Sway

Here are two great ways to get up to speed on influencer marketing. First up, there’s a new interactive video of Nick Hayes’ recent presentation at the Commonwealth Club, “Marketing Is Broken, Influencers Can Fit It”. Much of the presentation — including the case studies — comes from his book on influencer marketing. And you can purchase the book at a special 50% discount through August 20th.

The interactive video is available through videographer Ron Fredericks, at the Lecturemaker.com blog. You can view the entire video or use the red navigation dots to zero in on key points. I’ve known Ron for years as an industry analyst. We’re honored that he decided to bring Nick’s presentation to a much wider audience via the web.

The special 50% discount on the book, “Influencer Marketing - Who Really Influences Your Customers”, runs through August 20th. You can only get this low price via the book website, InfluencerMarketingBook.com.

The live event took place in late May at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. It was produced by Kevin O’Malley, chairman of the Business and Leadership Forum at the Club and a principal at TechTalk / Studio.

About 60 of us attended the reception and presentation. There was a very good QA session at the end, and Ron has included excerpts of that in the video. Thanks everyone for making it such a special evening.

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Bernie Reilly, head of Influencer50 in Australia, has built several high-performance sales channels in Asia Pacific. Here, he shares a candid account of his reaction to influencer marketing. This is a reprint of his article in ‘The Influencer’: Q3′09′. Register here for alerts on future issues.

I am new to the world of Influencer Marketing having joined Influencer50 just three months ago. The reasons why I came to Influencer50 may well parallel why I think you should be beginning a conversation with us.

As a former Managing Director of three NASDAQ-listed network security companies for Asia-Pacific, I have spent the last 20 years trying to develop collaborative efforts between my salesforce and my marketing teams, with few solid metrics to gauge my success or failure.

Many believe that the purpose of marketing is to be on the mind of the prospect, when they are ready to buy. So if knowing your target customers is a golden rule of marketing, then we all need to update our understanding of the various categories of Influencers in the B2B and B2C marketplaces.

The most observable forms of influence in the tech & telecoms sector have traditionally come from commercial forces like AR and PR. Yet in the past 10-15 years we have seen the influence of analysts and journalists drop from their highs of 80-90% down to most likely 40-50%.

How has your marketing team coped with uncovering the behind the scenes influencers? Your salesforce may be able to get to the decision-makers, but they can’t get to their influencers. As these individuals are not customers, you most likely do not have them on any prospect or client list. They come from previously undocumented sources, so they’re unlikely to be on a database of yours either.

That is why Influencer50 was established - to leverage the 50-60% of the influencers you are not presently engaging. Sales forces tell us that they love us for what we do - they believe we really aid their sales efforts.

So when I was introduced to Influencer50 by a respected peer late last year, I found myself wondering if this could be a path to leads. High quality leads. You all recognize the real hot leads - they come from a senior executive in a company, or a member of your Board of Directors. When you are handed them, they come with a note saying something like “Please have your BDM call this CFO, he has a need, he has my business card and is expecting your call.” These types of leads have a very high ratio of lead-to-sales conversion. These leads get you in early enough to influence the writing of a tender or a requirements doc. These leads all come from word of mouth. Now think about the quality of leads you would want to generate over time, if you could know and then engage with those influencers who have the ear of the check signer at your prospect. That is what brought me to Influencer50!

Now that I am here in Sydney heading up Influencer50’s Asia-Pacific Office, I would love to hear your thoughts on merging the gap between sales and marketing and what you think works for you on high-quality lead generation.

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This is a reprint of my article in ‘The Influencer’: Q3′09. Register now for alerts on future issues.

Nick and I were fortunate enough to spend quality time with a number of new clients and prospects in Silicon Valley during the first half of the year. One of the influencer topics that cropped up again and again during our conversations was the ‘hidden influencers’. There’s a particular interest right now in understanding how to spot hidden influencers and what to do about them.

Hidden influencers can represent up to half of a tech company’s top influencers in a typical B2B market. We’ve identified more than 24 categories of these influencers. They’re considered ‘hidden’ because they don’t have business titles reflecting their roles as decision-maker influencers. Most lie beyond the reach of product marketing, public relations and analyst relations programs. At best, they are scattered across various silos: direct sales, channel, alliance, developer, corporate and product marketing. Many simply fall through the outreach net.

