Dude, It's Marketing

Earn Awards and Endorsements to Build Credibility

A few months ago, I started a series of blog posts about why it’s important to make your marketing credible and how you could do it through thought leadership and creating valuable content. With the refined focus for Dude, It’s Marketing, this series of posts is more relevant than ever, as start-ups need credibility to secure their first few customers and begin to build a brand.

In this post, I’ll look at another way that start-ups can make their marketing more credible, which is to earn awards or endorsements from outside organizations. Outside or third party is obvious as you can’t just create an endorsement for yourself or give yourself an award. You’ll also note that I use the word earn, which is intentional, as there are clearly different types of awards and endorsements in terms of exposure and credibility.

I’ll address the elephant in the room first so we can move on: you can buy awards. There I said it and I’ll admit I’ve done it. I’m not sure how surprising this is to all of you, and I hope it isn’t, but I have seen shocked looks on some peoples faces when I tell them this is possible and that all awards are not created equal. Suffice to say, if you are trying to make your marketing credible, this is not the type of award I’m referring to and that’s why “earn” was used intentionally.

Winning an award that has been judged by a panel of industry experts, who are credible in their own right, can quickly raise the awareness of your company and provide strong third-party validation of your products or services. Even better, if the award is the result of a product review, or some other testing or validation was involved, that will increase the credibility of the award and the impact it will have on your marketing.

When you earn a respected award like these, you definitely want to promote them as they will increase your company’s credibility but make sure you do it in a subtle way. You want to get the word out but work with the third-party that granted the award so that you follow their guidelines as doing anything they don’t approve of will only undermine the award for you and others.

Awards aren’t the only way to make your marketing more credible. Endorsements and references from trusted third parties can be even better than the awards. Think of how much more credible your marketing will be when a well-respected industry analyst talks about how a specific problem needs to be solved and you have a solution. Or, think of an article in a trade publication that is written by an editor or a post in an industry blog that highlights the need for a solution similar to yours. In fact, I want to explore the media and analyst endorsements further in a subsequent blog post because I don’t want to get sidetracked here.

In the end, the very best kind of endorsement is from your customers. Every start-up needs to find their first one or two customers which are always the hardest but also absolutely crucial to success. Once you get someone interested you need to nurture this relationship to make sure the customer is always happy so they will act as a reference for other customers and hopefully provide a public endorsement in the form of a quote or a positive review on a web site.

Now I know every start-up wants to land the tier 1 customer or key influencer and have them issue a news release or do a customer testimonial but in the early days you can’t always just try and hit the grand slam home run. Start-ups are built by securing many smaller victories along the way. If you get the big win early, leverage it as best you can, but don’t wait for that.

In the early days, go after any customer, get your product installed and take whatever form of endorsement they will give you from answering a few questions from a prospect privately, to providing a quote, to writing a positive recommendation on a third-party site. Success breeds success and these small wins will lead to the big customer and testimonial.

Start-ups need these award and endorsements to make their marketing credible just like a prospective employee needs references. Companies want to go with the product or the person that they know someone else has recommended. Some award and endorsements are better than others and will vary by industry. Earn the ones that are respected and that you would be proud to show.

Be a Thought Leader to Make Your Marketing Credible

I recently started a series of blog posts on strategies that you should consider to make your marketing more credible. This week I want to look at the next strategy in more detail which is about becoming a thought leader in your industry.

First off, you need to decide who is the best person to become a thought leader. In some cases, it's the CEO of your company. But in many cases it's the founder, the CTO or some technical expert with many years of experience. In addition to knowledge though, this person needs writing and presentation skills along with a lot of time (more on this later) and true dedication to making the industry better. This role is not for someone who is going to fake it or is not willing to give everything they have to help people so choose carefully.

Finding the right person is not easy but that's only the beginning. Not surprisingly, creating valuable content, the strategy I wrote about previously, is a major step in helping you become a thought leader. In fact, creating new, relevant and useful content is the key to being a thought leader so the two are very intertwined. 

In addition to creating and publishing this content, you need to get out there and share your knowledge within your industry. You can speak at conferences, write articles or columns for industry publications, become involved in industry consortium or organizations, write a book or industry-focused blog, or become a go-to person for editors and get quoted in articles. All of these tactics help spread your content more widely and raise your profile with your target audience.

The important point with all of this is that you need to communicate how to solve your market's problems in new and compelling way so you will get calls from editors, get invited to speak at conferences, or get other opportunities to share your knowledge and content. No one is going to call if you only talk about your product.

Essentially, you need to build a personal brand as a respected expert on your industry's trends, with a deep understanding of the problems your target audience faces, and simple, clear solutions to these problems. There are many great example of individuals that have built strong, personal brands and helped their companies become credible through their thought leadership. 

One last consideration which I alluded to earlier - if you think this strategy is easy to implement and that you, or the person you selected, has the desire to succeed and the knowledge to share, you must realize that becoming a thought leader and building your personal brand takes an insane amount of time and effort.

You'll need to continually develope new content to tight deadlines so you get a book published, create a successful blog or write a column in a key publication. You need to travel to many conferences, in some not so exciting locales, not to mention the time it takes to develop the presentation you deliver. You may be interviewed multiple times about a certain topic and only have a small part of that interview appear in the article. It's all of these tasks and more in addition to your day job, as rarely is the thought leadership role a job in and of itself.

So before you embark on any of the tactics listed above for becoming a thought leader, you need to ask yourself long and hard to see if you have the right person. You need to make sure they have the time, dedication and patience to become a thought leader. If the right person is you, then look in the mirror long and hard to make sure you can handle it.

In the end, being a thought leader is not as glamorous as it first seems but it will bring many rewards for you and your company including making your marketing more credible. And, to all the thought leaders out there that we all learn from, you have my utmost respect and admiration. You make your industry better as a result of your dedication so thank you and please tell us your stories in the comments below.