Influencer Marketing Center of Excellence

Within the first edition of this influence transformation textbook, Influencer Marketing Center of Excellence, we discuss and share how marketing and communications leaders can enhance their integrated marketing and communications strategies by embedding additional, integrated dimensions of influence into the CX. Additionally, we introduce a new model of how the expanded role of IMR and the formation of an influencer marketing center of excellence can help to mitigate inefficiencies across matrixed marketing and communications enterprise organizations, and, as a result, elevate the purpose of IMR in brand strategy and CX design.

Influencers, by definition, have such rich consumer knowledge and relevant topical expertise that to not include them in initial campaign research, ideation, strategy, and planning pose significant missed opportunities. As modern business leaders struggle to remain influential and trustworthy themselves, not inviting the influencers who are influencing their target audiences into the boardroom is lost business insight. Influencers enable marketers to engage with consumers in ways that they never have been able to before. As IMR matures as an enterprise-level strategy, internal alignment to how influencers impact brand marketing and communications will become even more important. Trust is the new social proof and brands' many different touchpoints will need to reflect that in the form of influencers' opinions (i.e., influencer recommendations, advocacy, ratings, and reviews), which requires internal shifts and education in how brands communicate and act in these channels.

Liz Gottbrecht is VP of Marketing at Mavrck, where she manages brand strategy and performance marketing. She successfully coined the term 'micro-influencer' in July 2015 with a first-to-market campaign for Tom's of Maine. Her work has been featured in Adweek, Ad Age, Recode, Digiday, and Business Insider, among other leading publications.