While it’s not a new concept to treat individuals with ability to influence others as special–think about all the freebies celebrities get–it is an area being increasingly viewed as important to marketing.  What IS new, however, is that the Internet changed who can become one and how quickly.

There are individuals who are influential whether they are on or off ‘the grid’, such as analysts, journalists and standards/buyers groups, those who choose to become influential in a particular area, such as bloggers and columnists, and those who accidentally become influential by posting something, perhaps a video, that resonates with people and becomes popular.  It may not even be a person.  Clark Griswold the dog (who happens to be a male version of my Bella!) was an overnight sensation and is now influencing people to buy all kinds of products…which is another marketing lesson: helping people to have fun can increase your ROI.

Here are 10 tips for your influencer marketing campaign, per Influencers in this category (numbers correspond to quoted sources at bottom):

1. Treat everyone as important. Not everyone is an Influencer in your area of business, but if you treat everyone with the respect that they could be that’s always the best way. That one time you don’t respect someone as a potential Influencer you will inevitably wind up looking the fool. “Personally I would like to see brands realize every Customer can be an influencer and treat them in a way the builds them as advocates.”  While it’s normal to give Influencers preferential treatment, just be careful not to alienate customers who perhaps aren’t as influential (for now!).
2. Follow the content and get personal. “To become a Influence is the byproduct of continually producing high quality content.  Maximize human contact where possible – meeting for coffee or talking on the phone will form a much stronger bond between you, your brand and the potential influencer.”
3. Don’t forget the ‘little guys’. “While it’s relatively straightforward to manually identify the top-level “mass influencers” — such as journalists, celebrities or academics — the far larger number of ‘micro influencers’ has remained elusive. These micro influencers may not have a formal position that validates their influence, but they can be recognized among large audiences as being knowledgeable and trustworthy on specific topics. They also generate up to three times more word of mouth communications than non-influencers. Therefore, these micro influencers have a huge potential to drive purchase decisions and product contagion.”
4. Build a panel of vocal brand advocates or simply hire them.  Influencer marketing is “simply an extension of traditional word-of-mouth. We find that recommendations from ‘people you know’ are extremely important.  These advocates turn other consumers into advocates.”… “The Brand Ambassador hired by Company K was a nationally recognized authority figure in the category. His credibility enabled Company K to add more Brand Ambassadors at virtually no additional cost to increase the scope of the program.”
5. Sell to other companies how to connect with your “growing list of passionate individuals who are actively sought by their social group for recommendations.”
6. Track who’s writing about you and who could be. “Leverage social media [to] find people who are willing to review your product, spreading the word about your brand. These people are Influencers, and if you can access them, you’ll connect with the 82 percent of people who are influenced by the reviews they read online.”
7. Use Google+ circles to your advantage.  Something to do with Google+ that is different than what you’re already doing on other social networks!  “Customize different content to different groups…give [your] best content or news away to [your] most engaged or high value members.”  “Consumers could tell the brand what type of content they want, and the brand would create circles and share content accordingly.”
8. Influence and reach are not the same thing.  Another way of saying it: “It’s important to note the difference between credibility and fame.  Influence generate[s] both feeling and action on the part of your consumer base.”  As my high school Spanish teacher used to say, “Escuche y repita!” (“Listen and repeat!” I can’t believe I still remember that): reach is not the same as influence, but influence comes out of reach.
9. Target trade channels.  This is a stealthy way of infiltrating and overtaking markets.  “Company R targeted Trade Channels where the majority of the selling activity was very subtle and took place almost entirely after normal business hours. This made it nearly impossible for a Company B representative to encounter a Company R Brand Ambassador at work.”
10. Keep it focused.  “The program was limited to a single venue that was heavily visited by the targeted consumer group. This significantly increased adoption while keeping costs low.” … “The program was limited to a modest but very passionate consumer group that influenced the category. This significantly increased likelihood of adoption by a larger group while keeping costs low.”

One of the greatest challenges is identifying and targeting influencers in an effective manner.  To that end, I have made it my goal to scope out, use and review influencer marketing tools to help both of us achieve our goals.  The first in this coming series is available now, Manage Influencer Marketing with BuzzStream, on my second blog, BYOB.net, a hand-curated resource of products and services to help you Build Your Own Business.

Happy marketing ROI hunting!

1. Hosni Mubarak was an Influencer! By Frank Eliason
2. Marketers: How To Get Noticed by “Influencers” by Joe Chernov
3. The new marketing model: Peer index marketing By Azeem Azhar
4. P&G’s Panel of Women Helps Amplify Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Chris Laird / Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 4
5. InkFluence – Hidden Influencers
6. Does Word Of Mouth Marketing Work Better On Social Media? by Lauren Dugan
7. The Social Layer: Six Thoughts On Where Google Plus Is Going by David Armano / How I’m Using Google+ (Hint: It’s About Relevance) by Melissa Parrish
8. Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 1
9. Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 2
10. Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 3 / Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 4

Here’s the gist of the article: for two of GM’s automotive brands, GMC and Buick, consumers can now go to their website and utilize a vehicle-configuration tool, and then post the custom car from the tool to their Facebook page to solicit feedback from friends.  In addition to seeing responses from friends on Facebook, consumers also can see them in the configuration tool.  GM will be in essence spying on this activity to see what configurations are “liked” by consumers and their friends, and then “will also be able to tie those metrics to purchases.”

