Is Your Brand Seeking to Win Friends and Influence People? - Ed Keller - MediaBizBlogger

At last week39s ARF Audience Measurement 40 Conference Gregg Liebman SVP at CNN and I presented a paper on quotThe Marketing Value of Influencersquot in which we presented new research in support of influencer marketing We highlighted three primary reasons why influencers and influencer marketing brings considerable value to marketers Influencers generate reach making marketing more efficient and effective Influencers accelerate product adoption and improve profitability Influencers amplify advertising messages via word of mouth conversations that are more likely to include active brand advocacyAt just about the same time Brandweek ran a story entitled quotScientist Influencer Theory is Bogusquot based upon an interview with Duncan Watts a Columbia University professor who is now serving as a research scientist at YahooThe debate over whether influencers matter or not has become heated over the past few years Our research at the Keller Fay Group points strongly toward the important role influencers play in spreading word of mouth And now there is new recently published academic research that comes to the same conclusion while refuting the Watts positionThe central position about influencers that was made in my 2003 book The Influentials is that quotWhen Americans make decisions today it39s a conversation Marketers need to reach the people starting those conversationsquot We posited that there are about 1 in 10 Americans who are quotmarket multipliersquot amp8211 people who are disproportionately asked for their advice by others and as a result more likely to offer recommendations They are we said quotat the center of the conversationquotRecent research by the Keller Fay Group drills down into the exact role of influencers in word of mouth Three years of continuous research about word of mouth via our TalkTrackamp174 study have taught us that influencers are 130 more likely than the average consumer to talk about brands on any given day While representing only 10 of the population influencers are responsible for more than a quarter of all word of mouth Clearly they quotpunch well above their weightquot And when we look at categoryspecific influencers eg those who are influencers in automotive or financial services or travel etc they talk about brands at up to eight times the rate of the average consumer The evidence is crystal clear that influencers offer a route to efficiency and effectiveness in creating conversations and spreading the word about brandsAcademic studies released recently bear out this view For example Professor Donald R Lehmann of the Columbia Business School and his collaborators published an article quotThe Role of Hubs in the Adoption Processquot in the March 2009 issue the Journal of Marketing It says quotContrary to recent suggestions Watts and Dodds 2007 social hubs adopt sooner than other people because they are exposed earlier to an innovation due to their multiple social linksquot Further they say quotAdoption by hubs speeds up the growth process and directly influences eventual market sizequotIn other words people with large social networks matter According to Lehmann et al amp8211 and in contrast to what Watts advocates amp8211 quotIf social hubs can be identified they could be an efficient target for word of mouth campaigns leading to both faster growth and increased market sizequotFurther academic research by Professor Barak Libai of the Faculty of Management at Tel Aviv University and collaborators studies the adoption curve of influencers versus others Their research finds that influencers adopt new products earlier and because of this acceleration in the adoption process a firm can increase its profitability by between 6 and 14 by targeting influencers over random customers And a firm can increase profitability by 11 44 by targeting influencers via word of mouth versus no word of mouth seeding at all Libai et al say that those who have concluded influencers don39t matter fail to take into consideration the social value of a customer ie the profit impact of accelerated adoptionSome critics of the influencer model have objected to the seemingly quotundemocraticquot idea of a few quotelitequot consumers telling everyone else what to think and what to buy But in a democracy it has always been true that some people are more involved than others amp8211 they vote more often volunteer to work on campaigns write letters to the editor host parties and so forth While everyone has an equal right to participate it is a fact of human nature that some will participate more than othersThe same is true in the consumer marketplace Some people seek out more information about brands and share it more often with their friends Just as political campaigns succeed by effectively engaging political activists so should marketing campaigns make a priority of engaging consumer influencersEd Keller CEO of the Keller Fay Group has been called quotone of the most recognized names in word of mouthquot The publication of Keller39s book The Influentials has been called the quotseminal moment in the development of word of mouthquot Ed can be contacted at ekellerkellerfaycomRead all Edamp8217s MediaBizBlogger commentaries at Ed Keller MediaBizBlogger

Click to Make Your 2025 Contribution to Support the MediaVillage Education Foundation

Is Your Brand Seeking to Win Friends and Influence People? - Ed Keller - MediaBizBlogger

Author

Publish date

Channel

Edward Keller

Empowering Women in Media: Insights from Industry Leaders (Video) - By E.B. Moss

More Videos:

Click to Make Your 2025 Contribution to Support the MediaVillage Education Foundation

Is Your Brand Seeking to Win Friends and Influence People? - Ed Keller - MediaBizBlogger

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Edward Keller

Empowering Women in Media: Insights from Industry Leaders (Video) - By E.B. Moss

The payment was successful

Cookies