Influencer Marketing – Jon Ferrara
influencer marketing
SUMMARY
On this episode, we are with Jon Ferrara. Jon is a CRM and Relationship Management entrepreneur and noted speaker about Social Media’s effects on Sales and Marketing. He is best known as the co-founder of GoldMine Software Corp.
Jon talks about how he started GoldMine on $5000 without ever taking a dime of venture and was able to scale it to the first $50,000 in revenue per month. He also shares the formula he used to be able to do that.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
It’s more powerful when other people talk about you that when you talk about you.If you want to grow your business, it takes more than prospects and customers. You should be thinking about their influencers as well.
Have a singular platform where you can have all the connections and relationships from all the applications you use that everybody in the company can share.
Think about building a tribe around your business and ultimately, building apostles who’ll spread your gospel.
Reach out to micro niche influencers and offer them your product or service completely free and provide them with a good experience.
Instead of blasting a hundred people, have one person who can tell other people about your product or service.
If you want to learn about yourself and about relationships, be a present spouse and parent.
Instead of trying to tell how great you are or your product is to the influencer, think about how you can add value to them.
Aside from connecting with people, empower your team members to build their brand, share that content, and connect with these influencers.
Build great identities personally and professionally for yourself, your team members, and your business.
Share things that people connect on and these are the 5 F’s of life; family, friend, food, fun, & fellowship.
80% of your content should be an inspiration and educational.
Create the identities, share the content, listen and engage with the intent to serve and help other people grow.
TRANSCRIPTION: INFLUENCER MARKETING – JON FERRARA
Luis Congdon
Hey Thriving Launchers, today, we’re going to talk about ways to grow your business, get the word out, reach your ideal clients with influencer marketing, and with tactics and techniques that don’t require you to spend on ads or promotion.
Kamala Chambers
We’re here with Jon Ferrara. Maybe you’ve seen him with nimble.com. He’s been recently recognized on Forbes as one of the top 10 social CEOs, Top 10 social salespeople in the world, and Top 100 Marketing Influencers.
Luis Congdon
All right, Thriving Launchers. Let’s get Jon on the show.
We’re excited to have him on. He’s got such great energy and lots of knowledge to share with you about thriving and growing your business.
Without further ado, Jon, are you ready to launch?
Jon Ferrara
Luis and Kamala, I was born ready to launch.
Helping Other People Grow
Jon Ferrara
I really believe that we’re on this planet to grow by helping other people grow in any moment that I can to get up on my soapbox to teach and preach, to inspire and educate, to help others become better, stronger, smarter, faster, and achieve their dreams. It’s like a gift to my day.
Thank you for gifting me with this opportunity.
Access To Free Education
Luis Congdon
That’s refreshing. I love that kind of energy. This is exactly why we run the show. It is to do that, to give people access to free education in some of the greatest minds on the planet.
One of the things that you’ve really been passionate about is growing a company in Nimble in unique ways, and doing it in ways that really speak to your truth.
Growing A Business Without Spending Money On Ads
Luis Congdon
One thing that you said that you’re really excited to talk about is how can you grow a business without really diving excessively into marketing or using other methods. I’m curious about that.
Jon Ferrara
Well, I think that many things come from necessity. I think that the best things come from your own need because you’re passionate about it and you understand the problem.
Imagine me in 1988 as a salesperson in the field for a technology company. Back then, there was no contact management. There was no CRM. There was no Outlook. There was no Salesforce. Your CRM was your daytime or in a spreadsheet and maybe email in pink while you’re out slips.
I struggled as a business person to manage relationships and so I looked around for a tool, an integrated email, contact, calendar, and sales and market automation. I couldn’t find it.
Pioneer CRM Software
Jon Ferrara
So I quit my job in 1988 and started to come they called GoldMine to pioneer contact management and CRM back before they existed.
Imagine I had the world’s first sales and marketing contact platform. How do you sell that?
I tried to basically go sell it and there are only 8-14 hours in a day that you can sell. What I quickly realized is that that wasn’t going to work.
