Factors of Influence

Duncan Brown at Influencer 50 posted a blog today where he discusses the effectiveness of sponsored conversations (paid media) as a credible form of influence.

In a comment, I offered that at SAP we have found that there are generally three factors that combine to have a very powerful form of influence on most any decision. The three factors are: Awarness, Reputation and Experience. I detail this more in a blog post from last year.

Paid media (through advertising or sponsored conversations) and unpaid media (through traditional media and blogger relations) are great for generating broad awareness for companies and important industry issues.  However, awareness alone (regardless of the channel) will not entirely influence or motivate one to take action (e.g. purchase or engage).

This is where experience comes in. We have found that ‘experience’ is perhaps the single most important and credible factor that influences any individual or community to take action.  This this is very hard to ‘buy.’

Experience (good or bad) is authentic and extremely credible. This is were Duncan makes an excellent point that companies should focus on generating advocacy by creating remarkable products and services.

The more that companies can generate advocacy/endorsement based on the positive ‘experience’ of their products and/or services through their key stakeholder groups (e.g. customers, partners, employees, etc.) the better situated they are to establish a movement that will increase competitive advantage and/or other desirable results.

Comments

[Duncan Brown]

Thanks for the link, Don. The 'remarkable' reference is straight out of Seth Godin's Purple Cow, so no credit for me for that. What confuses/saddens me is that marketers with unremarkable products think they can (or must) buy attention, rather than re-engineering their products or (more easily) their product marketing. You can make unremarkable products remarkable through positioning, success stories, customer service, add-on services, and so on.

Re experience, what's vital is capturing that experience, both good and bad. The good informs future customers, the bad informs your internal strategy and customer service.