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In a crowded market, influencer marketing is considered an effective strategy for brands to reach new audiences.
Yet many marketers, whether in B2B or B2C, still equate influencer marketing with advertising for A-list celebrities. Just think of Salesforce hiring Matthew McConaughey to fight for artificial intelligence and customer privacy. Or model Hailey Bieber, wife of singer Justin Bieber, appearing in an Instagram story for grocer Erewhon to talk about a great smoothie.
But for every big star, there are hundreds of influencers working with companies of all sizes. Recent research from Influencer Marketing Hub found that 26% of U.S. companies spend more than 40% of their total marketing budget on influencers.
Interestingly, another research report finds that nano-influencers – those with fewer than 10,000 followers – have a better ROI than some A-list celebrities.
Is it better to work with a few large, expensive influencers, or should you work with many smaller, low-cost influencers?
We passed the question on to CMI's Chief Strategy Advisor Robert Rose to hear his thoughts. He also adds another facet to the dilemma. Read on or watch the video to hear what he's talking about:
AI smooths out wrinkles in influencer marketing
What happens if the influencer acts on their own? What if they spout heated political rhetoric? Or what if they talk about your competitors and have a toxic moment?
Managing an influencer portfolio can mean managing a wide range of mindsets. But it also means receiving a wide range of actions, and some of them may not be in the best interest of your brand.
This week, an article in the New York Times discussed the growing trend of brands using AI tools to scan the content of social media influencers and evaluate how likely they are to share strong political opinions on their channels.
In this divisive atmosphere, brands of all kinds are wary of getting political for fear of upsetting the very consumers they want to appeal to, so an AI tool that can assess the potential of political conversations can be immensely helpful.
That's especially true given the growing influence of influencer marketing. The Times article reports on a House Judiciary Committee hearing in July where a representative from WPP, the world's largest advertising agency, said that news media ad buys – historically a large portion of advertising revenue – account for less than 5% of total advertising spending.
Just last week, X and its mercurial CEO Elon Musk decided to sue GARM, a nonprofit coalition of consumer brands that have banded together to declare that they will no longer advertise on the X platform. That's one way to deal with this influencer challenge: Stop supporting the platforms where your brand's content could appear alongside things that run counter to your company's focus.
However, the AI scoring approach is also intriguing. It takes an interesting look at what it means to be an influencer today. If this technology can predict the likelihood that influencers will espouse their political beliefs, it can also analyze virtually any other type of content.
For me, this creates a fascinating tension that brings the world of AI, influencer marketing and brand safety full circle.
Choose many smaller influencers or one large one?
Influencers are often influencers because they move fluidly between transparency and/or at least a filtered view of their private lives. They live in the public eye with multiple brands and more performative activities. But today's G-rated influencer who shows off their family and is well-suited to promoting a children's brand is tomorrow's unfit celebrity who ends up getting arrested for something.
Influencers will have to monitor their brands more closely, and brands will be more careful in selecting their cooperation partners.
So let's go back to the original question: do you manage 100 influencers, one of whom is sure to go astray and do something stupid? Or do you put all your eggs in one influencer's basket and do the necessary background research and ongoing monitoring to make sure they're a good spokesperson for the brand?
The answer isn't entirely clear-cut, but with the advent of tools that allow you to calculate ratings and historical information about influencers, it won't be long before you can see in one report not only an influencer's current rating and brand safety score, but also all the times they've deviated from the norm.
What I do know, however, is that influencer marketing is growing and should be an important part of your go-to-market plan. Collaborating with familiar human and influential faces will become increasingly important as AI permeates the content ecosystem.
But just as media buying and brand safety assessment have become specialist skills, the same applies to the integration, management and measurement of influencer programs. Who does this for your brand? Does this provider have the necessary framework, standards and measurement methods for your company? These are the big challenges of the coming months.
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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
