Influencers Underpin Marketing Programs at Tech Companies
The most successful tech companies already know that their prosperity depends on recommendations from enthusiastic users and partners. Depending on your lens, these are the people known as advocates, influences, or influencers.
The most obvious example of an evangelist program that worked — and still works — was from Apple, who coined the term when launching the Macintosh. Guy Kawasaki, the legendary Apple evangelist, was a pioneer in creating Apple’s program to target schools. His job was to encourage developers to make software that could be used in education. Apple’s decision in the 80s to target schools proved prescient, because the kids in those schools grew up into today’s iPhone buyers, and many of them, Apple fan boys, are today’s influencers.
But in the 1980s, it was far more difficult to be an evangelist. Almost everything had to be done in person, and the easiest way to scale that was through independent user groups over which the company had little or no control. Now, with the internet, it’s possible to run global influencer and community programs under company auspices.
On this month’s IMC call, we listened to three members of the IMC who run three different programs that help enable customers and partners to be influencers and advocates, both on and off line. What’s remarkable is how different they all are.
All of these engagement programs are separate from their official “advocacy and influencer” programs, which are smaller, more exclusive programs that give the biggest ecosystem evangelists more access, status, and tools from the company.
The Qlik Nation program emerged from Qlik’s customer programs department. Using the Influitive platform for structured engagement — read this article; write a review; Tweet this; give us your survey feedback — the program has a strong gamification component, and this allows participants, many of them newcomers to advocacy, to engage at their own speed. Qlik didn’t just dump their users into the group; they started slowly, inviting in customers in small batches, and ensured they had a stream of interesting content to engage with. In fact, participants rate keeping up with the company as one of the key benefits of the program. Rewards for participants range from the normal branded swag to project reviews with product experts from the company— and people save up for them!
The NetApp United program is very different. About 30 people are part of the original influencer advocacy program, the NetApp A-Team, a high involvement, tight community that would be difficult to scale. So to broaden and grow its influencer community the company started a new program called NetApp United. Membership is still by application, but is more like a fan club for the company and is open to people who are not already well-known influencers. Members receive both greater access to NetApp teams as well as help and training expanding their individual influencer practices.
The Docker Community Leaders program, on the other hand, grew up out of the grass roots movement of people organizing meetups across the globe. The community events are run by local organizers, and the company keeps the overall program running via Meetup and Mobilize. The Community Leader program supports these community organizers via a program that is complementary to the more evangelical Docker Captains program.
Whether you decide your community engagement and influencer programs should have elements of a structured engagement platform, an influencer enablement and training program, or a program that supports community organizers, it’s important to set out your objectives. Whether you want to find customers who will speak for your company at conferences or advocates who will engage with your brand on social media, you will already find models out there to emulate.
