Want More Customers? Grasp These 5 Truths...

Right now, CEOs and company executives worldwide are desperately trying to wrap their heads around market share. In particular, their loss of it. Doesn’t matter what you sell, the information age has created a major disruption in every company’s ability to amass AND keep clients.

Customers overwhelmed by choice seek TRUST to make their decision.

In a time where consumers can find information for any product or service online, as well as find the cheapest option for everything, there’s a clear customer migration to buying from service providers they TRUST.

A study on major purchases shows 81% of consumers do research online first.

Everyone knows you can sell your product well. What they need to know is that you are a trusted source in the industry, because that makes your product sell itself. A huge struggle to creating captivating content for your audience, is first understanding the key pain points they are facing. If you can provide education that helps them with that pain, you win.

It’s called having “influence” – and it’s what will help you win the customer acquisition battle.

Having influence within a specific customer segment means building trust over a long period of time. It also means staying top of mind so when they’re ready to buy or refer your product or service, yours is the company they’d select.

“People don’t want to be sold to all the time — especially younger generations. They are very turned off by someone always selling to them, and they know there’s information on the web that can help them make better decisions,” explains John Hall, CEO of Influence & Co. “Companies should all strive to be the place providing information to people to help them make better decisions in their area.”

Don’t believe it? Check out these stats from Roper Public Affairs:

• 80 percent of business decision makers prefer to get company information from articles rather than an advertisement.
• 70 percent indicate that content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company.
• 60 percent feel that company content helps them make better product purchase decisions.

If influence is the secret to earning trust and acquiring customers, then here’s what every CEO needs to know about building company influence:

#1 Influence can’t be faked (anymore).

Influencing a customer’s decision can’t be bought anymore. Hall explains why:

“Many people want to take the easy way out and settle for the perception of influence, rather than truly earned influence. Companies fluff up reports by saying, ‘We got millions of impressions or this many views.’

A view or an impression is not a way to influence and build a relationship with a potential customer. People think you can fake it, but in order to truly build influence that affects behavior, you have to earn it.

You have to consistently engage in insightful conversations in the industry, and you have to lead the industry by bringing up ideas, perspectives, and topics that have not yet been shared. Most companies lack an effective strategy to gain influence and then don’t put the resources toward it that it deserves.”

To earn true influence, companies need:

1. An effective strategy or a blueprint of the business goals it’s trying to achieve, who it’s trying to influence, and how it’s going to add value.
2. External content (stories or articles on sites other than its own) to reach new audiences and add credibility to its message.
3. On-site content (original articles, contributions from other industry experts, and industry news) to nurture visitors, prospects, and current customers coming to its site — and give them a reason to consistently come back.
4. An offer or a reason to compel visitors to exchange their personal information for access. The company needs to get visitors to follow, subscribe, and make the company’s site part of their habitual content destinations.
5. Support from its other departments to leverage the content.

#2 Earning influence can give you an uncatchable lead in the customer acquisition race.

Most of the time, companies don’t have the focus, resources, or expertise to do this effectively. However, when a company puts the right amount of resources toward building influence, it’s remarkable what it can do.

Look at HubSpot as an example. The company earned influence in the inbound marketing world and has had skyrocketing growth compared to others in its industry. Now, its competitors are trying to bridge the huge gap in influence. However, HubSpot made the investment to do it right, and it’s seeing the long-term benefits as an industry influencer among small businesses and marketers.

#3 - You don't have to be a great writer to earn influence.

As Hall points out, “Many CEOs see the columns of Richard Branson and Tony Hsieh and think, ‘I could never do that because I’m a terrible writer.’ The secret is that many leaders are bad writers.

Unless you’re running a content company, people aren’t paying you for your writing ability — they’re paying you for the knowledge and expertise that makes your product or service the best. One of the reasons we started Influence & Co. was to specifically help companies extract their knowledge and present it in a way that resonates with a target audience while maintaining a unique voice.”

#4 Age matters. Know your audience and build influence accordingly.

Truly understand your audience. If you’re trying to influence college students, don’t assume you should be published in Forbes. Get in front of your audience on the sites they’re already frequenting and reading. Very few companies reach all age groups — or should treat all age groups as their audience. Hall says:

Companies should create personas to understand what messaging makes sense for their different audiences. If they discover that they serve people under the age of 20 and over the age of 60, then they should have two completely different personas, as well as matching strategies to reach each of those audiences.

In some cases, companies should even consider creating microsites that talk to each of those audiences individually, instead of trying to generalize their home page to appear to be everything to everyone. Put a lot of thought into who is reading it and what will be most valuable to them. Most likely, your different potential customer groups have far different pains and needs, so you shouldn’t try to create generic information that ends up being valuable to no one.”

#5 Earning influence is a ‘6-for-the-price-of-1’ business opportunity.

When you actively focus on building influence, many different parts of your business benefit, such as:

• Top talent recruitment. People want to work for the best. The more influence you have, the better your chances of attracting and keeping top talent.
• PR opportunities. The days of being covered in TechCrunch and having your site go down because you have too many click-throughs are gone. You have to gain real influence and create your own “watering hole” onsite so people find and visit your page, considering it a trusted source for information.
• Social channel content. Sharing how awesome your company is all the time doesn’t go very far. You need to share knowledge that people get value from so they become brand advocates and share your information with their networks.
• Lead generation. Spending the time to gain influence isn’t going to result in a great short-term benefit in lead generation. However, in the long run, the leads will be high-quality and will consistently increase as you build influence.
• Sales support materials. Equip your sales team so that when they come across a sales barrier, they can share a piece of content that doesn’t promote but instead educates the prospect and solves his pain point or objection.

• Executive branding. It’s starting to become assumed that the key employees at your company should have solid personal brands. If they don’t, they are probably already behind your competitors or aren’t doing their jobs as leaders to represent the company well. It’s not about ego — it’s about the importance of effective leadership. Check out the 8 tried-and-true steps for positioning your company’s key individuals as industry influencers.

In short, failing to focus on earning influence is hurting your productivity and profitability company-wide. You’re wasting a key opportunity to become a go-to resource for your audience.

PS – It’s going to get a lot tougher to leverage influence.

As more companies come to understand the need to earn the trust of customers to acquire and keep them, the market will get crowded with content. How will you rise above the noise? The sooner you get started, the better winning the battle for attention and influence

Think of all the executives that said, “social media is just a fad” that are now hustling (and struggling) to embrace the power of it?

Influence is the next big thing – don’t miss the train!

If you want to read more of what I've written, check out my articles on Inc.com.

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Have we met? My name is J.T. O'Donnell, and my company makes it easier for businesses and professionals to find each other. Our site, CAREEREALISM, is the job board alternative. We showcase company stories to the 800,000+ passive job seekers who visit our site so you can attract the best talent. [We just created the most comprehensive FREE eCourse on how to use company storytelling to build your Employment Brand. You can access it HERE >> ]

Here's more on the subject of storytelling for employment branding. These are some of my recent articles:

5 Things Great Companies Aren't Afraid to Reveal

#1 Way Top Talent Will Be Stolen in 2015

Why Employment Branding is the New "Going Green"

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