Paying for endorsements is an oxymoron

Last Wednesday I ran a webinar on Influencer Marketing. During the Q&A one attendee asked me if he could "enhance" the positive effect of influencers by paying them to say nice things. My answer was unequivocal - Don't do it!

There are many reasons why you shouldn't pay for influence, but I think the best one is common sense. If you pay an influencer to say something, their influence diminishes immediately because they are no longer independent.

It turns out that synchronicity was at work, because the FTC in the US just ruled that word-of-mouth marketers must reveal if they've paid an endorser (as reported in The Washington Post).

It's important to distinguish between paying an Influencer to say something (invalid), and paying them to state their opinion (valid). Otherwise the business models for consulting, industry analysis and many other activities would fall apart.

Unfortunately, there are those firms and individuals that do take money specifically to present vendors in a positive light. But these tend to be the less influential players in the market.

Better to try to influence influencers through relationship building and persuasion, rather than by paying to put words in their mouth.

Analyst influence diminishing further...?

A couple of months back we published a White Paper entitled Analyst Influence is Diminishing. What was remarkable about the paper's reception was its wide acknowledgement as fact, apart from one or two AR blogs. Most marketing directors and AR people we spoke to were pleased to have their views confirmed, but weren't hugely surprised by our promouncement. So much for being controversial.

One of the points we made was the dissipating influence of analysts, due to erosion of credibility. ARmadgeddon is running a poll on analyst "unpredictions" and has already recorded some examples where Gartner gets it wrong, mainly around its magic quadrant.

Our view is not that analysts are losing their influence. It is that analysts are having to share influence with other influencer types, that may be less obvious but just as important. Analysts have got predictions wrong for ever - at Ovum we used examples of poor predictions in our forecasting courses (politeness forbids naming offenders, except that one of them is me!).

Still, we enjoy with schadenfreude the current cycle of criticism...

Competitors as influencers

There's a fascinating article by management guru Tom Peters on the role of competitiors in your marketing strategy - read the post here.

Peters notes that talking up your competitors helps grow the market. I also think that it enhances your credibility, by demonstrating your knowledge of the market. Ignoring or, worse, bad-mouthing the competition conveys your fear of the opposition.

Of course, competitors are influencers in your market. They talk to your prospects, influence their opinions, and shape the mindset of decision makers. Do you know what your competitiors are saying about you?

Influencer Marketing Primer 4 - Marketing to influencers

So you have a shiny new list of your market’s influencers? Now what?

It’s typical to find that, of the 50 or more influencers you identify that have real influence over your prospects, you don’t know more than 20. Which means that at least 60% of your influencers don’t know you either.

It’s time to do some Go-To-Influencer marketing.

Marketing to influencers should be straightforward, as long as you remember the golden rule:

*********Influencers don’t buy anything from you.**********

Influencers are not customers. There is no point in pitching your usual marketing bumf at influencers – they don’t care.

You must, instead, treat influencers in the same way as you would any other segment. You find out what they want, what their interests and motivations are, and what their interest is (professional or otherwise) in you.

Here are some steps you get you started:

• Segment your influencers into influencer types. You may also want a separate segment for VIIs – Very Important Influencers.
• Identify the most important segments – start here.
• Identify where you have relationships with influencers, and where you’re starting from scratch.
• Develop a series of messages, based on your firm’s positioning and product set, that appeals to each influencer type. Remember these need to be pertinent to the needs of the influencer, not pushing product features (because influencers don’t care).
• Develop a community of influencers. You can do this for a one-off event, such as a dinner, or for a product launch, or as a longer-lasting community effort. Whatever fits with your firm, market and product/service.
• Consider commissioning deep profiles of specific influencers that carry extra weight. These may be so-called super-influencers, that influence other influencers in the influence web.

Go-To-Influencer marketing is a necessary means to an end – that of turning the market towards your firm or products. But GTI has its own benefit of increasing your awareness amongst the most important people in the market. If you’ve done the work well, your influencers will be eager not only to talk to you, but to talk about you.

The next step is to give them something to say…

Word of mouth marketing needs influencers

Influencer Marketing and word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) are inter-related. I’m a big fan of WOMM, Influencer50 is a member of WOMMA, and I’ve just read Andy Sernowitz’s book on WOM. Andy is the CEO of WOMMA.

But WOMM by itself lacks a key ingredient. As Seth Godin says in Purple Cow, it is useless to advertise to anyone except sneezers (i.e. talkers) with influence. I’d go further by extending advertising to all forms of marketing. People rarely buy just because they experience marketing. The marketing message is corroborated, enhanced and personalised through WOMM. And WOMM needs sneezers with influence.

In a B2C context, WOMM happens primarily at a peer level. That is, consumers talk to other consumers, and the message spreads.

In the B2B environment, things work differently. There are good reasons for this. There are competitive issues: if we are in the same field, passing on recommendations may erode the competitive advantage my firm has over yours. There are community issues: companies tend to be insular and don’t often communicate with other firms.

Instead, WOMM is mediated (often informally) by influencers. Recommendations, experiences, gossip and stories from the field are all related by various influencer types. Some of this communication is overt, published in analyst reports, journalistic articles and blogs. But much of it, up to 80% we estimate, happens in closed circles. These can be private meetings, invitation-only events, on the golf course, in lifts, over lunch, and so on.

