Attention Influencers: These Entrepreneurs Tell Businesses 60% Of You Are Full Of Shit

12 Feb

Instagram has transformed the marketing world.

With over 1 Billion active users, its perhaps the most visceral, engaging and “stylish” of the social media juggernauts.

How that Billion breaks down is important for understanding “Influencing”. According to mention.com:

70% of Instagram Users have less than 1,000 followers.

15.7% have between 1,000-10,000

2.8% have between 50,000-100,000

Theoretically, anyone can be an “influencer“ on the platform - someone operating as a brand, marketer or straight up sell out within the network of followers that they have collected.

But scoff at the effort, difficulty and persistence required to align with Zuckerburg’s shallow algorithms and risk under-appreciating the Influencer phenomenon.

A phenomenon that has led to Bali being on every Influencers bucket-list.

Beautiful people taking beautiful photos gravitate to beautiful environments.

They also come for the business. High end hotels, big brands and boutique concept stores - all see the value of the right photo with the right person.

But in such a saturated market, how do these businesses know that they are going to get a return on investment?

Enter WAVEMAKERS.

A modern all-female crew for a post-misogynist marketing world, WAVEMAKERS are a marketing communications company that help businesses strategize how best to reach their target audience.

With a 360 degree, data-driven approach - Influencer Marketing is a big part of what they do.

After their recent workshop, Finding The Right Influencer For Your Hotel Brand – they are full of insights for the 2019 market place.

The most important trend is the move away from “Macro” and “Mega” Influencers towards “Nano” and “Micro” Influencers.

While a universal standard has yet to be agreed upon, WAVEMAKERS define it as:

Nano = Between 1,000-10,000

Micro = 10,000-50,000

Mid Tier = 50,000-100,000

Macro = 100,000-1,000,000

Mega = 1,000,000+

That means that this market place is opening up to 20% of the entire Instagram population.

When 200,000 million people with perfect cheekbones and an echo-chamber of followers that reinforce the belief that they are gods gift to marketing, WAVEMAKERS help businesses surf the cesspool.

It’s one of the reasons marketing campaigns are looking to work with the “authentic“ Nano and Micro-influencers.

Many of these Nano and Micro-influencers have more tailored branding that their networks really engage with. And they are more affordable.

An army of smaller influencers “organically” spreading the message of a business is the predicted trend for 2019.

Standardised pricing is non-existent.

Brand prestige and campaign as well as Egos and elevated concepts of self-importance render a standardised payment model difficult.

Companies barter their products or pay anything from $200-$10,000 for a single photo.

And that’s just the Nano and Micro level.

Black Hat Marketing

Followers do not necessarily = great influencers.

“Black Hat Marketers” use various tactics to inflate their online persona and market value.

Strategies like “Follow, Unfollow”, buying followers, Comment Pods (direct messaging groups of 15-20 engaging with member’s accounts, like an Insta-luminati), as well as a myriad of liking and commenting software artificially create “hype”. This fools the algorithms and thus businesses that they are good investments for their marketing campaigns.

How do WAVEMAKERS shift through the shit?

By using a series of software that have access to Instagram's API – they process publicly available data that the vast majority of influencers keep secret.

Once this is complied, they share with businesses partners which Influencers are good investments, how much they charge etc.

How Many Influencers Represent Value For Money?

It varies slightly from industry, but their general data says 60% of people who consider themselves Influencers are a colossal waste of money.

Only 40% provide a good ROI.

And this percentile rings true all the way from 1k followers to 1 million followers and above.

It was inevitable that the social media fully immersed in 1 billion peoples lives was going to be hijacked by algorithm manipulators and people assuming a simple transition to “Online Marketer”.

It was also inevitable that businesses would be slower to understand and react to the individuals who feel they can command an inflated price for their “One Photo” service.

The likes of WAVEMAKERS will become increasingly important in an ever changing marketing environment.

That’s why Genesis is thrilled to be hosting them for their workshop “Creative Content Marketing And How To Make It In 2019” on Thursday, 21st February.

If their insights into Influencer Marketing are eye opening - we can’t wait to see how they put their Marketing brains towards producing content with true creative value.

James Buchanan