Influencer Marketing Demystified: Strategies, Compliance, and Success

Will Ockenden: 0:00

It's something we've been talking about for years and years and there's always been a lot of interest in it. But I think the last few years it's really kind of developed and evolved. Now there's a direct link to results and, specifically, sales, isn't there? Typically, a celebrity, somebody on Towie or Made in Chelsea, would charge I don't know, £20,000. They'd do a tweet some teeth whitening product and that's it, and people would expect some kind of return from that. But I think the market's a lot more sophisticated now, isn't it?

Chris Norton: 0:31

I think that says more about who we'll listen to and what he downloads than anything else.

Will Ockenden: 0:36

At one point Kim Kardashian was. Wasn't she actually like a million dollars

Will Ockenden: 0:41

And what kind of return could you possibly get? You think of Kim Kardashian's audience. Are they going to be 100% tuned into what your product represents?

Vicki Murphy: 0:54

Welcome to socially unacceptable from f**k ups to fame, the marketing podcast that celebrates the professional mishaps, mistakes and misjudgments, while delivering valuable marketing and life lessons in the time it takes you to eat your lunch.

Chris Norton: 1:12

Hi everybody, thanks for downloading socially unacceptable the podcast that celebrates mistakes, mishaps and yes, you've guessed it f**k ups. I'm your host, Chris Norton, and I'm joined by my good friend William Ockendon. How are you this morning, William?

Will Ockenden: 1:26

Yeah, not bad, thank you.

Chris Norton: 1:27

So if you've heard the podcast before, you'll know it comes out every Tuesday, every other Tuesday, but this one is a bonus episode. It's from one of our recent events and the event is completely sold out and has been so we wanted to do a podcast, like we did previously on the social video one. So this one's called Influencer Marketing Hacks 2024, and we're going to be focusing on how to get the most from influencer marketing.

Will Ockenden: 1:50

So you interested in this one Will yeah, I mean it's an interesting topic, isn't it? Influencer marketing, and I think it's something we've been talking about for years and years and there's always been a lot of interest in it. But I think the last few years it's really kind of developed and evolved and now there's a direct link to results and, specifically, sales. Isn't there from influencer marketing campaigns? And I think, when we delivered this as a webinar, some really interesting debate around it? So I suppose, as a starting point, there's a few themes, isn't there that we see from kind of senior marketers or marketers when it comes to influencer relations.

Chris Norton: 2:22

You know influencer marketing is important, but you don't have the time or knowledge to know where to start. So there's loads of marketers out there that are thinking I want to do influencer marketing or just throw some money at a particular influencer or whatever. Well, it doesn't work like that, does it?

Will Ockenden: 2:36

No, that's right, and I think the old days was very much the kind of Kardashian school of influencer marketing where typically a celebrity, somebody on Towie or Made in Chelsea, would charge I don't know £20,000. They'd do a tweet, some teeth whitening product and that's it, and people would expect some kind of return from that. But I think the market is a lot more sophisticated now, isn't it?

Chris Norton: 3:00

I think that says more about what Will listens too and what he downloads more than anything else.

Will Ockenden: 3:05

At one point Kim Kardashian was wasn't she like a million dollars for

Will Ockenden: 3:09

It was absolutely insane. And what kind of return could you possibly get? You think of Kim Kardashian's audience. Are they going to be 100% tuned into what your product represents?

Chris Norton: 3:18

Well, she was obviously worth every penny. The other things that we hear are your current approached influencers isn't driving the results. You need to very much like what Will's just talked about there, or you're struggling to understand how influencers fit within your broader marketing strategy. So before we get started, then I've got a couple of plugs for the show. So this is the influencer marketing hacks podcast, as I said, but we've also got several webinars. We've got the full webinar, which is much more in depth, and you can find that on our website, which is prohibitionpr. co. uk, and just click on the event section. We've got about 15 on-demand events there.

Chris Norton: 3:52

If you like the content of the show, hopefully you do Another plug. If you fancy a discovery session with either Will or myself to talk through a 50-minute chat on what you're doing with your business and where you want to go, you can catch us and book a session quite easily on bitlycom. That's bitlycom and that's me done, other than please subscribe to the show. If you like what you hear today, apart from my jokes and Will just humoring me all the way through it, please do subscribe to us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts, because we appreciate and we read every comment and appreciate every like we really do. So thanks. Let's get on with the pod then.

Will Ockenden: 4:34

And if you, just if, as the listener, you hear that we're slightly distracted. Our producers just started eating a pot noodle directly in front of us and I could see it out the corner of my eye.

Chris Norton: 4:46

What flavours the pot noodle?

Will Ockenden: 4:48

Classic, classic, yeah, I can hear the slurping as we present, so apologies for that. We're going to snip at that bit.

Chris Norton: 4:54

Right, so so why work with influencers then? Well, there's a huge interest. We've got here the statistics that we've pulled out here. If you like statistics, this is for you 400% increases in search for influencer marketing in the UK.

Will Ockenden: 5:09

Yeah, that's right. So massive, massive uplift and interest in influencer marketing for sure. What I find interesting is it's actually directly influencing people's views of brands. Another stat I find really interesting half of millennials actually trust influencer recommendations over all other forms of advertising. So it's really getting the kind of the lion's share of trust when it comes to other marketing disciplines.

Chris Norton: 5:34

Yeah, so more and more people are using influencer recommendations to buy products or recommend products, and that's so true. We see it in the. In my office we do like a we'll do a straw poll across the office and people buying things from TikTok it, and when we did the TikTok webinar amazed me how many bloody people are actually buying products. You see it on TikTok. Oh yeah, I've got to get one of them.

Will Ockenden: 5:52

Yeah, it's a years ago. For anyone old enough, you used to get the. They called it the Delia effect when Delia Smith when are you? Let's be having you I'm one of my favorite ever YouTube videos there but also the Grazie effects. You know brands used to get featured in Grazie and it would set out for two weeks, but now we're seeing that on TikTok, which is fascinating.

