Jeffrey K. Rohrs - AUDIENCE: marketing in the age of subscribers, fans and followers

Contents

Cover image: (top) iStockphoto/mahout; (bottom) iStockphoto/momcilog

Cover design: Elizabeth Kjeldsen

Copyright 2014 by ExactTarget, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ISBN: 978-1-118-73273-1 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-118-82556-3 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-82557-0 (ebk)

To the weird, wonderful, and loving audience that energizes me every single day, Jenny, Declan, & Bailey Kate.

And to the entire ExactTarget family, may you always be Orange.

j.k.r.

Foreword

I first met Jeff Rohrs back in 2004 when he was president of Optiem, a digital marketing agency in Cleveland, Ohio, and one of ExactTargets first reseller partners. His keen eye for business trends, passion for digital marketing, and sense of humor made an immediate impression on meand it wasnt long after that I found myself asking Jeff if hed be interested in joining our team. In 2007 he made the leap, and both of us couldnt have been happier with the results.

As producer of our award-winning SUBSCRIBERS, FANS & FOLLOWERS Research Series ( SFF ), Jeff was one of the first to highlight the fragmenting nature of consumer/brand relationships. Whereas many were taking a one-size-fits-all approach to their cross-channel marketing efforts, Jeff and his team were urging companies to better understand and meet the consumer expectations created by each channel. As the SFF research demonstrated, SUBSCRIBERS wanted different things than FANS and FOLLOWERSand vice versa.

In early 2013, Jeff approached us with a new ideaone that seemed revolutionary at the time but has proven to be true: Theres a hole in our marketing organizations. Advertising, brand, content marketing, demand generation, interactive marketing, product marketing, and sales all have leaders; but no one leader is responsible for building, engaging, and nurturing our proprietary audiences. Sure, there are great folks on the front lines of email, mobile, and social, each developing audiences specific to those channels. However, companies that dont have a singular voice to speak for the needs of proprietary audiences will be hard-pressed to deliver on the promise of todays convergent marketing technologiestrue one-to-one relationships with consumers across all channels.

AUDIENCE is a wake-up call for every company today. Before you acquire a customer ... before you can build a relationship ... there must first be an audience for you to address. Your company may be content simply buying advertising to reach audiences, but Jeff and our entire team see a different futureone in which companies embrace an asset-based approach to marketing and work to constantly improve the size, engagement, and value of their own proprietary audiences. This is not an either/or proposition. Paid, owned, and earned media can and should work together to produce more revenue at lower cost wherever possible. And thats the simple, powerful message of AUDIENCE : It is within our ability today to leverage data, permission, and technology to better sell to and serve consumers across all channels and devices.

Frankly, I dont think theres a more important book that companies can read today. Jeff has laid the groundwork for the responsible, long-term, profitable development of proprietary audiences. The structure you choose to build upon that foundation is up to you. However, if you build wisely, youll find yourself with a competitive advantage that will last for years to come.

Scott Dorsey ( @ScottDorsey )

CEO and Cofounder

ExactTarget, a salesforce.com company

Introduction: Why AUDIENCE?

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

Alfred North Whitehead

Welcome to the audience of AUDIENCE , the book! The moment you began flipping through these pages, you became a READER. Im hoping youll soon purchase a copy and graduate to my CUSTOMER audience.).

Ultimately, the choice is yours because youthe consumerdetermine whether or not to become a part of any audience. You are not owned . Your attention, action, and loyalty have to be earned by all those who want it.

Thats how it works today. We like, follow , and subscribe to our favorite brands, companies, and people any time we want. We usually do so when it brings us joy, saves us money, or provides us with timely information. As consumers, we are in control. We decide which audiences to join, leave, or ignore altogether.

Unfortunately, not all businesses appreciate this dynamic. They operate under the false assumption that paid media still rules the roost and provides all of the audiences needed to fuel their business. That may have been the case at one point in time, but no longer. Consider that as you read this, there are the following phenomena:

• A cookie (the edible kind) with over 34 million FANS on Facebook
• A landscape designer with over 3.5 million Pinterest FOLLOWERS
• An actor with 13 times the Twitter FOLLOWERS of his TV show
• An oral care startup with 100 times more YouTube SUBSCRIBERS than competitors with over 100 times the revenue
• A local restaurant with over 20,000 email SUBSCRIBERSover 500 of whom have restaurant-inspired tattoos