Influence marketing and influencers: do you know the difference?

It is love at first sight: your friend's new sofa, or perhaps your boss's handbag. You want to know where you can buy the same thing, but you do not have the chance, or the courage, to ask. We might even be talking about a dress worn by a celebrity at the latest Emmys, or the one that dazzled on the Oscars red carpet.

Then you search for that piece on Google insistently, page after page. You even post a photograph on your social media, and ask friends for help finding that object of desire.

Every time something like this happens, it represents not only an unsatisfied buyer, but also a lost sale. Making money from these situations can be a huge opportunity for influence marketing.

This is the point where we draw the big distinction between these actions and those of influencers, who are individuals who 'push' products at consumers. Unlike that, influence marketing is the power of content and context, and of giving the consumer enough information throughout the process that leads to a purchase. Here we mean brand awareness, consideration in the buying decision, which includes the ability to compare products, quality, price, popularity, proximity and even identification with the brand.

In a world extremely saturated with advertising, an influencer waving a new must-have lip gloss on Instagram can become just another drop in the ocean. By contrast, influence marketing does not force products on people. It presents them in the context of a narrative, a story. The success of eco-friendly and social marketing, such as the Patagonia campaign that, two years ago, during Black Friday, asked people not to buy a particular jacket and donated to charity all the money from the sales that ended up happening, shows the power of authentic, positive narratives.

The levels of influence

To create a buying context, we first have to categorise the levels of influence: micro, macro and mega.

Micro influencers are the people we come across day to day, including everyone we know who typically has fewer than ten thousand followers. They create content, or the buying context, and they are a very powerful force with a high level of engagement: in the United States, 80% of consumers look for recommendations before making a purchase, and the trend is for the same to happen in Portugal.

Liking a sofa that is in a relative's home, judging the comfort and the sincerity of that, creates a context that sells. Despite the high degree of involvement, micro influencers are not an official part of the value chain, because they are small pawns, even if they are considered the main force in the aggregate.

Macro influencers sit between social media notables, with tens of thousands of followers, and celebrities with tens of millions. This large and influential group has been one of the main drivers of influence marketing so far. And because they reach a larger audience than micro influencers, brands work with them through affiliate programmes or agencies.

And while there are countless examples of macro influencers making a great deal of money from sponsored products and public brand endorsements, it is not so clear how many sales they actually generate.

Take David Beckham: the former player earned 30 million a year by being the face of certain brands. From an affiliate-sales point of view, where commission is around 5%, we arrive at the conclusion that these campaigns should have generated about 600 million.

But the reality is that we do not know whether the former English football star was well or poorly paid. What role did Beckham play in the sales? Did his name and image keep selling after the contracts ended? Perhaps, if he could quantify his value precisely, he could take the risk of being a little more authentic, relevant and selective about the brands he fronted.

And as we move from micro to macro influencers, we see more potential monetary return, but we experience less authenticity. Consumers tend to trust friends more than David Beckham, however well known he may be.

As for mega influencers: these are created by a collective consumer mindset that persuades more than celebrities. Examples of this are news media, films, television, red-carpet events, festivals and professionals.

These influencers set trends and attract millions of consumers with their content or contexts. Studies show that video, a clip on YouTube or a Hollywood blockbuster, deeply influences the awareness people grant to brands. Buyers watch the videos not only for entertainment, but also to learn and to discover new fashions. It is this influence that leads to a purchase, taking advantage of the power of scripts that create immediate, powerful relationships between consumers and products.

Quantifying this mass, diffuse influence precisely has been difficult, because it is impossible to measure such a range.