get more attention as a marketing method. Among the most common types of video being used by businesses are company introductions, customer testimonials, product presentations/demonstrations, video blogs (vlogs) and company seminars/presentations.
Digital marketing tools also provide companies with the "feel good" benefit of being earth-friendly by reducing traditional printed marketing materials. Savvy business owners will weigh all of these options as they review their marketing plans in 2011."
-Kristan Getsy
President/CEO Life's Eyes Media
Influencer Marketing by Duncan Brown and Nick Hayes
Key points
Marketing is broken, because it no longer contributes directly and tangibly to sales. This situation pits marketers and sales forces against each other in animosity.
Marketing doesn't work because there are too many marketing messages bombarding prospects, all the messages sound the same, and even if your message is heard, prospects don't believe you. But they do believe influencers.
Influencer Marketing is an approach that identifies and targets influencers in a market. Influencers make up communities called decision-maker ecosystems, which revolve around a decision-maker.
Most firms decide their marketing budget by looking at what they did last year and making minor modifications, or following what other firms are doing. Yet there is precious little measurement on marketing effectiveness carried out by marketers, on which to base investment decisions.
Activities such as advertising, trade shows and sponsorships demonstrate almost no tangible benefit, if they are measured at all. What metrics do exist, in PR and AR in particular, are typically based on quantity rather than quality. Little research is done to determine which analysts and journalists are influential to the target audience.
Almost all marketing is aimed at prospects, virtually none at influencers. Which means that when marketing messages are thrown at prospects they usually bounce off. Influencers, though, are harder to target than prospects because they are difficult to identify.
Connectors, mavens and salesmen are three well-known types of influencers. But they are insufficient to describe the complexity of a business decision and the roles that influencers play within it. In particular, the importance of connectors is often overstated.
We've detected 10 different roles that an influencer can play in a decision process. But remember that not all roles may be played, a single influencer can play many roles, and that roles can overlap.
Influencers gain their influence from other influencers. Influence is transmitted between influencers, and there is no rigid hierarchy. But often there are small cliques of influencers that cluster together, which can create a groundswell of influential opinion.
There are multiple categories of influencer, which makes it extremely difficult to guess who might be influential, and to what extent, in a specific market. The difference in perspectives between sales, marketing, product development and other operational functions increases the danger in assuming the set of influencers.
A further degree of fragmentation has emerged due to Web 2.0 technologies. This means that influence is no longer the preserve of an elite, but can also bubble from the bottom up. The background, location and age of individual influencers is unpredictable, meaning that companies looking to work with them cannot expect to apply a 'one size fits all' approach.
The influencer categories we identify can map onto various influencer roles. But the mapping is indicative, not absolute. There are always exceptions, so understand your influencers well.
Measuring influence is inherently subjective. Our four suggested criteria are stable and proven, and balance any differences that exist in how influencers exert their impact. So we can compare apples and oranges.
Avoid selecting industry leaders and CEOs as influencers. Reaching such people with marketing is extremely difficult. It may also be plainly wrong: most decision-makers are influenced by individuals much closer to their business.
Influencers are individuals, not categories or firms of people. You need to identify not only the influential businesses but also the key staff within them. Again, avoid picking the CEO, as the influencer may be lower down the organization structure.
Influencers don't buy from you, so you can't market to them like you would a prospect. You need to find out what their needs and wants are, to create messages that are relevant and interesting to them.
Prioritize your influencers. There will be some that are more important than others, so you need to focus on those. Understanding more about your influencers, and knowing their perceptions of your firm, is useful input to prioritization.
Approach influencers in their networking groups, or create a group for them to meet. Then move this to a 1-to-1 basis. The objective of influencers talking to you is to get them to talk about you.
Getting influencers to carry your message is a legitimate exercise, as long as it's genuine and credible. There is an important difference between paying for the time of an influencer to speak their views, and paying to have an influencer speak your views. Don't confuse the two.
Influencers love to influence. So give them the tools of influence. Find out what they're saying, build a message that supports them, and build simple collateral around it. With collateral, less is more--don't crowd the influencer's own collateral.
Create different messages for each influencer. What you use in the extra effort required will be regained by higher traction from your influencer community.
Embed influencers' messages in your marketing collateral. It has a greater chance of reaching your market, of it being heard and of it being believed.
Align your influencer-led collateral with sales objections. Do this by eliciting your typical objections, creating counter-arguments, then mapping appropriate influencers to those counter-arguments. Try to use a broad spread of influencers, so as to keep them fresh.
Influencer-led collateral can include pre-existing material, so it can be cheap to gather. This can include articles, books, webcasts and so on. It does not have to have your brand on it. But pay attention to copyright and such like. If in doubt, ask.
