Tried Influencer Marketing and It Didn’t Work? Here Is What You Should Do

Source: Neil Patel

Companies have long sought to get their products in the hands of influential people.

By associating your brand with the right trendsetters, it leaks into the culture and becomes a household name.

It’s called influencer marketing.

The idea behind it is simple — you partner with trusted people in the community who have large platforms that can promote your brand.

These people can convince their social media followers to emulate them by purchasing your products.

I’m going to teach you how and why to get started.

Back in 2015, over 84% of companies surveyed were working on influencer marketing projects.

The State of Influencer Marketing (a 2017 survey of 170 marketers by influencer marketing agency Linqia) shows that while 94% of brands consider working with influencers to be a success, 78% are still working on ways to quantify that success.

Quantifiable data is the key to successful marketing.

In the modern age of mobile devices and social media, influencers should be easier to quantify than in the pre-Internet days.

Surely, a large number of followers and likes on Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat is a good sign.

But there’s a risk.

Fake social media followings have become too commonplace these days. There are even vending machines in Russian malls selling fake Instagram likes.

Adding to the confusion, the FTC cracked down on influencer marketers in April of 2017.

Warning letters were issued to top social media influencers advising them to disclose brand relationships clearly when endorsing or promoting products.

They even went so far as to specify that it’s not enough to bury that disclosure in a string of hashtags.

Here’s the letter if you’d like to read it for yourself.

The government is social media-savvy, and it’s clearly working on strengthening transparency for consumers. Do the right thing.

These dangers don’t mean influencer marketing is impossible, but it does take due diligence to get it right and generate ROI.

That’s the whole point of any marketing project, right?

People constantly use social media. Over half of all Facebook users access the site more than once a day, and another 30% use it at least once a day.

There has to be a way to take advantage of this platform, right?

For us to calculate that ROI, we’ll need to know the cost and value add of a social influencer.

Let’s roll up our sleeves and figure that out.

The value of the Internet celebrity

Despite the possible pitfalls, the reason influencers are so sought after is because there are only two sources of accurate product information more trusted than a brand itself.

Online reviewers and friends/family/colleagues are the goal of our influencer marketing initiatives.

Influencers can actually occupy both of these categories, but it’s not necessary to pull a product review from them to benefit from the connection.

Sometimes your product or logo just needs to be seen at the right place and time.

A mention of your brand from an influencer can be enough to drive conversions in some cases.

It used to be necessary to focus influencer marketing resources on film, television, and radio personalities to reach large audiences. There were two ways to accomplish this.

Hungry entrepreneurs would line up outside major events like the Academy Awards ceremony to get their goods into celebrity swag bags.

Other brands like Nike would sign lucrative million dollar endorsement deals to secure celebrity endorsements.

George Foreman made over $200 million for endorsing the George Foreman grill.

It was a match made in heaven, but an expensive one.

It cost the makers of the Lean, Mean, Fat Grilling Machine 45% of profits until they bought out Foreman’s contract for $150 million plus stock.

While swag and celebrity endorsement deals still exist, they’re no longer the only ways to get your products into the hands of influential people. The Internet has celebrities of its own.

Independent people can build cult followings, while celebrities struggle with the perils of fame on social media.

Nielsen ratings show that adults spend an average of five and a half hours on social media each week. That’s 22% of the total time spent across all media.

Even Hailey Baldwin, Iris Apfel, and other top celebrity endorsers for 2017 are more influencer than celebrity. It’s a sign of changing times.

Average people are the new celebrity.

Andy Warhol, whose art explored branding until he became a brand himself, put it best when he mentioned a future where everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

Technology reached a point where everyone can broadcast to the world and gather a platform of followers. It spreads far beyond social media’s 2.78 billion users.

Laina Morris, for instance, is more popularly known as the Overly Attached Girlfriend. Her YouTube channel has over 1.28 million subscribers and 150 million views.

It wasn’t long before Morris partnered with Kia to promote the Soul through a series of YouTube videos and tweets.

The Kia Soul closed out 2016 as the top-selling model in its class, so the company has clearly caught on to something.

The partnership was a win for both Morris, who exchanged her creative work for a car, and Kia.

That’s ultimately what you want to find with an influencer program.

Trading a $15,000 car for several years of devoted content for an audience of millions sounds more prudent than spending $5 million for 30 seconds during the Super Bowl.

She’s far from the only person creating content that builds a following online. And just because she’s popular doesn’t make her the right influencer for you.

There are a lot of fish in the sea, and the market favors brands that can catch the right ones.

Influencing the right channels

According to the old saying, who you know matters more than what you know.

This does ring true, but to connect with the right influencers for your brand, you need to know where and how to find them.

B2B brands will likely use LinkedIn and Facebook more, whereas Instagram and Snapchat are great visual platforms to reach consumers.

Vlogger and blogger outreach are also important for businesses of all types.

Here’s an interesting big-picture overview of the more popular social platforms.

Keep in mind that an influencer on one social media platform may not be as influential on another. And numbers can be deceiving, as even devoted followers don’t always get the message.

Hip-hop producer DJ Khaled, for example, is known as the king of Snapchat, averaging 3 million views per snap and often making guest appearances on corporate Snapchat accounts for brands like Coca-Cola and Stride Gum.

While his Twitter account has an equally impressive-looking 3.5 million followers, the engagement per post is much less.

If you were to work with DJ Khaled as an influencer, you’d need to be very specific on which channels you want to use for promotion.

Each is likely to come with an associated cost, and there’s no real formula to determine how much a Snapchat view or…

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