If you’d like to skip past the tl;dr just jump down to the numeric points at the end

Perhaps it’s just me. Perhaps I place too much value on the notion of getting something back in return for your money. But the state of influencer marketing programs has left me scratching my head for a few years now. I’ve watched company after company, often clients, often clients I’ve advised on the fallacies of the influencer marketing industry, throw a great deal of money down the drain for reasons that totally escape me.

Let me back up a second and say that I myself am part of many influencer programs, I’ve been designing them for seven years, and I am not against influencer programs in and of themselves. But here’s where I get confused, it’s that term ‘marketing’ that is slapped onto the end of it. I think anyone who has been around marketing for even a tiny amount of time can admit that Marketing (capital M) is about a call-to-action. Basically, conversion to sales. Yet the vast majority, let’s call it 92.374%, of influencers in these influence programs do not use the product in question, often cannot afford the product in question, have no clients that they advise on the purchase of the products in question, and other than having a large following have no correlation to sales of the product.

Let’s talk about that ‘following’ for a second. The very same marketers (smart ones I might add) who stand on stage or write posts about the uselessness of trying to equate the size of an ‘audience’ into whether or not that audience actually consists of buyers of their products continue to hire ineffectual influencers whose only benefit is a large audience of people who will never buy the product in question. Essentially, these companies are paying these influencers to increase their own influence without any conceivable benefit to the bottom line.

Now, if you want to call that ‘Influencer Awareness’, or some variant of ‘Influencer Branding’ then I suppose I couldn’t really argue with it. It’d still be ineffectual, but it would at least be accomplishing its goal of spreading awareness or brand identity…even if it was to people who still won’t be buying or influencing the purchase of their products. But ‘Marketing’? I’m sorry, I don’t buy it (and neither does the audience).

So the real question is ‘why’ would smart people continue to do the same useless thing over, and over, again? Part of it is psychological. Even though we all say audience numbers are basically meaningless unless they’ve been analyzed to the moon and back…we still feel that pull of popularity. It’s intoxicating. But like most things intoxicating it also impairs your decision making ability.

A very large part of the reason however is that whole ‘analyzed to the moon and back’ part. Who has the time? Who has the capability? Who can setup a program such that it’s measurable from day one and optimize it as you go? Oh, that’s right, we can (Oh yeah, I haven’t told you about my new thing yet, pretend you didn’t hear that). But here’s the thing, we have some pretty amazing technology, some of which no one has been able to duplicate. But in this particular area I refuse to believe that others can’t do it. When I started doing it seven years ago it was me and very big, very complicated, spreadsheet that I had to make up as I went along. But those are tools everyone has, and they are archaic compared to what’s available off-the-shelf now.

So let’s put a few things to rest.

You can absolutely create an influencer program that is explicitly, and objectively, measurable to the impact it has on sales. If you aren’t getting that, ask for it.

You can absolutely identify individuals and groups who make an *actual* impact on your bottom line, in some areas (travel and tourism for example) the size of the following can be a big factor, in other areas (enterprise software for example) you’re going to have to get used to the fact that it’s often people with what you would consider very, very small audiences who make the largest impact. These are the people who ‘influence the influencers’ if you will.

If your goal is to simply have a certain impression ‘rub off’ on you via your participation with a certain celebrity or influencer, in other words…brand identity, then by all means go for it. But make sure your boss knows that’s the goal, set proper KPI’s for it (yes, that can still be measured), and don’t find yourself in a bind when you’re asked for actual marketing metrics instead of what the intent was.

I don’t do a ton of influencer programs these days as I’m more on the inside where the equivalent would be employee advocacy, engagement, etc. But the same principle applies, our mantra here is Accountability for everything we do. You should insist on the same.

Cheers,

Matt Ridings