Do You Know Who Your “Affluencers” Are?

Hope you don’t mind if we correspond via good old fashioned email. Much as we’d like to be tweeting you, we just can’t get this weekly rant off our chests in only 140 characters. Likewise, we love it when you respond (pro or con)--take all the space you need to share your thoughts.

Have you hear about this new demographic group called the Affluent Influencers (a.k.a. “Affluencers”)? We hadn’t either until iProspect’s latest research came across our radar this week. Affluencers have the financial means to make all manner of serious buying decisions for their personal and business lives. But, they also have wide followings, so when they green-light something, they influence many others and deliver “an exponentially larger total reach both in traditional, offline word-of-mouth, and in online/social space,” according to researchers.

For more on this topic, see last week’s post about knowing your WoMi (word of mouth score).

So who are Affluencers exactly? They’re about evenly split between Boomers, Gen Xers and Millenials and slightly more male than female. The common thread is that they have household incomes of $100K+, they’re well educated and they have the ability to affect the purchase decisions of others.

There’s a pretty good chance you have Affluencers on staff. Many of your clients and prospects fall into this group as well. You might want to look carefully at how you’re communicating with them. Here’s why:

• Millennials like to author and create content, while Baby Boomers like to listen and watch the Gen Xers prefer curating content and commenting in the social space
• Millennials are the most likely to engage via social media daily (57%), followed by Gen Xers (45%), and Baby Boomers (37%)
• Millennials are willing to pay for online news access, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers aren’t

The research looked at Affluencer values, preferences, and behaviors across the three generations of Millennials, GenXers, and Boomers. Though they share many commonalities, each generation also has unique needs, says the report.

• Millennial Affluencers are more likely to respond well to messages with social benefits (fitting in, being admired, etc.) while Boomer Affluencers are more focused on personal benefits.
• A substantial percentage of Millennial and Gen X Affluencers access the web regularly via their smartphones (69% and 58%, respectively), or their tablets (45% and 34%, respectively).
• A notable percentage of Affluencers regularly read print magazines (YES they read print) and are substantially more likely than their affluent but non-influential counterparts to read publications in the buying guide, cars/automotive, technology, and classified advertisements categories.

Researchers say Affluencers are respected “experts” because they are well informed and eat up buying guides, Q&A pages, advice columns:

• 90% of Affluencers research products and services online.
• iProspect research showed that 78% of Millennial and 66% of Gen X Affluencers use their mobile devices like a computer, checking e-mails and performing web searches.

The iProspect report suggests that marketers use research findings and company data to create highly targeted customer profiles. The study shows that:

• 50% to 65% of Affluencers (depending on generation) are always the first among their friends to try new products and services, making the concept of “NEW” an appealing message.
• 56% to 65% of Affluencers (depending on generation) are willing to spend money to save time, making efficiency a valuable benefit.
• Millennial Affluencers are more than four times more likely than Boomer Affluencers to create online content, making them much more likely to engage in participatory brand activities.

Macro View

Despite all the doom and gloom expected as a result of the partial government shutdown last month, sales and hiring actually accelerated in the service sector last month. U.S. payrolls advanced by 204,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said today—almost double what economists were forecasting. It’s really not even worth tracking the official unemployment rate anymore since the feds claim it actually increased to 7.3 percent from 7.2 percent last month. More on that disconnect next week.

More good news, The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said Tuesday that its service-sector index rose a full point to 55.4 last month—any reading above 50 is considered an expansion. The ISM index covers about 90 percent of the U.S. workforce, with heavy representation in financial services, healthcare, construction and retail. What’s more, the annual growth rates estimated for the U.S. recently came in at 2.8 percent in Q3—the fastest quarterly increase in output so far in 2013.

Conclusion

When it comes to reaching your target market, it’s not just connect with a single person, department or household; it’s about connecting with everyone who’s influenced by the decisions made by that person, department or household. As we discussed last week, good new travels fast, but bad news even faster. Choose you messaging carefully in this age of viral, exponential communication touch points.

More tips can be found on the FREE Resources page of our website.

