Small Business Brand Advocates Drive Free WOMM Word of Mouth ~ Benefits of B2I2C Marketing

Image Credit @AskJamesHolmes Click image to read Gary Vaynerchuk and Guy Kawasaki on Brand Engagement

Big Brands and their Word of Mouth Experts insist that the only good word of mouth is free – and you should never compensate bloggers for their time or even hire brand advocates who can create ways your happy customers can spread the word about you.

If they can get small businesses to believe that, they will have the world all to themselves because THEY can afford huge budgets for advertising and they are national or international – and you can’t.

This is yet another case of what works for Fortune 500 / 1000
companies will NOT work for small business.
You are NOT Coca-Cola or McDonald’s.

You don’t have their brand recognition – and you aren’t going to get it by counting on what influencers can do in their “spare” time. [Hint: they are like you - they don't have any time to spare.]

Small business must pro-actively reach out to influencers
so they can promote your company!

You can not count on your customers to be effective evangelists because many of them are passive consumers and will not actively share anything – except when they’re really upset – and that is NOT the kind of sharing you want to see!

Even those customers who WILL recommend you will have limited reach –
BUT – and this is VERY IMPORTANT – they have high influence
with their friends, family and coworkers.

So you need a point of contact – your brand advocate – who provides them with easy ways to spread your message to those who will ACT on their recommendations – people they personally know who trust them!

Anything new and different starts out controversial, and turning your
company’s biggest fans into brand ambassadors is no exception.

The best Social Media Consultants – like Tamar Weinberg @Tamar -  are advising even traditional businesses to use Brand Evangelism to create passionate customers.

Forbes published her post about Brand Building where she explains how to leverage social media to expand your business. She wrote:

“You may want to have someone from your company act as a point of contact for your brand ambassador program. This task can be delegated to a community manager who corresponds directly with the evangelists and distributes special perks. The community manager should also keep an eye on the blog posts and other comments from your evangelists. Internally, the overhead is minimal because your “marketing” team has just been outsourced, clearing your company’s paid marketing team to work on more exciting projects.”

I like this infographic because it is a visual representation of the fact that most people are passive consumers – not promoters.

Image Credit: Mario Vellandi ~ Melodies in Marketing

Having a brand advocate continually seeking out the natural born promoters who love your cause, products or services and making it easy for them to rave about you is the least expensive way for a small business to increase visibility and income.

Your brand advocate will simultaneously be listening across social networks
and blogs for people who are your potential customers – and then sharing
one-on-one why they love you and how you can benefit that customer.

It is time to stand this whole advertising industry on its ear by becoming brand advocates and spreading the word about what we already love instead of letting only those who can afford to pay agencies for PR and advertising win.

Brand Evangelism

Just as I choose to be an influencer of influencers by seeking out the most brilliant social media savvy bloggers to collaborate with, I want to be the evangelist who finds your company’s greatest fans and gets them promoting YOU!

Find out more about what I can do to get Word of Mouth rolling for you in
Why Having a Brand Advocate Increases
Conversions, Customer Satisfaction and Profits

See my Case Study that clearly shows how pre-existing collaborations of influencers can quickly spread your message across Twitter:

• In less than an hour there were already 28 Retweets (RTs)
• At 24 hours Topsy shows 71 RTs
• Hit 100 RTs by noon Monday (4th day)
• 120 RTs when this post published on March 7 at 17:43 (6th day)
  
• CLICK THIS LINK >>> to Topsy to see the still growing RT total
  

Once a collaboration of bloggers exists that fits your location and niche – using my collaboration process – every time any one of those bloggers writes about you ALL of the others share that new content.

We have created a syndication system to benefit small businesses
and bloggers through blogging collaborations the way
traditional media uses AP or UPI to syndicate newspaper content.

And the best part about this for your non-profit, cause, or ethical small business is that you don’t have to know how to do anything to get this working for you. If your cause, product or service is something that we can believe in, this can work for you.

To get a good idea of what kind of people we want to benefit, see my list of the Recommended Brands I whole-heartedly endorse. There is a link to that page at the top of the center column (called a sidebar in blogger jargon) to make it easy to access any time.

DISCLAIMER: As of the publication date for this post I am NOT being paid and do NOT have ANY business relationship with ANY of the brands you see on that page. They are companies I believe are doing it right – and I want to promote them. I recommend them and will continue to recommend them whether or not I ever hear from them because they deserve it.

I know for a fact that we can greatly benefit them so I do hope they will at least
consider us – because they all deserve far more visibility to spread what they do.
By making them more successful we will be improving the economy,
creating jobs, and raising our collective standard of living.

Businesses must be wise about choosing influencers. As Social Media Strategist Mack Collier @MackCollier wrote in a post for @MarketingProfs, Are Companies Targeting the Wrong ‘Influencers’ With Social Media?:

“This is where companies should be investing their time if they want to
reach ‘influential’ people. Focus on your most passionate customers
that are active in social media, and reach out to them immediately.
‘Influential’ is fine, but influential and passionate
about your company is what you want.”

For agencies and those small businesses that can afford it there is FINALLY an exceptional solution for searching for the bloggers who fit your needs best and identifying which are the most influential: the GroupHigh Blog Outreach Solution.

GroupHigh allows you to search for blogs and bloggers by keywords, blog traffic, Pagerank, and LOCATION. It automatically removes blogs that have not published in six months and you can sort by traffic or Pagerank (and probably others – I’ll be reviewing it soon in more detail).

You have GOT to check them out – but, the bad news is their current offerings are priced beyond the range of bloggers and many small businesses. If you can afford though – or have an agency who can – there is nothing else like it.

They are the first tool to really make blog outreach research painless.  You’ll be hearing much more about them from me very soon. In the meantime, you can find out more about them in Susan Payton’s Small Business Trends review GroupHigh for Researching Bloggers.

Is YOUR cause or business one we would passionately promote?
Check out my recommended brands and the reasons they’re on there.
Find out if we want to build a coalition of awesome influential bloggers for you
Just pick up the phone and call, Skype, IM or tweet me any time.
See the contact tab for contact details.

Did you notice the title? Still wondering what B2I2C marketing is? Business to Influencer to Consumer.

Tagged as: blog outreach, blogger outreach, brand advocates, small business