Avoid Making a Billion-dollar Influencer Marketing Mistake. Here’s how

Welcome to Elewa, a series featuring African thinking and solutions for business leaders. Here, we don’t just talk about data, insights and technology: we talk about the real drivers of business transformation.

How do you reach, and connect with, an audience that’s increasingly living online? For a growing number of African companies, influencer marketing is the hottest ticket in town. Globally, the influencer marketing industry is set to hit $22.3 billion by 2024, and there’s no end in sight.

In many ways, influencer marketing is the perfect channel for African businesses to reach their audiences. We’re a continent with a rich heritage of storytelling, and getting people outside our companies to tell stories about our business and purpose is increasingly resonating with Africa’s booming online population.

What’s fascinating to me, though, is that influencer marketing is no longer limited to consumer brands. In 2020, we’ve seen more B2B brands than ever realise that influencers represent a significant opportunity to reach interested buyers in a credible and trustworthy way.

We’re also seeing a shift in the way that businesses work with influencers. We’re moving away from ‘the bigger the influencer, the better’ approach to a world of sophisticated tactics and well thought-through collaborations with influencers who are authentic, have smaller followings and are well aligned with brand values.

Unfortunately, many brands are still getting it wrong. They’re wasting billions of dollars on poorly optimised campaigns and ineffective partnerships, and in 2019 alone, engagement fraud is estimated to have cost companies $1.3-billion.

Influencer marketing isn’t going away any time soon. But to get the most out of it, there are a few pointers to keep top of mind.

Use technology to make connections

As consumers wise up to social media endorsements and sponsored posts, it’s no longer enough just to have a good-looking lifestyle blogger with half-a-million followers serve up some slick-looking content. With the limitations of traditional influencer marketing becoming clear, we’re seeing a shift from working with big names with large followings to nano-influencers – social media users who have sway with small, but highly desirable, communities.

How do you find them? To make influencer marketing work, you need data-driven digital platforms that allow you to find potential influencers, sniff out fake followers, and more accurately measure ROI. Unilever is actively investing in tools that help it manage and optimise influencer campaigns from start to finish. Connected identity platforms like TruOptik are making it possible to deliver the right content to consumers regardless of platform.

By using a data-driven approach, you get an influencer marketing approach based on proven results rather than guesswork, and that allows brands to build meaningful relationships with the right people over time and across channels.

Talking of channels, remember that influencer marketing is fast growing beyond the ‘obvious’ channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Amazon’s Live Creator lets influencers earn a commission on products they feature on live streams. Twitch has become a hub not just for gaming companies but for fast food and beauty brands. But don’t guess.

Focus on value AND authenticity

‘Authenticity’ has become the de-facto benchmark by which influencer success is measured. However, in a world where influencers don’t even need to be real people, what does it mean to be authentic?

We often use ‘authenticity’ as a metric for assessing whether a brand or individual is worth listening to, but it’s trust that’s the most important factor. Trust can only be developed by showing you have your audience’s best interests at heart, and delivering value that’s at least equal to what you ask of them. That can only be achieved by doing the groundwork of understanding the person on the other side of the influencer equation and how you can make their lives better.

For B2B brands, this means creating credible content that can be promoted to interested buyers by people they trust. Instead of brands simply talking about themselves, they could start with customer research, and bring in outside commentary that is relevant to both the brand and the audience. The value of trusted sources of information to customers looking for solutions is priceless.

Have clarity around success

Many brands are simply happy to pour cash into obscure hashtags, align themselves with a popular online presences and apply archaic metrics in determining a campaign’s success. For instance, reach doesn’t imply engagement or influence. Arianna Renee (Arii) decided to launch her own clothing line ERA last year. At the time Arii had 2.6 million followers. How many t-shirts did she end up selling? Just 36. Why do people follow a specific person? What are we striving to achieve? Social media users are inundated with thousands of adverts, products and digital noise each day. In order to have clarity of what success looks like, you need to cut through the digital noise. Instead of measuring impressions through clicks – focus on the impressions that matter, lasting impressions.

Leverage your networks

Too many influencer marketing campaigns are approached as mini-celebrity endorsements, failing to tap into the decentralised power of digital networks. Are you present at the digital campfires around which your target audience gathers? Do you know where your audiences go to feed for information, and to share ideas? Instead of just paying one person to be your champion, how are you empowering others within that network to advocate for your brand? 

One of the best examples of a brand that leverages data to activate the right networks is Spotify, whose annual Unwrapped campaign turns its users into organic advocates. The platform generates a personalised visually-pleasing recap for every user and makes it easy for them to share their results across social media. The result: 1.2-million posts on Twitter in 2019 alone.

Remember: Digital is everything – and in a digital ecosystem, every touchpoint has the potential for engagement.

Is your business looking at influencer marketing strategies in 2021 and beyond? What’s your experience been to date of influencer marketing? How do you make sure your influencer marketing delivers a bang for your buck? I’d love to hear your thoughts below.

Reach out to me at any time with your views and comments: [email protected]. I look forward to connecting with you.