John Smith, a 29-year-old junior sales manager, is bustling through Victoria underground on the morning of May 27 in his usual somnambulist-in-hyperdrive mode, when he is stopped dead in his tracks by the presence of a seven-foot, three-dimensional ball. Peering cautiously inside, he finds a seat facing a camera, Big Brother diary room style.
“Go on in,” someone prompts him. “Tell us what you would do to make a difference in the world.”
Later that day he finds his video on the ‘Pass the ball’ microsite, and he tweets it to his friends to rate.
“We’ve all got good ideas, we’ve all got intellectual capital,” explains Drew Nicholson, joint MD at DNX, of this recent influencer marketing initiative by Cisco Webex.
The campaign, which aims to raise the company’s profile with 22-33 year-old technology influencers, taps into the phenomenon of Internet sharing by giving people the opportunity to share their ideas, he explains.
The idea is that, while these individuals are not decision-makers themselves, they will help to influence and inform the decision of the guy in charge.
Definition
The term influencer means different things to different people. In the broadest sense, influencers are people whose actions or opinions have an effect on someone else. Duncan Brown, European managing director at specialist company Influencer50, points out that in terms of B2B marketing, marketers will be specifically interested in those individuals that impact on the buying decisions of firms.
Depending on the specifics of your business, a large variety of people – both internal and external to your target companies – could be identified as influencers. These include journalists, consultants, academics, authors, sourcing advisors, management gurus, procurement advisors, systems integrators, regulators, government executives, standards setters, industry associations, resellers, lobbyists, events, forums and bloggers, among many possibilities.
“An external influencer is someone that sits outside of the prospect organisation, but has the ear and trust of the decision-maker,” explains James Hanson, managing director at Noiseworks. He continues, “Their opinions are canvassed proactively as part of the purchase process, but they often remain invisible to the vendor organisation and therefore uncontrolled. This makes them a bit of a wildcard with the potential to severely disrupt a potential sale. Identify them and get them on-message, and that potential converts into very compelling sales support.”
Decision-makers can also be influenced by people within their own company.
“The internal influencers are the people within the prospect organisation that have no formal role in the final decision, but whose opinion is canvassed and who may be responsible for suggesting potential solutions. They may be people that are tasked with looking at the feasibility of certain projects or solutions and they then ultimately report back to the decision-makers, who have the final sign-off, with a list of potential solutions,” explains Hanson.
He gives the example of a company that might be looking at a new financial accounting software system. The decision-makers will likely be the FD, who needs to report to the board on the numbers, and IT, which is responsible for implementing the solution. But Clive in credit control needs to be able to use the system and might have his own recommendations to make to add to the shortlisted vendors – however, this is the extent of his role in the process. He has influence but no decision-making power.
It’s rare for a customer to be an influencer, according to Brown.
Marketing ‘to’ and ‘through’ influencers
The practice of influencer marketing is essentially about marketing ‘to’ influencers, to grab their attention and drive positive perception of your brand.
But businesses should also market ‘through’ influencers, stresses Brown, explaining that this is when influencers act as a channel to carry a vendor’s message to the market.
“It is important to market to influencers because they’re influencing your prospective customers now, whether you like it or not. You can’t leave what they’re saying to chance, or to their perceptions and prejudices. Marketing to them enables you to not only change their perceptions but also set up a base for continuous engagement,” says Brown.
Identifying influencers
“The emphasis is on influencing decision-makers,” stresses Brown. “It’s pointless to influence anyone else.” As a result, he recommends identifying who your target market or decision-makers are, as a first step. “This grounds the ecosystem of influencers firmly around the decision you’re trying to influence,” he explains. Once you know who your end target is, you can set about identifying those that will influence them.
Identifying influencers can be difficult, admits Paul Gillin, author of several books on online influencer marketing, including his most recent The New Influencers. “They are often not the usual suspects,” he observes.
Brown recommends a two-step process. First, it is important to understand the totality of people that have some impact on decision-makers, and then you must rank them in order.
The only proper way to identify your influencers is through in-depth market research, says Brown. The research programme can include many things, from desk-based research to focus groups, interviews with clients, prospects and existing customers as well as survey-based data. “In order to establish who influences a community of decision-makers, you’ve got to ask those decision-makers. It is therefore critical to understand exactly what community you’re looking at,” he says.
