Influence with influencers

In 2024, advertisers will spent $8.14 billion on influencer marketing, a 16% increase YoY, according to EMARKETER's March 2024 forecast. In the online world, just like Times Square, there’s so much noise, bright lights and gimmicks that your attention span shrinks to seconds because you physically can’t absorb everything you’re seeing. And this is your newsfeed on Instagram, X, LinkedIn and Facebook all day, every day. With the omni-channel experience, and having ubiquitous content at your fingertips, it’s become increasingly easier to get a share of voice and shout into the void, but the harder battle has become share of mind – being first to mind when your customers are ready to make buying choices.

Social media habits have changed beyond recognition in the last ten years: we have moved from using social media as a broadcasting tool, to using it as a community building platform, especially in the B2B world. Communication, even from B2B brands, has become more personal; content is more deliberate and relevant to the individual. It’s not about popularity - or who’s got the biggest, most expensive ad - it’s about aligning values and being approachable. And this is why influencers can be the embodiment of your brand or organisation in grabbing hold and hanging onto that share of mind.

Which is why we always kick off any influencer campaign with a strategic up-front piece where we really pinpoint who the target audience is, and what their wants and needs are. Then we can map these out and consider the type of influencer that is best placed to talk to those points and aligns most with our client - this can include bloggers, business leaders, celebrities and even brand advocates from within their own organisation.

The challenge is then how to gain, and hold onto, the attention of your audience without abusing their trust – research shows 69% trust influencer messages more than brand messages. Ultimately, what people want is for brands to be authentic and often, have an opinion on emerging issues: 59% said a brand’s stance on wider issues was ‘somewhat important’, or ‘very important’ (YouGov).

So, ‘purpose’ is clearly the new brand currency - telling a powerful story is the most effective way to create a deeper emotional connection with your audience. But of course, we’ve always known that – especially when thankfully the days of B2B content lacking personality or stories are long behind us.

As marketers we’re in a constant battle to find the ‘sweet spot’ between what audiences want to hear and what we want to say – it’s a tale as old as time. We believe that ‘sweet spot’ is where influencers can sit and make things easier by acting as the ‘middle man’ between us as marketers and your audience. User-generated content (UGC) massively changes the relationship between audience and businesses. Raw, uncensored content accompanied by character - and belief in the content creator - helps to bridge that gap between audience and business/brand.  According to a 2020 HubSpot social media report, 90% of purchasing decisions are led by UGC. So, moving forward we will continue to see brand content that doesn’t look like an agency made it –a trend that’s now here to stay.

When we work with brands and influencers, the one thing we hammer home to our clients is the importance of trust and authenticity. According to the Nielsen Consumer Trust Index, 92% of consumers trust influencer marketing over traditional advertising – because influencer content feels like you could see it from your friends or people like you. It allows a closer alignment between a brand, the product and how they might fit into the consumer’s life. People buy from people and that’s essentially what influencer marketing is. And no doubt the other reason is because you can have a ‘real’ conversation with an influencer, see a human face and engage.

Three-quarters of influencers are most likely to reject a pitch because of its lack of relevance to their audience, which is why we place such high value on understanding a client’s target audience, and their journey to purchase or build trust in a brand. This is critical information for any brand or organisation to take on board: just because an influencer is well known and has a huge following, they might not be the right person to successfully build brand engagement for you. Authenticity is key to a successful influencer marketing campaign – there has to be a natural fit between the influencer and what they’re promoting, or your audience will lose trust, and this could be damaging to your brand. 

Of course, one of the real benefits of influencer marketing is the demonstrable way you can quantify ROI: nearly everything can be tracked – engagement impressions, clicks, conversions, product sales. There’s also so much insight you can gain from audience interaction that can really help inform the next steps, especially when used in conjunction with robust social listening tactics to inform your next steps.

The world of influencer marketing is constantly evolving, and brands must continually evolve their strategies to match. If you’re considering how working with influencers could help you then drop us a line.