Proving the value of influencer marketing

Despite ques­tions over fraud, back­lash over trips to Dubai and the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic hit­ting adver­tis­ing hard, influ­encer mar­ket­ing con­tin­ues to grow. Accord­ing to influ­encer mar­ket­ing agency Medi­ak­ix, an indus­try that was worth just $500 mil­lion in 2015 could see spend of $15 bil­lion by 2022, if its high­er fore­cast for invest­ment proves true. 

Yet this is an indus­try beset by prob­lems for the brands that are invest­ing. Ebiq­ui­ty esti­mates that more than $1 bil­lion has been lost to fraud, while there are issues around unwant­ed brand expo­sure and pub­lic rela­tions dis­as­ters when things go wrong, as they have on a num­ber of occa­sions. 

“Brands need to do due dili­gence for influ­encer mar­ket­ing as they do across oth­er media,” says Angus McLean, direc­tor at Ebiq­ui­ty. That involves hav­ing the right con­tracts and ser­vice lev­el agree­ments, as well as doing due dili­gence on the back­ground of the peo­ple they work with. “The threat of an audit or some­one check­ing can make a huge dif­fer­ence to out­comes,” advis­es McLean. 

Rahul Titus, Ogilvy UK’s head of influ­ence, agrees. “Our stud­ies show one in four influ­encers in the UK have engaged in fraud against brands. We work to ensure we don’t work with any­one who has engaged in any fraud over the past five years. When we work with influ­encers, we need to ensure they’re brand safe,” he says.

Brand safe­ty is impor­tant, but so too is rel­e­vance. Mar­ket research com­pa­ny GlobalWebIndex’s research indi­cates 68 per cent of con­sumers fol­low­ing influ­encers intend to keep fol­low­ing them to the same extent after the pan­dem­ic ends. But there has been a back­lash against those post­ing what was deemed inap­pro­pri­ate dur­ing a cri­sis.

“If COVID-19 has taught us some­thing, it’s that peo­ple want aspi­ra­tional con­tent which is in reach. If there are trips to Dubai when trav­el is not allowed, then you’re not in tune with what the coun­try needs. There are influ­encers who’ve made mis­takes, but that’s the advan­tage of influ­encer mar­ket­ing, your feed­back loop is imme­di­ate. Aspi­ra­tional con­tent absolute­ly works, but aspi­ra­tional con­tent which isn’t achiev­able is def­i­nite­ly can­celled,” says Titus. 

This is a chal­lenge some mar­keters are all too famil­iar with, includ­ing Darain Faraz, EMEA direc­tor of brand mar­ket­ing at LinkedIn, who recog­nis­es how influ­encer mar­ket­ing can be seen neg­a­tive­ly. How­ev­er, with its “Change­mak­er” cam­paign, LinkedIn want­ed to find influ­encers mak­ing a pos­i­tive impact.

“We want­ed to shine a light on a series of indi­vid­u­als with some of the most talked about issues affect­ing the world of work. We iden­ti­fied top­ics that had viral­i­ty on LinkedIn and oth­er social plat­forms in the UK and set out to find these influ­encers,” says Faraz. 

“These peo­ple stood for a note­wor­thy cause and we saw they were migrat­ing to LinkedIn from oth­er plat­forms and want­ed these mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions and didn’t want to be trolled. Peo­ple weren’t there to find fame or there to cre­ate a liv­ing. What we found were peo­ple who had caus­es they were pas­sion­ate about.”

Giv­en the pos­si­ble down­sides, it is more impor­tant than ever for mar­keters to demon­strate the return on invest­ment (ROI) across their spend, includ­ing influ­encer mar­ket­ing. At the most basic lev­el, brands can mea­sure engage­ment, fol­lows, likes, reach or shares. But link­ing this back to busi­ness per­for­mance is key. 

Liisa Ennuste, influ­encer mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at deliv­ery com­pa­ny Bolt, uses a per­for­mance-dri­ven approach. “We track and mea­sure every­thing and bench­mark influ­encer mar­ket­ing against oth­er acqui­si­tion chan­nels, Face­book ads for exam­ple. Of course these chan­nels are not entire­ly com­pa­ra­ble, but you need to have a sol­id cost-per-acqui­si­tion bench­mark to be able to scale and see if it makes sense for the busi­ness,” she says. 

Ensur­ing it makes sense for the busi­ness is key. Ennuste adds: “What tends to hap­pen in mar­ket­ing is a new trend, or a new plat­form, takes over and every­one jumps on a band­wag­on with­out think­ing of the real mea­sur­able ben­e­fit. By look­ing at hard met­rics, we try to avoid that.”

Ogilvy UK’s Titus points to a grow­ing need for mar­keters to see the role of influ­encer mar­ket­ing across the sales fun­nel. “A lot of brands look at influ­encer mar­ket­ing as upper fun­nel. They think of it as aware­ness and con­sid­er­a­tion; it can be thought of as fluffy. The brands that are get­ting it right are using influ­encer mar­ket­ing across the whole fun­nel,” he says.