How can influencer marketing help your brand? Influencer Marketing Series

Some people (like me) are born skeptics.

Influencer marketing? Blah – why would that work? I know my audience – and I can reach them directly. I don’t need no influencer.

But, think about this:

• In 2017, eMarketer reported that marketers spent $570 million on influencer marketing globally. In 2018, $1.6 billion was channeled into sponsored posts on Instagram alone.

• According to a report by Linqia, only 6% of brands said influencer content under-performed brand content.

• By 2020, more than 50% of ad content will be created outside of marketing.

• Marketing-inspired word-of-mouth makes 4x the impact on purchasing decisions [McKinsey study]

Okay – so why should you think about influencer marketing? Maybe, you are in the B2B business and feel influencer marketing is not relevant for your segment, or maybe you feel your product doesn’t need influencers? Or it may be that you find your audience is not social media savvy – hence the need to obviate social media influencers.

Whoever your customer is, the person buying is a human, not an organization. And human beings are susceptible (and open) to influence, whether it is ideologies - leading to mass scale movements - or something as mundane as decision making.

So now that we have sorted that influencer marketing is important, let’s now see how it can help.

The reasons why influencer marketing is important for brands is because of the trust it offers, the amplification it provides, the credence and authority of the influencer, and the authenticity of the influencer and the content.

1.    Trust

Consumers are getting remarkably good at tuning out brand communications. Whether it is banner ads, TV ads, or pop-ups, an increasing number of consumers are now obviating hard sell advertisements and propped up marketing messages. As ad blockers become more mainstream, what can a brand do to ensure that its message is read / heard / received?

Whether it is a movie recommendation or vacation planning, people are more comfortable receiving information about brands from people they trust. Think of your own self – would you rather trust a brand to sell you something [which clearly has a financial incentive to do so] vs a friend to tell you that a product is good?

Influencers are the bridge between a brand and its audience. Not your closest friend yet, but not as distant as a brand. They also have a financial incentive for promoting a product, but serious influencers are conscious about declaring conflict of interests and sponsorships transparently.

Take-away: The trust factor is irreplaceable – and the most important factor in selecting an influencer and developing an influencer marketing program. Despite innovative ads formats being churned out every day, consumers are becoming immune to ad trickery. That being said, just because you are doing influencer marketing doesn’t mean that it is trustworthy. There are plenty of fake & compromised influencers out there. You need to be prudent while selecting your influencer. Need to know more about how to choose an influencer? Read here.

2.    Amplification

In a traditional advertising model, there were very little opportunities to market a niche product. But social media has democratized the playing field for niche products.

Do you promote unique designs for origami – well there’s a niche for you with your own tribe of like-minded enthusiasts. And you can choose an influencer who you feel is the right role model within the community.

An influencer can help amplify your brand’s message within the correct target audience. There is no waste reach – so to speak –as the target audience mapping is 100% accurate. You are only reaching out to people whom you want to reach out to. And collaboration with the correct influencer can help you position your brand amongst that target audience.

Take away: An influencer marketing program is extremely targeted, the correct message reaching the intended recipient (buyer persona) by the ideal sender (influencer). Hence, it is important that we choose the structure and the cadence of the program content accordingly. There has to be variation in the content to drive amplification. The same type of content, however well meaning it is, driven will create monotony and will disengage your audience.

3.    Credence

Ever felt that the celebrities endorsing the everyday products that we use were not a correct fit for the ad? 

Of course, they don’t use the products. For me, I absolutely hated that sense of dichotomy in celebrity endorsements [Well, I am rich enough to buy my own jet, but let me endorse this airline] or worse [I can afford to wash my face in caviar but let me endorse this everyday beauty brand], it was just so fake that I couldn’t stand it. I still can’t. And that’s why I think influencer marketing is more genuine. 

With influencer marketing, I am sure (or at least hopeful) that the influencer will have used it once [if not more]. The influencer is also more likely not to use it in case s/he is not satisfied with the brand. In any case, the influencer is more likely to be transparent about any less than desirable features / aspects of the brand out of concern for the thing that matters most to influencers: follower count & reputation. 

Finally, there is slightly more chance of accountability in the case of the influencer rather than celebrity endorsers. So overall, from a credence perspective, influencers win by a huge margin.

Take away: The credence of the influencer is a huge driver of influencer marketing programs. Make sure that the influencer is a genuine believer (and user) of the product. A fake influencer can negatively impact your sales (in the short term) and brand reputation (in the long term. Hence sacrifice short term vanity metrics such as follower count and likes in favor of more genuine metrics like competence, expertise and content engagement.

4.    Authenticity

Despite all the well – meaning stuff that they do, people are generally a bit mistrustful of brands. They cannot be blamed – there have been eons & eons of brands that have taken their position among their target audience for granted, made false [read tall] brand promises, and generally refused to deliver their very best to the customer. 

Now whether it was a massive deception & PR disaster like the Tylenol case or deliberate misleading of customers like in the Volkswagen case or the massive manipulation that went on in the case of the Fyre Festival, consumers have come to naturally disbelieve brands.

An influencer offers them some degree of comfort and familiarity – Hey, I have used this product and liked it. Chances are that you might too! The influencer offers some degree of risk mitigation for the customer – there is an existing relationship (follows / likes / shares), and if the influencer likes the product, others are liking it, there is a chance that the customer would like it too - and if it doesn’t turn out to be good, well, what is social media for? Unhappy customers will vent their dissatisfaction, bad products will be called out, and balance will be restored in the world once again [well, not quite, but you get the picture].

Take away: There have been brands that have mis-led their consumers while deploying an influencer marketing program - and brand fraud does exist on both sides of digital, but what matters is the speed of detection & redressal. A fake influencer might be a much more easier problem to detect and tackle than most of the traditional marketing frauds. 

5.    Authority

Say your product is a marketing automation software. Obviously, the celebrity endorsement route is not going to work. Neither are ads in magazines and banner ads. Remember, these are marketers to whom you are marketing. They are remarkably astute in detecting the very tricks that they pull on others. So what do you do?

Marketers, just like everyone else, look upto other marketers, higher up in the food chain. People are looking at what Ann Handley, Joe Pulizzi, Rand Fishkin, Sean Ellis are saying. What are they recommending? Now chances to get them on board as an influencer are next to nil (they are the foremost voices in marketing today). But that’s not impossible (remember Guy Kawasaki and theCanva story)?

So you have to keep on finding the influencer who you can represent your brand. Need to know the different types of influencers, hop over here.

Now finally, if you zero in on an influencer of your choice, s/he would know about marketing automation, would be using a horde of tools, will already have a community of dedicated followers, would be a subject authority on the matter of marketing automation, and hence, when that person says that “Hey, brand x is a cool marketing automation software, use this link to get 10% off”, people are going to be much more receptive than what they would be if they saw the same offer through a banner ad.

Take-away:  Choose an expert who can champion your brand with authority. You cannot hope to wing this. An expert will add to and elevate your brand's message naturally, giving you a captive pool of engaged audience - something not possible through many other customer acquisition methods.

Putting it all together

So the reasons why influencer marketing is immensely useful for brands is because of trust, amplification, credence, authority, and authenticity that it offers over the traditional marketing methods. However, you need to exercise care and caution while selecting your influencers and designing your influencer marketing program.

For more on influencer marketing, hop over to the section below:

Let me know what you think about influencer marketing in the comments section below.