The Business of Influence Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age

This book provides practical guidance in the restructuring and refocusing of marketing and PR teams and processes by the introduction of a framework in which change can be implemented, managed and measured. It is based on the author s clear articulation of the opportunities and challenges created by today s relentless innovations (and resultant modifications of consumer behaviour). It is enlightening yet utterly pragmatic, and will be relevant for many years. The book marks the transition from the silos of marketing and PR disciplines to the introduction of the Influence Professional and demonstrates to those in the business of influencing how to go about influencing in a strategic way that can be clearly measured. It highlights how to seeking to be influenced is one of the key changes to embrace. Beyond explaining what has happened, what is happening and what is likely to happen in this area, Influence points to the changes of direction organizations and individual practitioners must pursue to remain relevant in their roles as influencers. From a review of the latest and imminent innovations in social analytics to the introduction of a new framework and management approach for embedding the influence process into an organisation this book is full of best practice advice and tools on how to turn the changes in the industry into real opportunities for success. The author provides a clear roadmap for businesses to move from where they are now, to where they need to be. He outlines the skills and traits required of them and their organization in the future so that they can remain relevant, let alone competitive. He offers tools for how to make sense of the noise in the marketplace and how to beat the competition and create significant opportunities to secure competitive advantage. Central to the book are two key practical elements: the Six Influence Flow, a model that can inform an organization s structural and cultural design the Influence Scorecard tool, a management approach that enables the influence process to permeate the organization in a systematic and measurable way (by helping translate influence [marketing and PR] objectives into operational goals and cascade them down through the organization, and be measured within a business performance management process). Implementation of this model and tool allows for an appropriate influence strategy to be created, one that can be clearly measured. The book is essential reading for transforming organizations influence competitiveness, and for growing readers career prospects. It will attract anyone interested in organizational competitive advantage from a reputation, marketing and communications perspective.

Philip Sheldrake is a Chartered Engineer, a Co-Founding Partner of Meanwhile, the venture marketers, a Main Board Director of Intellect, the UK trade association for the technology industry, and Board Director of 6UK, a government backed non-profit to promote adoption of the new Internet protocol in the UK.

He co-founded an award-winning PR consultancy at the end of the 90s, selling it to W2 Group, a Massachusetts based marketing services group, to become the European HQ of W2's PR company, Racepoint.

Philip authored The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008, and the digital marketing chapter of The Marketing Century, a book celebrating the centenary of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He chairs the Chartered Institute of Public Relations group on measurement and evaluation, presents CIPR TV, and designs and chairs Internetome, the Internet of Things Conference.