December 20, 2005

Earlier this morning, Janet and I participated in a kick-off call for our latest and greatest foray into the great marketing unknown. We have commissioned the consulting firm Influencer50 to produce one of its self-titled research reports for us. These reports come highly recommended by the fine folks at Sterling Communications (VP Elke Heiss to be precise) and have already received rave reviews from the likes of NETGEAR, so we thought we'd give it a try.

A little background info from Influencer50's Web site:

Our popular Influencer50 reports identify and rank the 50 key influencers in your specific marketplace. These influencers are the executives, gurus, partners, distributors, trade association executives, financiers and industry authorities, among many others, who have the greatest impact on buying decisions in your sector.

Sounds good.  But this is the part that really got my attention:

Research has demonstrated that 10 years ago industry analysts and journalists made up between 75-80 percent of the major influencers on technology buying decisions. More recent research has shown that today that figure stands at 45-50 percent (dependent on exact marketplace). They're still very significant, but now almost 50 percent of influencers are neither analysts nor journalists.

It will take Influencer50 a couple of months to compile all of the info and deliver the final report (all 30 pages of it!), which will rank the top influencers according to market reach, quality of impact, frequency of impact, and closeness to decision.

Stay tuned for more on the process and the results...

Posted by at December 20, 2005

Comments

TJ Duckett email -

specifically... what is the market segment that they will be producing the report for?

Tara email - www.marqui.com/blog

Good question -- I should have specified that. It will focus on marketing automation.

Best,

Tara

Edw3rd email -

So... any news on this experiment?

Tara email - www.marqui.com/blog

Nope, nothing to report yet. We have to agree on initial survey questions and I have to provide some contact info for customers, prospects, etc. I should have new info in 3-4 weeks.

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