Onalytica has been named by Gartner as one of its Cool Vendors for 2013. We are one of just five companies to be featured within its Consumer Dynamics report, which recognises innovative consumer research techniques. Our flagship solutions - Onalytica Voice of the Market (VoM) and Onalytica Influencer Relationship Management (IRM) – have been highlighted for their novel approaches to real-time insight and influencer marketing.
We are very proud to be identified as a Gartner Cool Vendor as it really is validation of our expertise in helping marketing professionals navigate the challenges of an evolving digital landscape and deliver impactful influencer engagement to give brands a competitive edge.
Influencer marketing delivers improved 1:1 marketing and communication results within the following disciplines: Corporate Communications, PR (Corporate and Product), Investor Relations, Content Marketing, Software and Platform Evangelism, Analyst Relations, Public Affairs and Blogger Relations.
For more information you can read the full press release or get in touch with tim [dot] williams [at] onalytica.com.
The Gartner report can be viewed here.
Gartner, the information technology research and advisory firm, has named Onalytica Cool Vendor 2013 in its Consumer Dynamics category.
In its analysis Gartner cites Onalytica’s two flagship solutions Onalytica VoM (Voice of the Market) and Onalytica IRM (Influencer Relationship Management) and their novel, real-time and scalable approaches to insight and influencer marketing*.
In naming Onalytica “Cool Vendor 2013” Gartner concludes their analysis by saying..
“Brand marketing and market research professionals across all consumer technology segments that want to understand their brand perception, market needs and competitor activity among different uses based on online information, as well as to have more impactful conversation with promoters/influencers for their brand, should evaluate Onalytica.”
*Influencer marketing here includes Corporate Communications, PR (Corp and Product), Investor Relations, Content Marketing, Software and Platform Evangelism, Analyst Relations, Public Affairs, Blogger Relations and similar.
The full analysis on the Gartner website (pay-wall)
One of the hottest marketing tactics today is content marketing. According to the content marketing institute content marketing can be thought of as owning your own marketing channel rather than renting it through advertising.
The general idea of content marketing is simple: organisations create interesting content which often educates and inspires decision markers, influencers and potential customers. It’s an effective way of winning mindshare and the idea of communicating with your market place by inspiring and educating them, rather than interrupting people with advertising, seems a great idea.
However, in order to get to the point where you can get your content in front of the right people, they have to become aware of you or your content. To achieve this, and then often establish an automatic email-relationship as people will have to register and give up their details to get the content, content marketers use a range of other marketing tactics, especially social sharing and interruption marketing (aka advertising).
But what if the content could automatically find its way to the influencers or prospects you are seeking to get the content in front of? And not only that, what if it arrived at the time when it was most likely to be useful to the recipient?
Sounds too good to be true? Well, not anymore.
With Onalytica IRM our patent-pending process for “reverse content matching” makes it easy (and automated).
An example shows how it works: Say you work for an organisation in the Big Data space. You have dozens, hundreds or sometimes, thousands of case studies, white papers, blog posts and Power Point presentations; all of which are available on your website for people to download (if they happen to find them).
Just upload all this content to your Onalytica IRM solution, then input your influencers, or let the system determine who the influencers are.
Now, every time the influencers (analysts, journalists, bloggers, developers, storage architects, etc.) say something online, on Twitter, in their publication or their blog – or even shares a link on Twitter, this content is matched by Onalytica IRM with your content.
Onalytica IRM will now automatically surface what we call “moments of influence”; situations where the influencers in your industry are likely to find a particular piece of your content useful.
The evidence is that influencers are not only very thankful when they are alerted to the content, but they start to evangelise it to their network, driving a more viral effect.
A key benefit to content marketers is that the distribution and effect of existing content is amplified, with increased ROI on the content marketing tactic as the result.
Further resources:
White Papers
IRM launch announcement
I am excited to announce the general availability of our new product Onalytica IRM.
Onalytica IRM helps deliver better ROI on all types of influencing activities including PR, Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, Analyst Relations, Software Evangelism, and blogger relations.
Some of the key benefits and features of Onalytica IRM:
View, monitor and analyse all your influencers in one place
Automatically identify Moments-of-Influence – opportunities to influence or be useful
Manage more influencers per employee
Measure the results of your influencing activities
Understand which influencing activities drive results
Structure your influencing routine
Supports team workflow
Influence on the go – from your mobile
Onalytica IRM is also a content marketers dream come true as it contains patent-pending functionality that automatically identifies when any content or marketing collateral you have is likely to be relevant and useful for an influencer.
This is a game-changer for organisations that have large amounts of white papers, case studies or similar. Simply upload them all to Onalytica IRM and it will automatically flag up when something is relevant for an influencer.
Onalytica IRM is 100% cloud-based so there is no software to install.
Get in touch to learn more about how you can scale your influencing activities and dramatically improve your ROI.
by Tim Williams
There have been many interesting articles recently about the ways in which influencer marketing is being transformed by social media, such as this piece from Sean Clarke, and this article from Intelegia, which give a great background into why and how brands are adapting their communications strategies to new media channels. An issue which receives less attention however is how companies subsequently measure the results of influencer engagement. This is a major challenge for many brands, but absolutely critical to success.
MEASURE AGAINST CORPORATE OBJECTIVES
When it comes to influencer engagement, many organisations continue to rely upon a gut feel that their efforts have worked, but have no way in which to measure the real impact of these efforts. Measurement is important for helping businesses understand not only how this form of influencer engagement compares with other marketing methods, but exactly what it is they are doing to drive the effect.
BIG DATA, BIG OPPORTUNITY
Change begets change, and as new forms of interconnectivity reshape the marketing communications landscape, new measurement techniques such as large scale data analytics are playing an increasingly essential role in influencer engagement programs. Big Data can be used to uncover influencers in relevant fields and measure engagement results in real-time, allowing brands to proactively re-align their influencer marketing campaigns, and feed this information back into their engagement strategies.
BEYOND SOCIAL MEDIA
Accurate identification and profiling of influencers is a key element of an effective influencer program. Someone who is influential in the area of music might be less so when it comes to consumer electronics or Hungarian politics, regardless of the size of their Twitter following or overall influence score! It is important therefore for businesses to differentiate between influence and popularity and engage primarily with those who are influential both within the framework of a brand’s defined business areas and within a wider context than a particular social media channel. While social networks represent an excellent opportunity for brands to communicate with end users they are not often a reliable tool for measuring influence.
PLAYING THE WEIGHTING GAME
The credibility of influence-measurement services such as PeerIndex, Kred and Klout remains a contentious topic (nicely summed up here). When it comes to measuring influence, it is important to remember that the primary objective of an influencer program is not just to influence the influencer. The real objective is to influence the influencer’s network, as this is the point at which the impact of influencer engagement is both felt and measured. Knowing how much ‘weight’ various influencers have within different topics and networks not only allows organisations to identify the best influencers to engage with, but also those who punch above their weight in terms of influence – these represent the ‘low-hanging fruit’ when it comes to engagement.
BUILDING YOUR INFLUENCER ENGAGEMENT PROGRAM
For a more in-depth look at influencer marketing, including a step-by-step guide to creating your own influencer engagement program, please check out our latest white paper.