Influencers are influencers because they have expertise and because they like to influence. So they are more than willing to pass on messages that reinforce their influence.

The crux of Influencer Marketing is to communicate your messages to influencers, such that those messages are then communicated by influencers to your customers and prospects.

Remember, though, that your product or service will only be talked about if it is worth being talked about.

On Net Promoter Score – tangible measurement of marketing

I’m a big fan of Fred Reichheld’s Ultimate Question concept. I recommend reading the original HBR paper (published in December 2003 - email me if you can’t find it).

The basic concept is that you poll your customers on one key question – Would you refer us to a friend or colleague?” The result of positives minus negatives (excluding neutrals) gives you your Net Promoter Score.

The really interesting aspect of NPS is that it accurately predicts future revenue growth.

Wow! Tangible evidence that maps advocacy to sales.

Forrester has blogged on NPS recently and makes some interesting points, the most relevant being that “everyone in the room seemed to be using Net Promoter.” So it’s not just theory – people are using it in practice.

I also suggest reading Paul Marsden’s work on Advocacy and Growth, which adds further proof points to Reichheld’s work.

I like this idea so much, and it confirms the importance of advocacy (which is what Influencer Marketing is all about), that Influencer50 will soon be offering this as a service. It just makes sense.

Who says marketing measurement is intangible?

Influencer Marketing Primer 3 - Measuring influence

Robert Cialdini, in his excellent book Influence: Science and Practice, doesn’t actually define what influence is: the only omission in an otherwise worthy read. But for our purposes – understanding influence in the world of B2B marketing – Cialdini offers an interesting two-dimensional measure of influence:

• Is this individual truly an expert? Does the person have the credentials that make them an authoritative voice on the specific subject in question, and
• How truthful can we expect the individual to be? Does the person have some interest in the decision they are commenting on, or are they completely independent?

The first input distinguishes between influencers that have deep expertise in the subject domain, and those that have much less so. Expertise is, of course, relative and specific to the subject. I’d like to think I have some expertise in Single Malt Scotch Whisky, relative to the average person, and would be happy to exert some influence over Whisky purchases by friends and colleagues. But I’m no match for the professional palates of blenders, nor would I advise following my notions when investing in barrels of spirit maturing in casks. And I’m a complete ignoramus about wine, brandy and other tipples.

The second dimension cuts to the heart of a key issue in the advisory business – independence. When I worked at Ovum, we published an independence charter, to state clearly our practices when working with clients. We wouldn’t write commissioned white papers, nor were we allowed to own shares in companies we followed as analysts. At IDC, we also had strong principles of independence, but they resulted in quite different outcomes in practice from those at Ovum. It’s importance to determine what a firm means by independence – it may not be what you think it means.

The above criteria are useful, but not sufficient, when it comes to considering influence in a B2B context. They are, collectively, a measure of the quality of influence being exerted. Quality counts for little if the message is not heard. We require a measure of the frequency with which the individual applies their influence: the more an individual provides input to the market the more they are likely to be heard. This is straightforward to detect when the influencer communicates directly with the market (analysts or journalists, for example) but much harder when communications are made indirectly, via the media, conferences, private meetings, and so on. Nobody says measuring influence is easy!

It is also important to measure the accessibility of the influence’s opinion to the market: if the individual’s message is being ignored or disregarded then they are less likely to exert influence. Journalists, authors and analysts score highly here. Independent consultants, academics and purchasing groups are typically less accessible (with the usual caveat for exceptions).

Blogging is an excellent example of this measure at work. Frequency of posts is an early indicator of influence, but the number of links to a blogger over time is a more reliable measure.

Perhaps the most important criterion in measuring influence is the proximity of the influencer to the decision process. After all, we are measuring the degree of influence over B2B decision makers. Does the influencer have the ear of decision makers, either directly (as in the case of consultants) or via other indirect channels?

Influencer50 has defined four criteria that map to the measures discussed above:

• Market Reach – the number of people an individual has the ability to connect with. This it measures accessibility of the influencer.
• Quality of Impact – the esteem in which an individual’s view and opinions are held. This measure incorporates both credibility and independence of the influencer.
• Frequency of Impact – the number of opportunities an individual has to influence buying decisions.
• Closeness to Decision – how near an individual is to the decision-maker. This does not necessarily mean physical proximity – it can be online or indirect via some other channel. Whatever, great advice or insight has little influence if it is not heard by a decision-maker.

At Influencer50 we score each measure as a percentage, and we provide results in an unweighted manner. Our clients can apply their own weightings, as we provide results in an Excel format (as well as a written report and workshop presentation).

Measuring influence is an inexact science, and it requires experience and judgement. Results are always subjective to some degree, which is why we deliver scores that are relative. There are no absolutes in influence.

We’re continuing to review our criteria, based on changes in the market. For example, what impact does the Marketing 2.0 agenda have? How is blogging changing influence?

I’ll post any changes to our criteria as we release them. Meantime, I’m interested to receive any feedback on our current criteria.