Wu-Tang had it right: Cash rules everything around me. But it’s not just me, it’s all of us; clients want their dollars to work harder and the agency wants to show results through creativity and strategy. So, when it comes to influencer campaigns, we do have a way to grow reach and results. And that way is native amplification, or putting dollars behind an influencer’s post to reach a larger – yet targeted – audience. Doing this provides the brand the opportunity to reach an audience natively through the influencer’s handle. You can think of using native amplification for the same reason we use influencers: credibility and authenticity. If an influencer says it, it must be true; if the brand says it, is it true?
Let’s create a scenario. Imagine you’re at a party and there are a dozen different cliques having conversations. You want to tell everyone about the mustard you made, so you enlist your friend Matt because he’s popular. Matt climbs up onto a table and shouts, “EMILY’S MUSTARD IS THE BEST!” Some people hear him, but you want to make sure the right people heard him. So after Matt’s shouted himself hoarse (and had a Macallan to help his vocal cords), you have him slip into a few quieter conversations among known foodies at the party. He asks, “Did you know Emily’s mustard is best for making salad dressings?,” or, “Can you believe Emily’s mustard doesn’t have any corn syrup?” Now everyone knows a thing or two about Emily’s mustard, and the people who are interested are primed to purchase. Your message has reached everyone, and you talked to a targeted and interested audience.
We started this by talking about money, so let’s end it by showing what one of our clients achieved by allocating a bit of money into native amplification (talking directly to the foodies). A $120,000 organic influencer program delivered a little more than 12M social impressions. By adding an additional $50,000 of budget, this client delivered another 14M impressions basically doubling their reach, authentically, and they did it by spending less than half the organic influencer budget. All-in-all a $170,000 budget returned approximately 26M of the right impressions – pretty good ROI. On top of the pure numbers, because we are putting brand dollars behind the influencer’s post, we are also helping promote the influencer and further deepening the relationship.
