Use Key People to Reach Your Target Audiences
by Dick Dyer, APR

Whether they run a non-profit organization or a Fortune 500 company, leaders want the quickest ways to get target audiences to buy their products, services, or ideas. While there are no “silver bullets” in the marketing world, there are some effective and inexpensive ways to put an organization in the minds of its target audiences.

One way is to involve the opinion leader network. The opinion leader concept was made popular in the last couple years by books like The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

I started working with the opinion leader approach 19 years ago while on assignment for Grant Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. By working with opinion leaders inside that city hospital, I was able to prevent the building of an unneeded emergency room, by providing patients with blankets and pillows instead.

How did this happen? We carefully conducted a series of interviews with key opinion leaders within the hospital, with semi-internal groups like ambulance crews, and with actual pateints. Our research confirmed that there was no need for an emergency room, but there was a need for basic services like blankets and pillows.

It seemed that ambulance crews were replacing their soiled blankets and pillows with hospital-issued blankets and pillows. In retaliation, the hospital emergency room staff stopped stocking those essentials and sent the ambulance crews out the door to get their own gear.

The net result: The patients suffered. They often would arrive in trauma and couldn’t be comforted with the warmth of a blanket or the comfort of a soft pillow, while they awaited treatment. When asked about customer satisfaction, they responded extremely negatively.

Those low ratings were sending people to the two other competing hospitals in Columbus. After our research, the hospital chief executive immediately ordered the reinstatement of blankets and pillows (along with several other small changes), and the numbers shot back up to where they should have been.

That saved the hospital lost patients and the huge expense of construction. This example seems extreme, but my work finds similar examples on a daily basis. Organizations frequently take extreme measures to solve problems that could have been solved by simply asking the right questions of their opinion leaders.

There are three types of opinion leaders that are most important to an organization. Knowing who they are and what they think will help you reach goals faster than any other steps you can take. So, who are they? Gladwell, the author, refers to them as: salespeople, connectors, and mavens.

Salespeople are the folk who can persuade effectively. They are like the old E.F. Hutton ads—when they speak, people listen. I know the mechanic and I talk to him whenever I’m in the market to buy a car. He often influences my choices.

Salespeople are passionate about their subjects to the point that they have anticipated many of the likely questions and have a ready answer that is infectious to those who listen to them. There are salespeople out there who are knowledgeable, or should be, about your organization. It is critical to know what they are saying about your company.

Connectors also are important. Paul Revere and William Dawes were both charged with letting everyone know the British were coming. Yet, most people don’t remember Dawes. Why not? Dawes was not a connector.

Revere was more effective because he was connected to every doctor in the region. Those doctors knew everyone and could quickly spread the message. Look for people with large Rolodexes who care about your business.

I’ll leave you with my favorite group, the mavens. Maven is a Yiddish word meaning “one who connects knowledge.” Mavens pride themselves on knowing everything about a particular subject.

I have a friend in western Maine who is a Maven on baking. She can tell you everything about baking equipment, products, and how to bake. She goes to the best conferences on the subject, buys lots of books. If you have anything to do with the baking industry, you’d better be in touch with her. She will know everyone who should care about your product or service.

People can have more than one role, too. My mechanic, the salesperson, also is a maven when it comes to certain makes and models of cars and trucks.

Finding these opinion leaders will save enormous time and expense in selling products or services. In two days time, I mapped the opinion leaders for a client of mine, the city of Erie, Pa. That city of 200,000 people had just less than 10 opinion leaders whom I really needed to reach, to present my client’s idea. I did that, and persuaded the city to adopt a new idea.

Earlier, I mentioned the “low cost” associated with this approach. This process is inexpensive because you can frequently find out what you need to know by interviewing 10 or fewer people in a span of days.

As I say to my clients: “If you want to move a target audience toward your goal, you have to find out where they are, you have to ask.”

Dick Dyer is nationally accredited in public relations and owns Dyer Associates in Winthrop. He can be reached at dyerapr@fairpoint.net.