Synopsis

There are buzzwords everywhere in business and marketing. It’s easy to be overwhelmed and swamped by them. There are also ‘experts’ and ‘gurus’ who use these buzzwords to create a sense of superiority over the average marketer and use them to make things sound more complex than they are in reality. 

This book seeks to change that. There is nothing out there on people's bookshelves right now that looks generally at marketing buzzwords, what their purpose is and how they can and should be used both for a personal brand and a business brand. 

Marketing Buzzword to Marketing Authority is going to become a marketers essential guide to not only understanding the mechanics around buzzwords, but how they can use them in their personal brands, and integrate them into their brand marketing strategies. 

Following the rave success and growth of his ‘Marketing Buzzword Podcast’, Ben M Roberts shares his knowledge on buzzwords, shares his experiences on building a personal brand, and shares insights from discussions with industry experts on how they built authority for themselves or their businesses.

In order to make this book as digestible as possible, it has been broken down into 3 distinct sections. The first section looks at the history, current state and every-day use of business and marketing buzzwords. This will set the scene as to their importance, as well as helping the readers to understand good and bad principles regarding the use of buzzwords. This section will also explore some of the psychology around buzzwords, including their impact upon ‘sheep mentality’ (also known as herd mentality or group mentality) and, examine why some buzzwords catch on and become everyday terms, while others do not. 

The second section dives into personal branding. It highlights how buzzwords can be used to build a personal profile, and how to become associated with that term to the point that you are regarded as an ‘expert’. This includes some amazing guests from 'The Marketing Buzzword Podcast' including Bryan Kramer, Chris Strub, Madalyn Sklar, Andrew & Pete, Mark Masters and more . It also goes into the benefits and issues of building a personal brand within an existing business brand. 

The third section looks at the role of buzzwords and terms within a marketing plan. It will look at how buzzwords can be used to bring a team together and help create a unified approach and voice to marketing within an organisation, so that the business or organisation can become known for its association with a specific term. It will also showcase why businesses should encourage employees to build a personal brand and their own authority, which in turns, helps the business be recognised as an authority. This section will also include some amazing case studies from brands and people like SocialBakers, Jessika Phillips of Now Marketing Group, an my own experiences at Talkative..

You should consider this book like an important map or like a tour guide. It will show you key points of interest, give you some history, lessons and examples of what worked and didn’t work. This book is designed to inspire and motivate you to take action on buzzwords, and use them to build authority on a subject for you or for your brand. Marketing Buzzword to Marketing Authority

It’s Ben’s mission to try and make the words of buzzwords that much easier to understand. Having built his own personal brand, several company brands and through his experiences breaking down buzzwords every week on his podcast, he is the perfect person to create this book, for this audience

Outline

Introduction

Why Ben wrote this book, why it is important, and introduction to ‘Marketing Buzzword Bingo’

Section 1 - The what and why of marketing buzzwords

• What are buzzwords and why do we use them? - uses in different industries
• How do new buzzwords form? - Who creates buzzwords? People? Businesses?
• When do marketing buzzwords become everyday terms - Terms and phrases that are no longer buzzwords
• Why is there a negative sentiment towards buzzwords? - exploring reasons for negativity
• What does the future of buzzwords look like? - What changes are coming?

Section 2 - Building buzzwords into your personal brand

• Why is having and building a personal brand important? - You have to know why before you explore the how
• What do you stand for?  - Choosing a buzzword to align yourself with
• How to build authority - How will people link you and the buzzword
• Pivoting - Changing as times and terms change
• Creating or jumping on the bandwagon - Create your own or leverage existing term?
• When buzzwords go wrong - Some examples where alignment has gone wrong
• Who has got it right - Case studies of people who have built authority and how
• Integrating the personal brand with the corporate brand - Aligning to the same terms and working in tandem. 