I’m curious HOW they plan to tie those metrics to purchases, as they then go on to say they they do NOT “have mechanisms in place to remarket to consumers who build and share a vehicle, other than messaging to those who “like” the brands’ Facebook pages.”  At least GM acknowledges that “likes” on a Facebook page or playing around with a configuration tool are not ROI:

“The ultimate gold standard is to be able to connect how people are engaging on GMC.com and with the tool and ultimately be able to lead that into sales and how this tool helps to facilitate sales at the bottom line.”

Since GM doesn’t tell us how they’re doing it, we can only speculate.  What we do know is that GM obtains permission to access consumers’ basic profile when the user connect their vehicle design with their Facebook account, and GM may use some of this information shared publicly to tailor future marketing communications.  As an exercise I want to think thorough examples of how ROI can be measured in this situation.  I will further break it down into soft ROI and hard ROI, as well as what metrics I’m certain GM can access and what is my speculation (noted by asterisk).

Soft ROI

• # of “likes” on the brand pages
• # of consumers who use the auto configuration tool on the websites
• # of consumers who share their custom car design with their Facebook friends
• # of Facebook friends who “click,” “like” and “comment” on the custom car designs
• # of Facebook friends who “pass-along” the content from one person to another*
• # of variations of car designs
• # of likes per variation (qualitative “comments”can also be coded)
• segmentation of most liked car designs based on other gathered information (e.g. male/female, age ranges, geography)
• # of configuration tool visits and duration of engagement
• source of traffic, other pages visited and in what order
• whether the brands/the promotion are being talked about online (e.g. tweets, blogs, press)
• whether the brands are being talked about more than competitive brands
• # of consumers who visit a dealer month over prior month, year over prior year
• # of consumers who use the configuration tool who own a GM car currently*
• # of consumers who submit or call for more information on their dream car*

Hard ROI aka the “Gold Standard”

• # of consumers who visit a dealer and show a copy of their dream car or mention the tool*
• # of consumers who already pretty much know what they want, due to the tool, saving agent’s time*
• # of consumers who redeem coupons/offer codes*
• # of buyers who respond in a follow-up survey that the tool had a significant bearing on their purchase*

In summary, there are certainly a lot of opportunities to measure the soft ROI of social media marketing integration and, while more challenging to link these activities to hard ROI — money earned or resources saved — it’s not impossible.  If you have any thoughts of your own to fill out these lists, I’d love to hear them!

I spoke about the importance of creating positive marketing messages in a prior post about engagement marketing but it bears repeating.  At our core we are social creatures and we are attracted to people, events, products, services, and brands that help us to have fun. The reason that social media is such a huge hit is because it helps us to connect with others so we can share fun.  It’s so simple, yet so profound.  This simple truth creates infinite possibilities to increase your marketing ROI.

First of all, what is “fun?”  Fun isn’t just fun, it’s hope.  Fun can be found in magnifying the things you love in what you do everyday.  It can transform the annoyances you face into positive challenges to help others.  It is fun to see the results of your hard work in your personal growth and in your career.  It is fun to use your success to turn around and help someone else get further in their life.  It is fun to work in a team to pull together to see something accomplished.

Think for a minute about the products or services that you or your company are promoting.  Some of us may be lucky enough to work for a company whose mission is to help people have fun, such as film, gaming or social media.  Others of us have to search a bit harder to determine the fun that we provide to other people.  However, if you take the time to do this exercise it can transform the way you market yourself and your company’s products and services.

I offer, as example, my own situation to explain my thinking. What I promote to the business world is custom market research services on behalf of C.A. Walker Research Solutions.  On face value it doesn’t seem like I’m selling anything particularly fun, but to me it is great fun!

First of all, I find it fun to build relationships either online or in-person and to discover people’s current business objectives.  I am a natural problem-solver.  I enjoy delving into different business worlds to understand perspectives and pain points, so I can determine precisely how we may contribute to others’ success by applying custom research, thus creating more fun in their life.  It’s also fun to think through with people if there is anything we can do together to offer markets a service that is stronger than either of us could separately.

I find it fun to analyze potential markets and figure out fresh ways to make relevant the various types of research that we’ve been doing for more than 30 years.  It is fun to then use that information to prepare marketing messages that appeal to people’s sense of fun; at least to be interesting!  It’s fun to post applicable articles to my LinkedIn groups, which I also may use to explain some of what we do, and to meet new people who seek me out because they appreciate what I’ve shared.

