A principios de febrero John Donahoe, CEO de Nike, platicó en CNBC de los esfuerzos de Nike para volverse más sustentable. “Al consumidor cada vez le importa más la sustentabilidad,” comentó en la entrevista. “Es importante para Nike y sus consumidores… [Los consumidores] están buscando a compañías como Nike para que lideren este esfuerzo.” (Puedes encontrar este artículo en inglés aquí)

La sensación de que debes evolucionar a la par de los cambiantes valores y necesidades de los consumidores es algo familiar para las marcas y sus CMO, quienes han adaptado un mayor sentido de propósito en la forma en que se posicionan en el mundo. Y el propósito de la marca es cada vez más importante para los consumidores actuales: de acuerdo a datos de eMarketer, 59% de los consumidores en EU son más leales a las marcas que apoyan causas que les importan a ellos. Pero a pesar de esto, 61% de los consumidores creen que muchas marcas usan estas causas como estrategias de marketing en su propio beneficio, de acuerdo al mismo estudio.

Al mismo tiempo que las marcas buscan compartir sus valores y contar sus historias, los influencers sirven como un excelente herramienta para hacerlo de manera más auténtica de forma que resuene con los consumidores actuales, haciéndolos un factor importante dentro de la mezcla de marketing que busca crear una conexión genuina con los usuarios. Dada su relevancia para para audiencias de nicho y la participación en comunidades sociales cerradas, asociarse con influencers le da a las marcas la oportunidad de ser congruentes y tener una papel más activo dentro de culturas que representan algo y que guían el cambio, así es cómo.

Capacidades Aumentadas de Storytelling

Los creadores de contenido conocen a sus audiencias mejor que nadie. Han establecido relaciones profundas con sus seguidores y espectadores al crear un flujo de contenido regular de calidad y próximo; es precisamente este contenido y la cercanía con la audiencia lo que les ha ganado seguidores.

Esta habilidad es invaluable para las marcas que buscan hacerse más cercanas; sin embargo, es importante que las marcas entiendan hacia qué tipo de contenido gravitan los consumidores. Primero, las marcas no deberían enfocar toda su atención en el número de seguidores y de likes; Instagram está experimentando en deshacerse de los dos, y además no son una medida realmente exacta de qué tan influyente es un usuario en la plataforma.

Pero no hay que desesperarse; esto no significa que el marketing de influencer sea algo gratuito con poca atribución o en la que no haya forma de investigar socios efectivos. De hecho, datos de nuestro equipo IMA de activación de influencers apuntan a que la calidad es la verdadera medida de valor: lo que importa más que el número de espectadores que pueda traer un influencer a tu contenido, es cuántos de esos espectadores van a interactuar, buscarán y explorarán tu marca. Viendo más allá de los cifras duras y con miras en la calidad y el engagement también permite que haya contenido más genuino y auténtico. 

Contenido Shoppable Irresistible

El contenido shoppable está ganando tracción con los consumidores. El año pasado, según datos de Adobe, el porcentaje de tráfico de referrals de redes sociales a sitios de ecommerce creció de 3.1% en 2016 a 9.1% en 2019. Con el creciente interés de la Generación Z en la compra a través de redes sociales como Instagram, los influencers presentan una excelente oportunidad para que las marcas impulsen esta tendencia generando contenido shoppable o inspiracional que resuene con los consumidores.

¿Qué es el marketing de influencers?

De hecho, la confianza en los influencers es alta: otro estudio de eMarketer señala que el 25% de niños y adolescentes entre 6 y 16 años de edad en Estados Unidos y el Reino Unido, los citan como una de sus principales influencias a la hora de tomar decisiones de compra, poco abajo de los amigos (28%) y arriba de familiares (21%). A pesar de esto, es fundamental que las marcas no traten a los influencers como otra compra de medios; son socios creativos de principio a fin, y deben ser tratados como tales.

