While Klout may be a good starting point for research, it doesn’t even scratch the surface on quantifying a person’s influence. And, Klout’s latest addition, Klout Perks, is even more problematic. Perks lets online influencers receive free or discounted deals on products directly through the Klout dashboard. While this seems like a good idea on paper (Hey, who doesn’t like a good freebie?), I’m going to argue that it’s destined to fail. Here’s 5 reasons why.
1. It Puts Too Much Weight On Klout’s Mysterious Influence Score.
The majority of these perks are based off the presumption that you have a certain Klout score or higher. The problem with saying that you need a Klout score of 60 hypothetically or higher is that it becomes a free-for-all to get freebies. Those folks, with a 60+ score, could range from tech enthusiasts to mommy bloggers and eco-friendly outdoorsman. And even if you tack on extra qualifications like you must be influential about three or four topics on Klout, chances are you still have a much bigger umbrella of people than the core you should be targeting. Most people will sign up for this freebie, but an even smaller number will remember what the product is and buy from the vendor later on. See how this could be troubling?
2. You Can’t Quantify Influence
The next troubling issue has plagued Klout from the get-go. That’s you simply can’t quantify influence on a 1-100 score. It just doesn’t work that well. This will be a major sticking point down the road when Klout Perks tries to appeal to more marketers.
3. Poor Targeting
Klout has also been investing more time trying to gauge the topics that their online influencers are influential about. While it’s gotten better, they still have a long way to go. For instance according to Klout, I’m influential about social media, public relations, blogging, fast food and airports. Now, I’d like to think they are currently batting a 60%. Now, I have no idea how they found that I was influential about fast food and airports other than I occasionally use the hashtag, #airportpeoplewatching. A fun, mindless way to pass time in the airport. If you haven’t tried it, you should. I’ve seen some amusing things in airports, including a mother holding her baby while cursing out a woman in a wheelchair. Talk about staying classy, but I digress. See my point. Targeting people based on Klout’s influential topics can be a sticky situation.
4. A Free-For-All For Lazy PR Pros
Klout Perks is probably the closest thing to maximizing laziness for PRos. They can register for a perk and giveaway a free trial or some other discount of their client’s product with the hope that people will magically flock to it. They will get this free trial, be so grateful about it and then they are going to magically be brand advocates for life. WRONG.
People in general will always love freebies. People will also always take advantage of freebies. But once the freebies are gone, they are going to forgot about your product unless you work really hard to win them over. That’s just not going to happen with continual Klout Perks deals, because people will continue to want bigger and better freebies which will either lead to two things: a.) the company going out of business and the PR team losing the account or b.) the “freebie-seeking customers” going elsewhere when you stop giving out Klout Perks.
5. Lastly, it will suffer a demise similar to Groupon.
Companies initially loved Groupon. They paid Groupon to send out this massive discount. Then, Groupon would send out this daily deal and thousands would buy it. Then, Groupon would take 25% of the revenue and the company would get the 25% that was left (since 50% was already discounted in the actual deal). The company was still happy of course since they got 1,000s of new customers until they realized all the customers were just in it for the great deal and most would never return.
I’m guessing similar issues will plague Klout Perks. Right now, it’s still a relatively new marketing platform. The companies that have hopped on board the Klout Perks bandwagon, such as AXE, Secret, Spotify, Red Bull and Subway, etc., are just beginning to experiment with the platform. They are testing it out and giving small deals to online influencers. Since it’s so new, they probably don’t have many metrics set out to gauge how it’s working or many expectations. Some of these perks, i.e. like the Spotify USA invites, have even had some success.
However as the platform matures, brands, especially the early adopter brands (mentioned above), are going to have more and more expectations and demand more targeted information from Klout. Unless the influence score algorithm and influential topics mature a lot, Klout will have a very hard time managing these new expectations.
Do you think Klout Perks will take off? Please leave your comments below in the comment section.
