Your Weekly Influencer Marketing Update 🚀
11.01.2021
☀️ Happy New Year! ☀️
We’re back with a new edition of our weekly influencer marketing update.
This week’s article review
🍾 Here's Why Brands Are Failing at Influencer Campaigns (and What to Focus on in 2021) 🍾
I thought I’d start the year with this opinion piece - it’s quite the tradition to write about the “new” influencer marketing trends that are expected to come, so we’ve summarised the main talking points & analysed one of them. Enjoy!
Engagement remains king — not followers: engagement is the number one metric that brands depend upon to determine the success of a campaign. The value proposition of an influencer is determined by the percentage of impact upon their audience — not the size of their audience.
The need for pre-vetted influencers: this need for brands who depend on the influencer industry will be realized through technology solutions and information sharing between all social media platforms into a single source where the brand can have a transparent view and close to 100% prediction of profitable performance. Only then can we see influencer marketing become truly and unfailingly successful.
The utilization of micro-influencers: the nature of influence is changing between demographics and, in the case of companies trying to market to Gen-Z (and everything that comes after), micro-influencers may be the best option. They are also a great option when finances are particularly tight, but the campaigns still need to get done.
Partnerships with revenue share opportunities:
“I expect to see a proliferation of influencer joint venture partnership deals in 2021,” says Jesse Tevelow, founder of LaunchTeam and the LaunchTeam Growth Summit. “Companies will offer rev-share marketing opportunities to Influencers who demonstrate strong brand-alignment and maintain engaged, targeted audiences."Turning buyers into influencers through user-generated content:
“With the exploding popularity of creative media on TikTok and Instagram Reels, everyday followers are craving to be involved with more brand campaigns,” says Mark Escano of Escano Brothers, a content creation firm. “Brands who turn buyers — no matter the follower size — into influencers, gain trust by empowering their community to create and share content around their products.”
💡 Our Opinion
We’ve taken the most important points from the article and pasted them into the summary above, but because there is so much to discuss, we’ve broken down and analysed each point below in more detail.
Engagement remains king — not followers.
This is an age old topic within influencer marketing, the micro vs macro debate has been raging on for literally years now. Our thoughts lined up for 2021:
Engagement rate is a fantastic way to understand how engaged an audience is when it comes to content, but should by no means be a single deciding factor when it comes to selecting creators. It helps you understand (on average) how engaged audiences are with the content being shared with them. At a bare minimum, sponsored engagement rate should have a higher importance.
Engagement rate says less about actual performance and more about brand-audience match; at best a higher engagement rate indicates that the creator has a better understanding of what works for their audience. If you end up in a situation where your piece of commissioned content underperforms, it may not necessarily be because the content is bad quality but rather that the audience isn’t (yet) ready to receive it. It also shows the importance of continued relationships;the more often an audience is exposed to a similar content theme, the more likely they will be to embrace it.
Reach should never be neglected. Let’s face it, most brands want exposure and exposure requires an audience. Working with micro-influencers may be more efficient, but without the support of paid media or high-reach influencers, it will be significantly more challenging to generate traction.
The need for pre-vetted influencers.
Data and insights makes things significantly easier and, more so than performance, context will always be the most important thing to any brand. Our concern with pre-vetting by third parties is that it will turn influencer marketing into an influencer advertising business, with the money floating to the “top performers” versus the most relevant creators.
The utilization of micro-influencers.
I highlighted this as a trend as far back as 2016 :have we been utilising more micro-influencers year-on-year since, or have we ignored the trend for a whopping 5 years straight? I’d love to see some data.
Partnerships with rev-share opportunities.
While this is happening more and more often, the segue into influencers building their own brands versus simply renting out their audiences to brands is a much more interesting development, and one that I think will sky-rocket in the coming years. One example would be MrBeast launching MrBeast Burger - and taking the U.S. by storm.
His new delivery-only concept, MrBeast Burger, marks one of the most ambitious moves a media personality has taken in the food space to date. MrBeast isn't just committing money or a bit of ownership stake into a brand, he's the full owner and is working with 300 different ghost kitchen locations to bring his burgers nationwide.
Turning buyers into influencers through user-generated content.
Championing and empowering potential (and current) buyers and brand advocates is a crucial, often overlooked component of the influencer marketing mix. There should be more focus on engaging the audiences you’ve generated through influencer marketing - otherwise the long-term results of your efforts will be seriously impacted.
🏭 Industry Headlines
As The Influencer Marketing Industry Expands, Creators And Brands Must Self-Police
“With this tension comes a huge responsibility for influencers to self-regulate and assume a stringent duty of care, in order to protect the general public, as well as the brands they’re working with. Nuanced messaging, factual information sharing, and sensitivity are necessary for influencers to strike the right balance.”
Instagram reportedly let some influencers in on user engagement tips
“Shared behind closed doors, these suggestions come down to a matter of math (number of posts) and timing (how many times posted per day and week). The three Instagram content creators Business Insider spoke to told it that recommendations included posting three in-feed posts every week (which also means IGTV and Reels). They should also try to post somewhere between eight to 10 Stories through the Instagram Story feature. Look, no one said full-time content was going to be easy.”
General Motors Launches New Everybody In Marketing Campaign
“Everybody In demonstrates our intent to lead, while inviting others – policymakers, partners, individuals – to play an active role in moving society forward, whether that’s helping to expand infrastructure, advocating for progress in their communities, or simply taking an EV for a test drive to learn about the benefits of EV ownership,” General Motors’ chief marketing officer, Deborah Wahl, said in a statement.
Formula E’s new esports tournament features main series crossover rounds
“Formula E has announced a new six-round esports competition that is offering a minimum prize pool of €100,000 (US$122,000) and the opportunity to drive a car from the all-electric racing series.”
How deepfakes could change fashion advertising
“Dynamic campaigns — the term for micro-targeted ads at scale — are becoming a key tool in a marketer’s arsenal. Deepfakes have the potential to help brands reach customers with highly targeted and personalised messaging. For influencers and celebrities, deepfakes help them to easily broaden their reach by agreeing to front a fashion ad campaign and model clothes without even turning up for a photo shoot. Millions of different deepfake ads can instantly run across platforms like Facebook, while up to 100 different influencer ads targeted at various audiences could run, says Simon Lejeune, a growth marketing consultant.”