“Cuando encuentres influencers que empatan a la perfección con tu marca, debes confiar en que conocen a sus seguidores mejor que tu. Así que cuando estás accediendo a su comunidad, tendrás resultados más sólidos, dándoles libertad creativa para crear contenido creíble ligado a tu marca,” dice Emilie Tabor, Fundador y CMO de IMA. “Por supuesto, siempre le damos un brief muy preciso al influencer y el contenido siempre es aprobado por la marca antes de publicarse.”

Mayor Enfoque en la Obsesión del Consumidor

Finalmente, las alianzas con influencers le permiten a tu marca obsesionarse más con el cliente con relativa facilidad. ¿Qué es una marca obsesionada con el consumidor? La obsesión por el cliente viene en varias formas: “Forrester identifica tres expresiones comunes en la obsesión por el cliente: ‘Cuenta con nosotros’ (confiabilidad), ‘A tu servicio’ (servicio), y ‘A tu lado’ (apoyo); dependiendo de la fortaleza de la empresa y de lo que valoran sus clientes,” escribe Shar VanBoskirk, VP y Principal Analyst de Forrester, en el reporte “How To Build Your Company’s Customer Obsession Strategy.”

Los influencers encajan en este modelo al construir una relación cercana con sus audiencias de acuerdo a sus necesidades, por ejemplo, un creador de contenido de belleza que ayuda a sus espectadores a entender qué cosméticos son mejores para ellos, y cómo usarlos. La autoridad y la defensa de la comunidad como fuentes de conocimiento son dos grandes atributos que vemos en acción en este caso.

Wesley ter Haar, Fundador de MediaMonks, señala que “La creatividad diferenciada combina un entendimiento de la cultura con impacto de negocios de gran altura que genera un valor final real.” Para lograr esto, los influencers deben conocer a fondo a sus audiencias; elegir al mejor influencer para llegar a tu público objetivo requiere que también los entiendas a ellos y a sus necesidades.

Esto significa que invertir en social listening y en insights de mercado es un buen lugar para empezar tus esfuerzos de marketing de influencers, vamos a profundidad en todos los datos: analytics, social listening, engagement, percepción, calidad de contenido y la alineación con la marca,” dice Tabor. “¿Quiénes son los followers? ¿Dónde viven? ¿Cuáles son los rangos de edad y sus interes? ¿Han trabajado con tus competidores? Hay mucho más por debajo de la superficie.”

El punto anterior ilustra algunas de las formas en que los influencers pueden ayudar a las marcas a estar siempre a la vanguardia en el marketing de redes sociales. Los influencers pueden beneficiar a las marcas siendo expertos en diferentes áreas, figuras inspiracionales y talento, y además son clave para mejorar y fortalecer sus relaciones con los consumidores.

In early February, Nike CEO John Donahoe discussed with CNBC Nike’s efforts to become more sustainable. “The consumer increasingly cares about sustainability,” he told CNBC in an interview. “It matters to Nike and to consumers. … [Consumers] are looking to companies like Nike to lead.”

The feeling that one must evolve in accordance with consumers’ shifting values and needs is a familiar one for brands and their CMOs, who have adopted a greater sense of purpose in how they position themselves within the world. And brand purpose is increasingly important to today’s consumers: according to data from eMarketer, 59% of US consumers are more loyal toward brands that support the causes they care about. But despite this, 61% of consumers believe that too many brands use these issues as marketing ploys for their own gain, according to the same survey.

As brands strive to share their values and tell their stories, influencers serve as an excellent way to do so more authentically in a way that resonates with today’s consumers—making them an important factor within any marketing mix that aims to forge a genuine connection with consumers.  Given their relevance to niche audiences and participation in close social communities, partnering with influencers gives brands the opportunity to put their money where their mouth is and take a more active part within cultures that stand for something and drive change—here’s how.

Enhanced Storytelling Capabilities

Content creators know their audience better than anyone else. They’ve established deep relationships with followers and viewers by creating a regular stream of quality, relatable content; it’s precisely this content and closeness to the audience that has gained them a following in the first place.

