“You can spend your time on stage pleasing the heckler in the back, or you can devote it to the audience that came to hear you perform.”
marketing guru Seth Godin once said.
These days, influencer marketing has a significant impact on social media platforms. Ashley Walsh, a specialist in influencer marketing at North Strategic, has years of experience. The chance to attend Ashley's presentation from last week's Digital Media Marketing class at Centre for Business | George Brown College, where she shared her perspective with us, was incredible. Ashley Walsh is the Account Director at North Strategic, which is a part of the Publicis Groupe and sit at 75+ team members with offices in Toronto, Calgary and Montreal.
A little bit about Ashley
Ashley got an extensive experience in social and digital marketing over ten years. She obtained her first position with the social media agency Matchstick in Toronto, where she specialized in creating influencer marketing campaigns for companies across a variety of product categories, including L'Oréal, Beam Global, Maple Leaf Foods, and Coty. After working for Matchstick for five years, Ashley moved on to WedLuxe, Canada's Luxury Wedding Magazine, where she worked as the social media manager and assisted in growing the company's social media channels to over 500,000 followers. Since 2018, she has worked as a social media and influencer lead for clients like American Express, Sobeys, and Samsung at North Strategic/Publicis Groupe.
Influencers VS Advocates
Engaging with influencers and advocates/ brand ambassadors both are effective ways to acquire and retain consumers. Sometimes they are overlap and used interchangeably. There are several key factors that separate an advocate from an influencer partner.
For Influencers:
the difference is about sponsored content creation from an online personality. A contract with guaranteed minimum posts and an approval process should be in place for all influencer campaigns. It is also critical that influencer content be supported with media dollars to ensure audience reach, allowing marketers to easily measure all campaign activities using online metrics.
For Advocates:
they are categorized as everyday customers who organically advocate in response to positive experiences with a brand. For example, it could be someone that had a great experience at Sobie’s with a cashier, and they came to Twitter and wanted to give them a shout-out. It is a natural result of brand affinity. Customers may advocate in response to experiences and/or incentives or prompts, such as gift cards. However, there is no guarantee of content creation or audience size at the end of the day. It is because 90% of brand conversions occur offline, therefore, measuring effectiveness is more difficult.
Influencer Selection
When selecting influencers, marketers need to consider a variety of factors, including:
business objectives
brand alignment
true measures of influence (engagement rates, conversion tracking, etc.)
reach
budget
creative capabilities
There are mainly four different types of influencers: Celebrity, Macro, Micro, and Nano influencer.
Source: Ashley's presentation slide
Celebrity (+1MM): Notable personality who is both well-known and has a large social following or strong word-of-mouth capability (e.g., Drake).
Macro (1MM – 100K): Influencer who has a true affinity for the brand and will collaborate to create unique, highly engaging brand programs.
Micro (100K – 10K): Everyday voices with a decent following. They are relatable and trustworthy and have a highly engaged audience.
Nano (- 10K): Content creators with a smaller following however, distinguished for specificity and expertise in particular area.
To identify the right influencers, there are three steps: Define, Identify and Validate.
Determine campaign/brand criteria. Marketer usually look at reach, location, demographics, the type of categories, social media platforms, and its desired action.
Identify influencer partners. Marketers will look at insight alignment and leverage identification tools to find new partners, depending on campaign needs. Marketers will also review of feed for content watchouts, such as profanity, political speech and previous sponsorships.
Validate following and engagement: Marketer will finally validate engagement rates, or any influencer fraud involved etc. Tools marketer use for validation include Fake Check, Social Blade, and Phalanx.
2023 Influencer Marketing Trends
There are various trends in the influencer market for 2023 to consider. In Ashley’s session, she gave a few examples.
Source: Ashley's presentation slide
Rise of Creator-Led Short Form Video Content: Instagram is the leading platform for Influencer partnerships, there’s an increasing demand for TikTok and YouTube creator-led short form content. TikTok has become the most popular website, allowing brands to leverage partnerships with creators to engage a primarily Gen Z / millennial demo. YouTube recently launched Shorts, with creator monetization set to begin in 2023.
"No Edit Edit" Aesthetics: Taking notes from micro- and nano-creators, influencers are moving away from polished content and manicured feeds. Influencers are posting more in-the-moment or subtly edited content that portrays their actual, everyday life as there is an increased emphasis on authenticity. As a result of this change, new platforms like BeReal have emerged.
AI/Virtual Influencers: The rise of AI influencers has changed the concept of influencer marketing. Big brands in fashion, tech, and other industries are seeking AI influencers to market their products and services. Although they are still relatively new on social media, artificial intelligence influencers will soon take the lead.
Is a career in Influencer Marketing appealing?
Influencer marketing is a dynamic environment. Today, the best marketers look at their influencer as a tool to find high quality material that can be used on brand-owned marketing platforms, rather than relying simply on influencers' capacity to increase brand awareness and sales. It surely is challenging sometimes but to get my creative juices flowing is so much fun! Does Influencer Marketing appeal you? For me, it does!
My question for Ashley: How to handle nano- and micro-influencers with the ins-and-outs?
It can be tricky sometimes when handling nano- and micro-influencers because they do not want a commitment. For most of them, being influencers are just a side gig, therefore marketers are more likely to handhold the less experienced influencers during the campaign development. Ashley shared the best way to handle misunderstanding between two parties is by signing a contract. All paid influencers should be presented with a contract that details the campaign dates, required outputs, exclusivity, ownership, licensing, and payment terms. In addition, contracts should have mutual indemnification clauses to protect both the brand and influencer in cases of crisis resulting in legal action.
Learnings from Ashley that could help networking and job search
The huge part of Influencer Marketing is relationship building. Ashley told us:
“Don’t be shy and send a DM to the influencer saying that you love their content. Influencers also really enjoy chatting about brand opportunities.”
Being in this industry, you need to be interested in building people relations. Besides, there’s more to Influencer Marketing than just social media, there are also community management, PR, social listening, and client relations, etc.
Thank you Ashley for sharing her insights and experience. I hope people who are finding their internship in influencer marketing area will find this helpful, and don’t forget to start building your network now!
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