Kred Takes Target Marketing To A New Level

Who influences you when you have to make a buying decision? A friend or family member? A fellow business owner? A celebrity hawking a particular brand? Most likely, the answer varies depending on the type of purchase you’re making.

As a business owner, wouldn’t it be great if you could know exactly who influences your target customer’s decision-making process? What a coup that would be!

Enter a new social media platform called Kred. There is no doubt in my mind that Kred is going turn the world of marketing on its head. 

Since 2005, PeopleBrowsr, a high-tech analytics company, has archived 55 billion tweets on the Kred platform, consisting of 100 million names and 30 billion conversations. Using sophisticated analytics, Kred can filter these conversations and measure someone’s true influence within a interest-related communities.

“Kred is built on the fundamental belief that we are all influential somewhere” said PeopleBrowsr CEO Jodee Rich. 

Kred calculates two metrics; influence and outreach. Influence, scored on a normalized 1000-point scale, measures the ability to inspire action or influence others in the form of retweets, replies, likes, new follows and other actions. Outreach levels reflect your generosity and increase each time you initiate a conversation, interact with others or share content. So your Kred score might be something like 344/05--344 points for influence and 05 for outreach. (An 05 or 06 is high for outreach, I’m told.) 

In addition to your network score, Kred offers user scores for each of the communities formed around your interests. The more engaged you are in a particular community, the higher your score. 

“Kred scores emphasize the importance of small close networks of like-minded people,” Andrew Grill, CEO PeopleBrowsr U.K., explains.  “The main influencers are everyday people as opposed to celebrities. They are the new rock stars of influence.” 

So what does all of this mean for your marketing efforts? Assume you’re marketing a new product for infants.  It might be cool if Justin Bieber retweeted you, but would new mothers be influenced by him? Probably not.  However, a mommy blogger with a strong Kred score who retweets you or mentions your product could quickly spark sales. By leveraging the platform, you can determine where best to spend your time and effort.  

“We are releasing something that brings people closer together by measuring influence within communities,” Rich explained. “Kred asserts the importance of trust and sharing in human relationships.”

Does all of this sound a little too much like Big Brother? Kred makes it possible for you to opt out completely, remain anonymous or simply keep certain communications private. 

Unveiled in San Francisco last week, Kred isn’t open to the public quite yet. However, you can request access to the free service by tweeting to @PeopleBrowsr or requesting access online. Invitations will be delivered beginning on Thursday, October 6, 2011. 

I can’t wait to learn my Kred score.  What about you?

[Image: Flickr user Michael Holden]