For quite some time now, companies have been spending money on celebrities based solely on how many people they had in their follower counts. Their reasoning seems pretty straightforward: If we have 1 million followers, then we will make 1 million sales. It’s very simple to do the math. Unfortunately, that formula has been changed exponentially by some events that have transpired recently. Companies now find that most of the followers with an exponential amount of followers are rarely converting sales, and the smaller influencers who have half the following are quietly selling products like it’s nobody’s business. If you’re reading this and are feeling like you’ve experienced a shift but just aren’t able to articulate what you’ve experienced, you are not the only one. The polished influencer phase is being replaced by the authentic content creator phase, and the sales numbers reflect this.
The trust gap nobody saw coming
It took time for the marketing community to realize that people stopped trusting marketing influencers. There was a gradual erosion of trust, primarily due to the large number of social promotions that came from influencer discount codes, and they have all become jaded to the “act of being marketed to.” The influencer community has no one to blame but themselves for this. During this time, there were also many “authentic” creators who were trying to separate themselves from being a traditional commercial. They communicated with their followers in the same way you would have when having a conversation with a friend over a cup of coffee, creating an environment of openness and sharing experiences while being honest about both the positive and negative aspects of the product. This creates a certain degree of credibility due to the fact that the “creator” is relaying their experience with the product, rather than reading a scripted version of their experience. When a creator honestly tells their followers, “This product runs small” or “The packaging is terrible,” but the product works and provides them with benefits that they deserve or need, they are far more likely to listen because the influencer shared honest commentary about the product. Trusting one’s recommendation appears to be the only form of currency that converts sales.
Connection beats reach every single time
The industry had previously been fixated on unattainable goals. There was a sense of accomplishment with followers. As an example, a company displaying one million followers on a slideshow in a presentation was seen as a successful company; however, that does not constitute reach or influence; it is only an illusion. Furthermore, this illusion has cost companies dearly.
A creator with 80,000 visible followers who are engaged listeners to him or her will nearly always outsell an influencer (who is at celebrity status) who is broadcasting to a non-engaged audience of 2,000,000. The key here is that a creator has developed a relationship with the people who follow them; the followers are talking to the creator by commenting and asking questions and are waiting to hear from the creator before spending money. When the creator says, “I purchased this product, and this is what happened to me,” this feels less like an ad and more like a friend giving advice. The intimacy between the creator and the followers is something that neither of the two million followers of an impersonally large account can replicate, regardless of how professional their production techniques may be.
Micro/nano creators have had such an impact because their followers typically do not know them personally, and this is what makes them effective marketers. All of the creators seem like each of their individual followers; they are one of their followers. Additionally, they use the products that they discuss as the average follower would use them, as opposed to an influencer who is leading an unrealistic lifestyle that the average individual could only dream about living.
Storytelling sells better than a sales pitch
The Influencer Playbook has always had a slightly transactional feel to it: the product is shown, the promo code is given, and then it’s on to the next one, but Authentic Content Creators changed that by using Storytelling versus Straight-Pitch. Instead of simply showing their kitchen after the recipe came out looking perfect, they show you the mess in the kitchen when that recipe was attempted, or the same thing happens for Skincare Products. Instead of just showing you the final result of their new Skincare Routine, they take you through what happened over the course of the week prior to that result, and they show you the same for whatever product they recommend problems shown before providing the solution.
The reason the narrations work so well is that consumers do not buy products; instead, they buy outcomes and the feeling of being understood. So when a Creator takes you through their frustrations, what they have tried, and how they finally found what worked for them to show their recommendation, that provides a form of Pre-selling that can’t be matched by anything a glossy photo of a product could ever do. By the time an Audience member receives that Creator’s recommendation, they have already experienced all the things mentioned; therefore, they feel they will get what they expect once the sale has been made, making the sale feel like an everyday conversation that they were already having.
What “authentic” actually means in practice
Let me take a moment to discuss an important topic: Authenticity. In recent years, it’s become somewhat of a buzzword and has almost lost its original meaning. Just about every company thinks they can slap the word “Authentic” onto everything they produce; however, it’s not an aesthetic that one can simply turn on. Authenticity has no “on/off” switch, and audiences can usually tell if what they’re seeing is manufactured or contrived.
The vast majority of true-to-life creators have several characteristics in common. They consistently stay within their established brand identity and are not out there promoting any product or service for a check. Even when they are being compensated for their promotion efforts, they continue to interact with their fan base as if all their supporters were friends of theirs, not just accounts that they were trying to deplete through a commission structure.
When all of these examples come together, you begin to realize that a large portion of all of the “experience” we want to provide comes from a consistent and reliable creator; those are the kinds of creators who provide “believable recommendations.”
The creators who are succeeding the most today are not necessarily the most talented or the most aesthetically pleasing; rather, they’re passionate, sincere, and authentic people at the other end of the devices you are using to view them.
Why brands are quietly rewriting their budgets
There is a definite trend for brands to work with authentic creators. Marketing teams have tracked the data, and there is no question that their conversions tell them this is the direction they should be going. Campaigns built around authentic creators are producing better returns, lower customer acquisition costs, and creating long-term brand loyalty that is far superior to the “spray and pray” model of traditional influencer marketing.
One of the reasons why is cost. Although authentic creators may charge considerably less than top-tier influencers, they are still producing comparable (or better) sales. But perhaps the most compelling reason to work with an authentic creator is that they produce this value over time. Whereas an influencer’s post is simply advertising for that campaign and is completely gone when the campaign ends, an authentic creator continues to talk about that brand in an organic way, responds to customer questions in comments sections, and builds a relationship with the product and the audience long after the contract has ended, creating compounding value.
Smart brands are starting to realize they do better working with a few creators on a long-term basis that are aligned with their brand strategy than chasing new trending creators with one-off contracts. The relationship between the brand and the creator can develop over time in the same way that the relationship between the creator and the audience develops: gradually, with trust at the core, and resulting in much greater value over an extended period of time.
The takeaway for anyone building an audience
For creators wondering where they fit into this new model, here is your lesson: You no longer need millions of followers, or a well-lit studio scenario, or a perfectly curated feed in order to create a sustainable business. You must simply be genuinely useful, genuinely honest, and most importantly, genuinely YOU! Your audience will value your consistency much more than they will value how polished you are.
Brand marketers have the same clear path forward. Stop evaluating potential partners based on the number of followers they have. Start evaluating partners based on how much trust they have built. The creator with the smaller but loyal following who truly believes in what they are recommending will outperform the celebrity 99/100 times each quarter that matters to the brand.
The last several years of influencer marketing have taught us that attention is extremely easy to buy. The creator economy will teach us that trust is the only thing worth “owning.” The public has become extremely astute and extremely cynical; they want to hear from genuine, REAL people and not from celebrities anymore. Those brands and creators that get this are not just staying at the leading edge of this trend; they are profiting from it.
