To most companies, “influencer marketing” is just the hip, digital version of celebrity endorsements. Some people have thousands or millions of social media followers; you pay them to say nice things about your brand and they bring in new customers.
That is the “top-down” approach to influencer marketing, and it is broken. Although pure influencers can make plenty of noise, they have no credibility. They are mercenaries.
To be effective, influencer marketing must work bottom-up. Brands need to find advocates – people who would use their products and speak their praises with or without encouragement. These people can become “advocate-influencers” (the two roles are not mutually exclusive). At the highest level of influencer marketing, customers will pay you to advocate for your brand.
The Mercenaries
Paid endorsements are a broken norm. Today, we assume that famous endorsers are mercenaries who auction their opinions to the higher bidders. While we don’t fault celebrities for renting out their megaphones, we sure as hell don’t trust the endorsement.
Phil Mickelson may be sponsored by ExxonMobil, but we know he has no special attachment to their gasoline. There’s no way Jennifer Aniston can taste or feel the difference between SmartWater and other bottled waters. We know that Oprah was full of it when she plugged Microsoft Surface in 2012. She tweeted “Gotta say love that SURFACE!” via “Twitter for iPad.”
Mercenary endorsements make brands look desperate. Could they not find someone who genuinely likes their product? Or, do they default to the person with the biggest megaphone? We’re skeptical of paid endorsements, but we also see borderline cases where the endorser has skin in the game.
The bottom-up approach to influencer marketing starts with a question: who already likes your brand?
Take Oprah again – she has struggled with weight loss for years, so her endorsements for a diet program may be authentic. Recently, she bought 10 percent of Weight Watchers for $43 million. Sure enough, the stock soared on the news. Oprah sent the stock surging again in January, when she announced that she had lost 26 pounds while eating bread every day. And then on February 26, the value of her shares dropped $27 million on a surprise fourth-quarter loss.
Oprah appears to be a genuine advocate for Weight Watchers, but what if she regains the weight? Will she dump her shares and disavow Weight Watchers? Like a company’s CEO, does she have too much skin in the game to be credible?
Influencer marketing is not supposed to be celebrity endorsements 2.0, but most companies play it that way. To save influencer marketing from the same hypocrisies and mistrust, we must chart a different course.
The Peer Influencer
The bottom-up approach to influencer marketing starts with a question: who already likes your brand? Who shares your content on social media and speaks your praises without incentives?
A small percentage of these advocates will have a large “sphere of influence” – i.e. tons of followers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Within this influential cohort, we ask the next question: whose audience resembles your brand’s?
For example, Justin Bieber has 60.1 million Instagram followers, but they are mostly under 21 and female. Even if the ‘Biebs’ praised Stampede, your hypothetical scotch-style whiskey brand (yes, you’re a distiller for a few paragraphs), why would you want him to promote it to teen girls?
On the other hand, if comedian Ron White sang Stampede’s praises, he could be a better match. The man attracts a mature audience, and he never appears on stage without a tumbler of scotch.
But step back from this dialogue, for a moment. That is how brands regress into the mercenary mindset. As good as he sounds, Ron White will not promote Stampede for free. Yes, he’d raise brand awareness, but I doubt he’ll drive as much action as someone who has earned the trust and respect of whiskey lovers.
So let’s go back to your list of influential advocates and rank them by “peer influence.” Of the 100 people who organically mention your brand, how many are followed by other people on the same list? In other words, who influences the influencers?
Mediocre brands hire endorsers; great brands find advocates; the top 0.01% of brands don’t need to do either.
Let’s say your biggest peer influencer on Twitter is @ScotchScout (he’s made up too). We want to know if his audience aligns with Stampede’s. We analyze keywords at scale to see if @ScotchScout and @StampedeWhiskey followers have shared interests. It turns out that both groups like whiskey (duh), camping, hunting, RVs and motorcycles. And, there is only a two percent overlap between Stampede’s audience and ScotchScout’s. If he became your advocate-influencer, he would reach people who don’t already follow you.
Next, we find 20 more whiskey leaders like ScotchScout, and we invite them to an exclusive Stampede tasting at your headquarters in Austin, Texas. You invite them to become official Stampede Ambassadors. You’ll provide exclusive tastings, first dibs on new whiskeys, swag and product they can share with friends and followers.
In exchange, you ask that they share their Stampede experiences on social media. They say what they want to say, how they want to say it. You provide insights about their audience’s interests (camping, hunting, RVs, motorcycles, etc.) to help them build a creative strategy. In marketing-speak, people describe this process as “activating influencers” (yes, it sounds like a line from a dystopian B movie).
Now that you have advocate-influencers in action, we measure their effect. Who brings in new followers for Stampede? Who drives people to the email list? Who triggers online orders? We crosscheck new email address against their audiences to see who created action, not just awareness.
This is influencer marketing the way it should be done. You build relationships with genuine fans, and you support them with incentives that would only be valuable to a true fan. You’re not paying them to do this. They retain trust and authenticity yet still bring people to your brand.
You may choose to use a mixture of Ron Whites and @ScotchScouts to generate awareness and action. That’s tolerable but not optimal. In the long-term, you’ll find better ROI with unpaid advocate-influencers.
When Customers Pay to Join Your Tribe
Mediocre brands hire endorsers; great brands find advocates; the top 0.01% of brands don’t need to do either. People pay to become their advocate-influencers. In essence, they build a brand so powerful that people want to be identified with it.
Yeti Coolers is more than a brand – it’s a tribe. Their hats are part of the affluent, middle-aged dad uniform in Austin, Texas. And as Inc. reports, their customers pay a 10x premium for their coolers. They feel proud to say that their Yeti is “grizzly-proof,” even if they don’t live in a state with grizzly bears. It’s a $450 million brand because people want to be associated with the Yeti lifestyle. Regular customers are loud advocate-influencers; their celebrity endorsers whisper by comparison.
Before Lance Armstrong tarnished Livestrong, it didn’t need to pay for influencers. People bought more than 80 million Livestrong bracelets, promoting the brand every waking hour. The bright yellow wristbands, a symbol of support for cancer patients, became a source of camaraderie. People felt proud to spread the message of Livestrong.
Harley Davidson, MINI, CrossFit and other brands all fit this tribal model where customers pay, in part, to be associated with the brand. Can it work for any company? Probably not. As far as I’m aware, no B2B brand has reached cult status.
Renewing Trust
People come to an influencer for information and guidance – they trust the person to be an advocate, not a paid pawn. When you pay mercenaries to plug your brand, you trade trust for awareness. You undermine the credibility of influencers when you ask them to plug irrelevant things. Do you really want your brand represented by people who sell their opinion to the highest bidder?
Top-down influencer marketing has eroded public trust in endorsements, but a bottom-up approach can renew that trust. Celebrities endorsements are for brands that think short-term and value buzz. Influencer marketing is for brands that think long-term and value loyalty.
Learn more about defining and activating influencers and advocates by downloading our white paper.
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