Influencer marketing
Encyclopedia
Influencer marketing, is a form of marketing
that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.
Influencers may be potential buyers themselves, or they may be third parties. These third parties exist either in the supply chain (retailers, manufacturers, etc.) or may be so-called value-added influencers (such as journalists, academics, industry analysts, professional advisers, and so on).
centres on compliance and persuasion in a social environment, as exemplified in Robert Cialdini
’s book Influence: Science and Practice. In the context of Influencer Marketing, influence is less about argument and coercion to a particular point of view, and more about loose interactions between various parties in a community. Influence is often equated to advocacy, but may also be negative, and is thus related to concepts of promoters and detractors.
Influencer Marketing is enhanced by a continual evaluation activity that sits alongside the four main activities.
Influencer Marketing is not synonymous with word of mouth
marketing (WOM), but influence may be transmitted in this manner. Thus WOM is a core part of the mechanics of Influencer Marketing.
There are substantial differences in the definition of what an influencer is. Peck defines influencers as "a range of third parties who exercise influence over the organization and its potential customers". Similarly, Brown and Hayes define an influencer as "a third party who significantly shapes the customer's purchasing decision, but may never be accountable for it.". The Word of Mouth Marketing Association defines an influencer as "A person who has a greater than average reach or impact through word of mouth in a relevant marketplace. Keller and Berry note that influencers are activists, are well-connected, have impact, have active minds, and are trendsetters, though this set of attributes is aligned specifically to consumer markets.
Exactly what is included in Influencer Marketing depends on the context (B2C or B2B) and the medium of influence transmission (online or offline, or both). But it is increasingly accepted that companies are keen to identify and engage with influencers. As Keller and Berry note, " Business is working harder and paying more to pursue people who are trying to watch and listen less to its messages." Targeting influencers is seen as a means of amplifying marketing messages, in order to counteract the growing tendency of prospective customers to ignore marketing.
) they have limited use in marketing programmes targeted at specific segments.
Market research techniques can be used to identify influencers, using pre-defined criteria to determine the extent and type of influence. For example, Keller and Berry propose five attributes of influencers:
Most of the literature on influencers focuses on consumer markets. There is less insight into business-to-business influencers. A key distinction between consumer and business markets is that most of the focus in consumer markets is on consumer influencers themselves. This is because word of mouth
communication is prevalent in consumer environments. In business marketing
, influencers are people that affect a sale, but are typically removed from the actual purchase decision. Consultants, analysts, journalists, academics, regulators, standards bodies are examples of business influencers.
Not all business influencers are equal. Some have more influence than others, and some mechanism of ranking is required, to distinguish between key influencers and less impactful people. A model for ranking business influencers has been developed by Influencer50, thus:
Several other companies including Ammo Marketing and Liquid Intelligence in the US, Agent Wildfire in Canada, SCB Partners in Europe and Vocanic in Asia have developed their own proprietary methodologies for identifying and targeting influencers for a market (or market sector).
Fred Reichheld
, a consultant at Bain & Company
, has developed a methodology to determine the extent to which firms' growth is influenced by customers' propensity to make referrals to colleagues. Reichheld distills his research down to a single question: how likely is it that you would recommend company X to a friend or colleague? From answers to this question, a Net Promoter Score
is determined, which correlates strongly with a firm's growth rate.
The Avant-Guide Institute, a New York–based trends consultancy, has a large proprietary network of influential early-adaptors (called "Trendsformers") numbering in the thousands, including journalists, bloggers, academics, industry analysts and professional advisors.
Using online social media tools to identify influencers
Web services can be used to crawl social media sites for users that exert influence in their respective communities. Exactly how much is the user engaging the online community? The social influencer marketing firm then asks those influencers to try client products/services and discuss them on their respective social networks. Clients can then observe, through an enhanced digital dashboard, with metrics that measure the dissemination of brand mentions across numerous web platforms.
There are at least 70 companies offering online influence measurement. Advocates of this online-only approach claim that online activity reflects (or pre-empts) the trends in offline transactions. For example, Razorfish released one of the first social influencer marketing reports, entitled Fluent. The report discusses many theories surrounding social marketing, including the importance of the push/pull dynamic
and online consumer empowerment, authenticity and importance of buzz marketing.
In addition, online activity can be a core part of offline decision making, as consumers research products and review sites.
