infuse - the blog for Influencer Marketing

Directional influence and the Obama question

2008-11-04T12:36:00.003Z

A few days ago I read an interesting post by Auren Hoffman on homophily – the phenomenon of being affected by one's friends and close associates. Intuitively this makes sense – we all make decisions influenced by those around us.

But there’s an important distinction to make between the existence of influence and its direction. What I mean is this: you might be influenced in the purchase of a new digital camera by a friend who has bought one recently. But are you more or less likely to buy the same model as your friend? You might be inclined not to buy that model, even though it might be the best model for you, precisely because your friend just bought one.

I was reminded of this case while reading Dan Ariely’s excellent Predictably Irrational. His example of ordering beer demonstrates the phenomenon at work. It turns out that when ordering out loud people in a group opt for more variety, not less. Ariely suggests that this is because people need to choose something different to show they have a mind of their own, that their order conveys individuality, or perhaps that they are trying to impress.

This might mean that people order beer they don’t actually want to drink. Irrational maybe, but experimentally validated.

The really interesting part is that when people are allowed to order in private, by writing down their order, they order what they want.

Understanding this, from an influence viewpoint, is important:

People are influenced by others, but that influence may cause a decision contrary to the choices made by others;
People may make better (or at least more truthful) decisions by being protected from the influence of others and making their decisions in private.

This is very pertinent today of all days, as the US goes to the polls. The well-documented Bradley effect is an example of how some people will state their voting intentions in public, but vote differently when in the privacy of the polling booth. Will people who said they'll vote for Obama really vote for him?

We’ll see shortly in which direction the US public has truly been influenced.

The influence of online product reviewers

2008-10-30T11:56:00.003Z

Rubicon Consulting has written a white paper based on research conducted on US-based web users. Rubicon is run by Nilofer Merchant, with whom I worked in compiling case studies for the book.

There are some important points to pull out from the study. It finds that those people that regularly post reviews and comments are not your average customer, but enthusiasts (or enthusiastic detractors). Some firms may decide that these folk exist at the extreme ends of the customer spectrum, are not typical of general customer, and can therefore be ignored.

This is a mistake: although average customers don’t post reviews they do read them. Importantly, product reviews drive product purchases, so ignoring the review posters is dangerous. As the paper concludes:

“The most frequent contributors are the influencers, and they have a strong influence on purchase decisions because they write most of the online recommendations and reviews.”

This means that firms can’t ignore frequent contributors, but they have to talk to them in a different way to ‘normal’ customers. This is music to my ears, echoing Influencer50’s own mantra of “Don’t pitch to influencers.”

Other findings I picked out include:

Approaches that work well in one type of community may fail utterly in another. Confirmation of the ‘horses for courses’ guide to influence ecosystems.
Confirmation of the 90-9-1 rule: 90% of users are lurkers, 9% of users contribute from time to time, and 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions.
Influence of product reviews varies by category. You’re more likely to use an online review to buy a digital camera than you are to choose a doctor. (I’m relieved to hear this!)
Online discussion is theatre: “Web discussion is a performance in which a small group of people interact with each other, and with companies, for the benefit, education, and amusement of everyone else.” Understand this and it shapes your entire approach to online communities.

There is a ton of other information on web usage in the US, which makes interesting reading. For example, the research finds that web users are more likely to vote Democratic. That should be an interesting theory to check in the coming week…

Laura Ramos on B2B Marketing Trends

2008-10-24T12:30:00.003+01:00

Laura Ramos runs Forrester's B2B Marketing programme. I follow her research closely as, although it's US-centric, it produces some fascinating data on what B2B decision-makers do. Laura's latest comments focuses on B2B Marketing Trends. Pretty much consistent with what we see in the UK - the highlights are (with my notes):

Commoditisation leading to a lack of differentiation, which leads to marketing all sounding the same (so true);
B2B buyers buying like consumers. Using peer reviews and social media as decision making inputs (perhaps less true in the UK?);
Ad avoidance and sales call avoidance - using web sources to delay contact with vendors (I think there is generic 'marketing avoidance' going on);
Globalisation. Uh huh.

Laura suggests that the outcome of these trends will be the death of B2B Marketing. I agree, at least insofar as B2B marketing can't exist in the way it does. The justification that marketing "creates demand" is slammed by Laura as a cop-out. It needs to be more measurable in sales terms and more aligned with sales.

I'm looking forward to Part 2 of Laura's comments...

An interview with Nick Hayes

2008-10-21T10:28:00.003+01:00

Nick, the president and founder of Influencer50, appeared on Webmaster radio last week, covering the basics of Influencer Marketing. It's actually an easy listen, and you can stream the interview podcast here. Or download the mp3 here if you want to miss the commercials!

Welcome Barbara French

2008-10-21T10:10:00.002+01:00

A belated welcome is due to Barbara French, who joined Influencer50's San Francisco office in August. Barbara is well-known in Analyst Relations circles through her Tekrati service and blog. She's already contributing a ton of brain power to our US operation, and is sharing this publicly via her new blog, Sway.

Please welcome Barbara to the fold, and check out her blog for new insights into the world of influence.

How to engage with influencers

2008-10-21T10:05:00.002+01:00

This advice is an older post, but it still bears up as a good template for engaging with influencers.

It is not specific to word of mouth marketing...

Don’t forget the most obvious influencers

2008-10-16T15:36:00.002+01:00

At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, the most important influencer on your customers is:
You.

Two particular dimensions are important:

Your product. If your product sucks no amount of influencer outreach is going to fix it. Start there, then consider influencers.

Your sales force. 85% of purchase decisions are impacted by the relationship between your sales force and the customer, according to the CMO Council*. In fact, it’s probably 100% (if you think about it) but remember that the impact may be positive or negative. Get the relationship wrong and no third party influencer has the power to retrieve the situation.

*Closing the Gap: The Sales & Marketing Alignment Imperative Executive Summary. Summary report available free.

Online influence – here comes Google

2008-10-15T10:17:00.004+01:00

Via John Bell, I stumbled across an interesting post by Heather Green at Business Week on Google’s imminent method for ranking influencers. I shudder at the impact this will have on discussion of influence. We’ll end up comparing influencers based on the number of times they appear on a search result or, worse, whether they appear in the first ten returned results.

As John notes, influence is complex and context-specific. The specifics of influence are such that one might be a world expert in a given subject (Scotch whisky, web site development) but have very little authority in an adjacent area (cognac, web site design).

A feature (flaw?) in measuring influence is that you can only measure what you can measure. Google can only measure what it is aware of, which is the frequency and connectivity of web pages. It cannot determine (as far as I know) the impact that reading a particular page has on the subsequent actions of that reader. Did the reader make a purchase decision based on the content of the page, or rush off to sell their stock in RBS? Who knows.

Connectivity – the number of connections an individual has – is a poor proxy for influence. Why? It’s too easy to fake. We all know the people that have 500+ connections on LinkedIn, yet have very limited influence. Likewise with MySpace. The term for people with lots of connections but no influence is Bore.

The longer term, and greater, threat from Google is that influencers are considered a route to market for advertisers. We’ve already seen this sort of thing emerging from Buzzlogic – Google will be able to do this magnified a zillion times.

If Google’s plans get more firms to talk about influence, then fine. But I fear that it will dumb influence down to a few ‘magic’ numbers that have tenuous relevance to real influence.

In the presence of a super-influencer

2008-10-09T12:27:00.003+01:00

I wrote a few weeks back about how to use super-influencers, those rare folk that have true influence over market shape and direction at a macro level. I suggested that you should use them (if you have the opportunity) to attract other, perhaps more focused or local influencers, thus assisting in the overall engagement of the influencer community. If influencers help to attract customers, then super-influencers help to attract influencers.

So it was my pleasure last week to host, for Microsoft, an influencer-only event featuring Steve Ballmer. The audience of influencers was clearly captivated by Steve’s open and candid style of presenting, as well as his ability to field questions on a wide range of subjects.

But most influencers were just keen to be in the same room as the main guy at Microsoft. Just this fact alone gives them something to talk about to their networks, and thereby reinforces their own influence.

I expect some of the influencers (they’re from the small business community) will blog separately about their morning with Steve – I’ll link to the interesting ones as they appear, but here's a taster from Emma Jones.

WOMMA launches Influencer Marketing handbook

2008-10-08T09:17:00.002+01:00

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has just launched its Influencer Marketing handbook for comment. It’s worth a look.

I’m hugely relieved to see that WOMMA has resisted much of the nonsense that is talked about influencers, especially in the consumer markets. No paid “brand advocates”, no Big Seed Marketing, and no celebrities. Instead, some straightforward advice to get firms thinking about influence, and who might have it.

WOMMA tends to be very consumer-focused, and I’d like to have seen more reference to B2B influence, where the dynamics work differently, but that will come over time. More importantly, it ignores the subject of how to identify and rank influencers, since (I assert) some influencers are more influential than others. My guess is that measuring influence is in the ‘too hard’ tray, certainly as far as proposing a standard that works across all markets and sectors.

In all, the handbook is a useful source for those considering Influencer Marketing, and its bibliography is the most comprehensive I’ve seen. It certainly introduced some blogs that I’d not heard of, so I’ll check these out.

The handbook is available for public comment until Oct 20th.

Marketing spend grows, but in the wrong direction

2008-10-02T09:16:00.003+01:00

IDC has announced its latest marketing budget figures* for 2008. Rich Vancil’s program has been running for several years now, and it’s based on a consistent sampling of traditionally big spenders in marketing. It’s an excellent gauge of marketing’s current and intended spend amongst large IT vendors.

This year’s figures show an increase of 3.5% over 2007. Lower than the past three years, but at least it’s growth, right? Wrong. The percentage growth doesn’t account for inflation, or for the overall IT market growth, both of which are higher. So, in real terms, marketing spend is declining.

Does this indicate, or pre-empt, a decline in the overall market conditions for IT? Could be. Certainly, the prospects are gloomy (read here* and here).

But it’s always struck me that marketing, if it does what it’s supposed to, should be one of the last things to shrink in times of adversity. If marketing works, which means (to me) that it enables sales, then you’d think firms desperate for sales would do more marketing, not less, during a recession.

Which then leads me to conclude that either firms are just daft for not recognising this, or they know that marketing doesn’t really work that well yet were still spending money on it. Which is itself daft. Or that they don’t know whether marketing works or not, but it’s something that everyone else does.

Which is even dafter.

*Free registration required

Marketing in times of uncertainty

2008-09-30T07:38:00.001+01:00

Someone told me that recessions cycle around roughly every 18 years. What do they know?! It seems just like yesterday when the IT industry was flattened by the post Y2K and post 9/11 gloom. An now here we are again. If you’re in any doubt of what’s coming, read Richard Holway’s pessimistic but usually accurate view of the short term future.

Marketing’s core purpose comes to the fore in times of recession. If it doesn’t impact sales, directly and measurably, then it’s impact is questionable. Demonstrable short term sales impact is the best defence against cuts, because in a recession it’s all about short term sales.

Budget cuts are inevitable. This is good news, if you’re still in a job to be able to spend your diminished funds.

Firstly, it means that you must stop doing things that don’t work, or can’t be measured. What would happen if you didn’t do the next event you’ve got planned? What’s the impact of not doing PR for a quarter? Is that DM campaign really worthwhile? Cut what doesn’t work and invest it activity that truly generates sales. Be bold. Ask tough questions.

Budget reductions also mean that you have to be creative, which is what marketing types should be good at. So try new things. I expect more companies to invest in social networking technologies, as they try to reach their customers in new and innovative (and cheaper) ways. I think word-of-mouth campaigns will grow, looking for referrals and leads from existing customers. And I believe vendors will engage more with partner organisations in structured and sophisticated ways, like SAP’s Industry Value Network approach.

Recession is tough for everyone. But there are opportunities to take, if you’re brave enough to chuck out old and ineffective ways of marketing.

Batten down the hatches. Good luck.

It's ALL to do with alignment

2008-09-25T20:15:00.003+01:00

Funny how two unconnected things come together at the same time to contrive an “Aha” moment. Serendipity, synchronicity or spooky co-incidence. Whatever.

Anyway, Christine (Influencer50’s biz development lead in San Francisco) and I are discussing methods of engaging influencers. With over 20 different types of influencer to consider, we need an integrated method for the process, while catering for the wide differences in agendas, personalities and expectations.

Then just yesterday I was re-reading a Hugh post on Digital Nomads, when he uses the word “Alignment” to describe Dell’s blog attempt to sidle up to mobile workers.

Aha!

Influencer engagement is ALL to do with alignment. It’s about finding out what influencers do, when and how they influence, and what their agenda and motivations are. Once you know this you can (and should) align your outreach activities with your influencers on an individual (or at most clustered) basis.

So what? There are two traps to fall into when considering alignment with influencers. The first is that it’s actually quite hard to align yourself with a host of differing types of people. In fact, it’s hard enough aligning with different types of journalist or analyst. What about academics, community leaders, customers, regulators and the other numerous influencer types? Some discipline and structure is require, which is what Christine and I are working on.

The second trap is perhaps less obvious, but it is more commonly encountered. It is that alignment requires you to align with the influencers, not the other way around. Most vendors want to get influencers to agree with them. You should be looking for ways to agree with influencers, even if this means changing fundamental things about your business.

They are the influencers, after all.

Influence as vocabulary for integrated marketing

2008-09-19T16:08:00.001+01:00

One of Influencer50’s first clients initially thought that Influencer Marketing could unite the disparate silos that existed in the marketing department. Thanks for the confidence, guys!

Much as we’d like to position Influencer Marketing as a panacea for marketing’s ailments, it doesn’t work quite like that. But strangely, and probably because the client’s expectation was set from the beginning, the outcome was closer to their aspiration than we thought possible.

It works like this.

A major issue in marketing is the silo mentality that divides operations into a wide range of disjointed activities. So we have PR, AR, partner marketing, events (from conferences to podcasts), user groups, collateral development, and so on, as well as a host of telesales/telemarketing and mailings.

Now Influencer Marketing doesn’t promise to unite all of these distinct activities. But what it does do is identify where the influence on decision makers lies. It does ask the question: “How does this activity relate to influence on decision makers?” And it does suggest that if and activity cannot demonstrate an impact on influence then you should stop doing it.

Influencer Marketing applies right across the marketing operational domain. It covers press and analysts, and partner organisations, and end-users, and events and other influence categories. So it offers a vocabulary for discussing the widest range of marketing activities, uniting at least the terminology for discussing and managing marketing.

