Looking for a useful definition of “influencer” within the context of influencer marketing? Duncan gives a great run down in a B2B Marketing Online feature on influencer marketing by Meg de Jong, acting deputy editor:
“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.”
I am surprised to find Duncan saying that it’s rare for customers to be influencers. Sales professionals repeatedly tell me that customer references and customer case studies are highly valuable in winning business — not only towards the end of the purchase decision, but during short-listing as well.
Otherwise, it’s a excellent overview of B2B influencer marketing.
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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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An influencer program can be a powerful asset in countering sales objections. Here are a few well-proven tips from our collection of case studies:
1. Compile and prioritize specific sales objections. Don’t accept generalities at the outset. You can generalize later. Start with clear, articulate objections. Get a good sense of frequency, too.
2. Identify external influencers who have both the credibility and the message to address each sales objection. Remember, your focus is finding 3rd party influencers with credibility in the eyes of your customer decision-makers. The “right” influencer is one who has the credibility and already has the counter-argument to the sales objection.
That’s an important point and it bears repeating:
Your role is to find the right influencers — not to manufacture them.
3. Design appropriate vehicles for capturing influencer counter-arguments and conveying them to decision-makers as objections arise.
It’s straightforward and sheer common sense.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
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Forrester Research’s Kevin Lucas raises a good question: what core corporate business value can your analyst relations program deliver? His point is that AR programs shouldn’t commit to delivering sales value unless there’s good reason to do so. As logical as that advice may sound, I don’t agree with it.
Analyst relations programs can be designed to deliver on a wide range of business objectives. There’s no reason to shy away from aligning AR with the customer purchase decision process. In fact, that has been the basis of the analyst business — and analyst relations — since the late 80s.
What you can’t do, is bolt sales performance expectations onto an existing AR program. Objectives are fundamental to how you design, staff, fund and measure an AR program.
A legacy AR program — perhaps focused primarily on what’s said during a conference, or improving where your dot is placed on quadrants — is not going to shorten sales cycles tomorrow because somebody issues an edict today.
The magic wand scenario just doesn’t fly.
That doesn’t mean that an AR program can’t deliver sales value. It means that delivering sales value will take time. It will take intention. It will take planning.
Kevin asks a good question. It’s up to each of us to come up with a good answer.
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