What is Influencer Marketing? Q&A with Mikkel Malesa

Influencer marketing has evolved out of the explosion of social media, particularly with Facebook, Instagram and most recently Tik Tok. Some members of these networks have gained the reputation of having expert knowledge or influence from their followers, making these members a channel for brands to influence their product or service.

Mikkel Malesa, founder of DreamInfluencers.com, answered some questions and gave us insights into one of the newest online marketing channels.

What is an influencer, and why are they important to brand & marketing professionals?

An influencer is a person that can affect buying decisions with their own influence and often with a large following on their preferred social media. We talk about influencers in different sizes such as:

– Celebrities
– Macro Influencers
– Mid Tier
– Micro Influencers
– Nano Influencers.

See the tiers as shown on the picture.

Source: mediakix.com

Influencers are not something new, we are just seeing the shape of influencers changing now when social media is growing. Brands have used the faces of celebrities in TV ads and outdoor marketing in many years.

In the age of social media where we are seeing ads everywhere and it becomes harder to break through our mental spam filter. This is where Influencer Marketing becomes important. It’s a way to personalise your brand and tap into the trust that the influencers have to their audiences.

What kind of impact will an influencer have on a product or brand?

We are already seeing many different brands using influencers to create their new styles, new designs and to promote new product launches. A good example here is the fashion giant www.NA-KD.com that makes influencers co-create their styles.

The brands that can tap into their best influencer relationships and make them their ambassadors/super fans are the brands that are going to succeed. Influencer Marketing is not just about promoting a product in one post, it’s about the long-term relationship where we see the influencer use the product again and again. The impact the influencer has is that they collect so much information and data from their followers that the brand can use to create new products and improve their existing products.

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Can you name an example of an influencer marketing campaign that was a success or changed influencer marketing as a strong channel?

I will always mention Gymshark.com – They were one of the first brands really to nail the channel. And also brands to watch are Daniel Wellington and MVMT who are doing a great job with their influencer marketing strategy.

Every influencer campaign has its own goals, so how we measure the success of a campaign varies.

Are there any pitfalls or challenges with influencers marketing that marketers need to be aware of?

Influencer Marketing is all about finding the right Influencer matches. It doesn’t matter if you handle it by yourself, use an agency or a platform. The core of the good Influencer campaigns and collaborations is all about finding the best influencers for your specific brand to begin with.

A challenge I see is that many brands still are looking too much on the follower count of the influencer they want to work with instead of looking on the relevant of their profile, their niche, their insights data and their content. My opinion will always be that you need to think quality over quantity: It’s better to work with 10 good influencers than a 100 influencers you just accepted because of their following.

What types of influencers are there, and how would they be categorised?

At Dreaminfluencers.com we mainly work with 10 different kind of influencers and niches:

– Fitness/Sport
– Sustainability
– Foodies
– Travel
– Beauty
– Fashion
– Lifestyle
– Home/interior
– Gaming
– Mommy/Family

About Dreaminfluencers

Dreaminfluencers is an All-in-one platform that helps companies to find the right influencers to work with, manage influencer/ambassador teams and also scale them. It also help collect social media content and track data via Instagram directly into the platform. On the platform you will find danish micro-influencers, and in 2021 it will expand into Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Mikkel Malesa is the founder and director of Dreaminfluencers and can be reached via email on mm@dreaminfluencers or on Linkedin.