In a recent Facebook discussion between marketers, the question was asked if social influencers are just the equivalent of traditional media buying.
The point being made was, with all the paid influencer programs being used to shill product, has the role of the influencer been reduced to a simple ad platform?
In this week’s episode of Marketing on Tap, we look at how paid influence programs are impacting both social influencers and brands that use them, and what your business should do to get real and tangible results from your influence marketing campaigns.
Settle back and enjoy this week’s topic, brought to you in the usual unscripted manner that you’ve come to expect when Sam and Danny take the mic.
If you prefer to listen on the go, the audio version of this week’s episode can be listened to below.
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Transcription:
Intro: Join marketers, authors, and craft beer enthusiasts Sam Fiorella and Danny Brown for a hobby discussion on all things digital over a cheeky pint or two. Topics on the menu include influence marketing, social media, brand advocacy, and a taste testing of real world digital marketing campaigns. Some are smooth, others don’t sit so well. Don’t forget to stick around for last call where the boys will serve you up one final marketing takeaway that you can go out and apply in the real world. It’s a great primer before the weekend.
Sam Fiorella: All right. Welcome back, Danny, and welcome to all of you. This is our 20th episode.
Danny Brown: 20th episode.
Sam Fiorella: 20th week of Marketing On Tap.
Danny Brown: We’re almost legal to drink in the US.
Sam Fiorella: One more year. We’ve got something really weird today on the beer but before we talk about the beer I want to introduce the topic. This actually comes off a bit of a back and forth that I had on Facebook with a buddy of mine, Ted Rubin, and a few others, Lee Odden and others.
Sam Fiorella: We were going back and forth on a comment that Ted posted earlier this week, which said, “Okay, marketers. Let’s get this clear. For the most part influencer marketing equals media buying.” There was … I wouldn’t say heated but there was certainly an engaged conversation back and forth about is influencer marketing really just media buying? Is that a good thing or a bad thing if it is?
Sam Fiorella: Obviously that’s something that Danny and I are really interested in. It’s something we do a lot of here at Sensei Marketing. We wrote the book on it, I teach influence marketing. You know, I asked Robert like, “Do we really want to talk about this?” Because we’ve had a few episodes where we talked about influencer marketing.
Sam Fiorella: I think this is a different spin, especially since it’s coming from other marketers. Robert’s comment was, “People just don’t get it. After all of these years. Let’s delve into this a little bit further.” That’s what we’re talking about today. Is influencer marketing really just media buying? Is it really any different? Is it worth it still? Let’s get into some of the logistics around that.
Sam Fiorella: Before we do that, as always, what are we pouring?
Danny Brown: We have a nice winter stout here. Sawdust City. One of my favorite brewers up in the Muskoka region.
Sam Fiorella: Yup.
Danny Brown: This is their Long Dark Voyage to Uranus.
Sam Fiorella: Sorry, sorry, sorry. Say that again slowly.
Danny Brown: The Long Dark … You want me to do it sexy?
Sam Fiorella: Sexy voice for me please.
Danny Brown: The Long Dark Voyage to Uranus.
Sam Fiorella: The Long Dark Voyage to Uranus. Okay.
Danny Brown: It’s a Uranal Imperial Stout.
Sam Fiorella: A urinal? No. Really?
Danny Brown: Uranal. U-R-A-N-A-L.
Sam Fiorella: Oh my God. Uranal.
Danny Brown: Sawdust, please correct me if I’ve pronounced this wrong. Yeah, it’s an imperial stout. It’s like a nice winter stout. Hopped a little bit differently, brewed a little bit differently to get that extra kick in there.
Sam Fiorella: A little bit of extra ass?
Danny Brown: A little bit.
Sam Fiorella: Is that the brewing difference?
Danny Brown: Well, their normal stout I think it clocks at about 6.5%.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah.
Danny Brown: This clocks in at 9.5%.
Sam Fiorella: Oh, okay.
Danny Brown: It’s an imperial stout. It’s a bit stronger. It’s got lots of barley malt in there. We should be tasting some chocolate coming through. Like chocolate malt and roasted barley.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah.