Chris Norton: 6:11

Yeah, well, you see it, and you see it with PR as well. But another statistic we've got is 60% more engagement comes from micro influencers. So we talk a bit about influencers and the different types. There's three different types of influencers, but micro influencers are the small ones and you get more engagement. So they don't have as big a as big a reach, but the engagement that you get with the people that they do reach is much, much better.

Will Ockenden: 6:33

So yeah, and that's. That's a really interesting point. I think a few years ago everyone assumed you had to go massive and you had to go celebrity and you had to spend 10 grand on an influence.

Chris Norton: 6:41

But that's just not the case anymore 33% of Generation Z ZZ bought an influencer recommended product in the past three months. So there you go. A third of Generic Gen Z have bought an influencer recommended product. That goes back to what I was just saying about TikTok and people in the office just saying, oh yeah, I've seen that. A third.

Will Ockenden: 7:04

That's right. Yeah, the vast majority of us follow influencers on social media. I think that's a bit of a no-brainer, but alongside our friends and alongside brands, influencers are now taking up a lot of our feeds. And then, finally, 37% of brands use influencer marketing to increase sales. And I would say, chris, probably the big trend in the last couple of years is brands really tapping into influencer marketing to sell. I think a few years ago it was really kind of about web traffic or brand awareness, but people are really seeing the opportunity to sell products, aren't they now, through influencers.

Chris Norton: 7:35

Yeah, and they're looking more from, instead of like, like, just the one-off project because they don't work as well. You know, if you're wanting to do, you need to be doing influencer relations. You need to pick the authenticity of the influencer and they need to fit your brand appropriately rather than just the quick, quick, quick win hit. This is when we say 37% that's just over a third Want to just increase sales from it. So you're right, that's what it's about. It could be about sales, but it's got to be authentic, I think for the relationship to work.

Will Ockenden: 8:01

By that point. You mentioned there this kind of shift to influencer relations, away from influencer marketing. That's absolutely the way things are going as well, isn't it? And that's brands working with influencers in a much more kind of meaningful, long-term way, rather than this kind of one-hit wonder that you talked about.

Chris Norton: 8:17

And I think again.

Will Ockenden: 8:17

That's the natural development and evolution of influencer marketing.

Chris Norton: 8:22

So well. This has got some statistics here. This is from Influencer Marketing Hub and Ecommerce Fastlane, so 90% of influencer marketers find that creator campaigns produce as good or better returns than all other marketing mediums. I'm a bit dubious about this. Well, 90% of influencer marketers find that creator campaigns get good or better returns. Is that self-serving, that statistic?

Will Ockenden: 8:49

How do you believe it? I'm not sure it's as high as 90%. But the thing worth mentioning actually, influencer marketing doesn't always operate in silo, does it All. Good influencer campaigns would have a paid social bolt-on, for example. So ultimately it's probably several disciplines working together.

Chris Norton: 9:09

Also, marketers find that influencer-generated content receives an average of eight times more engagement than branded content. That is true, I mean that statistic is true. Branded content, content on your own social channels, whether you're an individual celebrity or a brand, we'll get engagement. But content that's authentic and comes from an influencer or somebody that is a brand advocate gets much more better engagement. And often we will say to a client to use that content as part of your paid social.

Will Ockenden: 9:39

Yeah, and that's a really smart way of looking at it, isn't it? Actually testing content with influencers and then taking the best performing influencer content and actually using that as the basis of e-commerce ads and actually add algorithms working a really similar way to organic algorithms and those ads will do much better. So that's we'll come onto that later, actually but that's a really smart way of getting more for less when it comes to influencers.

Chris Norton: 11:05

Yeah, and so the big thing we've seen on influencers is a lot of clients. When they're looking at this, like we got this on the TikTok session when we were discussing TikTok some brands, you know, they're like, oh would be to be, we don't do TikTok, it's too young. Well, the age, as we made the point in the TikTok session, the age demographic is shifting because obviously, as a platform becomes more and more embedded in society, how people use it, the age moves across. Like Facebook is everybody. But now Generation Z are they even using Facebook? Are they only posting on Facebook just as part of their? Well, let's ask.

Will Ockenden: 11:40

Zack, let's ask.

Chris Norton: 11:40

Zack.

: 11:40

Zack should have his own mic. You could have been our guest.

Chris Norton: 11:43

Do you use it? Yeah. Yeah, there you go so.

Will Ockenden: 11:46

Zack is Howard Zack about 15 years old, 16? Years old About 12, I'd say Doesn't use Facebook but yeah, he's bullying Paul.

Chris Norton: 11:53

Yeah, sorry about that, zack.

Will Ockenden: 11:56

We're breaking. Is this called breaking the fourth wall?

Chris Norton: 11:58

This is BAMS, what we're doing now.

Will Ockenden: 12:01

But what's quite interesting here, we actually put in chief execs as well to look at how they engage with influencers. And again, one of the conversations we've been having a lot over the last year or so is B2B brand saying look, I get it, influencers work but not for B2B. But that's not true.

Vicki Murphy: 12:18

No, not true at all, and influencers absolutely work in B2B.

Will Ockenden: 12:20

So if you look at chief execs, chief execs of all ages engage with influencers and it follows a very similar trend to the general population.

Chris Norton: 12:30

Yeah, it's not as high, but I mean you can see that when we look at the latest statistics percentage that engage with influencers and social media, more than 12% of over 45 year olds are doing that and about 7% of CEOs over 45 to 54. That's 7% of people engaging with influencers. That is quite interesting. It is showing that it is having an effect and obviously the further down the pipeline, the younger you get, the more it goes up. But actually when you're looking at CEOs because obviously I suppose a CEO with the age demographic 25 to 34 is probably where you start being either an MD or CEO or whatever and that is about 18% that are engaging, so nearly a fifth engaging with influencers and social media that shows it works, doesn't it?

