I just gave the morning keynote at the Stamats Higher Education Marketing conference in St Petersburg, Florida, and I decided to go totally away from slides, and just speak from passion. To do that, I kept a single sheet of paper with some notes so that I didn’t forget what I wanted to say. (I did the same thing in my making money isn’t evil presentation – remember, that one had lots of cursing.) I wanted to capture some of what I said as part of my presentation: Turning ROI into Return On Influence. I’m sure I’m missing a lot of what I said, but here are the main points.

I led with a quote.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.- Ralph Waldo Emerson US essayist & poet (1803 – 1882)

I went on to tell everyone in the room (marketers) that they are salespeople. They might not think they are (more than 50% raised their hand when I asked them about it). I say this because marketing is about moving a behavior forward from one state to another, and especially in 2009, it’s even more important that marketers feel and believe just how tied they are to the sales cycle, and for that matter, to the PR and customer service cycle.

I mentioned that marketers have to think like media makers, like CEOs, like salespeople. they have to OWN the process, the experience, the business of moving people from a to b. (Yes, this is a mix of Seth Godin and Tom Peters stuff.)

I talked about the five steps of media as an influence tool, but I think I forgot to tell them all five in detail. Here’s the five phases of it, at least.

1. Awareness. – People become aware that you’re out there.
2. Attention. – People actually open their eyes to what you’re saying.
3. Influence. – People start thinking about what you’re saying and map it to themselves.
4. Reputation. – You become known for having good information/ideas/whatever.
5. Authority. – People consider you the top voice on the matter.

Where do YOU want to be on that continuum. I know.

Beyond that, it’s all a blur. If someone recorded it, I’m sure it won’t sound nearly as good as it felt coming out.

Mostly I shared that folks must atomize their marketing. Break media into bites and throw it all over the place. Don’t focus on a newspaper. Focus on getting two way conversations started everywhere. Get things out to the places where people are. That kind of thing.

What would YOU have told them?

Photo credit, FoundPhotosLJ