By 2022, spending on influencers is on track to reach between $5 billion and $10 billion. And this trend isn’t going anywhere soon as brands move beyond traditional advertising to reach consumers where they’re spending most of their time: online. With those kind of numbers, it may be tempting to leverage the power and reach of an influencer to help drive engagement with your brand across social channels, and you clearly aren’t alone in this mindset.
While jumping on the bandwagon to hire an influencer may seem like an easy win, it’s worth careful consideration of your overall strategy and brand goals to determine if it’s the right decision for your business. Other things to consider are cost-effectiveness, how well an influencer and their followers align with your image and what kind of independence they should have in posting content related to your brand. It’s telling that out of 81% of marketers who leverage influencer content, 51% say it outperforms their own brand content, and 89% of marketers say they get comparable or better ROI from influencer marketing versus other marketing channels.
So should you tap an influencer in hopes of reaching a larger audience or connecting more deeply with your current audience? Let’s take a look at several scenarios where bringing an influencer on board might be right for you.
An influencer is right for your brand strategy
Fiji®Water’s brand promise is built around being “Earth’s Finest Water,” pristine and straight from the source in Fiji, and therefore better for hydration and a healthier lifestyle. This “better living” strategy led Fiji Water to tap Instagram influencer Danielle Bernstein, a fashion blogger with a largely female audience of 2.6 million followers, to help promote their water in an unobtrusive way on her Instagram channel. Collaborating with Fiji Water, she created eight minute workout videos that showcased her healthy lifestyle and fit fashion with their water bottles placed subtly in her workout space. The promotion was a success because it strategically associated staying hydrated with Fiji Water with her audience’s desire to look like her (and therefore, they must work out and drink plenty of water). In this case, the brand’s strategy worked since the influencer’s built-in followers were also Fiji Water’s target audience, thus gaining the brand more engagement in an organic way than they might have built on their own.
Take a look at your brand strategy — where and how do you want to engage consumers and what action you want them to take? Are you trying to promote a new product or service that hasn’t had the traction you had hoped for using traditional methods? Or maybe your brand doesn’t yet have a large following and your overall strategy is to build a stronger presence on social channels? If either is the case, then an influencer whose target audience closely aligns with yours might be a good strategic fit to drive awareness with their built-in followers.
The influencer’s unique content fits your brand
Marketers are always on the lookout for influencers with not only a dedicated following, but who are buzzworthy because of their unique skills, style or highly engaging content — better yet, all three. By partnering with such an influencer, brands hope a bit of that magic rubs off on them by giving the appearance of being on-trend and relevant. Take designer and talented letterer Lauren Hom (@homsweethom). Her gorgeously colorful hand-lettered murals, print pieces and memes with positive, upbeat sayings about life have attracted a substantial 247K following on Instagram. Because her content creation is so original and swoon-worthy, brands have flocked to partner with her — big names like Target, Michael’s, Starbucks — even the 2020 Biden/Harris campaign. Those partnerships are exciting for her followers and for these savvy brands: fans are quick to snatch up tangible products she’s designed and brands benefit not only from the added revenue, but also from the bump in brand perception. It’s a match made in branding heaven!
Before you engage with an influencer, think about your own offerings. Could an influencer promote them or your brand as a whole in a completely original way that no one else can — even you? A partnership with Hom worked for Starbucks in particular because the coffee purveyor’s design aesthetic was already built around hand-chalked café murals and handwritten names on cups, so Hom’s hand-lettered author quotes for their “The Way I See It” campaign perfectly fit Starbucks’ high-value image and took it to another level.
It’s more cost-effective for you
Another thing to consider when engaging an influencer is your budget. Obviously, how much you have to spend will determine what level of influencer you can afford, so likely the Kim Kardashians of the influencer world will be out of reach for the majority of modest-sized businesses.