Will Ockenden: 13:15

Absolutely. Yeah, it's now a mainstream medium. I think it's the message here and this is the point we made earlier. So 86% of B2B brands now estimate that they find success with influencer marketing. I'm not sure how you would define success, but the types of things B2B brands are doing when it comes to influencer marketing and this is certainly representative of the kind of work and approach we're advising our B2B clients on it's not product placement and things like that, but it's things like round table.

Will Ockenden: 13:45

So if you've got a number of subject matter experts, get them in the room, get them debating or discussing a paper you're releasing or something like that. That's a big use of influencers Jointly writing white papers or reports, expert analysis and consultancy. So if you're launching a new product or proposition, getting some industry experts or influencers involved in that process. Equally, there is a kind of a brand slash product piece as well, isn't there? When it comes to B2B, it's not the same as launching I don't know, a new biscuit brand or some crisps or something like that. But if you're a telecoms company launching a new broadband product, for example, influencers are increasingly being used to kind of amplify that.

Chris Norton: 14:26

Yeah, I mean we were approached a few years ago now it was about four or five years ago to do a B2B influencer mapping exercise. So we do a prohibition, we do influencer mapping where we'll identify influencers that are authentic and fit the relevant brand and this was for a brand that shall remain nameless but was an office chair brand and because they wanted to use influencers that could use office chairs. In the B2B environment, we'll talk about how comfortable and flexible and portable and good for your back, and so it does work, depending on it doesn't matter whether you're B2B or B2C, like what you're saying there. Well, you can do it for both. I mean, the people know it influencer marketing they're thinking of your Kim Kardashian's and your love island celebrities, but actually no influencers can work it. You can have. When we used to work on RunSeal, we used to have ShedExperts and when we had Pet Food Brand.

Chris Norton: 15:20

ShedBlog remember that the world's number one ShedBlog. Give us a shout out from the. I wonder if the ShedBlog still exists, but I think the point man. Cave. It's probably man Cave now, isn't it?

Will Ockenden: 15:30

The point with these influencers in B2B, though it's not. It looks different to a B2C influencer, doesn't it? You're much likely to be a much more niche networked individual. Typically it could be a broadcaster or a professor or some sort of subject matter expert, as opposed to somebody that's on TV or got a kind of an element of celebrity about them.

Chris Norton: 15:54

So yeah, so B2C you've got all the usual things you can do, such as brand awareness and reach with influencer marketing, sales, which we've touched on already. Content creation it brings some personality, obviously, if you get a celebrity to be involved in it or an influencer, and then obviously you can get some genuine marketing insight from a sector. If you ask an influencer, influencers will tell you what they think about the product and they might give you some user-generated content, which is, as we touched on before, really can be a lot more powerful than content that's on the brand page. User-generated content from an influencer can be. You're going to get Well, surely, with having them in it, you're going to get better engagement.

Will Ockenden: 16:30

So the interesting one for me, there actually is content creation. So I think, particularly in B2C influencer relations, it's actually presenting a brand, but through the eyes of somebody else. So you're essentially presenting a brand through the eyes of the customer or through a different perspective.

Chris Norton: 16:51

So will I remember when we did a campaign recently. We were analyzing what was quite interesting b2b campaign with. We put into the into a deck which will share with people, but it was a tick tock campaign for the institute of charted accountants. Okay, don't switch off and stop downloading. Now the institute of charted certified accountants can be interesting and the idea was to challenge yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're young as well to young people's perceptions of the profession and drive interest in having a career as an accountant.

Will Ockenden: 17:22

Yeah, I mean it's fascinating, isn't there, I think, a few years ago, an accountancy industry body using an influence, using influences for a campaign, and not only that, but using tick tock for a campaign to drive recruitment would be absolutely unheard of. But actually this campaign, hugely successful driver, huge amount of views in the eyes of the gen z audience, absolutely kind of repositioned, quite right, right leave the accountancy profession and actually drove real results as well. So fifteen percent engagement rate on the on the post. But actually they're running a recruitment event and they credit this with them this being the most successful ever recruitment event that they've run thanks to the tick tock campaign. So I'm and we're seeing this everywhere really a lot of brands are using influences, specifically tick tock for recruitment, to build the employer brand kind of reposition.

Chris Norton: 18:11

But they try to make it entertaining, like the key is, if you're a brand out there and you be to be, don't think I'll just stick my my corporate video on tick tock and it'll fly. It won't. It won't work if you make it and if you're thinking about entertaining someone with shot, sharp, snappy content, it can, but it's not something. It's not. It's not, it's not as difficult, but it's all people just think oh, it's not as easy as just getting a camera and taking a tick tock. Was it no strategy behind it?

Will Ockenden: 18:36

yeah, I mean this in brief, the strategies. If you imagine the sales funnel, about sixty percent of your tick tock content should be trending and engagement content. So it's presenting your brand and this might be a challenge to you and you might feel like you're compromising your brand actually as well, but it's presenting the brand and entertaining way that taps into trends and then probably thirty to forty percent of the content becomes about selling, about defining what your product is. So essentially, it's driving people through that sales funnel. So it's about finding out ways how your brand can entertain and if an accountancy Industry body can do it, I'm sure your brand can do it as well I mean I'd love to see me and you doing those crazy dances.

Chris Norton: 19:14

there is some dancing, obviously tick tocks involved, so there is some crazy dancing, but actually the videos with Wacky but the influences they use, it works and actually got tangible business results from it which is what a lot of people are good. You know, if I do a tick tock video, what am I going to get out of it? Well, because there was a strategy behind it. It worked.

Will Ockenden: 19:31

And we're going to talk about tick tock in a bit more detail later, but it's in terms of kind of growth platforms for influencers. Tick tock is hot right now, isn't?

