How to Incorporate Influencers into Your Marketing Strategy

Welcome to HBR on strategy, case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts hand selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business online. Influencers are an increasingly important way for companies to find new customers and drive sales. But if you're a marketer hoping to target consumers, it's important to understand the roots of how the influencer industry works. In this episode, Emily Hund, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, explains that influencers grew out of Great Recession era job cuts that forced people in creative fields to innovate. Hund is the author of the book the Influencer the Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. She offers advice for brands developing influencer marketing strategies. You'll learn how to find the right influencer for your brand and how to measure success. Hund recommends starting with a small experiment to get familiar with the process before making a larger investment. You'll also learn why longer term creative relationships with influencers can produce stronger results than one off endorsements. This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in February 2023. Here it's foreign.

Welcome to the hbr ideacast from harvard business review. I'm alison beard. If I say the word influencer, what comes to your mind? Some of you might picture a millennial or gen Zer on TikTok or Instagram, posting lots of videos and selfies, trying to get famous, avoiding a real job. Others might think of the trendsetters that you follow online, maybe the ones who encourage you to try that new workout routine, buy that magnetic golf towel, invest in that Carry on luggage set. And if you work in marketing or for any consumer facing brand, you probably immediately think of influencers as potential endorsers, people who can help you sell your products and services for a price. Born out of the Great Recession and the rise of social media platforms, the influencer industry has indeed made people famous and given them not just jobs, but lucrative careers. It does drive consumer trends, it's become a key sales tool for businesses of all sizes, and it's now a segment of the economy worth billions of dollars. Here to discuss all this is Emily Hund, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication and the author of the new book the Influencer the Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. Emily, welcome.

Thank you so much for.

Okay, let's start at the beginning. How and why did the first influencers get started?

So the influencer industry as we know it today really dates back to the first decade of the 21st century. There were cultural changes that had been going on for a long time with like the rise of the popularity of self branding and things like that. There were, of course, technological changes. Social media was sort of a new buzzword on people's minds in early, you know, platforms like Twitter and Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook were popularizing and there was a lot of optimism about these platforms. And then when the recession happened, so many people became unmoored from their planned career paths and sort of turned to these new platforms that seemed really promising to try to invent a new way of working. A lot of the earliest influencers worked in fashion, beauty, things like that. There's a rich history of the sort of early mommy blogosphere as well. And so a lot of these earlier influencers were women who were sharing their ideas about a range of topics, but mostly tied to commercial industries like fashion and beauty.

And why do you think that influencers are still so misunderstood, you know, even kind of looked out on? Because you seem to be arguing that it was this way to be entrepreneurial of sorts. You know, you're becoming a social media content creator and earning money from it.

That is something that has come through really strongly in my research. Pretty much every influencer that I that I have talked to identifies themselves as an entrepreneur. I think this sort of feminized history of the industry absolutely plays a significant role. Like I said, a lot of these early influencers were women and they were talking about topics that are, you know, traditionally thought of as stereotypically feminine topics, whether that is, you know, fashion, beauty, parenting, that, that sort of thing. And even though these topics are not frivolous and they actually have a significant role in the way we understand our world. It was very easy for people, I think, to, you know, look at these women and just say they're shallow, they're just self involved or narcissists or, you know, whatever, all these sort of tropes that are, you know, ultimately pretty sexist about the work that they were doing. Another reason is there are particular high profile influencers too, that kind of take up all the air in the room, if you will, People like Kim Kardashian or Addison Rae or these sort of banner name influencers. They get a lot of press attention. And these are people who kind of beg the question, I think of, like, why are these people who are hawking hair growth gummies, you know, why are they making so much money? Or these women are propagating unrealistic beauty ideals, or, you know, they're engaged in cultural appropriation and all these things. What we miss with this narrative though, is behind these few high net worth individuals is a gigantic industry of workers. The broader public sees the top of the pyramid, the Kim Kardashians and the like. They don't see this enormous, this middle band of people who are working. They're not necessarily getting rich, but they're essentially, you know, running their own advertising or marketing agencies and they're just like cranking out content and just working, working, working to power this industry. And then there's this even sort of larger base at the bottom of aspiring influencers, those people who aren't making money or are only making a few bucks and trying to make it in this industry. There's also a huge amount of marketing agencies, you know, advertising agencies, the, the commercial brands that are engaged in the space, the social media platforms who have, you know, vested interest in the influencer marketing industry, and a range of other organizations who are trying to figure out how to leverage influencers for their own end. So there is a massive and complex industry behind these sort of, I guess, influencers or influencer moments that grab a lot of press attention. Yeah.

