By Elizabeth Boineau
Marketing Matters

“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”

–Ferdinand Foch, French field marshal, World War I

The concept of using key influencers and/or opinion leaders to get the word out about your brand is not new, but it’s gaining fuel of late. Small business owners and corporate types alike all struggle with how to rise above the din of constant competitive distractions that vie for the attention of often the very same audience.

Just how many can get through at once and make a difference? How many can change the opinion, attitude and ultimately behavior that leads to the selection of your product or service over a competitor’s? Which brand has the power to set the soul afire and cause a prospective customer to fervently seek your brand rather than all the other choices on the horizon? Better yet, to seek it out again and again?

Likely it is the one that has been tried and proven true by those at the top of their game, and their endorsement, paid and unpaid, can move millions.

The best example is the celebrity endorsement. Having experience with them from my stint with a big Los Angeles agency, I assure you that’s not what I’m recommending for many, if any, businesses is the Charleston area. Headliner celebrities can max a budget quickly and a number of them can be very challenging to work with, so I’d stick with the homegrown, down-to-earth variety, the one you know from that local board, gym, church or otherwise.

Getting an influential person to try your product, even in testing, has been shown to automatically create deep loyalty that readily passes on to that new loyalist’s circle of influence and can ignite sales, simply through implied endorsement.

That nod/pat/wink for your brand races point-to-point, even more so these days with the Internet as such a prevalent high-speed channel of connectivity.

The power of influence and its impact on sales is documented in studies that gave rise in the 1930s to a psychological phenomenon known as the Hawthorne Effect. Through research and/or seeding trials—seeding a product pre-launch through exposure to a select group, often in a small, homogenous focus group discussion—researchers at Harvard University Business School found that participants in small group trials had a strong preference for the products they tested simply because of the positive effect that being asked to take part in that exclusive test made them feel toward that product and/or organization.

Those now-ubiquitous Post-it notes survived based initially on seeding trials after the early-stage concept had been deemed fairly useless by some members of 3M management.

Boxes of the product in all sizes and colors were sent to administrators in the company who were asked to think of uses for them. Seeds of Post-it Notes quickly turned into giant trees and became a runaway success, fueled by the giddy employees who participated in the trial. A star brand was born thanks to that zealous and influential group of employees who went well past just interested.

British author E.M. Forster once said, “One person with passion is better than 40 people merely interested.”

Since we live in a world of instant connections that fuel the spread of information, there’s very little choice but to leverage the connections we have, personal and professional, to increase the chance that your brand is top-choice.

It starts with identifying your own key circle of influence. Some small companies even tap an informal advisory board/committee to help guide their business success.

That group of cheerleaders is asked to listen out for concerns, watch for shifts in the marketplace and to trumpet your brand at every opportunity. When recruiting influencers and/or attracting prospects through other traditional marketing tools, it’s essential that their experience with your product or service consistently exceeds expectations, and ultimately sets their soul afire with passion for your brand.

Elizabeth L. Boineau runs E. Boineau & Company, a Charleston-based strategic marketing communications and public relations firm. She can be reached at eboineau@eboineauandco.com.

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