Many marketing and insights executives have found themselves questioning their bosses this past year, and for good reason. As influencer marketing has turned into a hot topic—and a bona fide marketing channel—buzzword-hungry execs have set their teams to work on Instagram to bring in business.
From what I’ve been hearing, many teams are frustrated by leadership that doesn’t know how to leverage social media for maximum organizational impact. Some teams report that their C-suite “keeps hearing about this thing called Influencer marketing.” They know over half of brands use influencers, and that influencer marketing will be a $15 billion market by 2022, but they don’t have the clearest idea what it entails, yet they’ve tasked the team to generically implement it.
Marketing leaders know Millennials & Gen Z are taking over. Having lived through multiple recessions, these generations have a fundamental mistrust of traditional marketing. They look to peers for input and recommendations, particularly those that have a meaningful and reliably established connection to a category. In the span of a few months, TikTok went from a viral dance video destination to a legitimate advertising platform on the level of Facebook and Twitter. Will Clubhouse be next?
No doubt, social media is an ever-evolving environment, and it can be hard for leadership to keep up, or to know what platforms, trends, and practices will stick. The effect: their organization takes months to develop creative content that goes through multiple rounds of approval, which can become totally stale by the time it reaches their audience.
These people are suffering from what we call influencer phobia. Over the past several years, scientists and researchers at Material have found a concerning rate of this problem among organizations. As someone at your organization with the ability to implement change, only you can make your company aware of, prevent, and cure influencer phobia.
We define influencer phobia as a disorder caused by an uncontrolled lack of organizational understanding about, or fear of, properly leveraging influencers in its insights, communications, and marketing strategies for maximum impact.
Symptoms include wasting money on marketing activities with low or no impact, and a prevalence of outdated, bloated, or bureaucratic policies. Other symptoms include having a social media team that’s not permitted to try new things or having a CMO facing crippling quarterly earnings pressure.
Fortunately, there is a cure for this very real fear. Consider curing your influencer phobia with a new analytics-driven social media treatment regimen, using Material’s strategic and executional framework to identify and activate your top brand influencers for maximum impact.
Our treatment builds off years of experience in extracting insights from all forms of consumer data. Through advanced networking analytics, we map the way consumers naturally and organically organize online. Evaluating these networks allows us to identify influencers who have a reliably established connection to, and trusted opinion among, a key audience.
Armed with these insights, you’re able to identify the absolute best influencers to help your brand, enabling you to unleash your influencer marketing potential.
After all, reviews, insider tips, and unboxings from experts who have lived every detail of a brand experience present consumers with an enticing trifecta:
While nearly all industries and categories can benefit from a well-executed influencer campaign, several categories are especially ripe. These are categories where purchase decisions impact the consumer’s social status, or otherwise affect their health or wellbeing. They are often one-time purchases, where a trusted recommendation can be invaluable.
The first step to recovering from influencer phobia is admitting you have a problem. That means your organization must be willing to implement change. You’ll have to accept that that you have a real desire to increase revenue, but also that you’ve been wasting money on some of your dearest marketing programs.
You’ll also have to be willing to adopt new strategies and ditch obsolete policies while you give your social media team more (strategically guided) freedom.
If you believe you are part of an organization that is suffering from influencer phobia, please continue following our blog series for more on how to cure this ailment, or reach out to our team of experts for help.
This article was co-authored by Stephen Lavender
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