Partnering With Influencers? Involve Them in Product Development

Influencer marketing has proved its potential.

For years, many brands were careful not to invest too much in the unpredictable influencer space. The lack of control by companies on the public actions of their influencers carries significant risk. If the influencer does something that irritates or offends digital audiences, the blowback on his or her sponsors could be vicious.

Today, influencer marketing is widely accepted as one of the most effective channels to promote products and services online, especially for B2C players. (Although I’m not discounting B2B influencers.)

The connection between followers and their favorite content creators is powerful. More importantly, the link can be leveraged by businesses.

Social media users trust influencers’ opinions and recommendations, valuing their advice as they do that of a family member of friend, an extremely valuable dynamic for brands. As such, many digital marketers consider this segment the word-of-mouth equivalent of the digital age.

Moreover, the potential pitfalls of influencer collaborations are no longer that big of a deal, particularly now that brands and consumers are far more knowledgeable about the nature of relationships between influencers and their sponsors.

As influencer marketing strengthens its position in the digital marketing mainstream, becoming increasingly central for many marketing campaigns and strategies, brands and marketers are exploring ways to innovate and leverage influencer impact even moreOpens a new window .

A new type of partnership

Emilie Tabor, founder of Influencer Marketing Agency, writes in The Drum that “forward-thinking brands have been pushing the limits of traditional partnerships and getting influencers more involved in the creative process of product development, and everyone is starting to realize that this is greatly beneficial from a 360-degree perspective.”

This new, more holistic approach to developing brand-influencer collaborations — in which co-creation is the goal from the start — not only helps generate leads, convert prospects to customers and enhance the effectiveness of influencer marketing campaigns, it “also can improve product development from a creative perspective,” says Tabor.

Ultimately, digital marketers must rethink how they view influencer sponsorships. In fact, viewing the relationship as a sponsorship is already wrong-footed. Rather, it must be treated as a partnership.

Content creators and influencers are fast-becoming cultural icons and celebrities. They’re more than mere advertising spokespeople.

Nordstrom, for instance, worked with Arielle Charnas, an American fashion blogger (@somethingnavy), to launch the influencer’s fashion line in 2018. On its first day of sales, demand for the Something Navy collection caused the retailer’s e-commerce site to crashOpens a new window due to a rush in traffic, and amassed more than $4 million in sales.

And Charnas’s own brand also benefitted, with the blogger upping her follower count to 1.2 million from 263,000. Meanwhile, her growing stardom will have no doubt boosted Nordstrom’s sales of the recently released fashion line.

Everybody wins.

Plus, according to Michael PatentOpens a new window , founder and president of brand advisory and integrated marketing agency Culture Group, “in an era of crossover and collaboration, working with cultural provocateurs to develop unique products or launch new ventures is a move towards securing the millennial market.”

Indeed, this type of relationship is one that nurtures the authenticity that young digital audiences — for example, millennials and Generation Z — expect from brands and influencers alikeOpens a new window .

If you still need convincing that fostering a co-creation environment with influencers is something your company should consider, I suggest you read Tabor’s articleOpens a new window .

There’s no doubt that the influencer-brand dynamic is evolving. There are even tools and tech coming to market that connect brands with the best content creators and influencers to help with their goals.

The big question marketers need to ask themselves is whether they want to be at the forefront of those changes and establishing these new-and-improved partnerships with influencers or whether they want to wait and see how the space continues to develop before going all in.