You know influencer marketing—but are you overlooking your biggest influencer of all? Your boss is an influencer too, says Rebekah King, Consumer Communications Manager at Kelley Blue Book. And the ‘numbers people’ you report to are the ones with the budgets. You need to connect with them in their own language – that’s numbers, charts and metrics. And it’s not hard when you know how. View the

1. Hey Influencer: Try Influencing
Your Boss!
Presented by Rebekah King
Consumer Communications Manager, Kelley Blue Book

2. Rebekah King
Consumer Communications Manager
Kelley Blue Book
@rebekah_king
• Devises and implements online and offline social media
strategies that increase awareness among consumers,
particularly Gen Y and Millennial groups.
• Ensures that all interactive promotional efforts are
aligned with overall corporate goals and strategies.
• Develops and implements programs that increase brand
awareness in the consumer marketplace, while increasing
traffic to the company’s website and social channels.

3. Setting expectations
For both internal and external influencer outreach, we hold three steps
to ‘awesomeness’
1. Identify the influencers
2. Learn their language
3. Get to work
I’ll share the theory and the practice I have applied at Kelley Blue Book.
Because we are a private company, exact values may be blurred.
While we do discuss competitive segments, I will not be commenting
on our competitors.
@rebekah_king

4. Three Steps to Influencer Awesomeness
1. Identify the influencers
2. Learn their language
3. Get to work
@rebekah_king

5. Whoever you are...
• new media, public relations, communications,
marketing, blogger outreach, influencer
outreach, social media, consumer marketing,
community management, marketing
technology, social strategy, digital strategy,
public outreach, digital marketing specialist,
community creator/manager & specialist,
online communities, interactive production,
integrated marketing
@rebekah_king

6. ...you report to someone
• Manager
• Director
• Chief Executive or Vice President
• CEO or President
• Owners or Board of Directors
CEO
PR Marketing Product Analytics Sales Legal
Product
Social Media KBB.com
Development
SEO Research
@rebekah_king

7. Influencer outreach begins within your
org
• Your boss Metrics level out
the playing field
• Their boss
• The ‘dude’
– He or she who thinks they should be your boss
• The ‘hater’
– He or she whose budget was redirected to you
– He or she who (insert political reason to hate you
here)
@rebekah_king

8. Three Steps to Influencer Awesomeness
1. Identify the influencers
2. Learn their language
3. Get to work
@rebekah_king

9. Learn the language of the influencer
It’s all about them Only you
• Their metrics can bring
clarity
• Their goals
• Their motivations
• Their strategy CEO
PR Marketing Product Analytics Sales Legal
Product
Social Media KBB.com
Development
SEO Research
@rebekah_king

10. The Language of Kelley Blue Book
We speak ‘dashboard’...
...and make decisions based on ‘projections’...
@rebekah_king ...but, I work with ‘people’

11. Three Steps to Influencer Awesomeness
1. Identify the influencers
2. Learn their language
3. Get to work
*Remember: when you work smarter first, ‘hard’ is do-able
@rebekah_king

12. The Language of Kelley Blue Book
C-o-r-r-e-l-a-t-e
@rebekah_king
@rebekah_king

13. Get To Work
• Develop Context
• Put a Plan in Place
• Communicate
• (begin again)
@rebekah_king

14. The Language of Kelley Blue Book
C-o-n-t-e-x-t
@rebekah_king

15. Why outreach? Overview Data
Blogs
@rebekah_king

16. Why outreach? Overview Data
Social Media
@rebekah_king

17. Why outreach? Trended Data
@rebekah_king

18. Get To Work
• Develop Context
• Put a Plan in Place
• Communicate
• (begin again)
@rebekah_king

19. Put a Plan in Place: Program Snapshot
What
A program to systematically allocate staff time to developing
relationships with key influencers in non-traditional media
(making friends)
• Why
– Value to the Business
• Drive traffic to KBB.com (direct revenue impact)
• Increase page rank via backlinks (indirect revenue impact)
– Value to Marketing
• Increase share of voice in the marketplace
• Decrease competitors share of voice in the marketplace
• Who
– The people with the greatest impact on our ‘why’ objectives
• When
– Ongoing, with Director reports monthly and org reports quarterly
• Where
– Online (blogs, email, social media)
• How
– Multimedia outreach and more TBD
@rebekah_king

20. Get To Work
• Develop Context
• Put a Plan in Place
• Communicate
• (begin again)
@rebekah_king

21. Speak the language: Executives
@rebekah_king

22. Speak the language: Teams
@rebekah_king

23. Ways to Communicate
Share everything, somehow
• Executive Briefings
• Sharepoint
• Internal presentations
• Lunch & Learns
• Analysis
• Post-ops
@rebekah_king

24. Rebekah King
Consumer Communications Manager
Kelley Blue Book
rking@kbb.com
@rebekah_king
@kelleybluebook
YouTube.com/KBB
/KBB

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