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Ford’s Philosophy on Influence Marketing: Always Be Nurturing

I don’t know what you’re into, but I’m into cars. Muscle cars, to be specific. Dodge Challengers, Chevy Camaros, Ford Mustangs—any vehicle with some power under the hood really gets my attention.

That’s why I accepted Ford Motor Company’s invitation to attend a 2013 event for women bloggers. (You can read the whole story in my previous post on this blog.)

Little did I know that luncheon would be the start of a partnership that would last for several years, and take me places I never imagined I’d go (like Dearborn, Michigan).

For 2015 and 2016, Ford Motor Company invited me (and more than 100 other “digital influencers”) to Detroit to attend the North American International Auto Show (“NAIAS”), the premier show for car enthusiasts and automotive industry insiders.

For three days, our group got access to Ford’s “Behind the Blue Oval” area at NAIAS, primo seats at Ford press conferences, and special events that brought us behind the scenes at Ford, like the Rouge Factory tour.

You might be wondering what the return on marketing investment is for something like this, and it’s a smart question.

First, let’s talk reach. During the event, Ford racked up thousands of social media mentions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Periscope, etc., and the Twitter coverage alone reached millions of followers.

By inviting a diverse group of influencers, Ford managed to dominate in terms of event coverage. They invite not just auto industry journalists, but parenting bloggers, Periscope personalities, social savvy businesspeople, and car enthusiasts.

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“We are looking for folks who are enthusiastic, who create great content, who really have audiences and know what works best for them,”explains JT. Ramsay, digital media manager at Ford. “When we bring them to something like Detroit Auto Show, we know we’re going to have great content for them to share.”

And beyond NAIAS, Ford keeps in touch with influencers throughout the year, hosting regional events, like “Quality Time with Ford” at the Aveda Institute Orlando (manicures were involved).  Ford also gave attendees tickets to the Central Florida International Auto Show so we could see Ford’s new line of cars up close and personal.

“These are relationships that we maintain all year long,” says Ramsay. “Whether that’s ‘Driving Skills for Life’ or Ford’s Smart Mobility Tour that we did this last summer, there are all kinds of different touch points that we have with our influencers that I think have been profoundly successful for us.” (Check out the full interview I conducted with JT. for MarketingProfs for more about Ford’s approach to influencer marketing and content.)

As a result, Ford maintains buzz about the brand and its line of cars throughout the year, with bloggers posting across social media and on their own sites. For example, check out Lynette Young’s post on Go Further With Ford, and Bess Auer’s post on lessons other brands can learn from the way Ford involves online influencers.

But does it sell cars? Probably some, although it’s difficult to know how many.

“Attribution is tricky,” acknowledges Ramsay. “However, I think that with some of our influencers they’ll even tell us, ‘I went to this event, I told a friend, and that friend bought a Ford.”

For what it’s worth, my last three cars have been Fords, and when I’m in the market for another, I’m very likely to choose a C-Max after my experience driving one for several months. (And that’s worth about $30,000!)

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Here are some tips for nurturing influencer relationships (and measuring the contribution these bloggers and social media stars bring to your bottom line):

Don’t forget your influencers in between major events.
As Ramsay observes, “[Ford is] working very closely with our regional teams to keep in touch, and not simply parachute in for a national event or two per year.

”Those smaller events might seem insignificant, but they deepen your relationship with your influencers and keep a baseline of buzz going all year long.

Know what you want out of the influencer relationship.
Engaging digital influencers is a smart way to amplify your reach, but is that where your aspirations end? It shouldn’t be! Give influencers personalized links to landing pages, so you know exactly where your traffic came from. Give them discount codes so you know when people convert because they’ve come across an influencer’s content.

Give them direction in terms of what you’re hoping to achieve: what product lines you’re interested in promoting, what upcoming events you’d like people to attend, what corporate charity initiatives you want people to know about.

If you want influencers to share your story about sustainability (like Ford’s “Farm to Car” initiative) or charitable giving (like how Mullinax Ford dealerships in Central Florida give all employees $250 per year to contribute to any charitable organization they like), you have to tell them so.

Otherwise, influencers will do their best to promote your brand, but might miss the points you’re trying to emphasize. This ties into the next tip.

Give influencers the information they need to share your brand story.
Influencers appreciate gaining an insider’s view of your brand (if they’re truly passionate about what you do), and they’ll want to help you get our brand message out. That’s easier to do if you give them event press kits and real-time press releases as you hold conferences and make announcements.

Remember to build relationships with each individual influencer, not “digital influencers” as a group.In between group events for area influencers, occasionally reach out to individual influencers when you have something going on you know would interest them in particular.

For example, before driving the C-Max, I had expressed interest in hybrid vehicles, so after my successful experience with that car, Ford gave me the chance to test drive a Fusion hybrid. They asked only that I provide them feedback about how the two vehicles compared.

This kind of personalized outreach ensures that influencers feel like partners, rather than shills—a critical difference to people who love your brand, but don’t post product reviews for a living.

Finally, choose your influencers carefully.
You want people who are passionate about your brand (or at least your industry), and who will represent you in a professional manner.

The last thing you want as a brand is to have someone stand up and poke his head out of the sunroof of your roped-off prototype vehicle, then wave away show staff while saying “it’s okay, I’m an influencer.”

I’m a muscle car girl, but I’m also a marketing industry professional—nice fit for an auto brand!