You can use influencer marketing to tune existing marketing programs for optimal effect and budgeting utilization. Your ranked list of influencers directs you to the most important journalists, analysts, trade shows, channel partners, forums, magazines and blogs.
By identifying the top influencers you also identify new routes to market. Use influencers to gain access to prospects, and pre-influence the market by involving influencers in product launches.
Use influencers in your lead generation activities. And use influencer-led collateral to counter sales objections and close leads. Your lead gen quality will increase, and sales cycles will decrease.
Word of Mouth (WOM) is a powerful communications mechanism. But it matters whose mouth the words come from. Using influencers to communicate messages means that WOM is carried to the right people and with credibility and authority.
WOM doesn't work well in B2B markets. This is because of the lack of opportunities for business people to converse, and due to the commercial sensitivities that exist between firms.
WOM is prone to urban myth and just plain wrong messages. Influencers can optimize WOM by correcting erroneous messages and misunderstandings.
Social media are enablers of influence: they are not by themselves influential. Today most influential social media users gain their influence through other means, and migrate it to blogs and other media. Influencers blog, more than bloggers influence.
The influence of bloggers is highly dependent on the subject matter. Blogger influence is higher in more technical subjects, and lower (sometimes zero) in more service-based and business-orientated markets.
Links are the best metric we have for measuring popularity of social media sites. But they can be faked or increased artificially. They also over-state influence in the general market, which in most cases extends far beyond the blogosphere.
The social media that are influential on buying decisions today are those that contain user feedback. This means that user feedback will emerge as an important influencer in decision-making.
Anonymity undermines influence. There is no business reason for anonymous blogs or posts and it creates the impression you're hiding something.
Normal rules for influencer marketing apply to social media. You should treat social media as an extension to your normal marketing, so don't try to shoehorn traditional marketing approaches onto blogs and social networking sites. They work just as badly there as in real life.
People trust people like themselves. That's why WOM is powerful. But consumer influencers are hard to identify and to reach. WOM is therefore difficult to control and to direct towards your target audience.
There's only one reason why you'd need to do stealth marketing, and that is if your product is not worth talking about. Otherwise, don't do it.
People always trust third parties, whether based within the consumer supply chain or outside it. These parties are much easier to identify and to reach.
Consumers trust a host of influencers other than people they know. These influencers are untapped and unexploited by marketing, but are much easier to identify and target than consumers.
Within the supply chain, the closer to the buyer an influencer is the greater the direct influence on the decision to buy. So retailers tend to exert more influence than manufacturers.
The more complex a product becomes, or the higher the value ascribed to the product, the greater the opportunity for value-added influencers to make an impact. Conversely, the simpler or commoditized a product is, the less scope there is for value-added influencers.
Marketing is broken, because it no longer contributes directly and tangibly to sales. This situation pits marketers and sales forces against each other in animosity.
Marketing doesn't work because there are too many marketing messages bombarding prospects, all the messages sound the same, and even if your message is heard, prospects don't believe you. But they do believe influencers.
Influencer Marketing is an approach that identifies and targets influencers in a market. Influencers make up communities called decision-maker ecosystems, which revolve around a decision-maker.
Most firms decide their marketing budget by looking at what they did last year and making minor modifications, or following what other firms are doing. Yet there is precious little measurement on marketing effectiveness carried out by marketers, on which to base investment decisions.
Activities such as advertising, trade shows and sponsorships demonstrate almost no tangible benefit, if they are measured at all. What metrics do exist, in PR and AR in particular, are typically based on quantity rather than quality. Little research is done to determine which analysts and journalists are influential to the target audience.
Almost all marketing is aimed at prospects, virtually none at influencers. Which means that when marketing messages are thrown at prospects they usually bounce off. Influencers, though, are harder to target than prospects because they are difficult to identify.
Connectors, mavens and salesmen are three well-known types of influencers. But they are insufficient to describe the complexity of a business decision and the roles that influencers play within it. In particular, the importance of connectors is often overstated.
We've detected 10 different roles that an influencer can play in a decision process. But remember that not all roles may be played, a single influencer can play many roles, and that roles can overlap.
Influencers gain their influence from other influencers. Influence is transmitted between influencers, and there is no rigid hierarchy. But often there are small cliques of influencers that cluster together, which can create a groundswell of influential opinion.
There are multiple categories of influencer, which makes it extremely difficult to guess who might be influential, and to what extent, in a specific market. The difference in perspectives between sales, marketing, product development and other operational functions increases the danger in assuming the set of influencers.
A further degree of fragmentation has emerged due to Web 2.0 technologies. This means that influence is no longer the preserve of an elite, but can also bubble from the bottom up. The background, location and age of individual influencers is unpredictable, meaning that companies looking to work with them cannot expect to apply a 'one size fits all' approach.
