Your Influencer ROI is Built on a House of Cards

The ROI you’re counting on from your next influencer campaign is nothing more than an illusion.?

Maybe your CMO wants “tangible” results or your sales department is calling the shots without really understanding what’s possible, probable, and predictable. Either way, as an industry veteran, I’ve seen a lot of potential impact flushed down the drain when misconceptions become the shaky foundation for influencer strategy.?

Here’s what I mean:

1. “We have to tie sales to this program.”

Put a finger down if you work for a DTC brand.

The rest of you cannot and will not ever be able to link product sales directly to your marketing efforts.

If you could, we wouldn’t still be talking about it. Period.

There would be an app or a software package to do it, and everyone I know - including my mother - would be shoveling money toward such a tool because it would solve all of our problems.

No such tool exists. You know it. I know it. My mother knows it.

Which means the ongoing conversation about tying marketing to sales is a red herring. It means: “we don’t know how to truly measure impact, but we all agree sales are a good thing.” And the more we tolerate that discussion, the more time we waste.

Stop hobbling the impact of your influencer campaigns with that conversation. Look for different, tangible results that you can predict and measure.

2. “We want a mix of nano, micro, macro, and celebrity influencers on this program.

Stop. Just stop.

We would never let you set your KPIs by first deciding which type of influencer you want to work with.

Frankly, there is shockingly little difference between influencers with 15K followers and influencers with 115K followers when it comes to moving consumers to action or gathering consumer insights. Guess which one is often more economical, agile, and closely connected to your ideal consumers?

A nano, micro, macro, or celebrity influencer is only as good for your brand’s growth as their alignment with your brand to begin with.

Let’s make a pact right now to stop vetting influencers in terms of raw numbers and agree to instead work only with the best fit for our brands.

3. “Impressions and reach are meaningless metrics, but we’re going to use both to measure success for this campaign.”

Okay, no one is actually saying this. But they might as well, because once presented with reporting that focuses on impressions and reach, the next question is “So what?”

If your campaign were a living being, our oversight and reporting would be the equivalent of doing lab work.

What I mean by that is that we go beyond measuring the basics like impressions and reach (e.g. height and weight). We dig down to the molecular level. How are your kidneys functioning? How are they impacting your liver (or vice versa)? What is your white blood cell count? And is that the cause of your fatigue?

As you can see, the critical question is: how do these metrics impact each other? What story are they telling?

We specialize in interpreting the data that comes through consumer engagement. We map that qualitative data against quantitative data (impressions/reach/sales) to extract critical insights that guide next steps and brand growth. It's granular and specialized.

Then we can begin to answer questions like:

• What motivates your consumer?
• What frustrates your consumer?
• What messaging resonates with them?
• How do they talk about your brand?
• What shouldn’t you say to your consumer?

The better you understand your consumer, the better you can position your brand to capture consumer mindshare and cut through the marketing noise that’s endemic in our lives.?

When you invest in influencer marketing, I want you to do it the right way from the beginning and be a rockstar in the end. Your brand, your team, your budget all deserve campaign results that make sense and set the stage for more impact and success moving forward. Resist the temptation of the flawed approaches above, and you’ll be on the right track.