In the past few years we have seen a lot of talk around influ­ence mar­ket­ing. It seems as if mar­keters have start­ed to real­ize that we can reach our audi­ence in more than one way, not just shout­ing out our mes­sage. All of a sud­den mar­keters start­ed reach­ing out to “influ­en­tials” and ser­vices like Klout start­ed to have suc­cess. There was a hype around this top­ic about two years ago, that hype is gone, but influ­ence mar­ket­ing is now a stan­dard part of any mar­ket­ing cam­paign.

Influ­ence mar­ket­ing might sound hip and trendy, but it’s actu­al­ly one of the old­est forms of mar­ket­ing.

Any­one who has looked at the his­to­ry of PR knows the name of Edward Bernays (I talked about him in the arti­cle I wrote about PR and Mar­ket­ing before). Bernays, nephew of Sig­mund Freud, is to some known as the per­son who “invent­ed” PR, or at least made it impor­tant for busi­ness.

Bernays is so impor­tant in the his­to­ry of PR because of his tech­niques, but most­ly because he intro­duced a dif­fer­ent way of think­ing to PR (and mar­ket­ing for that mat­ter). He made the PR man think about who he was tar­get­ing, more specif­i­cal­ly: what the brain of those he is tar­get­ing wants.

Bernays real­ized that our brains work in mys­te­ri­ous ways. We don’t always do what we think is best for us. He real­ized (no doubt influ­enced by his uncle Freud) we are being led by those around us. We tend to behave like ani­mals and fol­low each oth­er around.

The word “pro­pa­gan­da” has a neg­a­tive ring to it because it reminds us of the way the Nazis and oth­er oppres­sive regimes worked. But pro­pa­gan­da in its essence is again some­thing sim­ple: it shows how we are influ­enced. It shows that the peo­ple around us influ­ence us.

If a group goes, we usu­al­ly have to go our­selves as well. We can’t stop it. It’s the essence of influ­ence mar­ket­ing: know­ing that peo­ple do what oth­ers do.

For cen­turies the peo­ple around us have influ­enced us. Take reli­gion, or take the fact that we live togeth­er in cities. We are group ani­mals that fol­low each oth­er. This means that the choic­es we make in gen­er­al aren’t our own choic­es.

I’ve often giv­en this exam­ple in my talks: look at your shoes; try to remem­ber where and when you bought them. Most of us will think that they bought them, but that is only part­ly true. Yes, you may have paid for them; yes you may have made the choice to pick that par­tic­u­lar pair of shoes from the rack, but the more impor­tant process was already behind you at the time of choos­ing. The choice was actu­al­ly already made.

Inside your brain dots were con­nect­ed. With­out real­iz­ing it you were think­ing about the response from your part­ner, your col­leagues, your friends. If you felt like they would­n’t approve of the shoes, you wouldn’t have bought them.

PR and mar­ket­ing real­ized this decades ago. It wasn’t just Bernays who made this hap­pen, many mar­keters were respon­si­ble for this. They knew that by push­ing the right but­tons, by get­ting the right influ­ence, we would make the “right” choic­es – buy­ing the prod­ucts they want­ed us to buy.

The Influence From Experts

“Experts” influ­ence peo­ple. These are very impor­tant peo­ple we believe to have knowl­edge around a cer­tain top­ic. We’ve always trust­ed those peo­ple.

The first doc­tors prob­a­bly had no idea what they were doing, but we trust­ed them. The first sci­en­tists told us the world was flat, and we trust­ed them. And the kings and queens told us to fol­low them, so we did. Why? Because we are human, we need to trust.

Take this to adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing and you will see some stun­ning exam­ples of how we’ve been fooled in the past. It wasn’t that long ago that we trust­ed our doc­tors to tell us what cig­a­rettes to smoke.

Because we trust experts on their opin­ions, using experts in adver­tis­ing and PR has always been a suc­cess­ful strat­e­gy. It’s not always eth­i­cal, though. Some­times experts are used for the “wrong” rea­sons – for exam­ple, in polit­i­cal issues: get­ting an expert to speak about a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion, telling the audi­ence “your” sto­ry, will help the sto­ry be more con­vinc­ing.

This is why we see experts show up in adver­tis­ing (even if the expert is just an actor). Dress­ing some­one in a white lab coat makes a sto­ry sound more legit. It feels like a doc­tor is telling us the prod­uct is good.