Chris Norton: 19:40

it is. Check out my eighth video that will be on tomorrow.

Will Ockenden: 19:44

Yeah, the newest after your two week holiday, you know.

Chris Norton: 19:48

Anyway, jokes aside, right? So now we're going to go through some tips for using influence marketing. So tip one then what we got.

Will Ockenden: 19:54

Well, so this this can be applied to all sorts of parts of marketing really, but it's about being super clear on your objectives and why you are doing something. So I think If you're vague about why you want to do something, there's no way you can understand what success looks like. So the clear your objectives, the easier is to measure and understand what success looks like. So it's a starting point. With influence marketing, we would say define your goals and define your target audience as well. And we got to test you here, chris. We need to think smart in terms of our goals and objectives specific measurable actionable results relevant.

Will Ockenden: 20:32

Oh, bollocks, relevant and time bound time timely.

Chris Norton: 20:36

Timely, not time bound same thing.

Will Ockenden: 20:38

Yeah, yeah, okay Do.

Chris Norton: 20:40

I pass, or is that fail?

Will Ockenden: 20:41

yeah I'll give you an eight B for that, thanks. So define our goals and target audience and be smart about them, and we would encourage you to be as specific as possible. So Do you want to increase website referrals by 30%? And the more specific you can be, the easier is to actually measure some of our typical influence, the goals that we see. Things like brand awareness, sales might be, engagement I mentioned this early. I might be showcasing the brand from a new perspective, so you might just be interested in kind of presenting the brand through the eyes of the consumer or through the eyes of a skilled content creator. Whatever it is, be very, very specific, and then that allows you to track and measure results really effectively. The moment you don't have these clear objectives, you got no idea what you're gonna measure and therefore you got no idea if what you're doing actually works or not.

Chris Norton: 21:26

So tip two then. Tip two we've put in here is finding the right influences for your brand. So talked about influence and mapping before and that's what we're talking about here, like the key thing is will was talking about budgets earlier. You can still do influencer marketing for nothing like you. If you're, if you're in house, you got. You know we work with a number of charities ourselves. We help chara is got charitable, a preferential rate and we do do some pro bono work as well. But if you're a charity, for instance, and you haven't got a lot of money and you want to do some influencer marketing, hopefully can find someone that will Work alongside you because the fit is authentic and you find someone that the charity would be relevant to and often that that can be the ideal. But it's about mapping out the right influences for you.

Will Ockenden: 22:10

Yeah, and I think that comes down to really putting the work in when it comes down to researching who they are, and I think it's sometimes tempting to kind of you know, there's, there's, there's quite a lot of influence lists going round, isn't there, of you know, the generic mom, mom influences, the generic interior influences. I would always say dig deeper than that and go for that kind of authenticity studies. People that genuinely have something to say could genuinely work with your brand and an interesting and engaging way, and Guess what consumers will spot that the moment you're inauthentic about it, people will spot that a mile off.

Chris Norton: 22:47

We've got some research here that said, seventy five percent of creators are only interested in working with brands that align with their core values. So it's not just you that looking for influences that align with your values influences themselves looking for. So if you can open your pitch with that, use a bit chat, get creative, use chat gpt to write your personalized Approach as to why they should work with you and what they're going to, what you, what you'd like their help to do. But be all try and get it as authentic as possible. Do your own research, map out who these influences are that you want to work with, why should they work with you, and then do a nice little personalized approach. As I say, that work a lot better if it's authentic. So then that I can hear you scream at the end of the end of your headphones wherever you are in the gym, in the car or whatever. How the hell do I find the right collaborators will? How do they find them?

Will Ockenden: 23:36

Yeah, that's a good question. Actually, I think it's tempting to kind of go through the path of least resistance sometimes, isn't it, and do a quick Google search and find a list of influences in interiors, or mum influences, or whoever it might be but Doing a lot of influences with mum.

Chris Norton: 23:51

Mum work here.

Will Ockenden: 23:52

I didn't do a lot of mum that used to be the original mum bloggers, wasn't it?

Chris Norton: 23:55

yeah, mum, bloggers was the first.

Will Ockenden: 23:57

And then dad bloggers came out after that when everyone realized there's a bit of money in it. But the point is, if you go for the obvious, you're gonna be competing against a lot of brands. These people are gonna be approached all the time. They're gonna probably have fairly high rates because they used to being approached. You need to dig a little bit deeper. First of all, authenticity and brand affinity. So how relevant and fitting are they for you as a brand? You know, could you see them working with you and have you looked at some of their other content? And you know, do they do they kind of? Do they share your values? Have they actually got engagement?

Will Ockenden: 24:29

You know it's not uncommon for influences to either not get much engagement or to actually use bots and I mean that's luckily dying out now a bit, isn't it? Because it's quite easy to discover, using various third party tools, if people's engagement is real or not. But people need to be getting engagement and their audience needs to be relevant as well. Now, their audience is never gonna be 100% relevant to your brand, so we would say probably 60 to 70% audience relevance is about right and if you're chosen influencer broadly ticks these three boxes, then you're on to a bit of a winner and ultimately you need a list of about 10 to 15 influencers. So yeah, quite time consuming but time-worse band.

Chris Norton: 25:09

Yeah, good one. So tip three, go for the win-win. What?

Will Ockenden: 25:13

does that mean then, Chris?

Chris Norton: 25:15

Well, you've got to look at ways to add value to influencers and the people that they reach will. Everybody should get something out of an influencer program the audience, the influencer and the brand Said Brian Solis, not me from the Altima group.

Will Ockenden: 25:28

So what that means is it's not just a case of turning up to an influencer with a suitcase full of cash, is it? It's about working with them, and it might not even involve cash. It might get them, you know. It might involve them gifting them a product Tickets. Yeah, it's working with them in a creative way so that they can work with you, you can work with them and they ultimately create some sort of an interesting, engaging content.