Section 3 - Integrating buzzwords into a business brand

• How to integrate buzzwords into a business brand - what’s the goal?
• Balancing the buzzword equation - how many buzzwords are used and why? What’s the relevancy?
• The benefits of alignment - Authority, SEO, becoming synonymous etc 
• Opportunity costs - Working out what else you could have aligned yourself too and what you could have lost/gained.
• New or established buzzwords - Do you go in with a new unknown term or do you use existing well-known term? (will also cover how to discover find and learn about them)
• Examples of business buzzwords done badly - Why it went wrong, and what you can learn from it
• Who’s got it right? - Brands who’ve done it brilliantly and how.

Audience

Ben M Roberts is heavily involved in the Digital Marketing, Social Media and Podcasting spaces in the UK and USA. 

His involvement in these channels has not only helped him to get to know his audience, but also will help to generate awareness and pre-orders of the book.

As the book is heavily linked to his podcast, Ben has already created a warm audience of marketers, businesses owners and young professionals who are the key target audience. This is global audience of thousands of unique listeners based across the planet, however around 55% of total audience are UK based and 25% are USA based.

The primary audience for this book is marketers and businesses owners/senior executives. These are the people who attend conferences, workshops and events to try and better themselves, learn, or want to stay on top of the latest industry trends. Between 2017 and so far in 2018 Ben has attended/spoken at approximately 10 marketing events with a potential combined audience size of roughly 9,000 - 10,000 marketers. 

At all of these events, marketers are exposed to a plethora of marketing buzzwords and phrases. Some of which will make sense, others will not. In each talk a delegate attends they will be told to apply a buzzword to their personal brand or marketing strategy. For some that will be good, for others the opportunity cost could be huge. This book speaks to both of those people. It helps the ones who know what they stand for to stay on the right track, and helps give the people who do not yet know or understand what they stand for a guide to find and becoming an authority on a subject.

Some statistics to show the importance of building personal brand and business brand authority and alignment:

• 82% of people are more likely to trust a company when their senior executives are active on social media
  
• Leads generated by employees through social media activities are 7x more likely to convert than other leads
  
• 95% of recruiters think that the job market is going to get more competitive, and job seekers that stand out are likely to benefit.
  
• Only six out of ten marketers think that their company’s brand is well aligned with the strategic direction of their organisation.
  
• For over 70% of brand managers, building an audience is more important than converting sales.

As a marketer himself, Ben is in a prime position to see and hear the views of other marketers and understand what unique challenges they face.

There are a few marketing books already out there which have looked at building authority, but nothing Ben has found, which looks specifically at building authority regarding marketing buzzwords. This gives testament to the fact that people are looking for information on building authority for both their personal brands and business brands, and also highlights the clear, uncontested gap in the market that this book seeks to fill.

Promotion

Because the target audience of the book will be an extension of the podcast Ben hosts (2 episodes a week), there is already a warm, receptive audience of thousands of marketers and business professionals who want to hear about the topic, and love the way Ben communicates on the subject (see marketingbuzzword.com). In addition, a good number of the podcasts guests will be mentioned in the book and they will be asked to help distribute the word about the book. Some of the notable podcast guests - many of which are already published and bestselling authors - that will be featured in the book include (note that more will be included):

Bryan Kramer - Author of Human to Human #H2H and Shareology - 219K Twitter Followers

Dan Gingiss - Author of Winning at Social Customer Care - 18.2K Twitter Followers

Brian Fanzo - Global Keynote Marketing Speaker - 123K Twitter Followers

Moses Velasco - Head of Strategy at SocialBakers (World Leading Social Analytics platform) - 142K Twitter Followers on SocialBakers

Chris Strub - Author of 50 States, 100 Days - 18.3K Twitter Followers 

Although Ben’s current following is much smaller, just under 4.5K on Twitter, he has an incredibly engaged following with over 245K impressions and 288 mentions in May 2018. In addition to Twitter he’s highly active on LinkedIn (1630 active connections) and Facebook (over 1700 connections). It’s also worth mentioning that he is a key member in a number of closed groups and organisations on these platforms dedicated to marketing, which have a combined audience of roughly 8,000 marketers and business professionals.

