The form of advertising based on collaboration with external figures is practically as old as marketing itself. In recent years, with the growing opportunities to "collect" followers and communicate with them via various social media and other online platforms, influencer marketing has undoubtedly experienced a boom. As have many brands that have implemented such collaborations effectively. Let's start with what this type of marketing activity is, what benefits it brings, and how it can... damage a brand's image.
Influencer in a nutshell – definition, role and impact on the market
Influencer is a word with a very broad definition – everyone influences someone, after all. In the context of influencer marketing, we can define an influencer as an online personality who has built a specific community and exerts influence on it. Brands eagerly capitalize on this relationship, seeing its image-building and sales potential.
Of course, online presence doesn't have to be the foundation – any athlete, musician, beautician, journalist, or scientist who maintains a social media profile (and often multiple social media platforms simultaneously), such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, and has amassed a significant audience, can be considered an influencer. The pool is therefore quite extensive – influencers include Robert Lewandowski, Tomasz Rożek, Robert Pattinson, Olga Tokarczuk, Gordon Ramsay, "Trybson," and Jake Paul. The owner of a small YouTube channel about the history of video games, a popular Twitter political warrior, or a fashion blogger, can also be considered an influencer.
Influencers are most often categorized by the size of their audiences —nano-influencers (around 1000 subscribers), micro-influencers (up to around 80,000-100,000), macro-influencers (limited to around a million subscribers), and large influencers (also called mega-influencers), who offer influence to multi-million-strong fan bases. This division, however, is largely irrelevant, as reach isn't usually the key factor in online advertising partnerships—but more on that later.
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The golden age of influencers – how has their position on the market changed?
As is common with many internet marketing phenomena, the explosion of this form of marketing's popularity quickly led to an influencer boom. Encouraged by the quick and relatively low-energy profits, internet users began to create and expand their social media profiles, YouTube channels, and blogs en masse. This receptive market meant that even microscopic initiatives devoid of meaningful content were often targeted by various companies, under the principle that the brand should be ubiquitous. And this wasn't always illogical. Small and very small influencers often engage in bartering – in exchange for recommending a product to their community, they receive a free copy directly from the manufacturer. This way, the company gains online exposure while paying for the collaboration solely with the product. Top influencers operate at completely different rates – in Poland, leaders can earn up to several hundred thousand złoty for a single advertising post.
Above all, however, it's important to remember that rumors of the death of influencer marketing are greatly exaggerated. It's easy to be snarky and point out the industry's undoubtedly high levels of absurdity. It's easy to spot spectacular blunders, blown budgets, rampant artificiality, and the "quickly, before we realize it's pointless" tactic. Despite all this, there's no denying that a well-executed influencer campaign can pay off for all parties involved – the company increases brand awareness and sales, the influencer earns money, and the community purchases products that meet their needs.
Collaboration with an influencer step by step – from data to decision
A popular form of brand-influencer collaboration is organizing a joint contest. Such an initiative can indeed increase brand awareness, although experience clearly shows that people who enter contests with specific prizes rarely purchase those products. So, if the campaign's goal is to increase sales, don't expect significant increases.
A good way to measure the effectiveness of a collaboration is to provide the influencer with a code or password that their community can use to receive a discount on the advertiser's products or services . This way, you can easily measure the actual effectiveness of the collaboration – the numbers usually don't lie.
Choosing the right influencer for a campaign is a difficult task. There are many questions that must be answered before collaborating. However, a few key factors stand out:
Does the influencer's community fit the brand's target audience?
Every marketer knows that it's hard to overestimate the importance of selecting the right customer base. While it's highly likely that you'll find a few individuals, a community built around a fashion channel isn't likely to be broadly interested in marketing training, a new line of monitors, or a line of children's toys. A parenting blog isn't generally a particularly good place to advertise sports accessories, and tech fans will usually prefer products or services related to their interests to tickets to a concert of the current teen idol.
However, interesting "cross-genre" collaborations between brands and influencers do occur, seemingly from different worlds. The key to the success of such initiatives, however, is always a thorough analysis of the target groups – perhaps, despite apparent differences, many commonalities can be found?
Can an influencer engage their community?