And I want to dig into all the aspects of that industry. So first, the influencers themselves, how do they build their fan bases? And given how crowded the market is now, you know, do you still see new entrants coming in?

In the beginning, it was mostly bloggers and, you know, maybe people on the earlier platforms like YouTube and, and such. And they were, they were really talking about topics that were near and dear to them in some way. You know, like I mentioned, there were a lot of people who were unemployed or underemployed and creating content that centered on their sort of professional expertise or their particular professional niche. And they kind of fell backwards into this work because it was not something that had existed before. So it's not like they could have gone into it saying, I'm going to be an influencer, you know, and so there was sort of, I guess, more truth to the narrative of we're doing what we love and we're creating content just based on what we love in those early days. So they were able to really cultivate, you know, loyal and large followings based off of their sense of genuineness and authenticity. And then once those early bloggers and influencers started to gain traction, advertisers noticed, they entered the space. They recognized these early influencers as really powerful potential persuaders and got involved and started sponsored content and these branding deals and things like that. And then that's when things start to get complicated because after that initial wave that sort of established being an influencer as a potential career path. Then we have this just absolute crushing wave of people flocking to social media thinking, you know, I want to do that too. It became really complicated because in those early days, it was this whole idea that I can measure this person's influence. They have this many followers, this engagement rate that correlates to this level of influence, which is worth this amount of money. Once the field became so saturated, it became pretty much impossible to rely on, you know, influence metrics to single out people who are influential. So then it became about more pointedly cultivating this sense of authenticity. It's extremely difficult to do because there are so many different stakeholders in this industry. And so for an influencer, they are not only wanting to gain professional satisfaction and express themselves in, you know, their own particular ways, but they're also beholden to their audiences who express, expect them to present themselves in particular sort of predictable ways that communicate their selfhood and their authenticity. And they're also beholden to advertisers and the, you know, very opaque algorithms that govern social media visibility. So as time has gone on, you know, over the last decade plus, it is only getting harder and harder and harder to break through. And at that same time, the prevailing norms of authenticity, what is perceived as authentic and what is monetizably authentic are constantly changing.

Is there a particular influencer that you would point to who's done a good job navigating that balance between authenticity and maintaining credibility with their followers, but then also drawing in the endorsements and advertising that will earn them a real living?

That is hard to say. I mean, there are influencers, of course, who have sort of gone the distance, but they are pretty few and far between. I have interviewed several influencers in my research who, you know, were really successful at sort of earlier periods of the influencer industry. And then when the shifting expectations of their audiences and advertisers have changed, changed, they have decided, okay, now is the time for me to leave. I can't do this anymore. Like, I can't start creating video or, you know, I can't be sharing more of my personal life or. Or, you know, whatever it is. A lot of influencers have chosen to either leave altogether or to pivot away toward maybe like, influencer adjacent sort of work, like getting into marketing, you know, or that sort of thing. Another issue with the current landscape is that it is so vast that it's like, sort of almost impossible to wrangle, you know, the amount of influencers that there are working today and the ones that are really successful. When the influencer industry first developed, a lot of influencers gained traction because they were very niche. So they had super specific topics that they posted about. And then the industry kind of changed over the course of the 2010s and it started swung toward a much more like generalized sort of lifestyle influencer. And now in more recent years, we've sort of seen a shift back toward people going more niche again. And this is also helped along obviously by like the proliferation of platforms, you know, TikTok, Substack. They really stand out to me as, you know, really pushing the influencer industry in, in particular directions. And so there is just such a wide variety of influencers out there and the influencers that you or I see or engage with or seem really successful to us, or seem really famous to us, you know, many other people probably would have no idea who they are.

