Influence Marketing: It’s About People

Experts and the peo­ple around us real­ly help make our pur­chas­ing deci­sions.

Bas van den Beld By Bas van den Beld from State of Digital. Join the discussion » 0 comments

In the past few years we have seen a lot of talk around influ­ence mar­ket­ing. It seems as if mar­keters have start­ed to real­ize that we can reach our audi­ence in more than one way, not just shout­ing out our mes­sage. All of a sud­den mar­keters start­ed reach­ing out to “influ­en­tials” and ser­vices like Klout start­ed to have suc­cess. There was a hype around this top­ic about two years ago, that hype is gone, but influ­ence mar­ket­ing is now a stan­dard part of any mar­ket­ing cam­paign.


Influ­ence mar­ket­ing might sound hip and trendy, but it’s actu­al­ly one of the old­est forms of mar­ket­ing.

Any­one who has looked at the his­to­ry of PR knows the name of Edward Bernays (I talked about him in the arti­cle I wrote about PR and Mar­ket­ing before). Bernays, nephew of Sig­mund Freud, is to some known as the per­son who “invent­ed” PR, or at least made it impor­tant for busi­ness.

Bernays is so impor­tant in the his­to­ry of PR because of his tech­niques, but most­ly because he intro­duced a dif­fer­ent way of think­ing to PR (and mar­ket­ing for that mat­ter). He made the PR man think about who he was tar­get­ing, more specif­i­cal­ly: what the brain of those he is tar­get­ing wants.

Bernays real­ized that our brains work in mys­te­ri­ous ways. We don’t always do what we think is best for us. He real­ized (no doubt influ­enced by his uncle Freud) we are being led by those around us. We tend to behave like ani­mals and fol­low each oth­er around.

The word “pro­pa­gan­da” has a neg­a­tive ring to it because it reminds us of the way the Nazis and oth­er oppres­sive regimes worked. But pro­pa­gan­da in its essence is again some­thing sim­ple: it shows how we are influ­enced. It shows that the peo­ple around us influ­ence us.

If a group goes, we usu­al­ly have to go our­selves as well. We can’t stop it. It’s the essence of influ­ence mar­ket­ing: know­ing that peo­ple do what oth­ers do.

For cen­turies the peo­ple around us have influ­enced us. Take reli­gion, or take the fact that we live togeth­er in cities. We are group ani­mals that fol­low each oth­er. This means that the choic­es we make in gen­er­al aren’t our own choic­es.

I’ve often giv­en this exam­ple in my talks: look at your shoes; try to remem­ber where and when you bought them. Most of us will think that they bought them, but that is only part­ly true. Yes, you may have paid for them; yes you may have made the choice to pick that par­tic­u­lar pair of shoes from the rack, but the more impor­tant process was already behind you at the time of choos­ing. The choice was actu­al­ly already made.

Inside your brain dots were con­nect­ed. With­out real­iz­ing it you were think­ing about the response from your part­ner, your col­leagues, your friends. If you felt like they would­n’t approve of the shoes, you wouldn’t have bought them.

PR and mar­ket­ing real­ized this decades ago. It wasn’t just Bernays who made this hap­pen, many mar­keters were respon­si­ble for this. They knew that by push­ing the right but­tons, by get­ting the right influ­ence, we would make the “right” choic­es – buy­ing the prod­ucts they want­ed us to buy.

The Influence From Experts

Experts” influ­ence peo­ple. These are very impor­tant peo­ple we believe to have knowl­edge around a cer­tain top­ic. We’ve always trust­ed those peo­ple.

The first doc­tors prob­a­bly had no idea what they were doing, but we trust­ed them. The first sci­en­tists told us the world was flat, and we trust­ed them. And the kings and queens told us to fol­low them, so we did. Why? Because we are human, we need to trust.

Take this to adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing and you will see some stun­ning exam­ples of how we’ve been fooled in the past. It wasn’t that long ago that we trust­ed our doc­tors to tell us what cig­a­rettes to smoke.

Because we trust experts on their opin­ions, using experts in adver­tis­ing and PR has always been a suc­cess­ful strat­e­gy. It’s not always eth­i­cal, though. Some­times experts are used for the “wrong” rea­sons – for exam­ple, in polit­i­cal issues: get­ting an expert to speak about a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion, telling the audi­ence “your” sto­ry, will help the sto­ry be more con­vinc­ing.

This is why we see experts show up in adver­tis­ing (even if the expert is just an actor). Dress­ing some­one in a white lab coat makes a sto­ry sound more legit. It feels like a doc­tor is telling us the prod­uct is good.

