Thought Leadership

KOL Influence

The Strategic Importance of Micro-influencers

When discussing KOLs, we tend to associate the word ‘influence’ with a large reach, a significant audience, a well-known ‘name’ etc.

Yet in many therapy areas, micro-influencers may have a limited reach (as measured by traditional KOL activity metrics) and may not be as visible or have instant name recognition but are highly respected in their niche areas of expertise.

If your medical strategy calls for education, action, and advocacy around specific therapeutic topics that affect a select group of HCPs, then micro-influencers will be of tremendous importance given their specific expertise. They will have the knowledge, skills, and ability to engage in constructive scientific dialogue with your target HCPs around hyper-specialised topics that represent their expertise.

What often makes such micro-influencers even more important is that in many therapy areas, there also exist micro-communities of HCPs – subject matter experts, frontline HCPs, and stakeholders highly engaged with a very specific diagnostic and management issue through shared interest and advocacy.

The “micro” refers to the focused nature of such communities and the specificity of the cause around which they coalesce. The diagnostic and management issues that lie at the heart of such micro-communities can often be integral to your medical strategy's success, hence the importance of identifying and working with the right micro-influencers.

However, a significant challenge with identifying micro-influencers is that they will not typically be picked up by traditional KOL identification methods because those methods focus on the level of activity, degree of connections, etc.

Likewise, the algorithm of a syndicated database may look at the activity history of potential micro-influencers and consider them simply as a ‘lower-tier expert’ with limited influence/impact in your therapy area.

So only by engaging other KOLs, experts, and the specific micro-community that you need to work with can you accurately discover the truly important micro-influencers that have the power to drive forward your strategic imperatives.

For more information on identifying micro-influencers community KOLs/experts, talk to us or visit VMLY&R - KOL Insights.

Keywords: KOL identification, KOL mapping, Community KOLs, KOL influence