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Brand Ambassadors , Influencers, Brand Advocates ,

>To borrow a marvelous phrase from Peter Drucker, “converting need into demand”. On the face of it, this sounds simple: just figure out what audience want and give it to them. But if it’s so easy, why don’t we see more success stories like the Ipod? eBay? Facebook? The answer is that we need to return human beings to the centre of the story. We can’t make experiences without people.

Consider these facts:

“90% of the consumers read online reviews, and 83% say reviews influence their buying decisions” (Channel Advisor, 2011)

“69% of local consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations” (Bright Local, 2010)

 

Marketing is changing
When you think about social media interactions, they are very similar to the everyday interactions you have.

People care about what their friends think. You care about what your friends do, where your friends go, what brands your friends like, what your friends think and what your friends feel. Everyday life is about our friends and our everyday life is influenced by businesses, brands and experiences our friends have.

The same types of experiences people are having in their everyday life- they are sharing online. For the first time ever, people are bringing their true identity online. People are checking into places on Facebook, engaging with brands on Twitter and sharing Youtube videos.

Power of Influencers
According to Meteor Solutions the type of friends, fans and followers a brand gathers on social media sites matters more than the actual number of fans. On average, approximately 1% of a site’s audience generates 20% of all its traffic through sharing of the brand’s content. They can directly influence 30% or more of overall end actions on brand websites by recommending the brand’s site, products or promotions to friends.

Sponsored Stories
Facebook’s ad revenue last year totaled $1.86 billion. Their holy grail of branding, “Sponsored Stories” get 50 million “likes” a day. Nielsen shows the ads have a 68% recall, with users twice as likely to remember a brand and four times as likely to take action. The program represents a shift in the Facebook strategies for brands and the power of endorsers of brands.

7 Steps to Targeting Brand Ambassadors

1. People trust companies less so with the rise of social media you can create brand advocates who generate word of mouth for you. According to eMarketer.com (April 2011), 53% of people are likely to purchase the brand or company’s products after they follow them on social media platforms.

2. Social media analytics tools such as Traackr, Radian6 and ObjectiveMarketer enable businesses to quickly identify with precision brand advocates measuring website traffic, clicks on campaign links or conversions. This assists you to identify who your influencers are and how much of an impact they have on your traffic and sales leads.

3. Think of your key influencers as a creative asset. By directly engaging one influencer with exclusive opportunities, special offers, and unique content, you are indirectly engaging thousands of other people who are part of this influencer’s social sphere.

4. Create a strong social media content strategy to engage your influencers. This involves carefully planning, developing, delivering and managing information on the web. You need great content to be indexed by both search engines and social media. An excellent content strategy helps businesses achieve their goals by getting wider search engine exposure and driving maximum traffic to their websites and social media platforms.

5. Spreading the message, the importance of storytelling: communicating your brands value to influencers in such a way, that some of them want to go out and buy it. An experience that unfolds over time, engages participants, and allows them to tell their own stories. At the heart of any good story is a central narrative about the way and idea satisfies a need in a powerful way.

6. Content is King. Aggregate the User Generated Content created on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc. onto your website. The way in which consumer generated content works depends on a variety of factors including: content contribution and sharing needs of the audience, ability to create or update content management systems, a sound strategic plan and building a strong and engaged community.

7. It’s a marriage, not a date. This means you must be consistent in terms of engaging with your audience. Providing direct value to your influencers is the most important part of building a relationship. This can be achieved by studying social media analytics to gain an understanding of what content influencers are likely to share. Some may prefer discounts or special deals via Facebook while others may prefer videos shared on Twitter. You can measure the influence of your brand advocates using tools like Klout.

Brands will have to tell their story in a compelling way if it is to make itself heard. There is still a role for advertising, but less as a medium for blasting messages at people than as a way of helping turn its audience into brand advocates who act as storytellers themselves. Anyone who has a positive experience with a brand should be able to communicate its essential elements in a way that encourages other people to interact and sample the brand for themselves.