AUDIENCE(12)

As the series progressed, many of the “geeks” Len profiled turned into AMPLIFIERS, sharing news of the series (www.GeekAWeek.net) with friends around the world. The amplification helped Len not only land additional interviews with the legendary Stan Lee (@TheRealStanLee) and Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin; it also helped him sign on partners to manufacture and sell actual Geek A Week card sets.

With the fourth set of Geek A Week cards now under his belt, Len has seen firsthand the power of AMPLIFIERS—and approaches every new project with the goal of ensuring that he produces something exciting for them to share.





The Double-Edged Sword of AMPLIFIERS


The primary value of AMPLIFIERS is clear: They extend your brand’s reach and content distribution at no cost to you. They can also help drive SEEKERS to your website, blog, or mobile app, and encourage others to become JOINERS. We must not forget, however, that AMPLIFIERS can also be bad for business. As Andy Sernovitz (@sernovitz), author of Word of Mouth Marketing, puts it:

Happy customers are your greatest advertisers.11

Unfortunately, the corollary is also true:

Unhappy customers are your worst advertisers.

If you’re going to engage AMPLIFIERS, you must prepare for the inevitable day that one of them turns on you by writing a bad review on Yelp, tweeting about poor customer service, or—God forbid—posting pictures of sewage flowing down the walls of their luxury cruise cabin.12 Social media plays no favorites. It can turn any customer with a smartphone into a reporter and any consumer with an axe to grind—legitimate or not—into a cause célèbre.

As a result, your PR team has a huge stake in developing your company’s proprietary audiences. It is not enough to just push consumers to amplify content about your brand. When a brand crisis hits and “it’s all gone Pete Tong,”e you need audiences other than AMPLIFIERS and SEEKERS to help tell your side of the story. You need audiences that are just a push button away.

Enter the JOINERS.





JOINERS


Make no mistake about it; JOINERS are the most valuable audiences you can build for your company. They are the foundation of all permission marketing, because they are your push-button audiences (i.e., you initiate contact).





What JOINERS Want


JOINERS are the people who buy your products, work with your company, or put their hands up and say, “I want to hear from you!” They like, follow, pin, register, and subscribe to receive information that is of interest to them; and in so doing, they selectively open the communication channels they use to your messaging. You may know JOINERS better by these familiar names:

CUSTOMERS

DINERS

DONORS

EMPLOYEES

FANS

FOLLOWERS

PARTNERS

SUBSCRIBERS



JOINERS are the most valuable audiences you can build for your company.



I have a particular affinity for JOINERS for three reasons:

1. They grant you permission to send direct messages to them.

2. They provide you with an individually addressable means of contact.

3. Their interactions with your brand provide you with personal data about each JOINER—data that you can use to better tailor messaging to their needs and serve them at point of sale.



CUSTOMERS are the be-all and end-all of JOINER audiences. They pay the bills and refer business your way when they’re happy (thereby becoming AMPLIFIERS). EMPLOYEES and PARTNERS, on the other hand, are slightly different creatures.

Like AMPLIFIERS, EMPLOYEES and PARTNERS are audiences with audiences (friends, family, clients, etc.). The difference is that EMPLOYEES and PARTNERS work with you of their own volition, thereby giving you permission to message them in the regular course of business. If their business relationship with you ends, however, so may their desire to be a part of any of your proprietary audiences.





Obtaining Permission from JOINERS


Notice that the prerequisite to having any JOINER audience is first obtaining permission to message. This may come in the form of a subscription process or the like or follow button. In limited circumstances and channels—such as with certain emails to CUSTOMERS, EMPLOYEES, and PARTNERS—the permission may even be implicit based on a preexisting business relationship.f

Absent some form of legitimate permission to message, you do not have a JOINER audience; you have a captive, unwilling group of individuals being force-fed your marketing. In his seminal work, Permission Marketing, Seth Godin (@ThisIsSethsBlog) called such marketing without permission “interruption marketing.” The alternative of permission marketing is superior because:

[It] offers the consumer an opportunity to volunteer to be marketed to. By talking only to volunteers, Permission Marketing guarantees that consumers pay more attention to the marketing messages.13