Getting this step wrong could blow the whole campaign, cautions Alex Brayshaw, director at DNX. “The biggest damage is in terms of waste of resource (time and money). To guard against it, you need to test and trial your campaigns with a small target first – see the response, and understand behaviour, then roll out.”
A dark art: Ranking influencers
Once they’ve been identified, ranking these influencers in order of importance is the next step. “There’s no point in treating all influencers the same – some are more influential than others,” explains Brown.
He suggests the following six criteria:
1. Market reach. How well-known and listened to is the influencer? Are they ubiquitous in the industry? What are the chances that a given potential customer would have heard that influencer’s message?
2. Frequency of impact. Consider the number of opportunities the influencer has to do his or her thing. If they were likely to have several opportunities over one year then they score high. In this way, a daily paper would score higher than a speaker event.
3. Independence. Once the influencer’s message has been heard by the potential customer, how much impact does it have? Vendors could not rank too highly here, because their message would always be considered biased, whereas independent influencers automatically rate more highly.
4. Expertise. This criterion is self-explanatory, based on the influencer’s number of years with relevant experience and the seniority with which they have taken that experience.
5. Persuasiveness. When some people provide recommendation advice to another, their advice can be either taken or ignored without penalty. Casual acquaintances often provide advice but without persuasion. The advice of regulators, however, usually needs to be taken extremely seriously, such that they exhibit high levels of ‘persuasiveness’.
6. Thoroughness of role. Some individuals influence a decision throughout the decision-making lifecycle, from initial problem evaluation through to cheque-signing. Other influencers may be called in at one single micro-decision stage. This is on which we base their ‘thoroughness of influence’ role.
Influencing the influencers
So, now that you know who they are, how do you rope them in? It’s simple, says Brown. “Give them the tools of influence – influencers love to influence.” In practical terms, he explains, find out what they need to make them more effective at what they do, then supply it.
Gillin agrees. “Influencers are driven more by interest than need,” he says. “Target them by appealing to their interests and need to feel important. Many influencers thrive on being insiders or having special knowledge. Indulging this need for status can get their attention and begin a conversation.”
Brayshaw believes that the best approach is to create an affinity with your brand. “It’s about a brand connection,” he says. “It’s a less tangible relationship, and not built of the usual traits of business benefit, ROI, etc.” he continues. “This interaction could be at a very low level and may just get them to associate the brand with something.”
One thing to always bear in mind is that influencers are not a customer or prospect, so don’t treat them like one, cautions Brown. “They don’t buy stuff and they couldn’t care less about you or your products. So never, ever pitch to an influencer.”
Influencers can fall into a number of categories, explains Hanson, adding that it’s important to monitor this and act appropriately. He breaks the categories down into:
1. Those that you can engage directly with to help close deals. E.g. speaking at customer/prospect events, directly engaging in joint marketing/PR etc.
2. Those that you just need to keep updated with appropriate information to enable them to continue their self-seeking influencer status and to continue influencing your sales channel.
3. Those that you need to monitor who may be a negative influence – you won’t always be able to win over every influencer.
Measuring influencer success
As with all marketing, marketers want to see quantifiable results for their efforts. This can be trickier than it sounds, as each influencer influences in a different way, and must therefore be measured in a different way, as Bhavesh Vaghela, head of marketing EMEA for BPM company Global360 points out. He has decided to gauge success by monitoring the targeted influencers perception of his company over a 12 month period.
Influencer50 recommends a modified version of the Net Promoter Score (NPS). This method can be used not only to gauge success, but also in the targeting of influencers with more weight.
“The idea is,” says Brown, “the influencers’ NPS should predict customers’ NPS.”
Net Promoter methodology can also be used to monitor the sphere of influence your influencers have, says Karine Del Moro, director of EMEA marketing, Satmetrix. Combined with customer segmentation or a CRM program, she says, Net Promoter can help measure an influencer’s sphere of influence by looking at things like number of LinkedIn connections, blog postings, clients referred by this influencer, etc. Satmetrix refers to these as ‘Networked Promoters’.
Brayshaw, on the other hand, gauges the success of influencer campaigns by the consequent interactions between influencer and brand. This could include things like sign-ups, views, search volumes, site stats etc.
It can take time to see a return, Hanson warns, pointing out that the research takes a few months, before you even start to implement the influencer programme.
