Tip and Tricks from an Influencer Marketing Expert

Have you ever worked with a key opinion leader?

My Experience with Influencer Marketing

In my previous role as a Marketing Officer for fashion brands back in Manila, I've experienced working with influencers. Back home we call them KOLs or key opinion leaders and I’ve worked with a variety of Manila’s best KOLs or influencers ranging from nano to celebrity, either through organic seeding, paid engagement, and even event attendance. I can say that I've had my fair share of great and not so great experiences working with these influencers. From hand-holding them each step of the way, to dealing with arrogant and challenging influencers who don't follow the brief and content plan. To be honest, I’ve always found influencer marketing one of the trickiest and most challenging marketing tactics to date. Based on experience, it’s hard to find an effective influencer that aligns well with the brand and more importantly, the brand’s budget. More than that, I would always find myself questioning how to justify spending enormous amounts of the brands budget on something that is quite difficult to measure and no guaranteed conversion results.

Insights From an Industry Expert We were fortunate enough to have Ashley Walsh, an account director from North Strategic speak about influencer marketing for our Digital Media Marketing Seminar Series a week ago; and personally, I found her talk the most interesting one to date. Perhaps this is because I’ve had background already in doing influencer marketing but also I was interested to hear how influencer marketing is done here in Canada and if by any chance she has experienced the same challenges I have had in working with influencers. From her talk, it was interesting to hear that there are many similarities as well as significant differences in terms of working with influencers here in Canada, versus how I was used to doing it back in Manila. According to Ashley, there are three important steps in order to identify the right influencer for a brand. These are 1) Define, 2) Identify, and 3) Validate. Determining the campaign and brand’s criteria is the most critical step. In this stage, the this is where the brand and the team determines the reach, location, demographics, category, platforms, and the desired outcome. The second step which is Identifying the influencers includes checking their alignment to the brand and insight and if the fit well for the campaign requirements. The last step, validating the following and engagement is according to Ashley, very important and I definitely agree with this. Given that purchasing fake followers is rampant in the world of influencers, which Ashley confirmed as well, this step is crucial in making sure that the influencer is legitimate and more importantly that the brand will be getting their money’s worth with all the budget they are spending on an influencer. I think for the most part, it’s pretty similar to how I’m used to doing it including the brand approval process, but what I really liked from what Ashley mentioned and what really interested me was the validation step. Not that I’m skeptical with influencers and how they’ve achieved their following and success, but sometimes I really do wonder how they are able to get thousands of followers. So the validation process to me is interesting since this was barely done when I used to work with influencers back home. For reference, the previous company that I worked for had a pre-approved list of influencers that we could only and strictly work with. Very little information about them is really shared with the us, the brands. At the very most, we would have visibility on their following count, their engagement rate, the category they are known for, and the demographics of their followers. I feel that while all these are important, the information typically shared with us still lacked more of a background check since I know follower-buying is quite rampant in Manila. So it was interesting that this extra step of validating is surely done in the industry here. It not only protects the brand but more importantly the audiences that the brand is trying to reach.

What's Next for Influencer Marketing? Ashley also shared a couple of influencer marketing trends for the coming year. The trend that interested me the most because I have seen this coming since late last year especially from the Asian market is the “No Edit Edit” aesthetic. Let’s face it, with social media, everything that we show is edited and filtered. No one really likes to show the reality of things because sometimes it may not be nice or it doesn’t fit one’s feed but I’m glad to know that this is finally changing and more and more users and influencers are veering away from very polished content and starting to embrace being real and natural. Authenticity is the key, which is great because I think it’s important and healthy for the mind and soul to show the realness of things. Ashley also mentioned the rise of Be Real and I think this app is what will really pave the way for users to show what’s real and genuine.

Influencer Marketing as a Career Path Is a career in influencer marketing appealing to me? Definitely. Having background working with influencers gives me some confidence but at the same time I know the landscape is different here and I definitely want to learn more about it and be in it. I’m glad we had the privilege to listen to Ashley. I particularly liked that she shared North’s secret weapon, Fluency. With this end-to-end influencer marketing technology service, Ashley mentioned that they are able to see real time performing stats of an influencer’s post. Being able to have access to such data allows them to measure the engagement with the influencer right away and see if they are meeting their KPIs. Knowing that there’s a much better process and a measurement tool that is available to justify the spend working with influencers, sparked my interest in working with influencers again.

Questions I Had in Mind During the talk, I wanted to ask Ashley the following questions: 1) How to justify the big marketing spend when engaging with influencers 2) Has she experienced working with an influencer who did not meet her or her deliverables and did not reach brand’s expected KPIs Fortunately, Ashley somewhat talked about the first question I had in mind and she said that it really just boils down to choosing the right influencer by following the steps she mentioned and doing a full background check. Furthermore, aside from making sure the influencer’s rate is within the brand’s budget, it’s also important to set realistic KPIs, as well as checking the influencer’s historical performance and if they’ve had a good experience working with the influencer in the past. Unfortunately, I was not able to ask my second question. I would love to hear her thoughts on this one if ever I’ll be given a chance to meet her or talk to her again. Parting Words Overall, I really enjoyed listening to Ashley and learning from her experiences with Influencer Marketing. I also enjoyed the case study as it was one of the more engaging breakout rooms I've been part of. It seems many of us in the room were really interested in Influencer Marketing. Speaking to my peers through the case studies helps me build my confidence in terms of working with a diverse group of people who have different perspectives and come from different backgrounds. This definitely helps improve my networking skills in preparation for my co-op and full time job search. Speaking of job searching.. I think now I want to search postings specifically for Influencer Marketing for my co-op. Hopefully I find some openings! Are you interested in Influencer Marketing or have experience working with influencers? Share your thoughts below and let's compare notes :)

Image source: https://nakedmarketing.co/what-is-influencer-marketing/