Influencer Marketing
3
MIN READ
Everywhere you look surveys and stories are proclaiming that brands are set to increase spend on influence and creator marketing in 2023. An Advertiser Perceptions survey was released last week that asserted 53 percent of brands plan to increase the influencer marketing budget line this year. The research goes on to explain those dollars are being funneled from advertising budgets, taking money from television, print and radio funding for brands.
Why? Many reasons.
In a rather hilarious exchange on Twitter, @MrBeast underlined the main one.
He responded to Joe Pompilano’s listing of the average cost of a 30-second Super Bowl ad from 1967 through 2023. This year, the cost is $7 million. MrBeast responded that if anyone wanted to reach 100 million people for less than that, to let him know.
MrBeast has 133 million YouTube subscribers.
Influencer marketing, even at that level, is more cost efficient than traditional advertising. Plus, when you can drive the same reach with content that is more authentic and trusted by the audience, the communication is more effective.
But there are other reasons marketers are shifting dollars. The demographics of social platforms and influencers on them was called out in the research as another. Advertisers are looking to reach specific audiences and social channels like Instagram and TikTok can deliver them. Especially Gen-Z and Gen-Y consumers who are … brace yourselves, Boomers … creeping up on Gen X and Millennials in terms of spending power.
The truth is in the numbers. And the numbers say social media and its beacons of signal among the noise … influencers and content creators … that’s where brands need to focus more energy.
So, while trends show brands are migrating ad dollars to influencer marketing, they also show the leading edge brands are moving beyond traditional pay-per-post creator engagements.
A profile on Marketing Brew I found last week shows how Tabasco is going “all-in” on influencer marketing. The trendy hot sauce has always been a step or two ahead of most other consumer product goods in its use of digital marketing and social media. It smartly jumped out ahead of the competition by embracing user-generated content and the voice of its community years ago.
The look at the brand’s commitment to influencer marketing included details of its recent partnership with Christina Najjar, an influencer better known as Tinx. Her two million followers between TikTok and Instagram scored her a podcast and radio deal with Sirius XM.
Her brand collaboration with Tabasco led to a limited edition salad dressing, even.
But the pieces of the Tabasco story I noticed most were two fundamental components of great community influence marketing. First, they partnered with other brands like Chipotle, another connection through Tinx. We like to refer to that as Affinity Brand collaborations. Mapping the followers and audience of brands adjacent to, but not competitive with, your brand is one of the starting points of our Community Influence Marketing, or CIM, platform.
But then there was this little ditty in the piece. In the section titled “Who’s Next” the official from Tabasco offered this:
“The brand’s team monitors social media activity around the world, looking for people who are fans to be potential partners.”
People who mention your brand is another starting point for a good community influence marketing approach. Where Tabasco may be missing out is not mapping their customers, their social media followers, their employees and more. That’s where CIPIO.ai can come in and help their brand, or yours.
Still, Tabasco is at the leading edge of influence marketing. They’re thinking beyond the big influencer and tapping into the existing community of brand enthusiasts. If your brand would like to join them on that leading edge, all you need to do is map your community, plug in your affinity brands, your hashtags and other search terms, start identifying the influential voices you already know and start your outreach.
The trend may be for brands to invest more of their traditional advertising spend on influence and influence marketing. But why would you follow all the other laggards into the sponsored content traps the leading edge brands have already navigated through to find a better path? Join them … immediately … by moving your spend to strategies like Community Influence Marketing.
I’m guessing Tabasco might say that, my friends, is where the hot sauce is.
We would be delighted to show you how to jump into that kind of sauce this Friday. We’re offering a free webinar called Unlocking the Power of Community Influence Marketing to Grow Your Brand. It is available for you each Friday through March. Head to the link in this post at CIPIO.ai, or look for the link on our Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn channels to register.
If you want to cut to the chase and see a demo of our Community Influence Marketing platform, head to our website at CIPIO.ai and schedule one. I might just walk you through the platform myself.
