High Reach Influencer (HRI) and High Reach Influencer Value (HRIV)
High Reach Influencer (HRI) is a marketing term that identifies a person who refers a significantly higher number of other people to conduct business with a given company or organization relative to all who recommend the company or its brands. It has been suggested that High Reach Influencers represent the top 15% of people who recommend a specific product, service or brand to others in terms of the number of people they reach. The term is closely related to influencer marketing and has become especially important with the emergence of social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs and online product reviews as influencers can now reach a far greater number of people either directly or indirectly to influence others' purchasing decisions using these social media platforms.
The term was first used by Professional Certified Marketer and marketing blogger Dave Dolak in an analysis of social media as a marketing tactic. Building upon the research conducted in an October 2007 Harvard Business Review article entitled, "How Valuable Is Word Of Mouth?", Dolak put forth that High Reach Influencers are critical to identify, understand and quantify as part of one's marketing efforts in order to understand who is responsible for helping to drive the sales in any given company. High Reach Influencers often engage in word-of-mouth marketing -- online and offline -- and lead others to purchase products or services based on their personal recommendations.
While the authors of the original article identify Customer Referral Value (CRV) as an important factor and an important metric often overlooked by customer lifetime value calculations, Dolak underscores the importance of defining and profiling HRI's as an important metric to better understand how to improve the marketing efforts of a company or organization by understanding and influencing these people. He further suggests that HRI's may not themselves even be customers of the company thus making their identification difficult yet critical when designing marketing strategy. The fact that HRI's might not themselves be customers of the firm means by definition that they are often overlooked or neglected when organizations calculate customer lifetime value (CLV) and customer referral value (CRV). These influencers have become a critical element to consider when engaging in social media marketing.