Attending Advertising Week 2024 provided an incredible opportunity to immerse oneself in the latest innovations and trends in the influencer marketing industry. In the past few years, influencer marketing has become a cornerstone in modern brand strategy, where it has truly transformed how businesses connect with their audiences and their purchasing behaviors. As the marketing world continues to evolve, brands are looking for new strategies to best utilize their influencer community. While the sessions were great and super informative on a hypothetical level, we often find that this format and limited time don’t always allow for the sharing of more practical knowledge. In this article, we chose a few key topics to elaborate on and get closer to the “how?” of actual execution. 

 

With the growing importance of influencers in shaping brand narratives, Advertising Week’s sessions raised some key questions that can guide your next campaign.

How Do You Balance Brand Safety While Quickly Jumping Onto Trends?

In one of the sessions, the speakers emphasized the importance of maintaining brand safety without missing out on trends. To do this effectively, brands establish long-term partnerships with influencers, usually after at least three successful collaborations. These partnerships build consistency and trust, which are essential for leaning on creators to turn around quality content at a faster pace. It’s important to also note that internally, marketers must have streamlined processes in place to allow these quick campaigns to move smoothly. 

With your long-term partners, create and utilize pre-approved content templates that influencers can quickly adapt to align with new trends. Additionally, monitoring brand sentiment throughout influencer campaigns helps marketers better understand both the brand and audience, enabling the necessary speed and confidence for knowing which trends are worth jumping on. You don’t need to chase every trend; participate only when it counts. Short-lived trends often revolve around specific sounds, dances, or pranks, while broader trends such as shifts in humor, messaging, or content style tend to evolve more slowly, making them easier to incorporate into standard campaign timelines.

2.  How Can Influencers Be Included in the Process?

If you are an influencer marketer, you have likely heard that creators should be involved in the process to achieve authentic content a million times. What is typically not shared is exactly what efficient integration looks like and when it takes place.

Starting at the conceptual stage, allow influencers to review brand guidelines and campaign goals in order to propose how the product or service can fit seamlessly into their narrative and feel native to their audience. If the campaign strategy is less flexible, try to offer more than one approved content option and ask targeted questions such as, “How would you deliver this messaging in your own voice?” Similar questions ensure alignment without stifling creativity. 

During the pre-launch stage, influencers should submit draft content with room for one to two rounds of feedback. Give creators more freedom on the first draft. If feedback is needed, ask open-ended questions instead of giving direct orders. For example, if you need a video to feel more fast-paced, ask: how would they adjust the timing or which clips they would cut? Making decisions of that nature a collaborative effort will be vital to creating an organic feel.

The post-launch stage is when our Direct Agents team has gained some of the most impactful insights. Don’t make the mistake of ending the partnership with, “It was great working with you!” Ask influencers why they think a post performed the way it did and what they would or would not repeat. This is an important fresh perspective that many marketers leave on the table.

 3. How can Marketers Scale yet Maintain High Engagement and Low Cost Per Views?

As campaigns grow, be mindful that the level of intention and strategy does not diminish. To maintain efficiency, continue monitoring campaigns closely and collaborating with influencers as you would with smaller efforts. Close relationships with long-term partners were the key drivers behind our maintenance of excellent cost-efficiency in 2023 and 2024, despite significant increases in spend and scale.

Some may think working with the same influencers over and over is repetitive, but that would be entirely wrong. Maintaining continuity across campaigns by connecting an influencer’s earlier content, such as pre-launch teasers, with follow-up posts such as a review tells a cohesive story. Think about the bigger picture than a post itself. Consider how it fits in with the posts that come before and after it. Ongoing partnerships also allow brands to test the same audience and therefore gain much more granular and accurate insights into what resonates. When constant optimization is enabled, campaigns are destined for success. 

Long-term partnerships alone do not guarantee this outcome. Success heavily depends on the deliberate application of learnings from long-term partnerships. Go beyond basic metrics. Deeply analyze keywords, content types, posting times, or platform-specific nuances. Evaluating non-traditional elements, such as comparing content with multiple people versus one person, or indoor versus outdoor settings will help your campaigns to stand out.

 4. How Can Brands Move Beyond Surface-Level Inclusivity to Truly Resonate on a Multicultural Scale?

During a panel featuring a social media platform and olympic level professional athlete, they discussed the right and wrong ways to approach inclusivity. 

Superficial attempts at diversity, such as featuring diverse faces without authentic storytelling, can come across as performative and alienate consumers. To build real connections, engage in conversations with influencers about their culture, identity, and lived experiences. This begins the start of the creative process. 

Be mindful of who you are sourcing for what campaign. Ask questions before suggesting participation. Especially when campaigns are specifically centered around culture and identity, even if you think you know, ask first before throwing out any briefs. For example, do not make assumptions such as what holidays an influencer may or may not celebrate. 

Empower influencers to tell their own stories, rather than follow scripts. Allow room to align content with relevant cultural traditions, but do not take this effort lightly. Going back to the importance of long-term partnerships, move beyond the outdated and performative approach of one-off or seasonal campaigns with diverse communities, showing a genuine commitment. 

While Advertising Week sessions do not allow the time to outline detailed tactics, the discussions allowed us to hone in and reevaluate our processes, approach, and strategies to ensure that we continue to elevate our influencer campaigns.

If you would like to get in touch with one of our experts or learn more about our influencer marketing capabilities, please contact [email protected].

Ava Ganz, Creative and Influencer Manager, Direct Agents