When assessing the potential of influencer collaborations, many marketers consider only the reach achieved by a given creator. Reach is valuable… and simultaneously a trap. The fact that an online personality reaches thousands of people means little if engagement rates remain very low. The ability to properly engage one's fans is far more important than reach itself —it's precisely on this that the profitability of a collaboration truly depends. A true influencer influences a gathered community, and their words do not fall on deaf ears.
In addition, there's the still-common practice of buying followers or reactions to posts, as well as participating in "like-for-like" initiatives. Bots don't buy —the reach built on such activities is completely worthless from the advertiser's perspective and doesn't translate into real sales or image gains.
It's important to note that engagement rates typically decline as the number of subscribers increases. This is primarily due to scale. The more followers, the less likely it is to reach everyone—and typically, early subscribers are more active and have a closer bond with a given person. The second reason is social media algorithms. Major social media platforms like Instagram limit the organic visibility of posts to force profile owners to invest in advertising tools and build paid reach.
Also remember that engagement rate can easily be increased by publishing a post designed to spark cheap controversy and resulting in an avalanche of negative comments. The engagement rate then increases, but does this have a positive impact on the effectiveness of potential advertising collaborations? Usually not.
Is there potential for creative collaboration?
Another common flaw can be overproducing collaborations – if an influencer is constantly promoting products, focusing on quantity and putting in the absolute minimum of effort, advertising your brand likely won't hurt anyone. And it won't help – it will simply quickly disappear in the flood of content, generating no profit, and you, as an advertiser, will be left with an invoice to pay. Given the ubiquitous marketing stimuli from every influencer, for a message to break through the tons of competing posts, videos, and stories, it has to be creative… or at least well-planned and presented.
Will the influencer's image harm the brand?
Not all online influencers are credible. Nor do they all represent the values a brand espouses. Some influencers—even those from the media elite or the first league—engage in collaborations that later damage their image. This is particularly true when it comes to promoting shady stores or products that don't meet their stated goals. Failure to select the brands they endorse is the most common sin among digital celebrities. Before entering into a partnership, it's essential to thoroughly research the advertising history of a potential brand ambassador.
In addition to reliability, the creator's online sophistication must be considered. For a brand with a guardian or sage archetype , collaborating with a controversial influencer known for foul language and numerous scandals can prove to be a dead giveaway, even if KPIs temporarily increase. As always, it depends.
This latter group of internet personalities has, in fact, earned its own name in recent years. "Patoinfluencer" is a very fashionable word. What is this phenomenon?
Patoinfluencer – the dark side of influencer marketing
Over the past few years, internet personalities have gained considerable popularity thanks to—to put it simply—content based on the most primitive activities, replete with violence, drugs, and vulgar language. Pato-influencers know how to generate attention, and current media trends and a greater-than-ever emphasis on clicks are helping them achieve this . Pato-influencers are one of the fuels of high-budget MMA events, where the sport is merely a component of the entire show (and not the most important one at that). Since 2018, several such organizations have entered the market, and pay-per-view access to a single event can reach up to half a million people.
In assessing this phenomenon, however, I would caution against "once upon a time" bias. The internet has indeed allowed patoinfluencers to advance several levels in terms of generating reach and broadly defined media exposure, but the phenomenon itself is by no means new. People who cross social boundaries have always aroused curiosity, and now they have simply been enriched with new promotional tools.
Separating the wheat from the chaff
Is it worth collaborating with influencers in marketing activities? Absolutely. By working with an influencer, a brand benefits from the reputation a given influencer has built in a given field. Sometimes, there's no need to search the top of popularity rankings. Every topic attracts true enthusiasts, and many of them are also "media savvy" and can build, engage, and influence a community. The influencer industry is neither a business paradise for a brand (as marketing enthusiasts call it) nor a minefield (as skeptics bitterly claim) . The key—as always—is proper planning of the entire collaboration.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- The definition of an influencer and its importance in the modern marketing ecosystem
- The transformation of influencers' position in the advertising market over the years
- Stages of planning and implementing a campaign with the participation of an influencer
- The patoinfluencer phenomenon as a specific type of influencer marketing