Critics of this online-only approach argue that only researching online sources misses critical influential individuals and inputs. They note that much influential exchange of information occurs in the offline world, and is not captured in online media. Indeed, the majority of consumer exchanges occurs face-to-face, not in an online environment, as evidenced by Carl. He notes that "an overwhelming majority of WOM episodes (nearly 80%) ... occur in face-to-face interpersonal settings, while online WOM accounted for only seven to ten percent of the reported (WOM) episodes."
Carl concludes that "The majority of the WOM action still seems to be happening in the offline world. These findings are especially provocative since they emerge at a time when more and more organizations are paying attention to how their brands are discussed online and recent academic research has focused on online WOM. Thus it is important for organizations to keep both online and offline conversations on their radar screen."
Keller Fay announced in 2007 that "While experts have previously estimated that 80% of marketing-relevant word of mouth takes place “offline” (i.e., face-to-face or via telephone), the new results indicate that this figure is even higher - 92%."
More recently, Nate Elliott at Forrester observed that "the huge majority of users influence each other face to face rather than through social online channels like blogs and social networks."
And the Fluent report, though generally orientated towards online measures admits that "it is necessary to remember the effect that offline social activity has on purchasing decisions." It also notes that survey "respondents trust offline friends most, with 73 percent indicating near or complete trust versus just 33 percent for online friends."
Forrester analyst Michael Speyer notes that, for small and medium-size business, "IT sales are influenced by many parties, including peers, consultants, bloggers, and technology resellers". He advises that "Vendors need to identify and characterize the influencers in their market. This requires a comprehensive influencer identification program and the establishment of criteria for ranking influencer impact on the decision process."
An emerging exemplar of this approach is SAP AG
, whose Influencer Relations approach is being documented by Don Bulmer in his blog.
As well as a variety of influencer sources, influencers can play a variety of roles at different times in a decision process. This idea has been developed in Influencer Marketing by Brown & Hayes. They map out how and when particular types of influencer affect the decision process. This then enables marketers to selectively target influencers depending on their individual profile of influence.
The influence of bloggers and other social media
users is a topic of much discussion. This is covered in depth in Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers. Brown & Hayes also cover the subject but are less convinced of the importance of the impact of social media, particularly in B2B settings.
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.
Influencers may be potential buyers themselves, or they may be third parties. These third parties exist either in the supply chain (retailers, manufacturers, etc.) or may be so-called value-added influencers (such as journalists, academics, industry analysts, professional advisers, and so on).
What is “Influence”?
Most discussion on the generic topic of social influenceSocial influence
Social influence occurs when an individual's thoughts, feelings or actions are affected by other people. Social influence takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing...
centres on compliance and persuasion in a social environment, as exemplified in Robert Cialdini
Robert Cialdini
Robert B. Cialdini is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University.He is best known for his popular book on persuasion and marketing, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Influence has sold over 2 million copies and has been translated into twenty-six...
’s book Influence: Science and Practice. In the context of Influencer Marketing, influence is less about argument and coercion to a particular point of view, and more about loose interactions between various parties in a community. Influence is often equated to advocacy, but may also be negative, and is thus related to concepts of promoters and detractors.
Influencer Marketing as a Marketing Discipline
Influencer Marketing, as increasingly practiced in a commercial context, comprises four main activities:- Identifying influencers, and ranking them in order of importance.
- Marketing to influencers, to increase awareness of the firm within the influencer community
- Marketing through influencers, using influencers to increase market awareness of the firm amongst target markets
- Marketing with influencers, turning influencers into advocates of the firm.
Influencer Marketing is enhanced by a continual evaluation activity that sits alongside the four main activities.
Influencer Marketing is not synonymous with word of mouth
Word of mouth
Word of mouth, or viva voce, is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication. Storytelling is the oldest form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others of something, whether a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and...
marketing (WOM), but influence may be transmitted in this manner. Thus WOM is a core part of the mechanics of Influencer Marketing.
There are substantial differences in the definition of what an influencer is. Peck defines influencers as "a range of third parties who exercise influence over the organization and its potential customers". Similarly, Brown and Hayes define an influencer as "a third party who significantly shapes the customer's purchasing decision, but may never be accountable for it.". The Word of Mouth Marketing Association defines an influencer as "A person who has a greater than average reach or impact through word of mouth in a relevant marketplace. Keller and Berry note that influencers are activists, are well-connected, have impact, have active minds, and are trendsetters, though this set of attributes is aligned specifically to consumer markets.
Exactly what is included in Influencer Marketing depends on the context (B2C or B2B) and the medium of influence transmission (online or offline, or both). But it is increasingly accepted that companies are keen to identify and engage with influencers. As Keller and Berry note, " Business is working harder and paying more to pursue people who are trying to watch and listen less to its messages." Targeting influencers is seen as a means of amplifying marketing messages, in order to counteract the growing tendency of prospective customers to ignore marketing.
