B2B Marketing Blog

Back to the future with influencer marketing

September 8, 2009 8:31 AM | By Joel Harrison
They say in life that the best ideas are the ones that seem blindingly obvious; so obvious, in fact, that you can’t understand why no-one’s thought of them before. For me, one such idea is ‘influencer marketing’. It’s a term that’s been increasingly bandied about this year, and is consequently being recognised as a highly potent tactic by B2B brands, although paradoxically, it refers to something that is as old as the hills.

Something else in life that ‘they’ say, is that there’s nothing new under the sun – this too is certainly the case for influencer marketing. People have been recommending products, services, suppliers and contractors informally since the dawn of civilisation – indeed, marketing as we know it was probably invented as a means of formalising or rationalising this process. So its with no small sense of irony that I’m now pitching influencer marketing as the ‘next big thing’ in B2B.

Can I really justify this? A cynic might suggest that influencer marketing is just like demand generation: it’s something that any marketer worth his or her salt should have been doing as a matter of routine, and therefore it’s a case of the emperor’s new clothes.

But as regular readers of this column will know – and contrary to most journalistic stereotypes – I’m not a cynic… at least when it comes to finding alternative ways of addressing age-old problems. For me, like demand generation, what makes influencer marketing interesting and potent and allows it to transcend the hype, is technology. The development of social media tools has given marketers the means and methodologies to really target influencers in a structured, measurable, accountable and – above all – effective fashion.

Before social media, influencer marketing was at best unstructured, and at worst a fool’s errand – it was simply not practical. Does that mean it’s going to change the world overnight? No, obviously not. But it does take marketing back to its roots as a means of (ultimately) driving sales by direct human interaction.

And there is something oddly satisfying about that. As a concept it may not be new, but it’s certainly obvious – and potentially enormously powerful.  


4 Comments

Tim Hazelhurst said:

Joel

As you say, always been the case

B2B relationship building has always been targeted at 5 segments, namely

Specifiers, Users, installers, suppliers and influencers.

Of course, sometimes 2 or 3 of these are not relevant but never, influencers.

The danger, with the focus on the rather non emotional process of lead or demand generation, the influencers can be neglected.

But social media; technical conference participation and good old fashioned networking are not rocket science!

September 8, 2009 11:35 AM
Duncan Brown said:

Joel,

I'm delighted that you think the Influencer Marketing is “the next big thing” in B2B marketing. May I quote you, as an influencer?

I agree that recommenders of products and services are as old as the hills. However, I think there are important differences between Influencer Marketing and what’s gone before. The obvious one is having a formalised program to target influencers. How many B2B firms have an Influencer Marketing function, or allocated budget, or even a strategy? Not many, in my experience, although it is indeed growing fast. They may have, at best, PR and analyst relations, which leads me to a second difference: B2B firms don’t really know who their influencers are. Okay, they may know some of them, the obvious journalists and analysts. But do they know the key consultants, sourcing advisers, academics, regulators and other people that are influencing decisions? Here’s a simple test for your readers: write down the names of the top 50 people that are currently influencing your customers and prospects. The majority won't know.

So as a concept I accept it may not be new but it’s been done really badly up until now. Thankfully, that’s changing.

Great article, by the way!


Duncan

September 8, 2009 2:15 PM
Adrian Gill, TDA said:

Seth Godin wrote an excellent book on this some years ago called the Unleashing the Ideavirus. Like you Joel, he admits that much of it is obvious, albeit rarely practiced. Godwin refers to hives and sneezers. The aim is to get 'credible' people sneezing the idea virus into their 'hive' peer group. Promiscuous sneezers can do harm to the brand - the utopia is to find influential sneezers who are connected to the right audiences. Digital, social networking tools may help the sneeze but the challenge is still to find the influential sneezers and talk to them in a way that maintains brand dignity and encourages them to sneeze! Anyone know the answer?

September 14, 2009 2:15 PM
Francesca Brosan said:

Hi Joel

You are in good company when you say that the best ideas are blindingly obvious. As Edward de Bono says "All valuable creative ideas are logical in hindsight. But they cannot be reached by logic".

Influencer marketing is something B2B marketers have probably been doing naturally for ages, just recently it's started to be something people are doing in a more structured way. It's the structure which is valuable I think - giving you a framework to think through the issues and how to address them.

The overlay with social media is interesting - but then social media is another example of something which people have been doing in business for years (networking and sharing points of view) and now has a new 'coat'. Back to the future indeed!

September 17, 2009 3:12 PM

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