Aleesha Worthington, senior brand director of marketing and e-commerce at Scotch Porter, shares how we at UNDP can ensure our message and work has the visibility we envision by tapping into influencer marketing.
When you go online, it often seems like everyone is trying to sell you something. That’s why, when engaging with your target audience in the digital world, it’s easy to come off the wrong way. Luckily, we can correct course by building relationships with the right influencers, as Aleesha Worthington, an expert in digital marketing, suggests. The peace of mind that comes with someone having our back, validating our message, and celebrating our goals in a world where it’s hard to be seen as human -- is priceless. By tapping into the world of influencer marketing, we can engage more deeply with the individuals and online communities that support us, stay relevant, and keep our momentum going.
Elyse:
Welcome to Digital What? a podcast series where we join UNDP personnel and experts in conversation about the digital communications questions you’ve always wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.
Today we are taking a deep dive into the world of influencer marketing with Aleesha Smalls-Worthington, the senior brand director of marketing and e-commerce at a men's grooming brand called Scotch Porter. You may be unfamiliar with the brand, there are some other people Aleesha has done marketing for that you’ve maybe heard of: Jay Z, Kanye West, J. Cole, Willow Smith, Rihanna... No BIG DEAL. But after hearing Aleesha describe herself, I mean who wouldn’t want to work with her…
Aleesha:
I like to call myself a Swiss Army knife. I'm a mom, wife, passionate, hard worker. I started my career early on before there was, quote unquote, the Internet and social media. And so I grew up, I like to say, going to the digital school of hard knocks. And so I'm super passionate about digital and marketing overall.
Elyse:
So before we get into what influencer marketing is, I asked Aleesha, who exactly is an influencer?
Aleesha:
An influencer is a person, a group or even a brand that can help share your product or service to a target audience that you want to drive awareness through.
Elyse:
Influencers are critical, because when we’re trying to communicate in the digital world, it’s important our target audience feels there is a human on the other side.
Aleesha:
The way humans consume and engage, it's not one dimensional anymore. Whereas now it's going even deeper down the rabbit hole where I want to follow someone who looks like me and they're speaking in the language that I speak in. And they're also showing me that they understand me. Right. And so it doesn't feel like I'm being preached to. It feels like I'm having a dialog with someone who's interested in something that I want to know or want to get to learn and understand. And so when I think of UNDP, the first thing that comes to mind is the educational aspects sometimes can not only be from the authority. It also needs to be from folks who look and feel like who you're targeting. And that's what I think people love the most about influencers, is that it feels like, OK, I'm dealing with someone who actually has a face.
Elyse:
It’s natural to follow or take advice from someone you like or trust… so much so that as the social media boom came about, influencers easily became a part of our digital lives.
Aleesha:
We went from ordinary charismatic characters off line people who built a digital presence. And then that term was coined as influencers to now fast forward the everyday consumer influencing their families, their friends, their coworkers. And so in today's social sphere, you're looking at people who go deep vs. wide around which are product or services and figuring out how you can tap into them.
Elyse:
Influencer marketing is really about personalities being brought to life digitally. To find the ideal influencer, you want to think about the person, the type of relationship they have with the audience you want to tap into, and the digital ecosystem that they live in and how naturally you fit into it. Once you find the right fit, Aleesha suggests going slow:
Aleesha:
Just like with anything else in life, you should treat certain things with a crawl, walk, run approach. And I think when influencer marketing first came to light, it was all about running. Right. Like we have this product, you know, promote it to your followers.
Elyse:
But now, a lot of brands are taking the time to really make sure their influencers get to know them first. If not, influencers can come off as just adding to the noise in a climate where we are already inundated with information.
Aleesha:
We live in a society, you know, that's information overload. And I think what ends up happening is that individuals are so used to information coming to them, right, so even when you're on, let's say, Instagram, you may not be following CNN. But you know what? You don't have to because the reality is a lot of times your friends are going to be talking about things that are going on, you know, world news, etc.. So the information highway isn't a one to one anymore in terms of like, if I want to understand news, I have to follow a news outlet. No, I can follow this influencer or my friend and be fed all the things that I'm trying to learn. And so when I think of UNDP in terms of Driving awareness and understanding around your world and what you represent. It's important to touch into those socially conscious individuals who again may not be coined as your traditional influencer, but when you look at what their social sphere represents, what this sphere of influence represents. Right. And what I mean by that is it's not about, you know, partnering with someone who has a huge following. It's about that person who's true to the issues that your company represents. And looking at who's following them. So by those folks seeing that you're working with these folks or they are sharing a certain narrative that you guys have put out there it then says, I need to see what they're about. And so when thinking of influencer marketing, it's about building a groundswell and having groups of people who start to build affinity around your messaging…..There's so many times I'll look some time at the data and I'll be like, wow, you know, that video that this influencer did in December is still driving traffic to our website.
Elyse:
Aleesha suggests having a group of influencers who continuously have your back, and then also having influencers on board for special initiatives or events to really boost your message. So although influencer marketing sounds pretty good, it also sounds like a lot of work. So I asked Aleesha, how would I started?
Aleesha:
Put a toe in the water, as I like to say it. Right. So don't think of a large initiative until you get your feet wet and you're able to actually optimize your program so that you have it nailed down. You have who your target influencers are. You have the times of the year that you're going to work with them. You have your always on group who are people who consistently you're working with. And so to get started, I would say think about an initiative that's important to the brand. Then build out your program there in terms of having specific people to work around that initiative. Then take a 50,000 thousand foot aerial view post working with those folks and say hmmm… we see this work when we dealt with these type of people, we actually drove deeper engagement. But these other folks who have a larger following, we didn't really get the impression level that we were looking for. We didn't get the number of comments, et cetera.
