Leo Olsen Insights on How Influencer Marketing is Changing In The Digital Marketing Space

Influencer marketing has garnered a lot of interest over the last few years. In fact, a survey by Influencer Marketing Hub revealed that 63% of marketers intend to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2020. And as the digital marketing space continues to evolve, you need to adapt to the ever-changing demands of the market.

Leo Olsen has been in the social media consultancy for more than half a decade. He understands exactly what works and what does not work. He started his career in the digital marketing space at the age of 17. By the time he was 19 years old, he had already established a company called Mastermind.com, which he later sold to ClickFunnels. At 20 years old, Leo Olsen was already a millionaire. Now, he currently runs a social media agency helping multiple companies build their brands and drive revenue. In this article, Leo shares his insights on influencer marketing and what every digital marketer needs to know.

• Bottom-Up Approach

As brands continue to rely on influencers to communicate their message to consumers in a more natural way, influencers are getting more involved in the content creation process. The key reason for this is that influencers are also keen to retain relevance and build credibility among the audience. They want to produce content that engages and entertains their existing audiences, thus shifting away from the product-led activations. More and more, the directions now land in the hands of the influencers, so companies need to find a more balanced way in the involvement of influencers. 

• Storytelling is better

When consumers prepare to make purchase decisions, stories can deliver valuable information and shape the decision for the overall brand experience. Leo reckons that stories can be powerful tools for developing cognitive processing, recall, and brand image and choice. With these factors in mind, brands are working with influencers to determine how their partnership can tell a story to an influencer’s audience. Studies show that consumers want to see beyond the image. Besides, trends show that users will interact and engage more with content that resonates with them and brings more excellent reliability between influencers, audience, and brand. 

• Focus on more organic lead generation

Many are the times that influencer marketing strategist focuses on the wrong influencers. In today’s digital marketing space, the audience is keen on authentic conversations above all else. Traditional influencers that leverage on the vast social following are no longer working as before. Micro-influencers with a smaller following but a better engaged and targeted audience are presenting better results. Their message is perceived as better and trusted. For brands to build loyal communities, they need to choose the influencers more carefully. Importantly, they need to partner with influencers to create scalable, authentic content that creates a different experience for the audience and deliver a real return on investment.

• Using metrics to know the effectiveness of influencer marketing

Influencers can indeed add significant value to a marketing campaign. For all of the reasons explained above, brands want to gain more than just exposure. If anything, they want to see the link between influencers and sales. That is why metrics are getting at the center of the evaluating influencer campaigns. Factors such as impressions, clicks, conversions, or sales gauge the performance and measure progress. Platforms such as SaaS helps brands to track the entire customer journey, from awareness to conversion.

Influencer marketing can be tough to navigate, and sometimes, it is helpful to ask for guidance. One clear thing is that influencer marketing is here to stay. Leo Olsen advises companies to tap into available resources to ensure that they are incorporating new techniques in their digital marketing strategies. With the rapidly changing digital marketing space, companies have to be aware of the trends that shape the consumer market. Focusing on engaging influencers at every step of the way during the content creation stage is crucial. Again, storytelling and authentic engagements have proven to yield better results in influencer marketing campaigns. Lastly, if you cannot measure it, you cannot build it. Brands must continue to monitor the performance of their digital marketing campaigns to determine their effectiveness. Connect with Leo here to learn more about his work. 

Featured image used by permission from Leo Olsen-Guillot