Marketing to influencers :Business Strategy /Financial Advisors

So you’ve got your shiny new list of influencers. What now? Let’s recap
on what you have in your hands. You have a list of the most important
people in your target market, important not because they buy from you
(they don’t) but because they influence those that might buy. Treat this
list with care and respect.

It’s typical to find that, of the 50 or more influencers you identify that
have real influence over your prospects, you don’t know more than 20.
Which means that at least 60% of your influencers likely don’t know you
either. And let’s distinguish between awareness and knowledge. You
may even be aware of your influencers, and they may even be aware of
you, but awareness is just above consciousness in mental capacity.
Awareness does not infer interest or knowledge, or a desire to acquire
such. Spending time and money on market awareness alone is pointless.
Plenty of firms have high awareness without it necessarily translating
into success. But it’s a good starting point.

If you were in this situation with your prospects, where you had no
knowledge of them, you’d define a programme of go-to-market activities.
You’d research your audience to identify its needs and wants. You’d
determine its motivations, issues and constraints. You might create a file
on a specific customer account, detailing its revenues and profit history,
key personnel and business agenda.
So, take the same approach to influencer marketing, and define a Go-to-
Influencer programme.

Marketing to influencers should be straightforward, as long as you remember the golden rule:
Influencers don’t buy anything from you.
Influencers are not customers. There is no point in pitching your usual
marketing collateral to influencers – they don’t care about your products or
your firm’s success.While the activitiesmay be similar to those inmarketing
to prospects, the inputs are not the same and the end result is quite different.
You must instead treat influencers in the same way as you would any
other segment. You find out what they want, what their interests and
motivations are, and what their interest is (professional or otherwise) in
you. To draw on The Long Tail theory, your top influencers are at the head
of the influential sources market, and you can ignore the tail.

The influencer identification process should have yielded who your
influencers are, and some relative ranking of them. You’ll also have picked
up some insight on how they derived their influence, and how they use it.
That said, many questions will remain unanswered, such as
& Who specifically do they influence? Do they have generic market influence,
or a subset of customer firms? Or do they only influence influencers
from a distance (such as a regulator)?
& What decisions do they influence? (e.g. purchases, market adoption,
awareness, credibility)
& When do they influence in the sales cycle? Are they idea planters, or
recommenders, or validators? Or all three?
& How do you use each of these influencers to best effect?