Danny Brown: I’m interested to taste this. Sawdust makes some great seasonal beers so I’m real interested to see what this one’s like.
Sam Fiorella: All right. Hang on. Before we do this I’ve got to get the Robert Cam working here. I want to see his reaction to this. He likes stouts so I think we should be good with this one.
Danny Brown: Cheers.
Sam Fiorella: Cheers.
Robert: Happy Black Friday.
Danny Brown: Happy Black Friday.
Sam Fiorella: Happy Black Friday, everybody. Do we have a little bit of an approval from Robert?
Danny Brown: I think the silence speaks for … Yeah. I think he’s enjoying it too much to say. I like this. This is really nice. Demerara sugar, a bit of caramel there, flaked barley. You can taste these flavors all mixing together.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah. I know. [crosstalk 00:03:58] I’m a big stout fan so I like a bit of a play on the traditional stout, which this is really good. It reminds me of some of those cask brews that we had.
Danny Brown: At Cask Days?
Sam Fiorella: At the Cask Days. Yeah.
Danny Brown: True.
Sam Fiorella: Okay. Let’s get back to my buddy here Ted Rubin. Influencer marketing is media buying. Yes or no. Let’s start there.
Danny Brown: I would say it’s more media placement as opposed to media buy.
Sam Fiorella: Well, it is media buying because I think the point he’s trying to make here is that we pay … A lot of brands and what I call influencer factories, these agencies that basically have a den of so-called influencers that they sell access too …
Sam Fiorella: You pay for them. You’re paying these influencers to post a video or an image or whatever content you’ve given them to post. Is that really any different than placing an ad inside of a newspaper or a magazine? It’s just the modern version of that.
Danny Brown: It is the modern version. I think the difference is we’ve dedicated media buy. You’re guaranteed some kind of views within a TV show, a print magazine, whatever, and you’re guaranteed a placement.
Danny Brown: With social media influencers, even though some of them are getting paid, [inaudible 00:05:17], some doing it for either product or whatever. Yes, you’ve got it on your channels. You’re not guaranteed, even though you’ve got a bunch of followers, you’re not guaranteed to, A, be seen outside these followers towards your target audience whereas a print ad or a TV ad you’re maybe gearing more towards your target audience.
Sam Fiorella: That’s actually a good argument that when you look at the metrics that are being displayed or used for this type of influencer marketing campaign, which is the wrong influencer marketing campaign just by the way. If no one got that before. Which is to just get macro influencers or these social celebrities to post something up there, they’re going to show impressions but impressions is based on the number of followers that somebody has, not necessarily the number of people that physically read it.
Sam Fiorella: It’s really not that different, though, Danny, when it comes to a newspaper because a newspaper will report impressions based on the number of people that buy the newspaper or whatever their circulation is. However, there’s a stronger correlation between readers and circulation of a newspaper or subscribers of a newspaper than there is Twitter followers and a tweet that somebody puts out that follows them.
Danny Brown: Right. Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: You’re going to have a much higher concentration or a better percentage of readers in that print circulation. From that perspective I think you’re right. You might just be better off buying media if that’s how you’re measuring your campaigns and if that’s how you’re running your campaigns.
Sam Fiorella: I don’t want to … Take a look at our website. We sell influence marketing campaigns so let’s not shoot this horse here. It does work. What’s the difference? For me … I’ll start. I want your opinion on this as well.
Sam Fiorella: For me, the difference is that when you do an influencer marketing campaign … For full disclosure, my comment to Ted here was, “90% of influencer marketing is media buying. You’re right. That’s the wrong 90%.” The point I was trying to make, of course, is that the 10% of us out there … It’s not just us. There’s lots of good marketers out there. Lee Odden for example is one that’s doing this really well as well. He chimed in on this conversation.
Sam Fiorella: There’s a difference in what we do because we … There’s a difference between promoting a product and getting eyeballs. That fuzzy metric. Are people seeing it? Not seeing it?
