There is an interesting article in Horizont today under the headline "This is how much influencers earn per post". A closer look reveals the quality of management and leadership in marketing.
How much money do influencers get?
It is about an agency study that determines the investment behaviour of marketing departments in the matter of "influencers". First of all, an explanation on the subject of influencers.
Influencers are people who are more credible than media houses because they constantly publish content about themselves on social media that you can never know is authentic or not. For this, influencers with more than 500k followers receive up to 38,000 EUR per post from German marketing departments, according to the study. This is very beneficial for clarifying the authenticity question. Yes, say current court rulings, "influencing" is a commercial event subject to VAT and not a friendly service.
And how do digital marketers steer compensation to influencers?
Now to the point. The article gets interesting when it comes to the topic of numbers and performance review. We read:
"However, marketers are unclear whether the high expenditure is actually appropriate in individual cases. According to the survey, 77 per cent are unsure about the criteria that should be used to calculate the amount of compensation, and 37 per cent have no way of measuring the impact of individual influencer campaigns on their own sales."
Ok, so 37 per cent of those who have the ability to pay 38,000 euros for a single post in their company say they "have no way" of measuring impact on sales. So communication and marketing are controlled by gut feeling or by special knowledge (branding)? In any case, the wording suggests that digital marketers do not see it as their job to establish the missing link to sales effects. Leadership failure? That's what one can assume when looking at the next information in the article.
Current insights into leadership and management of marketing and digital marketing
"Fifty-seven per cent of the marketers surveyed only measure the reach of their campaigns, 55 per cent also check the impact on brand awareness. But only a third, 33 per cent, record sales that result either directly or indirectly from influencer activity. Also, only 32 per cent measure the website traffic generated."
These points deserve to be considered in more detail in turn.
"We measure reach". And nothing else?
57 percent "only" measure the reach of their campaigns - what exactly can be meant by that? Quite simply: no measurement at all.
The "measurement" of reach is a non-transparent matter for the platform, such as Instagram. Access to the unverifiable performance data from the platform monopolies' own black box is the responsibility of the account holder, i.e. the influencer. The only thing marketers in companies can do in terms of "reach" (impressions, unique users) is to have the data handed to them. 6 out of 10 marketers demand ONLY that.
Under the conditions of such non-existent controlling, I can now do anything as an influencer: Make up numbers and earn money for zero performance. I can also make even more money for nothing by buying for 3 dollars 100 new fake followers on Instagram. Whatever fake performance I charge, no one can notice because no engagement is measured. There are also no downstream checks on the effects on media resonance, brand or sales. This is an invitation to fraud.
As a marketer in the company, I can also do anything in such a situation of total neglect. Nobody notices whether the target group is reached. No one notices whether influencers and content work well because they are relevant. Whether perception and image are changed, media resonance is generated or sales impulses are triggered, no one notices all that, they don't seem to care. How can that be?
This can also be called "management by total blindness". And who is responsible for this? It is the management level in 6 out of 10 German companies.
" We measure brand awareness" - but how?
Next figure, please: 55 per cent "check" effects on brand awareness.
What do you need to do to measure campaign effects on brand awareness?
- one must measure sufficiently frequently (at least monthly)
- You have to measure sufficiently granularly (in the target group to be reached, which is no longer defined socio-demographically by mass media, but by interests and other targeting characteristics).
Even though there are many ways to measure brand awareness in a contemporary and comparatively inexpensive way, it costs comparatively high sums to measure the brand in any case. Because I can't get around survey projects. The costs are so great that in our practice so far we have not come across a company with sufficiently frequent measurement of the brand. Not one.
Most only measure their brand once a year, if at all. In such a database, not even the impact of a TV campaign worth millions can be reliably detected. The recognition of purely digital campaign effects is impossible, not to mention influencer effects.
The "testing" of the effects on brand awareness thus turns out to be a purely protective claim. Blind management in German marketing is optionally joined by incompetence or insincerity.
A third captures sales effects - but how?
Next figure: 33 per cent record "sales resulting either directly or indirectly from influencer activities". Very good, here we meet obviously functioning controlling. It applies to a third of the companies.
However, if at the same time only one third of the companies state that they measure the website traffic generated by influencers, which is really part of the little basics of web analysis, then it seems reasonable to assume that the direct or indirect effects on sales are in many cases not measured at all, but only observed.
Here is a curve with the sales figures, next to it a curve with the marketing spendings, and do both of them swing upwards? For a CEO, this shirt-sleeved correlation may be sufficient, but for the management of marketing and especially digital marketing, this is no basis. Who is responsible for this free pass to waste corporate money on digital marketing?
Conclusion: A maximum of one third of the companies have a data-based foundation for some kind for controlling of their own digital marketing activities. All the others have nothing. Questions upon questions.