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Tags: iProspect, affluent influencers, Affluencers, Institute of Supply Management, jobs report, Twitter 

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Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Not Federal Spending, Will Get Us Out of First Gear
Startups are what create net new jobs

Friday’s jobs report – most likely the last one we’ll see before the November elections – showed employers added only 114,000 jobs last month. Not a great result in an economy of our size, but better than many economists expected. Somehow the mediocre gain dropped the official unemployment rate to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent. We’re not going to waste your valuable time questioning the veracity of the numbers, but politicians who try to take advantage of this perceived job surge in their campaigns should be honest about the rest of the report—the share of jobless workers who’ve been out of work for at least six months is still extremely high at about 4.8 million. That’s about 4 in 10 total unemployed workers. Very depressing when we’re supposedly three years into the “recovery.” 

Long term joblessness, which tends to be a more accurate picture of what’s going on with mid-level and senior level job-seekers, has a debilitating effect on the economy. While some say it justifies the need for more federal spending to maintain and create jobs, we say long term joblessness highlights the need for more pure entrepreneurship and innovation. If there aren’t enough higher level jobs in the corporate and government sector for these talented folks, then make it easier for them to start their own companies, hire/mentor others and built productive assets.

As Thomas Friedman noted in his op-ed piece in yesterday’s New York Times, “If there has been one consistent weakness to this president’s public messaging, it is that it is often lacking in any excitement about innovation and entrepreneurship—the real drivers of our economy. In recent years, all the net new jobs in America have come from startups.”

Free agent economy

In many “idea” businesses, including software, media and marketing that are heavily dependent on out of the box thinking, you can get most of your work done by tapping into the “free agent economy” and using outsourced expertise. Here’s a great example of how companies are growing and moving the economy along by doing everything except hiring permanent full-time W-2 workers with benefits.

It’s like we’ve been saying throughout the economic downturn, there’s lots of work to be done, just not a lot of jobs in the traditional sense of the word “job.” Whether you’re a job seeker, an employer, a recruiter or an investor in companies, get used to the free agent economy. It’s here to stay.

Macro view

Despite the plague of high gas prices, long-term joblessness and a depressed housing market, Americans are still going to drive. And when they can’t squeeze another couple months out of their worn out vehicles they’re going to bite the bullet and get a new one. Driving (i.e. independent transportation) is part of our DNA and always will be. Case in point: Auto sales hit their highest level in four years in September, as nearly 1.2 million vehicles left the showroom—a 13 percent increase from a year ago. The cheap financing isn’t hurting either.

OUT TAKE: As auto makers and suppliers start to feel more flush, expect a significant surge in Super Bowl advertising this winter and stronger than expected ad spending across the board for a post-election year. Whether you’re in consumer or B2B, we advise getting your 2013 media buys in early this year as they’ll be more competition for desirable inventory than you’ve been used to fighting for since the recession began a half decade ago.

While the looming fiscal cliff on January 1 has been grabbing all the headlines, another large, but generally ignored cliff is about to wreak havoc with both individual and institutional investors—the amount of time that swollen private equity funds have to start making some deals or else return money to their investors. As this report related, “The private equity world is sitting on that 13-figure sum. It’s what the industry calls dry powder. If they don’t spend their cash pile snapping up acquisitions soon, they may have to return it to their investors.”

To make sure, we checked in with our friend Paul Brian Gibson, Portfolio Manager for Norwalk, CT-based Harborview Capital Management and he agreed.  “I’d say that’s just about right, and it’s been going on for quite some time, to the point where these private equity funds will have to start returning money to investors. Post-crash buyers finally came bidding, but sellers did not want to sell in the "hole", so like our residential real estate there was a strike.  Since then the amount of money private equity managers have had has grown, but the good deals have been done. You’ve seen M&A volumes down sharply as well (my investment banking friends are trying to hang on, but we should see more cuts into year-end by the JP Morgans and Bank of Americas of the world.


Conclusion

Let’s get these elections over with so we can start making long-term decisions, investing in great businesses, producing great products, services and marketing campaigns and keeping our customers and clients thrilled with what we do.


TAGS: auto sales, Paul Brian Gibson, Harborview Capital Management, jobs report, November election, free agent economy Thomas Friedman, startup companies


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