On a personal level, it’s fun to me to represent a company that I firmly believe in.  I’ve worked in a variety of companies over the years, but never before have I worked with such a terrific group of people.  It’s a joy to me to get up each day and go to work to spread the tale of C.A. Walker.  We are in a “sweet spot” in this rough economy as far as our size (25 people), the value that we offer, and our consistent focus on client service.  And to add to my point about the importance of having fun, I work with a bunch of comedians.  We’re all the time joking and kidding with one another, while always making sure all is well with our projects.  I love it!

It’s fun to study what marketing ROI means and how businesses are working to apply it.  It’s fun to build my personal brand, Marketing ROI or DIE!  It’s especially fun to read when people respond to my posts that it’s helped them in some way. It’s fun to use Twitter (@MktgROIorDIE) to spread what I’m learning and to make new connections, such as when I attended the Licensing Expo in Vegas recently.  I met some really great people through the use of the #licexpo hash tag who I look forward to working with!

So whatever it is you do, rediscover your sense of fun in it.  Think through how you are helping others have fun in their lives, and utilize that in your marketing to increase your ROI.  Most importantly, laugh daily and find people to laugh with you.  It’s hard to laugh alone!

So what is channel development?  Channel development is about creating partnerships upline and downline that bring greater influence, strength and sales to those participating.  Channel marketing is creating propositions to potential partners, marketing to them, and then motivating/incentivizing them.  Channel Marketing Partners are typically vendors, manufacturers, distributors, resellers and retailers, working in cooperation.  They start with a deep understanding of their specific target market. They identify the customer’s business issues and develop an approach to addressing those issues, cooperatively building programs from the ground up. They then assemble the necessary pieces and package them into a solution. The goal is to get customers to buy into the total vision of the Channel Partners.

Designing a system that can manage the complex relationships in channels is no small feat.   In 2004,  CRM Today said that most PRM (partner relationship management) tools out there were like “putting wings on a bus.”  They tried to re-purpose the CRM and it simply did not work.   They share why:

“CRM is fundamentally designed to manage direct sales engagements between a sales representative and a buyer. This mode revolves around collecting and sharing data throughout the customer lifecycle.  PRM, on the other hand, is designed to manage a complex ecosystem comprising legally independent partner organizations. This one-to-many model revolves around aligning business processes across the entire value chain, from vendor, to partner, to customer.”

Today, there are a number of PRM options that are much more sophisticated and designed from the ground up to work for channel managers.  And somewhere along the way, PRM became TPM (trade promotion management) and the term “trade funds” became used for co-op marketing.

A 2008 study by the Consumer Goods Technology group finds that “While only 52 percent of companies in 2008 evaluated trade spending, more and more companies are attempting to implement trade promotion management (TPM) applications to improve TPM analysis in 2009.”  The reason that more companies haven’t taken on a TPM application is due to their complexity and cost.

Oh, and did I mention cost?  NewsFactor suggests that “Because trade promotion spending can reach 20% or more of sales, a very minimal percentage of improvement [from a TPM] can justify an entire project without reaching too far.”

They then go on to detail ways to lower the cost:  Roll it out slowly and to those who can benefit most, first. Get sales buy-in and usage early in the process. Use an SaaS.  Build real metrics. Eliminate your desire to build unique processes into the system.  Talk with other companies (i.e. software vendor user groups and references) who have implemented a TPM and learn from them. Don’t wait until it’s too late and you make mistakes.

“Many growing CP manufacturers can quickly get inundated with unexpected deductions or make poor decisions about promotions due to a lack of centralized visibility. Many growing manufacturers start facing challenges associated with managing trade promotions when they reach a dozen or more SKUs, or when they start negotiating with their first national retailer, or when they surpass the $10M mark in sales.”

Here are several offerings by TPM vendors to get you started:

• Purplewire’s ChannelSUITE
• Adesso Solutions’  TradeAdvantage™
  
• The Synetics Group’s TPM
• The MEI TPM
• The SAP TPM
  

The Channel Champion recently attended a TPMA conference (trade promotion marketing association) and found that the key metrics to evaluating channel effectiveness are:

• Budget to spend
• Net incremental sales
• ROI – consumption or shipment based
• ROI – variable and fixed margin
• Incremental spend

Add to that list those NewsFactor recommended:

• Promotion effectiveness
• Lift improvements
• Reductions in stock-outs.

As an aside, the company that I work with, C.A. Walker, can support marketing’s efforts in channel development in the following ways:

• Profile partners to identify new contract opportunities
• Measure partner “brand fit,” awareness, satisfaction, usage
• Test partner communications, incentives and promotions

I look forward to learning more about channel marketing developments and sharing them with you here.

trade promotion management (TPM)