Influencer Marketing - How to do it right

Influencer Marketing is nothing new, but it's definitely caused a bit of buzz over the last few years and is an ever increasing industry.

In this episode, I discuss what has made this industry so successful and some of the mistakes you should avoid when it comes to planning an influencer campaign.

Transcript

Hey guys. Welcome back to pink podcasts. I'm your host Kirsten. Today, I want to talk to you about one of the most powerful tools that there is in the world of marketing. It's an industry that has seen a 42% growth in the last year, and currently stands at a value of 13.8 billion us dollars. This industry is none other than the influencer marketing industry.

Now it's become a bit of a buzzword everyone's all keen to get involved. A lot of people are jumping on the bandwagon and trying to become influencers. I think potentially not understanding how much work and consistency goes into running a really good influencer page, but a lot of brands are also including an influencer marketing strategy as part of their overall marketing strategy.

So this has become a really powerful tool and it's done so well for two main reasons.  The first is that it's a message that doesn't come from within your organization. It's a message that comes from someone else and someone of influence.

So let's take a few steps back and let's go back to the world pre digital marketing, which seems like a lifetime ago for sure. But in previous years, a lot of people found trust in brands that were big and bold. In fact, the bigger and bolder your brand was the more trust you had. So if you had big billboards, TV ads, magazine articles, and advertorials, you were automatically given a lot of trust because people thought if your brand is so big and you are able to do all these beautiful ads, you must be a brand worth trusting in because you've obviously built up a client base to get to such a point. But as we saw the rise of digital marketing, we were able to investigate more. So what happened is people could go and read reviews, they could join forums and talk about the products and services  that they'd hadn't experienced with.

And all of a sudden facts started to come out. For example, I've worked with X brand. For so many years I've been paying whatever fee. And now I found out that they lied to me. They told me they were the best and the cheapest on the market, and there are 10 other companies that offer the same thing for less.

So what happened is in these kinds of situations is people had their eyes opened to a lot more opportunities, and that caused a distrust, particularly with big brands. So as our generations have moved on and the digital marketing world has evolved, we no longer trust whatever the brand tells us. We want to hear it from someone who is outside of the brand.

So that's the first point that makes influencer marketing so successful. The second is that an influencer appeals to a very niche audience. In fact, they've created a very niche audience. So someone, for example, who is a makeup artist who does tutorials online and has skin pigmentation that they deal with on the daily. And perhaps they're promoting the fact that pigmentation is a beautiful part of natural beauty.

They would have a very niche targeted audience for a skincare product and a makeup product that suits that specific skin concern. So perhaps it's a  high coverage foundation, or maybe it's a sun care product that's going to assist them to protect their skin. Their audience naturally by following their page, we'd be interested in the same things, which makes their audience extremely niche.

So let me give you an example. A few weeks ago, I was in Cape town visiting my dad and he is a huge YouTube fan. He is just, yeah, he's obsessed. And the one evening he was trawling through the dark pit that is YouTube. And he came across this page and had to show me it's a new page that he started following.

And it's about this guy who is building a five acre pond on his property. So a couple of things shocked me. First of all, that my dad had actually subscribed to his channel and found this valuable because he's just, a regular hillbilly who's dug a massive hole on the back of his farm and is building a dam.

There's no professional footage. There's no real expertise or tips or guidance. It just is literally watching a man build a dam. So that was the first thing that shocked me. Secondly, was that this guy  📍 has 684,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. What surprised me even more than that was that his videos were sponsored.

So, uh, At one point after having watched a few videos about the progress of his five acre pond,  

he slipped in a sneaky piece about this knife brand that had sponsored him. And he did a very subtly of these really cool knives you can use at the barbecue to chop up your steak and very masculine and very manly. And that's what made me think about this topic. Thinking,  he's not a makeup artist, he's not a famous actor or super successful multi entrepreneur.

He just is a guy on a farm. Who's doing something that he thinks is worth sharing and why would a brand want to market with him? Why would they sponsor him? And it's simply because his audience is extremely niche. So they know that anyone who subscribes to his page is most likely going to be the man who loves the outdoors, perhaps loves fishing, probably enjoys the odd barbecue, or like we would call it braai and would need some big manly steak knives to chop it up with.

So it's a hugely powerful tool. If you can tap into that very niche, target audience. However, I do want to warn you about a couple of things that people do wrong when it comes to marketing with influencers, there are a few mistakes that you should watch out for the first is that people always assume that the influencer with the biggest following is the best influencer to work with.

Whereas that's not exactly true. First of all, they're going to be the most expensive, the more followers they have, the more they're going to charge you to  reach those followers. Secondly, you have no idea exactly who that target audience is and how engaging they are with the page. So what you should do is a deep dive into the influencer's content, to understand things like how frequently do they post.

How often do people engage with what they post, do they comment? Do they ask questions? Do their values, align with your brands? And that's a big one for me.

Say for example, you were selling a natural beauty product and you approached a makeup or skincare influencer only to find out that 10 posts ago, she had promoted something that was highly chemical related and completely opposite to what you are selling, or maybe  her lifestyle is just not sustainable and doesn't support the same values that you do.

 So that's a very important thing to consider. The other thing is, have they worked with any of your competitors previously and how did they mention or talk about the brands that they've worked with? Have they had any negative feedback? Because that's something to honestly consider.

If they are going to be promoting this as an honest, authentic post, you can't always control what they're going to say about your product or brand, especially if you're doing it without compensation.

Lastly, I think expectation is key. And you'll pick this up in your first dealings with the influencers you work with in communication. Very often, they won't be able to promise you a return on investment. And that's something you need to be very aware of. They can't say that if you spend X with them, they're going to guarantee a certain number of sales.

They might be able to give you an indication of the reach and of their average engagement per post, but don't think that it's a fast track to return on investment. This definitely should not be your primary strategy. If you are only looking to increase sales, if it's a short term goal for you, this is about brand building.

It's a long-term journey. It's about getting exposure and building a relationship with your clients.

So I'm gonna keep it short and sweet and leave it there. I hope you've picked up some influential tips and as always, you can follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And I look forward to being with you again on the next episode.