Distributed Presence TM

2009 Industry Prediction: Influence Marketing Comes of Age

Adweek recently published an article titled "Brands Tap Web Elite for Advertorial 2.0," where they describe Panasonic's jump into blogger influence marketing at the Consumer Electronics Show.  As you may recall in an earlier post titled "Blogger Influence Marketing," I described HP's foray into influence marketing in their 31 Days of Dragon promotion.  Though it's hard to determine ROI from these programs, HP credited their influence marketing program with an 84% increase in sales of the Dragon notebook computer.  These early successes, combined with strong evidence of consumer ad blocking and the consumer's acceptance and trust of social media, will drive many more marketers in 2009 to adopt social influence marketing as part of their overall digital strategy.  This new focus on influence marketing will lead to growth, further integration and consolidation in the digital media environment.  In 2009, expect "social media" shops to pop-up and steal the spotlight, expect existing digital agencies to add social media and influence marketing capabilities and expect existing pure-play social media shops to be acquired. 

Here what it's all about:  Social media has made a permanent imprint on the customer journey as consumers now have the opportunity to expand their sphere of influence to guide them through the purchase funnel.  Think about it, in the past consumers had only a few friends and family to seek advice on their experiences or perceptions of products.  Now, consumers can reach hundreds, if not thousands, in a matter of minutes via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google, Technorati, product review sites, expert blogs, etc. 

Therefore, as you set-out to define your influence marketing strategy, start by mapping the customer journey; too many marketers ignore this important step.  Understand consumer touchpoints with your brand as they move through the purchase funnel and develop influence marketing programs that complement other marketing tactics.  Be sure to be creative in both your programs and in how you determine ROI as there are no rules or standards as of yet; expect these to come later in the year as more programs get under way and establish benchmarks.

To help to get you started, I've provided a definition of Blogger Influence Marketing, a subset of Social Influence Marketing: 

A systematic approach or process where organizations actively solicit and engage online bloggers or key influencers for the purpose of obtaining a predetermined marketing objective.  Blogger Influence Marketing provides the brand with the opportunity to engage with their target consumer through trusted and credible communications platforms, which influences the consumer's purchase decision.  Programs or campaigns often include prepackaged marketing material, products, contests, promotions, giveaways, etc. that are provided to key bloggers who then execute the programs at a fraction of the price that it would cost the brand to execute the program employing traditional media tactics.

2009 Industry Prediction: Digital Marketing Goes to Washington

Obama's use of technology and social media has been widely credited with his ability to connect with U.S. citizens and to raise an unprecedented amount of money ultimatly resulting in his historic presidential win.  As Business Week stated "[Obama] leveraged his website, the blogosphere, and even user-generated content (remember Obama Girl) and video games to engage not just donors and volunteers but all citizens." There is no doubt that future presidential candidates will elicit outside agencies with the directive to employ the "Obama online community networking model" to mobilize their constituency, but what is the near-term impact to the digtital marketing industry? 

Recognizing that change must come to Washington, Obama has already promised to appoint a Technology Czar to ensure that the Government is appropriately investing in next generation technology.  Obama's vision of a friendlier and more responsive government should be seen as very good news for the digital marketing industry.  Here's why:  The Government has long invested in technology infrastructure projects, which is why today you see D.C. and Northern Virginia riddled with technology consulting firms.  Though, as most of us know in the digital marketing industry, the "back-end," though an enabler, is transparent to the end user.  What matters most to the consumer (and to the average U.S. citizen) is their experience; were they able to complete the task that they set-out to do with as little frustration as possible.  From a marketing perspective, we take this further by ensuring that the consumer experience reflects the brand's positioning and provides a consistent stop along the customer journey.  In our industry we continuously seek to optimize the consumer experience; employing testing techniques such as heuristics, split and multivariate tests, concept and usability testing, focus groups, etc.  We think beyond the core consumer experience and seek to create a brand web or distributed presence that touches  consumers across all channels (both paid and unpaid) with a consistent message.  Simply put, we want to get noticed, while at the same time we continuously seek to demonstrate value to our target consumers.  I don't need to tell you that accomplishing this is difficult to do today given the short attention span and high expectations of the digital consumer. 

That said, the U.S. Government and it's various agencies do not have the expertise to effectively leverage the new media environment to accomplish their goals all on their own.  Just having a website no longer does the job, as Obama clearly demonstrated to McCain during the 2008 campaign.  If you combine the above with Obama's recently announced economic stimulus plan set to kick-off shortly after his inauguration, it doesn't take much to connect the dots:  Beginning in 2009, digital marketing agencies are headed to Washington D.C.  Sure you can argue that they're already there; AKQA, Arnold & Wunderman/RTCRM all have offices in the area, but given Obama's new mandate it won't be long before many more digital marketing agencies infiltrate the newest digital marketing frontier; our nation's capital.