Influencer marketing is the biggest and most distinctive addition to the marketing landscape in a very long time. It’s also one of the fastest evolving. The notion of partnering with trusted, expert online content creators to reach their dedicated and often specialist audiences might seem a simple enough concept on the surface of the idea, but navigating the reality of influencer marketing (and doing it well) requires a great deal of insight and knowledge.

From emerging platforms, to authentic online culture and audience address, right down to the (not at all simple, but very rewarding) process of finding the right influencers to work with in the first place, there’s a lot to know, understand, and stay aware of. So we’re going to give you the crash course right here, with the vital, topline knowledge you need in order to be able to to talk about - and work with - influencer marketing with confidence. So let’s start with the most obvious question, shall we?

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing, put simply, is when brands engage in creative, commercial collaborations with well-known, independent online content creators in order engage the content creator’s audience and raise awareness of products and brand messaging.

Above: Just a handful of highlights from the suite of branded content we helped put together in November 2020.

That’s the most simple, technical description, mind. In truth, really good influencer marketing is a complex, nuanced, but powerful art, blending concrete marketing needs with matters of creativity, community, tone and voice, and finding the correct choice of audiences in the first place. Blending the art of content creation and community engagement with the science of channel data and audience insight (the foundation of all the right creative partnerships), it’s a unique and potent medium with a vast and diverse set of options for approach.

How and why influencer marketing works

Influencer marketing works because it is far more than an simple advert or product placement. Modern, media-savvy consumers know when they’re being blunt-force advertised to. They increasingly resent being interrupted with it, and in 2020 they have more than enough tools to effectively reject it. Between the free availability of online ad-blockers, the bounty of commercial-free entertainment on offer from subscription streaming services, and the simple, personal ability to tune out the modern oversaturation of marketing as background noise, it’s never been easier for consumers to ignore the message of traditional placement advertising.

Above: The Value Triangle shared by brands, creators, and audience informs everything we do at Fourth Floor.

Influencer marketing works because it fundamentally takes the opposite approach. Simply, it’s about working with independent content creators to deliver genuinely worthwhile, robust, and engaging material that their audience wants to consume in its own right, and then infusing that material with brand messaging in an authentic, organic way that drives goodwill rather than irritation. At Fourth Floor we talk in terms of the Value Triangle. Influencer marketing is only being done right when the content produced generates value for all three parties involved: The client, the creator, and the consumer.

Why influencer marketing is important

Influencer marketing is important because it directly synergises with the way modern audiences consume media. Time spent with online digital platforms and social media - from longer-form YouTube and Twitch video, to Instagram, to TikTok micro-vlogging - is only accelerating, and particularly in younger audiences that’s happening at the growing expense of traditional media platforms such as TV.

Above: Online media allows modern communities to entertain and personally connect at the same time.

Influencer marketing talks to the modern audience where they actually live, and it talks to them in a language natural and organic to that environment. Influencer marketing also talks to them in the voice of someone they know and trust, with a sense of dialogue rather than dictation. And when done right, it communicates its message openly, genuinely, and authentically, combining powerful emotional engagement with immediate access to purchase and information links. Traditional placement advertising simply cannot compete with that.

Influencer marketing vs. traditional marketing

Influencer marketing has a more natural, inherently more communicative approach to audience address than traditional marketing does. It’s fundamentally more human-minded. And that’s reflected in the now-documented physiological response, which indicates that the goodwill benefits of using influencer marketing can even reach as far as making traditional campaigns more effective, if integrated correctly.

Above: Influencer marketing doesn’t just make sense in theory. It has proven psychological benefits.

Neuroscientific study has revealed that influencer marketing is 277% more emotionally affecting to the consumer than TV ads, due to its more engaging, authentic, and audience-invested, personality-led nature. As an upshot, influencer marketing is also 87% more memorable. Influencer marketing doesn’t just talk to your audience. It really reaches them.

But beyond that, the same study also showed that audiences primed with influencer marketing tied to a particular campaign later became far more receptive to subsequent, traditional ads related to the same campaign. Specifically, they became 58% more likely to feel positive toward the ad, and 47% more likely to remember it. Influencer marketing isn’t just valuable in its own right. It makes your traditional marketing methods more valuable too.

Influencer marketing KPIs

Influencer marketing KPIs take a little digging through, and a fair bit of professional insight, to really understand. While the big, topline numbers like total views and likes can make an influencer marking campaign look like an open-and-shut, job well done, but the really important facts often lie elsewhere.

Looking beyond these ‘vanity metrics’, we find the truly valuable content performance data in areas like engagement, conversions, awareness and audience sentiment, and audience growth. If success were a simple matter of the number of eyes on a particular piece of messaging, mass-market, mainstream placement ads would still be king. And they’re not.

Influencer marketing has much greater power to really connect with audiences, and speak to them and their culture, while making your brand part of it. As such, measuring its success requires a much greater understanding of the chosen audience’s response, behaviour, and how a piece of content affected their personal actions and conversations on a more meaningful level. Thom explains more in his dedicated article on the subject.

Influencer marketing vs. celebrity endorsement

Influencer marketing might sound superficially similar to celebrity endorsement, but it differs in one key way: It isn’t superficial. Where celebrity ‘star power’ might be assumed to be persuasive enough to raise the profile and/or desirability of a brand, it lacks any genuine human connective power. It might conjure up a glossy, mass-market notion of prestige around a brand, but by nature of its generalist, wide-net appeal, it lacks personal meaning and authenticity.

