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Influencer is dead; Influencer marketing is Alive
#1. Influencers Die; Brands don’t Adapt
Influencer marketing is expected to grow but brands are making same mistakes of hiring trendy influencers that die. They die because they are promoting you on friday and Your competitor the next day.
Making the trust of Influencer die.
#2. You are doing creator marketing
Only 14% of creators are influencers. Not every creator will have a huge impact on your orders. That is why I advise to take the principle of 11 Brand touchpoints to your Influencer campaign.
Form long term partnerships with those creators focused on content. They charge less and you can negotiate long-term deals to use 11 Brand Touchpoints framework.
#3. Calculate Promotional Engagement
Don’t fall for overall engagement rate. Most creators have their viral moments. Making their average engagement rate look good.
Always ask for engagement rates on their last 3 organic posts and engagement on lasy 3-4 Promotional Posts.
Some creators might delete their old sponsored posts but they might have numbers to share with you. It is a red flag, if they are hesitating to share analytics with you.
#4. Great Influencer marketing Influences, The Influencer
You could have a great influencer marketing campaign but that impact dies when campaign is over. Because you influenced some of the consumers to buy.
But not influenced other influencers to talk about your product organically. The brands spending millions on Influencers are trying to acheive that.
This requires heavy budget or you need to growth hack your way into leading a creative growth strategy.
#5. Overvaluing or Undervaluing Influencers
The biggest issue with influencer marketing for agencies and brands is comparing costs to Paid media.
Many creators are uneducated about charging their worth and same goes for Brands. This is something parts need to work on.
What I advise is like you network at entrepreneurship events. Try to network with Influencers first by hanging out at online spaces where they exist. Or share the messaging behind you reaching out.
Truth is worth more than promising them future partnerships.
#6. The Fake Agency Model
Going back to roots of Influencer marketing. As Youtube kicked off the big level influencer marketing, the agency model was this:
You cold outreach the brand and pitch them idea of using influencer marketing. And lie about having a network of creators to boost your brand. In reality, you don’t have direct relation with those influencers.
And you do the same thing with Influencers. Pitching them a list of Brands under your belt.
This model is now getting exposed. Creators are brands are connecting with each other.
Only few are standing out, By either focusing on influencers or marketing data. And important for all is building healthy relations with influencers
A good examples are RAD AI using Data and Jellysmack funding their own creators.
#7. Doing Social Listening to prevent Budlight
Yes, you have a new brand messaging campaign going forward. And Influencers are the new hype.
Your content does not impact only followers of an influencer. That content is distributed by users and algorithms to everywhere.
Making the importance of Social listening significant. Listen to audience interests of your existing audience on reddit, twitter and community forums.
Before you deploy your Creative influencer strategy.
#8. AI, Influencers and UGC
There is a huge disruption in this space now. Because Meta & Tiktok are increasing their Ad targeting capabilities with AI and helping paid media agencies.
And then as I mentioned earlier Influencers losing spark, is causing a move from IGC to UGC (user generated content).
Meaning the new strategies I’m building for people include less influencer focus. But more focus on audience targeting through paid media and better UGC content.
This will affect the influencer world a lot. Especially if Influencer earnings get impacted, they will need to be more comfortable with Ad Creatives and pricing.
#9. Study Influencer / Ambassador programs
Brands like Lulumelon, Adidas, Amazon & even Walmart has a well structured Influencer program study them. And spy on their influencers,
You might find some good ones.+ I know this community well. Many are very much against influencers, I created this to help the ones focused on it.
If these billion dollar brands are doing it, they are doing it for a reason.
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1 Reply
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Everyone is and can be an influencer, however few actually do it right. Most small businesses cannot afford what these losers think they are worth because they have a following. In 2023, following numbers mean very little.
Consumers do not trust brand messaging. They do not trust their governments nor do they trust businesses lately. They trust friends, family and complete strangers that are similar to themselves that they can relate to.
Most influencers come across as fake. They are interested in your money and their follower counts. The passion isn’t there and you can get more fake passion from a hooker for less. Every brand has passionate users, most don’t know it because they make zero effort to find out. I only want to work with actual product users, people that already use the product.
Authenticity is difficult to fake. When someone uses and loves the product, it shows. I have zero issues paying for content creation upfront. I’ll even coach them after the content is created to help them create more effective content next time. Everything else is performance based. If they do well, their commission exceeds anything they asked for upfront that I said no to. The good ones love it.
Working with brand advocates, ambassadors and even influencers is about building relationships, not one and done. That never works. You want multiple pieces of content spread out. No influencers kill it every single time. You are almost guaranteed to fail with only one mention.
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