No high tech influencer program is complete until it addresses sourcing and vendor management executives.  You may think that this group of people is buried deep in your customers’ accounting departments, removed from actual decisions.  You may think of them more as gatekeepers on properly filled out forms, credit checks, and other accounting records.  Not so.  These executives wield enormous potential for influencing computer, software, service and device vendor selection, pricing, Ts&Cs, and more. 

The current economic condition makes this an ideal time to take a hard look at sourcing advisors and vendor management executives. Check out the insights one group shared with Forrester Research CEO George Colony.

 Take a little of our Influencer50 advice:  don’t limit your knowledge of these influencers to what you read in a market research report.  Get out there and identify them.  Then, engage with the ones who matter the most to you in each of your markets. 

Republished from my Influencer50 blog, Sway. 

I found a refreshing take on analyst influence and analyst relations in the book Influencer Marketing - Who Really Influences Your Customers, by Nick Hayes and Duncan Brown of Influencer50. The book proposes a focused, cohesive and research-driven approach to identifying external influencers and getting them to participate in appropriate ways in marketing.

The book is not about buying influence or licensing analyst content/speakers for demand gen tools. It’s about designing an influencer relations initiative that accurately targets the rich spectrum of influencers involved in purchase decisions within specific market sectors.

In the Influencer Marketing approach, organizations create a cross-discipline marketing initiative. They leverage the cream of the crop from traditional influencer silos like PR, AR, etc. They also add some new influencers to the mix — new names or new types of influencers, such as competitors, academia, government.

The first result is a “dream team” of top influencers from the many discrete spheres of influence — analysts, press, consultants, channels, customers, competitors, academia, government, and so on. All identified influencers — and the assigned relationship managers — are placed on equal footing. Refreshing.

The second result is a goal-oriented plan for participative marketing. Participative marketing puts the impetus on managing influencer relationships based on their specific role during the purchase decision. AR activities are driven by customer decision processes, rather than by vendor product/service lifecycles. Refreshing.

Organizations with analyst relations functions already in place could use this book as a springboard for creating a cross-company influencer marketing initiative. Stage it as a pilot program. Or, run it as a special executive buddy program. Make it complement the influencer strategies and programs already in place.

Such an initiative will take some AR professionals out of their comfort zone. Equal footing among all identified influencer means ranking analyst priority relative to the other kinds of voices whispering in the customer’s ear. Instead of comparing a Gartner analyst with a Burton Group analyst, for example, you would compare both to a different kind of influencer — perhaps an association thought leader like AIIM’s Dan Keldsen or an author/consultant/blogger like James Taylor.

Old boundaries are breaking down all over the place — who’s an analyst (and who’s not), who controls the brand reputation, who drives the innovation, who’s the trusted advisor. It’s going to take some trial and error to figure out how best to deal with all these changes. Influencer Marketing suggests one way to move on.

Next week’s book review: Groundswell.