Yeah. So I don't follow many fashion or beauty influencers, but I do have a lot of pet focused channels on my Twitter and Instagram feeds. And one of my favorites is a guy who started one called We Rate Dogs. And he features, you know, adorable pets that he'll give 10 out of 10 or more commonly 13 out of 10 or 14 out of 10. But he's really built a whole brand around it. You know, he has a partnership with Trupanion, the pet insurance company. He started his own foundation to support dogs in need who are sick or need medical attention. He even has a product line. And so this is really an entrepreneur who has started a business around his passion and found ways to get compensated for it.

So influencer marketing is of course like very appealing because it has the potential to really build that sort of sense of personal relationship, I think, with your, with your customers. And so I think, you know, brands are attracted to it for that reason. And also the technological infrastructure in the, in the influencer industry that allows products to be sold quite seamlessly. Obviously now it depends on your industry and what kind of product you are selling, but tools like affiliate linking and like the shopping in app like on Instagram and TikTok and things like that, that makes it so easy. If you connect with the right influencer who has like a super engaged audience and they are able to post about your product with like a link right there in the Instagram story or whatever, it has the potential to drive a lot of customers your way. So it's very appealing from, from the brand perspective.

And you know exactly how they've come to you also.

Yes. And so there is a largely unseen sector of the influencer industry. That is these, you know, marketing middlemen type firms that help brands connect to the right influencers. For them, we have marketing agencies who offer these huge sort of like databases of influencers where, you know, they have the stats on every influencer. And brands can get access to these databases and search keywords and easily turn up influencers with, you know, particular stats or, you know, particular content specialties and engage with them in sort of a transactional way, make offers through the platform, that sort of thing. Our brands can also post, you know, here's our campaign. We're looking for influencers to create X, Y, Z type of content. Here's our rate. Let us know if you're interested. You know, we see influencer marketing agencies who are sort of positioning themselves as being on the technological cutting edge. So marketing agencies will say, oh, we're now using AI. You know, we have, we have this AI tool that will help you find the right influencer or whatever it may be. They are constantly wanting to position themselves as being on the cutting edge of knowing the absolute best way to find the right influencer for your brand. And there's a lot of complexity behind the scenes of how they do their work as well. Because when you are in the business of trying to sift through this again, absolutely massive pool of potential influencers and you are relying on perhaps like your own in house, algorithmically driven tools or things like that, you're relying on your own sort of technological tools to do it. Issues can come up, you know, potential influencers get overlooked, looked. There is research by a media scholar named Sophie Bishop who has found that some of these tools have basically baked in biases. One of her examples was, you know, one of these tools had red flagged the use of the word queer and so that potentially, you know, disadvantages queer influencers or influencers who are, you know, you know, simply using the term to self identify or what have you, it potentially red flags them and puts them less likely to get the deal or potentially at a lower earnings bracket and that sort of thing.

Yeah, a big criticism of the influencer industry has been that the people who do rise to that high level of prominence, maybe not Kim K. But just a tier below, are predominantly fairly wealthy white young women.

Exactly, yes. And that has long sort of been the, the prevailing aesthetic norm in this industry. Despite the sort of popular narrative of the influencer industry as being all about doing what you love, following your passion, democratizing culture, that sort of thing, it is not free of these Biases and problems that plague society. And so while there has been, I think, a little bit more awareness of this in recent years, and there certainly have been attempts by people working in the industry to correct these biases and, you know, remove these hurdles as best as they can, there is still so much work to be done.

So for both the companies that are trying to work with influencers and this, you know, group of middlemen that you're talking about, how are deals negotiated, you know, in terms of pricing, in terms of exclusivity for, you know, certain product areas? All of that.

