On Edelman’s trust barometer

Every year Edelman PR commissions a survey of opinion leaders in 18 countries, measuring the degree of trust they have in business, government, media and NGOs.

As in other polls and lists, it’s interesting but not very useful to most firms targeting specific segments. You wouldn’t want to bet your marketing strategy on this study.

What is very significant, though, is that this poll acknowledges the influence of peers, “average employees” and “people like me.” It’s not just the elite that influencer. As David Brain, president and CEO, Edelman Europe, says:

“The growing trust in ‘people like me’ and average employees means that companies must design their communications as much on the horizontal or the peer-to-peer axis as on the vertical or top-down axis. CEOs should continue to talk with elites, such as investors and regulators, but also provide critical information to employees and enthusiastic consumers who spur the peer-to-peer discussion. Third parties with credentials, like academics and physicians, are also critical.”

It’s significant not because of what it says – it basically echoes the point of this blog and of Influencer50’s business model – but of who says it. Edelman is one of the world’s big PR firms and as such is clearly trying to get its head around the impact on its business of reaching out to new and diverse communities, while not incurring the wrath of the blogosphere. It’s had a couple of crises already (Walmart, Microsoft), but at least it’s trying.

Robert Cialdini on BBC

This morning, on the Today programme, Robert Cialdini gives his thoughts on how to persuade people to live greener lives. Interesting insight into mass ethical persuasion…

Professor Cialdini is the author of Influence: Science and Practice - a good read, even if not strictly marketing related.

Tom Peters on Women as Influencers

Tom Peters has being searching for excellence for 25 years. I think he found it occasionally.

This speech, given at the 25 year anniversary of Inc. Magazine, promotes women as the primary influencers in the majority of social decisions, and the fastest rising demographic in business.

Interestingly, most of Influencer50’s research returns results that are male-dominated, even within analyst firms. Personal experience indicates that women analysts are often very influential, and there is a better male/female ratio in analysts firm that in the IT industry as a whole. Is our research skewed in favour of male roles?

If Mr Peters is right, the demographics of power in business will change significantly over the next decade – we trust this will be reflected in our influencer research.

On Influence and Viagra

There, that got your attention.

Interesting, slightly off-the-wall article by Steve Hunt in Security Magazine, on a personal take of influencer ecosystems. It may seem strange that I'm reading up on Security technology, but no stranger than a security guru writing on influence...

The article is here.

Steve's blog is http://www.securitydreamer.com/

Blogger Relations as an extension of PR

It had to happen. PR blog The World’s Leading reports that Prompt Communications has launched a Blogger Relations practice, alongside its traditional PR activities. I doubt they’ll be the last.

Blogging is causing headaches in the worlds of PR and AR, not necessarily because they threaten the status quo, but because neither knows how to handle them. In many ways, blogging just highlights the debate between PR and specialist AR functions. There are important and fundamental differences between PR and AR. Now Blogger Relations (BR?!) seems to create another set of tensions. Some bloggers are analysts, some are journalists, some are, well, just folk.

There are a couple of ways BR may evolve.

We may see the emergence of what ARmageddon called Influencer Relations (InfR), where all influencers are managed under a cohesive programme. BR just becomes subsumed into InfR.

My main problem with the idea of InfR is that it stops at “relations”. I prefer the holistic concept of Influencer Marketing, because it makes tangible acknowledge of, and contribution to, the bottom line. AR and PR have always struggled to measure their value in hard cash.

The other evolution path for BR is for us to realise that blogging is just a medium. True, the medium allows huge reach for previously unknown people, but same applied to ecommerce web sites 10 years ago. In our categorisation of influencer types we use the term “blogger” only in rare cases and as a last resort. Charlene Li blogs, but she’s a Forrester analyst. Seth Godin blogs, but he’s an author and speaker. Heather Green blogs, but she’s a journalist. And so on.

One final thing: on-line dialogue, including blogging, accounts for only 6% of communication. Face-to-face accounts for 77%. So before we swoon over the power of blogs, shouldn’t we be setting up practices that deal with Face-to-Face Relations?

