Finding And Influencing The Influencers

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T'preneurship Headlines

Technopreneurship

Written by Nandini Hirianniah

Monday, 09 March 2009 23:44

They are a small group of people, but they could well control the destiny of your start-up. Here's how to first spot and then make the most of early adopters and innovators.

in today's world, thousands of advertising messages are aimed at us. At the same time, attention spans are rapidly getting shorter and the lines between PR and marketing have gotten blurred. All this, coupled with social media and social marketing coming into play, has made it very challenging for start-ups and new products to reach out to users and create brand recall and recognition.
For a start-up company or brand (for simplicity, I will use ‘start-up' to refer to all these three entities in this particular article), it is an on-going, ever evolving process to build an identity, and to increase recall and recognition. With the increased clutter in the world around, it is very important for start-ups to clearly identify who they are reaching out to, what the message is, and the impact of the communication.

Reaching out
In the current market scenario, it makes sense for any business to look for channels that have high viral effect, low customer acquisition costs, and with the potential to build high degrees of trust and awareness. Entrepreneurs can consider exploring the following options:
Founders as brand ambassadors: It is important for founders to channelise their efforts towards constantly building an identity for their start-up with themselves as ambassadors. Constant interaction and discussion about the start-up and business offering, candid sharing of opinions and thoughts on varied topics, communicating the USP (unique selling proposition)-all these go a long way in helping early adopters identify with you as the founder(s) and the brand at large. This also helps in building awareness and trust towards the start-up.

Vijay Mallya of the UB, Kingfisher Group and Richard Branson of Virgin are great examples of founders as effective brand ambassadors. Both have worked their way up in building and expanding their business empire, constantly promoting their products and offerings. From Branson appearing almost naked for a key business announcement at the New York Times Square and flying gas balloons that feature the Virgin brand, to Mallya personally sending out messages to all travellers on Kingfisher Airlines and living a lifestyle that reflects the brand-these business heads have done it all and constantly re-invent themselves to reach out to, and make an impact in the users' minds.

Reaching out to early adopters or influencers: For start-ups, it is important to engage in constant dialogue with early users. These early adopters are those who associate with your offering for various reasons:
They try everything that is new.
They are curious about the offering as it is a domain they are working on.
The start-up is their neighbour.
They love to give their opinion on various things.
Early adopters or influencers are special because they take to a new offering easily, are candid about their feedback, have more patience than normal users to try and test the product or service, and thus help fine-tune it. Most important, they are the ones who talk about and spread the word about the start-up. Therefore, it is important to reach out to these people, create a feedback channel, interact with them regularly, and improve on the offerings based on their inputs.
While interacting with influencers, it is important to constantly communicate with them and ensure that they see the constant evolution in the business offering. Keep the influencers interested and influence them by way of fine-tuning the offering, making it easy for them to talk about it and promote the offering further. Such people have a very wide circle of influence in society; hence, the term ‘influencers' to describe them.

While at Madhouse Media (one of the first organised movie rental services that was acquired by Seventymm in 2007), the one important task I had was to continually seek out avenues and opportunities to reach out to, and establish a feedback loop with the end users, by way of direct interactions or through other mediums of communication. Sameer Guglani (co-founder of Madhouse Media) and I did this to establish trust among the users about the founders-the people executing the idea.
Influencing5

Finding influencers
It is easy to talk about communicating with influencers or early adopters, but how on earth does one go about finding them? Well, the following are some good places to start your search.
Media: The media not only helps you to reach out to a large audience, but also to interact with the early adopters first-those who can influence society! The messages sent out via these channels have successfully created brands, heroes, patrons and, most of all, trust in the world. This channel includes the print media, radio, and online media too-blogs, news sites, and social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Many people recognise Basecamp of 37Signals because of the blog signalvsnoise. The founders wrote about things that mattered to them on their blog and started sharing their experiences with a set of readers, who would later become early adopters of their business offering. Their blog and their presence in the online world helped in creating a strong recall factor in the minds of those in the online world, the early adopters for Basecamp.

Public interactions: This tool is one of the oldest-it has been around since Aristotle's time. Public representation of the brand and its ambassador has a long lasting impression on users, increasing the chances of recall, recognition and loyalty. This includes demos, presentations, talks, mixers, meets, tweet-ups, and other face-to-face communication.

The more you interact with people face-to-face, the better it is for you to make a lasting impression. Interact with early adopters, opinion leaders, and influencers. Engage with them intellectually, challenge their notions, and allow your views to be challenged. Many successful personalities are people with good interpersonal and presentation skills, with the talent to reach out to and convince people about their thoughts.