The “Will it Blend” videos were a suc­cess because they were dif­fer­ent, but also because founder and CEO of Blendtec Tom Dick­son put on a lab coat when show­ing how strong his prod­uct actu­al­ly was. The lab coat made a huge dif­fer­ence in per­cep­tion: it cre­at­ed trust.

Using these experts to con­vince peo­ple to believe your sto­ry or trust your prod­uct has always been a sol­id method. And we are now see­ing this hap­pen every­where on the web as well.

We use experts for overview posts. We use trav­el jour­nal­ists as experts to tell us where to go. We use expert blog­gers to tell our sto­ries. The Wiz­ard­ing World of Har­ry Pot­ter is a good exam­ple of how experts in a niche were used to spread a mes­sage.

The Real Influence: The People Around Us

Experts work well. They help get atten­tion to our prod­ucts. The prob­lem? They don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make our audi­ence buy our prod­ucts. Oth­er peo­ple are need­ed to do that: our social net­work, the peo­ple around us.

This is where many mar­keters instant­ly think: social media! They will try and cre­ate a viral cam­paign that will show your prod­uct to every­one, using their social net­works. Again, this is nice and it will prob­a­bly help cre­ate aware­ness of your prod­uct. It doesn’t make peo­ple buy your prod­uct.

If you want peo­ple to buy your prod­uct you need to use real influ­ence mar­ket­ing: get­ting peo­ple to use your prod­ucts and show them off.

This is where stealth mar­ket­ing and influ­ence mar­ket­ing start over­lap­ping.

Prob­a­bly the best exam­ple of stealth mar­ket­ing you can see in the movie “The Jone­ses”. Watch the trail­er:

This movie shows a fam­i­ly mov­ing into the sub­urbs. Not to live, but to sell. The stealth part is that nobody knows they are there to sell. The influ­ence part is that every­body around them at one point starts want­i­ng to have what they have. Now that’s real influ­ence!

Yes, this is a movie, but there are real life exam­ples as well.

Meet, for exam­ple, the Girls Intel­li­gence agency, where you can hire a “slum­ber par­ty in a box.” Sounds excit­ing? It isn’t real­ly. Basi­cal­ly it’s using teenagers to orga­nize a slum­ber par­ty and giv­ing them a box of free stuff to use and share at the par­ty. It’s teenagers influ­enc­ing teenagers with­out real­iz­ing they are doing just that.

These types of com­pa­nies exist all over the world. They hand out test prod­ucts to peo­ple. The real rea­son? They want peo­ple to use the prod­ucts so oth­ers will see the prod­ucts and want them as well.

Anoth­er good exam­ple is the stealth mar­ket­ing cam­paign Sony Eric­s­son used back in 2002 to cre­ate atten­tion for their T68i phone, back then one of the first phones with a cam­era. Instead of adver­tis­ing it, they send out actors with the phones, pre­tend­ing to be tourists or cou­ples. As tourists they would ask oth­er peo­ple to take their pic­tures. Instead of hand­ing them a cam­era, they hand­ed them their phones and chat­ted about it. Again, it’s influ­ence and stealth mar­ket­ing com­bined, because the peo­ple nev­er felt like they were being adver­tised to but were influ­enced by the ‘aver­age Joe’ they were talk­ing to.

It hap­pens all the time. Even online.

When we’re logged into Face­book and vis­it Tri­pAd­vi­sor, we will see where our friends have gone. It’s why ser­vices offer to ‘share with your friends’ that you just bought some­thing or just read some­thing. It will make them look good to your net­work. And there’s some­thing in it for you as well.

Peo­ple want to share, it’s in our nature. Espe­cial­ly when we are enthu­si­as­tic about some­thing, but more impor­tant­ly: when we feel that by shar­ing we can help oth­ers. Peo­ple want to be per­ceived as help­ful, so if they can help a friend with talk­ing about a prod­uct or ser­vice, they will.

What Does All This Tell Us?

We know that we’re being influ­enced all the time. How can we use this?

As mar­keters, it’s very sim­ple: you need to real­ize that your prod­uct doesn’t sell itself. It’s not even the sales depart­ment that sells your prod­uct. Peo­ple sell your prod­uct – they are the ones influ­enc­ing the buy­ers and mak­ing their deci­sions eas­i­er.

This means that when it comes to mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, you need to focus not just on the buy­ers, but on those sur­round­ing the buy­ers. The experts, but more impor­tant­ly: the peo­ple around them. Let them use the prod­uct, make them impor­tant and they will start “sell­ing” for you.

How are you using influ­encers in your mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy? Share what’s worked for you in the com­ments.