Itâs time to drop the baggage around the word âinfluencer.â
If youâre a maw-and-paw restaurant, and a local foodie with 300 followers agrees to rave about how banginâ your pot pie is? Mazel tov! Youâre doing influencer marketing.
ââInfluencerâ is just a general category for anyone that is able to get an audience to take an action,â says creator economy expert Lindsey Gamble.
And whether that action is starting your first creator campaign or signing a viral TikToker with 2 million followers, todayâs master is gonna influence the crap outta you. In a good way.
|Meet the Master
Lindsey Gamble
Creator economy consultant, Creator of the Lindsey Gamble newsletter
Claim to fame: Worked as a brand ambassador and lifestyle creator for L.L. Bean, Every Man Jack, and Allagash Brewing. His self-titled newsletter was named one of the best marketing newsletters by Buffer.
Fun fact: Growing up, Lindseyâs dream was to play in the NFL. After playing Division 1 for Bryant University, he got a chance to work out with his favorite players at pro day.
Lesson 1: Everyone is a creator.
âIn todayâs day and age, everyone is a creator. Even if you donât call yourself that,â says Lindsey Gamble.
Whenever youâre makinâ a Bluesky post or TikTok short on something you care about, youâre creating content. And when that content finds someone else who cares, it creates a community.
And, even if that group is small or extremely niche, the parasocial relationship between creator and community cultivates a trust that can quickly turn audience members into customers.
Case in point, when I worked for a CPAP vendor, we saw double-digit returns working with a sleep apnea influencer. Talk about hyperspecific, right?
âIt doesnât always have to be the person with the biggest followership. You just want to work with people that believe in your brand.â
And thatâs the beauty of this lesson: If everyone is a creator, that means thereâs a creator for every industry. Even the really boring or weird ones.
Lesson 2: Thereâs power in someone elseâs voice.
Influencer marketing works for the same reason word-of-mouth is so effective.
âItâs all about social proof. What people say about you is more important than what you say about yourself as a brand. Any voice besides yourself is going to be powerful.â
But, like word-of-mouth, influencer marketing only works when it feels â you guessed it â authentic.
âYou wouldn't hire a plumber and then tell them what to do, right? You might tell them where the bathroom is, but they fix the problem because they have the skills and expertise.â
In other words, donât treat the creator like what Gamble calls a âdigital billboard,â asking them to simply parrot your existing message.
To plan a truly effective creator campaign, he advises starting with your pain points. For example, is there an audience youâre failing to connect with? Is your social presence on a certain platform lacking? Consider how that need could be addressed from the outside, then approach a content creator to create something entirely new.
âYou work with that creator because they have a value that you don't have as a brand or as an individual. Sometimes it's the audience, right? More times than not, it's their voice.â
Lesson 3: Work your way up.
Chances are good that you donât have the budget to nab MrBeast for your next campaign. That doesnât mean you canât benefit from creator marketing.
âYou can start small and build up,â Gamble says. âI always recommend running a couple of campaigns that are brand awareness [at first].â
After contracting with a creator, your first step should be to create a brief that outlines both your goals and your success metrics. After the content is made, analyze how it aligns with the brief.
âDo that two or three times [to make] benchmarks, and then figure out what didnât work and what you can build on top of.â
The idea is to build a roadmap toward working with a broader portfolio of creators that address a variety of business needs.
âYou might have this idea of the type of creator you want to work with, but a better start is tapping into different creators that help you get to different audiences.â
|Make Yourself a Master
How to harness the strength of creators
To signal boost your business,work with social media influencers â the way they connect with the masses is actually unmatched. (And an industry average of 20x ROI is borderline ridiculous.)
Key assets for influencer marketing:
Our top insights on working with creators
Four Google Sheets for organizing/analyzing campaigns
Eight email templates for reaching out respectfully
10 ways to save time in ChatGPT
The strategies and templates in this curated kit will arm you with tons of essentials.
đ Feeling iffy about blogging these days? Hereâs 7 benefits to blogging and why itâs still one of the highest ROI channels.
|Lingering Questions
THIS WEEK'S QUESTION
What's one marketing habit or best practice you think we should collectively leave behind, and what would you replace it with? â Al Iverson, Industry research and community engagement lead, Valimail; deliverability consultant and publisher, Spam Resource
THIS WEEK'S ANSWER
Gamble says: "Relying solely on last-click attribution for measuring the success of influencer marketing is a mistake.
Sure, tracking links and promo codes show direct sales, but creators play a much bigger role in awareness, brand building, consideration, traffic, and more â all of which leads to purchases down the line, even if the link or code isn't used.
We need to measure the impact of creators more creatively and look at the full picture, including content performance, website traffic, brand follower growth, search lift, share of voice, brand and sales lift studies, post-campaign surveys, and other methods to capture the true impact of influencer campaigns, otherwise you're likely missing out on the full story.
NEXT WEEK'S QUESTION
Gamble asks: Whatâs a marketing strategy or trend that you think is widely overlooked but has high potential for impact right now?
This week's email was brought to you by Curt del Principe. Editing by Laura M. Browning.
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