Our client runs marketing operational management meetings, at which all representatives report on their activities. The reports are provided in terms of their impact on the identified influencers relevant to the activity. So PR reports on progress in engaging with the most influential journalists. Events are scheduled to leverage the most influential conferences (a diminishing category), and influencers are solicited to speak at client-arranged seminars. Partnership strategy is oriented around the most influential people in third-party organisations, even if formal partnerships don’t already exist.

Thus influencers have become a way of everybody reporting back using the same terms, and with the same degree of focus on who really carries influential with decision-making prospects.

We, and our client, are smart enough to recognise that this isn’t truly integrated marketing. But it’s a useful start, easy to implement, and aids management. It also helps to present marketing in a more organised and professional light to the rest of the organisation. This is important, especially with a recession looming and the budgetary axe being lifted.

Influence in SMBs

2008-09-17T09:32:00.003+01:00

Barbara has picked up on the new CMB Sage Market Pulse study, which shows who SMBs use in making IT decisions. A high dependence on independent consultants and peers, followed by (whisper it) vendors' sales reps.

The influence of vendors on their own markets is typically understated. A typical buying pattern of an SMB is: get quotes from three vendors. A consultant or systems integrator or VAR may provide this quote gathering and assessment service by proxy. But that's pretty much all there is to it in the supply chain.

Little analyst penetration at this price point. But what's stranger is the absence of journalists and bloggers, much of whose information and opinion is widely available and free. And where are the other sources of advice, such as industry associations, government agencies and other influencers not in the supply chain. Was this an omission in the survey?

Anyway, the survey supports Forrester's own study last year, which found similar sources of influence, though in a slightly different order.

The main point is that SMBs are influenced by different folk than larger organisations. Indeed, SMBs are not a contiguous group, and there are many variations in influence dynamics within segments of the broad SMB space. So watch out if you're targeting firms other than enterprise size - you may be surprised who pop up in the influence ecosystem.

How to use ‘super-influencers’

2008-09-17T09:27:00.001+01:00

Sometimes we come across super-influencers. We define these people as having a high and broad level of influence across a wide variety of decision types. Most often, upper-influencers hold the most senior positions in business and government. Think Davos or TED, and you’re close to defining a commuity of super-influencers.

The problem with super-influencers is that they are too high-level and too hard to reach that, unless you are trying to influence other super-influencers, the effort required to engage with them is disproportionate to the likely benefits. The entry price for a corporate executive to Davos is something like $250,000 and even then there’s no guarantee of sitting next to the person you really want to meet.

The truth is, most decisions affecting your corporate health are made in a much more mundane, but reachable, community. Which is why most influencers on an Influencer50 list are grounded in practical, though deep, influence on decision makers.

Still, when a super-influencer drops in your lap, you should feel obliged to use them well. So the next time your CEO announces a visit, what should you do?

Super-influencers are so-called because they influencer other influencers. So get your super-influencer in front of as many other influencers as possible. Attract other super-influencers and make an occasion of it. Get influencers talking to each other. Why? Because influencers get a lot of their influence from networking with other influencers. Make this happen, be seen as the facilitator, and your influencers will thank you for it.

Idea diffusion and influence

2008-09-11T11:00:00.003+01:00

I was prompted to think more about Duncan Watts’s ideas by Sarah Fraser’s comment on my post on influencer communities, and by her post on professor Watt’s theories.

In fact, I’ve just finished reading Watts’s Six Degrees, which was excellent and more accessible (I found) than Barabasi’s Linked. So Professor Watts is top of mind right now.

Here’s where I think the key difference between what Watts says and my practical experience. Watts talks about the role of influencers in the diffusion of ideas. As Seth says, use ‘sneezers’ with influence if you want to crack a market. Watts disagrees that you can predict what ideas diffuse, or even whether you can identify influencers that might make diffusion easier or more likely. It’s pretty much random, according to Watts.

I agree. If you’re trying to use influencers to spread ideas and concepts, then good luck but don’t bet the firm.

My own view is that influencers can be identified, and can assist greatly, in the decision-making process. That is, not whether an idea is spread or not, but whether an idea is adopted in the end. Idea diffusion is part of the process, but it’s just the start. A decision-making process is often a long and time-consuming activity. In the B2B world especially, a decision may take years to emerge. Idea diffusion is necessary, but not sufficient.

I explored this relationship between influence and the decision-making process in the book, and also posted on it (in summary form) here. Idea planting (as I called it) is right at the start of the process, but is relatively low down in the awareness of senior decision makers. Thus idea diffusers (connectors, sneezers, etc) may not be that influential in affecting the ultimate decision. There are a whole bunch of other influencers that intervene after ideas are sown.

Idea diffusion is also important in the process of deciding whether to do something. Do I adopt SOA? Do I need a Web2.0 strategy? Do I need a new car? But it plays less of a role in the subsequent decision of what to buy. Different influencers are in play at this more practical stage, like product reviewers or case studies or implementers.

The only problem I have with Professor Watts’s arguments is that when he doubts the role of influencers in any aspect of life, it doesn’t fit with real world experience and intuition. My guess is that we can all think of people who are influential in certain areas of life. Fitting this experience and intuition into a practical marketing approach is what Influencer Marketing is all about.

Evolving PR towards influencers

2008-09-09T12:09:00.003+01:00

Seth reminds me that PR is a diminishing activity, in terms of its importance. The more enlightened PR firms accept that their business has been commoditised, with minimal opportunities for differentiation and fierce price competition. The question is, what do you do about it?

As ever, it’s a mindset change that’s required. Most start-up firms I know begin their marketing activities by recruiting a PR agency. Why? Because that’s what everyone else does.

Why not try to engage with the 50 most important people in your target market? Sure, some of these will be journalists, and you should definitely reach out to them. But you’ll probably find there are only a relative handful of them, which means you can treat them differently. Find out what they want to hear, what they’d find useful, what they’re interested in. Concentrate on being a resource for these most important journalists.

It means you don’t have to go chasing after the hundred other hacks that cover your space. Then use the time saved to focus on other influencer types, such as analysts, academics, consultants, bloggers, standards bodies and regulators.

The catch? It’s hard to determine which of the hundred journalists are really influential, by which I mean influential on decision makers. And it’s even harder to determine who else is influential, beyond journalists. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, or can’t, do it

Influencing outsourcing

2008-09-09T11:52:00.003+01:00

Barbara points to a new study by Global Services and AMR on the role of outsource advisory firms. Interesting stuff, and good insight into an often under-the-radar group of influencers.

In the book's case study on Wipro, sourcing advisers played the central role in their influencer outreach strategy, more important than analysts and business consultants. So their role is well understood by at least some services firms. But how many have pro-active and funded programmes to engage with sourcing advisers?

More lists of influencers

2008-09-04T14:23:00.003+01:00

You know how I like lists of influencers. Or rather, how I like to rant at their general pointlessness.

So I got all excited about another list source, called Most Public. It’s an index of the most influential public figures in some predefined news community. Like New York.

I'm troubled by any information source that claims "a teenage Twitterer may have as powerful a voice as the New York Times editorial board". What nonsense, at least without qualification (such as, influential on whom?).

Oh, and it has to be online influence. The measurement criteria, which are published, make it clear that it’s the online world that is being indexed.

In fact, I actually quite like the idea of this type of list, especially when there’s an obvious methodology in play. Disagree with the method, but you can’t claim that the list is made up randomly (unlike most compilations of influencers).

Still I can’t help wondering, who are these people influential on? My first guess is, other people on the list. There’s a tendency in the online blogosphere twitterverse web2.0 world to refer to other people in the same community. This is, of course, natural since we gravitate to others like us. Fair enough. Except don’t assume that the online community is a proxy for the rest of the world. It isn't. In a recent survey we conducted for a client, the most popular answer to "Which blogs do you read?" was "What's a blog?"

I’m left with the impression that the New York Most Public list is interesting, like a top ten list of marching band music is interesting, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. From a practical point of view, I’d rather see a top 50 list of the most influential restaurant critics in NY. Or who’s influencing advertising trends in print media. Or who’s influencing the economy. Or who’s influencing voting intentions.

Lists are all very well, but they beg the question, what are they for. Too often, this question is left unasked.

A reminder

2008-09-04T14:17:00.002+01:00

When considering influence, please remember to pose the question: influential on whom?

It saves a lot of bother if you have this question in mind before embarking on any Influencer program, or start composing a list of “influencers”, or even dismissing the concept of influencers.

It also helps if you have a decent understanding of the answer. Hopefully it will be something useful like “Influential on our customers and prospects”.

Holiday thoughts on marketing

2008-08-28T17:27:00.001+01:00

Just back from holiday during which I had time to reflect on fundamental stuff while horizontal and sunkissed. In fact I had some great “being marketed to” experiences, which just confirmed the basics in market. (Context: tourist volumes are down by (some say) 30% in Tenerife.)

1. Have a great product. Let people try the great product, for free. If it’s truly great they’ll buy it. Example: every restaurant along the beach front is touting for business, showing their menus and encouraging reluctant holidaymakers to venture inside. One restaurant, not even on the beach front, is full. That’s the one that’s handing out free samples of fried cod. It tasted great. There was a queue just to get the free samples. Why did no other restaurant try this, and hand out samples of paella? Near-zero incremental cost, ROI in one order.
2. You can differentiate in a commodity market. In Tenerife, all the resorts look basically the same. All the beaches look the same. All the restaurants serve the same food. All the shops sell the same stuff. Differentiation comes through service, through care for customer needs, through creativity. (Note to self: not everyone will appreciate attempts at differentiation. Elvis impersonators appeal to a niche market.)
3. If you have to lie to your prospects to get their attention, there’s something fundamentally wrong in your approach. I’m not sure exactly what the young people offering prize draw scratch cards were selling (timeshare?) but after the fifth time of being accosted even my kids recognised the script. No, you cannot hand the winning ticket in to the tourist office. There are not only three winning tickets each day (or I am improbably lucky, since I won five times). No, I haven’t possible won a cash prize, but I’ll bet you a tenner I’ve won the “free” holiday.

And they say holidays are relaxing…

Why does advertising slump in a recession?

2008-08-07T09:50:00.002+01:00

The FT notes that advertising budgets are being cut, typically by double digit percentages.*

If advertising works - that is, it sells more of what you're selling - you'd do more of it in a recession, wouldn't you? When every penny counts, surely you'd pump every available budget into selling more, including advertising. If advertising works...

Which just makes me even more convinced that advertising really doesn't work.

I also hear on the grapevine that operational marketing budgets are being cut at many tech vendors, as recession looms. Again, why would they do this if marketing works?

In a recession, every sale is harder to make, since customers are more reluctant to part with cash. Effective marketing must surely be an imperative.

Is this too simplistic a view? Please tell me.

*Free registration required.

What constitutes quality in an influencer?

2008-08-05T20:48:00.002+01:00

One of Influencer50’s criteria by which we score and rank influencers is Quality of Impact. But what is 'quality' in terms of influence?

Firstly, quality is not an all-or-nothing concept. It might be obvious if an individual has a lot of it, or none at all, but what about the large grey area in the middle?

We use Robert Cialdini’s book (bible?) on influence to provide the framework for our Quality measure. In his discussion on authority, Cialdini poses two questions:

Is this person truly an expert (measured by the person’s credentials and the relevance of those credentials to the matter in hand)?
How truthful can we expect the expert to be?

We simplify these to 'Expertise' and 'Independence.'

In the book we discuss the relative importance of these two dimensions, and offered the following diagram:

The diagram implies that 100% expertise and 0% independence means that influence is severely constrained. Similarly, 0% expertise and 100% independence also represents low influence. But is this true in the real world?

There are many cases where people have 100% independence and 0% expertise. My own influence on the wine trade is a good example of this (never trust my wine suggestions), and it translates (intuitively) to low influence. But is the converse true? I think I’d rather buy wine from an expert who works for a wine producer, even if they recommend their own wine. In fact, I’d surprised if they didn’t. As long as they’ve declared their interest I know that the advice I’m getting is trustworthy, if qualified.

Back in the real world, can vendors be influence on the market? Absolutely. No-one expects them to be independent, but they can demonstrate their ample expertise, and be influential.

So the relationship between expertise and independence looks more like this:

In other words, you’ve got to have some minimum level of relevant expertise to be influential at all. Independence increases influence, but it is not a pre-requisite for it.

Why fifty influencers?

2008-07-30T15:10:00.001+01:00

You’d be amazed how often I get asked, “So, why Influencer Fifty?” Easy answer: because we identify a minimum of fifty influencers for our clients as a kick-start to their influencer community programs.

But why fifty? What if we only want 25? Or what if we want 100?

It turns out that, for most B2B markets, fifty is the optimal number of people to reach out to, to manage appropriately, and to draw some conclusions from. Too few influencers, and you risk identifying just the obvious influencers: analysts and journalists. Too many, and you’ll get swamped: few organisations can appropriately manage more than fifty influential individuals.

Often, our clients will know some of the influencers we identify (though they usually don’t know their relative ranking). So we typically provide the top 75 or 80 influencers, so that they still have 50 or so individuals that are new to them.

In four years we’ve never had a client that has known more than half their influencer community. Usually it’s 10-15% - that’s between 5 and 8 influencers known to a vendor organisation.

Is influence ‘boring’?

2008-07-24T16:52:00.002+01:00

I’ve long enjoyed the irony of Richard Holway’s Boring awards. Boring awards are bestowed on those firms that manage 10 or more consecutive years of earnings-per-share growth. The idea that boring is desirable is inspired.

So I was reading a post on super-influencers, such as the speakers at TED. Then I looked at The Telegraph’s list of the most influential people in UK industry which, again, appears as a list of super-influencers, but of little practical value to marketers.

It turns out that real influence, where purchase decisions are informed, scoped, agreed and validated, is wielded not by charismatic CEOs and thought leaders. Instead, decisions are usually influenced at the coal face by ‘normal’ people, senior-to-middle grade professionals and experts, with the real-world experience relevant to the decision at hand.

It’s actually quite boring. Where boring is a desirable attribute.

From Analyst Relations to Influencer Relations

2008-07-18T11:11:00.002+01:00

Duncan Chapple posts an interesting comment on the expansion of analyst relations (AR) departments to a wider Influencer Relations approach. He notes that in starting from an AR perspective firms may miss out key groups of influencers, or gather them together as “left-overs”, and subsequently treat them inappropriately. I agree.

I think AR (or PR for that matter) can be a good starting point to adopt an influencer model. AR is a defined function within most firms, and (importantly) has a line-item budget allocation. There is also an established body of good practice and plenty of discussion to keep AR fresh and top-of-mind.

If you’re coming at influencer from an AR starting point, then SAP’s model is a great archetype to follow. Don knows that his model will evolve over time, as indeed it has done already, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Redefining AR as a sub-division of Influencer Relations is a start, if for no other reason than it identifies the gaps to fill.

