Influencer Marketing Is Dead… Enter ‘Share’ Marketing
‘Influencer Marketing’ as we know it was initially introduced with celebrity brand endorsements and commercials.
Nike and MJ might be the most famous (and best) example, but Influencer Marketing has drastically changed since its origin.
To most in marketing, there are now two distinct types (soon to be three) of influencer marketing:
A. Celebrity influencer marketing:
Celebrity status influencers that hold popularity just about everywhere. Think athletes, actors, artists, etc…
B. Social Influencer Marketing:
These are individuals with serious influence but limited to certain social platforms & communities. Think your average Twitch streamer not named Ninja, fashion blogger, YouTuber, or Instagram model.
For the past 5 years, the Social Influencer market has exploded in growth. So much growth in fact that the bubble has burst.
Influencer Marketing is Dead for Three Reasons:
1. Celebrity Connection
The issue with celebrity influencer marketing is that celebrities are simply relatable to the rest of us. My best example of this is Shaq’s Buick Commercial.
The consumer response was hilarious with quite a bit of truth. How can I relate to a 7ft NBA Hall of Fame Center when it comes to my car buying purchases?
The same can be said for every industry. When it comes to product purchases, how can we relate and be influenced by the purchasing decisions of global celebrities?
2. Social Influencers Are Now Celebrities
What made Social Influencers great was that they weren’t celebrities. They were average people with social influence that could truly connect with their audience.
Now, that has changed as Social Influencers have jumped into celebrity status.
3. Fake Engagement
If you’re familiar with the influencer marketing space, you know the only metric that matters is engagement. Anyone can buy followers, but engagement shows real results.
Now engagement can be faked too. Social Media ‘pods’ are built where influencers engage with one another’s content via an automated bot to drive ‘engagement’.
This means the views, impressions, and engagement you are paying for is really only seen by an automated bot…
So Influencer Marketing is dead… what now?
HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan coined the term ‘inbound’ marketing so here’s my attempt to do the same:
‘Share Marketing’:
Real users sharing content & endorsements that influence their audience regardless of the audience size.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Rather than searching for influencers with a large following, we use our existing audience, network, and community to find real people with a following of any kind.
Step 2: From there, we create ‘shareability incentives’ for them to share content with their community.
Step 3: We create content that will ‘catch wildfire’ as we label it. This is content that has a greater propensity to be seen, acted on, then shared again. This creates a snowball effect that generates the greatest ROI.
Step 4: We implement a CTA within the content that drives directly to the bottom line.
Here’s an example from a recent campaign aimed at attracting high school students ->
Step 1: We searched by location tags on Instagram for specific high schools. We then messaged the users of the top 5 posts with posts associated with that location tag.
Step 2: We offered each person a $10 Venmo to re-post one of our posts on their Instagram story.
Step 3: For the Instagram post we offered a giveaway to a local concert with the only way to enter to win by re-sharing the post on their own Instagram story. We included several videos and a color friendly graphic so it captured attention when reposted on the Instagram story format.
Step 4: Finally, we increased their odds of winning if they downloaded the app.
The results led to outperforming past influencer campaigns with a significantly smaller budget.
As firms continue to look for ways to turn dimes into dollars, ‘Share Marketing’ should become a staple of their marketing plans.
