The Influence Business

I've been talking to a lot of people about influence recently. In may ways, influencer marketing today reminds me of social media marketing 10 years ago. There's certainly a number of companies breaking new ground and doing interesting work - but many are still exploring the landscape and making tentative first steps.

The muse struck me and here are three influencer home truths...as always, welcome your brickbats, bouquets, likes, shares and comments...

Truth Number One: Influence has Evolved

Influence is all about change. And, as marketers/communicators, our ability to create measurable change is critical. We all understand that the channels that influence decision making continue to evolve. And they go well beyond those that PR agencies have traditionally focused on, such as news media.

Think about the kids from Parkland, Florida, the instigators of the Arab Spring, the students of Tiananmen Square, and individuals with strong opinions whose views you read / watched this morning. My kids spend more time with YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat than what we quaintly call 'mainstream media'. The writing is on the Facebook wall.

We’re seeing CEOs and SMEs become influencers by taking a stand on issues, sharing their stories, or making big bets about society.

Driven often by a sense of greater purpose, brands are increasingly becoming influencers too. State Street’s Fearless Girl stood up to Wall Street’s iconic “Charging Bull” and created a national debate. Brands are no longer staying on the sidelines of issues such as the gun debate and #MeToo. And their communities are taking notice.

Our audiences are making informed decisions based on the information they get from people they trust. Our opportunity – and challenge – is to help our brands play an appropriate role in this new trust dynamic.

Truth Number Two: You Can’t Always Buy Trust

Influencers have built large communities based on the trusted content they create. People trust their insights and recommendations and look to them for advice, direction, or entertainment. They've built their reputations over years of daily publishing, and our understanding of their goals are be critical in working with them.

Influencers don’t operate like journalists. They aren’t working to the same type of deadline pressures. Nor do they necessarily want to engage with agency or in-house marketing or PR teams.

Influencer marketing has become, for many, simply a commercial transaction. Brands create content or co-create with an influencer who then shares across their channel.

This will continue as it is an easy way to get a message in front of an audience. But this is a sophisticated audience – and influencers are increasingly realizing that the transactional nature of these campaigns only achieves short-term results such as clicks.

The opportunity is much more profound. The real power of influencer relations is to focus on mutual value between the brand and the influencer.

By determining mutual value through shared initiatives such as writing books, sharing stages at conferences, or collaborating on gallery openings, we’re reaching our desired audiences in a much more authentic way. It’s less the brand as borrower of community attention – the brand becomes part of the community.

Truth Number Three: Your Executives have Influence

We’ve established that business is no longer won and lost solely in the boardroom and influence is no longer solely defined by coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or on the BBC.

For example, B2B buyers are two-thirds to 90% through the sales cycle before they ever contact sales or click on your website. They are online doing their own research, learning about the industry on their terms and using social media to aid decision making. They’re taking input and advice from influencers to guide their purchase decisions.

B2B buyers demand to know the people behind the brand. And, frequently, they expect personal and authentic communication with a company’s executives and subject matter experts before formally reaching out to the brand.

Your opportunity is to turn your subject matter experts and executives into influencers. Help them create content platforms, build and engage with communities and become part of the fraternity of influencers who are increasingly playing a measurable role in purchase decisions.

It's the influencers' world - we just live in it. Or, more critically, the audiences we want to reach live in it.