The Ultimate Guide to

Influence Marketing

Foreword ................................................................................................ 1

Introduction to Influence Marketing .......................................................... 3

Influence Marketing Defined ............................................................... 4

Business Benefits of Influence Marketing .................................................. 5

Developing an Influence Marketing Strategy .............................................. 7

Top Metrics for Reviewing Progress ........................................................... 8

Common Challenges of Influence Marketing ............................................ 10

Getting Started with Influence Marketing ................................................ 12

Influence Marketing Checklist for the CEO/Executive Team ................. 13

Influence Marketing Checklist for the Senior Sponsor ......................... 14

Influence Marketing Checklist for the Influencer Relations Specialist ...... 15

Additional Resources ............................................................................ 16

Quickstart Guide for the Senior Sponsor .................................................. 17

Quickstart Guide for the Influencer Relations Specialist ........................... 30

The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing | 1

“We need to understand how the prospects we do have make their decisions.”

If there’s one type of marketing that senior executives intuitively understand, it’s influence marketing. It’s just never had a

name before. Most senior executives have spent a lifetime in front of prospects and customers, and they intrinsically know the

importance of influencers. They also listen to their salespeople, who routinely tell them about the people behind the scenes

who are continually shaping and reshaping the purchase decision.

Yet these people have always been beyond the reach of sales forces, which in turn often leads to frustration with the marketing

department for not having access to them either. As a result, the chasm between the sales and marketing teams is reinforced.

It’s ironic then that marketers have often been the most resistant to adopting influence marketing. They’re already over-

stretched, they’re concentrating on their prospect databases, and these days they’re trying to figure out whether online or offline

outreach will provide the greatest return on investment each quarter. They don’t need another set of shadowy figures with dis-

parate job titles to try to target — especially since those figures won’t likely ever buy anything directly. That’s why until recently,

influencers have been too “fuzzy” to concentrate on.

But there’s good news here. As marketing departments need to deliver more and more (often for less spend), more innovative

thinking is being introduced. We often hear about the search for greater “sales and marketing alignment.” There’s widespread

skepticism around simply buying more and more lists of database names to e-mail. Public relations and accounts receivable

teams are increasingly expected to show the impact of their work on the company’s bottom line, and that too is leading them

to broaden their reach. Yet time and again, the executive-level conversation comes down not to “We need to reach out to even

more people,” but instead to “We need to better understand how the prospects we do have make their decisions.”

Foreword

The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing | 2

It’s astonishing that so little knowledge has been acquired to address this question. We’ve always said that if those in marketing

departments would spend more time understanding how their prospects’ purchasing decisions are made, they would immedi-

ately change more than 50 percent of the marketing they currently initiate. All too often, vendors speak a different language

than their prospects. They fail to explain how their products solve the prospects’ pain points, and those vendors who are short-

listed then misunderstand who’s important in the presentation room (and who’s not).

We talk about marketing to, through, and with our selected influencers. They can most likely offer a level of credibility, trust,

and expertise to prospects that are currently missing from your outreach activities. They can also offer your company new routes

to market. Critically, they can act as a guiding hand throughout the purchase decision process. For that alone, they are worth

identifying and engaging with.

Practice influence marketing throughout your company’s outreach process, and the results will be obvious (and very persuasive).

You’ll have no problem securing the support of your executive sales function.

If you truly want sales and marketing alignment, it’s hard to beat influence marketing. This eBook offers a useful step-by-step

checklist for getting started. I wish you luck.

Nick Hayes

Principal, Influencer50 Inc.

Co-author, Influencer Marketing: Who Really Influences Your Customers?

The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing | 3

Introduction to Influence Marketing

Influence plays an important role in business. Entrepreneurs are often influ-

enced by the mentors they’ve learned from. Employees are influenced by the

culture they work in. And buyers are influenced by the ones they trust when

it comes down to making critical purchasing decisions.

Building that kind of trust takes time, of course. Fortunately, chances are that

there’s already a group of people out there who have earned the respect of

many of your potential customers. Whether they’re speakers, authors, entre-

preneurs, or regular Joes who blog in their spare time, their words carry weight

with your target market. That’s where influence marketing comes into play.

Influence marketing is a practice geared toward targeting and building rela-

tionships with key individuals who have influence over your target segment

— and ideally your target buyers.

