Chief Growth Officer at The Outloud Group, a full-service influencer marketing agency that creates & executes strategic campaigns at scale
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Influencer marketing has historically been focused on the relationship between the creator and their audience. First, you find a creator that aligns with your brand, which isn’t always easy, you work with the creator to develop content, and then you hope and trust that the creator’s audience engages with the campaign. And while this remains an incredibly powerful part of the influencer equation, it’s not the only game in town.
Influencer content also works incredibly well as influencer user-generated content (UGC). I say “influencer UGC” to distinguish it from unpaid content created by fans of a brand, like a selfie posted to Instagram while using a product. Influencer UGC is the sponsored content from an influencer that gives the influencer more creative control. In many ways, it more closely resembles a customer testimonial than an ad. It’s honest and authentic content that the creators share with the brand.
Influencer UGC also allows brands to put themselves in unique spots they might not normally have access to, like exotic locations, New York Fashion Week, on the top of a mountain or in the locker room before or after a big game.
Next, we have influencer paid social. These are the sponsored ads you’ve probably seen that are promoted from the influencer’s social account (rather than a brand’s account). There are all sorts of use cases for influencer paid social — similar to what we see with standard UGC. Brands and agencies are doing more influencer paid social options so that brands can put money into boosting specific posts created by influencers they’ve partnered with so that it’s seen by an even larger audience.
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When you bring together traditional influencer marketing, influencer UGC and influencer paid social, you end up with a powerful partnership that can generate significant results — something we see a lot of with the influencers and brands we work with.
Let’s unpack what this means.
The Audience Is Still King
Traditional influencer marketing, where we tap into the creator’s audience, is still king — and the real meat and potatoes live here. Audiences look up to creators like they are a “cool older cousin” and there’s psychological significance to choosing to “follow” someone online.
People follow specific influencers because they aspire to be like that person in some way, whether it’s their look, expertise, aesthetic, sense of humor, values, etc. They expect each piece of content produced by the influencer to feel relatively similar and to align with what originally attracted them in the first place.
In order to retain the trust and respect of their audience, it’s critical that influencers really do like and use the product they advocate for and are given the freedom to be brand advocates and not an outlet for the brand to push out their brand voice.
If a piece of sponsored content feels radically different from what the influencer normally creates, it will produce a jarring experience for their audience, and it’s certain to not get the reach of normal content from the creator.
For example, if a particular influencer spends a lot of time outdoors and communicates with his audience in a folksy, earthy tone, it would seem very odd to his audience if he was suddenly talking about how an organic shampoo gives women incredible shine and volume with their hair. It would be immediately obvious to his audience that he was reading straight off a brand script and not truly behind the product.
For influencer marketing to work, the audience must be respected.
The Power Of Influencer UGC
Respecting the audience is precisely why influencer UGC is effective. It’s not created or limited by the brand but comes from the creator’s vision of how to use a product or service and how to communicate the benefits in ways that resonate with their audience. There’s no limitation to how a product is used, and seeing it used in many different ways can give the audience ideas about how they might use it.
For example, the mega-famous YouTubers Dude Perfect often partner with brands that create products geared toward young boys in particular, such as Nerf and Airsoft. To promote the sponsored products, they often create elaborate battlefields or perform crazy trick shots, both of which are totally on-brand with their other videos and obviously appeal to young kids who enjoy having Nerf battles with their friends.
This type of creator-driven UGC resonates much more with the audience and almost always produces significantly better campaign results. When it’s obvious to the audience that the creator genuinely likes the product or service, they are much less likely to tune out the message as yet another advertisement.
Using Influencer Paid Social To Scale
Influencer paid social is the final piece of the puzzle, allowing brands to scale their most effective influencer work. With this approach, brands can identify the content that has performed well organically and then amplify it to a much larger audience, including boosting the content to the creator’s audience or audiences that have similar interests to those that follow the creator. Targeting audiences of similar influencers is also in play given that these audiences often are interested in similar types of products and services. This essentially gives you access to the fans of multiple influencers while only requiring the budget of working with one.
The Influencer Trifecta
The threefold strategy laid out above is, in our experience, the most effective way to approach influencer marketing today:
1. Start by identifying creators who will truly advocate for your products or services to their organic audience.
2. Give the creators the freedom to create UGC that feels authentic to their audience rather than a set of rigid talking points that the audience will tune out.
3. Identify the content and campaigns that produce the best organic results and fuel them with influencer paid social.
The end result is influencer marketing campaigns that resonate with a creator’s current audience and can be amplified to a much broader audience while still getting similar results.
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Author: Bradley Hoos, Forbes Councils Member
