Share Tweet Share EmailWritten by Lara HolmesInfluencer marketing might seem to be a comparatively new time period, however Social Soup’s Katie Palmer-Rose says the core idea of influencer marketing has been round since Social Soup launched 15 years in the past.Palmer-Rose is the managing director of Social Soup, an influencer marketing company targeted on word-of-mouth marketing for manufacturers. Setting Social Soup aside from the influencer marketing of “in a single day successes” within the ilk of actuality TV stars who amass tons of of 1000’s of followers in very quick durations of time. Social Soup doesn’t consider in transactional affect, and it doesn’t construct transactional relationships.Katie Palmer-Rose, Managing Director of Social Soup.Mediaweek sat down with Managing Director Katie Palmer-Rose to debate the business’s roots and future. Explaining Social Soup’s 15-year tenure within the influencer marketing business, Palmer-Rose says: “When we launched the enterprise [15 years ago], influencer marketing was all about how you can create advocacy. Influencer marketing is creating the appropriate situations for a advice for advocacy, and that actual shortcut to belief that helps us make choices about merchandise and manufacturers.”When Social Soup launched in 2007, it might be a 12 months earlier than the iPhone can be launched in Australia, and Instagram and TikTok didn’t but exist. Facebook had solely been round for 3 years, and Twitter was lower than a 12 months outdated.Building an influencer marketing enterprise earlier than the time period existed had Social Soup basing its marketing strategy on understanding a client’s world. Palmer-Rose says that’s nonetheless how Social Soup strategises and executes its marketing technique at this time. Speaking of the evolution of influencer marketing since she began within the business, Palmer-Rose notes that whereas platforms and engagements have modified, what has remained the identical is the significance of constructing a marketing marketing campaign from the basis of your viewers.“Who is your viewers? Where are they? What are they motivated by? That’s the very first a part of planning out affect. From there, you take a look at what they should hear. What goes to pique their curiosity, educate them in a approach that permits them to maneuver via a decision-making course of?” she says.The greatest evolution in influencer marketing is the platforms. Palmer-Rose makes use of the time period platform loosely, as she notes it’s the speedy development and invention of recent platforms which have modified the unique phases of affect creation.Expanding on the evolution of platforms, Palmer-Rose says: “Your platforms may very well be a advice from a pal in a mom’s group. As you’re sitting on a blanket at a picnic, you’ve received that particular person that you just belief, speaking to you a few product that you just’re curious about. It may very well be an internet evaluate on the level of buy. So that platform evolves, relying on what you should obtain. It’s not simply TikTok and Instagram.”The conventional types of social media – suppose again to the times of updating your MySpace track or posting on your folks’ Facebook Wall – have modified drastically. With the saturation of the social media market, TikTok specifically has taken over Facebook as the most well-liked platform. This begs the query, is Facebook nonetheless related on this planet of influencer marketing?Palmer-Rose says: “Marketers have to be cautious – a brand new platform or a giant platform doesn’t imply the appropriate platform. So once more, you should perceive your viewers. Are they on TikTok? Are they participating with details about your model on TikTok? If they’re not, then you definitely shouldn’t be there, simply because all people else is there.”The evolution isn’t only a bodily one in every of platforms and applied sciences, however how the market considers influencer marketing and campaigns. With the data that influencer platforms may be the individuals in a person’s social circle, how can influencer marketing harness that very same degree of belief? The quick reply, says Palmer-Rose, is authenticity, “Without authenticity, affect is wasted.”Though extremely profitable, influencer marketing isn’t with out its challenges. A standard subject within the business is how audiences may be purchased and bought, resulting in an empty influencer attain that will look like giant at first look.“We should not about indiscriminately deciding on an influencer who’s received a big attain. It needs to be a few real relationship or real affect that they’ll create,” she says. “We choose our influencers by understanding the neighborhood that we wish to attain and monitoring again to an influencer that may obtain that.“We then take a look at the standard of that influencer, that’s; Do they’ve a perspective? Do they’ve one thing that they’re speaking that they’re recognized for? Are they represented as an entire particular person within the social area?”Palmer-Rose views the democratization of marketing as a optimistic for influencer marketing, paving the best way for the business to permit customers to find manufacturers and merchandise in a related and genuine approach.The future of influencer marketing continues to shine vivid, although rules and disclosure agreements might current challenges for some within the business. Social Soup views the largest fixed within the enterprise as change. Through their market-led analysis and robust basis of viewers and influencer authenticity, the company has developed its methods as individuals are continually evolving in how they interact with one another.Palmer-Rose added: “If influencers who popped up in a single day – individuals from actuality TV reveals for instance – don’t have a detailed relationship with their viewers if what they’re saying just isn’t genuine, or believed or trusted, it received’t lead to conversions on a product. That’s why influencer marketing is highly effective. It’s a shortcut to belief.”Social Soup has a workforce of 26 individuals and has been working for 15 years.
https://www.mediaweek.com.au/social-soup-on-influencer-marketing-and-its-future/