I do think, however, that the ‘Relations’ model (AR, PR, media relations, investor relations, influencer relations) is often seen as an end in itself. At a practical level, in most IT organisations there is little coherency between relations and any marketing or sales activity. Sure, an analyst may be wheeled out at a lead generation event, or quoted on a product website. But it’s hardly integrated marketing.

AR and PR firms complain that they’ve been pushing an influencer model for several years, but firms lack the budget or insight to implement such a shift.

Not true – firms are deploying influencer models, but they are mostly not starting from within the AR and PR functions. They are typically emerging from operational marketing functions. Why is this? It’s simply because marketing is increasingly ineffective through the use of traditional models. It’s hard to differentiate a message, even harder to get that message heard, and even if it is heard, you’re unlikely to be believed. Why? Because it’s you that’s delivering the message. Get an influencer to deliver the same message, and it’s more likely to be trusted.

More importantly, by understanding why customers don’t buy from you, and then mapping influencer-led messages onto those objections, you can create a portfolio of counter-arguments based on what influencers are saying. That’s Influencer Marketing.

Unsurprising, then, that most firms truly engaged in an Influencer model are coming less from an AR or PR start, and more from a marketing start.

Influencer Marketing, as we define it, is precisely aimed at growing sales. It does this through a process of influencer identification and engagement, leading to an embedding of influencer-led messages that support and enable sales.

Influencer relations may get you on a shortlist. Influencer Marketing will make sure you get the purchase order.

The Telegraph’s Most Powrful People list

2008-07-17T09:01:00.001+01:00

Ooh! Another list of influencers! How novel. For anyone who’s thinking of using this as the basis for an influencer program, think on these questions:

What’s the basis on which these influencers were chosen? As far as I can tell, the methodology appears to be: pick the top firms in the UK in each sector, find out the name of the CEO, include on list, randomise names on list to mask lack of objective rationale.
Can this list be useful in your marketing campaigns? What are the chances of you creating an influencer program with the list’s constituents? Could you ever arrange a meeting with even ten people on the list?
Do the list’s constituents actually influence your customers’ and prospects’ purchase decisions? Are they often in front of real customers, informing and persuading, or are they busy running multi-million pound businesses?

The one good thing about the Telegraph list is that is may get you thinking about who really influences your customers.

Why you can’t guess your influencers

2008-07-15T14:25:00.000+01:00

We often play a game with our clients. Write down the names of the top ten influencers on your market (or segment). If you guess correctly you don’t pay us.

It’s a safe bet – we’ve never encountered a close guess. But why?

I think there are two possible reasons. Firstly, most people have never thought about the question before. Although intuitively they know that their prospects are being influenced by a range of individuals, they’ve never considered who these people might be.

The second reason is that when considering influence, they use one, or maybe two, dimensions to measure influence. The most common ones used are frequency and market reach/awareness. Sometime they’ll use connectedness, especially if they’re considering the influence of bloggers.

The problem is that influence is multi-dimensional. Currently we use four dimensions of influence, and are piloting a further four (from which we expect two to be practical and consistently measurable).

It also explains why Bill Gates and Steve Jobs rarely turn up on our influencer rankings, along with the other obvious CEO of top companies. These individuals may influence industry trends and directions, but they rarely affect real decisions at the coal face.

Analyst of the year...

2008-06-18T16:47:00.003+01:00

Better late than never, I've just read the IIAR's Analyst of the Year results. Really interesting stuff - check it out. The rise of the smaller guys is remarkable. Maybe they've done a better job of engaging with the AR community...

The full report is here.

A good analysis of the results is here.

Why links don't equate to influence

2008-05-20T11:35:00.003+01:00

We write about the disconnect between links and influence in the book

But Hugh has a better way of saying the same thing:

I really must learn to draw cartoons...

Analysts, influence, and the pointlessness of lists

2008-05-20T11:26:00.002+01:00

Aberdeen Group has announced the top 100 influential technology vendors in 2008. I’m assuming this isn’t a prank, since sensible folk like Jason Stamper at CBR have already commented on it. But it isn’t on Aberdeen’s own web site (yet) – I wonder if they’re embarrassed by it

Anyway, the list claims to show the top vendors that “excelled at providing value to the business community” – whatever that means. Jason does a great job of picking holes in the list’s composition, so I won’t repeat them.

So three macro comments:

Announcements like these do Aberdeen no favours. It is research generated purely for PR – there’s no other use for it. Are enterprises supposed to rush out and buy stuff only from the top 10? Are they supposed to not buy from the lower ranked vendors? In fact there is no insight, advice or action that can result (sanely) from this list. It’s a list for lists’ sake.
It brings into question the purpose of analysts generally. Can we respect the work of a firm that produces such pointless nonsense? This at a time when the very role of analysts is being discussed, here and here. Is Aberdeen really an anlyst firm? I hope not. If I was CIO at one of the “90% of the Fortune 500” or “75% of the Global 500” firms that “rely on Aberdeen's research” I’d have serious look at the value of my subscription. And then probably review my other analyst subscriptions too.
What is the point of a list? I think it’s either to recognise and reward performance, in which case it should be based on performance outcomes (like a league table). Or it should be an advisory statement, based on some survey data, that advises and/or challenges you to take note (like SAP’s influence chart). The recent WSJ list of business influencers has merit because it does both – “hats off to the top gurus, and you should be reading these guys…”

A list of 100 technology firms is neither recognition of success nor useful to decision makers. It’s pointless.

Who analyzes the analysts?

2008-05-15T10:48:00.003+01:00

There’s a new blog to discuss analysts - analystanalyst. Immediately I like its tone: thought-provoking, humble, discursive.

Its key purpose is to “analyse the analysts.” You might assume that this was already being done by the AR firms: Lighthouse, Tekrati, Tiger Lily, KnowledgeCapital, SageCircle, and so on. I’m guessing the IIAR has some role in analysing the space too.

So is there a point to the blog? Indeed there is. Firstly it aims to hold to account analysts and their predictions/advice. All of the AR firms and in-house practitioners position analysts as essential. They are all pro-analyst. They all position analysts as key influencers, often generalising influence based on the firm analysts work for rather than their individual influence.

This, I believe, distorts the role and reliability of analysts. As analystanalyst says, “no-one analyses or compares (analysts) or holds them to their word, rather we just keep on paying them the money…”

Do I detect a degree of resentment in this statement? Why do “we just keep on paying them the money…”?

Analystanalyst is an anonymous blog (which is a pity, as this diminishes its credibility) but I’m going to guess that the author works for a vendor. This guess is based on the blog description stating that the author “comes into contact with analysts everyday, and more importantly with people who think what analysts say is gospel.” Most end-users don’t encounter analysts everyday.

So here’s a question: what would happen to your organisation if you didn’t pay the money? What’s the bottom line impact of cancelling your Gartner subscription?

One answer is that you’d lose the deep insight that analysts provide into market dynamics. Many (most?) vendors buy analyst research for market data, for strategic insight and for competitive analysis.

But how many of these firms justify the spend by claiming that analysts are influential on end-users?

So welcome, analystanalyst, whoever you are. You’re asking some tough but important questions.

Analysts and their share of influence

2008-05-15T10:41:00.002+01:00

For the record, I’ve never said that analysts are no longer influential. (Some of my best friends are analysts…) What I have said is that the share of influence has shifted away from analysts towards a plethora of other influential categories, some new (eg. bloggers) and some old (eg. consultants, regulators, academics). In fact, what’s most relevant is that it is now possible, using sophisticated search capability (plus a good deal of research diligence) to detect influence (if you know where to look and don’t prejudge the answer).

I’ve also stated, in the book and elsewhere, that analyst influence is often overstated. Analysts are influential, but they are not at the top of the influence hierarchy. Indeed, I don’t believe there is an influence hierarchy.

HP, and now SAP, confirm that view that analysts are just one of multiple groups of influencer. It’s interesting that Don at SAP detected this 18 months ago and reacted by establishing an Influencer Relations division. What’s surprising is that so few companies have followed this lead. But I know many are watching this trend closely.

Who really influences customers?

2008-05-15T10:35:00.002+01:00

Hot on the heals of HP’s survey results on who influences their customers, Don at SAP has released figures of a survey conducted 18 months ago. The post, with Don’s observations on the data, is here.

A couple of immediate observations of my own:

How important peers and colleagues are. This is consistent with many consumer-focused surveys too. But I’m not convinced this is helpful from a marketing viewpoint: after all, it still poses the problem, how do you get you message to those peers and colleagues?
Our customers’ customers are major influencers. This is really interesting, and rarely picked up on. It means that what customers buy must add value to what they in turn sell. So we, as marketers, must know what our customers are selling, and to whom.
The importance of your competitors (in SAP’s case, Business Software vendors). Often downplayed, or ignored, but competitors are trying desperately to influence your customers. What do you do about it?
Confirmation that analysts are most influential in the 2500+ employee bracket. This mirrors Forrester’s own research into the influences on small and medium firms.
Blogs are low in influence. Don suggests this may have changed in the past 18 months. I’m less convinced.
Where are the events? This contrasts with HP’s figures, but match Influencer50’s research findings that events are rarely influential.

This is good insight into the share of influence that exists in the IT industry. I hope more firms will share their results.

More on SAP's approach to influencer relations

2008-05-02T11:59:00.002+01:00

Don Bulmer at SAP shares his experience of establishing an Influencer Relations program. I esepecially like the engagement model and the segmentation (with revenue opportunity) of influencer groups.

Don's diagram of this is here.

'Influencers possess less clout'

2008-05-02T11:44:00.003+01:00

So says Pollara, a Canadian research firm. Nice headline. Except what the research says is that online influencers (bloggers, social media users, etc) have less clout than real world influencers. And that's in consumer markets.

This is evidence of a vocabulary drift that now equates influencers with bloggers. It's symptomatic of a lack of thought over what influencers are and how they work. The fact that a blog gets a lot of hits has no bearing on its influence. Why? Because influence is subject-specific. Hugh McLeod may have influence in social media, wine and suits, but none (as far as I know) in cars, scotch and pets.

The biggest issue I have in the influence of bloggers is that most bloggers that have any influence at all do so over other bloggers. The area that bloggers have most influence, as a group, is blogging and social media.

Most claims of the influence of social media are generic. They talk about the influence on "products" or "brands" or "services". But this is meaningless when trying to understand the influence on purchase decisions in favour of a specific product or brand or service.

Which is what matters to marketers.

Analysts influence, as measured by HP - update

2008-05-01T19:47:00.003+01:00

I admit I didn't expect a reply to my post on HP's measurement of analyst influence, but a reply I received (see the comment on the post). Hats off to Bob at HP for disclosing the rankings of their survey.

The question is: what influences HP's customers’ decisions to place a vendor on the short-list when purchasing products and services. The rank is:

Experience with Vendor
TCO
Price [statistically significant gap between top 3 and next 5]
Analyst Reports
Events
Vendor Internet
Analyst Verbal [statistically significant gap between top 8 and rest]
Financial Analyst
Marketing Collateral
Blogs/Social
Media Coverage
Direct Marketing
Advertising

Inital observations:

- how powerful vendor experience is. We always see competing vendors as strong influencers in any market, but I didn't expect them to rated top.
- financial considerations are key, but not necessarily the financial performance of the vendor itself (if the low ranking of financial analysts is indicative).
- events are much higher than I'd have expected.
- interesting difference between analyst reports and analyst advice in forming a shortlist.
- social media and blogs are on the radar, but still low.
- very low showing for the media
- why does any firm bother with direct marketing and advertising these days?!

Also, I'm surprised at the absence of advisory consultants and players in the supply chain (VARs, SIs, etc). It may depend on the markets being surveyed.

Still interesting stuff and valuable contribution to the wider influence debate. Thanks to Bob for sharing the info.

Bob asks the community to share its data - we're currently putting a paper together on the Influencer50 research. Anyone else?

The original HP announcement is here.

Influencers are old hat

2008-05-01T14:52:00.003+01:00

When I was at the CMO Council Summit in November there was a panellist that said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Influencers? We’ve been doing that for years. It’s old hat.”

I confess, the comment bugged me then. It still does. I was reminded of the comment when in Ghent a few weeks ago, while being interviewed by the Belgian press. Two of the journalists I spoke to suggested that companies have been doing influencer marketing for years.

I know what seeds the belief that considering influencers is well-established. It’s research like Overstreet and Katz & Lazarfield. It’s books like Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and influence people. It’s Everett Rogers and the theory of diffusion of innovation. And so on.

There are two concerns I have in regarding influencers as old hat. First, if influencers are old hat, where are the influencer relations people? We have press relations and analysts relations. Whither influencer relations? In fact, influencer relations is just beginning to appear, in forward thinking companies like SAP and Wipro (check out the Wipro case study in the book).

Second, I actually think that influencers are old hat, insofar as they have always been there. Despite the talk about so-called “New Influencers” (bloggers and the like) it’s the “Old Influencers” that still dominate.

What’s new is the recognition that (a) we have a way of identifying them, and (b) we can then engage with them to improve marketing and sales.

That is very much "New hat".

Analysts influence, as measured by HP

2008-04-29T18:49:00.002+01:00

HP's AR blog announces its research findings of its survey of what influences customers’ decisions to place a vendor on the short-list. Interesting stuff.

But note that while 55% of respondents say analysts do influence the decision, this doesn't not equate to share of influence. It might be that 80% of respondents think peer customers have influence, or that 100% think consulting firms have influence, or that journalists have no influence at all.

Unfortunately, they don't say who else also influences customers, or where in the ranking analysts come. I assume it wasn't top...

The only tidbit they offer is that bloggers and social network sites rank 11th of the 14 types. Go on, HP. Tell us the order of influencers. We'd all love to know.

Influencing competitors

2008-04-29T17:07:00.003+01:00

I'm reminded by Josh Bernoff at Forrester about the influence of competitors. Josh asks, should you talk about your competitors? Absolutely, and I'd suggest that you should hope they talk about you.

In every market there are competitors (otherwise it isn't really a market), and there will be some influencers working for those competitors. So first, a reality check. It's unlikely that competitors will become your advocates (unless you can convince them into a partnership, for example). But remember that the influential competitors are influential on your prospects - that's the definition of an influencer. So you can't ignore them either.

Trashing a competitor publicly will be counter-productive, but neither are you going to endorse them. So what to do?

Josh suggests a middle ground. Talk about your competitors. Give credit where credit's due. Understand where your points of differentiation are, and emphasise them.

