Know Thy Influencer pt.1: Focusing Your Influencer Marketing Campaign
Trust paradox is a term coined by a former consultant and a renowned author John Hagel the Third. According to John, who is a public speaker and writer dedicated to clearing the foggy roads of the intersection that is business strategy and information technology development:
We all value trust, but have very little of it.
John is absolutely correct. With every survey, from quarter to quarter, and year to year – people emphasize how much trust is an important factor in their lives. We value trust above anything else, but we also choose not to believe in our governments, in our banks, not to trust advertisements, marketing campaigns etc.
Since the last financial crisis, the trust changed its address and relocated its center to where it always belonged. Today we choose only to trust people. Common and not-so-common folks no different than ourselves, and we trust them when we are making purchasing decisions, when we are looking for any sort of advice or recommendation.
We would trust a Facebook post more than we would ever trust any politician, for example.
Through the power of social media, actual, everyday people are the only trustworthy friends to other, actual and everyday people.
A very simple, yet a very interesting concept, isn’t it?
Under the Influence
In the contemporary world of marketing, a million dollar marketing campaign can bring as many results as an influencing individual with a million followers. In fact, having an influencer promoting your brand can help you build long-lasting relationships with your customers almost instantaneously.
But what makes an influencer such a valuable asset of any brand? Well, first of all, you shouldn’t think of them as assets. Their power comes from the art of storytelling.
A few weeks ago, Danica Kombol of the Everywhere Agency held a lecture on why influencers are so important when it comes to social media. Through her talk at Spark.me, one of the largest tech/business conferences in Southern Europe, organized by yours truly, Danica explained why influencers have that many followers, how they are able to arouse interest in their readers, and how they are able to make people engage with other brands.
In short – she explained why we trust influencers.
In her opinion, influencers are storytellers and nothing more. It’s the people who give them their trust, the power to engage or inspire others, and ultimately – to market products.
So, the next time you start contemplating different marketing strategies, do not neglect the power of influencers. The Return on the Investment with this kind of strategy is probably the highest in the industry! In fact, you will probably find the fact that influencer marketing is eleven times more lucrative than your average ad campaign rather shocking, but it is absolutely true.
Of course, we are talking just about monetary investments. The truth is – influencer marketing requires much more than just a stack of cash. It requires commitment and (drumroll) quite a bit of transparency. This might be a fairly new concept in marketing, and yet again, it is a very effective strategy in this age of disbelief.
So let’s identify your influencer
To help you find the right influencer, and focus your marketing efforts on the right target audience, we assembled a short but comprehensive checklist. Make sure that you pay due attention to every item on this list if you want the best possible return on the investment.
□ Is the influencer relevant to your brand?
□ Will their visitors be interested in your brand?
□ What is their followers/engagements ratio?
□ How often do they post new material?
□ What is the potential reach of their channel/blog/social media profile?
The first item on our checklist is of course – relevancy. If the content that the influencer is posting isn’t that relevant to your product or service – it is clear that this particular individual isn’t the right choice for you, no matter how popular they are! You can’t get a Fred Astaire to advertise your vacuum cleaner. Well, technically you can, but a peculiar choice like that might destroy both the reputation of that person and the reputation of your company. Also, you probably wouldn’t sell any of those vacuum cleaners. Case in point – here is a video of Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling with a vacuum cleaner.
Quite a scary image, isn’t it? So just because someone is popular, that doesn’t mean that they will do you well when they are promoting your brand and your business. Make sure that they are relevant to your particular niche as well.
On the other hand, even if you are selling golf gloves and you got Tiger Woods tweeting about them all the time, make sure that his fan base will be interested in that product. Examine your influencer’s followers. Make sure that they are your target audience.
For example, we all admire Tiger Woods, some of us even follow him on twitter (I do). But how many of us are professional golfers? I know that I’m not, and what is even more interesting, I don’t even like wearing gloves. But I do follow Tiger on Twitter ever since he had that affair a few years ago. Get the point? I’m not buying any gloves, not for golf or for any other purpose for that matter.
These are all blunt examples, and we are probably not using the right ones either. So let’s address a more relevant case for the next item on our checklist – the followers vs. engagement ratio.
We all know and love PewDiePie, the legendary vlogger with more than 40 million subscribers. But did you know that he is sponsored by Loot Crate? If you are watching his videos, then you probably are aware of this fact, because he cannot miss an opportunity to brag about all the cool stuff that he is getting in his monthly Loot Crates.
Oh, and FYI, Loot Crate gets 203 thousand visitors daily.
But what is crucial for this success is the fact that no matter how often Pewds post his content, he gets tons of reactions. People like his videos, engage in conversation, they even send him free stuff just so that he can show it online. In the world of influencer marketing, PewDiePie is something of an alpha dog, and he pulls this off without even trying. How does he do it? He is getting away with this solely because he is not just marketing the product, he actually loves the product, and shares it because he cares about it.
The frequency of posting is a crucial factor as well. When someone has thousands of followers, they probably didn’t get them by being idle. To expand their fan base, influencers have to post frequently and vigorously. They simply have to enjoy sharing their stories and their experiences with their followers.
When someone is not that diligent in this department, be aware that you are risking your investment by connecting with them. Even if the media gives them a lot of buzz, and the number of their followers is growing, if they mention your brand no more than once per month – that will hardly be an effective marketing campaign. So make sure that they are social media savvy individuals before you reach out to them.
The last item on our checklist is something that can actually help you in multiple different ways if performed correctly. We would all love to get mentions from someone popular like the aforementioned Pewds. But if you identify the actual potential of an influencer, even if they don’t have a large fan base at the beginning, you might able to connect with them and grow both their number of followers and your business exponentially.
What the heck does this actually mean, right?
It means that, when you find a rising star, with just a few thousand followers, but with a lot of them being actively engaged readers and fans, you can connect with them and invest in that individual. By sponsoring their popularity, and subtly pushing your product through their channels, you are able to build a long-lasting relationship between your business and their social presence.
However, make sure that the content that they are posting about you can grow exponentially as well. So if you are pushing a product to an influencer who is limited in any way by their niche, it might be difficult to assess their growth potential, but it is also necessary. Make sure that their interests can cover a large audience, and that they are motivated to gain as many new readers as possible.
To be continued
If you are simply interviewing an influencer in order to get some promotion through their social media platforms (hoping that they will share that interview), know that you are using one of the oldest tricks in the book. Is it effective? Certainly, to some extent. Can this type of campaign bring you any regular visitors? Perhaps a few.
But if you really want to see serious benefits from Influencer Marketing you need to connect with them. And that is exactly what we will talk about in our next piece about this topic.
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