What Brands, Creators, and YOU get Wrong about Influencer Marketing | by Matt Lyng | Aug, 2023

Get expert insight on the challenges of the industry, and how companies, creators and consumers can skirt these pitfalls

The relationship between influencers and brands has become one of the fastest growing marketing mediums in the past 5 years.

But how effective is this new style of reaching potential customers? Although many brands assume the effectiveness of influencer marketing, most don’t know what makes it so effective, the potential risks in partnering with the wrong influencer, and how best to use good ones.

Today, we will look at the research and answer all of these questions, so you can get more out of your partnerships.

What experts say:

Isidora Todorov’s “The Impact of Social Media Influencers on Consumer Behavior in Digital Marketing” asserts that influencer marketing primarily affects consumers in a Psychological and cognitive way.

By using social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), Todorov posits that an influencer’s audience uses upward comparison, the concept of comparing oneself to another that one assumes to be superior, to create an ideal image and something they wish to strive for.

“It is common that influencers represent those higher ideals and standards which are generally wanted by the majority of society and individuals and thus cause the need for upward comparison.” (Todorov 2023)

Combined with emotional engagement and captivating content, influencers are poised perfectly as an authentic expert on what their audience wants to be.

What They Found:

As brands begin to partner with influencers to capitalize on this parasocial relationship, Todorov found 3 major findings.

First, By promoting products on social channels, brands and influencers receive immediate feedback from consumers. This interactivity and reciprocal nature of social media plays a huge part in building brand and partnership loyalty.

Second, the success of building brand awareness through partnerships largely came from the quality of the influencer partnership, rather than how many influencers promoted the product.

Finally, an influencer’s endorsement of a product is valuable, however, the real impact came from post-purchase behaviors. By using it in their own way, influencers generated far higher levels of customer satisfaction, recommendations to others, and repeated purchases from their audience.

What We Get Wrong:

Todorov confirms a lot of assumptions around influencer marketing, and provides data to prove it even further, but how can a brand or influencer use this to be more successful?

If you are a brand: Take time to find the right person for you. There are millions of influencers with massive followings but the right person can create a great environment of happy customers, rather than a luke-warm reception that will forget your brand after 1 day.

If you are an influencer: understand why your followers follow you. Having an audience is a great thing, but not knowing why can hurt you if you want to work with brands. By understanding your audience, you can better know their preferences and what brands would work best for you when partnering up.

If you are a consumer: be aware of who influences you. We all have influencers we connect with and trust, but often that can make us compare who we are to them, which lead to buying products you don’t need. The best way to combat this is in this article itself: knowing your being influenced. Being aware gives you control and choice in what you buy, and more power to know what’s advice and what’s promotion.

Influencer marketing is not going anywhere, and it can be a wonderful tool for everyone when done right. But, just like anything else, knowing is half the battle. Thanks for reading.

Works cited:

Festinger, L. (1957). Social comparison theory. Selective Exposure Theory, 16, 401.

Todorov, I., Lazarević, K., & Cvetković, M. (2023, June). The Impact of Social Media Influencers on Consumer Behavior in Digital Marketing. In E-business technologies conference proceedings (Vol. 3, №1, pp. 63–68).