The “Will it Blend” videos were a suc­cess because they were dif­fer­ent, but also because founder and CEO of Blendtec Tom Dick­son put on a lab coat when show­ing how strong his prod­uct actu­al­ly was. The lab coat made a huge dif­fer­ence in per­cep­tion: it cre­at­ed trust.

Using these experts to con­vince peo­ple to believe your sto­ry or trust your prod­uct has always been a sol­id method. And we are now see­ing this hap­pen every­where on the web as well.

We use experts for overview posts. We use trav­el jour­nal­ists as experts to tell us where to go. We use expert blog­gers to tell our sto­ries. The Wiz­ard­ing World of Har­ry Pot­ter is a good exam­ple of how experts in a niche were used to spread a mes­sage.

The Real Influence: The People Around Us

Experts work well. They help get atten­tion to our prod­ucts. The prob­lem? They don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make our audi­ence buy our prod­ucts. Oth­er peo­ple are need­ed to do that: our social net­work, the peo­ple around us.

This is where many mar­keters instant­ly think: social media! They will try and cre­ate a viral cam­paign that will show your prod­uct to every­one, using their social net­works. Again, this is nice and it will prob­a­bly help cre­ate aware­ness of your prod­uct. It doesn’t make peo­ple buy your prod­uct.

If you want peo­ple to buy your prod­uct you need to use real influ­ence mar­ket­ing: get­ting peo­ple to use your prod­ucts and show them off.

This is where stealth mar­ket­ing and influ­ence mar­ket­ing start over­lap­ping.

Prob­a­bly the best exam­ple of stealth mar­ket­ing you can see in the movie “The Jone­ses”. Watch the trail­er:

This movie shows a fam­i­ly mov­ing into the sub­urbs. Not to live, but to sell. The stealth part is that nobody knows they are there to sell. The influ­ence part is that every­body around them at one point starts want­i­ng to have what they have. Now that’s real influ­ence!

Yes, this is a movie, but there are real life exam­ples as well.

Meet, for exam­ple, the Girls Intel­li­gence agency, where you can hire a “slum­ber par­ty in a box.” Sounds excit­ing? It isn’t real­ly. Basi­cal­ly it’s using teenagers to orga­nize a slum­ber par­ty and giv­ing them a box of free stuff to use and share at the par­ty. It’s teenagers influ­enc­ing teenagers with­out real­iz­ing they are doing just that.

These types of com­pa­nies exist all over the world. They hand out test prod­ucts to peo­ple. The real rea­son? They want peo­ple to use the prod­ucts so oth­ers will see the prod­ucts and want them as well.

Anoth­er good exam­ple is the stealth mar­ket­ing cam­paign Sony Eric­s­son used back in 2002 to cre­ate atten­tion for their T68i phone, back then one of the first phones with a cam­era. Instead of adver­tis­ing it, they send out actors with the phones, pre­tend­ing to be tourists or cou­ples. As tourists they would ask oth­er peo­ple to take their pic­tures. Instead of hand­ing them a cam­era, they hand­ed them their phones and chat­ted about it. Again, it’s influ­ence and stealth mar­ket­ing com­bined, because the peo­ple nev­er felt like they were being adver­tised to but were influ­enced by the ‘aver­age Joe’ they were talk­ing to.

It hap­pens all the time. Even online.

When we’re logged into Face­book and vis­it Tri­pAd­vi­sor, we will see where our friends have gone. It’s why ser­vices offer to ‘share with your friends’ that you just bought some­thing or just read some­thing. It will make them look good to your net­work. And there’s some­thing in it for you as well.

Peo­ple want to share, it’s in our nature. Espe­cial­ly when we are enthu­si­as­tic about some­thing, but more impor­tant­ly: when we feel that by shar­ing we can help oth­ers. Peo­ple want to be per­ceived as help­ful, so if they can help a friend with talk­ing about a prod­uct or ser­vice, they will.

What Does All This Tell Us?

We know that we’re being influ­enced all the time. How can we use this?

As mar­keters, it’s very sim­ple: you need to real­ize that your prod­uct doesn’t sell itself. It’s not even the sales depart­ment that sells your prod­uct. Peo­ple sell your prod­uct – they are the ones influ­enc­ing the buy­ers and mak­ing their deci­sions eas­i­er.

This means that when it comes to mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, you need to focus not just on the buy­ers, but on those sur­round­ing the buy­ers. The experts, but more impor­tant­ly: the peo­ple around them. Let them use the prod­uct, make them impor­tant and they will start “sell­ing” for you.


How are you using influ­encers in your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy? Share what’s worked for you in the com­ments.

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Bas van den Beld

Written by Bas van den Beld

Digital Marketing Strategist, State of Digital

Bas van den Beld is an award winning Digital Marketing consultant, trainer and speaker. He is the founder of State of Digital and helps companies develop solid marketing strategies.

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