In their new book, Influencer Marketing, Nick Hayes and Duncan Brown make the case that most businesses are squandering their marketing dollars by spending them on press and analyst relations. In fact, they argue, those influencers have relatively little impact on customer buying decisions. Businesses would be better off choosing the 50 or so people who really do affect those decisions and marketing to them through a coordinated program of highly personal contacts. Some of the categories of influencers they identify might surprise you. In this interview, Nick Hayes makes a case for the emerging discipline of influencer marketing.
This interview was conducted at the New Communications Forum in Santa Rosa, Calif. shortly before Paul’s keynote interview with Nick.
Download the podcast (11:24)
It’s quite mistaken to suggest that the media and analysts don’t have influence. Certainly they are not the only influencers, but it would be crazy to ignore them. Analysts influence hundreds of billions of dollars of spending.
The firms with the best ‘influencer relations’ programs tend to be those that also excel at analyst relations – a great example is SAP.