Above: Sticking an Avenger next to your logo may grab attention, but without deeper resonance, it doesn’t hold it.

The relationship between influencers and their audience is different. With influencers’ ongoing lives often thrown wide open, and their content output so organic and personality-led, there’s real connection and, well, genuine influence. Audiences might recognise celebrities and enjoy their work, but influencers’ content is defined as much by who they are, as well as what they do. Their audiences are entertained by them, but they also have a relationship with them. As such, influencers also have much more room to openly and transparently stand for causes, values, cultural perspectives, and overall tastes, which can naturally be a huge boon in brand alignments, as well as in allowing them to genuinely specialise and target precise audience communities.

Influencer marketing trends

Influencer marketing trends are constantly shifting as the medium matures and evolves. When we talk about influencers - at least at Fourth Floor - we’re not talking about one static, easily pigeon-holed set of people. We’re talking about a rich ecosystem of content creating voices expressing their outlooks, talent, interests, and personalities in an ever-expanding set of styles and media. Anyone who pretends they can pin influencers and influencer marketing down into a rubber-stamped box doesn’t understand the field.

Above: A genuine endorsement from the right, suitable influencer is good, but letting their full creativity flow can give your message a unique platform that really sticks in the memory.

But there are some principles that always hold true across the board. First and foremost, authenticity is king. No brand collaboration in influencer marketing can be successful unless it is a true collaboration, developed around ideas and presentation that fit naturally and authentically with a creator’s native voice, style, and audience. These are close, connected, enthused communities, and they can smell fake a mile off.

Consumers - particularly since the tough times of 2020 - increasingly demand something real, substantial, and nourishing in their media (and from the brands they choose to engage with). With so much online content to choose from, no-one has to put up with anything that doesn’t work for them. That’s partly why we’re currently seeing the rise in popularity of micro-influencers, smaller but more specialised channels able to talk to ultra-specific cultures and demographics in a relatable, focused voice. In influencer marketing, you need to think about - and truly understand - who you’re talking to, and then build your plan around the best way to reach them.

Influencer marketing on Instagram

Influencer marketing on Instagram is probably still the first thing that most people think of when they consider influencer marketing. It’s far from the be-all and end-all in 2020, but it is still a huge platform and one with potentially huge audience reach. Influencer marketing on Instagram is also, alas, probably the area that is most responsible for any negative stereotypes around the field, because the primarily image-led platform has in the past found itself lent itself to a few lazy, superficial treatments.

Above: FitWaffle’s uniquely visual, creatively indulgent baking has made their content a huge hit on both Instagram and TikTok, with massive growth over 2020.

But handled creatively, like all good influencer marketing content should be, Instagram can be as powerful and effective an influencer marketing platform as any. Find the right content creators with genuine, stand-out voices, who share your views and resonate with your brand’s messaging and products. Find them, come to understand their content and audience, and with the right, sympathetic, creative thinking you can deliver genuinely powerful campaigns on Instagram.

Influencer marketing on YouTube

Influencer marketing on YouTube is one the most powerful and rich environments in which to engage with hugely diverse, ultra-engaged communities. While gaming and lifestyle have long dominated the stereotypical perception of the video-on-demand platform, the truth is that it’s in YouTube influencer marketing that you’ll generally find the deepest, most expert content on pretty much any subject and interest area you wish to investigate. With loyal, dedicated audiences to match.

Above: When a client wants to promote a mobile warfare simulation, YouTube lets you build an all-terrain tank.

The open-ended production possibilities of YouTube videos allow content creators to build names making any kind of material they like, at any sort of scale. On YouTube you’ll find everything from incisive videogames commentary, to restaurant-quality culinary expertise, to short films and animation, to fly-on-the-wall slices of life at innovative media production companies, and all manner of entertainment, comedy, and music in between. Influencer marketing on YouTube probably has the most diverse and adaptable tool box in all of the medium, so you’d be very wise to factor it into your influencer marketing strategy.

Influencer marketing on TikTok

Influencer marketing on TikTok is the newest and fastest-growing area in the field, given the platform’s rapid and explosive growth over the course of 2020. With lockdown spurring on a greater public need than ever to consume - and create - homemade content, TikTok’s short-form, app-based, micro video platform was perfectly placed to fulfill demand. As such its userbase (and therefore its audience) rapidly scaled up.

Above: With influencer marketing, you don’t need to take the direct approach to raising brand awareness. You just need to find the right way to synergise with a creator’s established craft.

Being so young a platform, TikTok influencer marketing is still evolving and finding its conventions, but that’s precisely what makes it such an exciting place to work. Countless new voices and talents are springing up and finding loyal audiences every day, in a whole range of brand new and evolving, expressive, creative styles. Naturally the influencer marketing industry hasn’t taken long to see the potential of that, but if you want to do influencer marketing on TikTok well, you’ll need to keep a very close handle on a highly agile and quickly shifting creative ecosystem

Influencer marketing on Twitch

Influencer marketing on Twitch is another beast again. Being a livestreaming platform rather than dealing primarily with recorded video-on-demand or traditional social media posting, good Twitch influencer marketing makes use of that live element in order to create resonant moments and a community-led sense of occasion, where everyone feels truly present and involved in what’s happening.

There’s a fair bit of unique nuance to understand in terms of how Twitch works, but the topline is that good Twitch content thrives on an in-the-moment sense of community engagement and audience participation, and so Twitch influencer marketing should leverage the very same in order to really bring a product or brand to life.

What is influencer marketing, how and why does it work, and why is it important?