Understand Celebrity Endorsements? Time to Meet Influencer Marketing

Social media has created new celebrities with deeply engaged audiences. These fans have chosen to follow and are driven to engage.

Using brand advocates to influence audiences isn’t new. The rules have just changed. Brand ambassadors and their effect on brand recognition are well established. Associate your product with the people target consumer cares about and amplify that association.

Nike paid Michael Jordan $480 Million from 2002–2012.

Okay, fine, that is a bit of an outlier as his namesake is a significant part of their business. However, even a brand like Upper Deck paid him $14M over ten years. It is easy to look at the deal and say its obvious as to why the greatest NBA player of all time would receive that type of compensation. For some, it is a bit harder to understand why the same mechanics are at play when soliciting a social media influencer to represent your brand.

Why pay someone for posting a photo to social media?

“It only takes 5 minutes,” you say. “We gave them a free product,” you think.

While the action of posting a photo to a social account may take less than 5 minutes, it takes lots of time to build an audience and effort to keep them engaged over an extended period. If it was easy, why haven’t you done it? Why isn’t your product or company’s Instagram followed by thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions?

Developing an authentic voice on your platform of choice is kind of like traveling to a country and trying to figure out the language. On Instagram, resonate with the visual culture of your target audience. On Vine master the limitations of the platform. On Facebook, create content that consumers will choose to share. Leveraging the expertise of influencers who are natives to each platform is the best way to start building a brand identity that resonates with consumers on your platform of choice.

Just because everyone can use social media doesn’t mean they are good at it. Success requires dedication, time, and expertise.

At #paid, we specialize in Instagram. It allows us to focus on the needs of brands who see Instagram as being a primary channel to reach and engage their target customers. It means that we are always working with and enlisting creators who have been able to build audiences and engage them. If you believe your target market is on Instagram, and you want to reach them — why wouldn’t you use influencers who have proven that they can do it?

With Influencers you are buying more than reach, you are reaching consumers through ambassadors they trust.

Consumers are 92% more likely to trust an individual over a brand, even if they don’t know that person. (Nielsen)

Brands who work with influencers and ambassadors benefit from the brand association as much as the reach. Social influencers are in a stream of content curated by consumers alongside friends and family. This new relationship between ambassador and audience increases influence. Today, there is a sense of attachment between advocate and audience that, as marketers, we’ve never seen before.

No longer are your brand ambassadors distant and out of reach; they are a part of their followers every day lives. Followers refer to influencers on a first name basis and develop an attachment to these them that is far closer to friendship than fandom.

How many young girls do you know who refer to Kylie as if she was their best friend next door?

Amplify your relationship with influencers to increase the benefit to your brand.

When brands do endorsement deals with celebrities who are already famous actors, athletes, or reality TV stars, they to amplify that endorsement through other channels.

When Nike puts a pair of shoes on the feet of LeBron, they tell that story in the press, through paid commercials, as well as having him share the story on platforms like Instagram.

The most fetishized athletic wear collection last year was not endorsed by an athlete. It was through a collaboration with one of the biggest cultural influencers in the world, Kanye West. Adidas has transformed the perception of their brand through partnering with many influencers at different levels — the biggest of which was Kanye.

Successful influencer and ambassador programs understand that highly engaged niche audiences are more important than broad likability.

Coming back to Kanye, I love Kanye… There has rarely been a more contentious pop star. Although he has a ton of haters, those who buy in the cult of Yeezus (and yes I am one of them) feverishly consume what he creates, endorses, and propagates. He has been named GQs most stylish man two years in a row, and it’s not because of the large number people who dislike him. His most passionate supporters see him as a cultural icon who resonates with their creative taste.

When assessing influence, it is about more than mass appeal it is about a dedicated community who feel a personal connection to the influencer.

It’s not about mass popularity it’s about influence over an audience. When brands engage influencers and ambassadors it is about more than reaching people — it is about creating a brand association that they can capitalize on over time.

Influencers and Ambassadors reach thousands, sometimes millions of people with a single post, but make them a part of your overall marketing platform ant it will dividends beyond reach.