What is the point of this? The point is, you want competitors to talk about you. Given that they are just as unlikely to trash you, they will try to ignore you. They’d rather not talk about you.
Engaging with other non-competitor influencers has the effect of raising your profile in the industry, including your competitors. Because influencers are talking about you, your competitors will be forced to follow. Otherwise, their influence is diminished, because they are not seen as being in touch, or truthful.

This is particularly true for players trying to break into a market. It’s easy for the more established players to dismiss such competition. But they can’t do this if industry influencers are paying you attention. Importantly, talking about your competitors to influencers is very effective, because it aligns you with your competitors. What you are doing by engaging with influencers is creating a program to influence your competitors.

Your measure of success is simple. Do your competitors see you as a competitor? If yes, then that’s all you can do. If no, then you need to start influencing them.

Influencers don't buy stuff - the point is...

2008-04-29T09:59:00.004+01:00

After Nick's debate with Paul Gillin at the New Comms Forum last week, Katie and others have fastened onto Nick's quote that "Influencers don't buy stuff." It seems that some have taken this to mean that influencers don't matter because they are not buyers. This is not the point.

The point is, firstly, that influencers are influencers, and are therefore important - by definition. They can't both be influencers and not matter - that's an oxymoron. So engagement with influencers is mandatory.

The second, and more important point, is that you need to talk to influencers in a different way that you might to customers. To put it crudely, you can't pitch to influencers.

It's not enough to "join the conversation" with influencers. You've got to know what to say, and how to say it. Saying the wrong thing is worse than saying nothing.

I think the missing link here is the identity of influencers. There may be "new influencers" such as bloggers, but they are not the totality of the influencer ecosystem. In any market the ecosystem will be heterogenous: in most markets we see a dozen or more influencer types.

So, step one is always to identify the individual influencers in your market. Only then can you think about what to say to them.

Tekrati interviews Nick

2008-04-22T19:19:00.002+01:00

In advance of Nick's appearance at the New Communications Forum this week, he was interviewed by Barbara French at Tekrati on the subject of his debate with Paul Gillin. The link is here.

Nick at the New Communications Forum

2008-04-18T09:36:00.005+01:00

Paul Gillin wrote a great review of the book, but noted that we were a tad critical of the role of bloggers in the world of influence. This is somewhat at odds with Paul’s stance in his book on The New Influencers.

Paul got in touch and invited us to debate the issue with him at the New Communications Forum
in Sonoma next week. Nick is representing us – should be a thought-provoking event for all involved.

Markee seminar

2008-04-18T09:25:00.003+01:00

I was in Ghent, Belgium, last week presenting on the future of advertising. Shock: there is one.

Koen at Markee, who organised the event, has posted a video of the presentations. Koen’s is in Flemish, but the slides are English and worth a read. Jimmy Maymann from GoViral also presented and played some cool videos on how viral films can create social objects. My pres is on there too. The link is here.

I was introduced to some quirky Belgian humour. Markee had, for instance, arranged to have traditional advertising icons (Duracell’s bunny, Captain Birdseye) standing in glass specimen cases for the duration of the seminar. The stamina of Belgian actors is commendable…

Here’s the proof.

End notes:
Thanks to Koen, Selma and the team for organising a great event.
Visit Ghent for the most restful weekend in Europe, and only 2.5 hours from London on the train.

Reaching out to influencers

2008-04-16T10:11:00.000+01:00

There are two major dangers making contact with influencers. One stems from ignorance, the other from deep understanding.

Firstly, ignorance. We had an experience where we identified the key influencers on a market segment to a client. As part of the service we provide contact details. The client then wants to make contact with those influencers. It sends out emails to every influencer on the list, telling them how important they are. Saying how much attention they will be paid.

The typical response: “Please remove me from your mailing list “

I used to get this fairly frequently as an analyst. In my coaching workshops I still use examples of emails sent to me by vendor marketing or PR folks, inviting me to events or meetings. If the offenders were lucky, I’d politely decline their approaches. Usually it was easier to hit the “Send to spam” button.

Bang. There goes your opportunity to engage an influencer. You really didn’t understand the value of the information you had. The 50 most important people on your market, and you spammed them.

The second danger is that you understand only too well how important these influencers are. Which makes approaching them scary. What if you upset them? Or they’re hostile to your firm?

There are some basic rules of engagement. The first is to pick up the phone. Most busy people these days get over a hundred emails a day, most of which go unread. A colleague of mine just received a reply to an email he sent 300 days ago! I told him he was lucky to get any response.

The phone, on the other hand, is direct, allows synchronous conversation, and demonstrates your commitment and approachability, and you can immediately address any questions or negativity in real time. Importantly, the phone is now not the norm, which is why it works.

The other key rule is that any phone conversation must be a peer-level discussion. You can’t contact influencers through a call centre, or use junior executives. They’re too important for that.

Only when you really know your influencers well can you send them email, to confirm discussion points or to arrange meeting logistics. Sometimes, the old fashioned ways of contact still work best.

How important are blogs? To me? To decision makers?

2008-04-16T09:59:00.001+01:00

I’ve been busy. Really busy. Too busy to blog.

Is this true, though? How important is blogging to you? How important should it be to me?

The truth is, if you’re going to blog you should commit time and resource to it. I haven’t, lately. My bad (as they say). As luck would have it the projects we’ve been working on recently both had interesting perspectives on blogging.

The projects show that bloggers are now emerging as influencers in specific niche areas. A year ago it’s doubtful that any bloggers would have appeared on our top 50 list of influencers. Senior decision makers, in general, didn’t read blogs. This has changed, not in a big way, but blogs are now firmly on the list of decision maker reading. There are some infrastructure reasons for this. The adoption of RSS makes reading blogs easy nowadays, even for busy technology buyers. More likely, the adoption of blogging as a communications mechanism by already well-established influencers encourages adoption of the medium, which then prompts wider exploration of the blogosphere.

The main reason, we think, for growth in blogger influence is that the influential bloggers are getting out more. They attend conferences, they write articles in mainstream media, they consult and advise. In short, they engage in more ways than just on their blog. This, we think, is the primary reason why bloggers are increasingly influential.

What’s also interesting is that, in general, bloggers refer to other bloggers in a self-referencing cluster. This is why bloggers appear to be highly influential – they increase the number of links and references from blogs by increasing links and references to other blogs. For most, though, their influence is restricted to the blogosphere and few have escaped into influencing the real world, and real decision makers.

B2B magazine op-ed

2008-03-10T12:13:00.001Z

Nick has written a short op-ed piece for the US-based B2B magazine. It's available here.

SAP Industry and Influencer Relations blog

2008-03-05T11:45:00.004Z

Just picked up on Don Bulmer's blog, courtesy of ARmadgeddon. Don is VP of Industry and Influencer Relations at SAP, and is a welcome addition to the otherwise sell-side blogs promoting greater focus on influencers. That is, Don is a practitioner of what others (me included) are preaching*. We can all learn from his insights.

A couple of things occurred to me when reading his most recent post:

SAP has evolved its Industry and Influencer Relations group from its Analyst Relations team. That's one way of getting there. But not the only way. Influencer50 has clients that have arrived at Influencer identification & engagement from marketing effectiveness, sales effectiveness, PR, product marketing, corporate marketing and a bunch of other activities. That's not to say that it's a solution to all problems. Just that Influencers can be useful in a variety of ways.
SAP isn't the first firm to evolve in this manner - there are several others. For example, Wipro has been doing this kind of thing since 2006. We wrote a case study of Wipro for the book.
Don says that when SAP identified its business and IT influencers "We were surprised to find that a number of our assumptions on decision making authority and influence were challenged." That's completely normal for this exercise - influencers are not obvious, and take detailed and diligent research to identify and rank. IBM's Information Management group was "shocked" to discover it didn't know its influencers (again, a case study in the book). So don't embark on influencer identification expecting it to confirm what you already know.

And thanks, Don, for the link back to this blog.

*Before anyway starts, yes, we do use our own approaches. I'd like to think the book is a good example of what I call Influencer-led collateral...

Tom Peters on ads

2008-02-27T15:46:00.003Z

The management guru on advertising:

Advertising is a sick business. And it isn't just for the oft-mentioned reason that "consumers are using so many more media outlets—the Internet, hundreds of
TV stations, thousands of publications."
It is because people just don't buy this way anymore. Customers—your customers—are scrutinizing, savvy, discerning, and self-reliant. They look beyond your promises, and consider every interaction with your company as a chance to evaluate you.

Ouch.

Smoke & mirrors from adland

2008-02-27T15:32:00.003Z

"Pre-Click Ad Influence" - creativity clearly isn't dead!

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3624442

Thanks to Gartner's media blog for highlighting this tosh.

“British journalism is sloppy and morally bankrupt”

2008-02-27T14:50:00.003Z

Allegedly…

I listened to Nick Davies, the author of Flat Earth News on Radio 4 a few days ago. He was defending his view that, because media outlets have moved into the ownership of huge corporations, their primary interest is in profit rather than journalism. It’s highly listenable stuff:

“The logic of journalism has been overwhelmed by logic of commercialism…”

“Journalists no longer have time or resources to do their jobs properly as active new gatherers. They’ve become passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material. This makes them enormously vulnerable to manipulation.”

Davies also claims that journalists are incorporating criminality into their work. Driven by scoops, and a lack of time and resources, they cut corners. It’s common practice, says Davies, to hire private investigators to trawl through the trash. They can source bank statements, phone bills, tax records, even health records.

Of particular note to this blog is Davies’s claim that, “The role of the PR industry has become fascinatingly powerful.” He cites research conducted by Cardiff university, which found that of 2000 stories in the quality UK press, "54% of stories were wholly or mainly constructed out of PR product." So more than half of the stories we read are largely influenced by those serving an interest.

I’m not personally a fan of PR firms. Having been an analyst for 12 years, I found that most just got in the way. And now looking at broad ecosystems of influence, I see the dispersion of influence away from traditional journalists, which means that PR is less important to firms than it used to be.

Or so I thought. If Mr Davies is right, perhaps we should all hurry back to our PR friends with peace offerings and humble pie.

Or maybe he’s reporting the further and final erosion of journalists as real influencers.

…

(There’s a good review of Flat Earth News at The Economist, for those who subscribe. For those who don’t - tssk.)

(The full Cardfiff Uni report is here)

Hugh and friends discuss influence

2008-02-18T11:34:00.003Z

Hugh McLeod does a regular podcast with Rabbi Pinny Gniwisch, Johnnie Moore and Mark Earls. This week they talked about influence.

Well, they did for about 10 minutes – for the next 30 it was mainly about success in marketing and creativity. Interesting, nevertheless.

Listening to these intelligent chaps solidified my view that influence is grossly being misunderstood and/or misrepresented. As Johnnie Moore said, there are two views. One is to think of “cool people” that tell the rest of us what to do. Find those influencers and success will follow. The other view is that life is more complex (duh) and success is often just down to luck, or random acts of traction (as Hugh puts it). (Echoes of The Wisdom of Crowds and Fooled by Randomness here.)

This is being played out on the blogs as Malcolm Gladwell versus Duncan Watts.

I think neither of these views is right – this polarisation masks the real complexity of influence, which is that it’s damned hard to pin down in what it is and how it works.

I can’t criticise these guys for saying it how they see it. In fact, I think the biggest culprits are consumer-facing WOM agencies that claim to be able to identify influential consumers or, worse, to position celebrities as influencers.

The podcast does actually acknowledge that influencers do exist, though these may be the people that “show up.” In other words, anyone can be an influencer if they are committed and diligent enough. I think that this is true in large parts.

A couple of their comments jarred with me:

“The Influential model is most often touted by people who would like to be seen as Influentials, or at least, friends of Influentials.” Ouch. In fact, I “tout” Influencer50's approach because I see it working with clients. Some influential people don’t even know that they influence the market, and are surprised on being told such.

The idea that once you find influencers it’s a simple task of pulling the levers and success follows. My experience is that although identifying accurately is complex, it’s actually the easy part in the process. Engaging with influencers is much harder.

It’s also cemented my view that influence in the B2B world is different from B2C, in that B2B lacks a strong sense of peer-to-peer communication. Business people don’t talk to others outside their organisation because of the lack of opportunity, or due to competitive sensitivities. Influencers act as proxies here, acting as go-betweens for firms. This role is critical, and underpins the entire consulting and industry analysis business models.

In B2C, sure, there are influential consumers. But I’ll bet that no agency can identify which fellow consumers are influencing me on my (ongoing) new PC decision. But they could identify which web sites, retailers and magazines I might consult. Fixating on consumers as B2C influencers is missing the primary sources of influence: the supply chain and value-adding influencers.

It’s clear to me that most firms looking for influencers amongst consumers are looking in the wrong place.

Influence, independence and impact

2008-02-11T14:32:00.000Z

Good post from Jon on the influence, independence and impact of analysts. It comes spookily hot on the heels of Alan PS's note on the independence of analysts. That this issue still pops up decades after it was first raised undermines the credibility of the analyst industry. When I was at Ovum, we declined to take money from vendors for white papers, but changed our minds several times during my time there (1995-2004). At IDC (2004-2006) we happily and regularly took money from vendors for white papers. At both organisations we claimed independence.

At Influencer50 we are, not surprisingly, focused on influence. But it's always important to say what we mean when we try to identify and measure it. We think independence and impact are constituents of influence. A lack of independence erodes influence, but doesn't eliminated it. There are plenty of folks working at vendor firms that are themselves influential, but you wouldn't expect them to be independent. Vested interest, as long as it's declared, is the key issue.

The main issue is, then, transparency. So, come on analysts. Why not declare the extent of revenue from vendors. Name your clients and the proportion of revenues they contribute.

Perhaps the IIAR could define (or rate?) analyst firms on their independence...

I've seen the future...

2008-02-08T15:50:00.000Z

... and it doesn't have ads in it.

Witness this advert (noting the irony) I snapped on the Tube for Sky Movies promising whole films with no interuptions.

I admit that, for me, ad-allergic as I am, this is compelling.

Influencing standards

2008-02-08T14:32:00.000Z

Standards organisations can be significant influencers in markets. It seems that there is a steady increase in the amount of standardisation these days, and it covers technology, telecommunications, food standards, pharmaceuticals and so on.

I recently had a client whose primary influencer organisation was the standards body, with no fewer than five representatives in the community of top 50 influential individuals. What does a firm do to influence a standards organisation?

Standards organisations are usually interested in:

Increasing adoption of their standards amongst vendors, end-users/consumers and legislators
Increasing the reach and scope of standards
Increasing influence abroad, including influencing (or contributing in entirety) standards adopted by international agencies (the European Commission is a good example).

