By Mark Helfen
Content is king has reached buzzword status – the “phrase du jour” for digital marketing. But if everyone is creating piles of content, how does yours become noticed and effective. Effective, meaning it results in prospects entering the sales pipeline and eventually becoming customers.
According to Niki Hall, speaker at the June 9 SVForum Marketing SIG, you can “amplify” the effectiveness of your content by engaging the key influencers in your market. If content is king, Hall will extend you thinking to “context is queen,”, and “conversion is the ace.” Context is where and how prospects encounter your content. Conversion means a customer responds to the content and moves forward in the buying process.
Her presentation is titled Playing the Influence Game – Powerful Tools to Win The Hearts of Your Customers. She will give tips and strategies to implement your engagement program, with the intention of increasing conversion. With 60 to 70 percent of customers researching on-line before contacting your company, your content strategy needs to work well.
The meeting will be at our new and very nice location, Detati Digital Marketing, starting at the usual time of 6:30.
Hall is Vice President Corporate Marketing at Polycom, Inc. Polycom makes those cool star shaped speakerphones you've probably seen in many meeting rooms. The company has expanded their product offering to a much broader range, supporting human collaboration over a dispersed geography with the idea you can “defy distance.” Her range of responsibilities is also quite broad, including brand and reputation management, content strategies, and all web marketing. Her responsibility for analyst relations reflects both her background, and the essential ingredient for multiplying the effectiveness of marketing content.
Hall will bring her own guest with her - Zeus Kerravala, principle and founder of ZK Research, to give an analyst point of view.
She created Polycom’s influencer program, which was effective enough to win this year’s Influencer of the Year Award from SiriousDecisions. The award notes how the program “can help an organization drive more valuable influencer relationships and outcomes by using unique approaches to target and interact with both traditional and non-traditional influencer types.” Exactly what she will be giving tips and tools on at our meeting.
The right influencer can help validate your product or your company’s value proposition, and amplify your message. Hall relates one case with Polycom where conversion reached 70 percent, much higher than the typical 10 percent.
“But not all influencers are created equal,” said Hall. She looks for three criteria to decide on which analysts or influencers to engage: Customer reach, share of voice, and ability to reach the financial decision makers on Wall Street.
At Monday’s presentation, Hall will talk about the difference between influencing and engaging the analysts that can help you multiply the reach of your message. Her talk will include tips and tools on finding and identifying the right influencers, how to best engage them, and how they can help your marketing effort. And for a small startup, some help in getting noticed.
Please sign up:
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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.
He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: hlinkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen
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