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: Actually influencing somebody to buy it. Influencing someone to buy it has to go beyond just that presentation of something in a social network to some random grouping of your audience. It requires some type of an active agent.
Danny Brown: Right.
Sam Fiorella: Like the yeast of the campaign basically. You know what I mean? What is it that’s going to have that chemical reaction that’s going to move? Sometimes the content alone is not enough. There’s got to be something in the relationship between the influencer and the audience. There’s got to be a conversation that they have like what we’re having here or the comments that we’ll get on this blog for example.
Sam Fiorella: We know a few people that have said, “I’ve tried that beer and I really like it” because they’ve commented, “Hey, I like this kind of beer” on a Twitter post to me for example. “I saw you guys try it. What’s your opinion?” Well, guess what? We weren’t intending to be an influencer on beer but we influenced somebody.
Robert: [crosstalk 00:08:45] not getting paid.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah, and we’re not getting paid.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: Unfortunately we are not getting paid for this. If any of you micro breweries out there want to pay us we’re more than happy to take gifts. Just putting it out there into the universe.
Sam Fiorella: Anyway, it’s that active ingredient for me. What is it that the engagement of the post, the engagement of the contest, the engagement of the poll, what is it that the influencer is doing in a live event or on social media that actually changes somebody’s buying behavior?
Danny Brown: Right.
Sam Fiorella: So that you could actually measure the influence on sales, not just on awareness, which is good. Nothing wrong with that.
Danny Brown: That’s the first part of [crosstalk 00:09:29]
Sam Fiorella: That’s only the first part.
Danny Brown: Exactly. Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: Of the bigger picture. What’s the difference for you between those two types of engagements? Brand awareness versus actually transacting a sale.
Danny Brown: Once again, to Robert’s earlier point about data, you know which part of your audience segments are going to be ready for awareness and research, which are going to be looking for validation, which are going to be looking for purchasing. Then you have different levels of influencer that really can impact each segment of the audience.
Danny Brown: If you’re looking at micro influencers to actually get the eyeballs in the first view of your product that’s great. Then you want to take it along to, “Okay, who is a trusted guy that actually takes it to the next step and makes a potential customer buy it?”
Danny Brown: The timing of the message has to be right, the actual placement of the message has to be right, and the audience is actual place in the customer life cycle, if you like, going back to all the buzzwords, has to be right. I think it’s a mixture of the two. The right influencer, the right time for the audience participation if you like.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah. It reminds me of something that I’ve said many times when I sit and we make a presentation to a client about, “Here’s my idea of an influencer marketing strategy for you.” Invariably or inevitably? Invariably? Inevitably?
Danny Brown: Inevitably.
Sam Fiorella: Inevitably?
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: I went to school. Really, I did. Inevitably what happens is this glazed over look.
Danny Brown: Right.
Sam Fiorella: Like, “What? You mean I can’t do this all in two weeks?”
Danny Brown: Yeah. Right.
Sam Fiorella: This is a lot of work. It’s almost consistently with every client that I’ve made a presentation to about this they’re shocked at the amount of work that has to go into developing a true influencer marketing campaign that’s going to drive the results, that we can be proud of, and that they’re going to want to continue to pay us to do because we’ve delivered some kind of a result. Yes, I agree with you. There’s quite a bit there.
Danny Brown: Well, if you look at some of the clients we work with it’s like not six month campaigns. It’s two, three, five year, multi-year campaigns to get to that stage.
Sam Fiorella: Well, I think that also goes … I think we should clarify that for anybody that’s listening and interested because I think an influencer marketing campaign doesn’t have to be three to five years.
Danny Brown: No, no.
Sam Fiorella: Why with many of our clients are looking at multi-year campaigns it’s simply because we’re affecting different stages of that customer life cycle, that customer journey, from awareness to consideration. That’s one campaign.
Sam Fiorella: Once we have them in consideration mode what do we do from an influence marketing perspective to get them to buy. Then once we get them to buy how do we then take existing customers and move them along the rest of the life cycle to being satisfied with the product, getting over the cognitive dissonance that happens all the time when somebody buys a product, to getting them to be a loyal customer? Then how do we get loyal customers to become advocates?