As well as Social Media, Ben is highly active on the conference and events circuit (roughly 10 in the last 12 months), both in the UK and overseas. He is regularly asked to be on panels, and give presentations to large crowds. The most recent of which was at SocialBakers Engage Prague, attended by around 1000 marketers. At these events Ben builds personal rapport with hundreds of people, which he can use to promote the book as well as during the presentations. You can find Ben's latest speaking engagements here. 

Ben is also very well connected in the podcast space and will be able to featured on a number of podcasts and Live video shows to talk about the book. He also writes for a number of online publications including Business.com, Allbusiness.com and is to begin writing for SocialMediaToday.com in July 2018. 

Alongside all of the above, Ben is the Head of Marketing at a SaaS Technology company called Talkative, which is part of a much larger organisation (Wesley Clover). Wesley Clover is highly connected and funds various businesses around the globe. They will help to distribute the book to a global audience that Ben doesn’t yet have direct access to.

In order to maximise exposure, Ben will use tools such as Thunderclap to help generate awareness, he will increase the number of conferences he attends and speaks at even further, and he will promote the book in all of his podcast episodes. 

Competition

Beyond Buzzwords - Michelle A Bassett - Publisher: Digital Marketing Advisors, 29 Feb. 2016

Beyond Buzzwords addresses the ignorance and confusion surrounding professional Digital Marketing by taking a position on structured education in Internet Marketing, as well as the more dangerous parts of the web you won't hear from other thought leaders - It's a book that explores mostly Internet marketing and the education sector.

Known - Mark W. Schaefer - Publisher: Self Published, 2017

In today's world, there is a permanent advantage to becoming known in your field. Those who are known get the customers, the better jobs, and the invitations to exclusive opportunities. But can anybody become known? In this path-finding book, author Mark Schaefer provides a step-by-step plan followed by the most successful people in diverse careers like banking, education, real estate, construction, fashion, and more. - This is a fantastic book, but doesn't quite cover the same angle as Ben's book. It looks more at finding niches in markets, and not in aligning yourself to terms. There are similarities, but come from different angles with different points of view. 

Buzzmarketing - Mark Hughes - Publisher: Portfolio, 29 April, 2008

These days consumers are paying less and less attention to advertising. A majority already zap commercials, and new technology keeps making it easier to tune out marketing messages. - This book looks more at brands who have built a 'buzz around them'. It explores some similar themes to Ben's book, but not on the same wavelength.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind - Al Ries & Jack Trout - Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 3 Jan 2001

The first book to deal with the problems of communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed public, Positioning describes a revolutionary approach to creating a "position" in a prospective customer's mind-one that reflects a company's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors. - This book follows a similar theme in terms of aligning to a specific term, but ignores the history and reasons for doing so along with the impact on businesses and how businesses can become leaders in their own right.

Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype - Jay Baer - Publisher: Penguin, 27 Feb 2014

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters If you're wondering how to make your products seem more exciting online, you're asking the wrong question. You're not competing for attention only against other similar products. You're competing against your customers' friends and family and viral videos and cute puppies. To win attention these days you must ask a different question: "How can we help?" - This book explores similar themes to part three of Ben's book, where a business looks to align themselves with a word or phrase, and add value to an audience following it.

 
The Brand You 50 : Or : Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an 'Employee' into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! - Tom Peters - Publisher: Knopf, 31 Sep, 1999

In 50 essential points, Tom Peters shows how to be committed to your craft, choose the right projects, how to improve networking, why you need to think fun is cool, and why it's important to piss some people off. - This book looks at how employees can build their personal brands - a key theme in Ben's book - but doesn't explore the rest of Ben's proposed book.