Influencing the influencers!
It is not enough to find influencers. You have to influence them, in turn. How can you do that? Well, here are a few pointers.
Timeliness: Repeated updates that reach out to the early adopters, via:
Announcements of some important progress in the business offering or start-up.
Reiteration of what the start-up stands for and what the founders'/promoters' vision is.
Constant updates on relevant business related topics.
Open a dialogue with the early adopters. Listen to them, question them, and find out how things are every now and then. Make sure you delve deep into what their impression is about the business offering, how they use it, what they think needs to be changed-show them your concern, show them you care!

As part of Madhouse, Sameer and I continuously kept in touch with many people-in the media, early adopters, bloggers, and others. We made it a point to interact with everyone-big and small, as we believed that there is something to be learnt from everyone. We informed people of our progress, involving them in discussions specific to Madhouse and otherwise, and connecting them to others. We did this through informal regular mail interactions, commenting on the writers' articles, blogs, making a friendly call once in a while (with an update, question, connection or just an exchange of greetings) and other means. If we missed a movie or slipped up on our service for what ever reason, we would send a small little cake with a sorry note. This paid off as these early adopters who saw us sweat it out and pay attention to details, spread the word and helped us grow our customer base later.

Quality: Communication that has value, and that creates trust and exhibits the brands and the ambassador's authority over specific areas of expertise, can play a major role in influencing influencers. Such communication can comprise:
Authoritative write-ups about the field of expertise.
Analysis, projections, predictions in the area of expertise.
Taking a ‘stance', which the start-up and the founders will stand for and project.

I admire Jason Calacanis, Seth Godin and Paul Graham because all these people have a view point and are articulate about it, providing useful insights, challenging my intellect and giving me more to carry away each time I read their blog, write-up or an article about them. This is what we tried to do as part of Madhouse. We had our viewpoints and made sure we expressed them on various forums. Madhouse stood for "legal rentals," "doing things the right way," "organising the rental business in India," and "quality home video experience." Thus, we made sure we expressed our viewpoint and what we stood for in our words and actions. We also wanted to share our experiences as entrepreneurs and so we did, each time we met an entrepreneur, and in our personal blogs.

Innovative methods: Find the most economical and innovative methods of reaching out. Use smart techniques, but not overtly obvious ones. These days, with the social media channels, reaching out and creating a buzz is no longer expensive. Be on the look-out for venues to reach out-it could be the blogger you meet in a mixer, a journalist who is a friend's friend, or just you who's active on the social media channels. The best marketing is the one that does not cost a penny!

Who's got to do it?
Well, it is the person you see in the mirror-you! As the founder, promoter, CEO and stakeholder, you have got to do this. It's an ongoing task, it helps immensely and the returns are immeasurable. No outsourced firm, no internee, no management hire can do it for you. It is very important for a start-up to have the main stakeholders put in the effort of spreading the word for their start-up to build an image for them. It is of utmost importance that stakeholders interact with influencers and early adopters. Build trust, share the vision of the company with them, and for all you know, you might find your potential investor, partner or employee from among them!

At Madhouse, Sameer and I did all the work ourselves, from taking orders on the phone, buying movies and packing them, to delivering them to the users' doorsteps, and this paid off for us as a company. It helped us in building good processes and training employees.
It also helped us establish a relationship with the early users and get first-hand feedback from them. We were the ones who stood there in the mall and sold those initial memberships, interacted with people who were reluctant to take the membership and understood their concerns, fine-tuned the sales pitch and re-sold to the apprehensive ones! We were there in conferences, bar camps and mixers, representing Madhouse, talking about the concept and getting feedback. All this helped us establish Madhouse as a brand among the influencers, who in turn became spokespersons for the brand!

While doing all this, it is important that founders and stakeholders are:

Humble, as humility disarms.
Honest, as it helps win people over, build trust and create deep relationships.
Fair, as this is the best way to run a business.
Quick to accept mistakes, as this is another good trait that makes people like you. Everyone makes mistakes; the one who accepts it and changes is a winner!
In any society, the early adopters or influencers are the ones who have their antennae activated to receive and accept new things. If a product solves a problem or addresses a need, then it is almost sure to be noticed by these early adopters who will give you the advantage of candid feedback and help you improve on your business. So, keeping your ears closer to the ground will help you improve and spread the word through these sneezers!