Living with Influencers

It's a reality we can't escape... Influencers are the new celebrities of the 21st century, especially for younger generations.

They prefer following a YouTuber, Twitch streamer, or Instagrammer over an actor/actress, football player, or even business and cultural personalities.

That's just the way it is, and no matter how much we obsess over it... it's unlikely we'll change it, so we must adapt and, above all, understand the dynamics that define these groups.

When we talk about dynamics, it's about understanding how to manage interactions with them. We can try to organically (without associated costs) get them to notice our brand/service and mention it in one of their posts/broadcasts. But let's not kid ourselves; this is becoming increasingly difficult, especially when dealing with influencers with a large following/audience.

+ 1M followers	Celebrity
500K - 1M followers	Mega Influencer
100K - 500K followers	Macro Influencer
10K - 100K followers	Micro Influencer
1000 - 10K followers	Nano Influencer

But it's normal—they are "celebrities" who rightfully seek to maximize the benefits from their posts and their audience. Thus, an organic mention just because we deserve it is complex... unless we catch their attention somehow (positively or negatively). As they say, hope is the last thing to die.

If we consider that their support could add value to our brand/service, we can define an inorganic collaboration strategy with them. Just as we plan our SEA, SOA, or Display campaigns, we can devise a specific plan for influencers.

But what should we consider when launching into this? Because the issue is much more complex than just looking at the number of followers and whether the profile gives us a "good feeling" for our brand/service.

Let's get into the basics to consider:

1-Number of Followers: It's not everything, but it gives us an initial view of the influencer's potential. We must bear in mind that as we increase the size of their base, the associated costs will skyrocket, and the credibility/proximity of the message weakens. However, the reach is much greater.

Depending on what we're looking for—awareness, coverage, or a more transactional focus—we already have our first selection criterion.

It's true that smaller influencers have greater credibility, but the complexity of management also increases.

2-Engagement: It's not just about having followers; we want these followers to interact with the influencer's posts. Thus, engagement is a metric that measures the percentage of the base that interacts with the posts.

We have another segmentation criterion—if we're going with a very "top of the funnel" strategy (TOFU), we might settle for low engagement in exchange for high reach—though it's not the most advisable. We can see this by analyzing the average views of the posts.

Note: It's important to understand that social media posts have a very limited viewing time—both temporally (the "Champagne effect") and from the post itself (less than 5 seconds to capture attention and even less on TikTok).

With engagement, we must see how it breaks down by type of interaction. Typically, the volume of "likes" is much, much higher than comments. So, this is also relevant to consider when we define the dynamics of the post.

3-Quality of the Database: It's important to analyze how the influencer has built their follower base. We have to see what percentage of their database has a "dubious origin/veracity"—that is, consisting of bots, robots, or fake profiles.

The recommendation is that any influencer with a quality index below 75% should be very cautiously considered. But of course, this is also relative to the total volume of their base and the risk we want to take with our action.

To aid in this decision, an additional interesting parameter is to analyze the evolution of their base's growth over the last three months and their engagement and see if it's consistent. That is, whether they are growing in followers but maintaining the interaction rate or simply gaining inactive followers.

With these three metrics and their derivatives, we have the basic profiling of the influencer in terms of potential, but of course, these metrics are for when they work with organic posts... What happens if it's a paid action?

4-Performance of Paid Actions: This metric will indicate how all the previous parameters are influenced when the user detects that the influencer's post is backed by a brand.

Logically, when this happens, the impact is minimized—we consumers have an "aversion to advertising," and it's important to know and understand this.

Moreover, the behavior is not always linear—proportional to organic interaction.

This parameter is not always easy to obtain/available for all influencers, especially if they are very "virgin" in advertising actions.

Now we have adjusted the potential from its basic definition and the "filter" of its minimization when we undertake a paid action. But... does the influencer fit with our brand/service?

And not just in terms of theme, but also tone, target audience, brand affinity, "conflicts" with other actions carried out,...

In short, we must keep "digging" to have an integral view of the influencer and thus be able to define in all detail the interaction.

5- Sociodemographic Profile: It's basic, which indicates the breakdown by gender and age ranges of the influencer's selected community.

However, it's the generic data; we don't know which ones are the most active.

But it will give us a vision of alignment with our "natural buyer persona" or "desired buyers personas."

Additionally, when we launch the action, what we can analyze from our advertiser's perspective is what type of audience we have had derived from it and thus be able to perform a "post-mortem" analysis based on the profile.

6- Content: It's interesting to see which mentions they use the most, especially to analyze if they are very endogamous if they have links with any brands,...

Likewise, the "hashtags" will give us a vision of the topics they cover.

This complements the content we can see in their history of posts and thus has a global qualitative vision.

Now we have the global picture of the selected influencers, and we have enough "inputs" to make decisions about which ones might best fit our brand/service and the style of action to be taken.

But it will be of no use if we do not put some measurement into the action, and here we have to consider:

7- Actions: El tipo y número de acciones a realizar. ¿De qué tipo? Serán historias, Reels, Posts, Menciones en una retransmisión, product placement,… ¿Cuántas? Y ¿Cuál es su coste unitario?

Con ello, empezamos a construir nuestro cuadro de mandos de la acción.

8- Return: With the percentages of performance of paid actions, we can have an estimate of interactions generated per action. With the ability to break it down by type of interaction.

And since we have the cost per action, we already have a first calculation of return, which is at the highest

level: the cost per impact (x1000 to make it easier to read) and the cost per interaction.

If we focus our action on a specific conversion (CTA), we can move forward with the analysis of deeper return.

Here we will have to combine it with our own data of conversion on the specified conversion page/area, and with that, we will have an estimate of conversions and we can associate a cost of conversion or acquisition cost (CAC).

Also, with the price of the product/service acquired, we can end up having metrics linked to the action, such as:

-TACOS: Relationship between CAC (acquisition cost) and AOV (average order value)

-Return per Action: Amount of income (real or virtual generated)—value metric.

-ROAS: Relationship between the value generated and the cost of the action

In short, what we are trying to explain to you is that if we decide to enter the world of interaction and planning with influencers, we must try to go beyond the "ego" metrics and that this character is very well-known/glamorous/funny,...

We must analyze the action we are going to carry out as a marketing action, with its corresponding metrics that will also allow us to compare it with actions in other channels.

At The Brain Mixers, we help our clients in the process of defining the need or not to carry out actions with influencers, define the most suitable ones, manage their hiring, coordinate the action and, of course, monitor the return to the client brand.