When it comes to hidden influencers, awareness is the first step in a revolution. Once you become aware that your programs are ignoring up to half of the people influencing purchases of your products and services, you’re ready to take some sort of corrective action. Here are three essential steps you can take right away.

1. Conduct research to identify the top influencers operating outside the company envelope. Identify a realistic market segment and then talk to typical decision-makers, known influencers, successful salespeople and trusted partners within that segment. Who do they respect as experts? Who do they run into during the normal course of business? What specialist knowledge do they value? Where do they turn for information?

This research begins to shed light on influencers you don’t know. Just as importantly, it indicates what you need to know about them and their motivations.

2. Use your research to model a typical decision-maker ecosystem. Every single decision-maker puts together a unique ecosystem of advisors for an important purchase. However, you’re likely to find that certain categories of influencers are common to many individual ecosystems.

This exercise gives you insight into the types of influencers you should be addressing, even if you are still unclear at this point as to the specific names and faces. Don’t be surprised to find 10 or more categories of influencers joining the more familiar categories, such as journalists and analysts.

3. Map your influencer categories across the decision lifecycle. Different types of influencers play different roles during a decision process. Some are active early in the decision process, such as those who help decide whether a purchase is even appropriate. Others are active late in the game, such as those who advise on pricing and terms.

This third step helps you visualize the way that influencers interact with decision-makers and with each other. You may find that some influencers engage at multiple stages of a decision process.

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A group of about 60 of us converged on the Commonwealth Club in late May for an evening of networking and discussion around influencer marketing. Thanks everyone for making it such a special evening.

A Zoomify photo is available from Ron Fredericks, our videographer for the preso and Q&A. It’s at his LectureMaker blog — “Nick Hayes: Marketing Is Broken It, Influencers Can Fix It”. Click on it to launch the zoom and pan options:

Ron is working with us on the final edits to the video. Will let you know when it’s available.

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David Campbell, a digital marketing expert and one of Australia’s youngest agency heads, says the adage that word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing has been around a long time. But how do you actually activate it? How can companies and agencies stimulate word of mouth marketing and use influencer marketing? And, what are the implications for traditional advertising? David delves into these questions and more  during a recent interview with Nick Hayes.

The 13-minute podcast is available through his site, Love Digital, and at marketingmag.com.au, the online home of Australia’s Marketing Magazine and a vibrant marketing community:

At MarketingMag: “Podcast: Influencer Marketing”
At David’s Digital Love site: LD Out Loud, 21 May 2009, Influencer Marketing with Nick Hayes

You can find out more about Influencer50 services available in Australia by contacting Bernie Reilly, who heads Influencer50 Asia Pacific out of our Sydney office.  Or give me a shout.

For more on the Influencer Marketing book referenced during the interview, check out InfluencerMarketingBook.com

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Please join us for what promises to be a lively discussion about what’s wrong with marketing and how an influencer program can fix it. On May 20th, we are hosting a reception and presentation on influencer marketing at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

Check out the details below. We’ve reserved complimentary tickets so email me (barbara.french@influencer50.com) or any of us, to get onto the guest list.

“Marketing Is Broken, but Influencers Can Fix It”

Purchasing decisions made within organizations have changed over the past decade, but marketing hasn’t. Today, networks or “ecosystems” of influencers shape enterprise purchase decisions. Hayes draws from work with clients such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Orange Business Services to show how to identify the diverse individuals who influence decision-makers in a market, how they influence, and how to engage them.

Date: May 20, 2009
Reception: 5:30 PM
Presentation, Q&A: 6:00PM
Where: Commonwealth Club, 595 Market St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 (directions & parking)
 Phone: +1 (415) 597-6700

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Don’t miss Nick’s session at the upcoming IABC 2009 World Conference. This year, the IABC expects to host 1,600 communication practitioners from 40 countries for this event. Four days of learning, camaraderie and inspiration right here in San Francisco.