Elyse:
When choosing the right influencer, there are several variables to consider. Such as how many followers they have, who their followers are and how they interact with them. Aleesha breaks down the amount of followers and reach that influencers have into three tiers.
Aleesha:
Tier one being just the shiniest object in the room. Those are the macro influences that everybody looks at, says, oh my God, they have, you know, over a million followers. You know, when they post something, they get five hundred thousand likes. You know, I would love my brand to be on their page, you know, because it's going to drive so much awareness, you know. And then you have your mid-tier folks who fall below that. I would say down to about three hundred thousand followers. ….Then you have tier three, the micro influencers, where those folks can be anywhere from a thousand people to two hundred and ninety nine thousand people. And those guys, A) tend to reach more of their audience. B) tend to do a lot more. That's still organic and not every other post is paid. They're really about building out their persona digitally. And so the people who follow them are invested and really believe, you know, what they're pushing.
Elyse:
But it’s also important to consider your relationship with the influencer and how well they represent you.
Aleesha:
It's almost like going through the H.R. process and identifying an employee. Right. It's like if this person is out there representing my brand, you know, before you hire someone, you know, what are some of the attributes that you look at to make sure that they make sense to be a part of the UNDP family? Right. And so you should use those same identifiers when looking at influencers, but also too, you want to work with them in order to get reach, right? So you want to pay attention to how often they post. You want to pay attention to who they're following, because as the saying goes, “birds of a feather flock together”, right? So they're following folks that don't align with UNDP values. That's something that you may want to be a little cautious.
Elyse:
Most importantly, you want the influencer to be someone who you can trust, empower, and give creative freedom to without worrying about being misrepresented.
Aleesha:
You have to have, I say, the ying yang of it all where it's checks and balances on both sides. But you also too, don't want to limit your pool of people to work with. If you're if you're holding the influencer captive to too many rules and, you know, too many guardrails, A) they're probably not going to want to work with you or B) you're definitely not going to get the reach that you're looking for.
Elyse:
There are some pitfalls to watch out for, of course, you really want to make sure that your influencer is someone who you can also depend on, as you would a business partner.
Aleesha:
You know, so when it comes to you working with a person, there are deliverables, right? There are goals you want to achieve. There are objectives. And so if that person you know, if you're looking to have everyone post at 9:00 and they are like, “oh, well, you know, I had to go to the store I posted at 12:00”. But your goal was to have this huge rush online across 200 influencers at the same time at 9 am that doesn't check your box, right? And so sometimes some of these individuals aren't necessarily...don't have the business skill set and so you may run into issues when you're depending on them to do certain things. There also are instances where, again, because you want the influencer to have creative control, you want it to be organic and authentic to what they already produce on their platform. They may produce something for you. And you like mmm...I understand it works for your profile, but we never want to use these certain words, you know? So sometimes you can run into a subjective perspective where it's checks and balances between what works for them and their profile and then checks and balances against what works for you as a brand. So sometimes the stars don't necessarily align.
Elyse:
Aleesha says you can avoid these pitfalls by focusing on taking the time to really get to know your influencer and seeing how you can sustain a mutually beneficial connection with them.
Aleesha:
I think when you work with influencers who you really make them feel good about their brand and why you want to work with them, you really make them feel good about having a line in. And so even though it takes having an internal team member, having a system in place to be able to crowdsource these influencers, you know, get to know them, log their handles, you know, look at their engagement, that kind of thing, to me, it works better in the long run because you now have a relationship established. And guess what? Because you work with this influencer, sometimes it's not about paying them. It's like, hey, we have this initiative happening this week. We wanted 500 sign ups and we're at 400. You think you could throw this up in your story? And they'll make sure because you've already built a connection with them. And I think that will help things not go wrong when you have something that you really need to accomplish going on.
Elyse:
And when it comes to finding the right fit -- think outside of the box. It’s important to remember that influencers don’t need to be experts on a particular topic, but their sphere of influence just needs to tap into who you want to reach. Simply start by connecting with the influencers that inspire you and who you think could do the same for your audience. So don’t sweat it, take it from Aleeha.
Aleesha:
It's not rocket science. We're not performing brain surgery here. And I think for anyone who hasn't tried out influencer marketing doesn't necessarily understand it. I would say it's one of those things where don't be afraid to get started. Even if it's looking at your own personal digital ecosystem. Right. We're all influencers. So just thinking about how we would want to spread a message, share a message if we had a product or service or something that we want to educate our family and friends on. It's literally just building up that road map and now finding folks who fit it. And so it's all about just getting started. “Wash, rinse and repeat”, because you're going to need to keep cycling and new things to keep and pushing in the direction that you wanted to. But also in order to be able to optimize that and take some of the learnings to be able to even dive even deeper with your programming.
Elyse:
When it comes to getting our message out there in the social media universe, it can be tricky, but luckily, with these tips from Aleesha we are one step closer to finding the right influencers to help us reach our goals. Just remember, be like a swiss army knife.
This episode of Digital What!? is produced by Oscar Durand and myself. Our theme music is by Lemon Guo, and additional music is by Chris Zabriskie and Epidemic Sound. Sound design by myself. Special thanks to our influencer marketing expert, Aleesha Smalls-Worthington of Scotch Porter for taking the time to speak with us. To listen and subscribe go to wherever you find your podcasts or DigitalNow DOT UNDP DOT org.
I’m Elyse Blennerhassett. Stay with us.