The natural assumption, therefore, is to craft messages to standards representatives that focus on one or more of these interests. These are positive messages to take to standards groups, but in practice there is a paradoxical driving force behind them. It is that if the applicability and appeal of a standard is to widen, the easiest way to achieve this is to loosen the terms of that standard. The largest pressure on standards bodies often comes from those that would adopt a less stringent regime.

There are interesting examples of this. In Gilmore and Pine’s excellent Authenticity, the authors cite the US Department of Agriculture loosening the standards for organic foods in the US, allowing 39 synthetic ingredients into items labelled (officially) organic. This accounts for the rapid growth in the industry and the entrance of the major food manufacturers (Kraft, General Mills, etc) into the field, accompanied by derision from purists.

This same issue is currently being debated in the UK. With the import of organic foods from overseas, consumers are being presented with products labelled organic with a higher carbon footprint than locally-produced non-organic foods. A dilemma of conscience ensues…

The point of all this to identify the winners and losers of relaxed (or loose) standards. Low standards create low barriers for entry. This allows more and often larger players to move in and dominate a market. Greater competition is the result, more supply, and reduced prices. This then favours larger producers that have economies of scale.

That’s not to say that lower standards favour big companies. Rather, it is that standards favour incumbent companies, because they have sunk cost in meeting those standards.

Our default recommendation to clients is to lobby for increase standards. These raise the barriers to entry and create room for early mover competitive advantage and differentiation. At a minimum any firm in a standards-driven market should campaign for standards not to be slackened, to protect investment in processes and skills.

Seth offers Ford as a good (that is, bad but illustrative) example of this here. In fact, it’s arguable that a new entrant to a market should aim to set the barrier as high as possible, to shift the agenda and to gain from its lack of legacy.

What about those that promote the free market and claim standards as protectionism mechanisms? I’m all for the free market. But standards exist for a reason – to protect consumers. Standards raise quality and trust in the market. It’s doubtful that some markets would exist at all without standards.

Does Oprah have influence?

2008-01-31T20:46:00.000Z

A lot of the discussion on influence gets sidetracked by the allure of the super-influencer, or what I call the ‘Oprah Winfrey distortion’. The argument goes that super-influencers can make or break a product, or a market, by dropping the right or wrong names. Oprah is usually the cited case, where being named to her book club can rocket an author from zero to the top of the bestseller list. In the UK we have the Richard & Judy book club, which is similar in structure, if not in status.

Does Oprah really have influence? If so how does one tap it?

There’s no doubt that appearing on Oprah’s Book Club has a huge effect on a book’s sales. But is this useful information to a marketer or author? It would be useful if the right action to take was to call Oprah and ask her to read an aspiring writer’s novel. Except that isn’t the right thing to do. Why? Because (and here’s the ground-breaking insight) –

***

Oprah doesn’t choose the books.

***

Ms Winfrey heads a production firm called Harpo Productions, which employs a large team of producers and an even larger team of production assistants. This job spec was recently posted by Harpo productions (emphasis is mine):

Supports team and producer in daily production-including answering phone, getting lunch, opening mail, copying scripts and post-show notes, and other administrative duties. Production skills include research/resourcefulness-proficient in Lexis/Nexis, internet searches, DT searches. Must be resourceful in searching for guests, doing research, and obtaining footage. Reads all books considered to be selected with a critical eye. Maintains up-to-date knowledge of publishing industry. Consistently reads new books, searching for potential book club selections. Can suggest titles that are worthy candidates for upcoming selections. Can create system (charts, procedures, etc.) that are specific to the needs of the club/special projects production process. Charts and tracks show production and book selection process and can anticipate deadlines for the team. Must be able to consistently demonstrate solution driven communication. Communicates effectively with all Harpo departments demonstrating respect and professionalism. Team player works consistently to mesh well with supervisor, teammates, other department members and fellow staffers. Good phone etiquette.

If you want to get on Oprah’s Book Club, Oprah is exactly the wrong person to influence. It’s the new Production Assistant and her colleagues. They read the books, and make the decisions. I understand that Oprah reads the chosen book of the month, but that’s probably the only book she’s got time for (is my guess).

Believing that alleged super-influencers like Oprah, or Bill Gates, or David Beckham have real influence over the decisions that affect you and your firm can distort your marketing efforts, and completely misdirect your activities. Better to understand who really influences the decisions, and target those instead.

Of course, it’s much harder to find out who the new Production Assistant is, but that’s why knowledge of real influencers is valuable. It can give you a unique market insight which leads to competitive advantage.

Anything else is just wasting time and money.

More on Duncan Watts' theories

2008-01-31T09:46:00.000Z

I suddenly remembered, after posting on Duncan Watts's theories of idea spread and influence (or lack thereof), that Prof Watts currently works at Yahoo!.

Spookily, we included a case study of Yahoo!'s use of influencers in the book. I wonder how Prof Watts is getting on with Yahoo!'s influencer marketing team...

Duncan Watts – influence killer?

2008-01-30T19:59:00.000Z

There’s a bit of a stir going on regarding Duncan J Watts and his theories on how ideas spread. In particular he’s becoming known as the influencer killer because he says that influencers have no catalyst effect on the spread of ideas. Indeed, they have no special role in trends at all.

I’ve been following his research for about a year, since this was published. But the recent article in Fast Company magazine brings the issue to a head (and I think Clive Thompson has done a great job in raising the relevant issues).

As I see it, Prof Watts highlights some of the basic misunderstandings of influence. There is, frankly, a lot of nonsense and assumption talked about influence. Much of it stems from the Keller & Berry book The Influentials, which states that 10% of people tell the rest of us how to vote, where to eat and what to buy. I loved this book. I’ve read it three times. Nowhere does it say how Keller & Berry came up with the 10% number - why not 9% or 11%, or 1%. It is based on assertion, and the data in the book simply reasserts the 10% assumption. The Influentials is really useful in understanding how people gain influence in society. But it’s not useful in understanding who or where these people might be, or how to get them to influence markets on your behalf.

Another key misunderstanding on influence is that the people with influence are marked out through the roles they play, or the jobs they hold. Or worse, through the degree of celebrity status they hold. The consensus of research shows that we are more influenced by people with expertise than people with celebrity. And we are more likely to be influenced by people we know than by any other group.

Equally influencers don’t influence evenly through a decision process, as I wrote in this post and the book. And influencers aren’t influential in every category – influence is context-sensitive. So an influencer in buying a house may not have influence in buying a digital camera. This should be intuitive, but marketers sometimes get carried away by the promise of influencers that hold the keys to increased sales.

However, it’s clear that influence occurs in markets, and it’s attractive (I say essential) that firms understand how and what this influence is, and who are the conduits of it. So the final misunderstanding of influence is the assumption that it exists only within the consumers themselves. Clearly this is nonsense when you think about it (except marketers don’t tend to think about it). As consumers we are influenced by a host of people who are not (in the roles they play) consumers.

We’re clearly influenced by a range of people in different roles, some local, some national. What we do as decision-makers is to process the variety of influencers and then make a judgement. Not all influencers are successful in influencing every decision.

Consider the process of buying a house, something that most of us will be familiar with. You’ll be influenced by the house vendor and a real estate agent. Both have a vested interest in the transaction, so you do more checks. You’ll be influenced by any people that you know of within the area. You'll be able to check out whether a ‘neighbourhood watch' system is in place. You will consult published crime figures, possibly even calling the local police station for advice. You’ll refer to school inspection reports and league tables. Local councils will be quizzed for pending planning applications. The local head teacher may be critically important if the main attraction for the property is its proximity to good schools. Builders and other tradesmen may be asked for quotations for structural work you want to do.

I see this even more pronounced in B2B markets, where we can identify the individual people that influence a specific market segment. These are people that are not particularly obvious but undeniably carry influence in their area of expertise. B2B influence works in a different way to B2C, primary because B2B markets don’t have the word of mouth communication that B2C markets do.

But even in B2C markets we find that influencers in the supply chain and its ecosystem carry the majority of influence, with consumers having limited impact on the market as a whole.

I don’t believe that Prof Watts signals the death of influencers. But perhaps he has hastened the death of much of the nonsense that surrounds the notion of influence.

Book availability

2008-01-24T13:20:00.000Z

I'm told that the book has sold out at Amazon.co.uk. Which means (lest my ego swell too much) that they only ordered half a box in the first place. Amazon UK is now citing 2-3 weeks' delay in shipping on orders. (US is unaffected as it's just launching there this week.)

If you're desparately awaiting your shiny copy you might want to try Elsevier's own site. If you quote offer code ASR4 when ordering you get 10% discount and free p&p.

Or you try the myriad of other sites, some of which are listed on the book web site (scroll to the bottom of the home page).

At one point the book was #1 in Amazon's market research category, and #14 in the general sales & marketing category (just behind Meatball Sundae). But you know how I hate lists...

A list worth reading

2008-01-21T10:42:00.000Z

I hate lists. Especially top 10 or top 50 lists. Those pointless (endless) TV shows of 50 best comedy/horror/soap/movie/. Top 50 CIOs, top 50 management gurus, etc, etc, etc.

Typically such lists are poorly researched guesstimates noting the bleeding obvious people, in some sort of non-obvious order.

But consider this list. I confess I'm not an environment zealot, but I found the people identified in the list really interesting, primarly because I'd never heard of most of them. Besides the obvious Al Gore and prominent politicans, there is an eclectic mix of campaigners, artists, religious leaders, journalists, scientists and farmers. It's the mix of backgrounds and perspectives that give the list its credibility. Clearly the result of deep research.

So it is with any worthwhile list. While researching influencers for our clients we often find that potential influencers don't appear on any 'obvious' list. Yet their influence, once discovered, is clear.

We've often looked for shortcuts through the research process, and have examined methods for automating influencer identification, but they all fall short in thoroughness and completeness. There's no substitute for deep research.

Research of WOM and influence - a warning

2008-01-18T09:23:00.000Z

Guy Kawasaki points to an important article published in the December issue of the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR). The article is entitled Reconsidering Models of Influence: The Relationship between Consumer Social Networks and Word-of-Mouth Effectiveness. It looks at how influence works in wom, and whether common preconceptions of influence are valid.

Spookily, I gave a talk at the London WOM Forum yesterday, which was organised by WARC, the publisher of JAR. Copies of the journal containing the article were handed out to delegates.

The research suggests that a pyramidal model of influence, where the majority of influence is concentrated amongst relatively few, highly connected people, is incorrect. Instead, the paper says that "it is the moderately connected majority, not the much smaller number of highly connected people, who hold the greatest potential for influence.

It also says that, "contrary to conventional wisdom that points to ... blogging as indicators of influence," more altruistic behaviour, like product rating, carries more weight. The research concludes that influence is not an exclusive, top-down model. Instead influence is something we all share.

This article is important because it identifies some key assumptions being made in the market about influence and the way it works. Some of these assumptions are identified and challenged by the article: others are not.

Here are the assumptions I detected in the article, and thus probably quite common in the market. My list may not be exhaustive…

Assumption 1. We know what an influencer is. The paper cites ' influence' (or derivatives) 52 times but nowhere does it define it. This is really important, as the scope of influence frames all further discussion. It’s difficult to recognise or measure influence if you don’t know what you’re looking for. At Influencer50 we restrict influence to those effects that impact on a purchase decision.

Assumption 2. Influence is concentrated amongst an elite highly connect few. In fact there is a non sequeter here - that connectedness is somehow related to influence. The article challenges the view that influence is restricted to a small group, but it reinforces the view that influence is somehow correlated with connectedness. This is unproven (and I have big doubts, based on Influencer50 research).

Assumption 3. Influence is unidirectional. In fact, influence flows in all directions. You can observe this the next time you have a conversation, debate or argument.

Assumption 4. Influence online is a proxy for influence in the real world. The article is based on research sources from web site users.

Assumption 5. WOM happens just between consumers. It clearly doesn't - wom, and influence, occur throughout the supply chain, and outside it too. This has huge implications for the structure and measurement of word of mouth campaigns. It’s much easier (and more effective) if such campaigns are grounded within the supply chain.

We have never thought that influence lies with a few people. But it does cluster and there are certainly those with more influence than others. But who are those people? The only way I know is to research the market thoroughly and with a rigorous methodology and rationale - anything else is just guessing.

Guy Kawasaki seems to equate 'elite' with celebrity. In the book we say that celebrity is very unlikely to influence buying decisions, and there’s plenty of research to back this up. In the markets Influencer50 tracks – predominantly B2B markets – the closest we come to including celebrities is when notable management gurus or authors exert influence on purchase decision-makers. People like Geoffrey Moore or (ironically) Guy Kawasaki.

It’s good that influence is being researched, but we do need to be careful about exactly what we’re researching.

Marketing’s image problem

2008-01-14T13:43:00.000Z

In prepping for the CMO Council talk some weeks ago, I centred on a theme based on marketing’s image problem. It struck me that most non-marketers have a pretty poor regard for marketing, somewhere in the region of estate agents, lawyers and car salesmen.

What also struck me was the irony in the situation. Jeez – if marketers can’t fix their own image problem what chance do their employers/clients have.

When I met Hugh McLeod in 2006 he used this analogy for traditional marketing:

Imagine you're at a party. A man comes up to you, but instead of introducing himself, he yanks your head back, pulls your jaw down and looks at your teeth. "I'M A DENTIST!" he explains.

(I’ve subsequently plagiarised this analogy in a White Paper and the book.)

In a party context, most normal people would rather be offered some peanuts and engaged in polite, if trivial, conversation. Why can't marketing be like this? Why not engage people in a conversation? If you are interesting then they will respond in kind. You can move to a business conversation later, once social niceties are satisfied.

Hugh recently revisited the subject even more succinctly:

(Full post is here.)

The real problem for marketers is the awful image they have within their own firms. At the CMO Council Summit in Berlin, I was amazed at how many of the speakers criticised marketing and marketers (i.e. the audience!) for their lack of ambition and poor perception. “Blowing up the balloons,” was how Malcolm MacDonald termed it.

Marketing should be the second most important thing a firm does, after serving customers. If marketers are blowing up the balloons, then someone else has to do the effective, productive marketing, typically the sales teams and channel partners. Sales people can spend 40% of their time creating marketing collateral – 80% of “official” collateral created by marketers never gets used.

How are you perceived within your organisation? Are you a future board member or strategic thinker? Or do you blow up the balloons?

WOM Conference blog posts

2008-01-14T13:38:00.000Z

I've contributed some posts to the WOM Marketing Forum conference blog - I'm speaking at the event this Wednesday.

The posts can be read here, along with contributions from other speakers. Interesting stuff, and several posts examine the relationship between WOM and Influencer identifcation & engagement.

