From Analyst Relations to Influencer Relations

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.

Analysts and their share of influence

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?

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:

1. 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?
2. 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.
3. 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?
4. 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.
5. Blogs are low in influence. Don suggests this may have changed in the past 18 months. I’m less convinced.
6. 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

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.

SAP Industry and Influencer Relations blog

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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…