Still, leveraging a more reasonably priced influencer can be good for your bottom line. In a 2017 influencer marketing study, businesses were making $7.65 on average for every $1 spent, and influencer marketing spends by major brands have only gone up since then. In 2020, Estée Lauder allocated a whopping 75% of their budget to influencer marketing across all their brands. Though that seems game changing, it’s perhaps unsurprising when you consider that influencer marketing generates 11x greater ROI than any other digital advertising channel. Moreover, for a traditional campaign, there is typically a specific media spend, and once that budget is depleted, the ad stops running and the campaign is taken down. With influencer marketing, once a post is on an influencer’s social channels, it isn’t taken down after the collaboration ends, so it becomes an evergreen piece of advertising for the brand. And even while the collab is still live, the influencer is constantly creating new content to keep their channel fresh and users engaged, which is a great win for a brand’s SEO.
One trend in influencer marketing worth taking into account is the rise of the micro-influencer — something to consider if you have a smaller budget but want the most bang for your buck. A micro-influencer is any content creator with a more modest but staunchly loyal base of 2,500-100,000 followers. And loyal they are; their engagement rates are in the 7-20% range (typically, macro-influencers, or influencers with 100,000+ followers, top out at 5%). Not only do they cost a lot less to partner with, they create more content and reply more often in comments because they genuinely care about their followers, so a brand partnership would likely generate thoughtful and prolific content. They’re the perfect mix of influencer and best friend because of their desire to build their own brand by creating deeper, authentic connections with their community through consistent engagement.
The authenticity factor
Followers trust influencers over brands because they bring an authentic human voice to content creation. Think about it: would you follow someone on social media you didn’t like or believe? They have built a loyal following more willing to listen or take action when they promote something they personally love, whether that’s a brand, a way of life or even just an opinion.
In contrast, consumers often think of a brand as a faceless entity, not a person, which is one reason they are skeptical when a brand is trying to obviously “sell” them something, especially if they can’t interact directly. Millennials in particular want more from their brands; they want to engage with and build relationships with brands. Partnering with an influencer or micro-influencer is a smart way for a brand to instantly create the kind of rapport consumers are seeking because the influencer becomes the mouthpiece for the brand to have more honest, authentic interactions. Even though most savvy users know when their favorite influencer’s post is a paid partnership, they already trust their opinions and therefore may be more willing to engage with the brand, especially when it feels like a natural fit with the influencer’s own image and tastes.
Chipotle found huge success this way when they partnered with superfan and rising TikTok star David Dobrik for the #ChipotleLidFlip Challenge. Knowing that they needed help connecting with younger audiences on TikTok, Chipotle teamed up with him and other influencers to create a lid challenge with their takeout containers. The collab was a huge hit with followers; the videos garnered more than 300 million views and users rushed to create their own lid flip videos. Why did it work so well? Because the content felt organic, users were empowered to show off their own skills and Dobrik himself was already a Chipotle fan so the advertising didn’t feel forced.
However, one watchout to keep in mind when considering a collab with an influencer: your brand can potentially be negatively affected from association with them if they independently post hot button content or attract controversy — even if it’s unrelated to your brand directly. A classic example of this is Olivia Jade, daughter of Full House star Lori Loughlin. At the time when her mother’s college admissions scandal broke, Olivia Jade was a successful influencer repping brands like Sephora and Marc Jacobs. The brands immediately had to drop her because of this overwhelmingly negative association. Dobrik himself has recently been exposed in a #MeToo scandal that caused major brands to cut ties.
The lesson here is you can only control the content you pay influencers for, not the hundreds of other posts they put out or how they live their lives offline, so be sure to thoroughly do your research before bringing them on as a partner to ensure their brand values align with yours. Encourage an open dialogue to discuss any potential landmines like political, lifestyle or cultural viewpoints; they will likely have the same kind of questions for you since they have their own brand image to maintain.
Influencer marketing can be a powerful tool for you to build brand awareness and spark engagement with all-new followers on social media. There are many factors to consider when deciding whether to bring someone on for a collab with your brand, whether it’s budget considerations, image alignment or content creation possibilities. Most importantly, take a look at your brand’s strategy to make sure a partnership actually makes sense for showcasing your business in the best light; don’t just team up because other brands are doing it. When it’s the right fit, though, smart influencer content can help your brand truly stand out from the pack — and can be a great investment for your business.
If you need guidance with your brand’s social strategy, we can help. Connect with Barbara Wray at barbara@wickmarketing.com or (512) 479-9834.