That might include writers for major publications, industry analysts, indus-

try thought leaders, and senior managers of key organizations. In such

instances, contact is made by phone or in person, requiring significant

senior management time. Contact with other target influencers (e.g., blog-

gers and trade journal writers) can often take place through e-mail and

social media channels, requiring less senior management time.

Influence marketing is typically the responsibility of a senior sponsor —

often the senior most person in the organization responsible for market-

ing, such as the marketing VP. For earlier stage companies, this role is

frequently filled by the CEO. The senior sponsor then appoints one or more

people to serve as influencer relations specialist to develop the program and

manage the daily and weekly activities. In many cases, the influencer rela-

tions specialist can be a part-time role or part of another employee’s overall

responsibilities.

Influence marketing

can be a valuable

& cost-effective way to:

» Increase brand awareness

» Establish and/or enhance your thought leadership position

» Drive more traffic to your website

» Generate more sales leads

» Increase your deal close rate and reduce sales cycle time

» Ultimately impact the bottom line

The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing | 4

» Develops a list of influencers

» Develops influencer personas to identify the best ways to communicate with influencer segments

» Prioritizes the names into a narrow set of targets

» Begins reaching out to build relationships, deliver your messages, and get insights from the influencers

» Adjusts and improves the program over time

Most of the activities are free, requiring little more than time. The invest-

ment is small compared to the reach that can be achieved through the

influencers’ “influence.”

The overarching goal for the program is to get people who influence your

target buyers to write and talk about you in a way that generates buyer

interest and enthusiasm for your products and services.

Influence Marketing Defined

Influence marketing is an updated approach to marketing and public relations

where you target the people your prospects turn to for information. These influ-

encers help generate awareness and sway the purchasing decisions of those

who seek out and value their expertise, read their blogs, converse with them in

discussion forums, attend their presentations at industry events, and so on.

Marketing to influencers essentially means building relationships and pitch-

ing your stories to the influencers in a proactive, outbound fashion. Many

influencers are eager for ideas and content to speak or write about.

If they’re interested in your message, they will begin talking about your

company, its leaders, and/or products and services. Influence marketing

builds credibility for you in the eyes of your prospects because influencers

are often trusted resources.

A Quick Example: Exinda Networks

Problem Exinda was an expansion-stage company with a great product offering and very little brand awareness in its target market. CEO Michael Sharma said it was a little like trying to shout from the mountaintop without a voice.

Solution OpenView proposed an influence market-ing program. Rather than blow its budget on a massive advertising or PR campaign that might not affect its target markets anyway, Exinda would go for the word-of-mouth approach and try to develop relationships with key influencers in its target markets. OpenView and Exinda worked together to increase the company’s brand awareness within the market by identifying the target influencers, and then contacted each influencer to begin building relationships.

Results Exinda is getting more traffic to its website, and more keywords are driving traffic to the site from search engines. The result has been inbound leads that are more likely to turn into sales.

“ The influence marketing program was highly targeted in the education sector, and the results speak for themselves. We can track the results and

we’ve seen a measurable increase in sales in this sector, and I think we’ll continue to see that.”

Kevin Suitor VP of Customer Advocacy, Exinda

Develops Adjusts&

To get started with influence marketing, the specialist:

The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing | 5

Business Benefits of Influence Marketing

Influence marketing offers significant benefits to your customer development efforts. Specifically, it enables you to:

Raise awareness of your brand within your industry/space.

When you build relationships with key influencers, sooner or later you will probably benefit from getting some kind

of “ink.” Perhaps they will share one of your customer success stories, review one of your products, mention your

company in a case study, or write a company overview. These mentions essentially create another mark of your com-

pany on the Internet, acting as free advertising for your business. Your prospects will see this information and become

introduced to or reacquainted with your company’s brand.

Increase your Web traffic.

When an influencer mentions your company, it may cause his or her audience to seek out more information, usually by

going to your website.

Test your messaging and value proposition.

More often than not, your influencers are on the pulse of trends within your industry. If you can’t sell them on your

company’s competitive advantage and offerings, you may experience the same friction when selling to your prospects.

Influence marketing provides a feedback loop with people who live and breathe within your space.

Generate inbound leads or inquiries about your company.

Influence marketing gives you the opportunity to communicate your value proposition, offerings, and company back-

ground to prospects you may not otherwise have engaged with. Doing so will result in more people visiting your website,

participating in webinars, reading your blog, etc. — some of whom will eventually turn into qualified leads.