Yes. So again, this is something that happens very differently depending on the influencer, the brand and the campaign. And I think this points to one of the really prevailing problems in the influencer industry today, which is that there is little to no transparency in how these deals are being made. There is little transparency about how influencers are being judged. Also, there is no transparency in pay. There is a huge variety and disparity in what type of content is worth how much. There are many, many stories that circulate about, you know, a brand engaging a number of influencers for a particular campaign and then paying them different amounts or bringing influencers on trips and providing different perks for the same trip and the same amount of work.

And what about from the company side, though? You know, how do they ensure that they're getting their money's worth? You know, especially if they're a small company, for example, a startup that's investing in influencers to really kick off their marketing efforts in an inexpensive way?

I think. I mean, most companies engaged in influencer marketing rely a lot on the advice of the marketing agencies that they use to carry out these deals. And of course, they set goals. Like with any marketing campaign, they have goals and expectations for their campaigns and they, you know, rely on the advice of, of the agencies that they engage to sort of ensure that they're getting their money's worth.

But it's sort of a try and see type of exercise at this point.

Right, right.

You experiment and see what works.

Exactly.

But it does seem that companies can maybe get more bang for their buck by finding a group of niche influencers who do feel very authentic to their followers, who truly do connect with their products, as opposed to paying for an expensive celebrity, actor, sports star, et cetera, endorsement, right?

Yes, absolutely. I think there has also been a shift toward cultivating some sort of longer term relationships with influencers. While these big transactional agencies that I talked about are still very much an important player in influencer marketing, I think they're especially for smaller businesses there has definitely, there's a lot of attraction toward cultivating these sort of smaller influencers and having more of a like professional, longer term relationship with them.

So are companies working to cultivate sort of their own group of organic influencers either among their employees or people that they know are already loyal customers who don't necessarily have a social media presence to start with, but they help them create one?

Yes, absolutely. And both of those things are really happening and seeming to gain traction. So as far as the cultivating employees goes, there are programs out there. The Walmart Spotlight program is probably the largest and highest profile one that I'm aware of. But it is a program that essentially incentivizes Walmart employees to post about their time working at Walmart and you know, share online, you know, a day in the life of working at Walmart or here's a cool new product that we have or this sort of thing. And then they reward employees who do it really well with either cash bonuses or a free product or something like that. And so again, on its surface this seems like, you know, oh, fun, fun, fun thing to do. What I fear is that it is really incentivizing, you know, workers to behave in particular ways and you end up rewarding people with skills that aren't necessarily important to carrying out your day to day business and overlooking people who might actually have those skills that are critical to carrying out the business day to day in the long run. So really my, I would urge companies to think what, what is the real benefit to us as a business of incentivizing or rewarding our employees with influencer skills? You know, how important is that really to us and consider the sort of ripple effects of shifting business norms in that direction. And then we also absolutely see companies increasingly cultivating their sort of regular customers as influencers. This is really apparent in the fashion space. Again, companies like Banana Republic and Loft will encourage customers to like post a selfie from the dressing room or you know, with your try on haul or whatever and then potentially get like a small cash reward or you know, a coupon or something like that. And I worry about the sort of social ramifications of this, of this sort of encouraging more and more people to think of themselves as influencers. And again, why are we sort of rewarding, incentivizing and rewarding this sort of influencer like behavior and to what ends?

So you do talk in the book about, you know, the downsides of so much of the content that we are all Consuming on social media, being commercialized in this way. You know, I'm, as someone in traditional media, I'm used to a real separation of church and state. So there's something just a little bit strange about content creators also being endorsers of products. But you also argue in the book that this isn't a flash in the pan or a bubble about to burst. You know, so given that tension, sort of all the people in it in order to become influencers now, all the money flowing in, the sort of icky feeling we all get about everything being an endorsement, you know, why do you think it's a lasting, growing trend?