Details on Nick’s session:

T3 / Influencer marketing and the rise of decision maker ecosystems

Date: Tuesday, 9 June
Time: 11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Track: Strategy & Counsel

The way large-scale business purchases are made has changed. Company structure, corporate governance, the Internet and numerous other factors have led to the rise of decision-maker ecosystems‚ networks of individuals whose opinions shape the eventual purchase decision. These ecosystems play a major role in the success of every sales force, thus marketers need to consider communication strategies that include them.

What you’ll learn:

• How and why purchase decision making has changed
• Types of influencers who make up most decision-maker ecosystems
• How different influencers impact decision-makers

Register by 1 May to receive the lowest conference rate. Plus, you can discuss the event at the special IABC blog InSession and follow on Twitter using hash tag #IABC09.

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I’ve been knee-deep in influencer identification projects this month. It’s my first foray beyond custom industry analyst & consultant lists since my vendor marketing days. The work has been fun and interesting and much more demanding (i.e. harder) than I expected. Frankly, I just didn’t realize how much work goes into finding the top 50 to 100 influencers in a given market for a given product or service.

Here are a couple of early observations about the challenges in my journey from a pure-play analyst watcher to a full-score influencer watcher.

Top Challenge: volume
What: Hands down, my biggest challenge is adjusting to the sheer quantity and variety of candidates at the start of analysis. There are easily a couple thousand noteworthy people actively influencing some aspect of purchase decisions on a particular product or service in a specific region.
Shift: I came into this accustomed to starting influencer identification projects with a few hundred analysts tops.

Close 2nd: mental gymnastics
What: Another challenge is the number of filters you use, how often you flip between them and how you align them. Each type of influencer behaves differently, and many exert influence independent of their job title.
Shift: I’ve been advising on this dynamic within the analyst relations world for several years — even within analyst relations you need a sophisticated set of filters. Yet I’ve never flipped between so many sets of criteria, so many times, during one project.

As if 1 & 2 aren’t enough: noise and silence
What: Some very influential people have a very small footprint in the public domain. These quiet influential types don’t jump out of the research and kiss you on the cheek. Meanwhile, there’s no shortage of wind bags.
Shift: It’s like those perceptual illusions and Hidden Pictures puzzles: once you know what attributes you’re looking, you spot them.

There’d be a much longer list of challenges, had I attempted these projects on my own. Duncan and Nick have a killer approach and solid tools and the research team here is top notch.

What about you? Please share your stories and links on identifying influencers.

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Sway has just been added to Alltop’s Marketing collection. Marketing.alltop aggregates the headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover marketing. It’s an excellent resource on a range of marketing topics.

I’m proud that Sway is included.

I often use Alltop collections in my online work, and recommend them in my offline life. That’s where I discovered many of the blogs featured in my blogroll. In fact, speaker.allop has been on Sway’s blogroll since day 1.

For information about Alltop, see the YouTube tutorial.

Of course, I hope you’ll subscribe to Sway’s RSS feed, Duncan’s Infuse blog, and our Influencer50 newsletter, ‘The Influencer‘, as well.

Thanks Neenz!

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Scott Brinker blogged about propinquity and Twitter last week. I’d never heard the word propinquity before. However, propinquity seems to be a label for a familiar concept — the notion that physical promixity promotes relationships. My parents harped about that while I was a teen. Happily, Scott takes a different tack. He suggests that social media applications such as Twitter may wear down the effects of physical promixity in relationship dynamics. I wonder what kind of effect they will have on relationships with influencers. And how we will measure it.

Today, we use several criteria for measuring influence for our Influencer50 clients. Our metrics include factors such as an influencer’s

• market reach
• frequency of impact
• quality of impact
• closeness to decision

“Closeness to decision” is where propinquity comes into play. We include physical proximity and timing in this metric. So, we already think of closeness to a decision as a measure of more than physical distance.

It’s not hard to envision extending “closeness to decision” with new metrics focused on social media, mobile communications, or both.

Several companies already use Twitter as a way to engage with influencers and customer conversations online. Duncan has written about this development in The Influencer, our free newsletter.

One thing is clear. We haven’t gotten our collective heads around the implications of social media in terms of influence. We’re still caught up in early adopter personalities and tactics.

Sometime soon, we’ll need to stop counting social media links and echoes. We need to start agreeing on what counts as distance and what counts as closeness and what counts as influence.

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