Influencer Marketing is over (and what it means for you)

Fun fact. You're actually an influencer. Not only that, but your mom is an influencer, your dad's an influencer, your dog is an influencer. My dog is an influencer. Do you see where I'm going with this? Everyone is an influencer now. And that pedestal that we've put influencers on in the past is about to cease to exist. So today we're talking about the death of the modern influencer. We're going to talk about changes that have been happening, what it means for you and your brand and, and where influencer marketing is actually going right now. I'm Sam, by the way. You can find me on TikTok at marketing with Sam. Google search has officially changed forever. Starbucks is just not having a good time. I also help clients with marketing and I'm an adjunct professor teaching social media marketing. So let's take it back to the 90s. The 90s were like peak celebrity endorsements, and these endorsements really brought in the the big bucks. Michael Jordan's contract with Gatorade alone was $13.5 million over the span of 10 years. And that contract in today's world would be $30 million. Celebrities at the time were really the only idols that we had. But that really started to change in the early 2000s and the 2010s. In the 2010s, while most people were posting photos of their latte and putting filters on it, this is when social media influencers really started to rise to fame. However, we're really starting to see influencers following the path of our beloved celebrities before. Influencers are no longer idolizing, glamorized like they were before, and the novelty is kind of worn off. So if that's the case and bigger influencers are fading away, then what do the influencers of tomorrow really look like? Okay, so what if you're a brand who wants to work with an influencer? How do you actually go about getting started? Well, there are a few different things that you need to keep in mind before you even start influencer outreach. What you need to understand your ultimate goal. So do you want to achieve things like brand awareness or sales? You also want to understand who your target audience is and what benefits or features you want to highlight about your product or service. Once you know this, it's going to be so much easier to then go out and find the right influencers that are going to get you the results that you want. So let's say that I make candles for a brand and I want to go out there and I want to find an influencer who also has some kind of interest in candles. What I'm really looking for is someone who has an appreciation of candles and that might be someone who is in the home niche or the interior design niche who uses candles to create some sort of ambiance and somebody who also has an appreciation for the sense of the candles because maybe that's something that I would like to highlight as part of the benefits. So I'm going to wing it right now. Let's go to TikTok and let's do a search. I'm just going to type in Home Store smell good. I'm going to click on this first video because this first video actually looks interesting to me because this girl's talking about how to make your house smell good all the time, which is exactly the type of influencer that I would want. I'm going to watch this content and see if she mentions anything about candles. I'm also going to see if she fits the criteria for what we talked about before, which is storytelling, unique point of view and then also providing value. I'm going to go to her link in bio and I can see the first button is Business inquiries. Perfect. Hi, it's me. Hey, really quickly, if you're looking for more influencer resources, like you want more tips, you want more tricks, or you even want email templates that make outreach so much easier. HubSpot's pulled together some amazing resources for you. I'm just going to drop the link in the description below, make sure to check it out and let's get back to the video. Tell me how you feel about this. Let's say you work a full time job and your boss asks you to come in and work a week free in exchange for some pizza. What would you say to that? You'd probably tell your boss to buzz off. And the same exact thing happens with influencers. Just because an average or smaller influencer has a lower following count doesn't mean that they're any less worthy of a fear fair brand deal. And I want to emphasize fair brand deal because some influencers are completely fine getting free product, while other influencers really prefer to be paid in exchange for the content that they create for you. You really don't know until you reach out. So what I typically recommend is create a nice personalized email to your influencer and think about an email that you would like to receive yourself. And also keep in mind that some influencers are working full time jobs so if they don't get back to you right away that's totally fine. Just remember to follow up with them once or twice, give it a little nudge just in case they might have missed it because they're busy doing other things. Once you start to hear back, what I like to do is catalog in some kind of like Excel or Google Sheets. And after you have a few influencers that are interested, you're going to want to draft some kind of contract or agreement that clearly states the scope of work and says everything that the influencer is going to do for you and what those terms look like. Keep in mind, these influencers are normal people, just like you and I. So just remember to establish your criteria in the beginning and that will help alleviate hiccups. Okay, so remember what I said earlier about platforms wanting to keep people on those platforms for as long as possible. This presents a sticky situation for brands. For example, here on YouTube, if I'm creating a video, I can put a link to a product or service in the Description. But on TikTok it's so different. You have to basically have a call to action in your video that someone then needs to go to your profile. And then from your profile we need to click the link in bio. Then from the link in bio, they have to click the link within the link in bio to actually get to the end result. It's a very complex process because these platforms don't want you to go off the platform. This is why it is so important to set clear expectations about what you want from your campaign in the front part of an influencer relationship so that it's really obvious what the end goal is. Is brand awareness the number one driver or is sales more important? And depending on which is higher priority for you, then where do you need to spend your time reaching out to influencers? And which platforms do those influencers live on so that you're making sure to align your goals and objectives with what those influencers can actually accom accomplish for you. You need to have an honest conversation both with yourself and with influencers so that you're not setting the bar so high that influencers aren't able to do it just based on the platform limitations. Influencer culture is a constant evolution and right now the modern influencer is really just an average influencer. And while that might have seemed like an insult years ago, for most people, right now it's actually a welcome change. People like to hear and learn from other people and right now you have an opportunity to become an influencer or hire an influencer that just feels like themselves. We're all influencers at the end of the day. So whether you want to start your influencer career or work with influencers as a brand, this is all within your reach. But you want to get started today because you never know where the influencer landscape is going to go and how it's going to evolve as time goes on. I'll be linking some resources I mentioned in the description below and also let me know in the comments. Are you looking to become an influencer or are you looking to hire an influencer? What are you looking to achieve with influencers this year? And as always, looking forward to hearing your thoughts and I will catch you guys in the next video. Sam.