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.