Chris Norton: 25:50

Not too prescriptive either. So give them flexibility to do what they do. Don't prescribe exactly what they've got to do. Work with them so they get to use their creator. They're the creators. At the end of the day, they're the ones that do the amazing content.

Will Ockenden: 26:04

That's a good point, isn't it? And I think the bolder brands will literally give an influencer carte blanche to do what they want. And if you choose the influencer correctly, you've done your due diligence and they're a skilled content creator, then why would you try an influencer? I mean, it's okay to say if you refer to our brand, refer to it in this way, but it needs to be a very loose set of guidelines, doesn't it? And trust them to create. Ultimately, they know what works for their audience better than what you do, don't they?

Chris Norton: 26:29

Yeah, they do.

Will Ockenden: 26:30

Bit of an example of this kind of win-win. We work with a energy drink brand and I mean we have all sorts of different tiers of influencers. We have kind of what we call ambassadors, who are kind of commercial arrangements, and they will work with us on an annual basis and then we'll do kind of always on gifting and things like that. But the point is we lean on these influencers to create interesting, unique content and we give them the opportunities to do that. So, for example, we might work with some of our brand ambassadors and invite them to fitness events where they can try our products. But they can also take part in competitive fitness events and it's an opportunity. We're bringing them a content creation opportunity that they wouldn't necessarily have access to, and that's a really good example of a win-win. It's not just a case of here's some product, feature it. We're actually giving them an interesting, unique experience. And guess what it means? We get amazing content out of the back of it that's authentic and on-brand and engaging.

Chris Norton: 27:22

Yeah and it works because the influencers that you're using are doing exercise and the drinking question is a pre-exercise product. So if you do it pre-exercise, it gives you extra energy and you do get better results in the gym. Okay then. So tip four Get ready for your excitement hat. Here we go. My favourite topic Ring the bell Compliance. Now I can feel the downloads just dropping off a cliff here now. Yeah, important note.

Will Ockenden: 27:46

So recently the ASA has kind of tightened. Well, I say recently, it's the last couple of years, but they're really clamping down on this now. So they've reviewed the way influencer content is categorised and they now consider any influencer talking about a brand that either a paid relationship or a gifted relationship. They would deem that an ad and you need to label it as such and if you don't, they'll come down on you and they'll go off to you as the agency. They'll go off to the brand and they'll go off to the influencer.

Chris Norton: 28:18

And we've seen some interesting. So to give you a bit of an anecdote on that, we had one where a client came to us and we'd done some influencer marketing for the brand and a client came to us with an email from the ASA. The client shall remain nameless and it was an email from the ASA saying somebody has reported this influencer for not using a hashtag spawn or hashtag ad and doing a campaign for you. So the client got it sent to their inbox with a screen grab of this influencer using the product and then not doing that in a story in Instagram story. So the client got this email and sent it and then they just emailed it straight through to us at Prohibition.

Chris Norton: 28:59

So obviously I'm the lead on the account. I see. I'm like, oh my God, can I check the processes that we've gone through here and can we just check that we followed due diligence here? Yes, we'd done a contract listed out exactly. You know that they had to say ad and spawn and actually they did use ad and spawn, hashtag ad and spawn in the story and what happened was this influencer who was massive, by the way, millions had a small group of trolls who didn't like said influencer and so they would go out to try and get this influencer in trouble and what she'd done was photoshopped the two hashtags out and then sent it to the ASA as a complaint, which, to me, was just.

Chris Norton: 29:40

There's people out there on the internet that do these things just to get people because they're successful at being an influencer. It was quite signalling, but I tell you what having a clear process in your influencer marketing matters, because that just got immediately got rid of the ASA and we were compliant and we had, because what we'd done was, every time one of our campaigns is running, when the stories were going up, we were screen grabbing them. So we had the proper screen grab, not the edited one that was sent. We sent it through and, hey presto, thank Christ that didn't appear on this podcast about fuckups.

Will Ockenden: 30:12

But that said, the ASA found that nearly a quarter of influencer stories were technically adverts, but only 35% were correctly labelled. So despite all of this, there's still an awful lot of influencers out there not correctly labelling there.

Chris Norton: 30:28

Yeah, so we had a client, stock L Park, who we helped get some influencers along to the part to review a play area, a huge play area that they'd launched amazing venue that Prohibition had launched for them, and we got some influencers along, but actually we did it organically. So, also, so we did some work, we got influencers, but some influencers were attending because it's an amazing place to go and we're writing about when they went, anyway, just with their family. Nothing, not as part of that. But so where does that? Sit really.

Chris Norton: 30:58

I mean what you're saying, because it wasn't part of our campaign.

Will Ockenden: 31:00

Well, according to the ASA, if you any time an influencer has received a product, which they didn't.

Chris Norton: 31:11

on that occasion, they'd gone off their own back.

Will Ockenden: 31:13

You could probably argue that, but even if you give somebody a one-pound can of energy drink, that's deemed an advert and they need to label it as such.

Chris Norton: 31:21

What I'm saying is that influence. There's a few influencers that went off their own back bought their kids tickets, took them and they went and just did Instagram reels and stuff.

Vicki Murphy: 31:29

Now, that's organic content for them.

Chris Norton: 31:32

It was nothing to do with the fact that it wasn't a part of the campaign. So it's just interesting when you're saying, I think that maybe the content you know because people that just they need content other creators at the end of the day, if they've bought their own tickets, then it's legit yeah.

Will Ockenden: 31:46

I mean go on. I would say go on the ASA website. There's a quite a comprehensive guide, isn't there, to how you should work with influencers and how you should label it.