Danny Brown: Right. Exactly.
Sam Fiorella: Right. How do we get those advocates incentivized to want to …
Danny Brown: There you’ve got like seven or eight steps.
Sam Fiorella: That’s right. This is why it takes us so long. It’s not just one campaign. These are multi campaigns that we take everybody through the full life cycle. Just to be clear, if you’re going to do it right that’s why you’re going to want to do it. Especially for you brands out there.
Sam Fiorella: I want to mention one of the things that Ted said here because I think it’s important. I want to make his point of view clear because he’s got a really good point of view. He clarified his comment, “Influencer marketing equals media buying.” He says, “Better, more effective media most often if approached and created correctly and if done to best effect, community building.”
Sam Fiorella: I guess what he’s trying to say here, he clarified his position a little bit, is that there’s a handful of people who can actually drive sales with influence.
Danny Brown: Right.
Sam Fiorella: Who you’ve been calling influencers are actually content creator and hopefully community builders. He’s actually … While we disagreed on this point there’s some common ground there. For him, an influencer is a content creator, somebody who is developing content that will in fact be consumed by somebody, not just a post. Right? I think that’s also maybe something we can talk about.
Danny Brown: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Sam Fiorella: How would we explain this to a client or to a prospective client or to a brand, just in general, the difference between somebody that just posts something verus somebody that develops content that engages?
Danny Brown: Right. Content creator, for me, is someone that’s actually affiliated proper with the brand, wants to see the message succeed, is properly involved with the ideation of the campaign, how it’s going to look, what it’s going to look like for return, et cetera.
Danny Brown: Whereas someone that’s just a paid shill, [inaudible 00:14:08] media buy, is someone that’s already got the content created for them and all they’re doing is basically an ad platform, like Google AdWords. From an influencer point of view, post it up there, put a little ad disclaimer on their Instagram post, and I’m done, I’m paid, give me my money. That’s my approach.
Sam Fiorella: I think there’s also a difference between the use of the person … Are you looking at a macro influencer or what we call a mega influencer? To throw another buzzword out there for you guys. Bloggers are just so desperate to categorize everything and to write new blogs so we’ve got mega …
Danny Brown: Macro.
Sam Fiorella: Macro and micro now.
Danny Brown: Even mac and cheese influencer. [inaudible 00:14:54]
Sam Fiorella: I actually hate mac and cheese.
Danny Brown: Me too.
Sam Fiorella: I just can’t stand that stuff. Sorry, Kraft. That’s not true. They’re the connoisseurs out there. [inaudible 00:15:02] KD.
Danny Brown: That’s not mac and cheese.
Sam Fiorella: That’s not mac and cheese. Okay. One example … We had a big debate with somebody in the media industry recently. Selena Gomez, teen pop star … She’s not a teen anymore.
Danny Brown: She was known as a teen pop star when she came out.
Sam Fiorella: That’s right. She was on that Disney show. I forget what it was called now. She had one of the most successful I guess influence marketing campaigns out there when she was photographed … She posted on her Instagram a photograph of her holding a Coke.
Danny Brown: Okay.
Sam Fiorella: It was the most viewed or the most liked Instagram post in history. Until very recently she was the most followed person on Instagram. When she posted this she got more likes than any other picture on Instagram or had ever received in the history of Instagram.
Sam Fiorella: Everybody was saying what a successful campaign that was. When you take a look at who her audience is and the millions of teen girls that follow her and idolize her the argument was how many people actually bought Coke?
Danny Brown: Right. Exactly.
Sam Fiorella: Because they saw that. Yeah. They love the post. They love the image. Is it because they loved her?
Danny Brown: Or Coke?
Sam Fiorella: Or Coke. If they did, “Oh, you know what? Yeah. Coke is now in my head” but did that translate to somebody buying a Coke.
Danny Brown: Right.
