Measuring The Marketing Vortex

Being out on my own has given me the unique opportunity to start thinking about how I market myself - and how I might measure that. There are a couple of interesting things that have some good cross-over best practices for any kind of marketing. Because I am embedded in the social media/community world, I have not used traditional methods at all (i.e. sending out resumes, cold calling/emailing, etc) - other than creating a pipeline of prospects that evolve into concrete opportunities.

To me the new social marketing methods are about creating a marketing vortex (this is not a new idea - HubSpot and New Marketing Labs call this 'Inbound Marketing'). But I like the image of a vortex - you want to create an audience compelled to move into your field of view and then compelled to egaged with you. Personally, my audience was pulled in through my blog, Twitter, speaking engagements, events, and work relationships. That audience is the people on my pitch. Generally speaking, they are there to play the same game I am. I can count the number of people on my pitch even if I cannot identify them by name.

The next step is engaging with the people on your pitch. This takes the form of pageviews, Twitter conversations, comments, and conversations at events. The people I engage with show an increase in interest in the areas I care most about. I can count them. In my opinion it would be a mistake to weed any of these people out because they do not have an opportunity for me or are interested in areas that are not 100% aligned with mine. It's a mistake to ignore them mostly because I learn a lot from them but also because you cannot know when a situation with any of those people will change.  I also never directly ask this crowd for opportunities - I'm mostly interested in encouraging more engagement. These are cool leads in the world of marketing but this is actually the area of richest opportunity - these people will make connections for me that I don't even know exist. Those connections might simply be sharing one of my blog posts with a colleague. Regardless, these are the people that will increase the number of people on my pitch. Immensely valuable.

The tension in the vortex continues to increase when I start having a relationship with someone. I've had multiple conversations, I've likely met them, and we always get something out of speaking to each other. How does that conversion happen? More touch points. Here's where I think corporate marketing can learn something from personal relationships. Transitioning people from people you engage with to people who are really interested in what you are doing is not about getting them to read more of your blog, whitepapers or attend more webinars. That can certainly be part of it but most of this relationship building comes from less formal interaction. Tweetups, BBQs, lunches, breakfasts, and one-on-one interactions are really what move the relationship forward. Why? Because you are not just using their time to tell them something - you are developing a give and take. Listening and responding. Referring them to others (because you don't do everything...really). That give and take is absolutely essential in building trust. If you just try and force people through the tunnel the way you want it to work you make people uncomfortable by reducing their control over the situation. This also doesn't need to be expensive to do - just create opportunities to casually interact. This will help create your inner circle. But not everyone in your inner circle is necessarily a lead - but they are likely a fan.  You can count these people.

And how do you get conversion? If you do all of the above well, opportunity will come to you. If it doesn't, you are not selling something people want and need to rethink your product. Practice will help you understand how many conversions you get based on the size of your pitch...no one else can tell you that because your product and service are unique (unless you are selling a commodity in which case you shouldn't be considering using social marketing). If you have a huge number of people on your pitch, a product targeted at those people, and low conversion you likely have a product issue. Nothing new but in the traditional marketing approach you could often mask product issues by spending more on marketing. That world has not gone away but will slowly disappear over time for markets with plenty of competition.

I don't think I am describing anything a lot of us don't already realize. I think the challenge is transitioning tradtional marketing departments from the formal to the more interactive and transitioning market expenses from big formal, expensive campaigns to people that spend time forming relationships. Paricularly for large companies, that can be a disruptive process and the people skilled an formal programming are not always the same as people skilled at relationship building so it's not just changing your perspective it means changing resources, changing the tool set, changing policies, and changing the expectations of the rest of the organization. Not easy and in this economic climate it is likely the capacity does not exist to make a complete transition so you need to find specific product lines or market segments that are more likely to benefit from a conversational approach. But don't say it isn't measurable - it is the traditional marketing funnel, just with different activities.

Photos by fatcontroller & Gobbo1000

Comments

[Mimi Meredith]

While you may not have described anything people don't realize, it's something many fail to practice in their headlong rush toward getting a sale. Not only do those relationships built at the vortex center lead to better sales opportunities, they provide friendships and relationships that sustain as we do what we do. Thank you for empowering us to see social networking as steps to the ultimate goal--knowing one another through human contact.