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2.5 Minute Read
When it comes to reaching the influencers of decision-makers, there's a strange thing that happens in public affairs. Most campaigns treat all influencers equally, spending the same amount of resources to reach a Chief of Staff as a think tank analyst across town. This, of course, makes zero sense. In today's short read, we show you how to treat each influencer with the attention they deserve.
First, let's start with a simple question: "Who actually is an influencer to the decision-maker you're trying to reach?" We'll dig into the evidence over the next few weeks on how many influencers any one person can truly have. But spoiler alert, it's far fewer than most campaigns pay to reach.
For now, let's stipulate that there are various degrees of influencers. We can all agree that a politician's largest donor has far more influence on them than a junior lobbyist across town. So however you engage in influencer targeting, it's critical to distinguish between these groups in your targeting. The top donor should get a high volume of messages. The junior lobbyist? That should be up to what's left in your budget, if you want to target them at all.
Instead, most campaigns get sold black-box influencer targeting sets that don't allow you to distinguish who actually matters. This forces you to spend the same amount of money on that junior lobbyist as the top donor. If you're buying black-box influencer sets, you have no choice but to waste precious resources, and miss opportunities to get your message through to the people who matter the most.
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Do you think Toyota spends the same amount of money targeting someone who has built a car online and been on their lot, as they do to reach someone casually perusing Car and Driver? Of course not. The modern digital world means that organizations can micro-target different audiences both with tailored messages, and with a hyper-tailored volume of those messages. It takes work to run precision campaigns like this, but the reward is worth it.
In public affairs, this means identifying key influencers individually. This group should get the highest level of attention. There's also a role for reaching a broader group of people. You might call them "insiders," "opinion leaders," or maybe the "chattering class." (No offense, as every reader of this newsletter probably falls somewhere in this group for some politician.) This is a much larger audience, and modern AI tools make it practical to identify these targets anonymously and at scale.
Once you've separated the key influencers from this much larger audience, you can give them each the care and feeding they deserve.
🔱 Check your last influencer targeting campaign and see if you can identify who in the audience was actually a key influencer to the decision-maker.
🔱 For your next campaign, start with key influencers. Build your campaign plan around first maximizing frequency to this group. Use your remaining budget to reach the outer orbit of influencers, at a much lower frequency.
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