I know some people that would benefit from such knowledge ;-)

On Influencers in consumer markets

Good article here, written by Nilofer Merchant, CEO of Rubicon Consulting. She’s just been inspired by The Influentials, as I was when I read it.

Nilofer makes some interesting points which, despite seemingly focused on consumer markets, apply equally to the B2B market. Specifically:

• Influencers are not (necessarily) journalists and traditional PR targets. In the B2B world we’ve identified more than 20 influencer types.
• Influencers are specific to the market under examination. Just as school advice wouldn’t come from the BBQ expert, so security software influencers don’t normally come from the printer industry. We see that market specialisation also applies to geography and company size (SMBs are different in their influences than enterprises).
• It takes hard work to identify true influencers. Our experience shows that an intuitive guess is no better than 20% correct. Research is the only answer.
• Influencers love to influence. They’ll want to influence you – let them.

A couple of reminders:

1. In B2B markets, influencers are usually not customers or prospects. Which means that you can’t try to sell to them. Find out what they do want, then supply it.
2. You can’t rely on on-line channels to communicate with influencers. Research shows that, at best, 10% of communication is on-line, with the rest being telephone or face-to-face.
   
   

“Influencing the Influencers” reviewed

Just finished reading “Influencing the Influencers” by Bill Hopkins, CEO at Knowledge Capital Group (KCG). KCG is an Analysts Relations firm, and the book is a guide to AR in the technology industry.

I think that if you’re in AR you’ll get a lot of value from the book. It categorises the various types of analyst, provides best and worst practice examples, and even offers careers advice. All in all an excellent volume on Analyst Relations.

It’s a pity about the title, then. At face value, it’s a cosmetic thing – “Influencing the Analysts” is much less pithy. But it’s the assertion that analysts are the most important influencers that concerns, because our clients and our research tell us (at Influencer50) that it ain’t always so.

Perhaps it’s just that our perspectives are different. Bill examines the reach of various influencer types into IT deals. Bill estimates that peer groups influence decision-making in 80% of IT deals, analysts influence decision-making in 60-80% of IT deals, and so on. Systems integrators and consultants influence 20% of IT deals.

Note that these deals relate to Global5000 firms. Does anyone know of an IT sale to a G5000 firm that wasn’t influenced by a systems integrator or consultant? Hmmm.

Influencer50’s approach is to examine the available influence on a decision, and how this influence is distributed across many influencers. So we measure the extent of influence on IT decision making, not simply its presence. Analysts may appear in 60-80% of decisions, but what’s the extent of their influence? We believe it’s overstated.

KCG’s model even allows for this: in its categorisation of analyst firms it names only Gartner and Forrester in the “Deal Maker & Breaker” segment. In other words, most other analyst firms have limited influence on decision-making. (Exceptions are granted, such as specialist point players and regional buy-side players such as Ovum.)

I suspect there is more agreement than disagreement between KCG and Influencer50. To quote from the book, “Some influencers, of course, are more vital to you than others. But, overall, the effective management of influencers has become increasingly critical to the success of any enterprise.”

That’s pretty much what Influencer50 is about.

Influencer Marketing Primer 6 - Marketing with influencers

I’m really excited about this post, because it’s the one post I wanted to write all along. Marketing with influencers is the main event in the Influencer Marketing show – top billing. It’s where you see lead generation improve, conversion rates rise and sales increase.

There is a trick, though, that I need to let you in on. It is that you have to align 100% with the sales process, to the extent that your salesforce will be the most important source of input to your marketing efforts. It’s a trick because this should be true for all your marketing efforts, not just Influencer Marketing. But without input from sales, Influencer Marketing will never deliver the results you need.

So, the sequence of logic for marketing with influencers is this:

• Determine the reasons why prospect’s don’t buy from you. These reasons are called sales objections.
• Define a counter-argument for each sales objection.
• Map each counter-argument to an influencer, such that the counter-argument is (or could be) advocated by that influencer.
• Create influencer-led collateral that specifically addresses each objection.
  