Sam Fiorella: When you take a look at the audience and you take a look at the demographic that’s buying Coke it’s actually not happening. Right? I’m willing to have anybody from Coke come out and tell me otherwise but the people that I know in the industry are telling me that that actually didn’t happen, that there wasn’t an effect on sales that could be attributed. Causation versus correlation kind of thing. They couldn’t actually look at this post drove this number of purchases from the demographic that follows her.
Sam Fiorella: That’s a good example of posting versus a content that, to Ted’s point and in best case, building community. If you’re a community builder that’s an influencer. A community builder is somebody who not only posts something but could actually attract a group of people around a topic in a particular digital platform or physical environment that gets people talking and engaged just like we’re doing now.
Sam Fiorella: For example, I consider Ted Rubin an influencer on marketing. You take a look at his post, I’ve got it up on my Facebook page right now, I’m looking at it onscreen for those of you who are following us on our podcast. He posted this on November 12th, right? He had a bunch of people comment on it and he’s got a lot of comments. There’s probably 15 or 16 comments just on my comment on his comment.
Danny Brown: Right.
Sam Fiorella: Right? It’s all these marketers that are talking about brand influencers and the campaign. To me, Ted is a community builder.
Danny Brown: Right.
Sam Fiorella: Right? Because he can gather a bunch of people around his hashtag ROR, Return on Relationship, which he and I have been butting heads on since the beginning of time. The idea is regardless of whether you agree with him or disagree with him he brings in people and talks. For me, that’s who you should be looking for.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: Who builds that community? Right? How do you find people like that?
Danny Brown: Hard work. Hard work. I mean, a mix of tools, automated tools, and good old manual labor.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah.
Danny Brown: Yeah. I mean, it’s basically knowing ideally who is instrumental in your industry and then finding out where they are.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah.
Danny Brown: There’s a bunch of software that can find that based on topics, keywords, categories, or whatever but then you’ve got to do the leg work. The tools will only do so much. You’ve got to put the legwork in manually.
Sam Fiorella: It goes back to that, “Oh my God. This is hard work.”
Danny Brown: It is hard work.
Sam Fiorella: You can’t just push a button and some software is going to tell me who to talk to.
Danny Brown: Yeah. Just like any business. I mean, I’m not a business owner. I’m not really an entrepreneurial sort from that point of view but I know looking at yourself and guys I know that run their own business what goes into it.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah.
Danny Brown: It’s hard work if you want to succeed.
Sam Fiorella: Well, this is one of the reasons why [inaudible 00:18:56] Our favorite subject.
Danny Brown: Sorry. I always laugh when that name comes up. It’s like a trigger for me.
Sam Fiorella: You know what I mean? It’s true because they were trying to say, “Look, we’ve got the magic formula. Give us money. We’ll give you a bunch of influencers and, poof, you’re going to be rich.”
Danny Brown: Right.
Sam Fiorella: Of course, that doesn’t work. There is a lot of work that goes into this. I would say to find an influencer that’s a community builder as opposed to just a poster, the software is important. Yes, you’ve got to do the work but sometimes a challenge works. In terms of giving people tips and strategies and maybe I’m working ahead to my takeaway …
Danny Brown: Your takeaway.
Sam Fiorella: Some of the things we do when we’re trying to identify influencers is actually put it out there. Say, “Hey, look. We’re looking for influencers.” One of the new clients that we just signed on we’re looking for influencers for a specific demographic. What we’re doing is we’re going out to the wider community. We’re building a community and we’re saying, “Look, we’re looking for 10 people.”
Sam Fiorella: We give them a challenge and then we’re going to find the 10 people that can drive the greatest engagement with this challenge. You’ve got your first wave of influence, which is everybody talking about it and trying to prove that they can drive the engagement and then you pick the 10 people that actually drove the most engagement, not just … I don’t care how many followers they have. Quite frankly, if somebody has three followers on Twitter I don’t care but if you can drive that engagement, right?
Sam Fiorella: I will go ahead … Bell. Robert is giving me the [inaudible 00:20:29]
Danny Brown: That’s the end.
