"OPA" is often what a Greek restaurant waiter will shout when lighting up a plate of saganaki.
For me these days, OPA means "Other People's Audiences."
I've borrowed the term a bit from Jeffrey Hayzlett, who talks about using OPM (Other People's Money) to do really efficient marketing.
As much as we encourage clients to create their own media platforms—and publish great original content on them—the reality is most B2B marketers will reach and influence far greater numbers of customers, prospects and influencers by tapping and leveraging OPA.
In fact, too many B2B marketers, in our opinion, have it backward.
While they should be investing in and experimenting with their own media platforms, they often are over-investing time and money here and under-investing in getting their messages across through OPA.
What do I mean by Other People's Audiences? It includes:
- Guest columns or posts in widely followed external blogs
- Commentary posted on discussion boards at relevant B2B news and media sites
- Commentary posted on online B2B community sites and LinkedIn Groups
- Quotes folded into news and feature stories
- Media interviews
- External speaking engagements, panels
How do you identify the right OPA? It's really pretty easy—or at least straightforward.
You investigate and audit where large numbers of the people you want to reach, influence and motivate—at any stage of the buy cycle—are congregating and spending their time both online and offline.
Actually, it's pretty classic media pathway and channel analysis —the stuff you should be doing anyway in building integrated marketing communications (IMC) plans.
Some B2B marketers have built huge audiences for their own media. Adobe is one. Even so, they still tap OPA big time.
But most B2B marketers aren't where Adobe is, and they should consider redoubling their efforts to better tap OPA.
And have some delicious saganaki while at it!
