This Section Is Brought To You By Influencers #ad
Think we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one? Maybe you’re right. We’re doin’ it anyways.
The thing with Influencers (social media users unaffiliated with any particular brand or company that promote products/services using their channels), is that they kinda ruined it for themselves. We think the biggest factor in most brand marketing now is authenticity, and macro influencers don’t really have that anymore. That’s not to say that they don’t mean what they promote, that might be true, but it’s hard for consumers to take their word for it when we simply know how much they were paid for a particular promotion. That destroys the effect that this is someone just like you. Which is why micro-influencers are actually good investments for brands. Sure, they’re doing that work full-time, but they aren’t always rubbing their position in your face. And they’re more likely to be genuine. Their reach is smaller, but their authenticity gets passed onto your brand via the transitive property of marketing (trademark pending, don’t even think about it). We noticed over the weekend that McDonald’s was using influencers of varying reach to promote their new sauces, Mambo and Sweet & Spicy Jam. Like this one! We love this approach and think the simplicity makes it really smart.
One last note: macro-influencers still have a place in some marketing mixes! If you want your product to be associated with an aspirational-level consumer, it’s a good investment.
Meme Marketing is Giving Washed-Up
Before we launch in, this section was inspired by this edition of Embedded. The slant there is embarrassment for an entire generation. We just think marketers can and should do better. We wanted to add something more than just our objectivity, so we did a little research. Well, we tried. We found 20+ blogs about how meme marketing has an incredible ROI, but none provided any actual numbers. They just said things like “brand recall” and “actionable insights” without explanation. That’s insane, right? Is that what we want our brands to be known as—the quirky presence that belittles or dehumanizes its own customers? Or are we just old-fashioned?
Make a Super Simple Social Plan
In our last Mastermind session, we talked about our 4-Step Social Plan—something that’s taken us years to put together. You can watch that session (for free!) here. And if you like it, you can sign up for our monthly Social Media Mastermind sessions (also free!) here.