In December, I did Mark Ritson's MiniMBA in Brand Management. If you don't know Ritson, he's a marketing professor who's also worked with some of the biggest brands in the world (Sephora, Don Perignon, to name a few).
One thing I learned that stuck with me more than anything else: most marketers don't have a strategy.
By his estimation, 90% of marketers never develop one. Based on my career and the people we meet at Modash, that number is not far off.
Most of us have worked (or will work) at companies where the "strategy" is "make this number go up." Or worse: "make all seven of these numbers go up, and this one go down. Here’s $2000."
The problem is: you can't run a successful influencer program without aligning it with a marketing strategy. And you can’t run a successful marketing function without aligning your strategy to company objectives.
But we won’t always be lucky enough to be handed one. If you find yourself in a job where there’s no clear marketing strategy, here’s a good way to approach it.
Tip #1: Start at the top
Before you can align your influencer program with anything, you need to know your company's specific goals. "Grow revenue" is not specific. I’m talking specifically: how much, in what markets, by when.
These answers will impact which influencer types you partner with, how you measure success, how much budget you need, and just about everything in between.
Here's how to find them if they don’t exist:
Review internal memos, OKRs, company mission or vision statements. Think about the meetings you've sat in. Talk to the senior people around you. Ask yourself: what does success mean across the company? What are the big milestones for this year?
Refine everything you learn into simple statements. Something like: "[Result] by [time]."
Bring it to your manager to confirm. And if you can, bring it to the most senior person you have access to and have them add or correct.
You might be thinking, "Isn't this someone else's job?” Maybe. But I’ve seen what happens when influencer marketers (or other marketers) don’t do this.
You get hired. You’re told to make influencer marketing deliver sales. You say, "OK." Twelve months later, you’re looking for a new job because the channel "failed." You never pushed back. You never made specific internal agreements about what success means. And when the economy shifts and the CFO starts looking for cuts, you have a wishy-washy answer when he asks you, “Why do we do this?”
This story is avoidable. It starts with knowing what the company is trying to accomplish.
Tip #2: Get the marketing strategy or build one yourself
Once you know the company's goal, you need a marketing strategy.
Ritson always starts with diagnosis — understand your market, your customer, where you actually stand. Then you answer three questions:
Who are we targeting?
How do we want to position our offer to the people we're targeting?
What objectives does marketing need to achieve to support the company’s goal?
That's it. That's the strategy. It could fit in one paragraph.
If you have a marketing director or CMO, go ask them. Literally ask: who are we targeting? How do we want to be positioned? What are marketing's objectives this year?
If you get clear answers — great. You now have a strategy to build your influencer plan on. Go to Tip #3.
If you don't get clear answers (and this is more common than anyone likes to admit), you need to do your best to answer them yourself. Take a few days (or a week!) and look at who's buying your product. Look at how the brand talks about itself. Look at what the rest of marketing is doing and try to answer the 3 questions. Talk to whoever you can. Try to piece it together.
It won't be perfect. But a working strategy you built yourself is infinitely better than no strategy at all. And just like before, take your strategy and show it to the most senior person you have access to. Ask them: This is the marketing strategy as I see it. Do you agree?
Tip #3: Use the strategy to create your influencer marketing goal
Once you have your hands on a marketing strategy, you can use it to determine which part of it influencer marketing should be responsible for.
f goals include increasing AOV (average order value) or CLV (customer lifetime value) or decreasing cart abandonment, influencer marketing isn’t in a position to impact those numbers. But you can impact the revenue number or the customer acquisition cost.
Be choiceful. Choose a marketing objective that you can impact. Some objectives don’t make sense for you to focus on. You can’t do much to decrease the cart abandonment rate, for example.
Other objectives will help you determine what tactics you’ll use in influencer marketing to make a contribution.
If, say, there’s a marketing goal to increase AOV (average order value), you’re going to run a different campaign with creators than if the goal is focused on new customer acquisition.
Your influencer marketing goal should look something like: "[Strategic creator activity] to support [marketing goal], measured by [metric] by [time].
For example: "Partner with 50 creators to increase brand visibility to support our customer acquisition goals among women aged 30-45 in suburban markets, measured by new site visitors and email signups from creator content, by the end of Q3."
That's a plan you can execute, measure, and defend.
Once you have this, pitch it to your manager and get explicit buy-in. This is important. You want an internal agreement about what success looks like before you start doing the work.
Now, I’m curious.
🤔What’s everyone else doing?
Do you currently have a clear marketing strategy that your influencer program ties back to?
🩷A good influence
This week, it’s all about @bentonmcclintock.
Who he is: Benton McClintock, a comedy creator based in New York City with 565K followers on TikTok and 237K on Instagram, who makes absurdist, sketch-style content about everyday life (now and in the future).
Why he's worth a follow: Benton's organic content is funny on its own. He has recurring formats that his audience knows and loves. But comedy is subjective. What makes him genuinely interesting to anyone running creator campaigns is his sponsored content. He's worked with Jean Paul Gaultier, Vaseline, Caudalie, Clorox, and others — a wild range of brands — and every single ad fits seamlessly into his existing formats. The brand just becomes part of the joke. It's always a Benton video. The product just happens to be in it. If you brief creators for a living, his page is basically a masterclass in what happens when a brand trusts a creator enough to let the content stay theirs.
Dream collab: Honestly? This one's less about who should work with Benton and more about who should be studying him. But if you're an influencer marketer, follow him and pay attention to how the ads show up.
Tell me about a creator you love and any dream collab you have in mind. Email me at [email protected], to be featured.
See you next time!
Eleni Zoe xx
Brand @ Modash. Say hi on LinkedIn
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