Will Ockenden: 31:55

We've had to read it. I mean, the summary is use hashtag, add hashtag, sponsored hashtag, gifted, whatever it is ideally several of them on any post and the onus is on you, really, as a brand, isn't it? It should be. You know you should put this requirement in the contract. We're going to come onto contracts in a minute, but you know, when you do your influencer contract or influencer agreement, you have to put it in the contract, so you then shift the onus to the influencer, but you know it's your responsibility as well, isn't it?

Chris Norton: 32:21

Yeah, okay. So micro, then micro influencers. So I talked at the beginning about micro influencers and macro influencers. What the hell does that mean? Well, a micro influencer is anybody between 2,000 to 5,000 followers, and a macro influencer is anything above 100,000. And I would argue that this is slightly different now, because there must be a third level now, because it's quite a jump from 5,000 to 1,000.

Will Ockenden: 32:51

Yeah, you can have mid-tier as well. I mean, the point is, you know, macro influencers are your big ticket influencers. Often they're celebrities in their own right. They might be how many Joshua. Yeah, they could have been on TV or reality TV or whatever. Micro influencers tend to be the much more niche networked individuals, and this particularly is relevant for B2B, isn't it? You know you're working with people that might not have a massive reach, but actually the people they do reach, they're highly respected by and they've got high engagement.

Chris Norton: 33:25

Are you a macro or a micro?

Will Ockenden: 33:26

then Well, I'm probably just below micro influencer actually, if I'm honest with my 787 Twitter followers and my three posts in the last year.

Chris Norton: 33:35

So we've got some data here from Trendio data, so this is 2023's data. It's based on data from our network. We see engagement rates from micro influencers in the 7% to 20% range, so that's micro influencers 7% to 20%. Macro influencers are lucky to get any engagement around 5%, so there's quite a difference there. You get 20% on a micro, so you actually your bank can be a lot better for your book if you've got really a lot of micro influencers rather than one or two big when you want to spend all your money.

Will Ockenden: 34:06

Yeah, that's exactly right, I mean. The other point is you know your macro influencers. You're going to get a huge amount of wastage, aren't you with your audience? You might be looking at 5% relevance in the audience, that's part of the Kim Kardashian teeth whitening.

Will Ockenden: 34:18

It's featured a lot in this podcast. That's actually Kim Kardashian, and the other point is Can we feature on her podcast? Yeah, we'll see. The budget issue you know, if you work with 10 micro influencers, you might be paying a few hundred pounds to work with them or gifting products and actually collectively that's probably going to reach the same audience as one big hit macro influencer. So actually the smart brands are looking at how they can work with a higher volume of micro influencers and saving a huge amount of budget.

Chris Norton: 34:47

Tip six, then demonstrate an impact.

Will Ockenden: 34:50

Yeah, this actually links to one of the early challenges that we mentioned, that, you know, people can't kind of demonstrate the value of what they're doing, and I think that can be quite disheartening as a marketer, can't it? You know, you persuade the board that you want to do an influencer campaign. Or podcast.

Will Ockenden: 35:07

You deliver it, you feel like it's probably gone quite well, but then actually, what's it achieved? Debatable, right, yeah. So this is a challenge I think we hear a lot of, isn't it? You know you persuade the board to invest in an influencer campaign, but actually can you measure the effectiveness of it? Has it increased market share? Has it sold any product? And that can be a challenge and it can be quite disheartening.

Chris Norton: 35:35

So how do you see real results? We've got four things here, so you need to monitor and measure your influencer performance, so request access from the influencer to see what you can get.

Will Ockenden: 35:44

That's an interesting point, isn't it? And I think you know the relationship between agency or brand and influencer is now a lot more open and we can ask to see their analytics and typically, even at the auditing stage, you can ask to see their analytics. You can get a steer on what brands they work with, what results they've got from other branded partnerships, what kind of engagement they get, and if an influencer isn't willing to share that, then I wouldn't work with them.

Chris Norton: 36:06

No, definitely not. Number two, you can use UTM tracking so you can add UTM tracking to a link, so you can make that link more trackable through Google, so you can see how many people have clicked it, shared it, whatever you could consider point three is to consider trackable codes. Or point four, you can actually explore affiliates. We had a little discussion this morning about a great influencer marketing campaign delivered by Stanley just recently, which is around the Stanley Cup, which was really impressive, and they've asked influencers just to go out and use this new cup that they've had designed to target a new market. It used to be Stanley, used to target the male market and now it's gone out to a female market and they've been using influencers of all ages and all demographics, tiktok, to expand it and it has just been phenomenal.

Chris Norton: 36:52

So massive, massive round of applause to that campaign Because it looks great and for a brand that's quite manly like Stanley, like a brand that's manly like Stanley, I thought they've done a great job of that. It looked really great. And the final point I want to make on that is that they explore affiliates. So they've tied affiliates codes and affiliate tracking in with the influencer marketing. So the more things that are sold, the more money the influencer gets for endorsing the product, which is a key way to get results in it Well, yeah, absolutely.

Will Ockenden: 37:25

And that campaign, I mean do look it up or we'll share it in the show notes. Brilliant campaign Also. It shows the impact of having a brilliant product, doesn't?

Chris Norton: 37:33

it. And, stanley, if you're listening, can you send us a few Stanley cups, because we'd like to keep our beer cold.

Will Ockenden: 37:40

Can you put beer in it?

Chris Norton: 37:41

Yeah, you can. Can you put beer in it? I think you can.

Will Ockenden: 37:44

Yeah, under thoughts though, and the important thing here is you know you're measuring the right things because you've got really clear objectives, but you need to learn from the measurements and you need to constantly kind of learn and refine, and the idea is, the more you measure, the more you can learn about what does work and what doesn't work, and then it just means you can be more effective and better at what you do in the future.

Chris Norton: 38:03

So what's tip seven then Will?

Will Ockenden: 38:04

Right, this is a particular kind of soapbox issue for us, isn't it? I think it's about being creative and being integrated, so we'll explore what we mean by this. I think there's a danger, with influencer marketing, to be very tactical, isn't there? And you can kind of rely on the idea of let's just gift a load of influencers as our product, and I think we can be better than that, can't we, as marketers?

