This document provides an overview of influence marketing. It defines influence marketing as identifying and building relationships with individuals who have influence over target audiences. It then discusses the brief history of influence marketing from orators to modern social media influencers. Finally, it outlines the key aspects of creating an influence marketing program, including identifying influencers, measuring influence, developing relationships, and using influence marketing for initiatives like product launches, community management, and crisis response.
2. In this eBook
1. Definition of Influence Marketing
2. Brief History of Influence Marketing
3. Benefits of Influence Marketing
4. Influence Measurement
5. Personal vs. Contextual Influence
6. Who is an Influencer?
7. How Influence Fits Into Marketing
8. The Influencer Continuum™
9. Identifying Influencers
10. Building Influencer Relationships
11. Creating Influence Marketing Programs
12. Influence Marketing Use Cases
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3. 1. Definition of Influence Marketing
Influence marketing is the practice of identifying and building relationships with
individuals who have influence over a target audience of buyers.
Influencers are likely to be buyers themselves, as well as recommenders of
products or services to their own audiences, both online and off.
Influencers may also be trusted third parties, such as bloggers, journalists,
industry analysts, academics, or public figures.
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4. 2. Brief History of Influence Marketing
• Influence marketing has effectively been around for millennia
• From orators to celebrity endorsers, influence has impact on action
• Today’s influencers are a far more diffuse group than the
celebrities and personalities of yore
• Influence can be harnessed both on and off the web
On today’s
Lillie Langtry, an social web,
actress of the time, influence
In Ancient Greece in endorsed Pears’ Soap marketing
300 B.C. some –one of the first is the
orators had more celebrity provenance
influence than others endorsements of real
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celebrities
300 B.C. 1890s Now
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5. 3. Benefits of Influence Marketing
• Influence marketing can be a standalone effort, or an effective way to amplify
other marketing efforts
• By marketing to a small group of individuals (influencers), a brand has the
power to reach large groups of individuals (“influencees”)
• Understanding who a brand’s influencers are helps to target campaigns and
communications
• Brands that gain credibility with influencers gain credibility with their end
customers as well
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6. 4. Influence Measurement
Assessing who the appropriate influencers are for your brand is often determined
by understanding the relative value, to your brand, of people who may influence
your target audience.
Influence measurement is the practice of ranking or scoring potential influencers to
determine their value to your marketing efforts.
Influence measurement is also used throughout these marketing efforts to examine
the effect programs are having on outside influencers.
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7. 5. Personal vs. Contextual Influence
There are two predominant ways to measure influence:
Personal: Measuring or scoring influence for an individual using a single score
which stays with that individual, and then selecting influencers by score.
Personal influence tools, such as Klout, Kred and PeerIndex, primarily rely on a
person’s social media profiles to determine influence.
Contextual: Measuring or scoring influence solely within the context of a topic;
each influencer will score differently based on the topic in question.
Contextual influence tools, such as Appinions, are built to identify and measure
who has influence on a particular topic, subject or market.
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8. 6. Who Is an Influencer?
Appinions defines an influencer as a person, brand or company who expresses a
contextually relevant opinion that is meaningful enough to elicit action from
others
There are three criteria used to identify influencers:
• Opinions: Appinions focuses on expressions of subjectivity, indicating a
personal point-of-view, rather than mere distribution of fact
• Context: The opinions are relevant to a user-defined topic, which is
developed for a specific business need
• Action: The opinion is meaningful enough to the opinion holder’s audience
that they take action around it
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9. 7. How Influence Fits Into Marketing
Influence marketing can be part of, and impact, a variety of marketing efforts:
• Public Relations: Reach out to journalists, bloggers or industry analysts to
help generate awareness and help them to develop stories or content around
a product or service
• Digital Marketing: Create blogger programs or campaigns, utilizing bloggers
for content creation, endorsements, to host contests or promotions, or to
amplify marketing messages
• Advertising: Feature celebrities, bloggers or prominent product advocates in
advertising
• Community Management: Curate content based on topics of interest to
influencer networks
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10. 7. How Influence Fits Into Marketing (cont’d)
• Events: Reach out to influencers to help develop conference agendas or
identify speakers, or to inform a guest list for a corporate or industry event
• Product or R&D: Invite influencers to inform product or service development
• Marketing Research: Create focus groups of influencers to collect actionable
third-party opinions on products, services, or marketing efforts
• Crisis Management: Ask influencers to help spread important news;
understand the dynamics of the unfavorable news that is spreading through
influencer channels and craft outreach accordingly
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11. 8. The Influencer Continuum™
Appinions has developed a roadmap for influencer engagement, the
Influencer Continuum™ (free download). This multi-stage process provides a
framework for the organization and execution of influence marketing programs.
