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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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?
Further to my initial announcement on case studies for the forthcoming book, I can reveal two more case study subjects. These are Wipro and Yahoo!, thus adding to Adobe and Palm (and more coming soon).
What is interesting about both Wipro and Yahoo (without giving too much away) is that they have established Influencer Relations departments or functions within their marketing operations. This trend is growing.
The book is complete in draft proof format, and is out for review by a select group of experts – I hope they like it. We also have a natty cover design. The book web site is under construction and should be up and running shortly. It’s all coming together (finally).
I’m intrigued to find this blog mentioned on ARmageddon, the Analyst Relations blog, in the context of Forrester’s research into the blogs that AR pros read. Apparently (though I can’t trace the source email) Forrester sent a list of blogs to its AR program subscribers asking which one they read. Tacked on at the end of the list is my humble offering.
I’m intrigued because I wouldn’t position Infuse as an AR blog, though I do have some strong views on the analyst industry (having been an analyst for 12 years). This is a blog on Influencer Marketing (and I trust this isn’t news to you).
Have I been included by mistake? Or by misunderstanding? Or by the interest from AR in Influencer Relations? I don’t know.
Perhaps Forrester will let me know when they complete their research. Ta.
Recent Comments