Focusing on Influencer Marketing in 2021 (Archive, 2021)

Recorded in April 2021 during Simon's s.media agency era — a team compilation of positions on where influencer marketing was heading. Published as part of a dated historical record.

Do influencers need to be pre-vetted?

Something I'd come across recently: brands rating influencers on a scoring system — their ethics, their drive — to get a supposedly transparent view and a near-certain prediction of profitable performance. I'm not sure I agree with it. What matters more is finding influencers that match your brand values, and working closely together to make sure those values align. Building that relationship, and finding the people who genuinely fit your brand, is more important than rating influencers against each other on abstract qualities. Why would you want to score them against one another at all?

Why are rev-share deals coming to the front?

It's a challenging time for marketers and brands, and one interesting approach is revenue share. It's been around a while, but with purse strings tight it's coming to the front as brands look to maximise budgets. In most influencer deals, the influencer just gets paid for doing their thing — which is fine, but often those influencers aren't the right fit for the brand; there's a misalignment, and it doesn't feel real. A rev-share deal makes it more interesting for both parties longer term: it forces brand and influencer to genuinely think about how they align on values, what each needs from it, and what it means to the customers seeing the work. Financially it's good — and it probably binds the brand, the influencer and the consumer together far more strongly than the old model.

Are micro-influencers worth it for smaller brands?

If you're worried your brand is too small to work with an influencer, research micro-influencers: people with roughly 1,000 to 40,000 followers on a single platform. They'll work for a lot less than bigger names — sometimes for free, or in exchange for your product or service — so it's much easier to start collaborating. And the trust between them and their followers is far greater than with a big influencer or celebrity, because they're not out there doing huge brand deals for products they might not actually like. Their followers feel they're more honest, the relationship is better, engagement is higher — and your relationship with those followers inherits all of that.

How big is this going to get?

Influencer strategies look set to take a really sizeable portion of marketing budgets, and one reason is the value of user-generated content. Influencers demonstrably shape people's buying decisions, and as more people use social media and trust these voices, that becomes powerful currency. Brands that identify the right influencers and get involved with the communities buying their products build ambassadors — recognised for their content and the service it does — which drives both brand awareness and sales, and connects brands much more deeply with their communities.

What should you actually look for in an influencer?

The number one thing: their ability to create engagement. The size of their network is secondary to the quality of the audience they bring. Work with the influencer so they understand how people engage with your product and what value your content brings — whether they're a blogger or posting on social, you want people who can transition naturally from their day-to-day content to your brand and get people engaging with it, articulating the value your brand brings to them and the end customer. It does no good to fake it till you make it: if an influencer is going to represent your brand, they need to be a user of it, love it, and be able to articulate why. It's not just about mentions — it's engagement and value, articulated.

What's the catch in a saturated market?

Influencers are everywhere now — TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram — and the market is saturated. You won't always get great value, because so much of the content is mediocre and nobody stands out. Plenty of brands are wasting budget on the wrong influencers. Find the ones who are cost-effective and genuinely move your brand forward — for us, that's micro-influencers within a specific niche, heavily engaged with their topic, willing to work in exchange for products or trials. That incentive builds the influencer's confidence and following while showing your brand in a positive light and building the long-term prospect. Be wary, keep your eyes open, and be clear what you want out of the campaign.