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…