How I used 'Praise-Led Marketing' to go viral 🎊

Grow fast by celebrating others

One of the best tactics for brand awareness is to “hijack” the audience of others.

Most companies do it by sponsoring people with a large audience. This is called ‘Influencer Marketing’. But you DON’T have to chase down influencers and pay them loads of money to get them to talk about you.

Instead, try this strategy: praise them. 🎉

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👀 We all want to be recognized…

During my time at a B2B startup called Mine, we sold a platform to Data Protection Officers (a.k.a. DPOs).

When I joined the team, the first thing I did was look up famous DPOs. I was surprised to find that there were none. 😵 No directory, no list, no hall of fame. No room for the DPOs to show their status.

So I decided to make one.

I launched a “Top DPOs” section on our website, set up a nomination email address, and asked our social media followers to vote for their favorite DPOs via email. Then, I reached out to the top vote-getters, congratulated them for being the Top DPOs of 2022, and invited them for interviews.

It worked wonders. They all shared our interviews with them, boosting our website traffic, LinkedIn following, and demos booked.

👉 Why did they share our content? Because we praised them!

Just a few of those who shared—the engagement rates were insane!

Research shows that we constantly look for ways to improve how others see us — that’s where status comes into play.¹

And status is the secret behind this week’s beautiful marketing idea:

💡 The marketing idea: Publicly praise & celebrate individuals in your industry for their great work. And by inviting them to collaborate → they subsequently promote your brand (and might even become customers).

Here’s my ultimate playbook to apply it:

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💖 Praise-Led Marketing 101

Step 1: Set up your “Praising Platform”

Create a blog / LP / mini-website that explains what you’re about to do. Drop a nomination box too. It’s super important that your praising platform looks genuine and well-thought. At Mine, we published this blog post announcing it.

Here’s how I’d do it from scratch if I were to start all over:

1. Build a whole mini-website with a new domain name (not just a blog section).

2. Write A LOT of content about the role you’re praising, with links to resources and the criteria for choosing winners. Include a public nomination system (email/form). The secret is to be extremely authentic, detailed and well-researched. Make it look like the goal is to help the industry, NOT to gain attention.

3. Post everything on social media - consider boosting with paid ads.

The criteria for choosing winners we included in our blog post (the “praising platform”)

Step 2: Find famous thought leaders in your industry

Use tools like Sparktoro to find big names in your industry. Don’t wait for nominations—proactively look up leaders. We want to find people who regularly publish content about our industry, on any platform.

One of my favorite tactics here is to:

1. Find employees of successful companies who could be customers. If you know of a company that has done a meaningful job in the area you’re praising, check out the employee list on Linkedin and search for thought leaders who publish posts/articles about our industry frequently.

2. Reach out to other employees in the same company, with a link to your project, and ask them if they’d like to vote for their in-house thought leader.

I honestly recommend SparkToro (not sponsored)

Step 3: Research the *hell* out of winners

Heavily research each person you’re about to praise. Find any piece of content they’ve published and use it as an asset to justify the praise. Then, write a short outline/draft of the article about them. Highlight their specific achievements and contributions.

Don’t publish yet!

Step 4: Connect with the winners

Send a message to the recognized leaders: Your goal now is to get them to agree to an interview.

Start with a DM on Linkedin, continue with DMs to their colleagues, and try to find their email if none of them respond. Send them a link to the praising platform from step #1, your initial research from step #3, celebrate their accomplishments and ask them to have a quick interview. Show the value of being part of the project.

Here’s the first DM I used to send the chosen Top DPOs:

It went through many iterations, and the above text was the most converting. From my experience, the punch line that made the difference here is this sentence:

“We will be writing an article about you and your role…”

See what we did there? 🧠 We didn’t say “We’re considering the option to write an article about you”—our tone was 100% decisive: “We’re definitely going to write an article”. I think it made the other side a bit nervous: What will they write? Will it be accurate? Will it put me in a positive light?

This tiny hack made them want to collaborate on steroids. They want to control the narrative of the article → so they feel obligated to cooperate. See one of the messages I had received back then:

Once they gave me their email address, I sent them this email:

Step 5: Publish a praising piece of content

We can use practically any format (listicles, blog series, or even just LinkedIn posts). Keep in mind that “smaller” formats are less shareable. At Mine, we decided on blog series - see the interviews here.

Step 6: Add extra celebrations

On top of the praising article, add some creative activities to squeeze the juice:

1. Design a shareable image with a quote from the person we praised. Include our brand logo and their company's logo. Send them this image.

2. Ship some company swag with a handwritten greeting card signed by the CEO.

3. If there’s a budget, consider Times Square ads featuring the faces of those we praised.

A great example here is Goldcast, a webinar platform that publishes an annual Top B2B Marketers award, and also spotlights each winner briefly on Times Square. This is a great added bonus that helps with distribution. 

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🧗‍♀️ Potential pitfalls (and how to avoid them)

1. Don’t do generic praise: Be specific and research-based in your praise. Focus on specific achievements and contributions. Highlight what makes them stand out. Quality should always trump quantity.

2. Keep it fair: If your list of praised individuals is exclusively drawn from the customer list or has hidden biases (e.g. Lacework), it will destroy trust. Make the criteria and selection process public.

3. Don’t overdo: While it’s tempting to praise industry leaders continuously, be cautious not to overdo it. Maintain a balanced frequency; too much praise can lose its impact.

4. Avoid self-promo: The core of praise-led marketing is celebrating others, not using it as a facade for self-promotion. Keep the focus on the achievements and contributions of the influencers you recognize. Don't turn it into a platform for promoting your brand.

5. Celebrate smaller voices too: While it's natural to want to celebrate the big names in your industry, don't forget about emerging voices. Smaller, lesser-known leaders may be more willing to engage and share the recognition, given their rising status. Mixing in smaller names can diversify your acknowledgment platform and boost its trust.

6. Be personal: Don’t only be a representative of the company—tell the thought leaders they inspired you personally.

7. Consider the “Shareability Spectrum”: Some audiences are more ‘sharing’ by nature, and you should focus on praising them (they’ll probably return the favor). For example, I wouldn’t bother praising CFOs or accountants.

🔥 How to pitch Praise-Led Marketing to your boss

🏰 Become category kings: Recognizing industry leaders instantly elevates our brand’s reputation and perceived leadership. We suddenly seem like the category king, nominating others as top experts. Who gave us permission to do it? No one!

🙅🏻‍♂️ No need for influencers: We don’t have to chase influencers; praise-led marketing spotlights thought leaders in our industry who aren’t traditional influencers. Those people mostly have a large audience - but they’re not doing paid campaigns. A shoutout from them is extremely powerful. This is the way to reach their audience.

📣 More reach: Again, when we praise someone, they’re likely to share it. Look at the beautiful engagement rates that the DPO posts gathered—especially when comparing them to our own company’s LinkedIn page results.

💡 More examples of Praise-Led Marketing

• Hubspot

• Freshdesk

• Snov

• Compose.ly

See you next week ✌️

Tom

1. Sivanathan & Pettit (2010). Protecting the self through consumption: Status goods as affirmational commodities. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.