Identifying influencers
The first step in Influencer Marketing is to identify influencers. Influencers are specific to discrete market segments, and are used as conduits to the entire target segment. While there are lists of generic influencers (such as the Time 100Time 100
Time 100 is an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, as assembled by Time. First published in 1999 as a result of a debate among several academics, the list has become an annual event.-History and format:...
) they have limited use in marketing programmes targeted at specific segments.
Market research techniques can be used to identify influencers, using pre-defined criteria to determine the extent and type of influence. For example, Keller and Berry propose five attributes of influencers:
- Activists: influencers get involved, with their communities, political movements, charities and so on.
- Connected: influencers have large social networks
- Impact: influencers are looked up to and are trusted by others
- Active minds: influencers have multiple and diverse interests
- Trendsetters: influencers tend to be early adopters (or leavers) in markets
Most of the literature on influencers focuses on consumer markets. There is less insight into business-to-business influencers. A key distinction between consumer and business markets is that most of the focus in consumer markets is on consumer influencers themselves. This is because word of mouth
Word of mouth
Word of mouth, or viva voce, is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication. Storytelling is the oldest form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others of something, whether a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and...
communication is prevalent in consumer environments. In business marketing
Business marketing
Business Marketing is the practice of individuals, or organizations, including commercial businesses, governments and institutions, facilitating the sale of their products or services to other companies or organizations that in turn resell them, use them as components in products or services they...
, influencers are people that affect a sale, but are typically removed from the actual purchase decision. Consultants, analysts, journalists, academics, regulators, standards bodies are examples of business influencers.
Not all business influencers are equal. Some have more influence than others, and some mechanism of ranking is required, to distinguish between key influencers and less impactful people. A model for ranking business influencers has been developed by Influencer50, thus:
- Market Reach – the number of people an individual has the ability to connect with.
- Independence – whether an influencer has a vested interest in promoting a particular point of view.
- Frequency of Impact – the number of opportunities an individual has to influence buying decisions.
- Expertise – how much of a subject matter expert is the influencer.
- Persuasiveness - the degree of consequence in ignoring an influencer's advice.
- Thoroughness of role - the extent to which influence is exerted across the decision lifecycle.
Several other companies including Ammo Marketing and Liquid Intelligence in the US, Agent Wildfire in Canada, SCB Partners in Europe and Vocanic in Asia have developed their own proprietary methodologies for identifying and targeting influencers for a market (or market sector).
Fred Reichheld
Fred Reichheld
Frederick F. Reichheld is a United States business author and business strategist best known for his research and writing on the loyalty business model and Loyalty Marketing. His books include The Loyalty Effect , Loyalty Rules! , and The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth...
, a consultant at Bain & Company
Bain & Company
Bain & Company is a global management consulting firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Bain is considered one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world, with 47 offices in 30 countries and over 5,500 professionals on staff globally...
, has developed a methodology to determine the extent to which firms' growth is influenced by customers' propensity to make referrals to colleagues. Reichheld distills his research down to a single question: how likely is it that you would recommend company X to a friend or colleague? From answers to this question, a Net Promoter Score
Net promoter score
Net Promoter Score is a management tool that can be used to gauge the loyalty of a firm's customer relationships. It serves as an alternative to traditional customer satisfaction research.-Overview:...
is determined, which correlates strongly with a firm's growth rate.
The Avant-Guide Institute, a New York–based trends consultancy, has a large proprietary network of influential early-adaptors (called "Trendsformers") numbering in the thousands, including journalists, bloggers, academics, industry analysts and professional advisors.
Using online social media tools to identify influencers
Web services can be used to crawl social media sites for users that exert influence in their respective communities. Exactly how much is the user engaging the online community? The social influencer marketing firm then asks those influencers to try client products/services and discuss them on their respective social networks. Clients can then observe, through an enhanced digital dashboard, with metrics that measure the dissemination of brand mentions across numerous web platforms.
There are at least 70 companies offering online influence measurement. Advocates of this online-only approach claim that online activity reflects (or pre-empts) the trends in offline transactions. For example, Razorfish released one of the first social influencer marketing reports, entitled Fluent. The report discusses many theories surrounding social marketing, including the importance of the push/pull dynamic
Social pull marketing
The business terms push and pull originated in the logistic and supply chain management, but are also widely used in marketing.Social Pull Marketing is the adaptation of the traditional Push–pull strategy marketing concepts to Social Media Websites. It utilizes the traditional Pull concept for a...
and online consumer empowerment, authenticity and importance of buzz marketing.
