The Right Influencers for Credibility Marketing

Part 6 – of “Focus on Business and Marketing Strategy”

Influencing the influencers to influence your customers.

There is a simple law of marketing, “perception is reality.” This speaks to the absolute importance of perception and how that perception is molded by credibility. Building credibility, as a focused and programmed campaign, will net quicker results, higher-paying customers, and long-term loyalty.

What in your life is more important than trust? Trust is often the filter you use in the most critical decisions you make. So building more trustworthiness into your product or company should be an important strategy. By firmly establishing credibility your product or company will stand above the competition or, even better, stand out as a benchmark of excellence.

When an influencer endorses your product whether that is a customer influencer, an editor, analyst, industry pundit or partner, they add instant credibility. These trusted third party influencers considerably reduce a customer’s decision making time when they vouch for the product. You are more likely to purchase a product that Bill Gates has waved around the podium at a keynote address, or with a customer testimonial, than if you had only heard abut it through advertising. And if that customer is a brand recognized company, it adds even more credibility.

So who are these influencers and how can you use them? Following is a small sample of the kinds of influencers are company could use, these could be subcategorized even further.

Industry	Possible Influencers
Technology and consumer electronics	Analyst firms
	Strategic partners: complementary products/technologies; consortia; development partners
	Blog personalities/user group moderators
	Customers
	Celebrities
	Press and media
Consumer packaged goods	Celebrities (actors, writers, sports celebs)
	Strategic partners / joint venture partners
	Mass consumer media and bloggers
	Individual users/customers
	Movies and TV (product placement)
	Social networking sites (YouTube, MySpace, Fark, Digg, etc.)
Books, videos, audio	Well-known writers
	Writers in the same genre
	Critics/reviewers
	Celebrities
	Strategic partners / joint venture partners
	Press and media, bloggers
	Amazon (There are a lot of ways to use Amazon to build your brand)
	Readers/viewers/listeners

How do you get these folks on board? Ask them. Start a relationship with them, pursue them with integrity as you would a sales target. Find inventive ways to initiate conversations. This is an inexpensive and yet very thorough way of establishing more trust in your brand, it just takes time in planning and relationship building but is worth the effort.