Top 50 Influencers in VoIP – Not!
There are two ways to identify influencers. You can guess, or you can conduct a thorough market research exercise. No prizes for spotting the one with credibility and accuracy.
The trouble with market research is that everyone thinks they can do it. There’s scant attention paid to sample sizes and confidence intervals. (There’s a funny example of this on The World’s Leading… ). But it’s better than guessing.
The result of guessing will look something like that which VoIP-News has developed – there’s a copy here.
Some fundamental mistakes are made – I thought use VoIP-News as an example to explain why guessing misses the mark.
There is no sense of how the ranking has been arrived at. In fact, it’s not really a ranking at all. Instead, groups of influencer types are listed, with important (but obvious) firms or individuals within each grouping. So if you wanted to prioritise an influencer outreach program, where would you start? This list gives you no clues.
The list contains firms and people that influence the VoIP industry. It is a supply-side list. So what? The people that influence a market most are buyers – they fund everything else. Where is the buyer orientation in the list? It’s completely absent. There are no end-user firms represented, or user groups.
What’s the subject of the study, anyway? Is it enterprise-strength VoIP or consumer focused? They are two different markets, with different technologies and different customers. Cisco would blanch at being compared with Skype.
Who would buyers buy from? Big companies buy direct, but most buyers buy through channel – which are not represented in the list. Channel players are often huge influencers in technology markets.
There are no independent trusted advisers. Where are the analyst firms? Where are the management consulting firms and niche consultants?
There’s no representation from academia – I’d have thought VoIP would be under study, to research its productivity and low-cost claims.
When the list reaches number 40, desperation creeps in. Wikipedia as an influencer? Oh please.
Finally, there are no surprises. Research usually springs a couple of outlyers that are counter-intuitive (at least on first analysis). VoIP-News's list is predictable, which means it's incomplete.
This kind of list can be positioned as a bit of fun – fair enough. Or it could be used to inform a marketing and channel strategy, in which case it’s dangerous.
The trouble with market research is that everyone thinks they can do it. There’s scant attention paid to sample sizes and confidence intervals. (There’s a funny example of this on The World’s Leading… ). But it’s better than guessing.
The result of guessing will look something like that which VoIP-News has developed – there’s a copy here.
Some fundamental mistakes are made – I thought use VoIP-News as an example to explain why guessing misses the mark.
There is no sense of how the ranking has been arrived at. In fact, it’s not really a ranking at all. Instead, groups of influencer types are listed, with important (but obvious) firms or individuals within each grouping. So if you wanted to prioritise an influencer outreach program, where would you start? This list gives you no clues.
The list contains firms and people that influence the VoIP industry. It is a supply-side list. So what? The people that influence a market most are buyers – they fund everything else. Where is the buyer orientation in the list? It’s completely absent. There are no end-user firms represented, or user groups.
What’s the subject of the study, anyway? Is it enterprise-strength VoIP or consumer focused? They are two different markets, with different technologies and different customers. Cisco would blanch at being compared with Skype.
Who would buyers buy from? Big companies buy direct, but most buyers buy through channel – which are not represented in the list. Channel players are often huge influencers in technology markets.
There are no independent trusted advisers. Where are the analyst firms? Where are the management consulting firms and niche consultants?
There’s no representation from academia – I’d have thought VoIP would be under study, to research its productivity and low-cost claims.
When the list reaches number 40, desperation creeps in. Wikipedia as an influencer? Oh please.
Finally, there are no surprises. Research usually springs a couple of outlyers that are counter-intuitive (at least on first analysis). VoIP-News's list is predictable, which means it's incomplete.
This kind of list can be positioned as a bit of fun – fair enough. Or it could be used to inform a marketing and channel strategy, in which case it’s dangerous.
Labels: influencer marketing
posted by Duncan Brown at 5:46 pm
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