WOM conference speaking gig

2008-01-04T09:23:00.000Z

I’m presenting at the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) Word-of-Mouth conference on 16th January. Looks to be a good line-up, with Emanuel Rosen (The Anatomy of Buzz) as the headliner. Paul Marsden (Collaborative Marketing and Net Promoter Score fan) and Ivan Palmer (WOM advocate at Wildfire) are also there, together with a bunch of wom experts. Looking forward to meeting the crowd.

I’m talking on “Working with Influencers – Connecting with the Customers that Count.”

If you can’t make it to the conference to hear the presentation, here’s the short version:

All customers count.
Find out who influences them.
Market through influencers to customers.

Simple, really - you should try it.

New year, new budget, old habits

2008-01-04T09:19:00.000Z

What’s your rationale for determining your marketing budget this year?

The majority of us marketers look at what we spent last year, make a few tweaks, and submit the not-much-changed plan for approval.

So, did last year’s plan work well for you? Did it tangibly increase revenues, or generate better quality sales leads? The best measure for marketing success is to ask the sales team whether they think marketing is doing anything for them. So go on, ask them.

In fact, since Influencer50 started surveying sales teams as part of our kick-start influencer engagement programmes, I’ve been startled at the appalling scores marketing departments get by the sales teams. The average score for usefulness of marketing to sales efforts is less than 50%.

And don’t give me that “Oh marketing is complicated and we have to invest in awareness” claptrap. If you can’t justify marketing in terms of sales (or sales support) then why are you doing it?

With my Influencer50 hat on, I’d say that you should instead map out who and where your key influencers are, then organise your marketing activities around them.

But it doesn’t really matter what rationale you use to plan your marketing this year. Just make sure it’s not last year’s plan. If last year's plan didn't tangibly and positively affect sales, what makes you think the same plan will work this year?

The book is published...

2007-12-20T09:54:00.000Z

I just received some copies of the book, so those folks that have pre-ordered should be getting them any day now, Christmas post permitting. Our case study contributors and draft proof reviewers will receive their copies direct from the publisher.

Now comes the hard part - marketing and selling!

Whither the book?

2007-12-17T14:52:00.000Z

The book is supposed to be officially out. Except it's not - delays in the printing process.

I apologise if this has ruined your Christmas, though I suspect only my closest relatives are really fretting.

If it really will cause you grief let me know. Otherwise, consider it something meaty to start in 2008.

Thanks for your patience...

Carter Lusher's new gig

2007-12-13T16:54:00.001Z

You may have heard that Carter, who ran AR at HP in the US, departed HP recently. He emailed me yesterday to point out his new role, heading up a reborn SageCircle AR firm. I read Carter's blog while he was at HP, so his SageCircle Blog should be similarly stimulating. Good luck on the new gig, Carter.

Interestingly, the blog site names this blog as an AR blog, not the first time I've been pigeonholed as such. Lord help anyone visiting here expecting advice on how to run an AR practice. Read this post from Skip, then come back and see analysts in the holistic context of influencer ecosystems...

I also note that SageCircle blogs cite (what I guess are) SageCircle's competitors - ASG, KCG, Lighthouse, Tiger Lily, etc. Good on you, SageCircle. It's a small market and the more informed the target audience the better for all. Grow the pie, as they say.

It's also good influencing strategy, as your competitors are usually influencing your audience. Engage with them, arther than ignore them. It nearly always has benefits.

“We can’t find out who our influencers are…”

2007-12-13T10:40:00.000Z

Reuters reports that US PR companies are struggling to identify social media influencers, because they are using criteria out of step with the social networks being influenced. PR companies think quality of content, relevance and search engine rankings are important in influencing social media users. Social media users in fact value participation levels (e.g. number of comments), frequency of posting, and name recognition of the individual.

Two key points here:

Firstly, PR is out of step with its target audience, and the research by Society for New Communications Research is therefore very timely. Importantly, PR firms under-estimate the value of engagement in influencing through social media.

Secondly, I think the study shows that influence itself is a social phenomenon, whether exerted through social media or via more traditional channels. A great way to engage with your target audience is to engage with its influencers, but this has to be done in an appropriate social context.

That’s why establishing communities of influencers works well. We say often at Influencer50 that influencers love to influence, but they also love to interact with other influencers – that how they get much of their influence in the first place. Firms that facilitate this interaction are much valued – like the CMO Council.

CMO Council talk transcript

2007-12-13T10:26:00.000Z

It’s available for unrestricted download here…

The paper on the Insanity of Marketing, which I referred to, is here (one-time registration required, or just login).

Marketing efficiency versus marketing effectiveness

2007-12-06T09:42:00.000Z

How do you measure marketing?

I think that marketing should be measured by sales. Whether you use incremental sales, or total sales, or marketing-budget-to-sales ratio, or sales velocity, or some other metric, it all comes down to sales. Market awareness or “propensity to purchase” and other such things are pointless if they don’t ultimately lead to sales.

The difficulty comes in tying specific campaigns to sales. How do you know if the event you ran caused someone to buy when they wouldn’t have otherwise? So most marketing organisations track overall operational effectiveness and/or efficiency.

Fair enough. But I was shown the following chart by a client. It plots IDC's assessment of 99 firms on two scales: how efficient marketing is (vertical scale), and how effective it is (horizontal).

The chart comes from IDC’s CMO programme, Marketing Investment Planner 2008: Benchmarks and Key Performance Indicators, published in September 2007. (You have to subscribe to this service, which I recommend if you want to benchmark your marketing against peers, or purchase the report to see the whole document,).

What does this chart show us? The startling thing about this scatter diagram is the degree of scatter. It looks pretty much random. I’m guessing that if there is any correlation between effectiveness (how useful marketing is) and efficiency (how well marketing is performed) it’s tiny.

For example, the most efficient marketing operation faired no better in its effectiveness than many less efficient operations.

Put simply, how well you do marketing has little effect on how useful marketing is.

Ouch! What we have here is a case of measuring for measure’s sake. It’s a problem I’ve detected with the whole Marketing Performance Measurement (MPM) movement. It’s all very well measuring marketing, but does it actually help?

Focus on marketing effectiveness, measured in sales, and you won’t go far wrong. Efficiency can come later.

CMO Summit thoughts

2007-12-06T09:07:00.000Z

Last week I was at the CMO Summit, run by the CMO Council Europe, in the splendid Hotel Adlon Kempinski in Berlin. I'll post some of my more detailed thoughts on specific presentations shortly. But the overall impression is that the quality of presenters and attendees was very high. From Malcolm MacDonald to David Haigh of Brand Finance, the first day was top notch, and I learned a lot.

I'm usually very sceptical towards the value of conferences, as they tend to be vendor-sponsorred pitching opportunities. But at the CMO Summit there was very little pitch, and it created a rare occassion for CMOs to gather as a community.

I gave an after-dinner talk on why marketing is insane and what to do about it - transcript to be posted soon.

The lasting impression of the Summit is that I had planned to be tough on marketers and marketing - "you're insane..." and all that. But more than a few presenters beat me to it. There is an apparent consensus amongst commentators on marketing that there is a lot of nonsense and poor practice in the industry.

Will, or can, marketers change old habits and mindsets?

The Book - update, case studies and reviews

2007-11-22T11:27:00.000Z

The Book is imminent, which in publishing terms means two weeks or so. It's due on the 3rd December in the UK, and 14th January in the US. Don't ask why...

The book's available for pre-order on various amazon sites. Because of the Christmas rush, we won't be doing much in the way of formal promo until January, though I am discussing some of the book's main themes at the CMO Summit next week, as an exclusive(!). I'm also at the Word of Mouth Marketing Forum in January.

One of the main features of the book is the use of case studies. We have twelve of them, and I've previously announced that Wipro, Adobe, Palm and Yahoo! are among them. I can now divulge that IBM and Nortel will also be included, along with several firms that declined to be identified for competitive reasons. More details on all the case studies is available here.

Finally, we're delighted to have had the book reviewed by a dozen or so CMOs and other notables. The book reviews are posted here, and will also feature on the book cover. We're really chuffed that so many took the time to read the draft and provide comments. Nick and I are indebted.

CMO Council Summit talk

2007-11-22T11:18:00.000Z

I suppose these days I should refer to this as a "gig." But I just can't shake the image of rock stars in leather trousers. I digress.

I'm invited to address the CMO Council's Summit next week in Berlin - I'm in the after-dinner slot. It's a great opportunity to meet lots of Marketing chiefs in one place - should be a good event.

If you're going, let me know - perhaps we can hook up.

Spinfluencers

2007-11-22T09:03:00.000Z

I'm directed by The Leading Edge to the Spinfluencer blog. "Spinfluencer" is a great name (wish I'd thought of it, damn you!), and it got me thinking about how the marketing industry (and PR in particular) is struggling to incorporate influencer strategies into their traditional kitbag of activities.

I think marketing has got an image problem. Sales people find marketing pointless or irrelevant most of the time. Customers are suspicious and mistrust what they're being told. And proving RoI on marketing spend remains, for most, a "one day, maybe" aspiration.

I trust the irony of marketing's dilemma is not lost...

So putting together our thoughts for the book, Nick and I wanted to distance ourselves from traditonal marketing. Influencer Marketing is all about making messages more believed (because they're communicated by influencers, not by you). It's about aligning marketing with sales. And it's about demonstrating RoI, tangibly. Holistically, Influencer Marketing is about changing the way that organisations think about marketing.

One thing that holds this all together is the understanding that influencers are different. You can't "pitch" to them - they're way too smart for that. You can't train them to say nice things about you - they're not amenable. And you can't pay them - because that undermines their influence and is thus counter-productive.

While the term "spinfluencer" is memorable it has, for me, all the wrong connotations. It implies traditional marketing, spin and fluff, and it reinforces the negative image of the industry. Any marketing or PR agency that wants to understand influencers should be moving away from this approach.

When I browsed the Spinfluencer blog I found it to be interesting, well-written and insightful. I recommend it. I just hope they don't regret choosing the name.

The "Wave" is picked up by Paul Gillin

2007-11-22T08:54:00.000Z

I'm flattered that Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, has linked to the post on influencer roles.

I've just read The New Influencers. I highly recommend it to anyone struggling to understand the influence of social media (which is most of you, and me too!). If Naked Conversations got you started on blogging, then The New Influencers will make you see just how important bloggers can be.

Thanks, Paul.

Influencers roles: When and how do influencers influence?

2007-11-16T15:47:00.000Z

If you know anything about influencers you’ll know that they are a mixed bag. This of course means that they come from different disciplines and professions, since diversity is at the heart of a functional influencer ecosystem.

This diversity also extends to how and when influencers exert their influence. In researching the book, I charted a typical decision making process (because what we’re all trying to do is influence decisions) and then mapped out a range of influencer roles across this process. The result is this:

There’s a lot in this picture, but let me explain the various roles that influencers might play:

Idea planters are the thinkers in your industry. These people ask “what if?” They are the sources of uncertainty. Authors and thinkers like Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Trevor Bayliss, and Nicholas Negroponte are all idea planters.

Predictors tell us what (they believe) will be adopted soon. They ask “what next?” Much of this kind of influence comes from the supplier community, which is essentially telling us what’s next in their product pipeline. But this market priming is held in check by third parties such as analysts, financiers and other commentators such as bloggers and management gurus.

Trend setters are the early adopters. They set themselves as reference points and create the direction for the rest of the market. They are important because they not only validate the market but also communicate success to the market. They are influential due to their early adoption, and the fact that they spread the news of their success.

Proclaimers: Some influencers just stand up and proclaim that the world will be how they want it to be. They mandate (as far as they can) the what and how. Proclaimers most often work for government agencies and departments, regulators and legislators, or standards bodies, but may also include buyer groups or co-operatives, and industry commentators.

Aggregators/communicators: One of the most important roles an influencer can play is that of information gatherer and disseminators. It’s where the media and analysts get the majority of their influence: their knowledge of the detail of the market allows them power as to who has access to that knowledge. Non-media aggregators/communicators might include events, industry commentators, buyer groups, government agencies, industry bodies and industry analysts.

Scopers: At some point a definition of the decision to be taken has to be made. That’s the role of scopers, to map out the limitations, parameters and dimensions of the problem and its likely solutions. Scopers tell us “what now.”

Recommenders suggest what you should do. They are sometimes, but not often, able to dictate a decision. Most often they will make their professional judgment known, and then leave the final decision up to the ultimate decision-maker. They are therefore usually somewhat passive in their influence, which is advisory in nature.

Persuaders tell you what you must do. They are not passive at all, conveying precise direction rather than advice. These are your closers, salesmen in Gladwell’s terms, the people who are able to make or break a decision.

Negotiators: Once the supplier is picked the fun begins. How are you going to implement the decision, and how much do you, or should you, pay? Cue the negotiators, who decide how and how much, advising on the financial elements of the deal, as well as the mechanics of how to construct a deal.

Validators say “it’s okay,” and are the safety net for a decision-maker. Not the oft-perceived rubber stamp, they give any decision the health check, to make sure the decision-maker has covered all options. They can halt a deal, or send it circling back for additional scoping or negotiating.

Some key points:

Roles can be played by different influencer types (analysts, journalists, academics, etc).

One influencer could play several roles.

Not all roles are played in every decision process.

The wave and its implications are explored in more detail in the book. We also map out overlap between influencer types (who they are) and influencer roles (what they do).

Use the Wave to examine how and when influencers influence. It’s proved useful in our influencer identification and engagement programs.

Daft question #3 - Are bloggers influential?

2007-11-09T14:04:00.001Z

I get asked this all the time - are bloggers influential?

The only polite response I use is to answer with a question - "Influential on whom?"

In a client project we did earlier this year, there were zero influential bloggers (on UK CIOs in large enterprises).

In a case study for the book, there were dozen of influential bloggers (on tech-focused database administrators).

So the next time you see this sort of nonsense, ask yourself "Influential on whom?"

Then worry about how you might measure influence (clue: it's not the number of links...).

Nike’s influencers

2007-11-09T13:56:00.000Z

The Journal reports on Nike’s use of influencers in training shoes (aka sneakers). Nike is well known for its use of celebrities to promote its products – Michael Jordan is the best example. But it’s the growing use of “under the radar” influencers that is interesting in the article.

Some observations:

The use of influencers applies both to B2C and B2B markets. The influencers, and the engagement rules, may be different but the basic concepts are the same.
The use of celebrities is fraught with risk: the article cites several cases where celebrity sponsorship has had to be pulled hastily when the celebrity misbehaves.
It’s vital to know your market segment. Tattoo artists are hugely influential in some segments. Graffiti artists in other segments. Bloggers in others, still. Remember that influencers don’t travel well between segments, including geographic-based ones.

