New Book Advises Brands to Broaden Influencer Marketing’s Potential

Businesses, brands and agencies have influencer marketing all wrong. At least that is the claim made by industry thought leader, Jason Falls, in his new book 'Winfluence: Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand'. The third title from the Kentucky-based digital strategist hits store shelves 23rd February. It is available now from online retailers.

“When most people think of influencers and influencer marketing, they think of Instagrammers and YouTubers posting about a product,” Jason explained. “It has biased the way most businesses think about the practice. But influencer marketing is far more than social networks or even online activities. The industry is focusing on the influencers. It needs to focus on the goal - to influence.”

'Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand' argues the business world has pushed the practice of influencer marketing into a corner. Simply by labelling it 'influencer' marketing, we predispose one another to think of using social media stars with big followings in pseudo-advertising executions. Jason proposes we reframe our thinking to focus on 'influence' marketing (without the 'r') so we can get back to focusing on the goal - to influence - rather than the channel - the influencers.

“The biggest void in most influence marketing thinking these days is offline influence,” Jason said. “'Winfluence' makes the case for broadening our perspective to move businesses and brands forward in the practice rather than being stuck in pay-per-post tactics.”

Jason poses his proposition through his unique, no-nonsense voice and engaging storytelling style by framing how the problem of mislabeling the practice of influence came to be, establishing the business case for correcting it and illustrating how to approach this newly reframed approach - influence marketing - strategically. 

'Winfluence' establishes six steps to building successful influence marketing campaigns, providing the reader with practical, how-to instructions for implementation. But further dives into Jason’s Four Purposes of Influence Marketing, a deep discussion of case studies which bring to life the significant strategic output of influence work: persuasion, association, validation and enthusiasm. It also includes usable scorecards to help brands prioritise influencers and measure influence marketing success.

The book is published by Entrepreneur Press and will be available in paperback, ebook and audio book format. The title is available online from Entrepreneur Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers. 

'Winfluence - Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite Your Brand' is Jason’s third book on digital marketing strategy. He is an award-winning digital strategist who has been recognised as a social and digital thought leader by Entrepreneur, the BBC, the Wall-Street Journal, Forbes and BusinessWeek. Jason has served as director of digital strategy at Cornett since 2017. He also hosts a companion podcast also called 'Winfluence', which can be found here.