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.