In our latest team meeting, we took some time to talk about trends we are seeing in marketing right now. One common misconception we talked about was the dream of thousands of followers, and that being the measure of success. Enter in influencer marketing where their goal IS thousands of followers, and you get confused brands thinking that is their goal.

Here’s a sneak peek into our conversation…

Hayley: If you want to be an influencer, you have to have thousands and thousands of followers. If you’re a company or a business and your goal is to sell your product, you don’t have to have hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram. Building an audience on Instagram can be part of your overall marketing strategy, but your marketing strategy is not the same as that influencers strategy. And just because an influencer has 20,000 followers doesn’t mean that they understand digital marketing for a brand or business. I know plenty of people who call themselves content creators and say they’re experts at social media, but it’s just a totally different genre. I think there needs to be more like, to your point Steph, maybe there needs to be more labels and more of a line drawn between.

Steph: I think a lot of it, too, is an overwhelming misunderstanding of social media these days. A lot of brands and companies will think  the main way to market is to find this huge influencer. And it’s like, why? Like you were saying, what are your goals? And I think it’s a lot of just, I have to do this. I have to join TikTok and Instagram and Facebook. And it’s like, Facebook might have nothing to do with your brand.

Kaitlyn: Your audience doesn’t live there. I tell people all the time. It’s like, yeah, we could be on every single channel. But where does your audience live? And are you just creating content for nobody?

Hayley: Someone was asking today about lead Gen and building their email list. And I just kind of took a look at what they were doing and they had a lot of free downloads. And I’m like, Kevin, is that what your audience wants? I have a friend whose lead gen is –  “I’m going to do a five minute website audit. I’m going to record it and send it.” And I’m like, that is brilliant. It’s like you sign up and she spends five minutes recording a video of herself walking through your website and being like, oh, you don’t have this call to action here. I think I would put that here. Or you know what? This color you changed. And she was able to in five minutes really give some action to take and change that’s already. You built tremendous trust. And now you’re like, hey, if I’m ever hiring for my website, this girl is going to be the one you hire.

Steph: I feel like a lot of people think I have to have a presence or I have to offer this and that. Like, I just need to have this and send this and have this free thing. It will matter more if you have three people who are actually doing something about it than just 4000 followers who could care less about anything you do. Yeah, like they’re more concerned about a free email versus having a couple of people who actually want to work with you.

Kaitlyn: I think a lot of times too, when you have an influencer talk about a brand or they do a giveaway with a brand or something like that, you’ll have an influx of followers, but you watch in a month and they’ve all fallen off because they’ll then find your content back in the feed and be like, why am I following this? I don’t care about this.

Hayley: People are more careful and curated about who they’re following because people are taking more and more social media breaks. They want to make sure that who they’re following is uplifting, inspiring and life giving, not life sucking. So, yeah, those just don’t resonate anymore.

Adding to this conversation – influencer marketing can be a GREAT part of your marketing strategy! But don’t look at an influencer with 100,000 followers and think YOUR way to success is the path THEY took. Their intentions and goals are different from yours, and it all comes down to knowing your goals.