Build credibility/overcome objections/close more sales — faster.

When an influencer has given your company his or her “seal of approval,” the people who look to the influencer trust

that person’s word. Your salespeople won’t have to spend as much time selling your value proposition when the influ-

encer has already helped communicate your message.

The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing | 6

Making this happen takes a plan:

Become the leading expert. There is no better way to influence the influ-encers than by becoming a leading expert and voice in your industry. How do you do that? By being the “publisher” for your industry niche. If you create and curate the leading thinking in your area (i.e., solutions to prob-lems that no one else is covering), then influencers will take notice. This means that you need to develop a content strategy that focuses on true thought leadership and solving the problems of your customers and pros-pects. From the beginning, integrate influencers into your content produc-tion. They’ll be much more willing to share your information if you do.

The Content Hub. Think “one-to-many” here. You need a home for all your great content. That may be a blog or an article repository. American Express has AMEX OPEN Forum. OpenView has OpenView Labs. CMI has ContentMarketingInstitute.com. Focus on a core area to begin the influ-ence.

Your content must be shareable. Once you have the strategy and the platform, make sure that sharing from your platform is incredibly easy. Tweets, Facebook likes, and LinkedIn shares should all be seamless. It’s also social proof of your expertise. When an influencer goes to one of your posts with over 100 tweets, that says something about how effective your content (and your own influence) is.

This eBook breaks down step-by-step how to identify and interact with influ-encers, but the real key is to take the steps to become an influencer yourself. Social media can get you there, but not unless you’re incredibly interesting and helpful first. Think about a refrigerator with no food inside. Not good. Not in-teresting. Let’s stockpile that fridge with the best food your industry has to offer. When that happens, everyone will want to come and partake at your house.

Now that’s what I call influence marketing.

Joe Pulizzi Founder, Content Marketing Institute, Junta 42; co-author, Managing Content Marketing

Social Media Spurs Influence Marketing

Influence marketing is nothing new. Companies have targeted influencers for years in order to help get

their story told or get coverage in the media. The difference today is mainly twofold: 1) the influencers in

your target market include a whole new set of businesses and individuals, and 2) you have direct access to

these people through social media. To the first point, these “new” influencers are very important to a variety

of your marketing goals. To the second point, it’s not just the tools that matter — it’s what goes in them.

The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing | 7

Developing an Influence Marketing Strategy

As with any practice that requires resources and coordination across the company, influence marketing takes time, planning,

and established processes to be executed successfully. It also requires the CEO and executive team to:

» Buy in to the long-term value of the effort as a marketing initiative

» Assign a senior sponsor

» Approve the budget to put the necessary resources in place

» Develop long-term goals for the program

» Approve the target influencer list

» Commit to participating in interviews and other activities that will likely transpire as a result of the influence marketing program

» Participate in quarterly retrospective meetings to continually monitor the program

Generally, there are three main roles for expansion-stage companies:

The CEO and executive team, who set the priorities and goals

for the effort, approve the appropriate resources for the practice,

approve the influencer target list, and commit to being available for

interviews and other opportunities that the practice will generate.

The senior sponsor (generally the senior person in marketing),

who approves the plan, manages the influencer relations specialist,

reports on the goals, and supports the marketing efforts.

The influencer relations specialist, who builds and carries out

the plan, identifies and prioritizes the target list of influencers,

develops relationships with the influencers, makes adjustments to

improve the practice, and delivers tangible results from the program

(e.g., mentions in industry reports and articles, keynote presenta-

tions at your user conferences, case examples that include your

company in presentations, blog mentions, etc.).

Senior Sponsor

&CEO Executive Team

Influencer Relations Specialist

The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing | 8

Top Metrics for Reviewing Progress

Metrics are extremely helpful for keeping track of progress

and impact. They will help you gain insights into your

strategy, allowing for better planning as time goes on.

The metrics for influence marketing fall under three broad categories:

1. Program goals and an approved target list of influencers.

2. Activity metrics, which measure the inputs to your influence marketing efforts, such as:

» The number of activities taking place (e-mails, calls, meetings, demos, etc.)

» The number of daily and weekly conversations your influencer relations specialist is having with your target influencers

» The coverage level of your target influencers

3. Result metrics, which measure the impact the practice is having, such as:

» The number of opportunities (e.g., interviews, speaking engagements) the influencer relations specialist has set up

» The number of mentions in blogs, feature articles, etc.

