On Wednesday June 5th at 2.00pm EST, I’ll be hosting a free webinar in partnership with Vocus around actual business results through influence marketing. Details of the webinar and where to register are below.
For anyone that?s been involved in marketing for any amount of time, you?ll know there are shifts in thinking that take us beyond what we know, into what we can truly benefit from.
Think about some of the shifts from the last 20 years or so:
- Print media and flyers to social media and banner ads;
- Telesales to geo-fenced mobile marketing and QR codes;
- Direct mail to email marketing;
- Billboards to digital signage.
These shifts allowed us to be smarter at targeting audiences on a wider scale, and also to measure our campaigns more effectively.
However, despite these improved methodologies and metrics, there was still one form of marketing that could trump all of them ? word of mouth.
If we heard positive or negative feedback from a peer, friend or colleague about a certain product or service, there was a much higher chance of conversion to that recommendation than there was from any of the methods highlighted at the start of this post.
Brands understood the power of word of mouth marketing, and looked for ways to be part of these recommendations. This paved the way for influence marketing as we know it today ? otherwise known as social scoring.
The problem is, when it comes to actual business results like lead generation and customer acquisition, that definition hasn?t moved the marketing needle as much as the other shifts highlighted here.
Scoring platforms like Klout and Kred can help brands achieve share of voice and amplified awareness, but for true business results, we need to move deeper than the solutions they currently provide.
We need to move into the Third Stage of Influence Marketing.
What is the Third Stage of Influence Marketing?
When it comes to influence marketing, there are three clearly defined stages:
Stage 1: Celebrity Endorsement
PR pioneer Dan Edelman introduced the concept of celebrity endorsement in the middle of the last century. Seeing the shift of power to celebrities and how the public reacted to them, he pioneered the method of using stars like Vincent Price to represent the California wine industry. Through increased media, this led to an increase in sales and profits, and celebrity endorsement as a marketing tactic was born.
Stage 2: Social Scoring
While celebrity endorsements had a fine run and can still be used today to great effect, the danger of using a celebrity for your brand showed the flaws of that approach.
Tiger Woods; Lindsay Lohan; Mel Gibson; Oscar Pistorious; Lance Armstrong, and many more like them. Personal issues spilled into the public and began to tarnish the brands connected to these endorsers. A new method was needed, and this is where social scoring stepped in.
Early adopters in the social influence marketing space saw the potential of finding who was influential on a topic, and connecting these people to brands in that vertical to share that brand?s marketing message with their audience.
Initially, it worked. Superstar bloggers and social network users with large followings helped raise awareness for a brand or product, and public scores from Klout, Kred and PeerIndex could show which person was influential around what topic.
However, flaws started to appear in that methodology as well. Critics questioned the validity of the data and lack of success stories being shared publicly; influence was only measured by public Twitter updates unless you connected your other networks; and profiles and scores were being allocated to people without specific permission.
These flaws, along with how the algorithms on these platforms could be gamed, led to the need for a more effective and truer reflection of influence and what it means in the marketing sector.
Stage 3: Customer Centric Influence Marketing
The problem with both celebrity endorsements and social scoring when it comes to influence is that they both place the ?influencer? at the heart of the marketing circle.
While they may have a large following or audience, that doesn?t mean they?re right for the various segments of a brand?s customer base, current or potential.
The purchase decisions of a customer are influenced by many factors: emotional, financial, familial, peer, logical, time and many more.
Additionally, a message resonates differently with customers depending where they are in the purchase life cycle.
Research. Awareness. Consideration. Intent. Purchase. These are just five stages of the purchase life cycle that need to be addressed differently ? then you also have guilt and vindication play into the mix of decisions.
As you can see, the simple act of making a purchase is far from simple, if we ? as marketers ? are looking to encourage the customer along the decision-making path and into the action of making a purchase.
This is where the Third Wave of Influence Marketing succeeds, because it places the customer at the heart of the marketing circle and works back from there.
We can identify where customers are regarding their decision to buy; we can identify what issues or questions they have around it; who in their immediate circle influences them and at what stage; and how we can overcome disruptors like competitor messaging and situational factors.
The upcoming True Influence webinar will show you exactly how to utilize this new wave of influence marketing, and how to drive real business metrics that add to the bottom line ROI while improving the top line, as well as the lifetime value of your customers.
I look forward to sharing with you.