Hey presto – you’ve got an answer to each sales objection, and it’s an answer which has substantial credibility (because it’s from an influencer, and not from you).

The key points of this process are:

1. You need to know why people don’t buy from you. The salesforce is the custodian of this information, so you need to tap this resource. Sometimes it’s easy – they just know. Other times thy don’t know, or they think it’s price (hint: it’s almost never price). In these cases, there are ways of eliciting the information, either from the salesforce or directly from the market.
2. Arguments against sales objections are credible only if communicated by someone independent. A counter-argument conveyed by you doesn’t work because “you would say that, wouldn’t you.” Influencers, by definition, are more credible.
3. Counter-arguments are specific to the objection. In other words, the counter argument “Gartner says we’re a top-right player in its Magic Quadrant” works only if applied to the objection “We don’t think you’re a major player” but not if the objection is “We don’t perceive a need for your product.” This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often an objection is countered by an irrelevant response.

The power of the approach is that it directly links influencers to sales objections, arming the salesforce with specific collateral. If you get it right, the inevitable consequence is better leads, improved conversion rates and higher sales.

Now, I can hear you scream “If it’s that easy, why is it not done this way now?” Good question, two good answers:

Firstly, sales and marketing typically don’t talk to each other. Read Philip Kotler’s article “Ending the war between sales and marketing” in the Harvard Business Review for insight into why this situation exists.

Secondly, it only works if you use influencers to counter sales objections. And most firms don’t know who their influencers are.

One final thing: it’s possible to create influencer-led collateral that doesn’t tie into specific sales objections, but adds to the generic marketing mix of “stuff.” This is okay as far as it goes, and in fact it’s where we started when we first put our SFERE process together. But the approach is far more effective when aligned with sales objections, so I strongly recommend you take this extra step.

Open Source Analysts - taking on the big boys

I’m really interested in the emergence of a concept called open source analysis. Essentially, it’s an approach that links smaller industry analyst firms in collaboration – the analogy is with the open source software movement that allows programmers from all points to collaborate by contributing their programming expertise.

It’s unclear whether collaboration refers to research and opinion or to commercial relationships, or both (or neither?!). Interested parties have established a wiki project to sort out the detail.

I’m watching developments with interest because of the potential impact on the big influential analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester. It’s long been my contention that influence is a factor of the individual and the firm. In other words, some analysts are influential primarily because they work at a big firm, and some are influential because of their individual knowledge and expertise despite working for a small firm (or for themselves). But the most influential analysts both work for a big firm and are true experts individually. This is true in all but a few exceptions.

The open source movement aims to change this dynamic. There is the obvious commercial impact, that of individual analysts combining to deliver collectively a major project beyond the resource capability of each on their own. Freelance contractors have done this for decades.

The other potential impact is to collaborate on research, the intellectual property of analysts itself. The key challenge here is quality control. Collating input from a variety of different sources requires some oversight on quality, lest the overall value of the opinion and advice be diminished. Blogs already suffer from this dilution of credibility, and if open source analysis is to differentiate itself from “mere” blogs it must sort this out.

Unless, of course, blogs undermine the business case for analysts altogether…?

There’s no doubt that there are some smart analysts outside the major analyst firms – the Neils at MWD (former colleagues of mine), James Governor and so on. I’d like to see them increase their profile and influence because they have much value to add to the industry.

If open source analysis enables this then I’m all for it.

Influencer Marketing Primer 5 - Marketing through influencers

Marketing through influencers is where Influencer Marketing gets really interesting. The first thing to say is that I am NOT talking about paying stooges to say what you tell them to say. Any idiot can do that, it carries no influence, and usually is counter-productive.

Marketing through influencers is about enabling influencers to talk about you to prospects. Immediately the affinity with WOMM should be apparent. Obvious tasks include delivering content to influencers, so they have sufficient information to digest and pass on. We covered much of this in Marketing to influencers.

