Not all types of fans and followers are equal in value, and this applies to brands, influencers, creators, and affiliates. Sometimes the influencer or brand with a smaller following, even if they don’t drive sales, is the highest value for a specific part of your campaign. If this part fails because you passed them up, the rest becomes harder and more expensive.
This is the reason why a smaller influencer that does not drive any sales or has low engagement may be the person or brand that gets paid at one of the highest tiers. Segmenting the right voices at the appropriate stage in your campaign is critical to success.
The types of influencers and partners we consider high-value can be classified into four major groups:
- Trust Builders – Someone the other influencers trust, respect, and engage with.
- Popularity Accounts – Has a massive audience that engages with them.
- Money Makers – Their fans and followers take action like donating and subscribing, or spending money and shopping.
- Media Darlings – News and media companies as well as bloggers feature them regularly or cover what they talk about.
These high-value influencers can be mixed and matched as they could meet two or three of the above criteria. If you need them for multiple stages, they can be hired at a discount because you’ll be paying for more than one post or share and can negotiate a deal. Here’s an example of how this can work.
I’ll pretend we’re a brand launching a new line extension with a new product name. The steps of the launch with influencers could be:
- Build community trust.
- Get reviews and trials going so we can feature their names and comments on our website for consumer confidence.
- Use their feedback to fix any low hanging fruit and ask them to update their content if it hasn’t been released.
- Go live with the public and get media exposure or pickups and update our PR bar.
- Drive customer acquisition campaigns now that the funnel is tested, trust builders are in place, and the flow is working.
Let’s look at how each type of influential partner in the first bullet list impacts each of these stages. This way you can map out your marketing campaigns that use influencers or partnerships and apply it to your projects.
Trust Builders
These partners are the very top of the marketing campaign funnel. They’re industry leaders whose following is made up of speakers at conferences, the big names everyone knows that have massive followings, and possibly write for larger media publications. They’re known in the inner circles for being “smart” or “having clout,” so when they say they use or like a product or service, others immediately put credibility into it.
Once this trust is passed over, you as the marketer or brand may find it:
- Easier to recruit affiliates.
- Have the influencers in the other three categories respond when you’d normally be ignored.
- Get reviewers and others to start trials, include you in listcicles, or write reviews.
- Get booked on webinars to explain and share about the space and how your products or services work within it.
This applies to all products and services from kids toys to SAAS, and home repair. Their fans and followers trust them based on the quality they provide to their community, and that they don’t make bad recommendations. They’re passing their credibility to you when they vouge for you. It’s your “in” to the industry via a small fee, and one that lets you start with some level of trust vs. having to earn it.
Popularity Accounts
Some influencers have actual fans that love them and do challenges from dances to cooking, drawing, or reading books. Their audience aspires to be like them and responds to their brand message. It could be in the form of comments, likes, shares, or creating their own content for contests like you see above.
The audience may not always take actions that involve money, but they do come to defend the creator or brand when others attack. It’s because they feel like they are part of their lives. It’s that army that loves their content that can benefit your campaigns by:
- Sharing content that has your links in it which may build trust with some social platforms like LinkedIn and Pinterest.
- The demand and buzz around your brand, products, and services could be getting picked up or crawled by search engines, which does matter even if the links do not count as backlinks for SEO.
- Cause branded searches even if they don’t shop. This can signal what it is the new product or service does or is about. This may help some of the machine learning algorithms know what to show your pages for, when to show them, and who to show them to.
These influencers may not move the needle money wise, but they do impact other channels and build the buzz around your brand, products, and services.
Money Makers
Some influencers and brand partnerships bring in the money. When they speak their audience spends. More often then not they’re going to charge the most because money gets tied back to them. But be careful.
Some will play games like ask for tracking codes and submit them to coupon browser extensions and coupon websites that show up for your brand + coupons in Google and Bing.
This makes it appear they’re driving revenue from their campaigns, but it is actually the people already on your website and the browser extension inserting their coupon giving them credit for sales they did not refer. Other times it is your own customer going to Google and typing “your company + coupons”, seeing their code and entering it. There’s ways to prevent and detect this, reach out if you think it’s happening to you through my contact form.
For the ones that do have an actual following that spends money, here’s some ways to work with them:
- Track their growth and set up timed campaigns. If your products don’t need replaced every couple months, there is a diminishing return as the people that need it will have already shopped. If their audience grows substantially each month, get a recurring campaign for once their audience is refreshed. If not monthly, try quarterly or annually at important times.
- If it is a renewing product, run a “reasons to renew” campaign 11 months into the annual subscription.
- Get them on exclusives. When their audience is the same or similar to yours, get them under contract. You can stop your competitors from accessing them and you can work to grow their audience by featuring them in your ads and on your website. This in turn grows their audience and adds their credibility to your product in the ad which may increase loyalty and conversions.
- Have them create a branded line. Branded lines let their audience feel like they’re supporting the influencer that causes them to take their wallets out. Same with brand cross-overs like watches, bags, tshirts, dipping sauces, etc… Whatever causes their audience to engage may happen even more when it is that person’s name as the co-designer for your brand. This may help the products sell out and move. It’s like merch they sell on their channels, but for your brand and you get the customers to grow your list.
These are the data driven partners that are the easiest to justify if you have to get budget from accounting, or sign off from the C suite. Sometimes there is no easy way in because they have managers, and working with the “Trust Builders” first causes them to want to know more about you. This could be the easiest path forward.
Media Darlings
These can be complementary companies that don’t have a large following, or the content creators the media love to talk about. Look for similar companies or creators that are subject matter experts, or who for some reason get quoted and have their photos appear in media outlets. It could be local celebrities, unicorn brands, or someone that just stands out and creates views.
By having them feature you with a cross promotion, or by using your products or visiting your store, you get access to their group of trusted media professionals and may have an easier time getting featured. A good way to find them is to use Google News. Sort by most recent and look for how often they’re featured.
You can also create a list of your dream pickups and see when the last times they got coverage was. If it is recent and they’re from multiple editors vs. the same person who writes for four or five publications, this is an amazing partnership. If your campaign takes off you get logos for your PR bar, content you can share on social like “look what XYZ magazine says about us”, and the links and citations to your website may help with SEO.
New companies struggle with getting coverage. If there are creators and brands that are complementary, find ways to work with them. Like the trust builders, they pass their ability to get coverage onto your products and services so you may have an easier time getting natural and pitched coverage.
Each high-value fan or follower is different. Sometimes the value comes from audiences that take out their wallets which makes the influencer high value, other times its the fans and followers who have reach. Although the influencer you paid or have a relationship with drove zero sales or traction, their word built the credibility and trust to get you in the door with media companies, money makers, and popularity accounts.
