Marketing Ninja

I came across an entry on TomsTechBlog entitled “Influencers of the Tipping Point,” which linked to the more bluntly titled Valleywag article “Why sponsoring bloggers is a waste of money.” The short version of the story is thus: Seagate sponsored critically acclaimed techblogger/habitual overenthusiast Robert Scoble only to see their stock drop 35% in price since. In Valleywag’s world, correlation equals causation I suppose.

Valleywag goes on to declare that since the mighty Robert Scoble was unable to save the embattled commodity hardware producer from a stock price drop, it must be because influencer marketing does not work; pardon me while I roll my eyes in feign disgust at the predictable lack of intellectualism over at Valleywag. They go on to cite a study which tells us the obvious: people believe in the word-of-mouth power of their friends over the WOM power of a blogger by several orders of magnitude.

Influencer marketing is not dead, folks; it’s alive and well. Let me shed some light on this:

The Seagate example is stupid

What do Robert Scoble and Seagate have in common? What’s Robert’s message? What’s Seagate’s message? The first person that can answer all of these questions wins a slot in the Marketing Ninja hall of fame, because I sure as hell can’t.

Here’s the big problem with this Seagate example: the vast majority of Seagate’s consumers are completely unaware that they’re even using a Seagate product, and even if they did they wouldn’t care.

So how is sponsoring a prominent techblogger, especially Scoble, going to help make Seagate’s case to customers? The problem is mostly Seagate, some Scoble. Seagate’s in a commodity business and it has an exceptionally challenging task of differentiating itself from every other hard drive manufacturer. In addition Seagate should be trying to market itself to PC manufacturers, not end-consumers and tinkerers like the sort who would read Scobelizer.

Generally speaking I think blind sponsorship of anything is laughably stupid - what’s the point of having people see your logo and other branded materials if there isn’t a readily identifiable point to it?

Influencers are effective only on common ground

Influencers, whether they are prominent bloggers, noted industry experts, or journalists, are effective for the purposes of marketing only when they find common ground with your company and their audience. I can’t disclose the details (my employer is a stickler about privacy) but we’ve been working very closely with an influencer who has a common message with us: make better presentations using good visuals. Our software can be used to sculpt effective visuals and our influencer sells many books and courses on the art of giving good presentations with good visuals.

We have a good working relationship; he has been selling more books and we have been selling more software as a result of this influencer-sponsor relationship. Why is ours working so well but Seagate’s failed? Because we have a common message between us and each other’s audiences that is visible to the naked eye.

It takes a potential customer around two lines of marketing copy to see the connection, and it sells. What our influencer does is lend credibility to our message about using our software to prepare visuals, and in turn we offer our influencer a tool to help his audience implement his own advice.

The ripple effect

The study that Valleywag cited is correct: people trust the word of mouth of their friends over bloggers by orders of magnitude; however, if a blogger has an audience of several thousand and converts even a small percentage of that audience to become evangelists for the sponsor there’s a potential to create a penetrating effect within the converted audience’s sphere of contacts. It’s the ripple effect - positive or negative referrals from just one person can precipitate a sizeable number of residual sales.

As we have learned time and time again, just because the sales immediately following a sponsorship activity are do not yield net profit does not mean that the residuals won’t. In some instances the volume of residuals can be much higher than the initial sales themselves.

So the lesson here is thus: influencer marketing works, but you need to have a single, common message that is clear to the intended audience. It may not always work, but influencer marketing is by no means dead.

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