Your customer might not be king

High Reach Influencers (HRI's) are people who convince many others to purchase from you. High Reach Influencers often engage in word-of-mouth marketing and lead others to purchase products or services based on their personal recommendations. These people have the personal power to influence many others.

HRI’s might bring more new customers to you who then purchase far more than the HRI’s purchase themselves. In fact, HRI’s might not even purchase anything at all from you themselves. Because they might not currently be your customers, HRI's can often be overlooked by companies calculating customer lifetime value (CLV) or customer referral value (CRV).

HRI’s might be influential bloggers who comment on your brand as a result of hearing a rumor about you. These HRI’s might be industry reporters or trade editors. These HRI’s could be people who want to talk about your brand to others for a myriad of reasons other than the fact that they are your customers and they're either very happy or very disappointed with their experience with your brand.

Don't forget these high reach influencers when determining how to best build your brand. Quantify them as much as possible and seek ways to communicate with them and influence them.

Don't assume your customers are the only ones who refer others to you. By all means, don't assume that your customers are the only ones who matter because your best customers in terms of individual purchasing habits might pale in comparison to others who send much more business your way.

How to Build Your Reputation Online

Here is some great advice in the form of an interview on establishing and building your reputation online using some of the newer social media tools.

My recent break from blogging

Oh, did I not mention a conference that I would be attending in Cancun?

I'm back now and will start thinking about marketing again...although the entire concept of Cancun was obviously conceived with nothing but tourists in mind in order to find a way to part them from their money. Cancun is completely unlike the rest of Mexico and is entirely built for tourism. As branding goes, they've done a good job catering to their target market.

In order to further connect this trip to marketing and branding, I also snapped this second picture outside of a small convenience shop in Mexico.



Bimbo Bakeries was founded in Mexico City in 1945 and brought packaged, sliced bread to the Mexican market. Does this brand name hold up across countries and cultures?

..and this all begs the question, Is Cancun the best thing to happen in Mexico since sliced bread?