In addition, online activity can be a core part of offline decision making, as consumers research products and review sites.
Critics of this online-only approach argue that only researching online sources misses critical influential individuals and inputs. They note that much influential exchange of information occurs in the offline world, and is not captured in online media. Indeed, the majority of consumer exchanges occurs face-to-face, not in an online environment, as evidenced by Carl. He notes that "an overwhelming majority of WOM episodes (nearly 80%) ... occur in face-to-face interpersonal settings, while online WOM accounted for only seven to ten percent of the reported (WOM) episodes."
Carl concludes that "The majority of the WOM action still seems to be happening in the offline world. These findings are especially provocative since they emerge at a time when more and more organizations are paying attention to how their brands are discussed online and recent academic research has focused on online WOM. Thus it is important for organizations to keep both online and offline conversations on their radar screen."
Keller Fay announced in 2007 that "While experts have previously estimated that 80% of marketing-relevant word of mouth takes place “offline” (i.e., face-to-face or via telephone), the new results indicate that this figure is even higher - 92%."
More recently, Nate Elliott at Forrester observed that "the huge majority of users influence each other face to face rather than through social online channels like blogs and social networks."
And the Fluent report, though generally orientated towards online measures admits that "it is necessary to remember the effect that offline social activity has on purchasing decisions." It also notes that survey "respondents trust offline friends most, with 73 percent indicating near or complete trust versus just 33 percent for online friends."
Influencer ecosystems and roles
Sources of influencers can be varied. Marketers traditionally target influencers that are easy to identify, such as press, industry analysts and high profile executives. For most B2C purchases, however, influencers might include people known to the purchaser and the retailer staff. In higher value B2B transactions the community of influencers may be wide and varied, and include consultants, government-backed regulators, financiers and user communities.Forrester analyst Michael Speyer notes that, for small and medium-size business, "IT sales are influenced by many parties, including peers, consultants, bloggers, and technology resellers". He advises that "Vendors need to identify and characterize the influencers in their market. This requires a comprehensive influencer identification program and the establishment of criteria for ranking influencer impact on the decision process."
An emerging exemplar of this approach is SAP AG
SAP AG
SAP AG is a German software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. Headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, with regional offices around the world, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software...
, whose Influencer Relations approach is being documented by Don Bulmer in his blog.
As well as a variety of influencer sources, influencers can play a variety of roles at different times in a decision process. This idea has been developed in Influencer Marketing by Brown & Hayes. They map out how and when particular types of influencer affect the decision process. This then enables marketers to selectively target influencers depending on their individual profile of influence.
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
users is a topic of much discussion. This is covered in depth in Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers. Brown & Hayes also cover the subject but are less convinced of the importance of the impact of social media, particularly in B2B settings.
See also
- Celebrity brandingCelebrity brandingCelebrity branding is a type of branding, or advertising, in which a celebrity uses his or her status in society to promote a product, service or charity...
- TestimonialTestimonialIn promotion and of advertising, a testimonial or show consists of a written or spoken statement, sometimes from a person figure, sometimes from a private citizen, extolling the virtue of some product. The term "testimonial" most commonly applies to the sales-pitches attributed to ordinary...
- Relationship marketingRelationship marketingRelationship marketing was first defined as a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on sales transactions....
- Word of mouth marketing
- Customer engagementCustomer engagementCustomer engagement refers to the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer- or company-led and the medium of engagement can be on or offline....
- Business MarketingBusiness marketingBusiness Marketing is the practice of individuals, or organizations, including commercial businesses, governments and institutions, facilitating the sale of their products or services to other companies or organizations that in turn resell them, use them as components in products or services they...
- Reputation managementReputation managementReputation management , also known as directory management, is the process of tracking an entity's actions and other entities' opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop. All entities involved are generally people, but...
- Business-to-businessBusiness-to-businessBusiness-to-business describes commerce transactions between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer...
- Alpha User
External links
- Word of Mouth Marketing Association
- Deep Dive Marketing/Influencer Marketing is a blog about Influencer Marketing
- Influencer Marketing book web site
- ATA research focusses on IT analyst influencer's
- How They Change Your Mind The social impact of undisclosed marketing
- The Ultimate Question site
- Marketing Is Broken, Influencers Can Fix It Nick Hayes presents an overview of Influencer Marketing in this video
- 30 free tools for finding online influencers