How brands should approach influencer led marketing?

(Under here I explain what does being an influencer mean and what enables it) The rise of influencers fundamentally happened due to a persons ability to use social media (Instagram, snapchat, blogs) to keep in touch with a large number of people without much effort. Prior to the rise of Facebook and twitter one would try to do the same with the likes of My Space. However, use of smartphones changed that and brought in better, more dynamic and constantly evolving platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat. Soon the internet saw many people in all walks of life rise to public figure status as far as their followers on these platforms are concerned. And naturally, a brand wants to influence as many people in as less time and effort as possible. At least that’s what it seems.

(Under here I explain what almost all marketeers think today)

Should it be that easy, and for many brands and its custodians it is, one would pay the most impactful influencer the least amount they agree to, to mention their brand. If you are in the echo chamber that echoes that it is actually that easy and there isn’t much else to it, then you shouldn’t read further. Or should you? If you want to explore another possibility, you are welcome to read further.

Let’s analyse for a second, what we just established and then take it bit by bit. We said:

• one would pay: that means a one time transaction or a stipulated payment in exchange of a defined return
• the most impactful influencer: most impactful would mean the most influence foreseeable
• the least amount they agree to: least amount, since the idea is to maximise return, further emboldening the concept of a transaction
• to mention their brand: have them talk about the brand

To me this sounds temporary, only based on monetary gain without any guarantee of actual appreciation of your product or brand, and not even most impactful.

(Under here I explain how they are wrong and they should think the opposite)

Here’s how you should approach this instead.

You should instead, break all four issues and invert them. One, do not pay, two, the most genuine influencer, three, give them appreciation and time / effort instead, and four, to give them an option to mention your brand and not stipulate it.

Let me say this explicitly and correctly.

1. Find people who actually live their life spending time doing what they love. And share with their friends and family the moments from that life.
2. Once you find them tell them you exist and that your product can enhance their experience of doing what they love.
3. Tell them in a special and personal way.
4. And then tell them that you’d love to be a part of their lives for a long time.

If at all your product has made an impact in their lives genuinely they’d either mention your brand or it will show in their social media feeds anyway. Do this once and then repeat in loop.

This does a few things, it saves you tons of money, but takes a long time but also creates genuine fool proof influence.

You say this is drastic and idealistic? Humour me. Let me show you why I say what I say.

The case of more followers not always means more engagement

Consider thebodycoach on Instagram who has 1.9M followers and has at an average 13K likes on each of his latest 6 posts. This means a 0.72% likes to followers ratio. When you compare that to say beerbiceps who has 50.3K followers and has an average of 5K likes on each of his latest 6 posts, the ratio of likes to followers increases to 10.7%.

The key is to not be fooled by number of followers. Since any one user does not spend enough time on the internet to be shown post from all their followers, platforms have to filter the feed based on everything they know about each users’ likes and dislikes. And thus, a higher number of followers does not mean a higher reach.

Another aspect to note here is to consider the target audience you’d like to reach to. By studying each of the content pieces the influencer posts on their feed you could guesstimate what would be the composition of their followers and whether it fits your target audience aspirations.

To make it a little simpler to think about influencers you could consider the diagram below.

The grey area represents the internet population or your target audience, the yellow dots represent influencers, the dotted circles is their followers and the grey circles their effective influence potential.

Influence over internet users shown visually.

What about celebrities, does this apply to them too?

Unlike an organically built influencer, a celebrity’s job used to be to make believe that they use the said product or brand in their lifestyle. But now times have changed, a celebrity today speaks directly to their audiences. Audiences have direct access to what their favourite celebrity is up to throughout the day. In such a scenario it is very easy to see when a celebrity is promoting a product from a brand and when they are just using it in their natural course of the day.

However, an influencer skips this thinking. Their popularity has happened over time by constantly sharing what they do for fun. This lends authenticity. The audience already knows whether the influencer lets say likes to use a particular brand when it comes to choosing their running shoes. If the influencer always used a particular brand for certain benefits and alignments and suddenly changes the brand it becomes obvious why that must have happened.

Going ahead, the brand needs to answer the question whether they’d like to have authentic people, living real (ordinary) lifestyles talk about their brand or celebrities / top influencers that may mention brands interchangeably.

The case for long term association over one time impressions push

This brings us to another important consideration. The true value of an influencer is not only in mentioning the brand and ensuring impressions, but also in long term association.

In a long term association with an influencer one would be able to reap the benefits of coming across as a brand that values authenticity, loyalty, integrity and so on. However, in the case of a short term impressions based relationship a brand will have no such affects. The most such a relationship will do is what a TV ad did in the past.

And this is how I think brands should approach influencer led marketing.

Update: Adding to this article a link to another article which has tried to estimate the size of the Instagram Influencer market. Access it here.