Intro: The Influence Gap.
Crystal Golightly: Hello everyone, we're back! I'm Crystal Golightly, and I'm here with Nathan Herrman.
Nathan Herrman: Hey Crystal.
Crystal: Hi! So, we've been gone for a while. Nathan and I have been working on what the next thing is that we want to chat about, and we've come up with an idea. This show is our introduction to The Influence Gap. Nathan, tell everyone tuning in: what does that mean?
Nathan: What does it mean? I think we're going to figure that out as we go! At the center of what we want to do is talk about all things B2B influence—the who, what, when, where, and why of influence in the B2B context, if you will. Who's influential? What do we do to track it? Everything that goes into that conversation.
Obviously, I work in analyst relations, and you work in the analyst ecosystem. That's something we're really comfortable talking about, and we're going to keep talking about it. I don't think you can talk about B2B influence without talking about analysts.
But there's so much more to it. How does an up-and-coming CMO consider an influence campaign for an early-stage startup? How does a demand gen leader go about shaping their campaigns in a world where people just aren't visiting websites as much? These are some of the topics we want to dig into. We want to talk about analysts, metrics (which is disgusting), influencers, and the media. I think we wanted to give ourselves a platform where we could really go where the conversation takes us.
Crystal: Not just a platform, but an opportunity to explore topics that our day jobs don't really allow us to. The one thing I want to swirl into everything you just talked about is that the machines do a lot for us now—way more than they did a year ago, right? So, I think about what influence is, what is influencing me, and how everyone's talking about the "human in the loop" and how relationships still matter.
Let's bring all of that together and think about decision-makers and influencers. How do we take our human side, the machines, and the data, and look at what that ecosystem actually looks like? At the end of the day, what is influencing you to make decisions? Whether that’s a decision to buy something in the consumer market, a decision to invest your time and energy, or buying a very expensive enterprise platform or service agreement. There are so many factors in how decisions are being made—or maybe those factors are actually getting smaller.
Exploring B2B Influence and Consumer Behavior
Nathan: Are we talking about the consumer market, by the way? You said, "what influences you to buy something..."
Crystal: Okay, that's a great question. The reason why I bring that up is because I have been saying this since the minute I came into this influence world. I used to say all the time that our enterprise users are consumer users first.
Think about yourself: you're using your favorite mobile device, you're buying stuff on Amazon, you're doom-scrolling through whatever your social media vice may be. You can't just tear those two identities apart. When you're used to a great consumer platform—let's talk about software, where you know exactly where to find everything—and then you go to your enterprise job, that seamless consumer experience heavily influences what you expect from your enterprise experience. All of this plays a role into who we are as technology consumers, buyers, and decision-makers.
Nathan: It's a really good point. I was at a conference a couple of years ago at a happy hour, and I believe I was talking to somebody from SAP—or a similar large SaaS company. We started talking about influence and how that relates to analyst relations and the wider marketing ecosystem. She told me that their marketing department had decided to create a TikTok account because they fundamentally believed that the buying center had shifted; it was more geared towards Millennials and, increasingly, Gen Z.
The thought was that if they spin up a TikTok account as a B2B organization and advertise on a consumer platform, they may end up reaching somebody who sits in that enterprise buying center. That's probably true. B2B buying absolutely extends into the consumer space, which is a really great observation. It's worth talking about.
I want to unpack that further. I was at the Forrester B2B Summit recently, and they mentioned that in the B2B context, the internal buying center is now made up of 11 to 13 individuals. Then, the external buying center includes about 7 to 9 external stakeholders—which could be analysts, influencers, or news media. Our worlds have increasingly become intertwined. That's just how it works.
The Interplay of Consumer and B2B Marketing
Crystal: You are dead on the money. You may end up being influenced in a consumer context for something that you'll ultimately use in a B2B context. Let's see if we can do something with it.
Nathan: It wouldn't be me if I didn't also say that whenever B2B tools find me during my personal consumer time, I kind of go, "What is this? How do you know me? How did you find me here?" But sometimes it's serendipitous. For instance, we're recording on Riverside right now, and that's a tool that found me in some of my consumer worlds. I remember thinking, "Yeah, I really like this tool for all these different reasons."
Crystal: Exactly. We use Opus Clip for our editing, promos, and sizzle reels, too.
Nathan: Yeah, our sizzle reels. Shout out to Opus Clip—not sponsored! It could be, but it’s not. We're obviously using it in a consumer context because we're doing this on our own time and volition, but I see a lot of B2B-centered advertisements around it. To be fair, there are tons of technology categories that span both worlds. Employee resource tools aren't being targeted to a consumer for consumer use—that would make no sense. But...
Crystal: But Nathan, sometimes they start out as consumer tools. Look at Canva, and how they are trying to pivot into the enterprise world. What does that journey look like?
Nathan: Just a quick shout out to the Decoder podcast with Nilay Patel—they had the Canva CEO on recently, and she is perhaps the most well-media-trained person in the world. So yeah, let's not touch that one!
Crystal: Interesting. Yeah, fair enough.
Vision for the Podcast and Future Conversations
Crystal: With that being said, I think we forgot one thing in terms of our vision for this show. We are not the ultimate experts. What we really want to do is talk to industry people—people we respect, people we find interesting, or just someone who wants to chat with us for 30 minutes to get to know us. We'll have a rotating guest. With what frequency? We don't know yet. It kind of depends on how much folks want to hear about the influence gap! But we're going to shine a light on what actually influences buyers, mostly in the enterprise tech market space.
Nathan: You do know that we've completely changed what we said at the beginning, though? [Laughs] I started talking about The Influence Gap as a podcast strictly about B2B influence, and now, over the course of talking, we've decided it's just about influence in general. That's some of the craziness you're going to get with you and I hosting a podcast together, but it should make for great conversations.
Crystal: And that's exactly what's so important about the human side of this era of work right now. With that, Nathan, do you want to close us out?
Nathan: Thanks for listening to Crystal and I ramble. There is an idea of a plan behind this seemingly total lack of a plan! We're looking forward to recording the first full episode for everyone. Let us know what you want to see out of the show; we take community seriously and want to build this with you, for you. In the meantime, stay safe, stay well, and we'll talk soon.
Crystal: Yeah! See you later, everyone. Goodbye!