Which brings us full circle: muscle car girl makes friends with Ford, gets to attend NAIAS and see the sexy cars.

Who will your brand’s best friends be?

Sexy @Ford Shelby! #FordNAIAS

A photo posted by Kerry O’Shea Gorgone (@kerrygorgone) on

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What Every Blogger Wishes You Knew About Pitching Them

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You’re working for an agency that wants to get the word out about this cool new product/app/website that your client is releasing.  Here’s what you do:

1 – Google “(industry your product/app/website is in) bloggers”

2 – Get contact info of X number of bloggers based on Google search results and those ‘The 50 Best X Bloggers” lists.

3 – Cut and paste contact info into your database/spreadsheet/doc, etc.

4 – Cut and paste press release and send to each blogger, asking them to please email you with a link to their new article promoting your client.

5 – Sit back and wait for a flood of new posts from some of the most influential bloggers on the planet, all gushing about your client.

 

Any blogger that’s been pitched more than once knows there’s zero exaggeration to the above.  At least 90% of agencies and company’s pitching something to bloggers do this, and it never works.  The only good thing about this from the agency’s point of view is that they have been doing it for so long that most bloggers don’t even bother to publicly shame their crappy pitches.

Here’s why this strategy never works:

1 – You start off by building a list of bloggers that you don’t know.  It’s impossible to know every blogger, but uninvited pitches from agencies a blogger doesn’t know isn’t very endearing to that blogger.

2 – You target the most ‘popular’ bloggers.  These are the ones getting the most pitches, right?  So by default, you are setting the bar pretty high for your pitch.  When you simply cut and paste a press release, you are ensuring that your pitch goes straight in the Trash.

3 – You shouldn’t collect contact info to pitch bloggers, you should be collecting contact info to study those bloggers.  Actually read their blogs!  Try to learn a bit about who they are and what they do.  And most importantly, why your pitch would be relevant to them.

4 – Never pitch a stranger then ask them to please let you know when they have written their article promoting you.  That’s the fastest way to get your email posted on Facebook for public ridicule.

 

If I had to pitch bloggers today on a story, here’s the steps I would follow:

1 – Start with my own network.  Is there anyone I know that would be interested in this story?

2 – Start researching the space for X bloggers.  I’d do the same Googling as Step #1 at the top, but I’m not looking for the ‘A-List’ bloggers.  I am looking for B-List bloggers that appear to have a strong community on their blog.  These are bloggers that aren’t getting as many pitches as the A-List, but their strong connection with their readers shows that those readers trust them.  Plus it indicates that they will eventually become A-List bloggers, so it’s better to get on their good side now.

3 – Assemble my list of bloggers I want to pitch, then invest time reading each of their blogs.  I want to take the time to get to know who they are so I can determine if and why my pitch is relevant to them.  Yes, this is time-consuming.  And yes, it can be tedious work.  It can also be the difference between having a 0% response rate, and a 50% response rate.

4 – Once I have culled down my list to only the bloggers that I think would be interested in my pitch, then I start emailing them.  I tailor every pitch to that blogger, zero cutting and pasting is allowed.  I refer to them by their first name, not ‘Dear Blogger’ or ‘Dear Webmaster’ and for pete’s sake not ‘To Whom It May Concern…’  Oh and I make sure I call them by their correct name, as someone that gets pitched constantly as ‘Hey Mark!’, this matters.

5 – I make my pitch as short and relevant as possible.  I point out the nature of my pitch, and how it aligns with the focus of their blog (Which I know, because I took the time to read their blog).  If possible, I reference any posts they have already written about the same space or industry that relates to the story I am pitching.

6 – I end the email by thanking them for their time, and give them my contact info if they have any questions I can help them with.  I don’t ask them to write an article and place no expectations for them other than reading my pitch, and then I thank them for doing so.

 

And to be completely honest, my response rate is still going to be really low.  It will be much better than yours, but the cold, hard reality is that you have been sending crappy pitches to bloggers for so long that most of them have tuned out ALL pitches.  I get up to a dozen a day, and I delete 99% of them without even reading.

But if you are willing to do some legwork and actually give a damn about your job, it’s very possible to successfully pitch bloggers.  This is the best pitch I have ever gotten in 10 years of blogging.  Here’s what Kaitlyn did that made this pitch so great:

1 – She only targeted a handful of bloggers that she knew personally.

2 – She only targeted bloggers that covered marketing on their blogs.

3 – She made her pitch unique and creative.  She didn’t cut and paste a press release, she gave us a chance to ask the CMO at one of the world’s biggest brands a question and have him answer our question on video.  Gold!

4 – She created a pitch that was so useful to the bloggers she reached out to that they dropped everything to be involved.

5 – The pitch created insanely useful content for the bloggers, and free publicity for the client.  A huge win-win.  In fact, the post I wrote (linked above) ended up being one of the most popular posts I have ever written because the CMO gave me a huge nugget in his answer that created a story in and of itself.  Click the link to see what he said that was so interesting.

 

The bottom line in pitching bloggers is that your response rate goes up the more work you put into making sure your pitch is relevant to the bloggers you pitch.  Yes, that means spending some time reading blogs and actually attempting to learn something about the bloggers you pitch.  You’ll thank me when your response rate is 10X better than the competition.

UPDATE: Just checked my email, 1 min after I published this post, I received an email from someone I’d never heard of, all the email contains is a cut and paste of a press release.  Flagged as Spam.