High Reach Influencers (HRI's) are people who convince many others to purchase from you. High Reach Influencers often engage in word-of-mouth marketing and lead others to purchase products or services based on their personal recommendations. These people have the personal power to influence many others.
HRI’s might bring more new customers to you who then purchase far more than the HRI’s purchase themselves. In fact, HRI’s might not even purchase anything at all from you themselves. Because they might not currently be your customers, HRI's can often be overlooked by companies calculating customer lifetime value (CLV) or customer referral value (CRV).
HRI’s might be influential bloggers who comment on your brand as a result of hearing a rumor about you. These HRI’s might be industry reporters or trade editors. These HRI’s could be people who want to talk about your brand to others for a myriad of reasons other than the fact that they are your customers and they're either very happy or very disappointed with their experience with your brand.
Don't forget these high reach influencers when determining how to best build your brand. Quantify them as much as possible and seek ways to communicate with them and influence them.
Don't assume your customers are the only ones who refer others to you. By all means, don't assume that your customers are the only ones who matter because your best customers in terms of individual purchasing habits might pale in comparison to others who send much more business your way.
2 comments:
Very interesting point - people capable of spreading the word who are a very small fraction or none of your customers.
There is another kind of power influencer you've missed which is the social network top influencer. From recent studies conducted, over 20% of online adults have substantial influence power over their social circle. What if you could pick up from this 20% the very top 1% of influencers.
The prime benefits of social network influencer is its unbeatable credibility (80% friend-to-friend, far beyond bloggers) and extensive conversations he manages daily on the social networks.
There are new startups who can find you top influencers among the tens of millions of social network members. Moreover, they can find you top influencers related to specific interests and demographics.
Udi,
Thanks for the comment.
You obviously get the point and cut directly to the chase, namely, the Internet has done a lot to change the game.
People can share their views on your brand with much greater efficiency and with much more far-reaching impact than ever before.
Much "social networking" has shifted to the online world where brand communication is no longer controlled by brand and marketing managers. People don't just gather at the ice cream shop anymore to talk with their friends, they go online and talk about their experiences to a much broader audience with people they may or may not even personally know.
Marketers no longer totally control the message and marketers must realize that their actual customers might not be the ones with the greatest influence over others.
What methods are you familiar with to identify and connect with these influencers who live outside the customer database?
Post a Comment