Lies, damned lies and the truth about influencer marketing

Influ­encer mar­ket­ing remains one of the biggest oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands to mar­ket to and con­nect with increas­ing­ly social media savvy cus­tomers. But, giv­en that it has had its fair share of neg­a­tive media cov­er­age in recent times thanks to the antics of real­i­ty TV stars, it is vital to get the strat­e­gy right.

Celebri­ty Kim Kar­dashi­an was an exam­ple of a cam­paign gone wrong last year when she was fined $1.26million by the U.S. Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion for pro­mot­ing an unproven cryp­tocur­ren­cy called Ethereum­Max on social media, with­out dis­clos­ing that the con­tent was part of a $250,000 paid part­ner­ship. 

Her half-sis­ter and fel­low TV star, Kendall Jen­ner, had pre­vi­ous­ly been slammed along­side oth­er social media influ­encers, for pro­mot­ing the infa­mous fraud­u­lent Fyre music fes­ti­val. Fans paid thou­sands of dol­lars for a sup­posed lux­u­ry event in the Bahamas but were met instead by, as the Guardian report­ed, ‘emer­gency tents, cheese rolls and squalor’. 

This celebri­ty focussed approach can hit brands’ rep­u­ta­tions and their bot­tom line. Recent stud­ies have shown that near­ly half of con­sumers are fatigued by repet­i­tive and ano­dyne celebri­ty influ­encer con­tent with only 3% of con­sumers now being influ­enced by their endorse­ments when buy­ing prod­ucts.

“When I tell peo­ple what I do for a job they imme­di­ate­ly think about brands pay­ing big celebri­ties thou­sands of dol­lars to push their con­tent to mil­lions of fol­low­ers on their social media feeds. It is essen­tial­ly, they believe, a media ad buy­ing exer­cise,” says Neil Bren­nan, SVP sales at influ­encer mar­ket­ing plat­form Klear. “I see it every day myself. I fol­low Lionel Mes­si on social media, and he will just lit­er­al­ly post ads on his Insta­gram for prod­ucts I assume he knows very lit­tle about.”

Healthy ROI

But despite the gloom brands have not shown influ­encer mar­ket­ing the red card – quite the oppo­site.

Accord­ing to the Influ­encer Mar­ket­ing Hub’s 2023 ‘State of Influ­encer Mar­ket­ing’ report brands and mar­ket­ing agen­cies believe that the ‘odd hor­ror sto­ry in the media is the excep­tion and not the rule’ and that influ­encer mar­ket­ing is still deemed to be ‘effec­tive’ with regards to sales, engage­ment, return on invest­ment and attract­ing a high­er qual­i­ty of cus­tomer than oth­er mar­ket­ing meth­ods.

One key dri­ver behind the use of influ­encer mar­ket­ing is the devel­op­ment of user gen­er­at­ed con­tent – indeed accord­ing to the State of Influ­encer Mar­ket­ing report it is now the main rea­son brands embrace the strat­e­gy. It can be an effec­tive way of pop­u­lat­ing a brand’s web­site with con­tent gen­er­at­ed by influ­encers rather than their own cre­ators there­by reduc­ing costs. An exam­ple is Lululemon’s ‘The Sweat Life’ cam­paign, where it encour­ages its cus­tomers to post pho­tos of them­selves in the brand’s clothes on their social media feeds. They are then repur­posed for use on Lululemon’s own web­site.

Accord­ing to Sta­tista, 60% of mar­keters say influ­encer mar­ket­ing has a high­er return on invest­ment than tra­di­tion­al adver­tis­ing. Oth­er stud­ies have found that it also boosts brand engage­ment with just a 1% increase in influ­encer mar­ket­ing spend­ing result­ing in an engage­ment boost of almost 0.5%. In addi­tion,  a third of social media users say they dis­cov­er new prod­ucts via influ­encers.

The Influ­encer Mar­ket­ing Hub report found that spend on influ­encer mar­ket­ing climbed 29% from $16.4billion in 2022 to $21.1billion in 2023. Where­as in 2016, this fig­ure was only $1.7billion.

Indeed, more than 80% of mar­ket­ing agen­cies and brands intend­ed to ded­i­cate bud­get to influ­encer mar­ket­ing in 2023, with a quar­ter look­ing to allo­cate 40% of their total mar­ket­ing bud­get. 

“Some few and far between influ­encer cas­es have become news­wor­thy. It is a human based prac­tice and there is always going to be some lev­el of con­tro­ver­sy but over­all, more peo­ple fol­low influ­encers online than fol­low brands and trust them more,” says influ­encer mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant Camille Kennedy. “Peo­ple from all gen­er­a­tions still look at influ­encers rec­om­men­da­tions and go to their feeds on Insta­gram and Tik­Tok to learn about the lat­est trends and prod­ucts.”