Sam Fiorella: Thank you, Steven for our bell. My takeaway just to segue from that … Sorry, I know usually I come to you but I’m going to start here because I’m on a roll. Oh my God. I lost my train of thought.
Danny Brown: That’s what you get for showing off.
Sam Fiorella: And for drinking beer while you’re trying to do a podcast. No, what we wanted to do with this one particular group is to put the challenge out there. If we can find that these are the people that are driving engagement …
Sam Fiorella: For example, with this one client as a takeaway, we looked at an audience of people. We saw somebody in one of our communities, our influencer communities that we’ve developed, who has a massive social media audience. When you take a look at the amount of engagement that that person has on their social media posts it’s disproportionate.
Sam Fiorella: Tens of thousands of followers but only a few engagements or relatively few engagements whereas you’ve got another guy, within this group that we were just talking about this morning, who has a significantly smaller audience but much higher engagement every time he posts something.
Danny Brown: Right.
Sam Fiorella: Guess who we want to work with? It’s the one that drives the most engagement.
Danny Brown: Probably hasn’t bought the fake followers.
Sam Fiorella: And probably hasn’t bought the fake followers, which is a whole other thing.
Danny Brown: Yeah.
Sam Fiorella: To Ted’s point, community building. That’s the thing, media buying for me doesn’t involve that community building aspect. Right? Traditional media buying is just a push as opposed to building that engagement and analyzing that engagement. What’s the one takeaway you want to leave everybody with?
Danny Brown: No. I agree for a change. I agree with everything you say. I think you mix the two.
Sam Fiorella: You will still get paid your salary even if you don’t agree.
Danny Brown: Oh, even though I [crosstalk 00:22:13] That’s fine. Then I disagree. Take it with a pinch of salt. No, I just think you can mix the two. We’ve done it in the past.
Sam Fiorella: Yeah.
Danny Brown: Where you get the hardcore influencers that drive the community building, drive the candid conversation that a brand can learn from for either product improvements, service improvements, whatever but supported by media buy. Don’t be afraid to actually get some of the macro influencers that will put awareness out there for you.
Sam Fiorella: Right.
Danny Brown: Then you get the community guys to actually drive … Once that awareness is there you get the community guys to drive that whole conversation that leads back to the research and forward thinking.
Sam Fiorella: It goes back to that multi-steps. Starting from the beginning of the influencer … Use a macro influencer or to drive audience awareness but then find a way to get that awareness and funnel it down to a smaller group of people that you can engage with your micro influencers to actually convert.
Danny Brown: Yeah. Exactly.
Sam Fiorella: Look at the long cycle, not just the short-term thing. Anyway, I hope you guys got some inspiration or some ideas out of that. I know I do every time we talk about this. I have another idea that I want to run back to with one of our clients. That’s it for this week. Thank you very much everybody for following us.
Danny Brown: Yup.
Sam Fiorella: Or if they [inaudible 00:23:17] followed us. We’ve got to ask. This is one of the lessons. You’ve got to ask for followers.
Danny Brown: You’ve got to ask for followers. Yeah. If you’ve been enjoying the blog or the podcast be sure to either subscribe, get the notification, like on YouTube or your favorite podcast channel, so every time we post a new episode you’ll get notified. Share it if you’re enjoying it and you think someone else would enjoy it too. Don’t be afraid to recommend it.
Sam Fiorella: If you’ve got a topic you want us to talk about as one of our future ones please leave a comment at any one of the channels that we’re in. If you’ve got a beer that’s going to give Robert an even weirder look on his face we’re going to have a Robert [crosstalk 00:23:52]
Danny Brown: Recommend it.
Sam Fiorella: Moving forward. Yeah. Please recommend it. Cheers, everybody.
Danny Brown: Cheers.
Sam Fiorella: Cheers.
Outro: You’ve been listening to Marketing On Tap with Sam Fiorella and Danny Brown. If you enjoyed this episode make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next one. Please, feel free to leave a show review. That’s always worth a cheers.
The post Marketing on Tap Episode 19: Social Influencers or Media Buying – Has Influence Marketing Lost Its Way? appeared first on Sensei Marketing.