Identifying the Key Influencer
Jon Ferrara
What I did was I identified the key influencer or my core prospect in and around the areas of a promise of my product, and that was the Novell Reseller. They sold that business, that SMB, the small business and network, and I had one of the first networkable business applications to run on top of it.
What I did is I got them to use it because people sell what they know and they know what they use. They started to then recommend it and we sell it to the customer. Each one had a hundred to a few thousand customers and that’s how we started GoldMine on $5000 without ever taking a dime of venture and we’re able to scale it to the first $50,000 in revenue per month.
Early Form Of Influencer Marketing
Jon Ferrara
That initial sort of motion was an early form of influencer marketing.
Kamala Chambers
That’s a really amazing story.
I love to hear what is the most fundamental thing you learned from that about how to grow your business without paying for marketing and advertising?
Jon Ferrara
Well, Kamala, I think that the lesson is this.
Jon Ferrara
For most people, they can’t afford the advertising and they don’t even know how to do it so it would be a waste of money anyways.
Don’t Just Think About Prospects And Customers
Jon Ferrara
The thing you want to consider is if you want to grow your business, it takes more than prospects and customers. You should be thinking about their influencers as well. The influencers can be micro influencers. They don’t have to be the Kardashian’s. They could be the accountant of that business because they are the trusted priest of a business.
When you are trying to scale your business, don’t just think about prospects and customers. At Nimble, we connect with editors, analysts, bloggers, influencers, third-party developers, investors, and advisers of prospects and customers of various types. It’s more than salespeople that connect to them. Everybody in a company connects to them.
Having A Singular Platform
Jon Ferrara
So if you’re a person, business, individual listening to this today, you should have some type of platform that enables you to have all the connections and relationships from all the applications you may use; Gmail, G Suite, Office, QuickBooks, Mail Chimp, whatever you use in your business into a singular platform that everybody in the company can share so that everybody’s on one page of the interactions and can then follow-up and follow through.
However, there’s more to the story about scaling your business without marketing
Think about it. We got, let’s say 300-500 Novell resellers are using GoldMine and reselling it.
How then do you scale that? How do you take that to the next level? It’s because many of them are already sold to the existing base customers they had and they are asking me for leads. How do you give them leads?
Tell Stories And Get Other People To Tell Those Stories
Jon Ferrara
Well, because they didn’t know how to advertise and they didn’t have money to advertise, what I did is I went to the place where business people consume information to be better at business and technology and that’s publications like Inc. PC Magazine, and PC World and other publications like Forbes, Fortune, etc.
I asked the editors “How can I help you write more stories?” They said, “Tell us stories about how companies are using technologies to grow.”
Influencer Marketing And Guerilla PR
Jon Ferrara
I started telling them stories about how people are using GoldMine to grow their business and we ended up getting more print and more and more words and all the other products combined and that’s how we then scaled then from let’s say, $50 a month to a million dollars a month.
It’s a combination we used; influencer marketing and guerilla PR. Ultimately we told stories and got other people to tell those stories.
Building A Tribe Around Your Business
Jon Ferrara
What you need to think about is building a tribe around your business, building a sustainable garden, and ultimately, building apostles to spread your gospel.
Luis Congdon
I really love that and Jon. Recently, I was talking to a gym owner, and he not only owns a gym, he has created and patented a new product in the fitness space. He called me up and said “Hey, I’m struggling to make some sales and really get the word out. I’m really looking for investors and I’m looking for some unique ways to do that.”
Utilize Social Media
Luis Congdon
I suggested him to just really start using social media and we spent some time analyzing the social media and I said “Well, look. I noticed that you have this influencer you have.” He’s a renowned UFC fighter but the way you’re displaying this, he’s not sharing it. I don’t completely understand that he changed his method just a little bit and with one Facebook post, he got seven sales for his product, and also had an investor reach out.
Thriving Launchers, what I want to suggest you is that if you have something, let’s say you have a product or a service, and you’re not sure how to get more exposure, influencers are great.
Reaching Out To Micro Niche Influencers
Luis Congdon
Micro niche influencers are people that have anywhere from maybe 20,000-30,000 followers to a hundred thousand followers, at least if you’re looking on social media. You can reach out to these people on social media. You can reach out to these people. Because they’re smaller, they’re more likely to respond to you and you can offer them your product or your service completely free and give them this kind of premium experience so that then they’ll tell their audience about it.