Microinfluencers spark engagement

It’s also increas­ing­ly about val­ues, argues Scott Guthrie, direc­tor gen­er­al of the Influ­encer Mar­ket­ing trade body. “Con­sumers from all gen­er­a­tions want to spend their mon­ey with brands they can iden­ti­fy with on dif­fer­ent lev­els,” he says. “They want them to mesh with their world views and behav­iours. They want to cosy up with brands, so find­ing the right influ­encer who aligns with these val­ues and can human­ise the brand is impor­tant.”

Con­sumers are also gen­er­al­ly savvi­er about being mar­ket­ed and sold to by brands. 

Brands have also been accused of appro­pri­at­ing social caus­es for com­mer­cial gain. Recent­ly, brew­ing com­pa­ny AB In-Bev saw sales of drinks such as Bud Light slump fol­low­ing a social media pro­mo­tion with trans­gen­der influ­encer Dylan Mul­vaney. The brand faced crit­i­cism from con­ser­v­a­tive­ly mind­ed drinkers who believed a trans­gen­der per­son did not reflect their social val­ues and from trans­gen­der sup­port­ers who thought the brand did not give enough sup­port to Mul­vaney fol­low­ing the back­lash.

Bren­nan believes brands must respond to con­cerns around influ­encer fatigue by re-shap­ing influ­encer mar­ket­ing strate­gies if they want the ben­e­fits to con­tin­ue. That means mov­ing away from celeb-dom­i­nat­ed influ­encer mar­ket­ing to more use of so-called micro and nano influ­encers with small­er but more engaged fol­low­ers.

This is already hap­pen­ing with the Influ­encer Mar­ket­ing Hub report find­ing that there is a pref­er­ence amongst brands and mar­ket­ing agen­cies to use small­er influ­encers. These typ­i­cal­ly have fol­low­er num­bers between 1,000 and 100,000 rather than mega or celebri­ty influ­encers.

“The heart of cre­ative mar­ket­ing is hav­ing a gen­uine and authen­tic rela­tion­ship between a brand, an influ­encer and the audi­ence they want to appeal to,” Bren­nan says. “There are so many cre­ative influ­encers out there who are author­i­ties in their space and have pas­sion­ate fol­low­ers. They cre­ate con­tent which res­onates with peo­ple. They want to read it and are delight­ed by it. Brands are increas­ing­ly part­ner­ing with small­er influ­encers, insert­ing a brand mes­sage into the con­tent but main­tain­ing that appeal, authen­tic­i­ty and trust.”

Bren­nan adds that this bespoke con­tent will help give brands an advan­tage in an altered con­sumer envi­ron­ment. “Most buy­ing deci­sions are now made by peo­ple who research online first. That’s usu­al­ly on Google for those over 25 years of age and Tik-Tok for those a bit younger,” he says. “If peo­ple are on these social chan­nels, then brands need to be more aware of what and who is being talked about on them.”

Brands should also embed influ­encer mar­ket­ing into an over­all cam­paign strat­e­gy. “Influ­encer mar­ket­ing is often seen in iso­la­tion. When a brand decides to run a cam­paign, they focus on their main ver­ti­cal – say TV or dig­i­tal – and influ­encer mar­ket­ing is just an after­thought at the end of it,” Bren­nan explains. “The brands who are doing this the best are using a joined-up strat­e­gy. As part of their over­all plan­ning process, they iden­ti­fy cre­ative influ­encers who will make a big impact via con­tent and mes­sag­ing, but it can also be repur­posed to be used on their own social chan­nels.”

Influencers are a must-have

Guthrie adds: “Influ­encers can be used at the top of the sales fun­nel, along with the big celebri­ties, to build aware­ness, in the mid­dle to nudge peo­ple to find out more about a prod­uct and at the bot­tom dri­ving con­ver­sion. Again, find­ing the right influ­encer fit is cru­cial as dif­fer­ent cre­ators are adept at doing dif­fer­ent things from aspi­ra­tional to sales-focused con­tent.”

Kennedy says it is about find­ing where these cred­i­ble voic­es can be more effec­tive­ly used. “That could be invit­ing influ­encers to red car­pet brand events such as the Met Gala. A decade ago, it would have been full of celebri­ties not influ­encers. They are also even being used on pack­ag­ing in retail stores and in TV adver­tis­ing,” she says. “It is a 360-degree inte­grat­ed approach where influ­encer mar­ket­ing is part of the core strat­e­gy, chan­nel mix and media plan. If you aren’t using influ­encers, you are leav­ing mon­ey on the table.”

Guthrie is equal­ly as demon­stra­tive. “Influ­encer mar­ket­ing is no longer siloed. It is the beat­ing heart of the mar­ket­ing mix,” he says.

In fact, Bren­nan adds, some brands have put all their chips into influ­encer mar­ket­ing. “They’ve cut all their paid dig­i­tal media based on ROI and are using only influ­encers in their con­tent cre­ation strat­e­gy,” he says. “What­ev­er way you use it, it is naïve at best for a busi­ness to dis­miss influ­encer mar­ket­ing. If you don’t explore it, you are dri­ving your busi­ness with only one hand at the wheel.”