The Evil Marketer

This is first in a short series of posts that describe the Evil Marketer’s proposal for an influencer network; a radical new concept that could affect the way many of us experience marketing and brands based somewhat on the idea of “open source marketing” or “citizen marketing” introduced by other authors.

When yours truly thinks of the ideal marketing scenario, there are 3 core issues to consider and another, like the one true Ring, that rules them all. The three are:

1. Right Product
2. Right Time
3. Right Incentive

Almost every aspect of online marketing revolves around these three core principles. Google AdSense is a perfect example. It, by its very nature, already has #1 and #2 covered — the user is looking for the product right now (Right Time), and Google does its best to find the best match for what the user is looking for (Right Product). If the user sees a link that guarantees x% off, or if instead they find the merchant through a combination of Google and a coupon site, then all 3 are covered — a marketer’s perfect storm. All that’s left is to convert them quickly. Because if it’s not quick, there is always the potential for the One That Rules Them All to intervene:

Wife: Whatcha doing?

Husband (finger hovered over the “Order” button): About to buy a new X. The price is right, I need it ASAP, and I even found a 10% off coupon.

Wife: Just as long as it’s not Brand Y. My Dad [who is an expert on X’s of all kinds] says its the worst on the market and only suckers buy it.

Husband: Oh. I better keep looking then.

I am, of course, talking about the influencer.

Influencers aren’t always steering people away from products; in fact the internet has grown the positive aspect of the influencer more than anything else in history. What is the one thing in the above scenario that would have prevented Husband from listening to Wife after the damning opinion of Dad-in-Law the influencer? If Husband has seen a series of 5 star reviews at Amazon, headed up by a top 100 Reviewer who said that Brand Y made the best X he’d ever purchased.

Influencers come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they have a few things in common:

• They have more influence in certain niches/verticals than in others
• Their influence can be weakened or enforced greatly by the results of their recommendations
• Their scope of influence can vary widely, from one friend to millions of people
• Their influence can drop if they are being compensated for their recommendations (but not always!)

And one final commonality — the influencer and his or her recommendations, despite being the most powerful marketing force on the planet, have been almost entirely hidden from a marketer’s view or measurement.

Until now.

No, we can’t listen in to your private conversations and track a friend’s recommendation of a new movie to the actual ticket sale — yet. But most online word of mouth type marketing and all affiliate marketing (much of which is based, in some part, on an influencer recommending a product) can now be tracked, and as soon as mobile marketing takes the next step and starts letting you refer products and services and movie tickets to your friends via a trackable coupon or other incentive, then we will be watching over your shoulder, dear consumer.

The problem is that most of this is still de-centralized and segmented; Amazon reviewers, mobile marketing, social network members recommendations (especially recommendations from those with a lot of “friends”) — none of it really works together so an advertiser has a clear sense of where the influencers live and more importantly, how to get them talking about their products.

In part 2 I’ll discuss how these influencers need to stop giving away their “influence capital” for free and start monetizing it, and how a centralized network (or series of networks) needs to be developed for advertisers to strike deals with these influencers in way that doesn’t decrease the trust the influencer has gained.

Love,

The Evil Marketer

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 3:01 am and is filed under influencers, web 2.0, influencer network, marketing future, networks, brands, affiliate marketing, Evil. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.