Most importantly, targeting influencers works.

On the diversity of influencers

2007-11-09T10:23:00.000Z

At Influencer50 we bang on about different kinds on influencers and why the world has moved away from focusing on journalists and analysts. And we don’t just mean bloggers and other social media users, which represent only a small proportion of influencers (especially in B2B markets). We’ve identified over 20 different types of influencer and probably are still missing some.

But why does this matter? Clearly, it matters if there are influencers out there that you’re not in conversation with. But why do influencers come from numerous sources? Why is there no small group of “super-influencers” that dominate a sector?

The reason is that diversity within an influencer community improves the overall functioning of the wider market. Having diverse backgrounds and agendas (and opinions, more than likely) means that a cross-section of influencers’ perspectives is maintained, which is good for broad-based discussion. It also means that the influence of a few personalities can be kept in check, lest bias be introduced. This is particularly important in decision making.

It turns out that a market, or a decision-making unit, will seek out a diverse array of opinions because it’s the wise and safe thing to do. It shouldn’t be a surprise, therefore, that influencer communities are not dominated by journalists or analysts, or any other type of influencer.

What’s difficult is identifying the less-than-obvious influencers. Identifying analysts and journalists is too simplistic and misses the bigger picture.

There are a couple of reference works in this area: The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki is very accessible, and the recent article in HBR on The Wisdom of (Expert) Crowds by Robert S. Duboff is interesting too.

Is the penny dropping for AR professionals?

2007-10-29T16:35:00.000Z

Carter Lusher and Skip MacAskill two long-standing Analyst relations professionals, both ex-Gartner, now heading up AR at HP and Cisco respectively. I recently linked to Carter’s post on influence here.

Skip’s recent post on influence is important because he states a belief that “the traditional business models that analyst firms have employed for years will become less relevant within the next three to five years.”

He also thinks that the “traditional” firms won’t disappear completely, but they will be hard pressed by emerging information delivery models and processes – along with a new breed of alternative influencers – that are fast-moving and in-the moment.

Finally, Skip believes that “that the number of users that buy a product or invest in a technology off the back of a traditional Gartner, Forrester or Yankee report will significantly decrease over the next five years.”

These are important comments from the AR perspective, notably so because AR stands to lose as much as analyst firms. As Skip notes, “I don’t welcome that development with any type of mirth or glee – as an Analyst Relations guy, I’m quite interested in things like job security and my function’s own continued relevance – but I definitely sense a shift in the air.”

I think that the way forward for AR is for it to broaden out into a wider understanding of where influence is actually applied, beyond analysts to encompass consultants, academics, bloggers, procurement bodies, financial authorities, regulators, government agencies, consumer groups, and the rest of the influencer community.

The difficulty is, most vendors have no idea who really influences their customers and prospects, and wouldn’t have anything to say to them if they did know. That’s why I wrote a white paper on the subject a year ago, to shake vendors out of the “Analysts equal influence” mindset. It is still pertinent today.

The question for AR now is, do you take note of what senior AR pros are saying on the shake up of influence and act on it? Or ignore it and hope for the best?

Influencer marketing in a nutshell

2007-10-22T11:37:00.000+01:00

I sometimes get asked what Influencer Marketing is, in 30 seconds or less. Try this for starters.

In fact, replace "analyst" with "influencer" and you're very close. If you also replace "customer" with "influencer" you're there.

(Credit where it's due - the whole, original, post is here)

Facebook: agenda setter or over-hyped?

2007-10-19T13:56:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting juxtaposition. Richard Holway points to Mark Zuckerberg from FaceBook topping silcon's list of agenda setters. Facebook represents the zeitgeist of this decade, towards social networking, with all the implications that has for influence.

Except that The Economist has today published a sceptical article on Facebook, questioning Facebook valuations and its role as a one-size-fits-all social network. There's also an interesting (if brief) examination of whether social networks exhibit network effects of their value increasing with usage (aka Metcalfe's Law). It argues that smaller communities are valued more highly, since they represent members with similar interests.

This contrast in views is relevant to discussions on influence, in two ways. Firstly, it helps inform the debate on how, or whether, Facebook and other social media can enable or enhance influence. Is the value of a social network based on its popularity or its focus? Can we predict which social networks will be populated by most influencers?

The second point on influence is that I'd consider both Richard and Tom Standage at The Economist as influencers on the adoption of technologies. Who's right? Who carries the most weight with technology adopters? Who's opinion will sway valuations? How can you assess the influence of two heavyweights with countering opinions?

Answers on a postcard, please...

Daft question #2 – Can we mail our influencers?

2007-10-18T09:11:00.000+01:00

One of the things Influencer50 does for clients when researching their influencers is provide contact details of the top 50. It’s so that the client, or us if commissioned, can develop an outreach program. It’s difficult information to collect as some influencers are much more protective about their direct contact information - switchboard numbers are insufficient.

I was bemused one day by a client’s question that asked “do we own the list of contact details?” What do you mean “own the list”? I was flummoxed. Then the penny dropped – the client was thinking direct mail.

These influencers are the top 50 most important people in influencing your target market. And you want to send them direct mail – oh boy.

Outreach to influencers is like buying a birthday present for a spouse:

It’s got to be wrapped up nicely, showing obvious care and attention.
It’s got to be personalised, and suited for the specific needs/wants of the recipient. How would your spouse feel if you gave everyone the same present?
It’s got to be planned and delivered on time – too early and it’s suspicious, too late and you’re dead meat.

Most importantly, you’ve got to know the recipient well. Now, most of us can’t hope to know our influencers as well as we know our spouses. But you should do your research to have some idea of what is important to each influencer. The last thing to do is to treat influencers as you do everyone else.

And don’t ever, ever take them for granted…

HP's Lusher on AR and social media

2007-10-16T12:08:00.000+01:00

Carter Lusher, AR head at HP and ex-Gartner analyst, posts on the use of social media by analyst firms (synopsis: not enough) and wonders on the impact of blogging on influence from analysts. Great issues.

The current position, as I see it, is that bloggers have relatively little influence on CIO-level execs and business folk. They do, however, have influence in the more techie arenas. Big generalisations, of course, but it seems to hold for most markets, and makes a reasonable starting hypothesis. Demographics are also an important feature of socila media's reach (but this may be changing: if The Archers are podcasting, anyone can...). Country differences also exist (e.g. France is generally more blog-friendly...).

It's important to recognise that bloggers are often influential because of their "day job" and just happen to blog nowadays. Richard Holway is a good example. Blogging is a means of access, and it allows previously inaccessible people to gain exposure. So you find DBAs and developers emerging as influential bloggers - their influence is expanded out to the web, beyond the confines of their employers.

In researching case studies for the book, I discovered that blogging and other social media need to be dedicated activities, with time and budget allocated. Otherwise it's just dabbling, as Carter points out in IDC's approach.

The key question is always, influential on whom? If analysts are trying to influence CIOs then there is no immediate need to blog, because CIOs generally don't read them. James Governor is successful because he aims at the more techie audience, and is thus more influential on that audience.

The trick, then, is to monitor blog readership closely, and to respond when the sitation changes.

The value of referrals & references

2007-10-11T20:57:00.000+01:00

Serendipity strikes again. I’m arranging a reference call between a prospect and a client, and then HBR alerts me to this article (subscription required) on the value of word of mouth (WOM) referrals. And then Brand Republic points me to a Robin Grant post on the latest Nielsen* research that shows, yet again, that people trust people more than anything else.

The HBR article is interesting not so much for the mathematics of referral value (yawn) but because it identifies a gap between those who say they’ll make a referral, and those that actually do so. Strangely, the higher value customers tend not to carry out the promise, whereas lower value customers are more inclined. Thus there’s a difference between a customers lifetime value and their referral value (which, the article states, could be significantly higher).

In the world of Influencer Marketing we often say that reference customers are the ultimate influencers. In the absence of direct experience of a product or supplier, a prospect will defer to a peer as a proxy for personal experience.

The Nielsen research and HBR article talk about referrals in a B2C context, whereas Influencer50’s focus is predominantly B2B, which typically involves references. The difference between a referral and a reference is timing, occurring at the beginning or the end of the decision process, respectively. But otherwise they are the same, a recommendation, with the same high impact.

In my experience, references in B2B are just as difficult to realise as referrals in B2C. Why is this?

They’re generic: a reference is best if it maps closely to our own needs. That’s why banks like to get references from other banks. But most reference customers are used indiscriminately – case studies are notoriously bad for this approach.
They get tired easily: the goodwill established in a reference client erodes quickly. You have to use them soon, and appropriately, or lose them.
You don’t always have references: if you’re entering a new market, or have a new product to launch, you’re starting from scratch.

Understanding the whole ecosystem of influencers, not just customer references, is important for these reasons. You can use non-customer influencers to backfill your reference programs. This also means you keep your customer references fresh and focused for those situations where you really need them.

*The full Nielsen report is here.

Daft question #1 - Who owns the influencer?

2007-10-11T16:04:00.000+01:00

My commercial director Scott sent me a link to this post by Pete Blackshaw. Pete is a founder member of WOMMA, of which Influencer50 is a member. So Pete must know what he's talking about, at least in a B2C context.

But the question - Who owns the influencer? Oh, please. This is so 1990s. I remember endless (and pointless) debates about who owns the customer and various organisations getting upset because their partner firms claimed customer ownership. Completely pointless, because NOBODY OWNS THE CUSTOMER. Customers are fickle and are as able and likely to change suppliers as change their underwear. Especially these days, when your competitors are one click away.

So, here we are again, ten years later. Same question, even more pointless debate, and the same answer:

NOBODY OWNS THE INFLUENCER

What a crazy concept. True influencers have their influence largely because they are not affiliated to anyone. In fact, the more someone tries to "own" them, the less influential they become. That's why rent-a-quote analysts lack substantial influence - they're paid for ("owned") by a vendor to endorse a product or position.

The only value I can see coming out of asking "Who owns the influencer" is the shock - similar to being hit in the face with a spade - of realising that, more than likely, the influencer owns you! Or at least access to your market (which amounts to the same thing).

Treat your influencers not as peasants on your land but as royalty, to whom you need to pay dues.

How analysts can increase their influence

2007-10-05T11:21:00.000+01:00

It turns out that I’m becoming known for my “analyst bashing” blog posts and other writings. It's not a reputation I've sought. But I've made no secret that I think analyst influence is generally overstated, and that’s with eleven years of inside knowledge at Ovum and IDC. I’ve seen analysts with huge influence and those with very little. The real issue is, how do you tell them apart?

As Richard Holway told me:

Any fool can be an analyst
But very few get to be influencers.

Bill Hopkins’s AR text Influencing the Influencers maps out very clearly why a few analyst firms carry the majority of influence within the analyst community – I commend you to read it. As Bill states in the book, “Some influencers are more vital to you than others.” Though it’s completely obvious if you think about it, many vendors (and AR agencies) don’t think about it, and propagate blanket importance of analysts. PR agencies do the same with journalists.

I think a primary challenge for all analyst firms is to make their analysts more influential. The first question to be asked, as always, is who do they influence? A better way of understanding the relevance of this question is to ask another: who do vendors want to be influenced by analysts? Usually, vendors are trying to influence decision makers, so that they buy products and services. It’s logical, therefore, to want to know which analysts have influence over those decision makers, that can sway a decision in one direction on another. These are what Hopkins calls Deal Makers and Breakers.

Clearly, then, the more analysts are influencing decision makers the more influential they are to vendors. And while it’s risky to categorise all analysts within one firm together, a firm’s business model will point to the likelihood of influence on decision makers. So Gartner, with its end-user research focus and consulting business, is likely to be more influential than, say, IDC, which has a predominantly supply-side viewpoint.

Additionally, the closer an analyst gets to the decision maker, the more influence they will have on that decision. In my experience, this deep level of influence is delivered only through client engagements and consulting. So analysts that directly advise decision makers carry the greatest influence.

There is also an issue of when influence is being applied. Analyst research papers are used by end-users as guidance and pointers, sometimes in the development of shortlists. This occurs early in the decision making process. Consulting, again in my experience, happens later in the process where evaluations and recommendations are being made. At this point the stakes are high, and individual analysts much be sure in their understanding of both the needs of their client and the capabilities of the vendors they are judging.

I think that this is where many analysts, and analyst firms, cop out. They are unwilling, or unable, to help a specific end-user client make a final decision. They may claim that doing so would conflict with their vendor independence. Nonsense. Recommending a specific product to a specific end-user organisation does not conflict with independence, as long the same analyst is just as likely to recommend a different product to another client with different needs.

So I think analyst firms should tell their analysts to get out more. Talk to, engage with, and start influencing end-user decision makers. It’s the only route to real influence.

Influencing the competition

2007-10-03T22:10:00.000+01:00

I met up with one of Influencer50’s competitors yesterday. It’s always an interesting experience discussing the market and client needs with a rival. Give and take is the broad rule.

Competitors are a primary source of influence for your market. Remember, the important thing about influence is who you’re trying to influence. I’m trying to influence my customers and prospects, and so are my competitors.

Traditional marketing dictates that competitors should be regard as hostile enemy, to be dissed at every opportunity. But that approach doesn’t work anymore – your customers are way too smart for that nonsense.

We show our clients how to engage with influencers, to enlist them in marketing activities. But if competitors are influencers how can you influence them in your favour. Isn’t this an oxymoron?

There are many types of influencer that you can’t expect to be overt advocates. Analysts (the good ones, anyway) for instance. So it is for competitors – they are unlikely to be your advocates. But you can make sure that you are on their radar screen. You can make sure that, when a prospect mentions your firm, your competitor knows who you are and has something other than hearsay to respond with. In fact, competitors appear well-connected with the market place if they understand the strengths and weaknesses of their competition (that is, you).

So meet your competitors. Discuss broad market issues. Discuss other non-present competitors (mine enemy’s enemy, and all that). Show them that you’re human, not an ogre. It also turns out that competitors are just as keen on meeting you as you are on them. There is quid pro quo at play, and it should benefit you both.

Handling detractors - What Ovum and IDC illustrate about Influencer Marketing

2007-10-03T21:25:00.000+01:00

Last week I posted some thoughts on the current fortunes of my previous employers, Ovum and IDC. Both posts expressed my concern at their present situation and questioned their future direction, though for different reasons. The feedback I got from the firms, and from the wider community, illustrate some interesting aspects of influence. In particular, what should you do when a blogger (in this case, me) creates a negative view of your firm?

I should say at this point that I consider myself as an influencer in neither of the two firms. As a former employee, most recently from IDC, I guess I have some insight into the firms’ inner workings. But I doubt I’m affecting purchase decisions in a big way.