Chris Norton: 38:27

Well, we should be more strategic. I think so. The more strategic you are with it, the better the result you're going to get from it.

Will Ockenden: 38:33

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, on that point you know, why not think of a bigger creative campaign and involve influencers in that? You know, rather than influencer relations working in a silo, you know absolutely, incorporate influencer relations into your big creative hero brand campaigns that you might deliver once or twice a year. A few other points on this certainly, you know, leverage different platforms in different ways, and again, this is an issue we talk about all the time. You know audiences will be different on different social media platforms. There shouldn't be one size fits all, you know, and what we mean by that is the way we work with influencers on TikTok should be slightly different from the way we might work with influencers on YouTube or the way we work with influencers on Instagram, and each of them will naturally want to present the product or your brand in different ways. Different things will work on those platforms and we should encourage that. You know one size fits all means you end up with something very beige Beige. Beige.

Chris Norton: 39:31

So Will. What about TikTok then?

Will Ockenden: 39:33

Well, tiktok's an interesting one. I mean, it's obviously a massively growing channel in terms of that kind of entertainment content piece. We've already talked about how TikTok is directly linked to e-commerce, but the other big kind of growth area on TikTok is influencers and the way influencers are using it, and I think again, probably 12 months ago, people weren't quite sure how to use this channel, but now it absolutely should be a key kind of platform, shouldn't it when it comes to your influencer marketing strategy.

Chris Norton: 39:59

Oh yeah, I mean, it's the, still the channel that's growing mentally, and the algorithm just sends you down so many rabbit holes as. I said earlier. So let's look at some statistics then it's got huge reach. As I just said, 40% of TikTok creators have more than 500,000 followers.

Will Ockenden: 40:14

Yeah, I mean, the numbers are insane on TikTok, aren't they? And I think it's one of those channels where you can still get that magic organic engagement yeah, from a video you don't need followers.

Chris Norton: 40:23

It's about the algorithm really.

Will Ockenden: 40:24

You get a great idea a great.

Chris Norton: 40:26

That's what I love about it. It's still about it's like what social? When social media was cool, when social media was about organic great ideas rather than fucking paying for it. It's like it's still back to If you've got a great idea for a stupid video, that's quite funny, it'll go viral.

Will Ockenden: 40:41

Yeah, you can get a million video views without even trying if you shoot the right piece of content. Are they going to throttle that back, though? Surely, three, four years time we're not going to be getting the same organic reach, are we?

Chris Norton: 40:52

Well, no, when you're using paid ads on TikTok, it's the same sort of thing. You can do all the other things that you could do with paid social on Meta and the other platforms. So obviously you can enhance a video to get more, Maybe the snippets for this show. I might stick some money behind that and get more engagement on the video for that. So there is that. But what I like about TikTok is it's still got that organic element to it, and it's also the other reason why I still like Instagram. Instagram's still organic. There is still organic reach. That's why Instagram's done well. That's why Facebook and other platforms love to go on my bloody soap box, Though I think if you haven't got organic engagement, you've lost what your platform's about.

Will Ockenden: 41:36

I suppose the point is about the quality of content. I mean the reason Facebook one of the reasons of money started twinkling that that was because a lot of people were sharing sales irrelevant boom or sales content on there. So it's trying to filter out the less commercial content. And I wonder if TikTok will get to that point where people do realize like we're still in the gold rush, aren't we, for two years on, yeah, and we won't be forever say so what's next, then?

Chris Norton: 42:04

How to take your influencer relations to the next level will tell us all about this.

Will Ockenden: 42:08

Good question. Well, there's a few things you can do. First and foremost and we always talk about strategy, but you need to revisit your influencer strategy. So we talked about understanding where influencer relations sits within your border marketing strategy. If you haven't got a marketing strategy, don't worry, because a lot of people haven't or haven't updated it in the last six to 12 months. But we need to understand what we want influencer relations to achieve. And, particularly, we talked about our goals and objectives. Do you want to present your brand or we position your brand? Do you want to sell product? Do you want to generate an increased share of voice in the market? And then we need to come up some great ideas for them. And, again, I think we need to challenge ourselves to look beyond influencer gifting.

Chris Norton: 42:54

Yeah. Campaigns, creative campaigns.

Will Ockenden: 42:57

Yeah, ideas, and that's going to engage influencers, the more creative execution. If you're going to invite influencers to some unique event to test your products, you're going to get a much better result than if you're just mailing them out an opportunity to test your product. So great activations and then investing the time and influence and mapping. I think it's tempting to screw up on this stage, but ultimately you need to be finding those right influencers that are absolutely perfect for your brand. And then, finally, as with everything, measure, measure, measure, measure, do more of what worked, less of what doesn't work, and then scale your efforts. So don't try to boil the ocean, you know. Start small and then build on it. Just Don't stop. No, no, yes.

Chris Norton: 43:36

I love that.

Will Ockenden: 43:37

Don't boil the ocean. We can't, we can't.

Chris Norton: 43:40

Where does that come from? Boil the ocean, I'll do it. That's why I work with them guys. He's inspirational. Remember what works today doesn't work for tomorrow. Very true, but based on the organic engagement that we just talked about, when we started out, and so surely, was 100% and other just covered with meta, it's now 0.01%. So what worked then does not work now.

Will Ockenden: 44:01

Yeah, come winter there'll be three or four hour of the month per platform. There'll probably be a new social network emerging. You need to be very, very on it, don't you? And you need to be very responsive and reactive in terms of what's happening. I mean, how do you say on, how would? How can you possibly stay on top of every development? Now it's got time to read social media examiner every day. No, have they?

