Why brands need to stop thinking about reach as a metric of success.
In the booming economy of online influence, a mass audience — or the illusion of it — can be monetised. Brands and their advertising agencies continue to fall into the trap of paying 'influencers' to post to reach their audience — the demographics of which they often know nothing about. As The New York Times revealed this week, the majority of influencers and micro-influencers on platforms like Hello Society have bought fake followers. “Everyone does it,” said the actress Deirdre Lovejoy, a customer of Devumi who sells millions of followers directly to celebrities and influencers like popular UK teen blogger @Arabelladaho.
For brands and agencies who were early adopters of influencer marketing, the focus has shifted to micro-influencers and their KPIs updated to measure performance based on engagement (CPE). Yet even here it's a metric that can be easily manipulated by bots. Many micro-influencers will use sites like instamacro to increase likes and comments on their #sponcontent. So how do brands and agencies continue to get in front of their consumers on social and successfully navigate this grey area? One answer is to move towards 'nano-influencers' or brand fans as Zyper likes to call them. These brand fans are your top 1% of fans who have above average followers on social platforms (600-2000) and a high level of peer to peer influence (indicated through regular content engagement by the majority of their followers) and a good following to follower ratio. Their reach is slightly wider than their immediate real life friendship group, it's not huge, but it's real. Take Josie for example: a mother of two, she's not a blogger but she has a beautifully curated Instagram and creates content that's engaging. As Jim Warren, Marketing Director for Bloom & Wild, notes, "We now use Zyper brand fan UGC in ad creative and on our product carousel." With user-generated content containing a brand driving on average 6.9x higher engagement compared to a brand-generated post, it starts to make sense to look at fuelling creative through your fans.
As people continue to trust peer to peer recommendations more than any other media source, smart brands and their agencies need to recognise that without in-depth audience demographics and insights, reach is no longer an accurate way of measuring success.
If you'd like to learn more about community marketing and how to turn your passive followers into active brand advocates email us: hello@zyper.com