Influencer Marketing is most certainly a term you hear
bandied about the interwebs these days. On any given day, you can find a
Twitter chat focused on it, read a blog about someone’s experience with it, and
if you are a CPG brand, undoubtedly you have had a company pitch you on one of
their “influencers” you can pay to work with.
14 years ago, I had just graduated from undergrad, and
immediately got a job working at what is still one of the largest and coolest companies.
In those days, influencer marketing was simple – you paid a celebrity, and they
endorsed your brand. It could be through billboards, commercials, ads,
appearances or a combination of all of those. We weren’t the only brand doing
this, all the brands that could afford to did it. And it worked. Kids saw their
favorite sports stars drinking something, asked their parents to go buy it for
them, they did, and sales for the brand went up. Marketing had “worked.”
However, it didn’t work for ME. There was a pretty big star
in MLB that had an endorsement with a beverage company (not my brand) that had
a similar product to what we sold. You couldn’t go down most streets without
seeing his face, smiling while enjoying one of their products. Ironically, he
didn’t actually drink those products, though. How do I know? Because I once
went with a co-worker to meet him in a dark alley, where we delivered OUR
product to him. He oculdn’t be seen drinking OUR brand, it would have been a
breach of contract with the company he was currently endorsing.
I immediately became skeptical of him, and the whole idea of
this celebrity marketing. At the time, no one was talking about “transparency” or
“authenticity” but I noticed that this was anything but. Celebrity marketing
took quite a long time to die down, but with the increasing rise of “influencer
marketing,” it has begun to. People are looking more to people they TRUST when
seeking new products or brands to follow, rather than looking to celebrities,
and mimicking what we see them doing.
The more you read or listen to people talk about Influencer
Marketing, the more you realize that almost everyone seems to have their own
version of what it means. It’s subjective, just as what an influencer actually
is, or who it might be. It’s personal to each of us. Someone that incites ME to
action, might not never make you change a habit or behavior or adopt a new one.
Marketers have long been aware the Word of Mouth was one of
the biggest tools in our marketing toolkit. As social media has grown and become
more widely adopted, we have been given even more resources to use the tool,
and amplify the voices recommending our brands. People trust people they look
up to, or those that “influence” them.
Influencer marketing to me, is a form of marketing where
brands and companies target individuals with influence to affect change in
buying patterns or habits over other people. As we’ve seen, where those
individuals used to only be celebrities and pro-athletes, today anyone can have
just as large an impact. It’s not follower numbers that determine someone’s
influence on a given social network, but rather someone that people trust.
Influencers are people that have strong feelings about something or an affinity
to a certain company and a good relationship with others where people know this
person knows their stuff. It’s a matter of finding people with credibility. Quite
simply, influencer marketing is developing a mutually beneficial relationship
with people that help create visibility for your company or brand.
Influencer marketing is closely tied to content marketing.
In today’s world, consumers are becoming more aware of being “marketed to” and
tend to trust peer recommendations over branded content. This means that you
are more likely to have content shared on behalf of your brand if it comes from
an “influencer” than if you posted the exact same content on your company blog.
Who are these influencers, then? The way I find influencers
is by looking for a certain number of factors:
1.
People who engage with me in the communities I
choose to be in, and say things of value, thought leaders or people that look
like “experts” to me
2.
Someone who has an audience they actively work
with
3.
Authenticity – no matter what they are talking
about, they do it with authority and don’t change or sway from their beliefs
with every new thought. They aren’t saying things simply because they’re paid
to say them, the majority of their tweets don’t have #ad after them, and they
aren’t compromising themselves in a ploy to gain more followers
Does every brand need to employ influencer marketing? I
believe that every brand COULD use influencer marketing, but need is a strong
word. Smart marketers have always known that the more people talking about a
product or brand or service, the more people find out about it, gaining new
audiences in a variety of places traditional marketing wouldn’t hit. Influencer
marketing is nothing new, it’s just another piece of marketing with a new name
and new importance.
I’m not saying celebrity marketing doesn’t work. Done right,
it absolutely can increase sales or “move the needle.” Within the past 7 years,
there was a day I was at work (for another rather popular brand) when suddenly
our website crashed. Our sales on Amazon were skyrocketing. Why? Because I had
sent product to Anne Hathaway, and she was photographed holding a bottle of our
drink walking down the streets of New York.
It’s just important to learn how the audience you are trying
to reach wants to receive messages, and what they respond best to. The more
tactics you have, the better off you will be when trying to reach your ultimate
goals.
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