Motivating, Empowering and Retaining Your “Influencers”

Editor’s Note: Last time, Louise Rijk, Co-founder and Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Advanced Media Productions, introduced the concept of word of mouth marketing, or “WOMM” and showed how to find the right “influencers” to help promote your brand. This time, in the fifth installment in our series on driving traffic, Louise schools how to motivate, empower and retain those influencers so that they stay excited about your offerings and loyal toy our brand.

Motivating Influencers
Motivation can be challenging. Once you have identified the influencers, you need to look into what will help them help you.

Influencers enjoy being the first to know. They like to be “in the know” about new products, so that they can share the information with their friends. So give them exclusive access and special privileges, such as special access phone line, enrollment in any beta test programs, advanced information or demos of new products.

Learn what makes your influencers tick. It is usually not enough to rely on a positive experience of a great product to court the pure influencers. Identify upfront what social currency is required to motivate them to spread the word about your product or service. Influencers often demand real value for their participation in a “word of mouth” (WOMM) program, so some free stuff, a coupon and a short spot in the limelight usually does not work.

Finally, invite them in. Make it special and official. Invite your influencers officially into your WOMM program.

Empowering Your Influencers
WOMM is most effective when a product or service is new, unique, high-performing and fun—and therefore worth talking about.

1. Place the products or services in the hands of “influencers.” Give them a good product or service, and excellent customer service, so that they have something exciting to talk about.
2. Provide them with success stories about your products and services that they can talk and write about.
3. Provide product samples or literature that they can give out when they talk about your product or service.

Keeping Influencers Engaged
Once the WOMM campaign is underway, influencers need to remain engaged. This can be done in various ways:

• Keep the program visible and accessible for employees and influencers so that they can talk to each other.
• Respond quickly to opinions, questions, comments and feedback. Influencers expect that companies listen to them. There is nothing more discouraging for a loyal customer than to be ignored. Often their comments provide an early indicator of what others are thinking.
• Monitor the buzz online and look for ways to engage. Find out which blogs your influencers are reading and posting on, the forums they participate in, and the web sites they are visiting, because that may be where the next concentration of influencers is located.
• It is relatively easy to monitor influencers online. However, remember about 80 percent of WOM takes place offline. That’s why it is important to have your influencers report back on a regular basis or to meet with them in focus groups. What kind of conversations are they having with people? What are they saying?
• Influencers need recognition and rewards, or they will become inactive. The more personal recognition you can give them, the better. There is nothing more rewarding for an influencer than a “Thank you for your support” post from a company to a positive blog or forum comment regarding their product or service.
• Some of the most valuable feedback on your campaign may be negative. Don’t shut out the “haters.” Listen to them and engage with them if their comments are constructive.

There are many aspects to a successful WOMM campaign: the message, the product or service, listening to conversations, company commitment and many more. But most importantly, WOM is about people, and WOMM cannot succeed without loyal influencers who are spreading the message.

—Louise Rijk, Co-founder and Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Advanced Media Productions

View the other parts in this series:

Word of Mouth Marketing, I
25 Things to Think About Widgets
Leveraging Linkbait
Signal to Noise