The Secret to Influencer Marketing Success

If we think about the very point of influencer marketing, it’s to transfer the follower’s love for the influencer to a love for a brand, which then leads to a sale. What we’ve learnt over the years is that when authenticity is everything, the looser the partnership brief and approval process the better the outcome, here’s why:

1. Nobody knows the influencer’s community like they do
so they are best placed to decide what will resonate best with their audience – they’ve seen what goes viral and what flops, what gets engagement and what gets overlooked, they know their audience more intimately than anyone so trust their instincts.

2. The more free rein the influencer has the more authentic their endorsement will come across and the more it will resonate with the follower. Keeping in mind how allergic audiences are to anything that smells remotely like an ad, the moment a follower gets a whiff of an advertising message we’ve lost them.

3. Followers are more likely to believe the endorsement if it’s imperfect – just in the same way an ecom review builds trust even when the reviewer mentions a throw away negative amongst the overall positive endorsement, it’s still so much stronger than a perfect glowing review, because it’s real.

4. A follower doesn’t buy a t-shirt off the back of an endorsement because it’s 100% cotton with dry fit technology and a 500 thread count. They buy it because the influencer spoke to them about how it is relevant to their life (i.e. the Uniqlo mini tee works because there’s not too much material to tuck into a high waisted pant).

As marketers we need to let go of the idea of jamming a hundred key messages into a 15 second video, we need to unlearn the basics of traditional advertising and lead with the heart because this is an exercise with humans, and the most human brands will win.