The influencer categories we identify can map onto various influencer roles. But the mapping is indicative, not absolute. There are always exceptions, so understand your influencers well.
Measuring influence is inherently subjective. Our four suggested criteria are stable and proven, and balance any differences that exist in how influencers exert their impact. So we can compare apples and oranges.
Avoid selecting industry leaders and CEOs as influencers. Reaching such people with marketing is extremely difficult. It may also be plainly wrong: most decision-makers are influenced by individuals much closer to their business.
Influencers are individuals, not categories or firms of people. You need to identify not only the influential businesses but also the key staff within them. Again, avoid picking the CEO, as the influencer may be lower down the organization structure.
Influencers don't buy from you, so you can't market to them like you would a prospect. You need to find out what their needs and wants are, to create messages that are relevant and interesting to them.
Prioritize your influencers. There will be some that are more important than others, so you need to focus on those. Understanding more about your influencers, and knowing their perceptions of your firm, is useful input to prioritization.
Approach influencers in their networking groups, or create a group for them to meet. Then move this to a 1-to-1 basis. The objective of influencers talking to you is to get them to talk about you.
Getting influencers to carry your message is a legitimate exercise, as long as it's genuine and credible. There is an important difference between paying for the time of an influencer to speak their views, and paying to have an influencer speak your views. Don't confuse the two.
Influencers love to influence. So give them the tools of influence. Find out what they're saying, build a message that supports them, and build simple collateral around it. With collateral, less is more--don't crowd the influencer's own collateral.
Create different messages for each influencer. What you use in the extra effort required will be regained by higher traction from your influencer community.
Embed influencers' messages in your marketing collateral. It has a greater chance of reaching your market, of it being heard and of it being believed.
Align your influencer-led collateral with sales objections. Do this by eliciting your typical objections, creating counter-arguments, then mapping appropriate influencers to those counter-arguments. Try to use a broad spread of influencers, so as to keep them fresh.
Influencer-led collateral can include pre-existing material, so it can be cheap to gather. This can include articles, books, webcasts and so on. It does not have to have your brand on it. But pay attention to copyright and such like. If in doubt, ask.
You can use influencer marketing to tune existing marketing programs for optimal effect and budgeting utilization. Your ranked list of influencers directs you to the most important journalists, analysts, trade shows, channel partners, forums, magazines and blogs.
By identifying the top influencers you also identify new routes to market. Use influencers to gain access to prospects, and pre-influence the market by involving influencers in product launches.
Use influencers in your lead generation activities. And use influencer-led collateral to counter sales objections and close leads. Your lead gen quality will increase, and sales cycles will decrease.
Word of Mouth (WOM) is a powerful communications mechanism. But it matters whose mouth the words come from. Using influencers to communicate messages means that WOM is carried to the right people and with credibility and authority.
WOM doesn't work well in B2B markets. This is because of the lack of opportunities for business people to converse, and due to the commercial sensitivities that exist between firms.
WOM is prone to urban myth and just plain wrong messages. Influencers can optimize WOM by correcting erroneous messages and misunderstandings.
Social media are enablers of influence: they are not by themselves influential. Today most influential social media users gain their influence through other means, and migrate it to blogs and other media. Influencers blog, more than bloggers influence.
The influence of bloggers is highly dependent on the subject matter. Blogger influence is higher in more technical subjects, and lower (sometimes zero) in more service-based and business-orientated markets.
Links are the best metric we have for measuring popularity of social media sites. But they can be faked or increased artificially. They also over-state influence in the general market, which in most cases extends far beyond the blogosphere.
The social media that are influential on buying decisions today are those that contain user feedback. This means that user feedback will emerge as an important influencer in decision-making.
Anonymity undermines influence. There is no business reason for anonymous blogs or posts and it creates the impression you're hiding something.
Normal rules for influencer marketing apply to social media. You should treat social media as an extension to your normal marketing, so don't try to shoehorn traditional marketing approaches onto blogs and social networking sites. They work just as badly there as in real life.
People trust people like themselves. That's why WOM is powerful. But consumer influencers are hard to identify and to reach. WOM is therefore difficult to control and to direct towards your target audience.
There's only one reason why you'd need to do stealth marketing, and that is if your product is not worth talking about. Otherwise, don't do it.
People always trust third parties, whether based within the consumer supply chain or outside it. These parties are much easier to identify and to reach.
Consumers trust a host of influencers other than people they know. These influencers are untapped and unexploited by marketing, but are much easier to identify and target than consumers.
Within the supply chain, the closer to the buyer an influencer is the greater the direct influence on the decision to buy. So retailers tend to exert more influence than manufacturers.
The more complex a product becomes, or the higher the value ascribed to the product, the greater the opportunity for value-added influencers to make an impact. Conversely, the simpler or commoditized a product is, the less scope there is for value-added influencers.
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