Have An Influencer Who Can Tell About Your Product Or Service To Others
Luis Congdon
What you’re doing is instead of blasting hundred people, you just go to one person that has their connections in the market and can tell other people about your product or service. There are unique ways that you can reach these people without spending money per say. You can use unique methods. That’s something that Apple has been reputable in doing by placing their products in Hollywood.
I mean Jon, we’re talking the same language here.
Jon Ferrara
We are.
Luis, I think you bring up a really great point and this kind of transitions from when I sold GoldMine in 1999. So we ran at 10 years and we ended up with about a hundred million dollars in revenue per year and had about five million customers. It was a great success. It enabled me to spend 10 years raising three babies.
Learn About Relationships By Being A Spouse
Jon Ferrara
If you want to learn about yourself, if you want to learn about relationships, be a present spouse and parent because your kids will reflect your shit at you and if you’re willing to look at your shit in life and work on it, you can grow as a human being. I spent 10 years doing that.
It was amazing but then I started to use social media in 2006-2008 and I saw the way it’s going to change the way we work, play, buy, and sell. I started looking for a relationship manager that we integrate email, contact, and calendar, and social. I couldn’t find it and saw that contact management was really broken because Jimmy L. in office don’t link email, contact, and calendar so you don’t have the history or actions and you don’t have social so you have to Google people for a meeting.
How Nimble Started
Jon Ferrara
Then I started looking at CRM and saw it wasn’t about relationships, but really about reporting. I saw an opportunity to create a new generation of relationship platform that works for you by the build in itself, by unifying all contacts from email contact, calendar, social, and your business apps, and then work back in those and integrate with social and I called it “Nimble.”
But imagine just like GoldMine, I was ahead of my time with Nimble as a social relationship manager or social CRM or social selling tool. I basically invented those categories back in 2009 and 2010. How do you sell that? There were no resellers in the cloud at that time per say.
So I went and identified the influencer in around the areas of a promise of my product, thought leaders in sales, in marketing, in social media, people like David, Scott, and others. I basically built relationships by initially simply sharing their content.
Share The Influencer’s Content
Jon Ferrara
It’s a lot of work to write content and what you can do is identify influencers who inspire you in and around the areas of a promise your product. Sales, marketing, and social was ours.
I shared their content, hashtagged it appropriately, and add their name. What that does is it’s like dropping and dripping fishing lures outside your business and into the digital social river where anybody interested in being better, smarter, faster at social sales marketing would bite, but also the person that is part of that thought leaders community as well as the influencers themselves.
Adding Value To The Influencer
Jon Ferrara
Then what I did is rather get on the phone and try to tell them how great I am or my product is, I prepared and learned about them and I asked simple questions and listened to learn about ways I could add value to that person. I shared ideas of how I might be able to blow some wind in their sales.
Inevitably, they asked me “Well, what do I do? What am I doing?” I shared what I am doing and they become users and evangelists. So I used the exact same method to build Nimble as I did with GoldMine. The difference was in GoldMine, it’s Novell resellers. In Nimble, it was influencers and thought leaders in social sales and marketing.
Creating An Authentic Brand That Vibrates With People
Jon Ferrara
I was able to get people like Brad Solace and Brad Kramer, and thousands of other people to not only become evangelists but really dear friends and created this authentic relevant brand that vibrates with people.
And so, when you talked to people about Nimble, there’s actually this sort of deep feeling that people have with it and I think part of it is the culture that we created and the brand we created. It’s because what we did is not just me connecting with the people but I empower each of my team members to build their brand and share that content and connect with these influencers.
Creating A Community of People
Jon Ferrara
So you have this community of people at Nimble who connect with this community of people around us that vibrates and creates this massive community around the globe and all that was built without spending a dime on marketing.
What we’ve done is we’ve scaled Nimble over a thousand subscribers. Microsoft just signed a deal to resell Nimble globally. We’re signing up their resellers and their customers like TechData, Endurance, and other people like GoDaddy to be our resellers and all of this is happening again, without marketing.