So what about the less obvious stuff? This is where Influencer Marketing departs from traditional command-and-control marketing. I’m asking you to deviate from the textbooks and accept that you’re going to have to let someone else take control.

You must add value to the influencer’s agenda. Here’s what you have to do :

Firstly create a series of marketing messages that align with the influencers’ agenda. That is, messages that they will want to pass on, not those that you want communicated. Influencers don’t care about you – they care about themselves. So make it easy for them. Warning: it may not come easy to you! For starters, you'll have to know what influencers are interested in.

Secondly, create support material for influencers. Example: recently I was trying to get access to a specific firm, with little success. I found an influencer with a great relationship with the firm, and with a scheduled meeting. I found out what the influencer was planning to tell them. I then created one chart which drove home a key point the influencer wanted to make. It so happened that the one chart also reinforced Influencer50’s proposition. Result: we win a deal based on one chart that someone else presented (enabled, of course, by a load of work in identifying and marketing to the right influencer).

Thirdly, align your existing collateral with your influencers’ agenda. This may just be a mapping of your existing collateral to their propositions. Or you may have to redraft your collateral. But realise that it’s they that have the influence, and for good reason. Listen to influencers – they want to influence you too.

Marketing through influencers is all about giving them something to say that they want to say. Providing a story isn’t enough – it’s got to be part of their story too.

Paying for influence - don't do it!

I'm surprised that this issue is up for debate. Yet Joel Spolsky, a credible blogger on software markets, relates his thoughts on being offered a free laptop in return for reviewing Microsoft's Vista.

My surprise is doubled when I read that Robert Scoble, a blog hero of mine, endorses the practice. Notwithstanding Scoble is these days a MS employee, he often takes a position contrary to the corporate thought police. But not this time - Scoble thinks paying reviewers (in kind) is okay.

Scoble seems to think it's purely an ethical issue, and that if you disclose the bribe you're off the hook.

Not so. Influence isn't just about ethics. It's about credibility. How credible is a reviewer if it's known they've been given a freebie worth several hundred pounds? Or that they were flown, expenses paid, to Seattle?

It's really, really tempting, with a huge marketing budget at your disposal, to spend it on this type of stunt. "If you can, you should" as the advert goes. It's this sort of act that gets marketing a bad name. Resist, please.

I also have a more general concern, and that is that bloggers' influence (at least in the US) is rated higher than it actually is. Some bloggers do have influence, but not many and only in certain markets. Has Microsoft any sense of who the truly influential bloggers are, and why?

I thought not...

Influence and the “Derren Brown effect”

Over the festive season, I had the chance to watch Derren Brown’s act on TV. For those unititiated, Derren Brown is an illusionist capable of getting ordinary people to do strange things. Some of his act involves hypnotism, but much of it is based on suggestion and misdirection.

I was gobsmacked by his finale. This involved random members of a live audience selecting a newspaper at random, then choosing a page at random, then selecting a word on that page. Derren then reveals the contents of previously-sealed envelope and, of course, the chosen word matches.

The word was “Influential”.

This act, impressively performed, got me thinking – does this have anything to do with Influencer Marketing? At first blush, the answer is “little”. This is trickery, illusion for the masses, set in an artificial environment (a theatre) and the audience, even if professionally employed, are out of their business mindset.

Derren adds a key element to his act that sets him apart from most other performers – he shows how his illusions are done. Derren films the whole show secretly, then at the end plays back to the audience the key directions and suggestions that pepper the act. We can all see how the audience was led into choosing the word that was anything but random.

This is precisely what Influencer Marketing is about, except that it's done overtly as a professional practice rather than a covert illusion. And the process of influence takes months and years, not a couple of hours.

I bet you'd spend your entire marketing budget to establish an environment which led your prospects, unanimously, to the conclusion to buy from you.

Derren Brown is often criticised for demonstrating his talents in allegedly unethical ways – persuading respectable businessmen to conduct a robbery, for example.

Influencer Marketing can be criticised as unethical manipulation too. As always, it’s up to the practitioners to ensure they stay on the right side of the line.