Chris Norton: 44:26

Well, yeah, you have to keep on top of what's coming out. I mean, you could do a whole podcast on the Twitter rebrand, but I think that's for the day because and it's quite interesting all your perspectives on that bubble cover that. Yeah, you're right, there's a lot going on and there's always a lot going on because there's a changing marketplace. We, you know, there's threads, there's lots of different platforms and I'm sure there's already influences on the threads. But I don't know, it's that, god, some of the criticism of threads. Now, you see, it's fun, that's finding into it as well.

Will Ockenden: 44:51

That's a whole, the world's biggest debt to social network.

Chris Norton: 44:54

If you will, you know, we'll see, we'll see it's got time.

Will Ockenden: 44:57

So, yeah, the other thing worth mentioning actually is particularly on TikTok. It's about understanding what works at that moment in time on the platform, and that's typically driven by trending content, isn't it? Yeah, and the nature of trending content is it's not trending for long, so you need to absolutely be on top of what's happening and jump on those trends as quick as possible.

Chris Norton: 45:17

So there's our hacks for 2023-2024, our influencer marketing. We've also got what we call a discovery session. What's that world? You can book a discovery session with me or you.

Will Ockenden: 45:28

Yeah, with the or. We'd love to meet you. We're the host of the podcast.

Chris Norton: 45:31

Yeah, also, we'd love to meet everybody out there. Yeah, absolutely, maybe not everybody at the same time. Yeah, okay.

Will Ockenden: 45:36

All two of you, we're hoping, listening to this. I'll be watching that webinar. You're going to be sufficiently intrigued into what influencer marketing could actually do for your brand. So what we've got is what we call a discovery session, which is basically a 15-minute diagnostic where we hear about your challenges and on that call, we can actually share with you some strategies, some approaches and tricks and some ideas quite honestly, into how you can use influencer marketing. And as part of that as well, we've also got some exclusive templates as well. So we talked about influencer contracts. We've got one of those, and we also got a briefing sheet as well to help you actually work with influencers in a way that's compliant. So that's 15 minutes and there's a link we're going to share in the show notes where you can book that in if you're interested.

Chris Norton: 46:18

Yeah, it's . That's book a discovery session with me

Will Ockenden: 46:32

So, Chris, slightly different format. This week we've had no guest, but it seems a shame not to talk about fuck ups, and I don't believe you've actually shared your fuck up of your career so far, have you? So do you want to tell us a bit about that?

Chris Norton: 46:46

Yeah, I mean, it was when I first met you, actually, and I invited to work together. I think that's the biggest fuckup of my personal career. No, honestly, it's a pleasure to work with you, as you know, my friend. No, my biggest fuckup has got to be yeah, I've worked in PR since I went to university, did public relations. Then I'd got a job in London. I went to work for an international PR agency in London. I did four or five years down there, worked in healthcare PR, came up to the north and got an account manager job in the police, which is where Prohibition's based north of the UK with Cochie account manager, been travelling for a couple of months, was ready to take on my new job with my new Thailand Tam. And, yeah, I got the new job and it was a network agency which shall be named in the list. But she went on LinkedIn profile. You'll be able to know it now. And, yeah, they were a networked agency.

Chris Norton: 47:37

So I was in the leads office and it was like seven or eight. It was in the leads office and there was a network agency. So we had a Leeds, london, edinburgh, manchester, glasgow, all over the UK basically and we had an account and it was for a alcohol brand and they were launching a new bar in the north-east and I was really excited about this. It was a great consumer brand, brilliant. I can do some. I can get stuck in here and I had to write a story based on a brief that I'd taken from the London office and they said can you write this release about this new bar that's opening this new bar for our chain, the chain bar, and can you do it? I said OK. So I wrote the story, pulled my effort into it, sent it down to the office for approval and about a couple of hours later, again email back from the account director in London this is great, good to go, brilliant, so enthusiastic, 25 year old Chris thinks Ryan will smash this. This is the first project that I could do and show these guys how good I am at media relations.

Chris Norton: 48:44

So I started sending it out and getting a couple of execs that I worked with and we were on the phones all day the next couple of days, sent it out everywhere and it's gone everywhere, like literally everywhere. Anyway, at least it was on Wednesday. On Friday lunchtime I got an email ping into my Outlook and it said hi guys, just to let you know. Don't send that across to the client for approval. What do you mean? There's a bit of a technical issue. So I was like client approval, is the email good to go doesn't mean to go out.

Chris Norton: 49:18

Then and it turned out that I hadn't been briefed properly in my but it was my fuck up. So I did the only what I can do as being an honest, brave individual. I stuck my head in the sun and hoped it all blew over, and so I went to my in-laws for the weekend, but with my wife my now wife at the time as my girlfriend was sat in their house and I'm the technical fuck. The story is at this bar opening and there was a big who-how because the locals were not happy about the rebranded name for the bar. It was a fear of seeing that.

Chris Norton: 49:52

I literally thought in my first weekend I've done such a good job I was going to get fired. So to everybody out there, I apologize for sending a press release out too early. I was just keen to get going but luckily I survived and I'm here to do this podcast with you today. And that's basically it for Influencer Marketing. Obviously, this is just a snapshot of what we cover in the webinar, as Will's alluded to. But yeah, thanks for listening and downloading the podcast. We appreciate every single comment we get. I know you've got other things to do and listen and get on with your lives, but if you can leave us a review or just a thumbs up would be great. If you've got a fuck up to tell us, please send it over because we'd love to hear it and share it on the show. And until then, kick fucking up.

Vicki Murphy: 50:38

Thank you for listening to Socially Unacceptable. Please remember to subscribe to the podcast and leave us a five star review. Don't forget to follow us on social media on Twitter and Instagram at ProhibitionPR, we would love to hear some of your career fuck ups so we can share them on the show. For more information on the show, search ProhibitionPR in your search engine and click on podcasts. Until next time, please keep pushing the boundaries and embracing the socially unacceptable.