Achieving Your Purpose In Life
Jon Ferrara
If you’re listening to this today, you could use these concepts to build your personal brand, to build your company brand, to build a sustainable garden around your business that will attract the right things so you don’t have to spray pesticides. You don’t have to over water. You can create this beautiful vibrant garden that will help you achieve your passion, plan, and purpose in life, which should include serving others.
It’s because I believe that service is the new sales that you’re on this planet to grow by helping other people to grow and if you can help other people grow and scale, you could build a gold mine. I know I did.
Kamala Chambers
If you were to take these concepts and distill them down to three actionable steps that the Thriving Launchers could go out and apply this week, what would those be?
Building Great Identities
Jon Ferrara
Number one is to build great identities personally and professionally for yourself, your team members, and your business.
It’s because ultimately, these are the landing pages that you’ll need to convert from so great pictures that show your eyes, that show your face, that show your soul.
If you want people to connect with you, it’s more than the business connection. People buy from people they like, know, and trust.
Sharing The 5 F’s Of life
Jon Ferrara
And so, you need to share what I called these five Fs of life; family, friend, food, fun, and fellowship. These are the things that people connect on.
So create the landing pages, and then start sharing content across all those places; our identity, the company’s identity, and the team member’s identity that’s inspirational and educational about the areas of a promise of your product.
Don’t talk about the product. Don’t talk about yourself. Nobody cares. People care about how they can become better, smarter, and faster.
Jon Ferrara
80% of your content should be inspirational and educational and you can get that content by identifying thought leaders in and around the areas of a promise of your products and services.
A product like BuzzSumo is easy to use to do that. You just search a category, and you’ll find content and influencers. You share the content and I would basically do it every hour on Twitter, a certain amount on Linkedin and Facebook as well. Don’t forget places like Instagram because a picture tells a thousand words.
5 E’s of Social Business
Jon Ferrara
Then, when you share that content, what you need to do is you need to listen and engage. I call it the five Es of social business. That’s my formula. It’s Educate, Enchant, Engage, Embrace, and Empower your customers.
You educate with enchanting content and then you engage with the intent to empower other people to grow. If you follow that formula by creating the identities, sharing the content, listening, and engaging with the intent to serve that other person and help them grow, you’re going to get so over connected that you’re going to need a platform to manage these relationships that you’re scaling.
What I’d love to do is gift anybody listening to this. It’s Nimble, where it’s free for two weeks but if you sign up and use the “Jon40” you’re going to get 40% off for your first three or four months.
Network Is Your Net Worth
Jon Ferrara
Ultimately, your network is your net worth. Your personal brand plus your professional network is going to help you achieve your dreams in life and you need to be thinking about your network and your brand on a daily basis.
It’s because you’re not going to work where you work in one to five errors, the average is three and you should have your own golden rule and bring to work with you and all the business applications that you use.
The Formula
Jon Ferrara
The formula is simple.
Create the identities, share the content, listen and engage with the intent to serve and help other people grow.
Luis Congdon
I love that.
Thriving Launchers, if you want to get that free two weeks sign-up or the 40%, they’re all available at thrivinglaunch.com with this interview.
One of the things that I’ve really been reminded, it’s something that you guys already know about me is I come from the non-profit world. I did that for years and I came into the business world, not really being a business person, but understanding how to provide value, how to build connections, and how to serve.
Leading With Service
Luis Congdon
It was one of the key things that really took our business from struggling to thriving because I knew how to run a business like a non-profit. There were some growing pains with that but one of the initial growth points that really helped is that we led with a lot of service and really trying to promote and help the people in our community.
Thriving Launchers, I encourage you to do the same thing. Find a few key people in your life, see if you can help them, and do that every day. I promise you, you’ll be happy. Your life will be better and your business will thrive.
So we’ll see you on the website and we’ll talk to you soon on the next episode. Thank you so much for joining today, Jon.
Jon Ferrara
Thank you, Luis and Kamala. This has been an incredible opportunity to inspire and educate. Thank you so much for giving me this time.