» Increased awareness and clearer perception in the market (if you are doing perception research)

» Website traffic generated from the mentions

» Sales leads/sales generated from the mentions

» Closed sales generated from the mentions

Why Influencers Matter

Every quarter I present to my executive team on the impact of content marketing, which includes communications and influencer relations. This process requires heavy analysis from premium tools like Vocus and Sysomos that visualize data into pretty charts that executives like.

We’d just embarked on an influence marketing initiative, so I was eager to dig into the data. I went right to the Social Media Mentions dashboard and generated the cov-eted graph. I admired the massive spike in buzz to start the quarter. It was majestic. The Everest of awareness.

Then panic struck: the peak did not correspond to any mar-keting, communications, or product campaign. Moreover, the rogue spike happened during the Fourth of July holiday – precisely the last time anyone would expect a surge in dis-cussion about a business-to-business SaaS company. How would I explain to my CEO that the quarter’s most success-ful communications program wasn’t a program at all?

Eventually we solved the mystery.

What happened? Scott Monty happened, that’s what. Ford’s head of social media cheered our content on his personal blog, and the post started a groundswell of discussion that rang louder than any concerted effort we’d orchestrated. One guy, one blog post, and a holiday weekend. I’m always

reminded of this story when I think about the importance of influencer relations.

Joe Chernov Former VP of Content Marketing, Eloqua

The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing | 9

Based on your goals for the practice, you may want to track traffic (number of unique visitors to your blog or website), audi-

ence engagement (number of pageviews and time on site), conversion metrics (number of click-throughs, webinar participation,

newsletter signups, etc.), or various social media metrics (number of followers, fans, etc.).

For example, an effort with increased Web traffic but low conversions may be considered a success if your goal is to increase

awareness. On the other hand, if you’re looking to increase your number of short-term leads, you’ll want to work to achieve a

higher conversation rate.

To be clear, many of the essential metrics of the practice depend heavily on the goals you set for the program. It’s up to you

to determine the appropriate measures of success.

“Influence marketing is a great strategy to incorporate into your overall

marketing mix. But how do you know your efforts are really paying off?

By setting SMART goals and tracking the key metrics, you’ll be able to

determine a return on objective for your influence marketing program.

Metrics can be tracked in a simple spreadsheet or complex database

such as Salesforce.com. Over time the metrics will help you determine

what’s working and what’s not, so that you can then determine where

to focus your efforts overall.”

Kevin Cain Director of Content Strategy OpenView Venture Partners

The Value of Influence: The Ultimate Guide to Influence Marketing | 10

Common Challenges of Influence Marketing

Some of the issues you might face when initiating an influence marketing program include the following:

Lack of buy-in and/or commitment from your CEO or executive team. Before initiating the practice, make sure all of the company’s top leaders are willing to participate in activities with

influencers.

Lack of clear, measurable goals.Work as a team to identify and set the goals ahead of time. Adjust the goals as necessary over time.

Lack of valuable content.Without quality content, it will be difficult to tell your company’s story to influencers. Make sure you have enough con-

tent to share before you make the initial contact. Make sure you also have a program in place for continuously develop-

ing content so that you can provide your influencers with fresh material on a regular basis.

Lack of customer participation.Influencers don’t want to hear how great you are straight from the horse’s mouth — they want to hear from your cus-

tomers or end users. Before getting your influence marketing practice off the ground, make sure you have identified

a few customers who are willing to help tell your company’s story. You need to be able to share your customers’ suc-

cesses with influencers, who are often interested in learning how companies solve their problems.

Not focusing on the right influencers.Influence marketing can have a great impact, but only if you are targeting the right people, at the right time, with the

right message. This is one of the areas where your influencer relations specialist will prove especially useful. Part of

his or her job is to make sure you’ve identified the right people to target; the influencer relations specialist does this by

spending time monitoring the influencers’ activities.

Delivering the same content, in the same fashion, across the board to all influencers. It’s important to develop influencer personas, as different sets of influencers have different sets of needs, goals, and

preferred methods of communication. For example, you’ll probably have to approach technical bloggers differently than

you will industry analysts. Reporters will require yet another approach. Understanding your influencer personas will

help your team craft and deliver targeted, effective pitches based on each segment’s needs.

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