Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Intent versus Influencer Marketing

Quoting form a post I read recently: “A New Mindset is Needed” by Katie Delahaye Paine

“..in today’s environment, most decisions are influenced to a much greater degree by whatever your followers on Twitter, friends on Facebook recommend or what Google search delivers than they are by whatever ads pop up. Trying to decide what flat screen TV to buy, where to go for vacation, what movie to see, or where to make reservations for dinner, chances are you’ll either ask your friends on Facebook or Twitter for advice, or search on Google for reviews.”

While I agree with the above I think is missing a key point: in Social Media most of the time we don’t ask; instead we receive... our Facebook friends and the people we follow in Twitter or that we are connected to in other Social Networks bring information and product messages to us, and when they do it hits us at a completely different level because it is filtered and highlighted by the relevancy and context of the person that brings the information/recommendation forward. When my winemaker friend recommends a bottle, when my car fanatic neighbor recommends a set of snow tires, when my Science Fiction fanatic friend recommends a movie… you get the point… I know what to take from whom, because I have entitled them with different levels of authority in different areas of life.

Intent Marketing leverages the fact that I already had something in mind; and puts it a click away for me (most of the times through Keyword Advertising, or SEO). Influencer Marketing leverages the fact that people that share a relationship and a context likely share needs and desires as well, and this increases the power of the messages they deliver to eahc other (given the right context).

This is influencer marketing: it is not only about the person that has more friends or followers.. it is about finding those that are relevant to carry your message because they have the right context and relationships (a Mom with other moms, a Doctor with patients, a Computer Science Student with relatives that know nothing about computers), and it is about finding ways to entice them to carry that message for you (it is also about measuring the effectiveness of this operation and optimizing, that is a whole topic on its own).

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Filiberto.Selvas@Gmail.Com

2 comments:

Barbara French said...

Your use of the terms "intent marketing" and "influencer marketing" is superb. Wonderful compare/contrast. Thanks!

Filiberto Selvas said...

Thank you for your comment!