There are a few reasons. The first, I think is the role of sort of broader economic precarity in this space. Surveys continually show there's sort of mounting distrust in, like, traditional pillars of society. We've had a lot of economic turmoil in the 21st century where careers that were previously thought of as stable are proving to not be. So there are a lot of sort of societal factors that I think drive people to want to pursue this work. And I don't really see that changing. Even though the conversation is starting to change around influencers and, you know, the cracks in the facade of, you know, oh, this is just an ideal, like, wonderful way to make a living, you know, the cracks are becoming more obvious. It still purports to offer people a sort of way to feel, you know, sort of like an entrepreneur and have a sense of professional autonomy. And so I think that is very, very attractive. I also think that the influencer industry has had a lasting impact on the technological evolution of social media. And it's really rooted itself deeply in these platforms that are really central to how many people use the Internet. We've also come to expect this sort of rampant commercialism in our feeds. And so it's just, it's very much rooted itself in our way of life and our ways of using technology.

And you don't see the marketing benefit fading anytime soon either. You know, companies are still going to, to find this worth the investment.

The influencer industry has shown itself to be extremely adaptable, and as a whole, the people working in it are extremely driven to, to keep this industry going and keeping it growing and adapting to changing times and technologies. And so I, I absolutely don't see it going anywhere. I think it will just the way it looks and maybe the way it operates will shift, but it's going to continue to exist. And I think it would behoove us all to sort of recognize it as an industry. That exists and is here to stay and start thinking about, okay, what are we going to do about this? You know, how are we going to make the industry operate internally in a way that, you know, is beneficial to the world, workers in it, and preserves the positive things about the influencer industry, which is opportunities for entrepreneurialism, effective ways of getting media messages out there, you know, networking, finding community, all these things. How can we preserve the benefits and reduce the harms? Whether it's, you know, the rapid spread of misinformation, sort of mental health toll that being an influencer and also, you know, having a lot of exposure to particular types of influencer content can bring, how do we reduce those harms and how do we educate the public about what this content is and help people gain a better understanding of what exactly they are encountering when they encounter influencer content so that they are able to, you know, evaluate it for themselves.

So just to conclude, I'm going to ask you to give advice to sort of three different subsets of people. First, what advice do you have for an aspiring influencer today?

My advice for aspiring influencers is to go into it with eyes wide open, knowing that this is a really totalizing line of work that is incredibly difficult. And while people can find great personal satisfaction, creative satisfaction or, or, you know, a solid income and that sort of thing, it's not as common as popular narratives would lead you to believe. And so I would go into it with the knowledge that while you will be entrepreneurial and you have to be entrepreneurial to do it, you are still beholden to other stakeholders and other people who have, you know, a vested interest in the work that you're doing.

And what advice do you have for people working for companies that want to more effectively tap into this industry?

I think that valuing influencers as professional colleagues is really critical. And so rather than sort of approaching them as like a one off engagement, someone that you can just leverage for a quick campaign and then throw away, I think those days are increasingly needing to be left behind us. And I think companies will find more value and more satisfaction in a longer term sort of relationship if they can find influencers who, you know, they, they really value creatively and bring a lot of value to the company and, and, and treat them accordingly, you know, as, as valued collaborators who you, you know, pay fairly and, and work closely with.

Okay, and last, what advice do you have for consumers who are being bombarded by influencers?

I say to try to engage with a little bit of, of distance and again with eyes wide open as as much as you can, knowing that there is a range of pressures that influencers are navigating behind the scenes that shape the content that we see. And so I think just sort of remembering that this is a professional who is making this content shaped by a range of pressures that we do not see can hopefully go a long way in reorienting the sort of average consumer's relationship with influencer content.

Terrific. Well, thank you so much. I really have learned a ton about this industry from your book, beyond what I see on my Instagram and Twitter feeds.

Thank you so much for having me. This was really enjoyable.

That was Emily Hunt, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, in conversation with Alison Beard on HBO prideacast. She's also the author of the book the Influencer the Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. We'll be back next Wednesday with another handpicked conversation about business strategy from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review when you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books and videos with the world's top business and management experts. You'll find it all@hbr.org this episode was produced by Mary Dew, Ann Sani and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor, and special thanks to Maureen Hoke, Nicole Smith, Erica Trux, Ramsey Kabaz, Anne Bartholomew, and you, our listener. See you next week.