4. Prasant Naidu, “South Korea’s Messaging App Kakao Talk Has Passed 100 Million Registered Users,” Yahoo!, July 3, 2013, http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/south-korea-messaging-app-kakao-talk-passed-100-154014274.
5. Lauren Indvik, “Medium’s Plan to Serve the Next Generation of Bloggers,” May 28, 2013, http://mashable.com/2013/05/28/medium-ev-williams/.
6. David Taintor, “Myspace Relaunches with $20 Million Ad Campaign,” AdWeek, June 12, 2013, www.adweek.com/news/technology/myspace-relaunches-20-million-ad-campaign-150217.
7. Jennifer Van Grove, “Path Said to Be Seeking Valuation of $1 Billion,” CNET, June 14, 2013, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57589380-93/path-said-to-be-seeking-valuation-of-$1-billion/.
8. CIW Team Staff, “Tencent Active IM Users Close to 800 Million, Social Network Qzone over 600 Million in 2012,” China Internet Watch, March 21, 2013, www.chinainternetwatch.com/2054/tencent-active-im-users-close-to-800-million-social-network-qzone-over-600-million-in-2012/.
9. Stephanie Mlot, “Pew: 6 Percent of American Adults Use Reddit,” PCMag, July 3, 2013, www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421391,00.asp.
10. Trefis Team, “Renren Rides China’s Social Networking and Gaming to $3.20,” Great Speculations (blog), Forbes, May 3, 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/05/03/renren-rides-chinas-social-networking-and-gaming-to-3-20/.
11. “Which Social Networks Are Growing Fastest Worldwide?,” eMarketer, May 13, 2013, www.emarketer.com/Article/Which-Social-Networks-Growing-Fastest-Worldwide/1009884; Josh Ong, “China’s Sina Weibo Grew 73% in 2012, Passing 500 Million Registered Accounts,” The Next Web, February 21, 2013, http://thenextweb.com/asia/2013/02/21/chinas-sina-weibo-grew-73-in-2012-passing-500-million-registered-accounts/.
12. Tom Balmforth, “Russia’s Top Social Network under Fire,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 28, 2013, www.rferl.org/content/russia-vkontakte-under-fire/24999478.
13. Eric Larson, “Five Reasons to Choose Vimeo Instead of YouTube,” May 30, 2013, http://mashable.com/2013/05/30/vimeo-over-youtube/.
14. Jon Russell, “It’s Time to Stop Comparing Instagram and Vine using Twitter,” The Next Web, June 29, 2013, http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/29/its-time-to-stop-comparing-instagram-and-vine-using-twitter/.
Part III
The Audience Roadmap
You now know The Audience Imperative by heart, as well as the channels you can use to build and engage proprietary audiences. Accordingly, it’s time to develop your own Proprietary Audience Development Strategy. To do so, however, will take effort, dedication, and teamwork amongst colleagues who may have few organizational incentives to work together save for one:
Proprietary Audience Development is now a core marketing responsibility.
So roll up those sleeves and dig in; the path to more personal, cost-effective marketing and measurable competitive advantage lies straight ahead.
Chapter 22
Map & Align: Strategy and Team
To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
As we discussed in Part I, Proprietary Audience Development requires a long-term commitment from your company. Here are the four steps you need to take to get off on the right foot:
1. Assemble a team.
2. Map your current landscape.
3. Set your goals.
4. Articulate your strategy.
The time it takes to complete each step will largely depend on the complexity of your organization. But once you’re done, you’ll emerge with the ability to make much smarter choices about where to invest business resources in order to deliver the greatest bottom-line results.
1. Assemble a Team
You’re ready to embrace The Audience Imperative and put it to work for your company. But you can’t go it alone. You’re going to need some allies, encouragement, and support to truly move your company from haphazard development of proprietary audiences to a detailed Proprietary Audience Development strategy that fully embraces our Hybrid Marketing Era. You need a Proprietary Audience Development Team (PAD Team)—a cross-functional group of people who understand that audiences are corporate assets your entire company must build, nurture, and value.
In a perfect world, you’d find these folks by seeing who has a copy of AUDIENCE on their desks (an author can dream). The more likely scenario, however, is that you’ll need to win the support of those who already touch proprietary audiences within your company. These are people with responsibilities like:
Advertising
Content Marketing
CRM
Digital Marketing
Direct Marketing
Email Marketing
Events
Mobile Marketing
Partner Marketing