Posted on: 28th, March 2024 | By: Sourav Ray, CSO, Aparajita Biala
Roadmap To Accelerate Brand’s Influence
Influencer marketing (IM) is no longer a novelty in the marketer’s toolkit. Most who’ve leveraged influencers face the challenge to manage the large no. of variables involved in planning and executing an influencer strategy. In a rapidly growing and fragmenting ecosystem, there is lack of benchmarks and a constant conundrum of scale and authenticity. Challenges quite similar to those in the early years of social media!
To solve for these, one needs to step out of the immediate and take a wider view of the brand’s influencer marketing journey. Brands need to realize that IM is a continuum tool, unlike traditional media. IM’s true value is in the long term. It requires brands to pivot to an always on, relational approach for influencer initiative rather than a campaign burst approach. Hence the need for an “influencer program”. With the “Creator Program Acceleration Model (C-PAM)”, we’ve built a roadmap to grow a brand’s creator program.
Stage 1: Foundation
The foundational stage demands a startup culture of fearless experimentation and therefore is high on creative energy.
Challenges
- Tendency to lean on established KPIs, i.e. - traditional media’s “reach” and “frequency” obsession reflects in “no of followers” and “no of posts”. Defeating the purpose of “influence”.
- Lack of benchmarks and best practices wrt influencer compensation, content control & KPIs
- Manual processes & operational intensity (recruiting, briefing, creation, monitoring). High people & relationship involvement, low scalability What do you need to succeed?
- Measure “influence” ( indicators ; sentiment, engagement, brand content Vs influencer content test) rather than only followers and reach
- Experiment frequently with influencer cohorts, content formats, attention hacks. Analyse and record learnings
- Build a lean, ambitious team of doers with an entrepreneurial mind-set
Stage 2: Consolidation (setting up for scale)
Time to set order to chaos. Realizing the need for scale, this stage is marked by consolidating learnings into setting SOPs through templates.
Challenges
- Investments to subscribe to sophisticated IM tools
- Inertia from teams & creators to transition a “people” business to process orientation
- Tendency to templatize process as well as content output
- Developing KPI models for the program
What do you need to succeed?
- Finding the right tools that empower you to select basis audience interests and behaviour rather than only “follower/ influencer demographics”
- Templatize process not content - retain influencer’s voice of authenticity
- Strategic thinkers and process architects beyond doers
- Leaders with the ability to influence key stakeholders
Stage 3 – Expansion (rapid scaling up)
Ramping up influencer connections is certain to amplify brand’s share of content. The momentum created by volume of organic and inorganic content, could lead to a snowball effect. A validation of the value held by the brand.
Challenges
- Applying “one size fits all” approach to varied influencer segments
- Churning out content volume can lead to templatization, leading to low authenticity
- Effectiveness indicators ( influence ) can be overshadowed by efficiency
- Conundrum of process vs creativity and moment opportunities
What do you need to succeed?
- Segmenting influencers and building custom strategies to keep each motivated and engaged with brand ( Mercenaries to cult influencers )
- Look beyond macro & micro influencers to build volume engagement through regional influencers
- Define success KPIs depending on funnel objective
Stage 4 – Renew ( V_ 2.0 )
While the program becomes a sustained engine for content, your challenge would lie in shaking the predictable sameness of content and lack of agility within the system. Faced with a need to keep influencers motivated as well, new ideas will become even more critical.
What do you need to succeed?
- Ideation workshops with key stakeholders to chalk 2.0 strategies
- Map business priorities with directions for IM Program 2.0
- Explore potential ideas – monetization of content, cross functional utilization of content, influencer commerce models, leverage AI to evolve brand fans into influencers.