This skill is invaluable to brands that seek to make themselves more relatable, though it’s important that brands understand what kind of content consumers gravitate toward. First, brands shouldn’t focus all their attention on follower counts and likes—both of which Instagram is experimenting with getting rid of, and do little to measure exactly how influential any user on the platform is.

But don’t despair; this doesn’t mean influencer marketing is a free-for-all with little attribution or no way to vet effective partners. In fact, data from our influencer activation team IMA notes that quality is the true benchmark of value: what matters more than the number of viewers an influencer brings to your content is how many of those viewers will engage, seek out and explore your brand. Looking beyond hard numbers and toward quality and engagement also enables more genuine and authentic content.

Irresistible Shoppable Content

Shoppable content is gaining steam with consumers. Last year, US social referral share of total traffic to ecommerce sites grew from 3.1% in 2016 to 9.1% in 2019, according to data from Adobe, and has become the fastest-growing driver of referrals. With Gen Z’s increased interest in shopping on social channels like Instagram, influencers present an excellent opportunity for brands to support this trend by generating shoppable or inspirational content that resonates with consumers.

What’s influencing influencer marketing?

In fact, trust in influencers is strong: another eMarketer survey states that 25% of US/UK children and teens aged 6-16 cite them as leading influences on purchasing decisions, sandwiched between friends (28%) and family members (21%). Despite this, it’s critical brands don’t treat influencers as another media buy; they’re creative partners through and through, and should be treated as such.

“When you find influencers who match your brand perfectly, you should trust that they know their following best. So when you are tapping into their community, you’ll have a stronger outcome by giving them the creative freedom to create credible content linking to your brand,” says Emilie Tabor,  Founder & CMO of IMA. “Of course, we always brief the influencer closely and the content is always approved by the brand before it goes live.”

Greater Focus on Customer Obsession

Finally, influencer partnerships enable your brand to become more customer obsessed with relative ease. What is a customer-obsessed brand? Customer obsession takes a handful for forms: “Forrester sees three common expressions of customer obsession—‘Count on us’ (reliability), ‘At your service’ (service), and ‘On your side’ (advocacy)—depending on a company’s strengths and what its customers value,” writes Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Shar VanBoskirk in the report, “How To Build Your Company’s Customer Obsession Strategy.”

Influencers fit this model by building a close relationship with audiences based on their needs—for example, a beauty content creator who helps viewers understand which cosmetics are best for them, and how to apply them. Community advocacy and authority as a knowledgeable resource are two key influencer attributes at work here.

MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar notes that “Differentiated creative combines an understanding of culture with heavy-lifting business impact that drives real bottom line value.” In achieving this, influencers must be knowledgeable about their audiences; selecting the best influencer to reach your target audience requires you understand them and their needs, too.

This means a good place to begin your influencer marketing efforts is investing in social listening and market insights. “In selecting influencers for clients, we dig deep into all data: analytics, social listening, engagement, sentiment, quality of content and overall brand match,” says Tabor. “Who are their followers? Where are they based? Age groups, interests? Have they worked with competitors? There’s so much more beyond the surface.”

The points above points illustrate a handful of ways that influencers can help brands stay ahead of the game in social media marketing. Serving as knowledge experts, inspirational figures and talent, influencers offer several benefits to the brands that partner with them and are key to enhancing and strengthening the relationships they have with consumers.

The FTC recently released a set of guidelines informing influencers of how they should disclose branded content. They range from some of the more obvious points (definitely disclose that you’re being paid to promote something) to more stringent ethical concerns—for example, influencers can’t talk about an experience with a product you haven’t tried, nor can they praise a product that they don’t think is good.

These guidelines are not only useful to maintain transparency with consumers. In fact, they remind us how brands and influencers can—and should—form more meaningful partnerships that benefit them both. Doing so achieves a truer sense of authenticity, authority and integrity, exactly what a brand seeks to infuse in their story when working with influencers. Here’s how to make that happen.

