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Finding the 10% of your market already sold on your product…

Written by: Brian Beehler

Article Overview: Social Media networks are the new marketing channel of choice for cutting edge firms across all sectors. However, to use this medium, it is imperative that your marketing message reaches out to the influencers or “Passionistas”.

Finding the 10% of your market already sold on your product…

This post is in reference to my April 9th post - “Blue Print” for change, personalizing your brand

Step 1 - Identifying your target audience

Now that your committed to “personalizing your brand”, you can now identify your target audience. This is an exercise familiar to any traditional marketing executive. The identification of a target audience will help you focus your “Mass Media” and “My Media” marketing efforts on their interests, personalities and overall needs.

Social Media networks are the new marketing channel of choice for cutting edge firms across all sectors. However, to use this medium, it is imperative that your marketing message reaches out to the influencers or “Passionistas”. A term defined by Yahoo in a study “Passionistas: The New Empowered Consumers“, passionistas are the most influential groups of users online. They are motivated by actively sharing their ideas, opinions and thoughts and tend to attract others users to the content they have discovered online. By cultivating relationships with passionistas, consumer opinions about your brand could be shaped and get people talking. Social Media is a source of conversation that can be tracked, measured and managed; all you have to do is listen. Passionistas should be your target audience they are not only likely to buy your product or service but also increase sales through the word-of-mouth.

Identifying Passionistas

Passionistas are specific to market segments, and are used as ambassadors to the entire target market. I have read several books on identifying market influencers and the one that I think suits our purpose is Keller and Berry’s (The Influentials, Free Press, 2003) In the book they propose five attributes of a passionista (in their words Influencers):

• Activists: passionistas get involved, with their communities, political movements, charities and so on.
• Connected: passionistas have large social networks.
• Impact: passionistas are looked up to and are trusted by others.
• Active minds: passionistas have multiple and diverse interests.
• Trendsetters: passionistas tend to be early adopters (or leavers) in markets.

These five attributes proposed by Keller and Berry should help you identify who are your potential passionistas. By focusing your find you’ll be able to better understand if a passionista meets your target audience criteria.

Once you have determined your potential passionistas you’ll now have to rank them according to their overall impact to your market segment. Here is a model that you could use that could give you guidance:

1. What are the number of people can a passionista connect with?
This could be measured by the number of people commenting on a passionista’s blog, video, or any other online content they have posted.

2. Is the opinions and views of the passionista held in high regard?
This could be measured by tracking their conversations and giving a sentiment value.

3. Does the passionista have the ability to influence buying decisions?
This could be measured by evaluating the number of opportunities they have persuaded consumers to go to a particular site, brand or even product.

4. Does the passionista have a direct connection with potential buyers?
This could be measured by degrees of separation between a passionista and the buyer. The closer they are to the potential buyer the more likely they’ll be able to influence them to buy. It is said that everyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. See if you can narrow your list to the 1st or 2nd degree…

There is probably more that I could write concerning this step but for now I leave you with this thought from Graham Brown from mobileYouth.org, “Stop wasting your time on trying to convert the unconverted. Find the 10% of your market already sold on your product and give them something to care about.” - need I say more…

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Article Tags: activists, ambassadors, charities, consumer opinions, free press, ideas opinions, market influencers, market segments, marketing channel, marketing efforts, mass media, media networks, new marketing, personalities, social networks, step 1, target audience, target market, traditional marketing, word of mouth



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