Anyway, this post documents the reaction from Ovum. I have to say I was surprised that Anthony contact li’l ol’ me, but flattered was I that he took the considerable time. Unfortunately his response, which I published in full with Anthony’s consent, was received by the wider community with more negativity, most notably by Richard Holway. Now Richard is an influencer – did Anthony’s response spark an otherwise sleeping discontent amongst Richard and his followers?

In contrast, I’ve heard not a peep out of IDC. Have they read my post? Maybe not. Do they care? Probably not.

There are three strategies to deal with a so-called detractor. You can (1) try to convert them, (2) surround them with other (more positive) influencers, thereby neutralising them, or (3) you can ignore them. Ovum is attempting strategy #1. IDC is practising #3 (by default or design).

Microsoft’s Blue Monster gig with Hugh McLeod is an example of #2, where MS are attempting to engage with its influencer (and wider) community to address the tide of negativity towards it. Smart move, executed creatively.

How would you handle a detractor?

Ovum responds to yesterday's post

2007-09-27T15:56:00.000+01:00

I'm pleased to provide a response from Ovum to my post yesterday. Anthony Parslow, Ovum's MD and I had an interesting and fruitful discussion on the points raised in the post. Rather than edit Anthony's comments, I'm reproducing them here in full.

Duncan,

Following up on our exchanges last night on your recent post re: Datamonitor / Ovum I thought it would be helpful if I provided some additional facts and insights.

The IT industry often swirls with rumours and intrigue and I would like the opportunity to address some of the points made. While it is definitely not appropriate or possible to comment on every rumour or blog I think you will find that I and the senior management team at Ovum are quite approachable. I would encourage you or others to interact with us in order to get a more accurate or balanced story... if vendors or enterprises have to brief and touch the analyst firms then the bloggers and analyst watchers should be briefed and touch the analyst firms :-)

Moving onto the key points in the blog post yesterday...

IT Research
a) We feel we have actually potentially shown more focus on the IT side of the house than the previous management team as evidenced by the recent move to appoint David Mitchell as SVP for IT Research (which by the way was an internal promotion from within Ovum and is a role focused on IT than didn't exist previously)

b) We should have 35 people in our IT Research team at Ovum by year end not 6. We are close to that number right now though there are a few open positions at present e.g. hiring to backfill Ian whose very valid reason for leaving is that after many years of great service to Ovum he is retiring. Additionally, we have several associates who are working with us on a contractor basis and we are in discussions with Ian to keep him on as an associate as well. We have had some turn-over but have also hired well including Cornelia Wels-Maug (an ex-employee and long-time associate who rejoined the firm in Germany) and Ian Brown (who came from Gartner where he worked closely with both vendors and end users on their infrastructure technologies and related services).

c) We currently have invested almost all of Datamonitor Group's development resources in building a new client content delivery platform for 2008 for both IT and Telecoms. This is being done at the expense of almost all other development projects in Datamonitor and is a big investment in Ovum.

d) We have re-organised the analyst teams so that they will work together more closely and more collaboratively, breaking down some of the service and geography structures between them. The intention behind this is to create a more consistent and barriers-free offering for our clients which we will launch shortly... and yes to go-to-market with this in a more commercially focused way. We are not a charity and one of our value propositions has always been to help our clients from a commercial perspective so I am not ashamed to say that means we need to perhaps protect our own interests a bit more too.

e) In contradiction to what outsiders may say on blogs very few people's jobs have actually changed at all as the restructuring post-acquisition was focused on the support services and not on our analyst organisation. Acquisitions are of course difficult transitions and there is no doubt that some changes have occurred and I am probably not as cuddly as the previous management team. However, I think it is fair to say that Ovum went from being an employee owned private company to an IPO to acquisition in less than 12 months and I think many are finding it convenient to shift the difficulty for people in adapting to the implications of being a public company rather than a largely employee owned one onto Datamonitor. I do acknowledge that this is something as a management team we need to take on-board and work with our employees on and it is a large change management exercise.

f) We have also added / invested in additional sales people and added completely new business development teams in the US and EMEA.
That is not to say that we can't do a better job and we are working on ensuring Ovum is both a good place to work and a place that people are proud to work for. I suspect that is an ongoing challenge for most companies.

Ovum Acquisition

a) Ovum has been a strategic acquisition for Datamonitor and was on the potential list for a long time. We paid £42m for a business that had an annual profit for the last trading year before purchase of £0.4M and which was also a very large premium above the share price they are trading at which I think would tend to support a push for growth strategy!

b) Yes, we did feel that Ovum was not run as efficiently as it could be and have made changes to increase its profitability but the main focus of those have been on management and support services and not in the analyst area. In fact, including the team we have brought on in India, the telecoms side of the house will have more research staff by the end of this year not less.

c) We made a conscious decision not to integrate Ovum into Datamonitor for a long series of reasons which were actually carefully explained to the company during the 3 internal global monthly briefing calls (we host EMEA, US and AP calls each month to keep our teams up-to-date on what is happening). One of the prime drivers was to protect the brand values, approach and advisory nature of Ovum rather than risk damaging that by integrating into other brands. Butler, Datamonitor Technology and Ovum are focused on different audiences and different segments of the market and, after looking at this in depth, there would not be much advantage in merging them but there would be significant risk of "blanding" them all together.

d) The Informa acquisition was not even on Datamonitor radar at the time we approached Ovum in late summer of 2006. The Informa offer came in early Q2 of 2007 and was based on them seeing DM as an attractive and complementary business. If you look at the share price of Datamonitor between those two periods you will see a significant upturn which is a) due to the swift execution and confidence by the market in the acquisition of Ovum and expectation that we would drive growth there but b) is also very much due to strong performance by the core Datamonitor business. However, the share price had risen rapidly in the previous year as well and was part of an ongoing approach to drive growth, profits and our share price. This is further supported by the recent Informa investor meeting where they talked about Datamonitor outperforming expectations in the 1H of 2007.

f) Datamonitor was not on the market or actively being touted for sale but the offer price and the fit between the two businesses (DM and Informa) meant that the bid was supported. The offer to close period was quite interesting with speculative outside investors driving the price above the Informa offer price before accepting the bid. We would have been perfectly happy to continue operating independently if the deal had not gone through and had previously turned down several approaches. Ovum wasn't part of an exit strategy or a stock pumping exercise.

Thanks for being approachable and open towards some additional input.

Anthony Parslow
General Manager, Datamonitor Group
Managing Director, Ovum

Trouble at IDC too

2007-09-26T12:17:00.000+01:00

Further to recording the troubles at Ovum, it turns out that my other former analyst employer is also having issues. IDC is focus primarily on hitting its profit targets, and having failed has made 5 people redundant. The significance of this is that redunancies included sales staff which, in a sales orientated organisation, indicates a sharp drop in revenues.

IDC is desparately trying to move up the thought leader stack and change its image as a "data-monkey numbers factory" (and I'm not the originator of this phrase). It has two challenges. The first is its poor depth of good analysts in Europe. Some are excellent, but most lack insight and strong opinions.

Secondly, it continues to struggle to penetrate the end-user market. Its Insights business units were loss-making to June last year (when I left IDC) and I doubt whether they've made a substantial turnaround now. Financial Insights longs to advise banks on IT strategy, but more usually advises vendors on how to pentrate the banking sector - traditional supply-side IDC fodder. There are claims that IDC is increasing in influence but influence on whom? Not end-user decision makers. As always, the key question is, who are you trying to influence?

This is at the time when IDC management seem to be on a charm offensive, inviting AR professionals (Duncan Chapple at least) to its flagship IT Forum, and lately addressing the IIAR. I wonder if anyone asked them about projected profitability...

Trouble at t’ Ovum mill

2007-09-26T11:46:00.000+01:00

Last week I celebrated (?) the departure from Ovum of two of its diehards, Ian Wesley and Gary Barnett. Ian recruited me to Ovum in 1995 and was hugely influential in my learning the analyst ropes. Gary joined a couple of months after me and quickly established himself as a bright, opinionated and insightful chap. His insights were usually correct, unlike mine ;-)

What was interesting, during the opportunity to catch up on gossip, was the apparent demise of Ovum, especially its software/IT services (SITS) analysis capability. In essence, it’s evaporating quickly. I’m told that Ovum only has 6 SITS analysts left, from a core team of 17 prior to the acquisition by Datamonitor.

There are two reasons for the demise. Firstly, the obvious clash of cultures has been too much for some Ovumites. Ovum was a nice place to work, with nice people in a nice environment. (Perhaps it was too nice, from a commercial viewpoint, but that’s another story.) Datamonitor has a much more aggressive commercial strategy and, I’m told, a less-than-cuddly approach to staff welfare.

The second reason is that Ovum was acquired largely to beef up Datamonitor in anticipation of its own acquisition by Informa. DM needed to increase its book revenues to reach the share price at which it wanted to sell. It also needs to hit the profit targets on which the sale was agreed. DM is therefore reluctant to invest in anything that impacts profitability. This includes merging the analysis capabilities of DM, Ovum, Butler and ComputerWire, which would make more long term sense, but impact short term profits.

The long term future for Ovum is uncertain, and the short term levels of service look set to be affected. There was once a time when Ovum analysts were proud to work at the firm (despite the silly name). This ethos is disappearing fast. Which is a pity.

[Updates: Firstly, I need to make it clear that, although I met Ian and Gary last week, my comments are my own syntheses from various discussions and not necessarily those of Ian or Gary or any other individual employee. Secondly, Anthony Parslow has provided a response to my comments which I've posted here.]

The Dip on influence

2007-09-21T16:11:00.000+01:00

With Seth’s permission I’m reproducing a page of his most recent book, The Dip. I read it the day after I posted on the most important question. Spooky, but true…

Who am I trying to influence?

Are you trying to succeed in a market?

If you’re considering quitting, it’s almost certainly because you’re not being successful at your current attempts at influence. If you have called on a prospect a dozen times without success, you’re frustrated and giving up. If you’ve a boss who just won’t let up, you’re considering quitting your job. And if you’re a marketer with a product that doesn’t seem to be catching on, you’re wondering if you should abandon this product and try another.

If you’re trying to influence just one person, persistence has its limits. It’s easy to cross the line between demonstrating your commitment and being a pest. If you haven’t influenced him yet, it may very well be time to quit.

One person or organization will behave differently than a market of people will. One person has a particular agenda and a single worldview. One person will make up his mind and if you’re going to succeed, you’ll have to change it. And changing someone’s mind is difficult, if not impossible.

If you’re trying to influence a market, though, the rules are different. Sure, some of the people in a market have considered you (and even rejected you). But most of the people in the market have never heard of you. The market doesn’t have just one mind. Different people in the market are seeking different things.

Influencing one person is like scaling a wall. If you get over the wall the first few tries, you’re in. if you don’t often you’ll find that the wall gets higher with each attempt.

Influencing a market, on the other hand, is more of a hill than a wall. You can make progress, one step at a time, and as you get higher, it actually gets easier. People in the market talk to each other. They are influenced by each other. So every step of progress you make actually gets amplified.

Seth has also agreed to us using the above text as a pseudo-foreword for the book, which is due out late November. It’s just a tad galling that Seth writes in one page what we take 230 pages to say – gnash! At least we have case studies...

Needless to say, you should read The Dip in its entirety.

The most important question about influence

2007-09-13T11:11:00.000+01:00

It’s not about who has the influence.

The question is, influence on whom?

Most studies of influencers are lists of important or high profile people. Fair enough, except there is no discussion on the scope of their influence. What decisions are impacted by their influence? How can you tap into their influence? Are these influencers influencing my customers?

Here’s another example of a nicely researched and presented example, this time looking at the top 50 influential bloggers (allegedly). Have a look through, then count how many bloggers on list do you think are influencing your target market today. My prediction is, not many.

If you start Influencer Marketing by looking for people you think are influential you end up missing the point. It’s not for you to decide.

Instead, put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Who are they listening to? What do they read? Who are they following? My expereince is that you can only do this by asking them.

Otherwise, you’re just guessing, and probably guessing wrongly.

Hugh on marketing

2007-09-11T10:59:00.000+01:00

I'm on a roll - third post today and it isn't even noon!

Hugh synopsises The trick to marketing.

More on Net Promoter adoption

2007-09-11T10:41:00.000+01:00

Interesting post on NPS here.

At Influencer50 we've rolled out our NIPS service - NIPS = Net Influencer Promoter Score. It's based on the premise that influencer promoter scores should predict a customer-orientated NPS.

NIPS is a combination of NPS and the Delphi method to consensus-based forcasting. Basically, it's ascientific approach to prove what all good consultants know - that if you talk to enough knowledgeable people eventually you become knowledgeable yourself (and can then sell that expertise).

The trick is knowing which people are the ones to talk to...

Influencer marketing in a nutshell

2007-09-11T10:36:00.000+01:00

Try this.

It's what influencer marketing is all about.

Forrester reports on “Hidden Influencers”

2007-09-05T16:55:00.000+01:00

I’ve just received a copy of Forrester’s new report on influencers. Written by Michael Speyer, it’s called Identifying IT Buyers’ Hidden Influencers. The report is available here (free for Forrester clients; available for purchase by non-clients).

You should read this report, if you’re at all interested in influencers. While you track down your Forrester password or fumble for your credit card, let me give a quick overview of the report’s findings:

The key recommendation is that Influencer Management begins with knowing who the influencers are. No news here except that, as the report title suggest, many influencers are hidden. Most firms just examine their sales channels, and tack on press and analysts.
According to the report, SIs and VARs have the biggest impact on sales. Again, this may seem obvious, but I’ve had a battle in the past with (a few) folks that position analysts as the most important influencers. Not so, according Forrester, the analyst firm. In fact, Speyer states that “While they (analysts) are easily identified and reached, the impact of their advice and perceived value is highly variable.”
Ranking of influencers is critical. The report says that ranking “will allow vendors to understand the value of any given influencer to a buyer, which can be used to prioritize influencer management spending.” I agree. Speyer proposes several dimensions for ranking purposes, which is pretty close to Influencer50’s.

There are other important points in the report, which is in all an excellent summary of the subject.

The only slight beef I have is that the report refers to influencers in the context of SMBs. I assume that this is because Speyer usually researches the SMB market. But the report conclusions are equally applicable to enterprise-level buyers too. Indeed much of the research input and explanatory text refer to both enterprise and SMB buyers. I hope this point isn't lost on the readership.

Disclaimer: I was interviewed by Michael for the report and Influencer50 is listed as a source, along with Cisco Systems/Linksys, Citrix Systems, EMC, IBM, Microsoft and Symantec.