Adopt a Community-First Mindset

The surest way to build authenticity into an influencer campaign is to center the story around the community you hope to connect with. Consider, for example, how many leading content creators interrupt or introduce their content with a scripted spiel about a product that doesn’t have anything to do with the content itself. For many in the audience, these ad reads might have a “it’s what pays the bills” kind of vibe, rather than a reliable endorsement from the influencer.

While such a tactic might increase reach and awareness, it doesn’t go far enough in creating a meaningful connection with the audience. “A lot of companies think about influencer partnerships like they would a media spend,” says Claudia Cameron, Head of Digital Marketing at IMA, a digital influencer agency that merged with MediaMonks in August. “Get at the heart of what the influencer means for their audience, rather than focusing on getting in front of as many people as possible.”

In an ANA presentation on how brands can retain relevance through influencer partnerships, Hot Wheels Sr. Marketing Director/Head of Brand Marketing Ricardo Briceno discussed the toy brand’s strategic, long-term partnership with vlogger Tanner Fox. As an automotive enthusiast, it was clear how Fox’s content overlapped with the brand’s mission to ignite a challenging spirit in children through cars. “What is the shared value between what Hot Wheels stands for and what the creator stands for?” Briceno asked rhetorically, demonstrating key questions that brands should consider in forming their approach to partnership.

Allow Creative Control for Added Authenticity

Defining this shared value and goals does more than ensure a brand’s goals and influencer’s audiences are aligned. It can also help build confidence and comfort in giving the influencer freedom to create content how they choose. Cameron advises that brands provide influencers this flexibility.

This enables the brand to achieve authenticity and relevance by building the story around the influencer’s audience. “Set the campaign to fit the feed, rather than the other way around,” Cameron says. “You can give influencers parameters in how you want to position the brand, allowing them to connect strategically with the audience.”

And no niche is too small or obscure to make a meaningful connection. In promoting its new navigation device, electronics company TomTom faced a challenge: how could they reach an audience of truck drivers, who are notoriously hard to reach with so much time spent on the road? Inspired by the insight that truckers combat loneliness through social media connection, IMA tapped into an online community of drivers and discovered 18 of its most influential users, paving the path for TomTom to engage with the community in a genuine way. It shows how the value of influencers extends beyond the glossy image that the term “influencer” commonly conjures up—and that even those without big followings can earn big user engagement.

Build Lasting Relationships and Trust

Brands can do more than give up some creative control to maintain authenticity. Cameron suggests they achieve a higher quality relationship with influencers by moving away from short-term campaigns and cultivating longer-term partnerships instead—at least six months at minimum. “You need an understanding of how the influencer talks with their audience, then apply that with your strategy,” says Cameron. “When connecting with niche audiences, this becomes very specific.” Nurturing a longer-term relationship helps build that understanding.

This also helps influencers feel more involved with the brand. “If you’re a makeup brand and there’s a new release, make sure your influencer gets it before anyone else,” says Cameron. She notes that gifting products alone is no longer an effective strategy for building social buzz, though brands can build involvement by offering influencers—and their communities—with an exclusive experience.

Keep Up with Evolving, Cross-Border Guidelines

Regardless of how deep your relationship is with an influencer, it’s important to keep abreast of regulations and guidelines like those recently released by the FTC. But this offers a challenge to global brands: each market has different rules to follow. A global partner like IMA can help brands and influencers alike ensure their message is within local guidelines while maintaining a global brand standard.

Cameron also notes that disclosure is quickly getting better on social platforms like Instagram, which offers a paid partnership tag that clearly labels branded content. Far from harmful to branded content’s effectiveness—“We don’t see any negative ramifications yet,” says Cameron—the tag offers greater visibility for the brand by highlighting its role in creation of the content.

With greater visibility for the brand, added authority for the influencer and transparency toward the user, it’s easy to see how improved disclosure offers a net positive for everyone and builds stronger relationships. And that’s what influencer marketing is about: forging a meaningful connection and offering real, relevant value to the audience.