Engaged Brands and the Rise of Trust-Based Marketing
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The document discusses the evolution of marketing strategies from traditional methods to trust-based marketing in the digital era, emphasizing the importance of engagement with influencers and social touchpoints. Companies that successfully leverage credible third-party influencers gain a competitive edge, particularly those among the Fortune 500. The study highlights how influential brands utilize blogs and social media to enhance their influence and build trust with consumers.
Engaged Brands and the Rise of Trust-Based Marketing
- 1. Engaged Brands And the Rise of Trust-Based Marketing
- 2. 2 Introduction: Engaged Brands In pre-internet days, the buyer’s process was fairly straightforward: stimulus, shelf, experience. A stimulus sparked a buyer’s interest in a product leading the individual to a store or to call a salesperson to make the purchase. The journey ended with the individual experiencing the product. There were very few places where a brand could intersect with the buyer. Today’s purchasing journey, whether for a consumer product or complex business purchase, has infinitely more touchpoints where a brand and buyer might intersect. The most trusted touchpoints are socially-driven: recommendations and other consumers’ opinions are more highly trusted than any brand, or even editorial, content. A company increases the likelihood that a buyer will find and develop trust within a touchpoint by converting them to trust points™, which is achieved through engagement with influencers. The following brief study illustrates how today’s most influential brands in the FORTUNE 500 are also the most engaged brands that best leverage the power of credible third-party influencers rather than relying heavily on more traditional news sources to amplify the brand message. Their success is aided by inserting trust into the purchasing journey. Therein lies the power of influence marketing. Data for this study were obtained on May 1, 2013 and are based on data 60 days prior to that date.
- 3. FORTUNE 500 Top 15 Most Influential Brands 3 122 97 113 51 83 104 87 221 106 210 282 353 378 387 368 266 307 301 415 384 375 417 597 788 1035 1010 1866 1843 2455 2508 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 News Engagement Net Influence Score For the more influential brands, blogs & social make up a larger share of the sources driving the brand’s influence.
- 4. News is a constant source of influence: Social and blogs are the differentiator 4 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 Engagement News Net Influence Score Most brands have a comparable percentage of news driving the Net Influence Score
- 5. 5 56% 66% 44% 34% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% Blog News % of source Net Influence Score: 232 Net Influence Score: 818 For more influential brands, blogs make up the largest share of the sources 1 9 No. of bloggers within the Top 20 influencers
- 6. Bloggers are more subjective than the more “formal” influencers “His Ford dealer was unable to find an abnormal diagnostic code that had been logged, and Richard claims he was told to come back if the light came back.” – Sebastian Blanco, via Autoblog “For starters, the base Ford coupe is expected to carry on with V6 power, likely from the same 3.7-liter unit found in today's car.” – Steven Ewing, via Autoblog “And judging by the once-overs and questions locals and visitors asked us about the Ford Fusion Energi, latent interest already exists.” – Leon Kaye, via Triple Pundit “What is likely to be even better news for Ford Fiesta buyers is the likelihood the little car will stretch even further – without much performance sacrifice – when the maker adds the new 1.0-liter EcoBoost engine to the Fiesta line-up later this year.” – Paul Eisenstein, via TheDetroitBureau “The third step is particularly important because if Ford can ensure that its production matches with the demand, most of the losses will be cut.” – Jacob Steinberg, SeekingAlpha.com “Ford Mustang is a symbol of freedom and optimism that allows you to be the person you dream of being, making it the perfect fit for this story.” – Jim Farley, EVP, Marketing and Sales, Ford via Variety “Prime Minister Julia Gillard has blamed the high Australian dollar for many of the sector's problems, which manifested themselves recently in the announcement by Ford that it would withdraw from local automobile production.” – Julia Gillard, PM of Australia via TradingCharts.com “It costs the company four times as much to make a car in Australia as it does in its Asian divisions.” – Bob Graziano, President of Ford Australia, via Mining Weekly “(Ford) had full faith in the Indian growth story and was confident that its contribution to the company’s business in the Asia Pacific business region in the coming decades would create enough disposable income in India and China to fuel demands for vehicles.” – Alan Mulally, CEO, Ford, via Financial Chronicle “Ford's retail market share year-to-date vehicles sold to consumers rather than commercial customers and car rental companies is approaching 8.5% in California, an increase of two percentage points over the last year…” – Ken Czubay, VP of sales and marketing, via LA Times Sample Blogger Opinions Bloggers are more likely to become brand advocates, but also more likely to be brand detractors. Sample Non-Blogger Opinions 6
- 7. How Appinions Analyzes Influence About Appinions Appinions is an opinion-based influence marketing platform designed to give companies the unmatched ability to identify, analyze, engage, monitor and measure influencers. Built on more than a decade of Cornell University research, Appinions extracts and aggregates opinions from more than 6 million sources including blogs, social networks, forums, and newspaper and magazine articles, thus providing a more complete picture of influence. By analyzing opinions, Appinions can focus on the thought-leaders most capable of impacting a conversation. Who is an Influencer? Appinions defines an influencer as a person, brand or company who expresses a contextually relevant opinion that is meaningful enough to elicit action from others. How is Influence calculated? Appinions calculates individual influence scores based on an influencer’s opinions for a given topic. Scores are determined by the following criteria: • Frequency of actions the opinions generate; • Credibility of the publications in which the opinions appear; and • Diversity of publications carrying the opinions. Appinions calculates influence at the topic level to understand the relative influence of different topics. About Net Influence Score (NIS) Appinions calculates topic influence scores, or the Net Influence Scores, based on the following criteria: • Influence scores of each individual within the topic; and • Number of trust impressions created by each influencer on that topic. Trust impressions are driven and derived by what influencers are saying and the subsequent actions taken by the audience. 7
- 8. 8 Contact Us! To learn more about Appinions and our modular approach to produce trust points™ that optimize your marketing efforts, contact us at [email protected] or +1 646-532-3062. Web: www.appinions.com Twitter: @appinions LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/appinions Launch Marketing Earned Display Corporate Social Responsibility Content Marketing Executive Influence Event Optimization