The Dip on influence

With Seth’s permission I’m reproducing a page of his most recent book, The Dip. I read it the day after I posted on the most important question. Spooky, but true…

Who am I trying to influence?

Are you trying to succeed in a market?

If you’re considering quitting, it’s almost certainly because you’re not being successful at your current attempts at influence. If you have called on a prospect a dozen times without success, you’re frustrated and giving up. If you’ve a boss who just won’t let up, you’re considering quitting your job. And if you’re a marketer with a product that doesn’t seem to be catching on, you’re wondering if you should abandon this product and try another.

If you’re trying to influence just one person, persistence has its limits. It’s easy to cross the line between demonstrating your commitment and being a pest. If you haven’t influenced him yet, it may very well be time to quit.

One person or organization will behave differently than a market of people will. One person has a particular agenda and a single worldview. One person will make up his mind and if you’re going to succeed, you’ll have to change it. And changing someone’s mind is difficult, if not impossible.

If you’re trying to influence a market, though, the rules are different. Sure, some of the people in a market have considered you (and even rejected you). But most of the people in the market have never heard of you. The market doesn’t have just one mind. Different people in the market are seeking different things.

Influencing one person is like scaling a wall. If you get over the wall the first few tries, you’re in. if you don’t often you’ll find that the wall gets higher with each attempt.

Influencing a market, on the other hand, is more of a hill than a wall. You can make progress, one step at a time, and as you get higher, it actually gets easier. People in the market talk to each other. They are influenced by each other. So every step of progress you make actually gets amplified.



Seth has also agreed to us using the above text as a pseudo-foreword for the book, which is due out late November. It’s just a tad galling that Seth writes in one page what we take 230 pages to say – gnash! At least we have case studies...

Needless to say, you should read The Dip in its entirety.

Influencer marketing in a nutshell

Try this.

It's what influencer marketing is all about.

Marketers - please read this!

If you're a marketer, or ask the marketing department to do things for you, then read this.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/08/is-good-enough-.html

Then think, and act, differently.

No, … and yes

Seth writes a neat couple of posts on the observation that some people just say no. it doesn’t seems to matter what the issue is, they just resist it. There is a natural inclination of many, particularly in a business setting, to preserve the status quo, even when it’s mad to do so.

So what to do about the Nos? One method is to target the Yeses, those people that do want to change.

What’s this got to do with Influencer Marketing? Simply, that Nos equate to detractors and Yeses are promoters or advocates. You can use promoters of your products or services (assuming you know who they are) to outweigh the detractors. This approach is at the heart of the Net Promoter Score concept.

In fact, most influencers are neither promoters not detractors. They just call it as they see it. One day they’ll be arguing for you and the next for someone else. Why is this? Because influencers don’t care about you. They have their own agendas, and they are different from yours.

There is a difference between influence and advocacy. Advocacy tends to erode influence, because the more one advocates the less independent they appear. The best form of advocacy (best = most benign) is where an influencer advocates a strategy or position, which is subsequently adopted by a vendor. Influencers like this, because it demonstrates their influence, and they can use it as an example when they are influencing others.

Brands are an outcome

I’ve just finished the major part of the book we’re doing, published by Butterworth-Heinemann. Hence the long gap between the last post and this. So expect more content from now on.

Anyway, one of the research themes we look at is the influence of brand on decision making. Did you know that there is no research available that supports the assertion that “building the brand” leads to more sales? None.

In simple terms, this means that any money pumped into branding is unlikely to translate into business success. This, presumably, would include the hilarious London Olympics 2012 pink splodge. Spookily, Seth Godin comments on more or less the same thing here.

But if brand is not a prerequisite for success, what is it? Firstly, brand is a consequence of success. Google is successful, so its brand becomes trusted. Secondly, brand is a measure of trust and expectation, not awareness. Anyone can get awareness is they spend enough. Ford is well-known – does it have trusted brand? (Answer: not if business success is the measure.)

Finally, it’s interesting to see how fragile a brand is, only as robust as the product or service quality it represents. In the UK, the banks are taking an absolute pasting on their charging regimes, and it seems that the US banks are having a few problems too. The trust with which we approach banks is being severely dented. And I predict that the first bank to promise no more unfair charges will be deluged with new custom, irrespective of their current brand status.

Time to try something new

Seth blogs on why firms refuse to change, when it would actually be the best thing for them. Business as usual seems the safe thing to do.

My pet topic, The Insanity of Marketing, refers to the unwillingness of marketers to change while trying to achieve different results. But what if the game changes? Doesn’t this mean that marketers have to change anyway?

One of my clients told me that their PR budgets have been cut by one third. Ouch! Irrespective of the initial size of the budget (big, since you ask), one third is a big chunk. And yet, my client is expected to deliver the same service as before.

It’s madness. Insane. If your budget gets cut by one third, don’t even try to do what you did before. It’s time to try something new.

Good news for our clients!

I’m a big fan of Seth Godin and his ravings on marketing and why firms must be remarkable in order to succeed. (Read Purple Cow for the full story.)

Paradoxically, Seth says that remarkable firms and products appeal not to mass markets but to early adopters. There’s more value in early adopters, as they seek to establish competitive advantage. Once something becomes adopted by the mass market it becomes boring and undifferentiating. (This was what Nicholas Carr was saying in “IT doesn’t matter.)

Over at the Analyst Equity blog, Duncan Chapple publishes results from a survey of AR professionals. He draws attention to the things that AR people are not interested in, one of which is “Understanding the wider influencer community”.

Phew! I’m delighted that understanding the wider influencer community is so low down the agenda of most AR folks. It means that those that are adopting Influencer Marketing are creating real competitive advantage. Which is what I’ve being telling them. It’s great when data supports the pitch.