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B2B Influence Marketing strategies for the Social Cloud

Web Business 101What is Influence Marketing?

Web Business 301How can Brand Dynamics help?

Web Business 201An Influence Marketing strategy?

http://brandingdynamics.wordpress.com/

Web Business 101

What is Influence Marketing?

It’s about engaging with your current and potential customers using the Internet.

But to know why we should use Influence Marketing we have to go back to business basics.

Web Business 101

Web Business 101

What makes a business?

Easy answer: Sales!

Web Business 101

How do I drive Sales?

Use marketing to reach out to potential or existing customers

Web Business 101

How do I use marketing to get to my customers?

In the age of the Social Web there exist two major marketing models:

Disruptive MarketingInfluence Marketing

Web Business 101

What’s the difference?

Disruptive marketing relies on pushing messages out to where you think your customers are looking and making sure you disrupt their attention.

Think print advertising, banner ads, TV and Radio ads, Telemarketing.

Web Business 101

Disruptive marketing sounds great, doesn’t it?

It’s expensive, Its mainly about advertising, you don’t know if it will work, only 1 in 5 TV ads achieve a return on money spent.

People hate being disrupted, people get annoyed, people are already bombarded by 2000 messages every week, people have tuned out and aren’t listening any more,

How often do you listen to or see ads any more ?

Ads are no more than visual noise.

Ads are getting more outrageous to capture ever smaller attention spans of people that don’t want to see or listen.

Web Business 101

OK, So what is Influence Marketing and is it any better?

70% of purchasing decisions are influenced by what customers have heard about your product or service, from their friends and acquaintances. From their influence network.

Only 30% of purchasing decisions are made from what advertisements you have placed through disruptive marketing.

The Social Web is driving change in how to reach your customer and how your customer hears about you.

Influence Marketing makes use of the Social web and the social networks within them to engage with your customers, but it isn’t only confined to the Internet.

Social networks exist outside the Internet too!

Think of your local chamber or commerce or Toastmaster group.

Web Business 101

What the hell is the Social Web anyway?

The internet has changed the face of business by providing a means to provide information about your business to anyone interested.

In the last few years people have learnt that they can do more than just look at websites, they can talk to each other, find common interests and share information through Social Websites and build online social networks.

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Sites such as Linkedin where professionals can network, Facebook and MySpace where friends can connect, YouTube where videos are shared, Delicious where bookmarks are shared, Blogger where people write about and share their ideas etc. etc.

Web Business 101

So what has this got to do with Influence Marketing?

Because the majority of sales are made by people asking other people about the product or service they want to buy. Sales are being made through social networks created within the Social Web

The advent of the Social Web has meant that you can now get people talking about you on the internet without temporal or spatial constraints. This is changing how marketing is being executed.

When people are talking about your products or services they will make their decisions about your product or service from what is being said about you on the Social Web.

Web Business 101

So how does Influence Marketing help generate sales?

Influence Marketing isn’t about pushing messages out to people that don’t want to see or hear them, it’s about engaging, listening to and influencing your potential customers and making it easy for them to talk about you and find you.

Influence Marketing is about enabling your customers to market for you.

By letting your customers do the talking they will help themselves make the decisions they need to make to come and visit you and buy from you.

You need to influence them to say what you want them to say

Web Business 101

How can I get Influence Marketing to work for me?

Firstly, Presence:

If you’re not online you’re nowhere.

You need to provide customers with content to read and talk about. Having content or a presence on the Internet such as a website or a social networking site is a good start.

Secondly, Look & Listen:

You need to find out where your potential customers are on the Internet and start listening to what they are saying.

Web Business 101

How can I get Influence Marketing to work for me?

Thirdly, Engage:

You need to engage with your customers by communicating with them as well as providing them material that they can share amongst themselves .

This makes it easy for them to talk about you, makes it easy for them to find you and helps them solve their problems.

Fourthly, Repeat:

These are your potential customers you need to continuously engage with them, the more you engage, the more potential customers will find you and the more well known you will become, marketing is a never ending process.

Web Business 101

How do I establish a presence?

You can start with a website. Influence Marketing is about establishing trust, credibility and authority, your website is the first link in the Influence Marketing chain.

You need to demonstrate what clients you have worked with, how you solve your customers problems, give them a space where they can talk with you and provide them with material that they can share amongst themselves.

Your website also needs to be easy to find so you need to optimise it for Search engines and then all your communication and content must provide links back to your website.

Web Business 101

Why do I need to look as well as listen to where my customers are talking on the Internet?

It’s the first step in engaging with your customers, making them aware of you and giving them the ability to talk about you, it shows that you’re listening.

Influence Marketing isn’t about throwing messages into the ether like disruptive marketing.

Influence Marketing is about listening, engaging and influencing your potential customers.

Web Business 101

Why do I need to engage with them?

When you engage with your customers you fill a vacuum about what is being said about you, before the Internet this was very hard to do, now it’s very simple.

It also lets you be known to a larger population of potential customers because what is being communicated will be displayed on the internet and can be linked back to your company, product or service.

This makes it easier for customers to find out about you through search engines.

This process begins to build influence and credibility which are the strongest reasons why a customer makes a decision to purchase from you.

Web Business 101

Is this more effective than disruptive marketing?

Disruptive marketing that uses messages and disruption still has a place but it’s impact is declining and it’s real share of why a client buys has always been small, Influence Marketing is the future of how sales will be made.

Looking on the Social Web is the easiest way for your customer to decide whether they should make a purchase from you based on what is being said about you on the Internet.

If you don’t engage with Influence Marketing you are leaving it up to your competitors to do it for you. If you don’t engage at the level where the decision is being made, amongst your customers friends, acquaintances and peers you are missing out on 70% of the actual decision making influences that your potential customers rely on.


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