We recommend reviewing the Influencer Continuum™ prior to creating an
influence marketing program.
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12. 9. Identifying Influencers
Our companion eBook, How to Create Successful Influencer Marketing Programs
(free download), goes into depth on influencer identification.
In brief:
• Identify the topics which are relevant to your brand, industry or target audience
• Listen to what people are saying around that topic across the web and in
traditional media
• Identify the individuals who seem credible on that topic, and who appear to have
a following or audience for their opinions
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13. 10. Building Influencer Relationships
An effective influence marketing strategy relies on relationships with influencers
and these relationships are built over time.
Influence marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Forcing your brand onto
influencers is a recipe for failure.
On the next page, we provide a high-level framework for building influencer
relationships.
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14. 10. Building Influencer Relationships (cont’d)
Steps to building relationships with influencers (and others):
1. Get to know the influencer well: read what they write and what’s been written about
them, watch videos of them, understand their background and experience.
2. Understand their attitude towards brands, products and services – within and outside
of your industry or market.
3. Engage with influencers over time: read their blog or follow them on Twitter,
comment on, retweet or share their work.
4. Send an introductory communication: say hello via Twitter or email, just to introduce
yourself (no pitching!)
5. Never mass-pitch influencers. Every communication must be individualized and
focused; you’ll lose credibility with them if you treat them like a group.
6. Keep track of your influencers over time. They may shift focus and you need to know
when they are no longer focused on your industry or market.
7. Always be respectful, professional, and humble. Never assume they will want to work
with you – over time, help them believe it will be great to work with you.
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15. 11. Creating Influence Marketing Programs
To create influence marketing programs or take them to the
next level, we recommend referencing our eBook,
How to Create Successful Influencer Marketing Programs (free download).
In it, we describe the four-step process for creating influence marketing programs:
1. Identify your influencers
2. Map influencers to the phases of engagement (our Influence Continuum™)
3. Determine the brand assets (materials, campaigns, promotions, etc.) you have
available for your influence program
4. Create the program and execute
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16. 12a. Influence Marketing Use Case:
Product Launch
Objective: A mobile technology brand is
planning to launch its first tablet, and wants
to differentiate the device in a crowded and
competitive marketplace.
Influence Initiatives:
• Determine which tablet feature or benefit
to emphasize in launch communications
by analyzing influential opinions in the Figure 1 (left): Use trending themes in influencer
conversations about the tablet sector to inform which
general mobile and tablet industries, as key messages should be emphasized for the launch.
well as specific competitive tablet brands. Figure 2 (right): Brand influencers identified to engage
in a pre-launch initiative
• Engage existing brand influencers who
are most likely to be advocates for the
new tablet.
Click for more on Product Launch
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17. 12b. Influence Marketing Use Case:
Community Management
Objective: A beverage brand is looking
for engaging content to share as part of
an upcoming eco-friendly campaign
across its social media channels.
Influence Initiatives:
• Discover the most influential content
creators around eco-friendly subjects.
• Create a content calendar of branded
and influencer eco-friendly content to
distribute to social media channels,
and cross promote with the
Influencers on the topic of eco-friendly fashion
influencer’s personal network. engaged by the beverage brand to create content
Click for more on Community Management
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18. 12c. Influence Marketing Use Case:
Crisis Management
Objective: A pharmaceutical
company wants to manage the
conversation and quell negative
sentiment around a recent product
recall.
Influence Initiatives:
• Determine whether an official
company statement is required
based on influential conversation
about the product recall.
• Identify most influential company
Product Recall
detractors for potential outreach.
Influencer Outreach
Sentiment analysis and opinion volume graph of product recall
shows how the sentiment around the company improves
following influencer outreach.
Click for more on Crisis Management
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