The Web is a powerful medium for targeting, reaching and connecting with Influencers, particularly the newly coined group of Influentials.
The next four months of Best Practices will focus on specific verticals, as well as unique demographics/audience segments. In both cases, the format will largely remain the same -- where relevant, complementary best practices, which are slam dunks so to speak, will be highlighted.
The timing couldn’t be better to talk about using the Web to target, reach and connect with Influencers. The term Influencers (not to be confused with Influentials, a subset of Influencers – see my Jaffe Juice interview with Jon Berry) covers the full spectrum of individuals from innovators through early and late majority, and even touching laggards (because if you think about it, one person’s laggard is another one’s opinion leader).
This is one of those best practices that appears to be a smorgasbord of all key best practice tactics. Take pull-based marketing or rewarding interest with immediate fulfillment for examples. Interested parties can learn more on their terms; they can obtain information on demand; and they can take action by sharing their newly found knowledge with others all with several clicks of a button.
Another example is the blog phenomenon. Blogs have become virtual community centers where connectors construct web-like beacons outwards and reach out to interested parties who in turn perpetuate and strengthen the momentum generating from the organic and ever-evolving message board. Take Gizmodo for example, billed as “the gadget’s Weblog.” Dollar for dollar, how much more persuasive value is sandwiched between this HTML code, compared with other more luxurious forms of communication?
Even the concept of flash mobs seems to resonate within the category as a catalyst to affect action through numbers. In this vane, I often think back to Mercata, one of the failed dot-coms that boldly attempted to launch a reverse-auction type market, whereby the price of the product decreased as more people purchased it. This community-based model had flash mobs written all over it (if only the company didn’t burn all that cash on TV ads!).
Knowledge is a social currency and the Web has enriched those that selectively spread and share the nuggets with their various networks. Marketers have long yearned to demystify and deconstruct the inner workings of what it takes to incent one person to reach out to another. In many respects, this is the viral marketing/refer-a-friend conundrum all over again, with the same warning to marketers: The more you try and control it, the less likely you are to succeed.
From a targeting perspective, however, finding these groups of Influentials may very well be less difficult than it would have seemed. In their book, The Influentials, Jon Berry and Ed Keller drop enough bread crumbs to help any Hansel or Gretel find their way home. And using a combination of demographics, behavioral and psychographic data and trending, media planning tool @plan comes up trumps as a means to help identify/locate and profile this valuable type of consumer. The ability to offer up an additional layer of depth and illumination in terms of being able to compare one site against another certainly makes for healthy competition.
The link between Influentials and the Internet is obvious:
- 82% of Influentials have Internet access, compared to 54% of the general population (2003 study by RoperASW)
- 10% of the American population are Influentials, while 15% of the online population are Influentials.*
Influentials are avid forwarders. They see it almost as a duty to “share the love” when it comes to a subject, product, event or promotion they’re passionate about. The chart below (sourced from the book, The Influentials) illustrates the amount of Influentials who have recommended items to others in the past year, the difference between them and the general public, and also the number of recommendations.
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Taking this one level further – by isolating the Web or at least honing in on those Influentials that are online – reveals even more meaty insights.
For starters, Online Influentials who forward advice do so to an average of five to 20 individuals. In a run performed on Influentials who frequent WashingtonPost.com, the numbers skyrocketed. For example, the average number of forwards for Insurance and Cars increased from 3.2 and 3.9 to 14.2 and 6.3 respectively.
There are various explanations for this seemingly intuitive conclusion. While the demographic profiles of the typical online user and the offline consumer mirror each other nowadays, the online consumer has access to a plethora of incremental data, information and research; is able to connect, compare and communicate with a bevy of like-minded counterparts; and is able to do so, on a one-to-many basis in the blink of an eye. Furthermore, as concluded in the Roper study, the likelihood of being an Influential is not solely dependent on a finite set of demographic variables; thus, in the case of the Washington Post user base, a variety of other factors such as broadband-enabled, tenured at-work audience comes into play as well.
“The effect of these “key multipliers” can be seen dramatically on how they are shaping the billion-dollar entertainment industry,” states Ty Braswell, senior strategist at newly formed iMediaStrategy. “Teens walking out of a new film with their cell phones and sending text messages to their friends around the globe telecasting "that movie sucks" is having a significant impact on the film industry according to a recent story in the LA Times. And P2P networks of anonymous music fans trading MP3 files around the globe 24/7 has eclipsed CD sales as a mechanism for getting music to music fans.”
In some respects, the Internet itself is the Influencer, or at least is the conduit towards harnessing this powerful network effect. The buffet of available tactics makes this an all-you-can-eat extravaganza for the marketer with an appetite for success.
Tom Goosmann, executive director, creative at True North Inc., shares this hunger when it comes to the entertainment industry in particular. “On the B2B side, we often design to the highest common denominator when reaching influencers—high bandwidth, rich media-enabled users who can experience creative beyond the status quo."
“We’ve developed flash emails that offer attention-getting animation and stream in video trailers for the key retail buyers around the country. We track many forwards on these deployments. Some are viewed as many as 100 times as they get passed around.”
Indeed, some of the most renowned success stories come from this sector, whereby fan bases both embraced and were embraced by relevant paraphernalia and equity.
“On the consumer side, we utilize brand advocacy vehicles like IM icons, postcards, screen wallpaper, screen-savers, etc. By adorning brand advocates with imagery, and shareable assets, we hope to penetrate their circle of influence and beyond,” adds Goosmann.
For the most part, both marketers and consumers they covet are still learning just how powerful the Internet can be as an influencing mechanism. “What is going to be interesting is the next generation of Influentials that have been born and 100% evolved in a digital wr sL,” says Braswell. “Because digital technology removes a great deal of friction and inertia in communicating, they will not only influence locally but more importantly multiply globally.”
We’ve already seen one sign of things to come through the power of search. And in this light, “Targeting Influencers” may soon become known as “Being Targeted By Influencers.”
Sounds kind of ominous, don’t it?